EP034 - What is digital leadership with Ilona Brannen of Slate Digital
About the episode
This episode focuses on digital leadership and how it differs from traditional leadership styles. While many companies transitioned to either fully remote or hybrid in the last years, leadership is yet to experience a level-up in their skills for the newly changed environment. I’ve sat down with Ilona Brannen, a leadership consultant from the UK, to discuss how leaders can adapt to the future of work.
About the guest
Ilona Brannen is a consultant specializing in SaaS scale-ups in that pivotal moment when a company goes from scrappy start-up to incredible growth scale-up. Working with clients, she has developed winning digital leadership programs helping them to align their leaders, accelerate their growth plans, create a learning culture, and build a community to improve the culture of remote and hybrid teams.
Obsessed with leadership in the digital age, she explores the topic on her own podcast, Still Loading, interviewing leaders and experts from all over the world to understand how leadership has evolved in our increasingly digital world of work.
Connect with Ilona on LinkedIn.
About the host
My name is Peter Benei, founder of Anywhere Consulting. My mission is to help and inspire a community of remote leaders who can bring more autonomy, transparency, and leverage to their businesses, ultimately empowering their colleagues to be happier, more independent, and more self-conscious.
Connect with me on LinkedIn.
Want to become a guest on the show? Contact me here.
Quotes from the show
With leadership, you can recognize it when it's good, and you can recognize it when it's bad. Leadership development is important for any company because you have more of those good behaviors you want to see.
When I think of leaders, they and their teams transform. They all go on a journey of development together. And that's how you know you are creating great leaders when they create other great leaders.
Culture will become more of a prominent feature. It has to be intentional when remote, whereas it can be organic if you are all physically in the same location. So companies that invest in culture and understanding their values will have an advantage over those who have yet to make that distinction.
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Welcome everyone. Yet another day to talk about the future of work and the future of leadership. Today we'll talk about digital leadership, what it means to be a leader in the digital workplace, and how does that differ from the traditional setup. I have Ilona Brannen, CEO of Slate Digital, a company that helps scale up grow through leadership, development and growth consulting. Hi Ilona, how are you?
So great to be here. Thank you so much for having me on.
Appreciate your time. It's lovely to have you here. So the first question usually is the same for everyone because we are focusing on remote leadership and remote leaders, remote managers, remote companies. What's your remote journey? When did you start working remotely, do you consult and work with others through online? And how do you view the remote leadership aspects?
Yeah, no. All great questions. I'll take the first one with my remote journey. Which started interestingly enough in the, because I went from being a classroom teacher and looking out my window. Cause I taught in London at the Shard. And I remember looking at it going one day I'm gonna be a businesswoman who goes to the shard? And I did become a businesswoman, so I was like, ooh. But with that sort of transition, I became a consultant. And so as a consultant working for P W C and then in a scale up itself, I was in a hybrid working world ages ago before people even knew that was a thing. It was just you were on client site. You were working remotely, you were basically attached to your laptop and it was just the way that we worked. And so transitioning from a full-on face-to-face, obviously, you know, with classroom teaching back in the day you were in the classroom nine, you know, a hundred percent of the time. To then being in this hybrid working world, I sort of learned all these different things about what's effective and what wasn't through that whole process. And I think for me remote leadership and remote working offers so many great opportunities, but part of the thing I think that is really essential is the structures that you put in place in order to produce or do the work that you need to do across time zones, across locations. All of those things need to be put in place in a kind of meaningful and intentional way.
And that's how you help with companies through Slate Digital.
Yeah. So with my company, slate Digital, I decided to set up my own consultancy after spending a lot of time being a consultant for other companies that just specifically targeted scale up and specifically SaaS scale-ups as they move and transitioned from a small startup to a big scale up and helped them through that hope or growth and that transition. And the key things I help with are leadership development for remote companies. So how do you facilitate that growth and development for individuals as they go through that? And also how to help the, you know, leadership teams to grow the company and thinking about what processes they need to put in place and the systems they need to put in place to be success.
