Beyond Busy #95 with Christina Kisley
Graham Allcott 00:04
You're listening to Beyond Busy, the show where we talk, productivity, work life balance, and how people define happiness and success. All the big questions for work and life. My name is Graham Allcott. I'm your host for the show. And my guest this week is Christina Kisley, She is the founder of Kisley and Wild. She's got 30 plus years experience as a coach, as a growth catalyst. And just someone who really understands both business and collaboration and people. And I think you can really enjoy this episode. We are basically using for this episode, the audio from a free webinar that we put on a little while ago. And it was for World Kindness Day. So the topic that we're going to be talking about this week is the productivity of kindness. And this is a topic very close to my heart for reasons which will become more obvious at the end of this episode, I have a very special announcement to make at the end of this episode. So stay tuned right till the end, grab yourself a cup of tea or coffee, or a glass of wine depending on what time of day or evening, you're listening to this. And let's get into the episode, obviously, the wine is if you listen to this in the morning.
So my guest is Christina Kisley and we're talking about the productivity of kindness. And one of the things that I want to plug as part of this is a thing that we're doing together. Over four weeks, in January, we're going to be running together a thing called the Kindness Happening, and it's a limited zoom group, maximum of 40, places for zero places. So pretty small, little group. And the idea is we're going to be talking about kindness at work, kindness and its effect on productivity, and all kinds of stuff around that. So radical honesty, how to give feedback with kindness, you know, really talking about some of the the ways to have difficult conversations at work in a way that's kind and authentic, and really holds that person at the center of the conversation. So this is something that Chris and I have been talking a lot about just behind the scenes for quite a while, and we would love you to join us at the Kindness Happening. So it's happening in January. And the reasons for the Kindness Happening, by the way is that it's not a workshop. And it's not a focus group. It's basically a gathering. So it's bringing people together. Chris and I are gonna lead it. We're gonna have a fair amount of content to, to give to the group at the beginning. But really, it's about who else is in the room. And we've got some great people in the room, including my colleagues from Think Productive, and Hayley Watts and Grace Marshall, both people who've done this podcast before actually Haley's one hasn't gone out yet, but we've recorded it. And we've also got Magnus Wood, who is the founder of The Kindness Consultancy going to be joining us on week one's call and lots of other stuff happening. So it's going to be a really interesting way to reflect on how you deal with people at work. It's hopefully going to give you lots of practical tips and tricks, as well as hopefully just helping to build some momentum and a bit of a movement around this idea of kindness at work and being more human at work. So if that at all sounds interesting, then go to Eventbrite put in The Kindness Happening. And you'll find details and we've tried to keep the ticket price pretty low. And there is a little discount code, which I will give you at the end of this episode as well, with my special announcements. So if you want to do that, go to eventbrite.com and put in The Kindness Happening. And we'll also put a link obviously in the show notes, which is a getbeyondbusy.com and you can just jump straight from there to the Kindness Happening page. So let's get into this episode. This was originally recorded as one of our Think Productive free webinars. We also have some other webinars around the book that I'm releasing in January with Collette Heneghan called How to Have the Energy, all about nutrition and eating well to have good energy for work. If you want to sign up for those, go to thinkproductive.co.uk click on the free webinars tab. Those are happening on the seventh of December the 11th and 16th of December. So free webinars all around nutrition, Colette's a voracious reader of the science of foods and qualified nutritionist. She will have all the answers if you bring your questions to this free webinar. And we'll see you there. So here is last month's free webinar, which is myself and Christina. And we call this the productivity of kindness. I think you're gonna really like it and so let's get into it. Welcome, everybody. It's lovely to have you with us. We got 66 people joining us It's shooting up. And this is a very special, free think productive webinar for World Kindness day. So Happy World Kindness day, we're going to be talking about the productivity of kindness, and why I'm on a bit of a mission to spread kindness, more generally. I'll introduce Christina in a moment. So Chris is a friend and colleague. We've been working together quite a lot over this year, and just has some some incredible perspectives on kindness, I just thought it'd be really good to double check this and introduce you all to Chris and Chris's work. So those of you who don't know me, so I'm Graham Allcott, I'm the founder of Think Productive. And we have for the last decade or so been on this mission to help organizations to make space for what matters. So that is all about helping people to get their inbox to zero, to really think about productivity in a very personal sense. And to help them fix their meetings, I'm probably best known for the book, How to be a Productivity Ninja. And I also have two books coming out next year. So how to fix meetings with my colleague, Katie Watts, and how to have the energy which is all about nutrition and eating well to have the best energy for work, and also have a podcast called Beyond Busy. So if you're not into subscribing to my podcast yet, then go to your podcast app and subscribe to Beyond Busy just had Anne Bowden, the CEO of Starling bank on the podcast yesterday, which was great fun.
And one of the reasons I'm talking about kindness a lot today, and more generally, not just for World Kindness day is that one of Think Productive values, we have five values in the company, and one of them is trust and kindness are rocket fuel. So I'll be talking a little bit later about what that means and how we use that in practice. But let's start just by introducing Chris.
