How to get a promotion this year

21:32And I had the most amazing boss at the time who was the managing partner at the firm who allowed me to cut a day down a week and then use that day to be able to grow my own business on the side. I mean, it was a really amazing conversation we had. It took about three months to negotiate. But you had that conversation? Yeah, I had that conversation. Did you go to them with that conversation? Yeah, I did. Because they're not going to come to you. And I had an epiphany moment because I was asked to speak at this conference in Vancouver. And it's like, I was doing my day job for like nine years. And I think I was doing a good job of my day job.

22:02And then at the end of the conference, maybe it was being an English guy in Canada. I don't know. But I just like the line of people, they queued up to ask me questions. And you start to feel like a preacher. I was getting people out of wheelchairs. Yeah, yeah. I command me. HR. The power of Christ compels you. It felt like that. So I saw it on the plane back. I thought, this is something. I'm that guy. I'm that guy. Yeah. Why don't I use this stuff and grow my own thing? And that was the, and I went back and again, I'm sort of full of that thing, right? So I get back into reality into Baker Street and I realized I'm not that guy.

22:34And he's looking at me like, what are you talking about? You know, I want to, you know, take a day a week. And we negotiated that over a few months and we got to a good agreement with it. But if I hadn't have done that, if I hadn't have had the relationship I had with my boss, then there's no way I would have been able to do that. And, you know, we now have a business which is 13, 14 years old. One thing that I got from your work was this thing about having a conversation with your boss. And actually your boss doesn't want to have a bad conversation. And most of them are humans who go home and, you know, if you put something to them, they're not going to slap you down necessarily.

23:07They probably will hear you out. But can we talk about that conversation? Because we've talked about the goal and that. I want to talk about, you know, how do you get them in the room? And then what do you say to them when they're in the room? Yeah. Well, let's assume that you've had this six month run up. You've done some prep. You've worked out where you are versus the market. You've looked at what skill set you've got and what adds value. You've identified a few areas where, and it's kind of like selling a company, right? The idea is you don't want to be able to demonstrate all the value because for the potential buyer, there's nothing, there's no more upside.

23:35So you want to demonstrate there's some trajectory of growth there. So you've identified a few things as like, you know, teasers or carrots where you can move this forward and the, you know, the manager and the team benefits. I think the key then is finding like an environment that works for everyone. So you might feel quite intimidated and it could be a certain boardroom you get asked to go to. Don't go to that place. Try and find a cafe or somewhere that you feel comfortable. And as they often say, there's a saying in there, it says, you know, no strategy survives first contact with the enemy, right?

24:02Right. And often what you can do is, yeah, you can plan out a whole series of how this conversation is going to go. you sit down and then you sit with your line manager who says oh you know I was up all night because Charles really sick everyone's got a plan to get punched in the mouth yeah that's what Tyson said same thing same thing but it's like that and then like the conversation just goes left oh man this wasn't part of my plan this wasn't part of my plan so you should expect it's never going to go the way you expect I think is the main thing and then you have a few scenarios I think and then the key is you're trying to essentially you like selling any product or service, you're essentially selling a vision, right?

24:37You're selling something that in a way should have a benefit to this individual. My first ever boss, when I worked for Deloitte or Arthur Anderson as it was, said to me, he said, it's important that you don't understand your boss's objectives. Understand your boss's objectives. And he was very clear. He said, look, if you help me to win, you win. I thought, what a great piece of advice early on. I was like 22, 23. Make your boss look good. That's what I always used to say to the new starters. I was like, that's our sales manager make him look good if he steals one of your sales or claims a victory don't worry about it because he'll remember that you gave him that credit yeah i mean like really is yeah so so i think finding a way to initiate and articulate whatever that vision looks like in a way that excites the person you're trying to get on board with it which is in most cases going to be your supervisor or your line manager it might be something where you know you you might recognize that let's say i worked in a factory let's make it like you know accessible for many people.

25:30And it looks like, you know, my line manager or my supervisor has got a difficult, fractious relationship with that guy over there and we have to work together. So one of the things that I could, you know, talk about is how I'm going to make the relationship between our teams better. You know, that would make their life, his or her life, so much more enriched. I'll take that drama away from you. That's it. And it's like a burden off of them, makes their life easier. And as we've often learned, you know, human beings are pretty straightforward. If we can decrease the pain and increase the pleasure, both things have a similar effect.

