music Hello, everyone. I know that we don't have many viewers yet, but you will come in. And just to start, we will be taking questions throughout to help us kind of navigate the discussion. I'm Leith Hury. I'm the founder of Spartan SC and the Global Recruiter Academy. And this is Mary Oakley who runs a business innovation group. She is my Irish fairy godmother in terms of business, in terms of, you know, just moral support and so on.
And she, this group that she runs is filled with incredible people. Some of them have PhDs. Some of them are authors. Some of them are just, you know, interested in technology and artificial intelligence and they're from all over the world. Very fascinating people. And Mary, you know, she's, she put, she brought everyone together and she really understands people. And I think that that's going to be a really great added value to this discussion.
So just to start at Mary, if you want to give your own, you know, self-introduction, you can go start from there. Oh my god, Leith. Well, first of all, thanks very much, thanks for asking me today. And you know, we've been pilots for so many years now and helped each other because the feeling has moved to a, yeah, that group was formed during COVID and it kept going from strength to strength. And I love every bit of it and every person that's in it. There's such interesting people in it.
And we're all very close. And really what keeps, what keeps it going is the power of human connection and that we all got to know each other very well. And it's a comfortable, safe place. And that's what we need to be happy, you know. Our basic human needs need to be met. And today we'll be talking about happy workplaces. So that's where it all starts. Happy human. Absolutely. I have, I've often been fascinated with the connection of psychology, the labor market and economics.
And you know, I also am one of the members on something called the rehumanization project with Bob McGannan, Dr. Steve Jeffs, Dave Burrs, Lucy D'Ossardo and Christina. And these are a really interesting group of people as well. And you know, we've taken a lot of time. We've met a lot, many times. And this is, this discussion in particular is built on a lot of the things that we've identified and in terms of conditioning.
So whether it's psychology or going to the gym or whatever, I mean, if you go to the gym, you don't expect to lift weights really heavily from day one. And you've got to condition your body and get your body ready to lift heavier weights and to have more endurance and stuff. It doesn't happen just by sitting around. And the idea is to condition the way we treat each other in the workplace.
The mindset that you bring into the discussion, whatever project you're working on with the team or whatever, you need to be in the right mindset. And one of the things that I noticed is that when you want to make the mindset better, when you want to condition the workforce to be happier, there's a lot of groundwork that you need to set up to really foster such an environment. And those include the organization structure itself. It includes the incentivization structures.
It includes teaching managers and peers how to talk to each other. Because for example, giving feedback is a very sensitive topic. And if it's not done correctly in a timely manner and on a very specific approach, it can actually have more disastrous effects than actual beneficial effects. There's so many factors involving it, but basically what my point is is that you have to get the groundwork done right in order to start building the happy parts of the environment.
Yes. And I think a lot of that starts with clarity from the beginning and definite rules. People have to know their boundaries to feel safe. So from the organization, if to keep changing and if there's too much change and the goal goes keeps moving and also lack of training. A lot of micro management is caused out of lack of proper training in the beginning. So it is, it's this conditioning from the very start. It's like bullying in the schools.
If it's not hit on the head from the very first day, it festers the whole way through. And we're not talking about bullying here necessarily, but we're talking about people knowing where their place is, their role and also communication from management to staff. You know, that there is that respect between both. You know, one common thing that I, in terms of communication that I found quite interesting.
By the way, anyone that's watching, I see we have Mr. Michael Leons here from Manchester and and calm Flynn, of course, it's always a pleasure to have you. You guys can always just ask any question, throw in any comments, add any points of view and I'll be happy to share that on the screen throughout.
But what I was saying is in terms of the communication factor is that a lot of the times people are under the assumption that everyone has the same thought process and the same logic patterns and not that any logic pattern is more superior to another. But for me, for example, when I want to start a discussion, I like to set the stage. If you're asking me a binary question, I'm unlikely to give you a binary response. Because for me, the world is not black and white.
I like to set the stage so that we have a common ground before I give you my binary response to your binary question. And a lot of people get really upset. It's like, why are you talking about all of this? Hold on, we'll get to the point, we'll get there. But in order for me to answer this, I know for a fact that you are missing information that needs to be set as a stage for the rest of the discussion.
But I'm not going to put myself in a self-perjuring situation because you don't understand the entire story. And people like to jump to conclusions as well. And it's a very dangerous thing when you jump to conclusions. Yes. But we need to embrace diversity. We need to embrace the diverse thinkers. And we need to recognize what ideas, if we throw it out there, when people come together and diverse minds come together. So it's lovely to encourage thinking out loud and go the long way about it.
I know time is often, it's very important. But there needs to be clear channels of communication where people are free to express themselves. Well, yeah, exactly. Time becomes a major issue in many different conversations. So I know for a fact there are two kinds of people when I was recruiting executives, they don't have time to sit and go through the resume line by line with you. And they will not appreciate if you try to do that either. And the other people are programmers.