Awesome. I think and sorry to be a little bit more controversial here but because I also work with leaders and also talk with others about leadership development, usually what I get from others is that it's just so broad term right?
Yes.
That's like, okay, we need leadership development, but. What's that? How can we execute it? What are the technical steps? And it's all smushy and fluffy, so I don't really understand why do I need it anyway. And it's really hard, I think, for us consultants to argue and justify why it is needed. So what are your answers usually through these kind of claims? Why do we need digital? Why no. Why do we need leadership development first? And then we can discuss what's the difference between digital and normal classical leadership development.
Yeah, you're right. It is a very nebulous term and I think I've found that when I discuss leadership because it, it's almost like, I suppose with leadership, you can recognize it when it's good and you can recognize it when it's bad, but you can't necessarily put it in a box, and that's what's difficult. So the reason leadership development is important for any company is so that you have more of those good behaviors that you want to like replicate across your company and also to create leaders that embody the values and culture of your company. If you don't, you have a fractal arrangement of different sort of different people and the way that they approach things. And it can actually help you to get a bit of consistency, but equally can help that person develop the kind of key skills to really help them help others be better.
So it's pretty much helping people to get more aligned and more focused through supportive leadership.
Yeah, and I think also because you're doing it in companies, it is about like driving high performance because if you have that alignment and you have that clear vision from a leader, it becomes much easier than execute on what the task is and the goal that you're trying to achieve. And the people will be like transformed along that journey. That, you know, when I'm thinking of the leaders that I've sort of worked with or, you know, developed through my career you see that they transform and so do their teams. You know, they actually all go on a journey of development. And I think that's how you know you are creating great leaders when they create other great leaders.
Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's the same thing that Simon Sinek also said that the single most important purpose for a leader is to create other leaders as well.
Yeah.
Let's talk about the challenges of digital leadership and how it differs from traditional leadership setups because, I just to give it the context, I think and that's what I saw by the way, when I worked in the offices. It's really, it's, it's so easy or easier to lead teams when you do have the proximity of others physically. You can easily influence others. And oh, it's almost like an organic journey, almost like an organic approach. But the key difference changes a lot in terms of organic approach to a more proactive approach when you are talking about digital leadership. So how do you advocate and differ the digital part of the leadership development?
Yeah. I think for me it is about that key concept of it being organic, right? So when you are physically next to someone you have mirror neurons, which means that you're going to kind of replicate the behaviors of the person that is leading you. So be that positive or negative behaviors. When you are digital leadership space, what needs to happen from a leader to be effective is intentionality and to be very clear with the instructions and the behaviors that they're looking for. So whereas you could have done that in a non-verbal cue context in like a physical proximity online, you have to be quite explicit with what it is that you are looking for. And I mean the out, I think it's the clarity towards the outcome, right? I think what people can get mixed misunderstand is that with digital leadership, I need to almost micromanage. It's not that. Being clear about the outcome, how someone gets there, that is where your leadership skills come in to empower that person. But being very clear about the outcome that you are looking for and being intentional with your interactions with people is really essential.
Totally, totally. One, one of the, one of the good examples on how to implement this, by the way, is actually what I usually say to others is it's just like how you write an email. Sorry, this is super basic, but that's super important example, I write an email how it's different from grabbing someone in the office and tell them what to do. It's totally different because during a organic conversation you can tell them that, you know, this is what I need. This is kinda like a deadline, but you know, you can have your lunch and whatever still do it tomorrow, whatever. But when you write an email, you usually just focus on what you need to do. What are the deliver? But most leaders usually forget at the end that okay, this is not so urgent. This is not so emergency here, you can reply to this email two or three days later. That's totally fine because when you send the email without that, it puts people into an anxious pressure situation already, right? Because they feel that they need to reply because it's a notification. It's not a conversation, but a notification that they need to address, right? So it's totally different when you do it digitally. What kind of practices that you do in terms of leadership development when it comes to digital leadership? So is it like coaching workshops or, or what are the, not just in terms of platforms, but what are the main or key things that you usually push leader towards or forward?