25:58So again, could I take, it's a great phraseology. Can I take something off of their back, which makes their load a bit lighter? And another thing is you've got to be, I think, aware of maybe what you're dealing with in the sense that every individual's got a story and it might be an often an ambitious individual in the team for certain managers and certain leaders can be a challenge for them. Because what it does is it in a way throws up and puts in front of their face the fact that they may not have succeeded as much as they wanted to. Yeah. And you've got certain managers who would be, who would do nothing more than help you to succeed and want to see you win because they genuinely want you to be totally fulfilled.

26:35Other managers who don't want you to win at all. How do you deal with that? I think the key is understanding their story as much as possible, right? And you're not always going to solve it. It's not realistic. But what I've said, as we went through lockdown, I got a bit of mosh one day because I was looking through LinkedIn posts and everyone's talking about challenges and whatnot. So I said, right, I'm going to do an open public thing where if any random member that I'm connected to wants to talk about their life story and their challenges, I'll do it. And for about an hour, I try and listen to their life story.

27:04The fascinating thing when you do this exercise is as you watch people telling you their life story, they start to solve their own stuff. And then often they start to realize why they do the things that they do and they start to identify things that hold them back. So that's with a stranger. If you do this with someone that you actually know, it's so powerful because even with someone who's a manager or a boss, you start to realize, ah, I get it. That's why you don't like to go to those meetings. That's why you react that way when someone says that. That's why you would only attend this thing or do things in a certain way.

27:33That's why you manage projects that way. It helps you to understand them in a way. And often what you're doing when you're trying to, you know, the best idea is you're trying to sell a vision to someone you actually understand. It could be, and I think this sounds sexist, but I think this is actually worse with men. And when I've done this exercise in companies, it tends to be men are worse at this, where they have known and worked with each other for 20 years, but never knew each other. Is it true that women are less likely to ask for a pay rise than men? I mean, I don't know what the data says on that, but I think anecdotally, from what I would suggest, I think women would definitely tend to be more, I don't know what the word is for it.

28:08They would work smarter and harder. They would go the extra mile, whereas some men probably wouldn't as much as women would do. So I think, you know, so that's one challenge. and often they can downplay their own skills and experiences. So I think, you know, like the imposter syndrome thing, you know, that I've come across when I talk to lots of different people at work, it's prevalent in both sexes, of course, but I think with women can be even worse, which is totally unfounded. They've got, in many cases, much more experience, much more adept at doing the job, but often feel like they can't ask for what they want to ask for, for all sorts of reasons.

28:40And that can be also women, that can also be people, you know, with disabilities, that can be ethnic groups. like we feel like you know there's a there's a reason why i shouldn't ask for this we all doubt our abilities as well that's true i'm a legend yeah this guy this guy doesn't okay so you know you said go into the meeting and almost be prepared for a no so but you can still have a positive outcome out of that other things that people could you know they want they want a 10 % pay rise they come out of there they didn't get that is there still a win in that somewhere you know how are you managing that situation well what you would probably do is go in with a few options of things that you might request.

29:16So one thing might be, we start with the star prize if we're going to win the game show, which is going to be 10, 11, 12, whatever the percentage is that you're going to ask for. And that you may realize quite quickly in the conversation that actually that's either not possible, it's off the table for discussion, or it might be up for debate, and this is going to take some time. And that time, the discussion I had with my boss about this day a week wasn't immediate. It was kind of met with, okay, you need to develop a business plan and show me some data and some stats and some stuff, which felt uncomfortable.

29:43So I went away, put together some documentation on it and it took three months to discuss. And during those three months, it's difficult as far as I was concerned, because we all now know this thing. It's like I've let something out the bag and you know that really I want what I really want to do, even though I've been here for a while and doing a good job, you now understand that I want to grow my own company. It's a little, it's like sort of in a weird way, sort of semi breaking up with someone saying, yeah, we're going to be together for the next few months. So they found out you've been interviewing elsewhere or something.

30:09Yeah. It's kind of like that. It's difficult, isn't it? So I think that's a really important thing to get into and make sure that you're clear about that next step. Yeah. And if they do say no, where do you go from there? Well, so sorry. I think the first thing is to have this number in mind. And then what you might have is some alternative ideas of things that could benefit everyone. So that might be development opportunity. So it might be something that either as a paid course, something where you want to go and have some experience of doing something, or it might be something inside the organization.

30:43So I lecture at City University. I do like five or six lectures each. I did one on Monday. And one of the things I say to the undergrads and to the master's students is we talk about like the dream manager. And we describe the dream manager does two things, right? The dream manager is someone who understands who you are and genuinely wants to know who you are and help you to develop and grow yourself, and is able to help you understand the network and the matrix of the organization that you work in. And there's red flags, right? So I would say to an undergrad, or, you know, if you've just finished your, you know, just graduated and you're going to go for that interview, if you get a sense that the manager you might be working for is, you know, it's like two things.

