How to work with Anyone with Julia Sullivan

Hi everyone. My name is Patrick Akio and if you're interested in how people communicate, how to get dedicated teams and how to let people grow and flourish, this episode is for you. Joining me today is my friend Julia Sullivan. She does and facilitates all of that and much more. Enjoy.

I was thinking because I I saw you wrote a book and you said you've done podcasts and more so broadcasts. Where is like your sweet spot? Do you like written form content or also like conversations like these? In where I think I both really my most of my work happens live but then I'm training people so nobody's interviewing me about me and I suppose that's that's what I'm what I'm used to doing. Working live with people, whatever, with whatever happens.

I'm not really used to people interviewing me about what I think and and so whenever it's about what I think and about me, then I like to prepare. So in in that sense, writing is good because I I tend to kind of edit myself while I'm I'm talking. So writing the book was a very good process for me to get my ideas together. I don't write very easily, so I have to correct myself a lot. But I suppose I'm a bit of a perfectionist.

And then when when I've got it, when I've got it, that's exactly the way I wanted on paper, yeah. Then it must have been a process. So it was a whole process. It was a whole process, yeah. Funny, I don't label myself as a perfectionist, but for some reason when it comes to writing, like a lot of things irked me and I'm like, no, this can be rewritten and I have to really be like, OK, I'll either publish it or it's never going to get published.

When it comes to like a social post or or content, even on with regards to the podcast, somehow I turn into a perfectionist when it comes to writing. Well luckily I was I I was supported through the whole process of of writing and and at the beginning they told us to like just just just sit down, write, don't even think what you're going to write. Think of the day before what you're going to write on. And then just so I would write without my glasses.

Now I need glasses to read, so without my glasses. So I couldn't see what I was writing and literally and I knew it was rubbish. And they said, they said to us, you know, even Ernest Hemingway, you know we started writing rubbish and then you and you have to edit it. I'm not claiming that I've earnest Hemingway here at all, but that was get that really helped us get over the the sentence has got to be brilliant. Interesting because I I have a really hard time starting

things. And it's not just in writing, it's in a lot of things that are new, because I just see a kind of an uphill battle. Getting to a level of quality where I want to be and then starting is really hard. Once I start, I can really find my stride. And for example, I had to write like a business plan because I had an idea. And to get that idea I have to convince people. And the best way to do so is to make a business plan, talk about costs and benefits and risks and

stuff like that. And I always knew like, OK, the ball is in my court. I have to do this now if I want to get it done. And still I postpone it to the very end. And then when I sat down and I was like, OK, I've postponed it for long enough and I start writing. It's hard to stop myself because I'm like this is a lot of fun ideas go on paper and but

starting is really hard. Yeah, yeah, there's even often we're not even aware of it. But there's often that secret pressure we put on ourselves, like it has to be good. So. So that's often in the background when we postpone things, this expectation. But if you say to yourself, you know, just do just, I'll just write rubbish and then and then start start writing, you know what you're thinking about and then it takes form and yeah, yeah. I wonder if that's.

I'm going to try it out, but I wonder if the IT has to be good, is more helpful or harmful because it has to be good. Puts pressure on you. It puts pressure in that sense it could be harmful, but then it also I mean it drives me to do something good so that it might be helpful. Yeah, I think. I think there's both sides to it. It can drive you, but if you find yourself postponing then sometimes somehow it must be holding, holding you and and me, because I recognise it as well.

It holds us back and there's there's a kind of arrogance in in without knowing it, in in that thought. It has to be good because we expect ourselves to be better than than we are. And it's normal when you're starting something new that you've just got to find your feet. Yeah. And you know people talk about you've got to fail so many times in order. I don't actually believe in the word failure. I we just have to start on

something. And in the beginning you're you won't be as good as you are when you've done it 137 times. So yeah, allow us, allow ourselves to start somewhere and get better. I like that a lot.

I think the hard part for me is the the perceiving what others do. And then I don't see kind of the journey they've laid out. So if they've done it 200 times and I'm starting out from me starting out, I want to be there already. And that is kind of the, the struggle because to get there, I have to do it maybe 200 times, maybe 300 times, maybe a little bit less. But I have to put in the work, yeah.