Chris Kisley 07:04
So my name's Chris Kisley. And I have an organization called Kisley and Wild in the States. I live in Atlanta, Georgia. And I have been working with Graham. Actually, I've known him for about three years and been working with him a lot through the pandemic. So I know a lot of people have gotten closer throughout this time. And we're, we're no exception. One of the one of the values that Kisley and Wild is to perpetuate kindness. And so and Graham and I didn't even actually know that about each other. Like, we didn't know that the values of our two companies were in alignment. So when we found out it was kind of just a bonus. But our thing is all about treating people with honor, dignity and respect, regardless of how you might feel in the moment, because I do a lot of leadership development work and a lot of teaching people how to engage, especially in the tough times, and then also practicing non judgment and compassion, because we can all use that little bit in the world.
Graham Allcott 08:01
And so if you are familiar with Productivity Ninja, you probably know that there are nine characteristics of the productivity ninja. And the ninth one, which kind of wraps everything together at the end, is the idea of human not superhero. So when I wrote Productivity Ninja, the idea of this characteristic was, we all have limits. And you can, if you incorporate all the right productivity habits and skills, you can seem like you're a superhero. So you can be the person at work, who is turning up on time to the meetings with a really nice file with all the right stuff, printed out and ready to go, you're responding really quickly to your emails, you seem to just be on top of your game and on top of your work. But you're not a superhero, there are no special powers. So actually, a productivity ninja is just a human with good skills and doing the simple things consistently and well. It's really about recognizing that we all have limitations. And we can't push ourselves too hard, or we'll face burnout. And we really need to therefore embrace the human side of how we work. And I think as time has gone on, human, not superhero out of the nine characteristics is probably the one that that resonates the most with people. You know, when we're in companies doing workshops, people go, Oh, yeah, I'm human, not superhero. I need to think about that. So I think it's something where it's led me on to this whole conversation with different organizations about how can we be more human at work, and the benefits of being more human at work, which I think many of us really recognize, and also a lot of people feel quite scared of, there's some kind of notion that you need to go to work and sort of put on a cloak or have a knee or a mask and, you know, be acting in a different way that wouldn't necessarily reflect your personal values. So I've been thinking a lot recently about why that is, and I'm going to call this the ruthlessness fallacy. So we tend to to adopt and perpetuate in our culture, a whole series of very bad archetypes around the idea of the business baddie. So when we think of leaders, when we think of entrepreneurship, we'll often think of figures like Steve Jobs, or Donald Trump. And obviously, in fiction people like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons, and when business is portrayed on TV, it's in shows like Shark Tank and Dragon's Den and The Apprentice shows that are always you know, very dimly lit. There's kind of music that goes on in the background that makes it seem like everyone's conniving and evil and doing bad stuff. And I think what's interesting to me is that this perpetuates in the culture where people feel, you know, even friends of mine will say to me, Oh, you've been an entrepreneur for 12 years, you must have had to step over loads of people in order to be successful. And, you know, my response back is always will know, like, why would you think that of me, you know, it's like, just feels like a really weird assumption to make about anybody. But I think what's happening here is, there's this fallacy where and it's often referred to as survivorship bias, because Steve Jobs behaved in the way that he did, and then was successful, we put two and two together and say, he must have been successful because he behaved like that. And, you know, I would like to just flip this around and say, probably, he was successful in spite of behaving like that, right? People often say, of Donald Trump, and, you know, he were he does bad stuff, but he gets things done. And it's almost like we have to tolerate this really toxic bad behavior in order to so you know, to sort of experience the successes that he has off the back of it. And I think this is just really wrong. I think the reason that this perpetuates as a myth, this idea of the business baddie is that there's a tiny part in all of us that is curious about what would it look like if we behaved in this really terrible way. And there's a curiosity about that. But these people, their stories are told over and over again, not because they are, you know, good examples of leadership, or even common examples of leadership. They're remarkable because they are the outliers. They're not the norm. They're not how most people behave. And if you look around your own businesses, you probably see loads of examples of slightly more heroic, compassionate, empathetic leaders. And I think we need to create more of a platform for the real heroes. I'd say Mary Portas, the retail guru talks a lot about kindness, both in terms of kindness to her customers, kindness to her staff, often in retail, you know, you're working with people who are on casual contracts, they're low paid, and using kindness as a way to really make people feel valued. Really, really important. Nick Jenkins from Dragon's Den, so he was one of the dragons who only was on the program for I think, one or two series. And when I interviewed him for Beyond Busy, and you can go and check that in the previous beyond busy episodes. And this is really interesting conversation where I say to him, were you trying to be if I'd like strategically you were trying to be the nicest dragon or the kindest dragon? And he said, Well, no, that's just how I've been successful all through the years. You know, he built Moonpig as a very successful business by being reasonable. So when he's on the show, and he's giving people advice, even though he doesn't want to invest in them, then it's just not good television. Right? Like