31:21If you get a sense that they don't really care about you and your growth and development, and there's ways that you can ask those questions, that's a red flag. And the big red flag is how well networked are they in the organization? Because it might be that you're asking for growth and development opportunities, but unfortunately you've got like dead end as a manager who doesn't really know many people. They could work for, you know, an organization that employs 200 ,000 people. It doesn't mean much if they're not well networked. So I think again, in the conversation, you've got the percentage and you've also got some requests of development, growth and opportunity for your own growth and development.

31:51And that could be internal, that might necessarily not cost any money, or it could be external, which could mean it needs some sort of business case to fund it. So, you know, a request could be, you know, I would like to spend half a day a week working with another team or understanding how that, you know, those guys work over there that helps add value to what we're doing here. I mean, it's not an unreasonable request. But again, it's sort of 10%, right? So it could be 10 % of cash, could be 10 % of your time to do something else with, which ultimately, if you're being really smart about it, you want to use that percentage of time to do something that's value adding to you that makes you worth more.

32:24Either here or should I have to leave, makes me valuable elsewhere. But frame it as a benefit to that manager at the same time. Yeah. Because, you know, if you've only got the pay rise and they say no, you're like, oh shit, where do I go from here? But if you go, okay, well, that's a no. What about me working 10 % of my time with this team? I think the manager's going to find it hard to say no again, aren't they? That's right. And let's imagine the other way, right? Let's imagine this is a job that you don't particularly enjoy. And often what we found in our data is jobs that people don't enjoy, they tend to want more money for.

32:55There's a weird inverse relationship with it. Let's assume I really dislike this job, but actually I want 15 % more to cope with the shit of being here. Now I love it. Well, now I don't because I've got 50. Let's assume we have the debate and you say, right, okay, cool. 15 % we're on. I now get paid 15 % more for a job I don't like. And now your expectation of me as my manager goes up because you need more from me. More of the stuff I didn't like anyway. And how long does that 15 % make an impact for? A month or two? Yeah. Couple max. You know, you readjust, don't you? You buy better wine. Go to a nicer restaurant.

33:30Upgrade the car. Yeah. That money's now normal. and therefore I'm still stuck. And actually I'm asking for more, which is going to be impossible. So again, that's the reason why spending those six months would be a clever idea because you might reinvestigate the idea that actually I don't want to be here at all. I don't want to do this job anymore. I want to do something different. I want to apply my skills elsewhere. So again, it gives you some breathing space. The worst thing you can do is a snap reaction to, I spoke to a mate of mine at the pub over the weekend and it's Monday morning. Now I'm demanding a pay rise, right?

33:58Yeah. Like bad idea. Yeah. Last time we recorded, Tomei, and you were having some real dramas with your accountant. So how's that been going, mate? They're sacked. So drama sorted. They're a big corporate firm. They didn't really reply to my emails very quickly, like took a week or two at times. And they charged me way too much. I mean, I've got pretty simple taxes. And yeah, they were charging me thousands. They saved me some money, but yeah, I had to move on. Slow and expensive. Pretty much, yeah. This is one of the reasons that we're really happy to be partnering with TaxApp. It's a tech platform that makes self-assessment simple.

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35:03We've left a link in the description and use the code MONEY10 for 10 % off your first tax filing. That code is MONEY, M-O-N-E-Y 1-0. So Mr. O 'Carolet, I hear you are a salesman. Elite salesman, yes. One of the best, they say? I've got a little bit of experience in the game, yeah, I could say. Done a few deals. Bill, Bill. What would your compliance team say about you? They will say that I am always nagging them and that essentially I just have beef with compliance. I love the team. Compliance slows down all my deals because every time I get to the finish line, they've got to check documents, KYC, GDPR, and it's just a nightmare.

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37:24Yeah, and your mind goes into hyperdrive, doesn't it? Once someone says something that you're not expecting, it's all gone. It's like sort of the adrenaline kicks in. And your manager's good at having that conversation. They might have it a lot. It's the first time you've ever had it. So you go in like this, and the manager's like, no, because of da, da, da, da, da. And you're just like, you feel like you've just been spanked and turned around. And I've met some real psycho leaders who like enjoy saying no. Nothing gives them more pleasure than to sort of smack people down. There was a guy that he ran this, it's in the building game, right?