And then from perception, I don't see the work that was put in to get to that level of quality. Yeah. That's the hard part. And that you see a lot. And I see that with myself, but I see that all around me that people you know, they often they want to be there what which is actually taking themselves for granted because you're not allowing yourself to be a

learner. And and when you allow yourself to be a learner, which we do with children, by the way, it's funny that we stop when people turn 18. When you allow yourself to be a learner, then, then you, you know, you, you give yourself credit for, for even starting. You give yourself credit for trying something you haven't done before. You learn from the mistakes you've made. And then? And then you learn in a real way, rather than trying to copy

someone else. And and then you know you'll find that you make mistakes that somebody else never made, or you have a brilliant idea that another person didn't have you. Only you can only do that when you allow yourself to be a learner. You said we we start like that

as kids and we get taught like that. Or maybe it's their innate nature and somehow it waters down and you'd lose that. Or you could lose that, or you have to find that again within yourself. Why do you think people lose that throughout growing up? I think there were a lot of, let's say, shared stories we're unaware of. And one of the shared stories is that, you know, learning stops when you're an adult and you

know, you go through. So we we all accept that when you're a child and adolescent and you're a student, then you're learning. But somehow there's this assumption that from a certain age, whether it's 2324 or whatever, then you're an adult and learning stops. Whereas I see that the whole, you know, our whole lives we're learning. And they're all kind of, yeah, good question actually where that comes from, I I can't, I don't really have one answer where it comes from.

But maybe as children we we look at adults and we, it looks like they know what they're doing. So we expect that when we're adults that we should know what we're doing. And then you start your first job and everyone looks like they know, they know what they're doing and you're being paid a salary. So you think, well, I should know what I'm doing and other people expect me to know what I'm doing because they're paying me a salary.

And yeah, and before you know it, you know, you know, you're 232425 being paid a salary, thinking, Oh my God, I should know what I'm doing and. I I don't. It really, really hits home what you're saying, because for me as

a kid, I was like, adults know everything. I was very curious. I asked a lot of questions. Sometimes I got the answer I thought was true, sometimes I got a different answer, but I always got an answer. Sometimes I got the you asked too many questions. But still I was like adults know everything. And I also thought that going into adolescence I was like, I

don't know everything. I don't know how people do this and especially joining my my first organization as a first job coming coming out of my educational journey as like people really don't know actually what they're doing or they kind of know what they're doing or they're doing a piece of the puzzle. And they're fine with that and they've accepted that. But no one really knows everything that's going on. And maybe in the way that I joined or maybe the organization.

But I was like, for me, it's obvious that I don't know, like just because it's my first job, because of my age, because of my title had junior in, it means obvious. So then asking questions. I don't really think someone is going to have an opinion of me asking questions.

And then I saw other people really, how do you say that get far ahead by asking questions and get a lot of stuff done by clearing things up and by asking questions that I thought or that I thought other people knew so I didn't ask. And because of that, I think I've always hold held on to that. I I think asking questions is fine still. Now I don't think I know everything. I think it would be very arrogant to say I know everything.

Maybe I do myself a dish justice for some topics that I say. I still don't know everything, but still, I think that mindset is better than having the mindset of I've learned everything. Because then if you've learned everything, you're learning stops and therefore your growth also stops. You're very wise. Thank you. Yeah. No, absolutely, absolutely. I I really think that well I I

agree with you and and when when when we stop asking questions then our learning stops and I mean very often it it it kind of I'm thinking in Dutch here very often people kind of slip into it unintentionally and it's not that they're meaning to be arrogant but they there's a kind of hidden fear especially when you get to a certain age or you get to a certain level in your job that you get the impression that other people expect you to know or that you feel the pressure.

And so almost unconsciously, people slip into, well, you know, I I'm now this level so. And it's not that they they they they say, you know, I know everything, but there's a kind of hidden attitude that, you know, I I shouldn't show my weakness. I shouldn't show what I don't

know. And one of one of the things that people find very difficult to say, for example, in a meeting is especially if it looks like everyone else understands what's going on. I hear time and time again people say, well actually I, you know, this meeting happened.

It all went very, very fast. There was something I didn't agree with or something I didn't quite get, but I didn't open my mouth because I was afraid of looking stupid or what my colleagues would think of me. I hear that time and time and time again. What what about that makes the people not speak up? Is that the environment? Is that the perception? Is that how other people react or how their perception is of other people? What do you think that is? Well, a combination of all that.