people want to see the tension of someone being screwed over or you know, seeing those really kind of ruthless baddie behaviors play out. And the other ones on there, John Timpson, very famous, you know, Timpson's shoes and key repair, strange kind of shop, I guess, tips, this isn't really think about it. But here's one of his big policies in his business is to give second chances to ex offenders, and to give all the people who work in his business, a lot of autonomy and trust in the way that he works with them. And that becomes something that when he shows loyalty to those people, it gets repaid tenfold. And then on the right hand side of the screen there, Tony Hsieh from Zappos. And Oprah, you know, both people who are, you know, really thinking about kindness for the staff that they work with Zappos really legendary for its customer service and kindness, and Oprah just bags of empathy. So people who I think are just really at the forefront of doing business in a much better way, and just rejecting that whole business body narrative. And we can't really talk about kindness and leadership without talking about Jacinda Ardern. And I think when we look at the last few months, there's been a lot of articles written about the the gender responses to COVID. So you know how typically a lot of the countries that have had female leaders, and have dealt with COVID in a much better way than those who are leaders. And it's interesting when I've talked about kindness, and kindness and leadership to friends and colleagues. Often some of the responses I get from women is they almost have like a sort of negative reaction to the idea of kindness and leadership. And one of the things that, that that's uncovered is that there's this book called, why nice girls don't get the corner office. And essentially, what this book talks about is how women if they want to succeed in business, and they want to get the corner office, which isn't the sort of the, the cornerstone of success, you need to be more brutish, you need to be more male and masculine. And you know, it's a, it's a masculine dog eat dog kind of world be more like that. And I would say that right now, if we look at what's happened with COVID, we need the opposite book. To that we need the book that shows men how to take on what are often seen as female traits, I think it's wrong to see them as female traits, they should just be seen as human traits that traits of empathy, kindness, listening, and, you know, we need to have a book for men that teaches them how to be more like Jacinda. And I think the reason for that is that when we look at the future of work, when so many of the jobs that people do now will be automated, I think what will come to the forefront will be human beings, and you know, human behavior, managing and working with humans, collaboration with other humans, is going to become more and more the essential skill of business, because a lot of the stuff we can do with robots and machines, right, but actually how we interact with each other collaborate with each other, for me becomes, you know, really critical to our success. So as I mentioned before, the one of the values of Think Productive is trust and kindness are our rocket fuel. And there's some thinking behind that. It's not just, you know, kind of nice fluffy words, I think genuinely, by being kind to the people that we work with, we have a stronger, more robust business. And we have a more loyal staff team. And ultimately, it drives our productivity, creativity, problem solving all of that stuff. And the way that works is that when you're kind, what you do is you elicit and produce empathy, and people. And by doing that, you gain trust. And if you think about all of the different transactions that we do in work in life, right, so whether you're buying a product, whether you're deciding to work for somebody, whether you're collaborating on a on a project with people, and all of those transactions are based on trust. So the more trust you have, the easier it is to come to, you know, negotiations, decisions, deals on these different things. And you could do a big deal with Donald Trump or Steve Jobs once, but you probably wouldn't want to go back and do it, do it a second time. So actually, the leaders that are able to build that trust and produce Win-Win deals are the people that you're going to come back and work with time and time again. And ultimately, in organizations, I think something that we really need to aspire to is the idea of psychological safety. So from a point of trust, and psychological safety, it's much easier for people to contribute, you know, perhaps a really crazy way out their creative idea. Or say, actually, everyone else, everybody else in the room agrees on this thing. But I disagree. And I've got a different point of view. And sometimes we need that critical thinking, we need that creativity. And we need that honesty in the way that we work. And psychological safety, something that I think often gets talked about in organizations, you know, in the HR department, but isn't necessarily as well known, just like across the organizations. And, Chris, have you got any thoughts on that? Like, why? Why are we not talking more about psychological safety?
Chris Kisley 18:43
So it's interesting, we actually talk about it a lot in the US. So organizationally, a lot of the leaders in team development like Patrick Lencioni, he actually does talk a lot about psychological safety and the Harvard Business Review does, he has done a lot of articles. In essentially, in the last probably two years, we've been talking about it, but I actually think sometimes it's not very exciting. It's not an accessible definition. Some people are like, what? Yeah, you know, so you talk about it, it feels very academic. And so I'm glad that we're actually doing what you and I are doing, because it's going to help people really understand it at a level where you can actually go make changes tomorrow.
Graham Allcott 19:28
Yeah, for sure. You know, I kind of feel like we need to get it out of just the L&D team, right. And just, this becomes a thing that everybody is focused on in organizations. And we're going to talk about the seven traits of kind leaders, and then give you some practical stuff that you can do around this. So the first one is that a leader needs to have a clear vision and clear values. So clearly, if you're going to be a leader, you need to articulate the destination that you're going to take people along to.