So programmers are really focused and they need to focus. And I've said this a thousand times. If they lose track of what they're working on, that could actually damage the entire program that they're trying to build. So they don't appreciate their time being wasted just as much as an executive would. And if you're not speaking their language, both as an executive or as a programmer, they don't want to sit in the interview with you. For them, it seems to be just taking valuable time from them.
But on the contrary, if something is important to you, if something is actually damaging what you're trying to achieve, you're going to have to dedicate the time and the patience to listen to the person who has a potential solution.
And if you're not willing to take the time to walk through the thought process properly without trying to jump the gun to the conclusion, then you're going to end up in a situation where, for example, a lot of companies like to increase the tax rate in order to make more money for the nation, which is fair enough when we understand that it's important to make more money as the nation.
But it's like taking half a class in economics, understanding what margins are without understanding that things are elastic and inelastic. And there's a point where people will start to find cheaper, more dangerous, uncontrolled, unregulated solutions rather than pay more for something that they could find alternatives for. So you've created risk to the community because you wanted to take a shortcut by increasing the taxes. And it's the same for prices, for companies as well.
So a lot of companies, they're ISO standard, everything is really well taken care of, really well regulated, audited, made sure that they have the quality assurance looking at all of their manufacturing process. And we know it's a safe product. But you can't just increase the prices just for the sake of increasing prices because what's going to happen is the sales volume is going to decrease.
So my point here is that if you don't understand the full picture of economics or the full picture of a discussion in general, you can't jump the gun because you're going to end up shooting yourself in the foot. But getting back to the people then, you need the right team behind you to, you know, and we were talking about the programmers and we were talking, you know, we're getting back to the happy workplaces.
Like how do you keep those people happy in the workplace to make sure you are making the money? Yeah. Well, I mean, there's so much that goes into this, the complexity of happiness in humans. Time to listen to their needs. If you don't meet their needs. Well, and one general sense is continuous happiness is unachievable, not as humans. We're not responsible for everyone's happiness anyway. But satisfaction should be the goal to achieve.
Satisfaction and, you know, creating an environment where it's okay to be there for nine hours a day. When you look at happiness, happiness in psychology is like an elastic rubber band. You pull it in one direction and it's going to bounce back and it's going to go through that vibration, right?
So no matter what you do, like today, if I go and increase all the employees' salaries by 20 or 200 euros or dollars, they're going to be happy for the, maybe for the next two or three weeks, but then it's going to become the norm. And once it becomes the norm, it goes back to just, you know, plateau. And so that's not necessarily a sustainable achievement. But one thing that we could do is learn how to communicate better and not put so much pressure on people.
I understand that there's a need to like grow an organization and growth has become a major trend, especially with venture capital funding, which really puts pressure on growth. And I love venture capital. I find it to be one of the most fascinating industries in the world. So nothing against it. Actually, you know, it's incredible. I love what they do. I think it's really fascinating. However, when you put that amount of pressure on people to grow that fast, what you're demanding is inhuman.
Yeah, because risk, now you're going to risk area where you're, you know, you're pushing people too far. And it is, it is inhuman. And what do you think can be done? And what do you think businesses can do from your perspective? You know, I always think, you know, measure twice and cut once, like, you know, just think about it, take it out first and how much you value. Well, some mistakes get made when you're desperate. Someone here is talking about micromanagement.
Yeah. So how do you deal with a micromanager? I think that's all Omar Kourdi actually, or at least there's a share to Omar. Anyways, so in terms of dealing with the micromanager, the thing is, all they really want to know is to make sure that you're doing your job.
And if you can create a system and agree on a system, like maybe have an Excel sheet with a shared folder and you just update the Excel sheet every now and then to where they can check in and look at it every now and then, it might take some relief away from that need to micromanage. Yes. As long as they can, if anytime they have a concern, they pull up that Excel sheet and they see that you're doing your work and you're checking all the boxes and they seek progress.
That's all they really need to see and they need to see that you're diligent. So even in the Excel sheet, make sure that you're proving that you're being diligent as well. And that would slowly reduce the amount of micromanagement that's happening. Yes. And maybe they're confused about the rule. Maybe there is, and maybe there was some training, the mist or whatever, and that's why they have to be micromanaged. Yeah, true.
I mean, one of the biggest problems I've always seen with companies with high attrition rates, which is turnover rates, is that when they hire a new employee, although there's a job description, the job description isn't matching what the manager is expecting from the employee. And then there becomes this grand ambiguity between the relationship between the manager and the employee.
And everyone kind of feels lost, including the manager, by the way, that's toxic for the manager, not just for the employee as well. A large part of that lack of coordination comes from not running a proper skill gap analysis throughout the organization. And so if you launch a business today, you want to start with the vision and the mission and the values and look at your CSR strategy, the corporate and social, what was it, corporate and social responsibility.