Yeah, a combination all of all that. Because when you whenever you put a team of people together,

whether you like it or not, immediately all this human stuff starts to play. You get opinions back and forth, whether they're voiced or not. People just can't help it. People just have opinions. You get kind of arrogances that people aren't aware of, insecurities, tensions. All this starts to come into play immediately in every team, whether it causes a problem or not. And let's say under the, under the surface of the water, it's

there. And every team member is aware that, that's actually aware that that's happening. You're aware that your colleagues have opinions about things. They have opinions about, you know, football and what their neighbours are doing. So obviously you're aware that they will have opinions about

you too. So before you, you know, before you realise it, you're kind of trying to, you're taking that into account and you're thinking, well, what am I, what are my colleagues going to think if I say I don't understand this, or everyone in the, everyone in the room thinks this, but I think something different. What are people going to think? So it's a combination of all that, of all this human stuff going on all the time in every team. Yeah, For for some reason I've

always really enjoyed kind of the team building aspect and if something was going wrong in my team or I I think something was going wrong, I would usually point that out or start working on that. But I don't have a a silver bullet let's say and I don't think there is one, but let's say a step by step process of really forming A-Team. For me that's still very difficult because from CBA we're

consultants. So sometimes we come in as consultants where we already are aligned on certain values just through the hiring process just by virtue of being part of this company. And then the team forming aspect, I feel like already has a leg up versus people that are just really random and put together as a team, which sometimes happens within an organization to a certain degree and then all of a sudden has to perform as a team. And the expectation are that they are a team, but they are

not a team yet. They're just a group of individuals trying to work together and somehow through tried and true through storming and forming and all of that, they become a team. But I don't know how to influence the that, how to expedite that, how to make that team a real team that it needs to be to perform. Well, most people don't. It's it's something we're not taught at school. It's something we're not taught

at university. A lot of people talk about team building, but nobody actually knows what is a built team. Yeah, most people don't know. We have a definition. What is a built team? And once you know what a built team is, when I talk about we, I mean I have I work with humanication and there are other trainers there too. Once you have a definition of what a built team is, then you can identify what part of the team isn't built yet. And actually there is a hole when you there isn't a silver

bullet. But once you understand there are very, very clear, delineated building blocks to building a team, and once you understand them, it's actually it's very doable and it's very good fun building a team. Interesting. But it's it's not one silver bullet, no, because humans are humans.

So, so first of all it's it's getting, getting the team to understand what is a built team, which is it's a group of people with a shared who have a a shared mission and a shared vision that they each of them understand what that vision means. They've all bought into it and they know what it means practically and they've all given their, let's say, agreement to it. That's that's a built team. When you know that it's easy to to be able to well, it's not easy to build a team, but it's

doable to build a team. What makes it not easy is that human beings are human beings with their opinions, with their history. Their opinions are off by definition, formed by their history. So they aren't necessarily going to agree with whatever whatever you say. They also have their different communication styles, which means that they all absorb information in a different way. And if you trans, if you if you don't take that into account, you're going to create

resistance. So you need to take all this into account and once you know the building blocks it's it's really exciting actually, building a team and then you know exactly what to do. I remember in my 20s suddenly

being given a position of responsibility. I was made editor of a tiny, a tiny trade magazine. But I was suddenly responsible for a team of, I don't know, I think it was three or four people. And I can remember from one day to the next feeling this pressure on my on my shoulders, like, Oh my goodness, I'm not

responsible for this team. And I really didn't know what to do. All I could do was like hope, just hope that everyone would give their best and I was secretly dreading, you know, the day then that I would have to do some kind of an intervention because I had no clue what to do. And because because of that stress of obviously I became a slightly, you know, I became a less nice person to work with because I was stressed about my position as a team leader. Because I really had no clue.

Because no, no one had taught me. And it was only, I suppose, about seven years later when I understood ah, and I'd learnt, OK, these are the building blocks. And then it became really exciting. Yeah, I really like that.

You say a shared mission and vision, but people understand it. So people not just hear it or see it or perceive it as a written phrase on a piece of paper, but really understand what it means, what the thought is behind it, and why that is what it is. And buy into it, which is the most important. Yeah, I was, I was going to say that as well.

They can only buy into that if they've probably partaken in forming or yeah, I would say forming that vision given their input and thought about it together. If someone gives me a mission and a vision says this is now yours, I'm not going to buy into it. That's the, I think that's the prerequisite. Yeah. And also being aware that everything has its prices. So let's say you have a vision

of an inner vision. So vision is one thing, but to build a team, you need to translate that into practicalities of how we work together on a daily basis. And imagine one of those practicalities is we turn up on time to meetings and on time means not 10 minutes late. On time means exactly on time. Now in order to get everyone in the team to buy into that, they need to understand there's a price to pay for that and they need to be willing to pray, pay

that price. Now that price could be leaving home half an hour earlier. That price could be, you know, cutting off conversation that happens half an hour before before the meeting. Only when you've got everyone in the team willing, understanding that the, let's say the the mutual agreements between everyone in the team is going to require them to pay a price. They get it, they're willing to pay the price, then you've got buy in. Yeah. Is that also the the practical

implications you talked about? Because you said buy in is one of the components and they need to understand what it means for them in a practical sense. Yes, yes. And and also, it's not only the prices but also the benefits. Then once you've got all of them to think through the prices and the benefits, then you've treated them like adults. They've been able to think it through and then then you're on your way to building a team. Yeah, interesting.