Chris Kisley 19:57
And then the second one is focus. So focus on driving performance is to focus on results. And so it's competing and winning together.
Graham Allcott 20:08
And the third one is people first work second, always, this has become a bit of a personal mantra of mine, I'm going to explain fully what it means in a couple minutes time.
Chris Kisley 20:18
The fourth one is self awareness. So it's understanding both your strengths and your weaknesses, and being able to actually get out of the way and let people do their thing. When you're not good at it.
Graham Allcott 20:31
and trust builder, so helping to build psychological safety, building autonomy, and encouraging healthy conflict. I think sometimes we, we shy away from conflict, no one really likes conflict. But actually, we can use those disagreements to actually build more trust,
Chris Kisley 20:48
the sixth one is cultural architect, and this is all about making sure that you're rewarding and recognizing the things that you say are important in your organization. It's really remembering as a leader, that the things that you put up on a pedestal, metaphorically are the things that people look at, and they'll want to do the same.
Graham Allcott 21:09
And then finally, humility. So taking responsibility when things don't go well, and then giving credit to the team when things do go well. I think ego is a really funny thing in in business in general. But just being aware of that ego, I think, is just a huge responsibility that we have as leaders. So I think sometimes we sometimes we confuse the idea of kind with the idea of nice, Chris, tell us what the difference is and how you see it.
Chris Kisley 21:41
Yeah, this is actually a really great conversation, because it really does get confused. So if you think about Nice, nice is more, not telling the truth in case it hurt someone's feelings. So it's the thing where you're like, Oh, I didn't say that, because I was afraid. But what happened. And kindness is thinking about making sure that you're telling the truth, but in a way that is for the person. And so that's when you actually have dealt with your own feelings before you go have a conversation with someone. So that when it comes out, whatever comes out, but the truth is, be able to be heard. The second thing is like nodding your head in a meeting, but then going out and either talking in the parking lot, or calling somebody and be like, That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And we actually call that the dirty. Yes. So it's saying yes, when you actually meant No. If you're kind of at it, then you actually just respectfully disagree, and you disagree with not the person but the idea. And then the third one that we thought about was being too agreeable or malleable, so you're going along to get along? And kind of people actually stand for things but value and respect other people in the process.
Graham Allcott 22:59
Absolutely. Yeah. It's funny how nice can often mean that you're just shying away from any conflict or disagreement I which, clearly when you know, when we're in the business of, of trying to, you know, change things, trying to come up with new ideas, like you need a little bit of disagreement and healthy disagreement and healthy conflict or to make none of that stuff work to about radical honesty.
Chris Kisley 23:24
Yeah. So I think this is one of the really, like, really practical things that you can do is that if you want to actually have really good conversations where you're telling the truth, but being for someone, the first thing you have to do is look inward. And so you've actually really got to figure out like, Okay, so how am I feeling about what's happening? And then, why am I feeling this way? This is so that you can actually get out of your own way so that when you go have the conversation, you really are for the person, that you're not caught up in your own drama. So it's everything from how am I feeling? Why am I feeling it's also, what's the story, I'm telling myself about why this person did what they did, or why something happened. And, as Brittany Brown says, is that you want to actually have the most generous interpretation of someone else's behavior. So making sure that you don't think this person like did this on purpose, or, you know, they were trying to get something or this is their ego. You actually are like, you know what, I I'm gonna bet that this person didn't even know that this had the impact that it had. And so you go into that conversation, assuming no ill will whatsoever. And you set it up for success before when
Graham Allcott 24:44
Brittany is like Yoda right? That thing about the generous interpretation of other people's behavior. I just think it's so, so powerful.
Chris Kisley 24:51
Yeah, feels Mother Teresa ish.
Graham Allcott 24:55
So let's talk about giving feedback with kindness. This is a little model that Chris is going to share with us and we thought we'd title this one that sucked but i love it.
Chris Kisley 25:04
Yeah. So when you when somebody does something, and you need to actually give constructive feedback, you need to share like, hey, you're off track, you want to be really, really. So you do the first thing first, which is like, check in with yourself kind of how you feeling about it, what story you're telling yourself, and then you get down to I'm going to deliver really truthful, specific feedback, and then we're going to have a discussion about it. And so the big thing here is to think about the fact that people typically haven't one intention, and they often have a different impact. And so if you believe that even when someone has screwed something up, or something hasn't gone, well, if you go in believing, like, okay, they're impacted match their intention, but that their intention was good. So let me just say, Okay, so in this situation, here was the behavior, and here's the impact it had. And I like to give the impact on the person. So like, whether it was, you know, your peers on exactly sure how to engage with you now, or you know, something to that effect, you share the impact to self and the impact to others, and then the impact to the business. And then what you say is, like, I'm sure that that wasn't your intention, but it was your impact. So let's talk about how do we make sure your intention and your impact equal one another? And then you have a really good discussion about like, Hey, tell me what you were trying to do? How do you feel about what happened? What do you think you can do differently next time?