37:53Building in the construction business. And as I go in to meet this guy, as I'm walking down the corridor, I saw this guy called John who's worked there for about 30 years, right? In a sales role. I think he was either sales director or he was like very, very senior. And as I walked past him, I went to say hello to him and I've met him a couple of times before and he just looks away. So I'm like, all right. So I go in to see the boss. He's in this sort of quite intimidating character. And he says, you know, how are you? I said, I'm good, thanks. And I said, oh, I just saw John in the corridor. And he says, oh, yes, we've just let John go.

38:25I'm like, okay. And he talks in analogies, this guy, right? And he said, I said to John, John, we here at the company, John, we're like a boat, John. And John, you're like the hull. You keep us like grounded in the water, John. And then he said, but the unfortunate thing is, John, all the rest of us on the leadership team, we're on the top deck, scanning the horizon, looking out. And then apparently poor John says, well that's where I want to be that's where I want to be with you guys on the top deck on the looking at the horizon and then the boss says are you John see there John therein lies the problem and then I said what happened then he said well we just shook hands and I said what and and that was it and then he said if you'll pardon the pun my analogy ran aground but hold on it gets deeper it gets deeper so at the time he was pouring me a glass of water in this like cheap plastic cup so I can like I can just remember the crinkling of the cup and is he about to pour the water?

39:18He just finished the story and then he did this. Anyway, Wayne, how are you? Move on. Just ruin that guy's life. I thought you absolute psycho. Yeah, you've just like this guy's 30 years. That's how you've done him. Yeah. Yeah, I've definitely worked for some bosses like that. Especially in sales. I feel like they fire people like very aggressively and harshly. When it was like the bottom 10 % go every year. Yeah, when I was a broker in the city, they'd be like, get your stuff and get out, get off my trading floor. I'm like, whoa, like in front of the whole company. That's brutal. Yeah. Like you say, and that's, but it's like a, it's like a, it's almost like a show of power.

39:54Maybe this person's got some real deep-seated issues of their own, like you say, that they feel that they need to just crush people to gain confidence. Well, I mean, if you accept that, you know, according to many studies, 1 % of the population will be a clinical psychopath, you know, which is actually about 600 ,000 psychopaths just in the UK alone. and many of them find their way into certain roles in certain professions like finance. Because actually what you can do is you, if you, it's actually pretty good skillset, isn't it? If you're really clever and you genuinely can't care less about people, not because you don't, but because you're perhaps clinically incapable of caring about other people's emotions, it's a pretty good combo.

40:29It's almost like the lack of empathy is a superpower there. It's a massive superpower because you can sort of, you know, step on people all the time and have no guilt about doing it, which is what this guy is. If I own the organization, I'm like, he can be the guy that does the dirty work. Like get rid of him, get rid of that. And he's just like, yeah, what, no bother. Which is why I think it's so important as someone junior into the workplace, get a read of this and look at these things quickly. Because if you figure, as I say to the undergrads, if you start to realise you're working for that type of person, get out.

40:54Yeah. Like don't waste two years there trying to negotiate a better pay rise, move and leave. You know, this is a smart strategy. Do you find when people leave that they do get bigger pay rises? Is that true? It can often be a smart way to do it, to make those career jumps every two to three years, make a jump. And often what will happen is you'll go in probably a higher level than you would have done. So when I left the company, I started out when I left university, my boss actually said to me, it'd be a clever idea for you to leave, come back in three years time and you'll come back in a more senior position than if you would have stayed here.

41:21Interesting. And in the process, you would have negotiated two pay jumps. Yeah. But again, on the other side, I think it's about knowing your space because let's say when I was in sales slash account management, the person who'd been there the longest got the best accounts. If you leave for a competitor, they're not going to give you the crown jewels. and it's the guy who's, you know, everyone comes in and they go, oh, that guy's earning loads of money. It's like, he's been here 10 years. He's got like the best clients. He's got the pipeline, the best clients. Yeah, like, because over time people leave and it's like, oh, we trust Damien or Tomein.

41:51He's getting the best. This client's worth 25 % of our business. We're giving it to our best guy. But that's actually the easiest client to manage because they're so ingrained within the company. You don't need to do any work. Just show up. Yeah, you just show up. But you only get in that by being there for a long time. So I do think it's like, you know, you've got to know the kind of sector you're in. I think that's maybe a sales specific thing though. But if they are unreasonable and they go, you're not getting a pay raise, you can't go work with a team, get back out there and grind. And you're now at the point of, I should probably leave.

42:22How do people approach that decision? Well, you need to get active. I think we'll be smart and try and have as many conversations. And I think it's much easier, you know, today with many of the digital tools that are available, certainly with something like LinkedIn and other platforms where you can start to initiate that search and that sort of inquiry on a large scale. The other thing is, so that's the external route. The other thing is, again, it can be possible to be able to make an important move inside an organization. And what you'd need to be prepared for is you have to be prepared to rustle a few feathers, right?

