Ep78 Maintaining a Resilient Mindset through a Merger Process

So we have helped Lucy and colleagues over the last year with a number of events around resilience and well-being , so that we can equip people with the tools and the habits that will help them focus on themselves first during this time of real challenge and change focused on well-being of her most critical asset her people , and she's got a great story to tell , so

I thought we'd invite her along . And also she's just quite awesome . So hi , Lucy , and welcome . Thank you .

That then started to extend out the further we got into the transaction and I suppose now , literally from sort of day one of the combined group was the 1st of January we're now at that inflection point that , frankly , it's going to take a whole army of people , whether that's delivering business as usual , whether that's delivering the integration .

So there's just been that real focus , exactly as Amanda said , is what is it you need to do for those people that are sort of right in the heart of things , to make sure they're okay and in turn , that they can make sure that then , beyond them , the teams that they lead into have got what they need to be able to operate really effectively day to day in

what is fundamentally a very changed world as we go forward for people .

So business lending , current account , so completely different product sets . Doubling the size of our people overnight .

Wow , it's been busy . Yeah . So when people say , oh , you know you've been quite busy and you know how things , you know , how much longer do you think you're going to be busy for ? It's like two to four years yeah , absolutely well .

I mean , I say small because what we did is we ran the executive event and we ran the leadership event with a focus on resilience and psychological safety . But could you talk a little bit about the broader help that you were giving and the broader support you were giving the leadership team and the executive team through that ? Yeah , of course I will .

There were a couple of those moments where it did feel particularly intense , where you know it was deliberate that we asked for your intervention . At those points it did make a meaningful difference and I can remember emailing you at the end of the year to say I have had to draw on every last drop of what you gave us through those interventions .

So I'll come on to talk a bit more about the sort of broader pieces . But that very timely in the moment focus on resilience and psychological safety did make a massive difference for us , I suppose . Taking it back then to the broader pieces , as a society we've had a focus on well-being for about the last six , seven years .

So we went to the board and said look , there are spaces we can't own , so we're never going to pay more than anybody else , we're're never going to have the biggest bonuses , etc . We decided the space we wanted to own was wellbeing . We felt that was really

aligned with the sort of mutual ethos of the society and we felt it was an area we could really stand out . So we've put an awful lot of energy into that wellbeing space . We've put a lot of energy into our leadership framework and particularly resilience as part of that leadership framework .

We see as a real differentiator , so how we sort of play in with that personal wellbeing and that resilience as a driver of leadership capability and as a driver of an environment that is positive , where people feel they can belong and speaker . So , yeah , a real breadth of work .

But some of those little pieces , as you described them , have made a really meaningful difference .

So , in a situation that is not necessarily of your making , where you can't necessarily control what's coming at you , being able to control your reaction , how you respond , how you feel day to day , that for me , was enormous and for me personally , being able to look at that .

You know , these are some of the simple things I can do , whether it's , you know , dark chocolate or getting outside or practicing gratitude . None of them felt overwhelming . They felt as though they were eminently doable . There were little adjustments that therefore didn't give another job task something else to make room for .

I think the other piece that really helped , particularly in the environment that I work with and with a number of colleagues , was that you anchored it back to the science .

So this wasn't just woo , woo and how can you make yourself feel better , but that was really important for those people that are very left brain driven anchoring it back to the science and therefore , if you do these things , this is the difference it makes to your physiology and that worked for us .

But actually what I love about neuroscience is that if you do this , dopamine will be released . If you do this , you will release serotonin . The conversation we've had that's what I adore about it . You don't get rid of the maybes that you have with psychology , that if you do these things you may feel in a certain way .

So how much control we feel we have in our lives can make such a big difference to our well-being , our resilience and the effectiveness in terms of us coping with change and habits are a big thing , aren't they ? So I'd love to know what you practice yourself , lucy .