Graham Allcott 26:35
Yeah. And I think sometimes a lot of these kind of conversations, they can feel awkward. And so just having those really simple, you know, little bullets to hit, and just a structure to guide you through some of those conversations, I think can be super helpful. And let's talk about perspective taking. And so I love this, this phrase that you gave me the other day, before someone will listen, they need to feel understood.
Chris Kisley 27:02
So perspective taking is really all about so let's say you get into a conversation, and you realize that you're kind of rubbing, and maybe you don't agree with what the person said or there. And so I was like, okay, so pause, back up. And think about the fact that really, to have somebody listened to you, you really need to make them feel understood. And the way to do that is through something called perspective taking, which is where you are like, Okay, tell me like what happened for you? How did you feel? How did you experience this thing, and what you're doing the whole time is saying, like, Alright, so you felt this way about you this thing, in your perspective was this. And then you actually say, like, thank you so much for sharing that I would have not seen it that way. Right? I that gave me some insight that I didn't have before. But what you do is you actually believe that their perspective and their experiences real and true for them. This isn't about like you can't agree or disagree with someone's perspective, because it's theirs. And so what this really is all about is making sure that somebody feels like you see them, you hear them, you are working really hard to understand them. Because that level of like kindness and engagement and empathy really makes people feel like you care, which also makes them way more open to listening in whatever. Whatever rub you're having.
Graham Allcott 28:33
I also love to think that you said to me recently about this, such as the if you if you understand the tool of perspective taking and you are skilled in being able to do that, then that means is always your responsibility to play that role. Because in order to defuse it, you need one person to write. So if if this is something that you're familiar with, and you've had training in or just feel comfortable in, then it's your responsibility to be the one to do that, which I think is it's just a really important thing as well. And productivity is that making space what matters? That's a phrase that I talk about a lot. And I think, and never more so than this year have we been forced to confront a lot of the stuff that does really matter. And I think this is really what I want to end on, which is I wrote actually a blog post about this recently, under the same title people first work second, always apples just going to share that I think in the chat. And this has become a bit of a personal mantra of mine over the last few years. We actually had about three years ago a period where it just seemed like everybody on our team was going through really difficult stuff, you know, breakups, very sudden bereavement really difficult stuff happening. And for a while, we started to think that our company and the people in our company were kind of cursed. And then after a while, we realized No, this is life, right? Life is suffering, you know, to think about it in the very beginning. said, but people first work. Second always, the definition of this really is that when somebody comes to you, and they say, and they say, hey, there's something really big going on in my personal life, I really don't know what to do, the answer is always drop your work, go and deal with what you're dealing with take as long as you need, and then come back to us. And the thing is, that is, that is always true, right. So the always has a double meaning. There are no exceptions to always, even when you're really busy, even when you're on a deadline. It's your job as a leader, to replace that person on the team, if they have to drop everything and go and do something like that, and need to be away. And always is also about saying, it's always somebody who's always right, so they'll always be someone on the team that either needs to be away, or perhaps just need some extra support. And just recognizing that people always come before task, I think is just a really critical thing. I kind of thought that this was something that I adopted as a manager, like in more recent years, the last sort of five, four or five years, and then I put it out on the blog the other week, and that my number two in my first really big job, reached out I hadn't spoken to her about five or six years. And she was like, remember when we worked in London, and new people would start and you would always say, get your house sorted out? You know, how long would that take? Just let us know. And then your start date is after that even when we had really critical stuff going on. And I was like, ah, isn't it it's nice to know, like reassuring to know that this is something that I've really been thinking about and kind of using for a long time. And so as I say, I really feel like this, I'm gonna open this up for questions in a moment, I think I've definitely found over the years that when you put people first and work Second, you build incredible loyalty from your team. And that's not to say that work doesn't matter, or you don't have high standards for the work, I really do. And I set the bar, you know, really high for my team as well. And but it's about recognizing that there's always stuff in our lives that, you know, that is either going to help us with our work or really impinge on our work. And we really need to recognize that it's humans doing that work. So people first work second, always, I'd love you to check out that blog post. But I think it really has a huge effect on productivity. And ultimately, it's just a power of good to be thinking about kindness. And there are cynics and there are people who will say, well, what's, what's the ROI of this? You know, how does this drive profit? You know, like, surely we need to be more cutthroat. And I think in the in the world, you know, we need to go out into the world and capitalism is about competition, right? So we need to go out and compete. And there are times where our organizations need to be cutthroat. But then with it within ourselves and within our teams, we need to also be kind. And so that kind of marrying up of cutthroat unkind, I think, for me, is a really important thing to recognize. And if people are asking you about what's the payoff for this, and you know, we don't have time for kindness, and all that kind of stuff. And what's the ROI? I'll leave you with a quote from Gary Vaynerchuk. What's the ROI of your mom? And that's it. So let's open it up for some questions. I know there's a few questions in the q&a already. So Richard says question for Chris, if someone gives you as they describe brutally honest feedback, which in my experience is often more brutal than honest. How should you respond, if at all?