Great question. I work usually in leadership development cohorts. Mm-hmm. So that's usually the design because we are dealing with a bit more scale when we're working with series B and series C.
Sure.
So it's between 15 and 500 people like that. I know that's a big range, but it depends on the size of the organization. And so when it's cohort-based, you've got a group of people who are gonna be working together. And one of the things that's really important, I think, Any sort of program like that is you have the content available to people so they can actually access it asynchronously. You go through the key points of the content so people can A, actually hear it and understand it, metabolize it, but then you also have to have a component of where they either get a chance to practice or role model or observe somebody else doing it. And have those touchpoints is because you are in a virtual space. So you need to have, you know, it's almost like that classic marketing thing of you need to have like almost seven touchpoints or 12 touch points. I can't remember which one it is. Yeah. But you got more touchpoint along the way for someone to really feel connected to that brand. It's the same kind of thing with soft skills development digitally and remotely. You, if you need to have meaningful, intentional touchpoints along the way so that that cognitive sort of step and progress is quite clear, but also helps them get to the next level. And that if that person then also wants to develop themselves, they've still got access to the content, right, because it's asynchronous.
Sure.
They can also form a group with someone else and go over the content and they can take themselves off and do it themselves, but that reflective quality has to be in. The other bits I think are really good when you are doing leadership development remotely, is to have a task so that people can actually go around the task and learn about the task. And, you know, it's not just, I find that if it's too lecture based or too much like content driven where you're just taking in information that's passive. You need to put in those moments where it's active. And the other bit that is just a really fun thing that I've realized a along the way is if you can try and get fidgital, so I'm showing at the moment you can't see it cuz we're on a podcast, but I'm showing leader a little miniature globe, a little glass globe. And this was actually from the leadership development program I designed at pwc when I was working there. And this was back in the day before we had the pandemic and it was remote. This leadership development program was for the future leaders of the firm. And it was a global program and it was predominantly remote, 18 months of remote with one week face-to-face. And we sent these globes, these miniature glass globes to the participants so that they could have a physical, tangible object with them. And we asked them to then put a selfie, like on the sort of shared space area that we'd created online, so that they could feel like, oh, we all have the same object. We all have something that we can, you know, almost connect.
We are connected.
And then they could share a great selfie of them with their globe. And so we had great submissions. You know, someone in front of table mounted in Cape Town, someone in front of a kangaroo, and it was just brilliant. And we could then use that content to when we got to the face-to-face to be like, remember these photos? Remember these people remember? You know? So it's a great way to connect, create connection when you're at a.
This is so nice. This is a really great example. Can you tell me some other examples on the tasks, for example, so what kind of tasks leaders can practice during these engagements?
A great task I find is so like there'll be different levels of tasks, but a really good one to start with is almost like do a square grid of different, so in each of the squares have different aspects of two like axis delegation. So delegation on one axis and then almost like urgency on another axis. And think about the work that you need to do and the work that you need your team to do, and start to plot where those things need to be. Because I think the first thing when a leader becomes a first time leader or is a relatively new leader is often they'll still be doing everything the. Or they might not realize like, I need to delegate. I need to give this to these people in these, this sort of way. Or they're over delegating and they're not realizing where they are and where they need to kind of connect and put that together. And that's a really great tool that anyone can use on themselves or with their team to just start to realize like, what are we actually doing with the like, just to be more intentional with it. And again, it's about putting those structures in place to really start to build momentum with the work that you do. Because I think a lot of the time you don't have structures in a remote working environment because it is remote. You don't have the office, you don't necessarily have the same time zones all the time, and people are working very flexibly. You have to put some structures in place to bind the connective tissues between you and your colleagues. So another aspect of that would be absolutely do one-to-ones with your team. You know, get to know them on a one-to-one personal level. You could either do that weekly or at least monthly, but it has to be a one-to-one, and there's great resources out there to help you structure your one-to-ones so that it's not just all about work. And it's also not just all about chit chat. You've gotta find that balance because if you do effective one-to-ones, the, you know, the effect is incredible for people's perform. Yes. That is generally the big one. If you get a one-to-one, you feel like you're listened to and you're supported and you're being en coached and encouraged, people generally outperform those who don't have one-to-ones with their managers. So definitely do that. And then the third. Is, you know, take potentially something in your company, like if they have them, like the annual report or maybe that there was a recent report that you've all like had access to, or some sort of industry information and get your leaders to talk and discuss about that because it's helping them to build that kind of market awareness, getting them to think a bit more strategically and commercially. And then they can start to then facilitate that and start to share resources with each other.