As opposed to trying to create even more room when there isn't any , I've started to use the time I have when I'm driving into work by dropping my daughter off at school , and when I'm driving home again , because that is time that I can't get away with the fact that I have to spend that half an hour 45 minutes at both ends of the day .

So with my daughter , we've started practicing gratitude and together as we're driving in . Honestly , that often starts my day with such comedy , because it is amazing what comes out of the mind of a 16 year old . One of my favorites recently was how grateful she is for vegetarians , because without them there would be no veggie Percy pigs .

I mean , it's profound stuff to start the day with but also particularly as I'm driving home and practicing breathing and deeper breathing , rather than the sort of , you know , shoulders wrapped up around my ears and that sort of slightly anxious just really trying to slow down and deepen my breathing as I drive home and they feel again I go back to .

They're really small adjustments that I can really easily do , that I'm not giving up anything in order to be able to do , but I can feel the difference and I think that sort of embedding of small , simple habits that I can keep up with has made a difference for me .

But going and getting outside and still again achieving what they plan to achieve in that hour , but doing it in a different way . So that sense of getting outside and still again achieving what they plan to achieve in that hour , but doing it in a different way , so that sense of getting outside , has made a really big difference .

I think the other thing that has helped is you have given us a frame of reference to be able to have a conversation which essentially boils down to how you're feeling , are you okay , but feels less intrusive than that would feel for certain people . So you know , do you know what ?

Where you've got those really deep relationships with colleagues who are sort of similarly emotionally wired . That's a really easy conversation . It's made it easier to have that broader conversation .

I think the other thing that has helped is leaders feeling more comfortable to talk about some of the emotional roller coaster that , particularly through the transaction , happened some of the times where we didn't agree , some of the times where , frankly , you were just exhausted or it all felt a bit emotional and being prepared to just open up a little bit more

around how you're feeling , but doing that in quite a purposeful way , about creating an environment where other people feel they can has really helped .

, which I don't think we'd have had a lot of time for .

When you give somebody the language and the permission , but also the tools , then it can completely change actually , and it made me think about the fact that when we're going through such significant change , we get prefrontal cortex overload and we get fatigue because , if you think about it , the prefrontal cortex is the CEO of the brain and that's the bit that's

having to constantly prioritize and reprioritize and make decisions , and you've got not just one or two decisions to make that are impacting employees and shareholders and customers , but you've got many coming .

Actually , the pressure is really very , very big and unless we face into it and recognize that fatigue for what it is actually , what could happen is we could then be prone to feeling like we're not good enough , you might start getting imposter moments , you might start procrastinating , biases might start coming to the fore because we take mental shortcuts , so

acknowledging actually how we feel , talking about how we feel , we are less prone to give in to the impacts of that prefrontal fatigue and therefore have the downsides of feeling quite so exhausted , which is , you know , I'm not up for it today , I'm not going to make the decision today , or whatever that outcome might be .

So it's absolutely great , and I mean , we're in a wonderful position where we're talking to you towards the end of January , albeit this is going to go out in a few months time , once we've gone through the editing process . So you're well and truly through that , lucy , aren't you ?

We're in the same corner now and therefore our ability to be able to affect change , to sit alongside people as opposed to opposite , across the negotiating table , it does feel as though there's a really different tone . So , yes , there is a lot ahead of us , but it feels more in our control .

Obviously I don't know them and I don't know what their priorities have been , but I wondered how are you going to bring all that together ?

What I would say is that the bank has been in US hedge fund ownership for quite a period of time and therefore the sense of coming back into mutuality was seen really positively , really really positively , by colleagues . Because of the bank's ownership structure it hasn't necessarily had as much of a long term focus as you would expect with a mutual .

So by its very nature , a mutual's purpose is to be there into , you know , into the coming generations . So I think we have got the opportunity to take a longer term perspective . There are some things the bank does brilliantly and I would say resilience is one of them .

Actually , amanda , because it's been through so much change , has therefore built up a muscle in a way that actually the society has gone through lots and lots of growth but not a lot of change , I would say .