Yes. So when you align all of that, you see how you should be incentivizing every single person in the organization. And then you can build out actual like, oh, so in order to achieve these things, I'm going to need this department, this department, I'm going to need these tasks to be done by these people. And then everything becomes really clear as a structure.
And then after that, you really do have to break down all the skill requirements for each job role that you're going to need, and then divide it fairly in a way where you're not going to be exhausting to stop. And then that's clear. And then now you have KPIs for every single person that joins your business. And KPIs are just another way of saying expectations. And that's all. And that's what usually the pressure is on for the KPIs. But I suppose the values need to be constantly adhered to.
And companies, they have their values, but they don't actually lift them, some of them. And perhaps that is why I think you said one time that you're very entitled to asking an interview about the company's values. And people don't. But some people do look for a job in certain companies because of their values and tend to get disappointed when they start working. I know that a lot of companies lately are putting CSR and DE and I as the top list of their values.
But in reality, that's to get investors. And sometimes it's important that we need to acknowledge that sometimes as much as we wish that the world was honest and transparent and really clear and everything, sometimes it's all about money. And when you sit with the manager, at least you're talking to a human or the HR or whatever. You're like, look, I understand that these are your values that are written down.
But if I was to come here and work here today, are these the values that are reflected or not? Yes. And be like, you know, I'm not judging and I just really need to know for my own sake. Yes. Especially in this day of the ESG goals, you know, the environmental, social and governance goals that are to be met and DEI becoming very important. And that's what's important. It is important. There are actual financial reasons why you should integrate an actual DE and I strategy.
Things that have a properly functional DE and I strategy within their organization that's aligned throughout their operation grow significantly faster and expand to new markets in like three times faster than other companies. And that's like, that's something you can literally look up. You can do the research on your own and you're going to find what I'm saying is completely true.
But and the reason, for example, in some countries, it's not acceptable for me to do an interview call with someone who is a female. And you have to respect that cultural difference. You do. It doesn't mean that they're not qualified to do the job, but it means that there's a cultural difference that you need to acknowledge and you need to respect. But by having a woman on my team to interview those people means that I've increased my talent pool size.
If you take that in terms of marketing and sales and comparatively, you've increased your market size in terms of sales capacity, in terms of understanding, how do I need to label this product to this group of people in a way that's not going to be offensive? It's not going to be culturally insensitive and you're going to actually really expand into new markets that way. Yeah, so it's no brainer.
Yeah. But it doesn't always work and it doesn't, a lot of companies, they tick all those boxes, but they don't actually do it on the ground. And I think it might be down to the need for better the Annih training of managers, you know, understanding. But I know it is better now than it used to be. But the potential you can bring out people, you know, when they're working in the industry, in the right environment. Yeah. I know first hand, it's wonderful.
So we have a comment from Mr. Michael Leon, who is one of my favorite people on the planet. Happy workplaces on the subject of topics like happiness and or diversity at work. My observation is that inside many organizations, there's a difference between what one sees looking up the organization leadership ladder versus what leaders want to see when they look down. And that's a real challenge. But the big question is how do good leaders turn this around and work differently? Oh, wow.
That is a great question. Again, you know, I mean, that's all about communication and sharing perspective. But you know, I saw an Instagram post and I know that it's not like a great source of, you know, information or education. But there was an Instagram post where they said that most of the world views the world through perception. And the problem with perception is that you only see it through your eyes, through your story.
And the people that really succeed in life and really have control over their life and the surroundings in their life, or people who continuously pursue perspective, multiple perspectives. For example, you don't read one newspaper and assume that you're getting solid facts. You read multiple ones in order to see where the common threads are, and then you put your own conclusion forward.
I mean, even if it's subconscious in terms of the journalists that's writing the newspaper, there is always a bias as long as humans are involved. So sharing, trying to convince all of these people to look from perspective, look from the perspective of the hiring manager, of the line manager, of the ownership.
So a lot of people when they, you know, this is another thing, Michael, you know, when people join an organization coming from a bad experience with a previous employer is they bring that baggage on to the new employer and hold them accountable for what they used to experience, which is a defense mechanism. And it's, and which Mary told me earlier before we went live, it is a defense mechanism. Yeah, for us here. Yeah, but at the same time, it's also something else. This is a employee mindset.
They're not thinking with a full perspective of being in a work environment. And people shouldn't be in an employee mindset. Yes, negotiate your basic salary. Yes, negotiate the hours that you're going to work. Do what you're doing, but do so with consideration of the owner. A lot of people don't realize that the owner is the last person to get paid. So first you have the suppliers that get paid. Then, and this is something that really people don't even think about.
They just want to negotiate a higher salary unfairly to the owner and they refuse to acknowledge that it's unfairly to them because they feel that they were mistreated at a previous employer. So the supplier gets paid first, the employees get paid second, the government gets paid third and whatever is left after all of that, if anything, goes to the owner.