Yes. These, these are amazing examples. And not many companies do these right, by the way.
Well, this is why the way we come in.
This is, this is, yes, this justifies our existence, kind of.
It does.
Sadly, but yes. And what are the other issues that you, that you sow? In terms of, so usually most companies, And I think we discussed this before how can you tell that you are on the wrong journey or on the wrong path, right? With your business? Usually can tell that you're on a good journey because everything is, you know, coming in and everything is great. But you can also immediately tell if you're on a bad journey. What if, can we, do we have any kind of signs? Where the leaders can realize that there will be problems if they don't react, or don't act, or don't invests in any kind of leadership development for the long run without any clear, immediate signs of, you know reactionary investment.
I mean, I definitely think a first port of call is just almost asking your managers, like, how often are they connecting with their team members, right? Mm-hmm. So how often do you connect with that person? If they're like, oh, you know, a couple of months ago we had a chat. It's like, well, you know, put some formal structures in place as mentioned in the example before. I also think it's really important to have your team meetings in the diary as well. You don't need to have billions of them, but just have a team meeting in the diary. And I also think with companies that have like engaged with me and said, can you help often a telltale sign is the e employee n p s score, if they have one, is declining. And they, they're a bit like, oh, we're not, you know, it's happened. And they get that, that's a metric that's kind of declined and you know, so one of the things that I do, when I engage with clients is I make sure I speak to all layers of the organization. Person who's potentially the line manager of the people that we will be engaging with, the people we will engage with like an example, the people that will report to them and then, and I think this is really cool and important key influences in the business. Right, because they might be, you know, there's always that one person I have found in every business who maybe isn't like the top salesperson or the top this, but they know everyone and they know all the gossip and they know all the backs, stories, but everything, yes. And. If you fired that person, which you will cause there will be an influential person who's maybe not in a position of seniority, but they just know everything that's actually going on and they can give you a much better temperature check. I recently read that, you know, With CEOs generally they're the and the C-suite. Their day is taken up in meetings. So, you know, I thought that was an interesting insight because you can almost see how CEOs are like, we need to come back to the office. Cuz yes, they're on meetings all day. So for them that makes sense. The middle layer of any organization is where the actual work of the company gets done. And so for that middle layer of the company, it makes much more sense that they wanna work remotely because they have so much work to do. They want to be efficient and really get it out the way so they can enjoy the rest of their life. Cause it's a very stressful like clump of work that has to happen. Then your junior people want to learn. So they're like, can we go back to the office cuz we wanna learn? So there's these three different groups who all have different agendas about why remote working or working from the office kind of matters to them. If you have a look, I think you know, I'm sure you'll see a lot of the C-suite are the ones who are going back to the office. And it's like, that's not really the conversation we should be having. We should be saying, how do we create these working environments that are really beneficial for all?
Yes, totally. Totally. Although I think the back to the office movement is driven by the real estate market as well, and the government as well. And it's so interesting that you said, for example, for the junior level, that they think that learning and development happens in the office because and I don't know to argue with the, with, with the statement much, but, but it's so interesting that the like, gen Z, shall we say, or even youngers they learn pretty much anything online through courses, YouTube, whatever it is, but they think that the company learning and development should happen in the office. So it's so interesting to how to bridge that gap of, because I think most learning and development programs are not about learning and development, it's more about cultural transfer right. And because you can learn anything from a YouTube video. I mean, let's, let's be honest if it's just information transaction, then you don't need the office. If it's more like a cultural approach you might need the office. So, yeah, I, I'm not sure that you, have you seen the same?