42:53And sort of employ a little bit of hustle. So what happens is we investigated this idea a few years ago of saying, why is it that more CEOs in organizations are more excited generally than anyone else in the company about the strategy. Yeah, yeah. It's not, you know, what you see is often you meet a CEO or a top team and they're high-fiving and they're loving it. You sort of, the further you walk away from them by grade and geographical distance, the more muted the response gets to whatever this strategy might be. The reason why those few people are excited about it is because they made it up.

43:23Yeah. Things that you design and create, you generally think are pretty good because you're emotionally connected to it. They feel entrepreneurial and in control. look at us. We're the guy. And that's the issue. And what often happens is they feel tremendously isolated because there are not many people in truth in the organization that are up for that thing. So again, it feels to me like, and that's the way I kind of saw it every time I worked in a company, I felt like a bit of a kid in a candy shop because in a way you've got all, all you need to do is out care the majority of the population and the majority of the population don't care that much.

43:54It's not hard to be, to stand out in that way. No. Yeah. So again, understanding the CEO, I worked for a company once and I developed a relationship with the CEO, which really upset two lines of people between myself and the CEO. I reported to someone who reported to someone who reported to the CEO. I went to the CEO and I'd started there. I'd been there like a month. And I said, it'd be really important for us to talk every month. And he's like, why? I said, well, because my job was designed to facilitate and improve engagement and communications in the company. How can I do a good job of that if I'm not connected to you and I'm hearing your information third hand.

44:25And he said, all right, fine. So now I have to go back and say to my manager, I'm meeting the boss every month. They didn't even meet the boss every month, which caused some issue, but it worked out well. I'm in the same situation. I have meetings with my CEO every week and the people in between me and the CEO, they were like, they're like, oh, you're her favorite. And like, oh, you're her pet. And yeah, because yeah. And it's like, doesn't that cause more internal issues? Because I'm kind of reporting to one of the directors who's below the CEO, but I meet the CEO every week. So it's caused me a little bit of headache.

44:56Yeah. And I think it's okay, isn't it? As long as you're doing things like you feel for the right reason and it's making the right impact. And it's okay to accept that not everyone is going to like you. And that's something that a lot of people don't feel that comfortable with. But we're trying to solve something here for the organization, for the customers, for yourself, and it doesn't always please everyone. I think this is an important point. So, you know, one thing that came across in the research was you saying that your manager isn't actually that invested in your long term career, you know, so you need to kind of make those decisions sometimes because they don't care where you're going to be in 20 years.

45:32Yeah, I mean, apart from your parents, maybe if you're lucky, if you've got a parent or two, there's not many other people that care very much about where you're going to get to. It's the sad truth, right? But it's not even sad. It's just a reality. It's one of the things I often talk to the undergrads about as well. You know, other than your parents, that's probably it. And, you know, there's a great speaker, this guy called Jim Rohn. Have you seen any of his stuff? He was quite influential in this Herbalife movement in the US and gave a wonderful speech about, he calls it like the not much speech.

46:01So he asks people and says, you know, if the economy changes, what's that going to do for you? And everyone in the audience says, not much. You know, if inflation goes down, what's that going to do for you? People are like, not much. And he said, if you don't make plans of your own, then people will make plans for you. And what do you think they've got in store for you? And they all say, not much. That's absolutely right. People often don't have a plan for you. And this is a really important area as well, I think, because often in people's personal lives, we take leadership in so many areas. That could be clubs we run, that could be family relationships.

46:31We could be dealing with family issues that require exceptional leadership and resilience. Something weird then often happens to many people when they walk inside the doors or virtual doors of the organisation and then start to think that actually they're not in that position. They're not a leader. They're not able to do these things. And actually my growth and development and my future now becomes someone else's problem. For years, I was involved with looking at employee data in surveys. And what we'd find are people would say in the surveys, my manager doesn't develop me. There's no career development path for me.

47:00And it's fascinating because in my personal life, I take complete responsibility for what I'm up to. You should develop yourself. In work, there's a belief that actually the organization cares. And there are some organizations that are truly caring organizations headed by truly caring individuals who do care. But I don't think you should bank on that. It's like a cross your finger strategy, right? Yeah. I mean, in my background, I will admit that it was always like, you don't go above your manager. Like if you do, you're getting managed out. Yeah, yeah. You know, a lot of sales environments are very boys clubby.