I was thinking about my own context and I have different different settings with different people, different amounts of people even. Our unit is quite flatly structured. Our organization and I'm, I'm part of the software engineering consultancy unit and it has about 60 consultants now in there. I always asked or I recently asked who's responsible for, let's say improving the unit and the answer quite generally was

everyone. And that means that everyone is kind of part of this unit, everyone is kind of part of this team to a certain degree. But then to have that shared vision, the buy in, the understanding of the price and the benefits through 60 people, that is quite like a Herculean task if you ask me. On smaller levels it's easier.

I feel like if we have a group of three immediately, I feel like we're aligned better or things get explained in a in a manner which makes sense and we can get this shared mindset and shared mental model of a goal and what it means for us.

But as soon as it hits and I don't know what number it is, I've seen it with eight get really difficult within a software development team and now within my consultancy unit we have 60. That is very hard to do, to get everyone aligned on the same matter. I don't know if that needs to happen, if some people can understand it better than others.

But I would say that the biggest benefit would be if everyone understands it to the same degree, and that takes a lot of time and attention to a certain point, and there's a mismatch in also vision. Should everyone understand that or should a few people understand that and there's consequences to those actions that come based on those decisions? Yeah. Do you think you can form a team with a bigger amount of people? Not even maybe 60, but definitely close to let's say

10/20/30 even beyond? Well, above a certain number it becomes, it becomes difficult because above, I don't know whether it's between 50 and 2015 and 20 or to 25 roughly, that there's a certain number above which you don't really know everyone personally. It's probably bigger than 25. So then it becomes more difficult, but it becomes more

necessary for each person to really get, let's say, what the moral values are in that team and for that person to understand that it affects them as a human being. So I'm not just talking about the mechanics of how we work together and not just talking about the mission that everyone buys into it, but let's say the moral, ethical quality of what it means to be part of this team. So here we're talking about values.

Now a lot of companies work with values, but very often they're just, you know, I don't know whether it's with a service oriented team. What does that mean? It. Could mean everything. It could mean everything. It's only when you as an individual understand what at your core what it means and and that it applies not only to how you handle your clients, but it also applies to how you handle your colleagues and how your colleagues handle you. Yeah, both ways.

So that it so that it affects every phone call you have with each other. It affects every meeting. So actually, every activity you do with your team should be should be formed by these ethical values that you've all agreed to. And then you will notice. Then people will notice in the team what if they've?

If they're clear on what these are, and they're clear on what it means practically, then it will be clear to them when when someone stepped out of it. Yeah, I think the hard part for me is to for me being in a team, to consciously think about kind

of what we agreed upon both on a moral value and an ethical value. I usually just go with my gut in kind of a feeling sense. And then if I were to step out of that, I don't know if I've ever done that. But then for someone to call me out on that, we have to more so consciously be aware of our understanding of what it means

to be a team and our values. And if they're aligned, and if someone steps out of that more consciously than I'm doing now, do you think that should be the case as well? Should I consciously think about those things or how does it get kind of subconsciously or unconsciously? Well, what you don't want is, is for it to become yet another obligation. Yeah, because then you'll get weighed down by so many expectations.

You want it to be, you want to really get it now that you can only do when you've when you've learnt. How can I say this? I do understand what you're saying. Because it shouldn't. It shouldn't be like a list of of expectations. Because then you won't be spontaneous anymore. It'll wear you down. Yeah. But for for me when you said some people or or you would just need to get it. I've talked to people and our,

our. I don't know if it's values or I don't know if it's it's also vision are so misaligned that I'm just like all right to a certain point. We argue we don't understand each other and we just don't get it. We we cannot align. It's because of a different past, probably previous experiences which lead us to believe something different and then we either have to accept that we agree to disagree or we can really not align on this and that can that clash can result

in something worse. It's never happened to me, but I do understand that at some point I were to say I I literally said to my colleagues like it's it's just not in their DNA, it's literally ADNA mismatch and that's really hard to overcome.