I think for me with the, you know, early stage career people, part of it is, yeah, I wanna learn the behaviors of how to be successful at work and how to do that well. And you can't necessarily pick that up directly from the, like, from the screen of how does someone actually do this task? And because remote working requires intentionality, that can be done. But I haven't yet seen it. And I'm sure this will probably come like as a sort of new offering at some point, but you know that, how do you transfer those behavioral skills? How do you transfer the way of working from one person in your company to another? And I think that's where it becomes about task-based and outcome-based activities.
Yes. Yes. Totally. Totally. Most managers usually when they delegate things the key part where they have some hiccups is when they focus on the tasks and the list that they need to do instead of the outcomes and the, and the outputs of the team they're doing.
And I think it's tough talk cause it requires you to have good instructional language, I think like, so what I mean is you can have an outcome, right? That you're trying to work to as a manager. So say you want to get a report done, et cetera, but someone's level of report writing ability might not be where you need it to be. And so sometimes the disconnect is, You need to provide potentially some scaffolding along the way to help that person get to that point rather than sort of just leave them completely to it. And you don't really know until you give someone that task. So I think part of the sort of challenge of being a digital leader is almost providing enough structure that you can give someone a good first attempt and then go back to them and say, this is the feedback. Rather than just leaving them to it and then almost be disappointed that it didn't meet your expectations, that you didn't quite articulate very well either.
Yeah, totally. And I, and I view this as the same. This like it's a fine balance between asking about what needs to be done, but also providing kinda like coaching or mentoring. For those who are, who are doing the job for.
As well is also asking good questions course because one of the things in any organization that we're all aware of, even the flattest organization, there is still a hierarchy. You know, if someone is your boss or line manager, there is always a little bit of a hierarchy regardless of how well you get on. So knowing that, I think as a digital leader, another important component is to ask questions to facilitate that person's thinking and to make them. Psychologically safe to actually say, you know what I actually think if we try it like this, this might work. And let me show you how, because there's always that bit of, well, I don't wanna, you know, challenge the boss just in case. And it depends on your style in, so I've been to many, many companies. And some companies have a conflict you know, a pro conflict approach, some have a conflict averse, like more of a collaborative approach. And it's just understanding that actually individually, we also all have that. We, we either are, you know, I'm gonna challenge you and I'm gonna get involved in that. Or we're like, I'll give my feedback at the end of the day or the end of the session. So understanding that part of your job as a digital leader for the, you know, outcomes is to facilitate.
Totally. How can you learn a little bit more about your team? Do you have any tips on that? So for example, when you said, it triggered me what you just said about the two style approach of confrontational and collaborative, because I honestly believe it's not by per industry but pair team. So as a manager or as a leader, you need to understand who are the people that are working with you. And based on those people that you do have right now, plus matching with your own leadership practices and vision, you can or you should create some sort of like a approach because sometimes for you it works as a collaborative approach. Sometimes it works as a confrontational approach, because if you have more confrontational people, the, the approach is simple. If you have a balanced approach, it's different. If you have more introverts, shall I say, or more collaborative people, then again, the decision presents itself. So what are the practical tips that you can give for leaders on how do, how should they know or feel who their team are.