47:30So if you did, you know, but I guess I had managers that always looked after me because I got on with them. But I saw that if they didn't like someone, they were done. You know, it didn't matter how good they were. If you weren't part of that club, you were out. How do you kind of, how important do you think it is to be liked, to get what you want in an organization? I started the same day at a company with this guy. and I noticed that after about two months, he had a much better relationship with the boss than I did. And I thought I got on with the boss until I figured out what was happening.

48:01And I never really drunk much as a kid, you know, like as a teenager, wasn't really into it. But I noticed every Friday, he's going to the pub with this guy. And I thought, ah, this is it. So I went to the pub for the first time and I drank two pints and I was smashed. Absolutely legless. You got that money. No, I didn't. And I thought this is like ludicrous. What am I doing this for? but and I realized that there was a way to build a relate and I built a great relationship with this guy in the end but there's a way to do it but what I think the realization was is I'd realized quite soon that relationship is key yeah and often you don't think about the relationship much what are some ways that you can maybe build those relationships without you know the pub on a Friday night or smoking yeah I mean one way in the in the office space could be to ask people if they want to have a coffee for example that could be a good way to do it if they don't drink coffee maybe as a tea, but something where you can have an opportunity to get some one-to-one time with someone can be a really valuable way to do it.

48:53And then again, you know, if you're managing to get sort of half an hour or an hour with someone, how best to use the time. So again, most people, if you ask most people, how are you doing right now? Their response is usually, I'm manic, I'm stressed, I'm overworked, I'm exhausted. You rarely find people who say, I'm good. I'm just sort of seeing as the day goes. I've got a lot of space in the diary and I'm wondering what to fill with. It's not that. Most people are sort of stressed out with something. So again, the building relationship part might be a few moments to ask someone how they're getting on and get them to talk to you about what they're up to, what their work challenges are.

49:27People like an opportunity to de-stress and sort of de-gas in those type of conversations. So it's a good way in the office. And I guess if you're virtual, it could be a way to do that again virtually. So it might be that you might want to invite people to find out about what's going on with their project or with their team or anything that you can help them with. But the key here is you've got to be proactive. People aren't going to walk past your desk or phone you up or Zoom you and say, do you fancy having half an hour to talk about stuff? It generally doesn't work like that. What we found in our research is most organizations would say, most people in most organizations would say we're way too siloed.

50:02So silo working is a consistent problem in every organization all around the world. But it's odd. It's not like I'd be walking past your desk and say, oh, hi, Damien. I know we don't know each other but fancy getting a coffee and talking about work challenges like no weirdo but you know that might but you've got to find a way to do that and you've got to build those relationships i got the um so in my job when i was in sales one thing i realized was that the payroll team were really important but no one understood the dramas of payroll they just thought oh they're awkward you know but actually they're processing 80 000 people's pay every week and it's so they were like you know at it constantly yeah i asked them a little favor and then this is so this is so weird but I got a giant cookie with my face delivered on it to them.

50:43Yeah, to these like the 200 payroll people. And then they never forgot me. So anytime I ever called - That's genius. Yeah, I was just like, thank you like this. Like it was from Millet's Cookies. It was like a heart with my face and the thumbs up. And then everyone in there knew me. And then anytime I called, they'd be like, I need this person paying now. It wasn't like, you've got to wait. It was like, yep, done. You know? That's genius. And everyone, all my team were like, you're so cringe. Why are you sending them a cookie with your face on it? But it just stuck. Yeah, and they knew my face and it was just like, and they liked the fact that another department valued them because they don't, what I think most people don't realize is everyone in the organization has a hard job.

51:19Everyone is doing something that's difficult. And if you went and spent some time in their shoes, you would think, God, there's a lot of pressure in here. It's not easy. I think with the silo in effect, we tend to think everyone is making my job difficult. That's right. Yeah, and it's not that deep. They aren't thinking about you at all. No. My job's the hardest. They're fighting. Yeah, I'm the most important. Yeah, without me, this company wouldn't exist. That's what you want to say. But they - I'm like, I keep the lights on here. That's why I tell them my work. Everyone's fighting fire. Yeah, you're all welcome.

51:55Yeah, everyone's fighting their fires. And if you can show a bit of empathy like that, or just strike up that conversation. And if you can genuinely listen, like you say, I think it was a really good point you just made there, that I don't want people to brush over. everyone wants to talk about how hard their job is and like how rubbish it is but most people don't want to listen they're just like i'm not interested but if you genuinely say like what's going on and what's your drama and you listen people will love you for that yeah yeah totally i think this is a really important point as well because as you know in the line of work that i'm in and that my team have done over the years you know i must have now bumped into and spoken with you know hundreds of thousands of people in all around the world and i'm yet to find a person yet who doesn't have an ambition or a dream or a desire to do something.