Chris Kisley 33:30
So interestingly enough, I always tell people to say thank you, period, and then walk away, and then process it with somebody else. Because sometimes people use a whole like brutally honest title as a reason to give you like judgy feedback, and so
Graham Allcott 33:57
licensed to not be tactful? Isn't it often, like I just say, like it is, and it's like, well, no, you need
Chris Kisley 34:03
to be mean sometimes, like when when I hear the word brutal, I'm like, truth does not ever have to be brutal. It can always be like, both truth and grace together. It can be for you, right? And so yeah, there's a there's a lot there's like, a lot in that sometimes people are trying to, like, try on a new skill or something like that. And so here's what I always do, like, Okay, thank you, and I go process it like, I go call Graham, and I'd be like, Hey, I just got this feedback. It actually felt like crap to get it. But I'm sure that there's a nugget in here. So help me mine for what actually I could take out of this. But I don't I don't engage. When somebody says that typically, cuz it often kind of is like,
Graham Allcott 34:54
John Brady has a question here. Presumably it's worth spelling out to your team, but Your perspective is that their intentions are positive. Yeah, I think probably if there's a, if there's a flaw in the people first work second always approach. And the only flaw in it would be that if you had somebody whose intentions were not positive, then they could see that as license to be taking too much time away or to be kind of, you know, taking advantage of that trust and autonomy, because I think, ultimately is about trust and autonomy. And I think those are the things that ultimately build, I think, a really successful culture. And I think if you have people who just are not bought into that culture and don't really train with it, then they probably shouldn't really be there anyway. Right. So that's about hiring and kind of recognizing that the people that you bring in, and, you know, share your values are have some kind of connection to the mission. And I think, you know, maybe that's a slightly more difficult thing. In larger businesses and smaller businesses. But then as you've talked before, you know, Moonpig, Timpson's, there are so many examples of organizations that have very hot on, you know, putting trust in people giving autonomy to the right people and, and helping them to live out those values. But yeah, absolutely. You want to be making it clear that like, we think your intentions are positive. And we, you know, we think you believe in this at least nearly as much as I do what we do.
Chris Kisley 36:26
And it's really good to actually do team norms, and have assume positive intent be one of the team norms that you have. And then it actually levels that expectation for everybody on the team. Yeah. And then you can always go back to like, let's practice this. And so it's a really good, it just goes in line with the expectations for sure.
Graham Allcott 36:50
And question here, when putting people first and your business involves serving people, so like schools, training, nursing, etc. and an employee need conflicts directly with the needs of the clients, which people's needs come first? Is it still the team, the needs of the team always? Or is it the children, ill people, etc, etc? I think this is a really good question. And it's kind of like a sort of ethical riddle, ethical dilemma in some ways. But what I would say is, having spent the first few years of my career working in the charity sector, where a lot of people are constantly, you know, three days away from burnout, and you know, strung out from caring too much and doing too many hours, I think it's really important in those kind of roles to be much more respectful of people's personal boundaries and work life balance, because, you know, particularly because there are people who are there because they care, often, you know, more motivated by that caring than necessarily the money. And so, you know, for me, those are probably the places to double down on people first work second, always. And, you know, and what that then involves is, you know, different conversations within the team about who's going to pitch in and cover for that person. It might involve bigger conversations around resourcing. And I know, obviously, in places like the NHS, that's just a really difficult circle to square. But I think we're talking about sustainability here, right. So unless, unless we work out, you know, how to manage people's work life balance on a consistent basis, then people will leave. And that's certainly what happens in places like the NHS and teaching. And you know, people just burn out because they don't get the support they need. So, I would say those are the places when it's when you when your industry is caring, you need to double down on caring for people.
Chris Kisley 38:40
I was just gonna say it just reminds me of the whole put your oxygen mask on first. Yeah. On your child. Yeah. And an airplane. And so yeah, I think that just underscores it.
Graham Allcott 38:50
question here from Katie. Hi, Katie. How do you help your team move from niceness to kindness?