So when you're over negotiating what's limited from that profit margin at the end of all of these expenses, you're actually taking away from the pocket of the owner. So I mean, or owners, so I mean, it could be like 20 owners that are involved or partnered in a business. And that profit that looks like, wow, one million is actually divided amongst 20 people. It's not that big of a number for the risk that they're taking. So that's one thing.
So when an employee goes in with that in mind as an owner, I would be more willing to give them my margin because they're empathetic towards that to grow within my organization. I would take that risk on them. I would pay them more. I suppose it all depends on whether you're working for a big money national, you know, or a smaller business or a family owned business or a group of individuals. The perspective changes, it depends on what kind of a company you're working for.
But you said in one of your posts earlier on, about the toxicity from a hierarchy to where the higher managers don't empathize enough or vice versa. There's too much of a division. Yeah, and this was actually something that was discussed in the re-humanization project. That wasn't my idea. I think that was from someone else. But they made a very good point when we were in one of those private meetings kind of identify the pillars of toxicity.
And what it was is that when you only incentivize a big, beautiful salary, a comfortable paycheck, it's normally only for vertical growth. But if you want to look at horizontal growth, like becoming a subject matter expert, a leader within a specific set of tasks, expert expertise, advisory kind of thing, we're not incentivizing those people to grow horizontally.
We're only incentivizing them to grow vertically, which means now instead of having people focus on tasks, you're having everyone trying to climb on top of each other at cost of whoever in order to reach the top of the ladder and get into that high level managerial role. And that's too competitive. That's not a healthy competition. And trust is lost in this process because they're all against each other instead of together as a team. And trust is a big thing in the workplace. What about trust?
Tell us more about the re-humanization project actually, Leit. What other things come up in the pillars of toxicity? Some of the pillars of toxicity is communication. We discuss incentive misalignment with vision and mission. Sometimes in organizations, you'll see that the salespeople are incentivized on sales like revenue, which is really far up on the financial statements. It's still not covering all the expenses. And then you'll see more senior people being incentivized on profit margin.
So what you're going to have now is a disalignment in the organization where the salespeople will get the sales, meet their target at whatever cost just to get that commission. And then you'll have managers, CEOs, COOs incentivized on end of your profit. So now what you have is you have the C level arguing with the rest of the staff throughout the organization. Why are you being so irresponsible? Why are you doing whatever?
Well, I mean, when you have a misalignment on incentives, that's what's going to happen. And I understand that people want to get their commission check as soon as possible, which means revenue. But at the same time, is that really the kind of attitude and incentive you want to be giving people? As an owner, I want to walk away from my business one day and not have to look back every five minutes and I want to go on a vacation. I don't want to have to deal with this.
I want to be able to know that everyone in the organization is looking to maximize the profit margin because that's where the commission is coming out for everyone, including ownership. But you don't want to leave burnt out and absolutely disgruntled and sick at that stage of your life either from this lack of effective communication in the company. That's a killer for the owner, for the C suite, for the entry level. It's like, why am I always being yelled at?
I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. You're under, at the higher levels, loneliness and just pure pressure. You know, it's causing a lot of other problems. I read some research article and actually I'll bring this question up because it's relevant. So, Finola, nice to see you here. So how do you view managers and leaders within an organization? Yeah, so first and foremost, they're human and they make mistakes, even if they don't want to admit it.
So they do make mistakes, whether it's a communication mistake, numerical error, God knows what, and people need to just kind of give the benefit of the doubt to each other a little bit, give a little bit of give and take here. And unfortunately, you always see this kind of like employees versus leadership, always, always in most organizations. And in reality, everyone just wants to achieve the goal. That's it. And there is no real division.
I mean, for me, for example, one thing that I always tried my best, wherever I worked, was to get in alignment and focus on the project at the end. And one thing was, so one example I had is I briefly worked at Devo team and I really loved the staff there. Beautiful people. It's a French multinational that specializes in digital transformation. I mean, I really believe in their mission. I still do. I think they're fantastic. But the recruiters were a little bit, you know, back and forth.
There's just a little bit of stuff. One of the first things that I did was I wrote the target for recruitment, how many people we have to recruit by the end of the year. And it was a big number. And I didn't have to do much else after that because once you put the big challenge in front of people that's bigger than anyone, bigger than everyone, what happens is that by nature people will come together and they will start to work towards that mission on their own.
And then it just takes some fine tuning. But getting people aligned starts with the objective. It doesn't start with anything else. And you know, honestly, I was so proud of that team by the time I left, I wasn't there for that long. But the team were achieving 124% of the weekly target on average. I mean, you know, like what amazing people to like come together that way and to really get so many vacancies closed.
And the, you know, the amount of communication you would see directly with their directors or with the partners or whatever. And just they would start to just gather all this information. And honestly, there wasn't much work for me to do. So at some point, you know, let them do it on their own. They're good. They're set. Yes, that's what trust is. I trust them to do it. Yeah. You know, you know, I'm an Irish person, so we love telling stories. And Lace was actually in Jordan.