52:36For most people, it could be buried quite deep. And what I'd realised when I did those sort of anonymous sort of meetings as we went through lockdown with people, you recognise that everyone, as stuck as they might feel, have got something in there, but not many people are lucky enough to be able to have that type of conversation with someone. And we sort of describe it as, you know, when I talk with, again, with younger people, with undergrads, I talk with them about, have you had that conversation? You know, it's not like the birds and the bees conversation, but the bit about hopes, dreams and ambitions, because not many people have had it.

53:05And I've met with, so it is a great one. I met with a guy who has run a car business, was in the car business for years, about 40 years, very successful, made an absolute fortune. And he said to me, he went to a conference the year before, which was around this employee engagement management topic, which is why he'd asked to meet with me and said to me that he'd never realized he wanted to go into the car business. His dad expected him to go into the car business. He'd done 40 years in the car business and a year before retirement he realized he didn't want to be in the car business whole life on autopilot very successful outside looking in made a fortune you say what a guy you know he's done it but actually has realized a year before retirement it's kind of like he's wasted a lot of his life because the expectation was there and you find that in a lot of professions it's why we found out when we looked at the data that a lot of the um like legal profession i said if you look at careers where you're going to end up really happy according to the stuff that i've seen generally lawyers aren't going to fare that well when it comes to happiness because you often got really highly intelligent people who get slammed into a company and have to do a few thousand hours of chargeable time every year and actually it sort of thwarts their um their intelligence and their entrepreneurialism as well it's quite an interesting dynamic my mates with doctors are like that they they went into it but it's like you know being a doctor is a great job but now they're all like i could have been an investment banker and been retired by now because they're that level of intelligence that's right and then you know they're they're not getting paid very well for what they do hours wise comparative to other areas yeah so this is why we come back to the role of the manager because again as a manager if you looked at this in a in a in a lovely way right that's what i can find for it and so i've got five people in the team you know wouldn't it be nice if i could spend a little bit of time with each of them to understand where their hopes dreams and ambitions might be that could be an hour conversation with each of them it might be with some people that you get to the realization that they don't want anything you know so i worked with someone as well that they were like you know i was born here i live here i'm gonna die here i'm like all right uh and i don't want any more than this i just want to do my job i was that person i just like i'm happy being where i am it's quite enviable though in a way when you when you meet people like that because what you're trying to get to totally content yeah and don't want anything else yeah uh but the the unfortunate thing is the way that most organizations work is every six months i've got to pummel that poor lady and talk to her about her hope, dreams and ambitions and her goals and objectives.

55:24It's like, you know, where do you see yourself in three years? Here. Doing what? This. All right. But a good manager would sit her down and be like, you know, Julie, whatever. Yeah. I know what you're going to say. So let's just have a, let's just have a chat for a minute. How's the kids? How, you know, how's the family? And that's what a good manager should do in that moment, shouldn't they? They should know their member of staff. Yeah. I want to talk about the manager point because I think that's like everything that you've said here is underpinned by the fact that actually on the other side of it is another human being and I think most people don't see their managers like you say the hatred thing it's like when we were in sales as soon as someone got promoted to manager it's like right you gotta delete everyone off Instagram you gotta not post on social media anymore you're now hated by your team oh really do you know what I mean it was kind of like that's how it was it was like you're not one of them anymore separate yourself from them you'll go out with them once a quarter but you won't get as drunk because they will.

56:16That was literally the conversation that it had and is that you've got to separate yourself from them. Can you talk about your work with managers and how you view how they should interact with their team? Yeah, well, we looked at the, a very sort of simple basic question that we asked a number of years ago because I spent years feeding back employee data to CEOs. Most of those CEOs said, you know, we want world-class managers in our company. And I'd sit this side of the table talking to you as the leaders and I'd think, well, that makes sense. World-class leaders, managers, that makes sense. And then a few years ago, we asked a basic question, well what is one you know what what is a world-class manager what do they do so we went around the world we started out in New Zealand and worked all the way through to Brazil interviewing CEOs HR directors frontline managers teams and saying you know if you were a CEO and according to you what behavior would you want to see from a world-class manager and they said ah this and this this we spoke to managers and said what do you need ah this and this and this this is the problem team members what do you need from a great manager we took all of that input and then built in a way a working model of what we consider to be the 12 most important things that a great manager should do.