Chris Kisley 38:59
That's such a great question. Yeah, I was gonna say one of the things that I would definitely do is have the conversation about what is the difference between nice and kind? And why do we want to move from nice to kind, because it's really all about getting the best from people, having them be honest about what they're thinking, how they're feeling, what they're experiencing, what their perspectives are. And wanting to make sure that you as the leader understand, how do I make this the safest place possible for people to lean in, especially as they're moving from nice to kind? Because there's a lot of fear about what if I say what I'm actually thinking, What if I stop nodding? Yes. And so there are little things that you can do like in your meetings Institute. I mean, this is just a practical thing, but Institute no dirty Yes. So explain what a dirty yeses and say like, Hey, we want to clean, yes, but don't say yes. If you mean no, if there's something that you have a reservation about, get it out there. So we can talk about it, because we want you to have a clean, yes, going into this decision so that you can execute on it. And so the first place to start is have a conversation about what is nice, what is kind, and why would you make the move? And I think be honest about how people feel like what's at stake, right. So people actually, they feel like a, that's a vulnerable place to be. And so you want to make sure that we set the team up with support, their vulnerability won't get shut down. Yeah,
Graham Allcott 40:40
I did a podcast a little while ago on Beyond Busy with David Marquet, who's the one of the Navy captains, he wrote the book, turning the ship around, if you've seen that Ted Talk, really brilliant TED Talk. And he has this follow up called follow up a book called leadership is language. And in the book, he talks about the phrases that we can use as leaders that are quite lazy, and ultimately, are not genuine questions. Right? So things like Is everything okay, I will good never understand, like, there's no answers that other than yet. Okay, even when you don't. So flipping that around. And at the end of meetings, I had an example the other week, Tesco has a sort of formula for meetings. And one of the formulas in every Tesco meeting is at the end. And people say what they're happy about in that in reaching that decision, and also what their concerns still are, which I think is a really useful way to make sure that there's always a vessel for that honesty, and always a vessel for that, you know, very constructive disagreement or just showing the different perspectives. And I think, you know, groupthink becomes a huge issue in organizations if we don't have some kind of level of honesty. So yeah, check out David Marquet's work. He was on the beyond busy podcast, but the book, and leadership is language, I think, is a really useful resource around that. We've got a few more questions. And I need to shoot in a minute because I am going to speak at Kind Fest in a minute, which you're very welcome to join us for all afternoon. But just before we finish, if you want more stuff from us, I'm going to be doing a couple of webinars around my new book with Collette Heneghan, it's called How to Have the Energy. So if you want to sign up for one of the free webinars on that all about how to eat well to have the best energy for your work. And then Chris and I are going to be doing a thing that we're calling the Kindness Happening, you want to talk about the Kindness Happening?
Chris Kisley 42:42
Yeah, absolutely. And so we're going to do a four week zoom event starting in January, to talk about the kindness in leadership, and about how you do that. And so we've picked for like super relevant topics. And we're going to talk to some leaders in the kindness space, as well as the two of us, we're going to talk about things that are relevant. So we can give you things to do like tomorrow afterwards. And we're going to have you interact with each other, do some activities and do some Q&A as well. So we're pretty excited about that starts on the 14th of January.
Graham Allcott 43:23
Yeah, and if you want to get involved with that, if you just go to Eventbrite and just put in kindness happening, it will come up, we'll do an event called kindness happening, apples, just put the link in the chat here as well. And if you use the code, Ninja 15, you get 15% off, there's also an opportunity to buy one ticket for you and gift a ticket for somebody else, pay it forward. So if you're able to do that, and really encourage you to do that, and yeah, really looking forward to just delving into some of those key topics around courageous conversations and giving feedback and how to manage healthy, healthy conflicts over the course of the kindness happening. So come and get involved with that. We'd love to have you with us. Here's a good final question. Before I leave you, Chris, I'll leave you in. And I'm gonna say yeah, leave everybody in Chris's capable hands. I couldn't agree more with the people first work second always value, any advice on how to manage directors heads off, etc. Against this value when pressure is being applied to perform against targets? So I guess that's saying like, if people are kind of, you know, kindness is all very well when things are quiet, but like we're under pressure, and we've got targets to hit. So we we don't have time for kindness, I guess.
Chris Kisley 44:38
What do you think? Well? Yeah, so it's, so that's one of the times where you all your influence, or all your relationship building is going to have paid off. And so that you get to have that conversation with somebody, where again, you're kind with them, where you just say, hey, do you have a minute to talk and then you say sit down with them. And you just say, this person has something going on, like kind of depends on the situation. But you would say, I'm sure you didn't know this, but this person has this thing going on. And I'd really like to talk about how do we support this person as, as they're trying to perform, but also trying to take care of what's happening, right. So it's, that's when you actually stand up for the value in the organization and you pull somebody aside and say, Hey, I'm sure that, like, you don't recognize that when you send emails at 2am on Saturday night, and then you tell people you don't expect for them to answer them on Sunday. But you have to understand the pressure that they feel because of who you are. You're having those conversations. And you just try and influence the best that you possibly can. Right? Can't make decisions for people, but you can make them aware of things that they are not aware of.
Graham Allcott 45:59
Yeah, that's always a thing where often, if you've been in senior leadership roles for a long time, you just forget the impact. Because it's been so long since you felt intimidated by a senior leader. Like absolutely will just be we'll just forget the impact that that stuff has, right.