So I think some of the resilience muscle is really really strong with the bank , whereas actually some of the investments in things like well-being , in leadership development , has been greater in the society because we've been able to take that longer term focus .

So I suppose for me , if we ace this , it will be how do we get those bits that are brilliant in the society , how do we get the bits that are brilliant in the bank and how do we bring both of them together to really get that multiplying impact . So that's very much what we need to do .

We are just in the process , you know , 28 days in of doing that discovery , doing that listening piece . We are working with colleagues on both sides to define our go-to culture . I mean , how exciting is that to have the chance to be able to say what is the culture that we want , how we going to measure it .

So it does feel as though we've got some cracking opportunities . As I said , I think the resilience in bank colleagues is naturally higher . But through any change of course , there is a level of uncertainty . So , just making sure we communicate as often as we can and as much as we can and we're just as transparent as we possibly can be .

I'll be joined by the amazing Laura McLean and together we'll explore how psychological safety has moved from theory to action within Santander . We will talk about how they have embedded strategies for inclusion and how they have scaled psychological safety across their organisation .

We'll take you beyond the buzzword and explain how Santa and Dare have been able to drive true transformation , and we'll have an honest conversation about what worked , what hasn't worked so well and the common pitfalls so that you can avoid them if you were to roll out a psychological safety programme across your organization .

If you're going to the conference , please do drop by stand l69 and say hello and meet myself and my co-hosts of the chief psychology officer podcast . So christian , caitlin , angela will all be on stand l69 throughout the conference and would love to meet you and love to get your insights on what you've learned and what you've heard .

Thank you so much so interesting . I've been writing notes as you've been talking because there's so many things I want to say . But the first one is how interesting you refer to

the bank having higher levels of resilience , because the precursor to resilience is stress . In order to build our resilience , we need to learn how to combat stress . We need to face stress and experience and learn how to cope with those stresses . How do we respond and how would we like to respond so we can create that neuroplasticity .

And that leads me to my second point , which is around relentlessness . Of private equity organizations , we work with a number and our research has identified , from the ones that we work with , that because of the focus on profitability , on shareholder value , it creates a relentlessness which is , of course , a negative indicator of psychological safety .

And it reminded me of an organization that we've worked with recently that was private equity owned , that they identified their drivers for success as being disruption , innovation , empathy and compassion and breadth of thinking , so external focus .

And when we did the analysis of the leadership team and exec , we identified those three things as being the weakest for that organization because of the relentlessness . It doesn't encourage you to to disrupt , because you want to achieve .

It doesn't encourage you to disrupt because you want to achieve results , and doesn't encourage you to be empathic because you focus on numbers , and it doesn't encourage you to have breadth because you get narrow thinking . When we're low on resilience we get tunnel vision .

And the reason I'm bringing it up is that empathy and compassionate point , because I know from my research , when we're going through major change , one of the things that can be a product of that change is compassion fatigue . We're just like can you just do your job , please ? Can you just get on with it ?

I haven't got the energy to be kind either to myself or to the people around me . So I suppose it's great that you've got through the year so successfully . What are you going to do to make sure you get through the next year without people having that sense of compassion fatigue , because it's you're only really halfway through , if you like ?

So , actually , all of that investment to support our leaders through , you know , the coaching infrastructure that exists for them through the mentoring , through the development program we have to rely now on you've made all of this investment . Now let's really rely on it .

Certainly , my learning , having been through this very intense last year , was the reason why I got through . That was because of the people around me . So there were definitely times where I was full up , literally full up , and you know that emotional overflow needed to happen in order for me to be able to move on .

There are absolutely people in my team , be it the exec team or my people team , that I trusted to have that emotional overflow with . There were also times when I was able to support them with theirs .

So almost that little circle of you know there's times when I'm feeling more resilient and I've got some in the tank to give , and there's times where I'm not and I really need you . I need you , yeah . So I think all of us have seen how much . We've relied on each other through the course of the last year , so you very much hope that that gets magnified .