What of what can be the case? See, I'm, I'm, I'm switching between Dutch and English cake. What is often the case is that, let's say deep down, actually you want the same thing. But there are so many layers of opinions, communication style, past disappointments, so many layers of the human stuff that are getting in the way that unless until you've handled those, you won't discover that actually you want the same

thing. I'm not saying that that it's not possible for you to have completely different visions, but in most cases that I work with, once we've got to work and you've cut through all the human stuff and people dare to be really real, then they discover actually we do want the same

thing. Because coming back to coming back to what we were talking about earlier on, why people stop learning when they're when they've left the university and they start working, is that somewhere along the line all of us have learnt that it's not good to make mistakes. We say it's good to make mistakes, but in practice we don't like it it. Doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel good because we feel stupid somewhere along the

line we've learnt this. It may be started by, you know, at some point, some adults said to us, you know, watch out, be careful. And then as a child, you learn that the world is a scarier, is a is a dangerous place, and that you you need to think, you know, 5-6, seven times before you take an action. And we we we take that with us and we remember it. So people learn to be very cautious and they learn to hold up a kind of a mask and pretend

to pretend in a certain way. Like to pretend, you know, to do your best to show that you're intelligent, to do your best to show that you're well informed or that you're professional. So without realising it, most professionals are holding up a kind of a mask. And that is one of the reasons that tensions arise between people and teams, that it looks like people don't want the same thing.

And yeah, you need to. You need to deal with that before before getting to the core and realising that actually you want the same thing. Yeah, it's interesting that you

you label it as a mask because I've I've explained this to, I mean, in different settings, even to my parents. When I'm with my friends, I'm a different kind of person than when I'm at home, because my home was a bit more strict. And with my friends I had more freedom to explore as a kid, for

example. And even at home or my siblings, I say when I'm at work, it's a kind of a different version of me. What you're seeing on a recording on a podcast is still kind of a different version of me. They're all different versions of me, and I hope I am still my authentic self. And I don't feel like it is a mask. But yes, I feel like the more kind of stigma you have on how you should act, the further away you go from being your true self

at work. And the further and further away all of a sudden then masks clash, let's say, whereas you really like the person sitting across from you. But in that setting, in a professional context, you clash, whereas when you were at a bar you can talk like friends and it's a different setting. And I was maybe a bit unfair with the word mask. Sure. It's. I'm not saying that people

continuously have a mask. Yeah. It's just that, you know, when we feel attacked, when we, you know, when you're in an argument or a discussion and you feel strongly about something and the other feels strongly in a different way about something, then we find all kinds of different ways to, you know, to to to to hold our, you know, to hold it, to take a stand and show that we're right.

That's one way of of holding up a mask or where you can where people secretly feel you know what you know. Do you know have I got enough experience for this job? And so it it, it sounds very cruel to call it a mask. I don't mean it cruelly, but what I mean is doing your best to look the part. Yeah. And and very often it works. I'm not saying it doesn't work, but there were some places where it doesn't work. Yeah, I think it's. I'm trying to think because I

was wondering how to breakthrough that. And the only way to do that is if everyone kind of drops that mask and literally states their opinion truthfully without being fearful of what others think. So the environment needs to be safe enough to do that. Other people need to be aware and not judging and not hold that against that person because otherwise they're going to shut down in in any future

interactions. I think a whole lot needs to be in place for people to be kind of their true self in those interactions, and especially within our organization, because an organization has a brand, has a reputation, people have a certain idea of what they should do to uphold that, look at other people and perceive them being not really truly themselves, maybe even unawarely. So it's really hard to break that down, I think. This is, this is what I do. It's very and it's very exciting.

It's not hard. You just know need to know how. How would you start? A good place to start is for a

team to to learn communication styles. 90 to 95% of tensions, unspoken opinions, unspoken tensions, misunderstandings, even people leaving their jobs, even projects that fail. 90 to 95% of that is to do with differences in communication styles. And this has to do with how people, how people talk, how their body language. So imagine you you meet a new colleague within the within the first fraction of a second, whether you like it or not, you

form an opinion of that person. This also happens. You know you're at, you're at a conference and you you talk to someone. Within a fraction of a second you have an opinion about them and you think, I, you know, this person is a this person is a very charismatic person, for example. Or this person is a bit unsure of themselves. Or gosh, this, you know, this person is chaotical. This happens within a fraction of a second, and 90 to 95% of that is to do with communication

styles. But we don't realise it. Now the other person is doing the same to you. They form an opinion of you. Now this happens in a team all the time, and we form opinions about other people and we think they're chaotic, or we think they're unreliable, or we think they're being unnecessarily cautious. Or. Or that they're what's the word bought in Dutch. Which is rude. Rude, yeah. And most and in most cases that's got to do with communication styles.

But it causes a huge amount of tension in teams, whether it's spoken or not spoken. Because let's imagine you're working with a manager and you think he's rude and you think or he, she, he or she is uninterested in you. And that's going to affect your performance, that's going to affect your happiness, that's going to affect how relaxed you

feel with that person. And in most cases, that is absolutely not the intention of the person, it's just how you've interpreted their communication style. So for a team to learn, to learn, to work with communication styles is the best, is the best starting point. And then there we And then what happens is teams then realise, Oh my goodness, suddenly kind of 50% of the potential tensions just kind of dissolve. Yeah. Is it more so from the sorry?