I've seen a great way of doing this is to have a team charter. Right. So it is almost like a set of expectations and behavior mm-hmm. Within your team. And you almost create it, you know, you say we are a team who share, you know, we share all resources. We don't hide them, we keep them all in this folder. We are a team that gives feedback to each other, to always make sure the quality of the work is the best it can be. We are a team who works in a timely fashion so that we hit deadlines and if we can't make it, we communicate that. And you can do that with your team. You can say, look, collectively, how are we gonna work best together? Like, what are the expectations? Is it. You know, we will, you know, definitely reply to someone's email within 24 hours. Is it that we're gonna make sure that we all keep documents on this particular project or this client in this folder? You know, that way you've got a set of behaviors and expectations that you've set collectively as a group. Right. So that's, that's part one. And I think part two is a bit of experimentation with different styles of feedback for you and your team can be really valuable to just give you insights about them and them insights about each other. So for example, you could have you know, a so one of the clients I worked with, we would have a wash up session at the end of every quarter. Cause they were a sales. And so we'll put in sort of these feedback sessions and so it's almost like a feedback session of wins that they'd had, so successful contracts that they'd won, but also feedback about what they'd lost and what they could learn from each other. And that was really powerful because we would use templates to have written like feedback. Then we'd have a session on like Zoom to have oral feedback. So that feedback was collected and received and understood in lots of different ways because, you know, some people are more comfortable saying it out loud. Some people are better and more reflective when they wrote it down, and, and sometimes a bit of both. So I think using like actual moments in your Journey to actually provide those reflective spaces. And you can also use, I mean it's a, a very old model now, but like, you know, Deb Bono's hats where you've got the different types of hats, so you can say to your team, right, we're gonna pretend that we are, you know, very creative about this problem. We're all gonna be as creative as we possibly can, but we're not gonna say anything negative, right? Change it up. We're gonna now just be absolutely negative. But everything that went. So people can start to realize and flex their own style and flex their own approach so that they're realizing, oh, okay yeah, no, that's just a different way of approaching it and viewing.
Love all of these tips especially the charter one because I think it's also important, not, not just for the teams, but also for the individuals and especially for the leaders. So it's pretty much a guide in manual on how we work together in preferences and, and styles. But also like it should be a manual for the individual as well. Mm-hmm. So for example, this is just my example, but I've seen this example for others as well. When you get introduced to a digital workspace, Slack or whatever that you use what I usually do is not just like intro myself of what I'm doing and why and whatever, but also how to communicate with. In terms of like practical tips and also how I prefer to be communicated with, which is by the way, a hundred percent direct, so no fluff, obviously. But also how I prefer to communicate with others and what are the preferences in terms of meetings. And so, so I actually give out a full user manual, shall we say. On, on my, on myself. And and it works amazingly by the way, because it's part of every, every other new member of the team's onboarding. And you should write your own user manual. You should write your teams' user manual. Kinda like the same thing that you said, the charter. Because it makes expectations so clear for each other.
Yeah, I totally, I totally can see that. And you were saying, you're like, you are really direct, I'm a bit more fluffy. Like I want there to be a bit of like, Hey, how was your weekend? All that sort of stuff. And yeah, it's just learning to flex your preferences, I think, along the way. And I love that idea about a user manual and almost like, you know, that's also useful. You could add to that with what times of the day are best If you wanna connect with me, because if you're working asynchronously and globally, which you would, you would come across. If you're remote working, then that's a great way to know that's your business hours.
Yes, totally. And by the way, the and just one more thing on the user manual, because I see your eyes are popping out. Because it's a good idea. You know why it's working really well? Because you have a remote team and most under remote teams are cross-cultural.
Yes.
And most people tend to forget that stuff and be because. Okay, I might be controversial again here. But for example, if you are in the US let's say you all talk about the diversity equality and inclusion and whatever, right? I'm sure it's super important, but when an American company hires someone from Asia, for example, Like person who is Asian and living in Asia, not American Asian just or someone from Africa or someone from Eastern Europe or someone from Russia or someone from middle of the Europe or something. You immediately just by these, I know for examples, I told you immediately get four totally different cultures. And when I say culture four, Totally different style of working. And when you mix those together that's like that, you know that's where things get really interesting. And the user manual can be super helpful. To mitigate these occasional tensions, shall we say, with different cultures. Because the, and, and by the way, this is totally normal. So if you, if you are, you said for example that you're a bit more fluffy in terms of engaging with others in the workplace. Sorry to say, but it's mostly because you're British and
Sorry, we've just, I'm so sorry. Yes, yes. Chit-chat and you pretty much most of at least I've worked in London many, many years. So working with British people is usually they ask you to do a task with a. And that's totally different when you work with, for example, someone from Eastern Europe, or let's say Israel for example, they are very direct. Also they literally tell you that I need this now and you need to do this right now. And that's it. And how you deliver on those requests it's also totally different in terms of culturally. So what I'm trying to say is that when you do have a policy that everyone should write a user manual on themselves, it pretty much mitigates the expectations between the teams because remote teams, it's all about cross-cultural collaboration and sometimes collaboration has hiccups, not because the collaboration tool that you're using is bad or your facilitation approach isn't, is bad but because you have like these simple basic things that cross-cultural teams are participating in a collaboration.