The other piece for me that has proven to be so valuable time and time again is creating a little bit of space , creating a little fire break and , going back to some of the interventions that we did with you , amanda , last year content so important , actually just creating time for people to get off the treadmill to spend time together .

Talking about this is how it's been for me . This is what's on my mind , this is what I'm wrestling with . There's such value in just creating that bit of space for people to come together . I talked a bit about the work that we're now doing on culture , which is about bringing colleagues together .

So some of it needs to be infrastructure , the frameworks that we've built , the tools , the products . Some of it will just be about how we create those firebreaks , how we create spaces in which people can come together , support each other and find answers together , which maybe isn't very scientific .

How do you want people to feel when they're part of society or part of the group ?

And how amazing wouldn't it be for people to feel totally proud to work for your organization , because of who you are and what you do and there is a real sense of that in the society at the moment .

We did a lot of listening before we completed the transaction . So going and talking to customers about contemplating the transaction and the warmth and affection with which they talked about the society doesn't correlate with financial services and institution . But it was very much .

You know , I had my first account opened by my granny when I was eight and then when I got my first mortgage , she helped me because I really didn't understand the process and then when I went through a divorce and things were really sticky , I could come into the branch I picked up and there is just a an emotional connection and a relationship with a mutual

organization like the

society . That , I think , is also something we need to protect on the way through .

So 91% of people are saying they get empathy and care .

What do you mean you expect me to attend work ? What do you mean you expect me to perform in a slightly different way ? That doesn't make me feel psychologically safe . So I suppose the term psychological safety for me I've seen all too often played into that .

These are my list of demands and unless you meet my demands , I'm not safe , as opposed to no , no , no . We have a shared responsibility here to create an environment , to create a set of deliverables , all all of those things . But yeah , psychological safety as a term is probably the standout for me . That hasn't quite worked .

That's the kind of the wrong end . There's the organizations that fully embrace it and we've got some which are psych safety is at the forefront of the language and it's being driven by the CEO and it's in a lot of their communications and their stand-ups .

And then we do see a number of organizations where the meaning behind psychological safety , which is giving people the opportunity to speak up , to be heard , to challenge , to ask questions , to disrupt , to offer suggestions , et cetera , et cetera , is absolutely accepted . But , like yourselves , the actual language of psych safety just doesn't translate .

Brilliant , Because all of that says you have a shared objective , you have a shared goal , you have shared interests . As opposed to these are my requirements , meet them or else . So I think we're definitely with you . It's not about throwing away any of those ambitions . It's just about achieving them through a sort of different set of labels .

It's just about achieving them through a sort of different set of labels , actions , etc . Which feel more around a shared responsibility , a shared set of goals and objectives , rather than a set of individual requirements that must be met .

They misconstrue really what that means and I think Amy Edmondson herself , I think , has actually said she would use the term interpersonal risk instead of psychological safety if she was obviously researching and conceptualizing that term now .

So I think it's a really interesting topic and in our research and accreditations at Zircon we also talk about stress actually the importance of accountability , and that's something you referred to , with those people who would use that as an excuse or weaponize that to not show up to those responsibilities they have .

So accountability , we found in our research , is critical , combined with psychological safety , and it's these things together that are the sweet spot for performance .

In a slightly different context , the one that you've just mentioned , though , lucy . It's more that , in the spirit of psychological safety , because it's a priority in this organization , I'm going to just tell you what I think .

I'm going to be blunt , I'm going to be direct , I'm going to be inappropriate in my language , I'm not going to be emotionally resilient and express any emotional control , I'm just going to blurt it out because I feel safe to do so . So that's a misuse of psych safety that we're starting to also hear in some organizations .

But I would say , for the very few where they might say they're worried about the weaponization , there's still , luckily , a good number that are getting the benefit from the approach and from the thinking that feels really aligned to .