Is it more so from the interpreting side or also from the person that has that communication style? Because for myself, I like to be flexible in communicating, to get stuff done, basically to get more stuff done. And I think part of that would be to switch up my communication style based on the person that's in front of me. Yeah, it works both ways. So you want to be able to read the person who's talking to you. So you understand that they're not being rude, they're not being chaotic.

It's just their communication style. But by the same token, when you're talking to someone, you need to be able to talk in their communication styles so that they get you, so that they realise that you're not being rude, you're not being well. If you're too flexible by the way, they may think, certain styles may think, Oh my goodness, this is taking too long. So, so it works both ways. Yeah.

So if you're somebody in a team and you feel that you're not being heard, you want to learn communication styles so that so that you get heard. Exactly, yeah.

How does a team get aware of what each other's communication style is, other than just day-to-day interactions in that way? It takes it. It takes half a day of a training to to to see it and get it. And it takes a day to learn to work with it. So it's so it's part of you, so that you work with it naturally, so that you can use it at home with your kids, so that you can use it at home with your partner, because it's really about talking to people.

Yeah, I've I've heard this one before of like colleagues in the past that they're like, I'm aware this is my communication style and I do not care. I don't want to adapt. If you have people like that on the team, how how do you solve that or how do you work around that? Well, first of all, it's absolutely their prerogative. It's up to them to decide. When it's about colleagues, they may not care, but when it's about their two year old kid,

they probably will care. That's a good point, yeah. So in all the work I do, it's it's it's all about communication with people. So the way you communicate with your colleagues at work, you know, is actually no different from the way you can't you communicate with your child. Of course you talk about different things, yeah, yeah.

But if you're able to talk, to create connection and understanding and humour and mutual respect with anyone at your work, then you're able to do it with your two year old child. Yeah, yeah, I love that. I I'm going to use that probably. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, why not?

Once people, once a team or individuals, understand each other's communication style, understand kind of their default and even their preference because I think those might be different or they might be aligned, What would then be next in kind of allowing people to have comfort in the way that they're working within a team or within an organization?

It's also very important in a team to create Ocanus, to be honest, and one of the commonest problems in teams is that past frustrations or disappointments are not communicated because people are worried about being seen seen as negative or whatever. Now people talk about being transparent, but in practice it's it's it's more challenging than in theory. So you need to get.

So that would be my second step is getting a team, First of all understanding the the benefits and prices of being honest, of not being honest. For them to really get, when am I honest, when am I not honest? If we agree with each other, we're going to be honest with each other. What are the benefits and prices which because let's say we agree, we're going to be honest with you each other. Sounds good on paper and it's easy to say.

But if we mean it, that means that if you come to me and you say, hey, Julia, you know that meeting we were in last week, well, what you did in that meeting, that didn't work for me, It means I need to be willing to hear that from you. Yeah, so I need to get that. That's the price of wanting honesty between us. So it's first getting this understanding in the team of what honesty means getting buy in, do they want it or do they not.

And and also giving them the tools to be able to handle handle it if somebody else is disappointed, if your partner at home is disappointed about something and they're, you know, angry or you can see in their body language that they're disappointed that that that you know how to handle that. And there is a way, yeah, there's a very simple tool of handling someone else's disappointment.

Your client, if you see that your client is disappointed either in you or in your company, how to handle that, you need to develop your confidence in being able to handle that. Now, developing confidence in a team is first of all knowing the technique. If you don't know the technique, you will never be confident about it.

And then practicing it. And what, once you're confident about being able to handle disappointments without feeling attacked, that will create a huge difference in a team. Yeah. I think when you lay that out, kind of the price of being honest with each other, I'm OK with that. With people saying Patrick in that meeting, what you did didn't work for me. That's objective feedback. People sometimes even jump in to immediately advise I would have done XY and Z, but I'm OK with

that. However, I have noticed that when I'm trying to do that with someone else, we haven't had that mutual agreement that this is the price. I give the feedback that not everyone is OK with that and people jump into kind of a defensive position sometimes and depending on the code context can get really emotional and things. All of a sudden I've been in situations where I'm like, I don't know how we got here, but here we are and that's a lot of emotion then, then and there.