Yeah. Yeah. No, cultural intelligence is really, really important. And I think, you know, remote workers generally I would say they're, they're either working remotely in their home country or potentially travel and work at sometimes as well. And I think there's one step. Just before the user manual which is developing the ability to self-reflect. Because like if, yeah, because you don't have that bit where you're like, oh, how are my preferences? You know? Like that takes a bit of skill to get to that point, to be like, My name's Iona. I'm British, so I like my tea and I like to have like fluffy conversations before I start working. But that requires a bit of self reflection and of course what your preferences are and also to be able to be confident enough to articulate them. Cause yeah, you don't start off with that. You don't, you don't necessarily know all of those things about you. And I wonder, you know, if we did a longitudinal study, do those preferences change over time because of your changing like life or circumstances or personality? I mean, that's a better question, but, oh yeah. Sorry, a big question, but it's it is, it's interesting cause I do think you would change over time, but, so you'd need to update your user manual, but probably as often as you think. Do you think if your life circumstances change, so say like for example, you become a mother your life circumstances change in the sense of, okay, you can contacting me here, potentially there's no time for fluff anymore, or, you know what I mean, like, or potentially you change location, right? And so your times change or you know, you become a bit more like, say fast paced orientated, depending on where you are. I don't think they would change a huge amount, but I think it's just an interesting reflection to be like change over time.
Maybe the priorities change and and that's why you, your behavior changes.
Yeah.
Right. I agree. In terms of...
seeing skills to self reflect, if you don't have that, then the user guide could be maybe full of Yeah, there's.
Seriously, like self-reflection is one of the rare characteristics of anyone these days. And it's really important to state that. I do think that it can be a little bit, shall we say, forced on others and back to the user manual. That is a forced way of self-reflection for everyone because I'll give you an example. For example, on trust. I had a conversation with Jan van der Spoel trust consultant from the Netherlands. He's amazing. His book is coming out shortly, by the way, and He said that when he talks to leaders and they think that they are punctual and attending meetings and whatever, when they actually check their calendars and stuff, it turns out that they are always freaking late from every meeting like half an hour or so. So how people can trust them when they are late on the meetings, this is just a bare minimum foundational, like basic behavior being on point on a meeting, but they always tell that they are on point of meetings and they care about their teams. You know, the perception is totally different. But they are not self-reflective on that. So it's super interesting to, to force people to be self-reflective. And I think mentors and coaches I mean, our job is, is sometimes just to be the therapist and make sure that people are forced to be self-reflective because if they are, they can maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe change a little or at least by understanding how others are behaving through the user manual, shall we say. They can be more empathetic towards that. So obviously, for example, if I'm saying that I'm, I'm super, I prefer direct conversation. But I know that without implying any culture characteristics here, I know that the other team member prefers much more no face loss, no confrontation style approach. Obviously, I, because I know this because of the user menu or because I'm culturally aware anyway I won't be as with that person because I'm also empathetic, right? So obviously you are living in a community, you're living with other people, you are working in a team. And self-reflection also also can teaches you just to be a little bit more patient, more, more, more relaxed and more empathetic to others.