But I just brought me back to when I was 18 years old, I got a summer job in the waybridge of a creamery, you know, a milk processing plant. And it was actually a great place to work. I loved it. I loved that summer I spent there. And I met great friends and they're still my friends to this day. But what I did notice was the managers, the lab technicians, the lorry drivers, they were all friends and there was a, there was great communication between them all.
But recently I was having coffee in a hotel in the local hotel. Now, you know, it's a long time ago since I was 18. So it's a long time ago since they were all there working. And one by one, myself and my friends were having coffee in the foyer. And one by one, they all started to come in. And I was telling my friends, you know, I said, I can't believe this. I said, when I was 18, I worked, that was the manager, the waybridge. And then that was the manager of the whole co-op.
And that was these two guys used to go out to the farms to collect milk. And here's all the lorry drivers. They all meet once a month, still, all of them. And I just thought that is exactly how work, a workplace should be. And it all in their retirement, they meet once a month and they all have a chat and a cup of tea and a spoon. And I just thought it was the loveliest thing, the secretary's door all there. And I just thought it was the most half-warming thing I could see.
And it was a great company culture back then. I don't know what it's like nowadays, the same organization. But what I was saying is that is, you know, it was such a great thing to see how they all stayed together. And it was mutual respect between all the layers of management and we're all there together. So if other workplaces, if that could be achieved. I mean, it's not easy to achieve. It's not easy to get that level of connectiveness within a team.
A lot of times you have people that are more susceptible towards biases. So when I, you know, if I see someone that looks similar to you, what that would be called is a halo effect. So because I've always had a good experience with you, I'm going to assume that this person has the same motives and the same character. And I might be significantly flawed in that thinking and then I would be disappointed.
But so like, even if someone becomes in super innocent, just ready to work and get the work done, someone might have something against them just because of the way they look. Yes. And before you don't think it's a good idea to put a photo on a CV. What's it you just sent out? Yes, I never think it's a good idea to put your, no matter if you're good looking, you have pearl white teeth, you look like a real estate salesperson with the white teeth and the, you know, just brand new, a look.
It doesn't matter, honestly, because, you know, you can have bad experiences with someone who's super good looking and you can have good experiences with someone who's average. And it doesn't matter at all what you look at. You want to be hired based on merit, based on your results, based on capabilities. And that's in the interest of the employer and the employee and candidates and everyone. Yes. And the reason for that, sorry, it's a long thread. I have so much in my head.
It's definitely so wonderful, Leighton. It's like chaos in here. I'm all alone in this box with full of information. So, so what happens is if you get a job based on the way you look, not based on merit, there's going to be a lot of arguments once you start the job and arguments why you're not achieving the target, why you're not whatever. And, and again, the hiring manager is going to assume he did his due diligence because it's subconscious. You don't make bias decisions consciously.
But it's the resume to CV, not just to get the interview and then you, you meet the person. Right. But that sets the tone. That sets the initial expectation from the employer. So you don't want to lie on your resume. You just want to be able to present yourself as accurately as possible with the real strengths that you have through and through. Yeah. And it's not easy to represent yourself.
I mean, how can you possibly represent all that is a human, even if you're a fresh graduate, 23 years of life? How do you limit it to one page resume? Realistically, and then what kind of recruiter is going to read every single line with a full attention span? Yes. You know, no one, no one. They look at 200, 300 resumes per job post. But you think there's too much emphasis on their skills rather on their hard skills rather than their soft skills and that they're hiring.
Yes, you need the technical, you know, you need the technical skills. But do you think that's overriding and getting the wrong people into the, into that job? Because they're so skilled at what to do. Well, what I learned is that most of the... To do a toxic workplace. So a lot of small companies aren't fully aware of the importance of a proper recruitment process. A proper recruitment process starts with the hard skills.
And that's how we identify the basics of what we need as a human being for this job role to be filled and the tasks for that job role to be properly executed. And then you move on to psychometric evaluations, which could be the big five, the disc, or the simple version, which is Myers-Briggs or Carl Jung. Which, by the way, has a 50% inaccuracy rate. So I wouldn't take it literally.
And if you do take the big five and you believe that that suits you really well and you just want to verify, test it cross-reference with the big five. And if a lot of the descriptions match up and align with what you got as a result on the 16 personalities, then you're more solidified in who you are.
So once you've gotten that personality, that behavior kind of testing done, they should be able to align it with the behavior, the vision, the values of the organization as well to make sure that it's a right hire, not just for them, but for you as well as a candidate. After that, you go into technical interviews to eliminate the remaining five or 10 candidates. And that technical interview is going to be very intense. Sometimes they ask for a case study.