So not everyone might be OK with that, being aware or unaware of that. Yeah, yeah. This is why I have a job. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. But. Yeah. Should people be open to that or is it also their prerogative to say I I don't want that because. That's a hard one for the word should. It's a great word. I mean, it's it's easy to say, yeah, everyone should be open, but we're all human beings and we've all been there, haven't we?

You know, I still get defensive. If my partner gives me feedback

on something, you know, it's it's so I I I'm not a fan of the word should. Fair enough. Because you know, there there is a theoretical what we all should do if we were all absolutely perfect. And then there's OK, well, we're all human beings. So how to handle, how to handle it? So how to handle the fact that we are all sensitive. We all, we we, you know, we don't like to make mistakes. So if we hear that we've done something that doesn't work, we

do tend to get defensive. So how to handle that? So how, how to handle it when someone gets defensive, how to create openness and willingness to listen. And this is another skill. So these are all skills that team leaders actually need to have in in order for first of all not to be scared of being a team leader to be able to handle anything that happens. And then when you're able to to

do this. So when you know for example, how to how to immediately see if somebody's going into resistance before they even notice it and how to how to create a dynamic that the person is kind of opens up and is willing to listen to you. Yeah, these are very exciting things to learn. And when I discovered that you can learn these things, suddenly the, the, you know, the

responsibility of being team leader suddenly became very exciting. Did you learn that through more, so let's say practical experience? Because you you talked about really early on in your career having those responsibilities and it it to a point where it stressed you out or did that come more so from theory and then putting that into practice? I didn't learn it through, only through practice because I just didn't know. And what you don't know, you can't know.

So I learnt it through doing a training. Somebody taught me how to do it. It's like, oh really? I never looked at it this way before, and I did several trainings. You know, I sometimes think that these are the most important things, like how to hand, how to work with people, how to navigate tricky situations with people. And we're not taught them at

school, no, you know? So it took me several trainings, not, you know, 10 years of trainings, but really several to to to to learn the basics, to get better at it, to get to get to feel authentic in it. And the more I the more I learned, the more exciting it became. And I'm still learning. And I started learning this when I was 30 and now I'm 56. I think that's a great mindset. I for me, it's one of my my joys to kind of figure out and to make someone really excited and help someone.

I don't know if that's nature or nurture. It's just something that's in me. I'm not sure where it comes from and I'm trying to get better at that. I'm still always also going to be learning. I feel like because the complexity of the conversations are, that's kind of stupid, silly. The complexity is really

complex. Yeah, those conversations are so complex that there are going to be nuances and differences and things you could have done differently to get to a different outcome or to get to the same outcome in so far that I think I'm never going to stop learning that. But I do think a lot of experience based I'm. I'm very practical in a sense and I'd like to go based off experiences. So when I am in a training, one of the my fondest memories of being in those trainings is more

so role-playing. And then I think, OK, how much of role-playing is like me in an actual setting or me in this kind of safe space where we are role-playing and it's known that we are. That's kind of the hard part, putting into practice what I'm learning theory wise or

role-playing wise. The only way to do that is to be in those positions, but then not being as comfortable because probably with the same perfectionist mindset or the stigma of I'm team lead now, I have to do this or I have to be able to do this. That makes it a bit more difficult sometimes, being in my position, I feel like.

One of the big eye openers for me was getting that. I didn't understand what my role actually was as a manager or a team lead. Yeah, once you get that as a team lead, as a leader, once you get that, your responsibility is to make your team members flourish. Once I got that, that already took off a huge amount of pressure for me. Why is that? Because until then I hadn't got that clear. I thought until then my that my role was to ensure that they did

the job right. Oh, OK, that's different. It's different, yeah. Once you get that, your role is to get your team members to flourish and grow as human beings, first of all. Then you get well, You're on the you're on the same side. Once they get that, you get it. Once you get that, they get that you get it, then suddenly things look very, very, very, very different.

And and any intervention you do then suddenly becomes clear that it's for their benefit, not for the company's benefit, It's for their benefit. And then suddenly the whole game changes once you get once you get that. Yeah, being in that position and having been in that position, I I open up more easily. If someone's, if I know that someone is there to make me grow and to make me flourish, yeah, because then I I can be open. I can be honest.

As soon as that kind of goes away, that is the hard part, because then the walls come down and things are not being set anymore. Yeah. But I've. I've had the fortune that I've worked with managers that really gave me the feeling that that was the case and also acted upon a way that I understood that that was the case. And with situations where that was not the case, Yeah, I felt something was missing, I must say, and that I saw elsewhere to get a feeling in a sense, from

someone else then, yeah, yeah. How do you give people that?