Chris Kisley 46:18
Yeah, yes. And they just have gotten they've been so they're so far away from the work of the day to day work, that they don't even remember what it takes often to get something done, or how much time it takes. Yeah,
Graham Allcott 46:31
I'm gonna head off and get into the backstage tend to Kind Fest. So lovely to see you all here. Thanks, Chris, for being part of this. And yeah, really looking forward to the kindness happening in January. So come join us for that. So as you heard that we are doing this thing together, the kindness happening, which launches on the 14th of January 2021. So if you want to be part of it, then just go to eventbrite.co.uk. And just put in the kindness Happening. And then you'll get the details for our four weeks of zoom calls, it starts on the 14th of January. And if you want a discount code to get some money off, then just put in Ninja15. So ninja and then one, five, and I'll give you 15% off the price as well. We've tried to keep the price pretty accessible, because we really want to have a nice broad range of people. And it's limited to 40 people. So when it sells out, it sells out. Will we do again? I don't know, maybe not. I think it might be a one off thing. The idea is it will spark lots of conversation, as well as leading into some of the work that we're both going to be doing over the next few months. So don't miss it, it's going to be a one-off thing, the kindness happening 14th of January and use the code Ninja15 at event bright. To get money off, I have a little bit of an announcement to make on a similar theme as well, which is this is not something that I've actually written down publicly or put on my website or share with anybody. So you're going to be getting a little bit of a Beyond Busy exclusive here at the end of the episodes. And that is that I've signed a deal with penguin business to write a book and the book is going to be on the same lines as we just talked about. So it's going to be all about kindness and leadership. Why kindness is a really underrated leadership trait, how you can foster kindness in yourself and in your team and in your organization. And I'm really excited about it, it feels like a little bit of a step into the unknown. For me, I've obviously been known as the Productivity Ninja guy for, I don't know, 11 or 12 years, something like that. So it's a long, long time where my work has been really centered around productivity. Now, as you just heard, I passionately believe that the more kindness that you spread, the more empathy and trust you generate, and therefore the more productivity you get from your team. But this is a whole new subject matter a whole new area. And it's, you know, a very interesting step into an kind of whole new world ready, so I'm really excited about it. I've obviously been putting myself out there a little bit on this topic for a little while been talking about it in my Rev Up for the week email list, which if you're not on, you can just go to Graham Allcott.com, and I just send out positive, productive thoughts into your inbox every Sunday night for the week ahead. So yeah, I've been talking about it there a little bit. And then I did a couple of events for World Kindness Day in November 2020. But really, as of next year, I'm going to be cranking up the my new role as ambassador of kindness going into 2021 feels like this year, people have really needed it a lot. It feels like a word and a theme that's been on everybody's lips and I want to keep it that way. I want to make sure that we build on this and you know really start to change how we've been You culture at work and being human at work, and all of that stuff. So this is going to be my, my next, the next stage of my life's mission really, really excited about the book. It's a little while, the process with Penguin businesses quite a bit longer than the process with my previous publisher. So my book deadline for the first draft is October 2021. And currently, we're thinking about publication date as being somewhere around October 2022. Such a long project. But what I'm really excited about, and obviously, the release of it will hopefully be the first step in a long association of my work on this topic. So really looking forward to it. getting stuck in with it, there's going to be a bit more coming over the next few weeks on this topic, and me sharing it. So watch this space. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. So it's Graham@thinkproductive.co.uk if you've got anything to share with me on that. And as ever, we're always looking for guests to be on the show. We've been a weekly podcast this year, and I thought maybe we'd be struggling to find guests and keep up with that relentless drive to record one one a week and put put one out once a week. And actually we are booked up until about March-April time. Emilie always tells me off cuz I if I say March, he really means it's like June, she's way further ahead than me. But we are booked up in all seriousness for quite a bit of the kind of winter and spring of 2021. But we're always keen to hear from, like recommendations for guests, if you want to put people forward. Put yourself forward if you like as well, but I actually usually prefer it if it's someone else, putting you forward. And as always really keen to make sure that we've got a good diversity of guests. So I don't just want lots of white men. I want lots of women, I want lots of people of color. I want those people from all around the world actually, as well, like we've been as a podcast pretty focused on UK people. And I think as the podcast goes a bit more global as we've really stepped up our game this year, we are definitely open to making our guests a bit more global as well. So if you've got people that you think might be a really good guest on the topic of productivity and work life balance and how people set up their life and how people to find happiness and stuff like that, then yeah, drop drop the line. It's Graham@thinkproductive.co.uk. I realize I'm rambling because I'm actually recording this on a Friday afternoon. And it's been a long week. And yeah, that may well have been quite a rambly end to the podcast. But hopefully if you've seen it through this far, then thank you and well done. Thank you for indulging me. But we'll be back next week. We've got a real life spy coming up on the podcast next week. So that's exciting. Someone talking about their life in government playing really prominent roles in various government departments and intelligence agencies and stuff like that. And it's all about how to think like a spy. So yeah, it's a fascinating conversation. I think you're gonna really love it. So we're back with that episode next week. All the show notes previous episodes at getbeyondbusy.com. See you next week. Take care. Bye for now.