If it's, I know normally I had one client that did a case study and it was a very difficult case study. But the pay was worth doing the case study, to be fair. So this case study probably took each of the candidates three to five hours to prep and present. And that's a lot of time for a job that you might not get. But at the same time, everyone needs to do cost benefit analysis. So if you're willing to take this risk, know that the benefit in return is going to be a nice paycheck every month.
That's job security, that's financial security. So why not do the case study? Why wouldn't you? I mean, if this is your expertise to do these things, doing this case study is just a great thing. It's just another day of your professional career. I mean, it's not that much extra effort. So yeah, there's lots of factors that you would find the right candidate.
But smaller organizations that don't have the full resources of a recruitment firm or of a multinational, they unfortunately have to rely more on intuition, on judgment from experience and on skills that are written on the resume. So yeah, I mean, I guess I hope that answers that question. And what about the intuition that you're talking about? Because that's what I'm interested in.
And why are so, you know, I don't want stereotype doctors, but a lot of doctors like don't have good bedside manners. You know, they're actually shouldn't be near a human being, you know, to me be good at their technical skills. Are we talking about psychologists and psychiatrists or are we talking about medical doctors? A lot of medical doctors. You know, in the past, you know, it can be common, but it goes across the board.
Like when you hire engineers or whatever, you do hire them in the hope that they will rise the ranks of the managers and then they're managing people. So you have to look at the bigger picture, you know, how are they with, you know, they're good at their job and they're good as, you know, presenting and everything. But doesn't necessarily mean they'll be good at leading the team. Yeah. Well, I mean, for me, in most cases, I don't care how the doctor treats me as long as I get cured.
But if it comes down to like a child, the pediatrician should know how to talk to a child. If it's someone with a mental disorder or some sort of mental limitation, I don't know what the political correct word is for this anymore. I've lost track.
But honestly, the psychologists and the psychiatrists need to have a level of sensitivity and control on their other behavioral reactions to the clients in front of them in order not to offend them and to make sure that they come back and continue the care that they need. So yeah, I agree with you in some cases on that. In terms of engineers, in terms of dealing with anyone as a manager, as a, we're all human.
And a big problem is that when ego takes place or takes priority over the goals and the mission, that's when we lose humanity. Yes. That's when you start to see toxicity arise from the top levels. It happens. It happens. And I think that's one of those things that I think will always kind of happen. And I think a lot of it has to do with how someone has developed into an adult, maybe past trauma that they dealt with.
We don't know how, not everyone reacts to the same traumatic event in the same way. You know, this is another reference to Instagram. I love reels on Instagram. I find them extremely entertaining. On Instagram, there was, sorry, this was actually in Batman. It's a reference to Batman. And they were saying that what's the difference between a villain and a hero? So they normally have the same exact backstory. On planet was destroyed. They lost their parents. God knows what.
But it's not about their backstory that makes them the villain. It's how they reacted and started to look at the world. You know, so I don't know. One is really a villain in reality. Everyone has their own reasons for doing whatever they're doing. That's what they do. Yeah. And I think that's that's interesting. What they make out of this. Yeah. We have calm flint.
When thinking about bedside manner, the real challenge is understanding the bedside manner for each group or even individual for a manager. You have to manage Gen Z very different to Gen X. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. But but the reason for this and I'm convinced with this is the difference between Gen Z and Gen X is economic stability. And when, you know, so so the current the newest generation to the workforce needs to start looking at the world more based on a gig economy. I got to take this gig.
I got to take this gig. I got to take this gig in order to close my cost of living. When you have companies that offer a, you know, if you're lucky, a 5% annual bonus to your basic salary and you have inflation rising today between 30 and 15% globally. What you're incentivizing, because on the other hand, if I was to jump jobs and go to a competitor, I would get a 20% increase like that.
So you're not incentivizing that long term career path like our parents have because they would go get a job and they would stay there until they get their 401k and then they would retire. But when inflation is growing significantly faster than what, you know, my cost of living, I'm going to have to jump jobs. Yeah. And that's the sad truth of it though.
And the pressure is on the loss from working from home now, which creates a lot more loss from our delighted to be working from home, but it also creates new problems in isolation and workplace management. I naturally love working alone, whether it's online or not. I like to research. That's honestly my, I love reading books. I love looking into new information. I like looking at statistics. For me, if I could just do that all day and get paid for that, that's what I'm going to be doing.
Unfortunately, that's not the case. You have to use a mix of skills in order to make money these days. But there are under a lot more pressure than former generations because of this ever changing, like changing faster than ever before work situation. And also the housing crisis adds to it. So there is a lot of pressure. How can they be supported? I think this is an issue far behind. I'm not a real estate expert. But I do know what happened in the U S with COVID.
So with COVID, all these companies started to work remotely all of a sudden and it lasted long enough for people to relocate to more cost effective living, maybe near to their parents home, maybe out on the outskirts of a city in order to cut costs. And they, and you know, when they did prove that productivity was not effective, but yet they were asked to come back to the office full time. Well now you had people that were able to be near their parents and they realize what they were missing.