So if , if you're in it together and if you're trying to achieve something by coming together , naturally that does moderate the way in which you're going to relate to each other , the way in which you're going to behave together , because you're trying to achieve a shared outcome as opposed to well , no , my outcome I'm trying to achieve is this and therefore I'm

slightly indifferent to yours .

summarize what's coming in the next 12 months and beyond , and the fact that you're still focusing on wellbeing as a priority , which is absolutely brilliant .

But I was wondering if there is a listener to the podcast who is part of an organization or as a CHRO themselves , and they're about to go through a major acquisition or a major merger , what recommendations would

you have for that person ? What would you say that they should think about ?

We did create one of those fire breaks . We're so relieved because whether that was getting people to reconnect in terms of what it is that we're trying to achieve here , because , frankly , as you all go off and working on your own things , sometimes you lose sight of the bit that unifies us , the thing we're actually trying to achieve .

Those personal connections were also what carried , I think , most of us through the course of last year . Those relationships and I talked about the moments where , frankly , I was empty and somebody else that propped me up and the times where I felt as though I had enough energy to be able to help other people .

So , number one , firebreaks and , aligned to that , the focus on the people that are delivering this rather than just the activity . So those fire breaks allowed us to look after the individuals as opposed to just , frankly , track the deliverables .

So they sort of go hand in hand , but it made a material difference to what we were able to achieve and the time scales we were able to do it in by taking a little bit of time out and not focusing on the deliverables in that time out .

In fact , I asked permission to talk about this example , but I've got a client from another banking group .

She works for Santander and she was saying about the fact that when she's working really under pressure , she gives the air of everything is fine , so she really gives the impression of the swan , so she's smiling and she's in control , and then she gets really upset that nobody offers her any help and she's like can't they see I'm struggling ?

Why doesn't anyone ever help me ? I said because you're giving the impression that everything is fine but actually not being real . You know I'm laughing .

But that totally resonates with me is that sense of look behind certain doors , then I will let everything show elsewhere . I need to create confidence and therefore they're fine .

And imagine going to the board and saying , right , this is what we're going to pay attention to this year , we're going to have fun at work and , to be fair , they absolutely could see , again , going back to the data , how closely correlated that was .

So last year was the society's 140th birthday , so we had sort of various activities that ran through the course of the year . We had a big sort of birthday party celebration that was sort of picnics around the campus and bake-offs , and you can look at it on one hand and say you know , is it all a little bit silly ?

But the society's trust score is high , into the 80s across 70 odd dimensions of engagement and , you know , many , many scores into the 90 . I don't believe you achieve that without creating a feeling . And that isn't about what we delivered , it's not about the profit , it's

not about the time it takes us to answer a customer's call . That's about what it feels like to be part of this organization . Again , that's another firebreak . It's allowing people to stop and take a picnic for an hour . We gave everybody an extra day's holiday , so effectively a birthday day .

It is creating those moments to create a feeling , what it feels like to be part of this organization , part of this community of people that has made a difference to us , so it can feel trite . I suppose I've seen the very tangible impact that it has , and if you align higher engagement with higher productivity , why wouldn't you pay attention to it ?

So giving people the opportunity to get together , have fun is absolutely key . So that's absolutely brilliant . But it takes quite a lot of courage , I would say , to actually do that during times of real pressure and change , rather than just being relentless and just pushing and pushing and pushing for numbers and pushing for deadlines and priorities to be completed .

So that's great .

So I do think having that support from the board does make a massive difference .

We also do a piece of benchmarking there in terms of leadership potential against a wider population , but that is something we pay attention to , particularly for those senior external hires .

So I think it's really important that we're really honest with each other upfront about the extent to which that is something that people are going to enjoy in an environment that they're likely to be able to thrive in .

So perhaps a parting thought for our listeners is to think about a habit , even one thing , that could improve their own personal resilience , and that a habit that they can build in and do at the same time as something that a habit or an activity that they already do , I think really resonated .