And I don't know how to do that. I think I do it maybe automatically or I try to because you have to get people into a place where they understand that and feel that and see you act upon that as well. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. They need to trust that, yeah. And for them to trust that, they need to be able to see you as the whoever, the team leader, as a human being, which means as a team leader, coming back to this cruel word of the mask, as a team leader, you don't want to

be holding up a mask. You want to be as real as you want to be real. So as a team leader, you need to show that you also make mistakes, that you're learning from your mistakes, which is quite a, for some people, a scary place to be. Yeah. And you know, the whole thing of vulnerability that Brett Brené Brown talks about, this is what it comes down to showing as a team leader. Not that you're always making mistakes, but that you don't necessarily have the last word.

You don't necessarily have the answer. And just in in the way you communicate and the way you are that your team trusts that that you are being real. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's foundational in in building up that relationship. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that changes everything. I I think so too.

The hard part I have is that it really comes from you having experienced that with previous managers or previous settings, having been in that position, let's say from the other side of the conversation, and with how people grow into those positions. I feel like if you haven't had a good experience like that, you're gonna act upon what you experienced. And in that way you might automatically create an environment like that and that

foundational trust. Or you might act in a way that you're more of a manager's manager and you're acting in the best of the company, not letting people flourish or not letting even people go when that might be better for their personal growth or personal career. And you can say things about that. But I think that's my opinion. I don't think maybe it's my experience, but I I will always try and do what's best for the people that are in my team or sitting across from me in that way.

I I wouldn't be able to see it that much from the other side is the hard part. Yeah.

And and you're right, people leaders very often take the lead from the leaders above them. Yeah. So where the real courage comes in is, is say you're working for a very, very corporate company and the manager above you, the directors above you, are very, very top down and they're very kind of, you know, directive. The real courage comes in daring to create a different culture in your own team. So then yeah, that's that, that's that's brave to do that. I think so too. It's very brave.

I've seen a lot of people do it. It takes. It takes real courage. Yeah. That's one of my final thoughts, just because we're touching on this and I think it's very relevant for some organizations that are out there. Have you seen this culture, let's say within a team that went against the stream of the big organization all of a sudden get the overhand and change company culture in a way that was beneficial for the people as

well? Because I feel like starting within a team is is a nice thing, is a good thing. At some point you do want the organizational culture to also uphold that because otherwise you're continuously going against the stream and that chips away at trust. At some point it chips away at energy. So without kind of an overarching change, that might be hard and sustainable. Yeah, that's that's true. That's true. Now one of my limitations is

that I'm I come in as a trainer and I train a group of people and I often don't see it the company. Then the year later, certainly for the hopefully I'm going that way. But for many years that was the case. So I don't have a lot of examples and I'm certainly not going to band around names without having first checked with those companies.

But I have seen in a couple of IT companies that certain departments started to create this this culture thanks to the director of that department that the year later there was a a call to to do something about the culture in the whole organization. They looked at what she'd done in her department and they decided to do a whole culture change process in the whole organization. Beautiful. Yeah, yeah, it does happen. Yeah, that's amazing. It's, it's funny that you say

that. I mean, I'm a I'm a consultant, so part of my work is going to clients, helping and then leaving. Making myself obsolete is part of the job. And then I don't know what happens after when I found out and things are still happy and they're still happy with what we've done. It's part of a fulfillment that I don't know is missing sometimes, but I'm happy when it gets fulfilled. So I'm happy. That's the same for you as well, where you have those tidbits of feedback.

Yeah, where people say, well this is the blueprint how we want the organization to structure itself, cuz this is valuable to us. And sometimes, sometimes I hear from people who say thank you this really, really, you know, now I get what leadership is. I decided to leave the company. But the way I communicate with my kids and my partner and the way I'm communicating my new company is, is completely

different. So yeah, sometimes people decide to leave because they're clear on the fact that the match isn't there anymore. Yeah, and that's amazing as well for those people. Yeah, I've really enjoyed this

conversation, Julianne. Me too. Talking about how to form a team, what really makes a team, how to get people to be comfortable within a team from a leadership perspective, talking about communication styles and honesty. Is there anything that's still missing that you'd still like to add? Not really, no. I think we've we've, we've

covered it, yeah. The thing I would like to leave people with is once you get that work is actually about relationships with people and making them work, then work becomes very, very exciting and meaningful. Yeah, meaningful is the the essence there. And that you never stop learning. Yeah, I love that. Let's round it off here. Thank you so much for coming on, Julia. This was a blast. And I'll. I'll round it off here. Thank you for listening.

If you're still with us, leave a comment in the comment section below. I'm gonna put Julia Socials in the description below as well. Reach out to her, let her know you came from our show. And with that being said, thank you for listening. We'll see you in the next one. Beyond coding.