You have people that are saving significant amount of money and have a better quality of life and still doing the same job. And they're not willing to sacrifice that. So that comes into, like you said last time we talked, this is work life balance now. And we become more conscious of it because of COVID. So yeah, we need to adapt to that as well. So there's a lot of adapting to be done and a lot of different generations who have totally different mindsets flashing.
So there is a lot to take on for managers. Another source of depression, by the way, a depression, lack of life satisfaction is addiction. And I'm not talking about drugs. I'm not talking about drugs. The other day, me and my wife were sitting down and we were watching TV, but neither of us were watching TV. We were both on our phones flipping through social media. And all of a sudden we both stopped randomly, looked at each other and said, what are we doing? Why are we looking at our phones?
We're not even talking, we're not even watching the movie. And this creates a disconnect. It's a massive disconnect. We're not participating on the movie and we're not engaging with each other. So what's happening? We may as well be in two separate rooms. And imagine that in a work environment now. So online, I have all this technology in front of me.
It's extremely difficult for me right now in this moment to keep focused on this conversation because I have this light here that's kind of in my face. I have this camera in the middle of the screen to make sure that everyone feels like I'm looking at them and I'm engaging with them. I have my other laptop screen down here to make sure that I can see the comments coming through. It's exhausting. It's a lot of work and it's hard to keep focus and it takes a significant amount of mental effort.
It's an always on kind of thing. You're always on. Your phone is always beside you. And I see people walking across the road on their phone, texting. You see them in the car. Yeah. But it is, we're being programmed I suppose. I suppose there's this growing need for stimulation. We have instant gratification there all the time. We can look up anything we want at any time. So more notifications. Notifications. I always see people in meetings today and I'm talking about face to face meetings.
In face to face meetings, there's so many notifications. I'm sorry, like if you come here and you do this and you do not disturb, that's all you need to swipe and click that button. And all of a sudden you can be fully engaged in the conversation. But people don't even do that. It's a very basic two step process. That's it. That's all you got to do.
And they'll keep getting notifications and keep getting distracted and keep getting phone calls in the middle of a meeting, which can be taken as very insulting if the other person is making a conscious effort to do what I just said. I understand that life is busy. It's so fast paced. I know that people get upset with me when I don't respond to a WhatsApp message within five to 10 minutes. And because of that, I gave up. Sometimes I don't even respond for three, four days.
Like whatever, you're going to be upset no matter what. So it's no wonder people are suffering from mental health problems. And Finola probably agree with us. Finola from development officer for mental health Ireland is here. You know, it is a serious problem nowadays. And we're all guilty of it. We're all taken in by it. Because the quality of our lives is, you know, diminishing. And I don't know. And that spills into the workplace.
It spills into tiredness and spills into, you know, lack of exercise and doing the things we should be doing. As you pointed out when you were sitting on the couch, you know, supposed to be watching TV and bonding. It has the opposite. We're getting more singular, aren't we? We're getting more distracted. Everyone has ADD. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone has it now. Everyone. I mean, and it's not by choice. I mean, the amount of notifications, the amount of advertisements, the amount of God knows what.
And it's not just advertisements. It's customized advertisements coming straight to you, which is additionally distracting towards the life you're trying to live. Yeah. When I think about all of this, like, how is someone supposed to function in day to day? And for me, I took a course with Harvard Medical School. It's an online. I think I paid $35 for it. It's not like an accredited course. Like, you're not going to get like credit and then go and finish your degree with it.
Yeah. It's just for personal development, personal use. It's called positive psychology. And this was actually the phone situation, technology situation was one thing that they discussed. But in general, mindfulness, which they teach in Buddhism. So being in the moment, remembering like, if you have an urge, I got to look at my phone, like it can wait one more minute. Find yourself, it can wait one more minute. Just because the world is moving a thousand miles an hour doesn't mean we have to.
And be in the moment. And like, when you want to go for a walk, leave your phone in the house. Enjoy the walk. Enjoy the fresh air. Enjoy the series. And when you do that, and when I took that course and I started practicing what I learned, I felt this weight just fly off of me. And now I'm really in, I mean, when was the last time you saw me do one of these live talks? I am relaxed. Is my situation any better than it was three weeks ago? Absolutely not. But I'm being more mindful.
That's all it takes. Yeah. And that's back to the work life balance. And what matters at the end of the day for our short lives here in Earth? We were talking about even animals earlier on, weren't we late? Like even what we can learn from our animals and how good it is to have a connection to animals, have a pet or get out in those walks. And start, I suppose, thinking about what matters. Is it only money or what else do you value? Yeah. Going through. Money is important, I think.