I think that's a huge challenge, right, for any digital leader is to almost develop like digital empathy, right? Cause you're doing it remotely. It's a bit more tricky to kind of sense that. So it is like what you're describing with the user guide, the user manual and also to try and build in that self-reflection. Like what I find with clients that I'm working with is nobody wants to self-reflect because it takes a lot of mental energy. It does. That's why people say, go and find yourself a quiet space, put on the candle and the music. It's because it, it takes cognitive load to reflect and one way that I find can be very powerful is using the jahari's window kind of concept where you ask for feedback probably from your friends and family first that you trust then you know that they'll give it to you straight. But you can start to see, oh yeah, there's this kind of odd behavior that I have, that actually, that I probably need to work on. So for me, an odd behavior I have is I leave half cups of tea everywhere. So my partner's always like, oh, she hasn't drink, you know, she didn't drink that one again. And it's a thing, I know it's a thing, it's cuz it gets to a certain temperature and I'm just like, I don't want it anymore. Nah, I'm not, I'm not drinking.
Nothing worse than cold cup of tea.
Right, exactly. So I can't give more of it and that's the end of it. So it's things like that where you are almost not aware of those behaviors cuz they're not in your consciousness. And so asking your friends and family and if you know you are confident enough, asking people in the business that you're working in, like give me feedback I remember being given that advice at the beginning of my career, and I have to say, feedback is amazing because you learn so much more about yourself and you can develop yourself in so many more different ways and start to discern great feedback that's developmental and rubbish feedback that you don't need to worry about. So don't be afraid of feedback. It's actually a good thing for you. Rather than protecting your identity and ego, it's okay. Just feedback is great. It just gives you a sense of either what that person's perception is or something that you can do to develop yourself.
Perfect. I love the quality approach by the way, do, do you drink it with, with milk or without milk?
With milk, I don't have any sugar. I don't need.
Thank you. Nice. I also do my tea milk, by the way. Heritage from Britain. How do you see the future? So this is one of the last questions. So how do you see the future for companies in general, I guess, but obviously it means that half of them will be remote and half of them will be hybrid or some sort. What do you think, what will happen in the next one or two years in terms of company and business and teams?
I think what I'm finding, just generally talking to clients is a lot more thought and investment being put into, how do you do this really well? How do you actually build effective remote teams? How do you make sure it's like really working because. I think the pandemic put a lot of companies like into a state of, we've just got to do this. Now they're realizing we've actually got to make this work and make this like a real tangible thing. Mm-hmm. I think culture will become more of a prominent feature, like a genuine conversation about culture because it has to be intentional when it's remote, whereas if you are all physically in the same location, it can be organic. So the, the companies that invest in culture and understanding what their values, In a company and how that translates into a remote working culture, they will have an advantage over those who haven't made that distinction. And so you'll see almost like the, the different sort of layers of that as you as, as we go through the next wave of change in the economy and changing the way that people are working. And I think we might also see a increase in maybe one yearly face-to-face events. So that do have an injection of coming together and they feel like, wow. So a bit like that leadership development program I described, it was like 18 months remote and one week face-to-face. So I dunno, that would be the ratio for every company, but I think there'll be more investment in we work remotely predominantly, but once in a while we come together and we come together intentionally. So you'll see like a lot more thought being put into, how do we use this as almost like a catalyst, as a real catalyst for all our people. So then get to the next level.
Yes, totally. I agree with everything you said. And by the way, yes, if you are in the team retreat business, the business will booming. And this and next year. I am a hundred percent sure invest in it now.
People invest in it now.
Yes. Again, thank you. Thank you for your time. This was a really engaging conversation. I really loved it.
Yeah, me too.
Where people can find?
Well, you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm there. And I share my podcast as well. Still loading, which is all about exploring leadership for the digital age. It's called Still Loading cuz I don't ever think it's gonna be done. We're always gonna be processing that. And you can also find me at www.slatedigital.ho.uk cause I'm based in the uk That's why that website said Code UK one. And yeah, please reach out and connect. I love connecting to people and talking about these sorts of.
Thank you again. Thank you for your time. Thank you for coming here.
Thank you.