57:17And we sort of then went back and tested it and it kind of stood up everywhere that we spoke to. It's not a perfect science. You know, someone said if management was a science, we'd have an equation for it by now because we've been at it for like thousands of years. But there are some things that seem to be quite universal, that seem to be the same in Vietnam or Morocco or Beijing or, you know, Buenos Aires. They seem to be the same sorts of things that people want. And we took a view of saying, right, this is what a world-class manager in essence looks like. So like the first sort of two key modules we talk about in the program are what we call great goal setting.

57:48So, you know, how do you have a great goal setting conversation with someone? Next one is how do you have an aspiring or inspiring appraisal conversation with someone? We separated those two things out for a good reason. Third thing we talk about is how do you optimize your time? So you've got so many hours, you know, how do you make the best of that time? How do you run effective meetings? How How do you manage up effectively? So hyper practical things that in a way you can kind of put into play, like, you know, within an hour, but they're the same issues that managers everywhere kept telling us were the problems.

58:20And again, you know, if you look to any population of people and said, right, you know, let's say we look at 100 managers, it seems to be that you're going to have between 10 to 20 who are always going to be much better than everyone else. Not because they're nicer human beings, but they're just more effective and they've learned through their own ways of doing things in a more effective way. and then what our interest was was looking at what do they do you know and if we followed them for a week in the life of and watch their behavior what do they do i worked with again one of the big global banks and i was with one of their like hyper effective leaders i spent two days with him in buffalo in new york um and i just watched him for two days like every meeting we went to he's documenting noting everything i'm a terrible note taker and even when i write notes i can't read them after you know but this guy was like meticulous and you realize in the in the micro that's his behavior, which is why he's so effective.

59:05It's just like, you know, watching some of your content and see some of these brilliant investors. I'm sure the way that they manage money on a day-to-day basis is better than most people. Therefore, in the macro, they're generally pretty well off. And it's like that with these effective managers. We were trying to study what are these micro behaviors that tell us something about their performance overall. But there are different shades of that. Like I've worked for some sloppy managers, but they were amazing because you wanted to do well for them. And like I've worked for other managers that were very analytical and data-driven, but you just didn't want to perform for them.

59:34So they were never going to win, if that makes sense. Was empathy like one of the characteristics that came through? I would say like as a 21st century skill that would set you apart, empathy is probably the most important thing I would focus on. Because the ability to see something from someone else's perspective, especially if you apply the modern lens of a cost of living crisis, where, you know, we might be sitting there doing work on something, but actually in the back of my mind, I'm thinking gas bill this month. Don't know how I'm going to make this payment. You know, car bill, you know, whatever it is.

1:00:07I've got stuff going on. So to be able to see things from someone else's perspective, I think is key. Plus in the world of knowledge work, which most of us are in, you know, it's all about understanding how, you know, sophisticated people can think and apply critical thinking to a subject, which brings value to the organization. But again, seeing things from their perspective is probably one of the most valuable things to do. So I just want to summarize the points because again, I want to make sure that this is super actionable for people. I think your work around managers is amazing. And I like that that conversation happens because better managers, better organizations, happy staff, all of that stuff.

1:00:42But for individuals who are looking at this in January thinking, you know, I want to earn more money, have a clear plan, figure out how you can demonstrate value, make sure that that's a trajectory that's going up as well, which is what I've just taken away from. You don't go in, there's a finished article going, this is me complete because they're going to be like, well, we've got that already. Why would we need to have a pay rise? Have a plan. So if they say no, you can go, okay, well, what about this? And that might be, you know, working with another team or 10 % of your time instead of a 10 % pay rise.

1:01:12Is there anything else that you think needs to be added to that? I think the only thing I would add to it is in the sense of trying to connect what you're requesting and the reasons why. It's just something that's linked to either the value for the team or the organization. So, you know, there's often an explicit goal or strategy or objective that's been set by someone, CEO, director general, managing director, someone somewhere is usually set some direction. And to try and link what you're requesting of why it supports and is in line with that goal is a clever idea. Not least because of course, that's probably what you should be doing anyway, because that's why you've probably been employed in the first place, but something that demonstrates why this is value adding to the organisation.

1:01:56If you missed anything in that episode, don't worry. We do a really good summary of everything that's gone on and what we discussed in our newsletter. You can sign up using the link in the description. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review. It really makes a difference and lets us know what we're doing right. This is not financial advice. The reason it's not financial advice is because it's not tailored to you. Like we say a lot on the podcast, investments can fall and rise. In fact, this is almost a guarantee. Remember, past performance is no guarantee of future results.

1:02:24so your money is always at risk with investing. Also, remember other fees may apply. I'm Damo. I'm T. This episode was recorded by Jack Hobbs. It was produced and edited by Ruth Edwards. Johnny Hunter is in charge of all our marketing and it's all brought together by Will Stollerman.