It's really important because I don't think it's the most important thing because I think everyone in the world has heard this phrase, but you don't take money to the grave with you. Exactly. A rich man's grave and a poor man's is very same. Absolutely. Doesn't matter what kind of tombstone you put on it. But legacy does matter, you know, and live in a good life. And I suppose it's coming to that realization because some people don't. They don't stop to think about that.
They stay going, they get caught up in that hamster wheel that never ends, that leads to bad health and unhappiness. Absolutely. What are your, what's your advice on making the workplace of this crazy workplace of today more happy late, you know? Some small, simple steps. So one thing that a lot of people do not do is some stuff, you know, I mean, it's actually more of a human solution than an organizational solution. And I think a lot of people don't self reflect.
They don't take the time to really sit down and understand themselves, their strengths, their weaknesses, their mistakes, their flaws and, and strengths as well, you know, which I already said, but I want to emphasize that because I hit more negative notes. I want to be more positive on that, but like really being honest with yourself, but also pursuit of perspective really is enlightening and relieving.
It's not easy to self reflect and sometimes it can be a very painful journey to do, but we all need to do it. And the second thing to be quite honest is no matter what you think about what someone is done or what someone's doing or what's whatever conclusion you have about someone, you never really know what they're dealing with. And I, this was, this is a quote from someone else is, you only know what you think you know. Yeah. And you never know what other people are going through.
And you just got to be really accepting and live with the rule of benefit of the doubt for everyone. And that, that will give some peace to be honest. Because you're only really in control of yourself. You can control your own behavior. And as long as you do your best to have, have good intentions. And if everyone had good intentions and not not compete with one another, but work collaboratively it's a be a better place.
Well some very evil people in the world thought that they had good intentions as well. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't take that completely on path. But but in general, it's about really pursuit of perspective because the people, the evil people who have had good intentions and made it in the history books for, you know, very notorious reasons. You know, they were flawed in their thinking and they never pursued perspective.
They only went in with that one perception from their own eyes, from their own experience, and they never cared to actually see the good in the same situations with other people. Yes. So it's not always just about intention. I mean intention is good and it's a nice thing to have, but it needs to be directed in the right place. But we do have the power to control, you know, our own behavior and our thoughts and do the best we can.
Whereas the constant victim culture and blame culture, you know, and it's very common in the workplace gets, you know, it creates a lot of problems. Yeah, that as well. I mean, accountability is a big thing. A friend of mine who was working in an organization for many, many years and I was asking her about, there was one toxic manager that came in one time into the workplace and the manager actually left themselves. And I said, how did that work?
You know, when she said she left and I said, yeah, well, what happened? She says, what happened was the energy in the workplace was so good, no matter what she did, it was stronger than hers. Well, the strong energy wins, you know, and the team was so strong and so good to work very well together, very, very caring environment that it didn't matter what she said or did. They were stronger, you know, that energy was stronger.
Yeah, I think these days it's a little bit harder to have a dominant positive culture. But it was strong. Yeah, they had built it over years, you know, to be strong. It takes a collective conscious effort from everyone on a team to have a very positive culture, you know, an environment. And it's not just one person. A leader is a leader can give guidance, but it takes effort from everyone to make things happen. Yes, and that's, I mean, about it.
I mean, there's the phrase where, you know, you can bring the horse to the water, but if it doesn't drink, it's not going to drink. Exactly. Yeah. So I mean, it's the same concept here. I mean, if we want things to be better, if we want everything to kind of be more positive and positive work environment, it takes a collective effort from absolutely everyone.
From you know, entry level employees, support staff, you know, the janitorial staff even legitimately that is included because because they are they are whether they like it or not involved with the employee experience. So everyone needs to put in that effort for a collective mental unity on positivity and collaboration and making things good for everyone. Respect for each other. Yeah. And giving opportunities as well, I think. Yeah. Sharing opportunities.
If anyone wants to continue the session and share their opinions on a private Zoom call a collective Zoom call, I'm going to start hosting this same discussion with Mary every Saturday. You know, Mary might not always attend, but she's more than welcome to co-host with me. But I'll share the link that you can save to your browser. And once it'll be in the comment sections. So you can take that county link. It doesn't matter whether you're watching this from YouTube, LinkedIn or Facebook.
So you take that county, you book one of the Saturdays and we'll attend maximum 10 people per Saturday just for the sake of, you know, getting things on rotation, keeping the conversation fresh and with lots of new ideas. And maybe we can even do some networking at the end of each of those sessions as well. Thank you, Mary for being with us. Thank you to everyone who participated in the comment section and anyone that may have enjoyed quietly observing as well.
And thank you, ladies, for having me. Really enjoyed the conversation and would love to join you on those zooms on a Saturday or whichever platform you're going to have it on. And thanks everyone for coming. Lots of my friends there too. Thank you. Thank you, Mary. Thank you, Mary, for your time. Thank you, everyone, for attending. Really great comments, great ideas, great concepts. And hope to see you guys this or next Saturday. Have a good one.