Hi, and a massive welcome to not only an old friend, but an old colleague of mine, Paul Coates from FranklinCovey. Welcome Paul. It is an absolute privilege to have you on in the office cast.

Likewise. Absolutely. It's been a while.

 Yeah. It's been on the cards for a bit, hasn't it? But you're a busy chap to nail down. So just squeeze us in.

 Yeah. Lovely. So why don't we start off just, if you don't mind, just giving us a little bit of background to Paul Coates, what you do and who you do that for.

 Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, so I'm Paul. So who I am is a little bit, as you know who I am, I'm very much tied up into what I do.

But also who I am is I am probably a frustrated accountant, a frustrated marketer and an actual consultant and in my spare time, a ridiculous level of gamer. So my professional role is I head up a consultancy team across European direct operations for FranklinCovey, which some people may or may not have heard of. So you obviously have heard of it as an alumnus of that business as well.

But so FranklinCovey, for those people who don't know, probably people will most likely know one of our publications. So most people know us for The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which was published in 1989. And now we're a kind of global consultancy that focuses on four things.

So focus on leadership development, individual development, kind of helping people to be better, whether it's individual contributors or they are CEOs, but kind of in themselves, as it were, cultural inclusivity development and then helping organisations with strategy execution. And what we basically know is that those four things are what good organisations get right. So we decided not to do anything else.

And we aspire ultimately to be the most trusted organisation in our marketplace that we can be, which is about 160 countries at the moment. So I was a client of FranklinCovey for a decade before I joined the organisation. And so my corporate role was some very big multinationals in learning roles, talent roles, did a little stint in recruitment as well and started my career back when HR was called personnel.

So which is terrifying. So but now I kind of my role divides into kind of four things is there's about a third of my role is helping our salespeople kind of engage with clients and start with that, which includes running kind of our marketing events. And so kind of with audiences in London and talking about our latest thought leadership, then about 30 percent of my role is leading the consultant team.

And how do we get really great quality from our consultants? And then another 30 percent, which is just all the usual things that come with being a leader and getting involved in things. And then about 10 percent of my job or should be 10 percent is kind of a bit bigger than that is working with clients. And probably for the last three years, my work has almost been exclusively, exclusively been with executive teams in finance, weirdly finance.

And the third sector has been mostly what it is. But working with exec teams, some from the absolute biggest bank in the world, working with the executive team of one of the big four on team dynamics and basically how we build trust within those executive teams and then move on to how we then execute. And it's really rewarding work.

So that's me and what I do and who I do it for. I think, you know, that's absolutely brilliant. It gives people a kind of snapshot of I mean, ultimately, the reason why I want to do that is because obviously that's the why of why you're here.

We set up when we were speaking beforehand around, you know, kind of subject matter. And we said, actually, behaviour change in this hybrid world. What a great topic to talk about because it encompasses is perfect for us because, you know, we're a piece of software that talks to tries to help people implement hybrid working for them all the way from the individual up through to the leadership CEO level.

How do they do that? And that's our avatars of people like office managers, facilities managers, IT people, et cetera, et cetera. So that blend of your knowledge around thought leadership, around about change, around particularly about behaviour change. And so that's hence why we thought, do you know what, Paul would be a great person to come and talk us through.

It makes total sense as well in the fact that our next round of live events that we're doing in late June, July, have got a component of this idea that actually growing managers to be and we kind of are saying managers specifically, they're kind of those people in the middle of the organisation, growing them to be able to deal with things like the hybrid workplace is something we're kind of leading out on in July. So it just made total sense to come talk about that, seeing as it's front of mind for what we're going to be talking about as an organisation very soon. Now, the synergies are perfect.

And this is something that's really interesting, I think, because we we've come through the pandemic. We've got these policies in place. A lot of businesses have and we've seen some CEOs misquoted by saying, oh, back to work.

That's not actually what they said, you know, back to the office, I mean, five days a week. That's not truly what they said. And we did a podcast and a blog on that a little while ago.

But this whole principle that actually now it's sorted is an anathema. It's just not true. Yeah, it absolutely is not sorted.

And it's an absolute dichotomy that Slack did some great research today that said that effectively it's not about being black and white, it's not about being back to the office or being remote. Most people, it's like I think Slack said 73 percent of people want the hybrid model, which is great. But then also the other research was that you've got 83 percent of CEOs saying we're not sure about the hybrid model.

And Gartner did some research, it was only last year, that said HR people get and kind of get conceptually that hybrid is absolutely the right thing. But there's a significant minority and by significant about 41 percent who worry that hybrid is going to have an impact on culture. So it isn't it isn't sorted.

There's kind of I think people are intellectually of the view that this is here. I think some CEOs are maybe not of the view that this is here, but we can get on to that discussion later. And I think it's now about how we deal with it.

It's really interesting whether it's software or behaviour change. I think both of those things have to be part of it. They do.

Yeah, there's not one answer. There's not one magic bullet, I think, with this. So what I'd like to do is just let's go back to some basics.

You know, FranklinCovey is a leadership development company, technology company to, of course, as well, their own IP, lots of content and the content based on masses of academic research, not just in the kind of getting AI to put a few things together. So let's go back to leadership itself. You're a leader yourself. You've been in leadership roles for a long time. You lead leaders, you train leaders, you teach leaders, you take them on programs and teach them how to be better. So let's just talk a little bit about defining a good leader today from your perspective.

I think it's there's a lot of interesting pieces, I think what FranklinCovey does is the idea that everything comes down to mindset, you know, mindset precedes behaviour, behaviour, perceived results and results reinforce mindset. So in our marketplace, we very much focus on the idea of actually who a leader is, their character and how they think about things. And broadly, that's what I would say is actually exceptional leaders are built basically by, OK, do they deliver a result? Fundamentally, people hire or fire whether they deliver the result that is expected of them.

You know, yours, unless you're in, you know, startups and things like that, is that you're within an organisational contract construct. You're in a context that demands results. And are you delivering them? That's kind of the first thing is as a leader, you need to deliver results.

The second piece then being, OK, what actions do you take to deliver those results? And what are those actions? Are you leading people rather than trying to manage things? Are you trying to lead the whole people when you are taking those actions? Because ultimately, those results can be unsustainable if you just tread on everyone because you're trying to do that, which requires oftentimes for some leaders a shift in mindset to be able to say, well, actually, I need to be a steward of my people. And what I mean by steward is that leadership is a stewardship. It's a job with a trust is that, OK, there's a job to do, but there's a level of trust that comes with it to I've got to help my people get where they're going.

And then there is that final character piece. So it's results, it's actions, it's how they think about stuff. It's it is the and who they are as a character.

And it's also the mindset of actually saying that I can be anywhere as a leader because it's the choice I need to make first. And I would also say that the biggest hallmark of a great leader is does their team do their systems do their results and do you're beyond the leader? Yeah. Yeah.

But actually, do they leave leaders behind? Is that their legacy of who they leave behind? And I think to me, the other hallmark of a great leader is they don't have the word should in their vocabulary around their role as a leader. Because I think the moment you have the word should is just, you know, you have people who say, oh, well, you are awesome. Why do you want to be a leader? Oh, well, I put in my career where I should be a leader now.

Yeah. Yeah. Not so much.

 You're at a point in your career where you want to be a leader now or you don't, is I think the moment you and we see this particularly in in younger people. I say as well, we both say as older people now. But it's the idea.

I think it's not necessarily younger, but when you're saying that the millennial generation and millennials are 40 now, you know, whatever, you know, that's terrifying. But ultimately, I think it's the idea that. Sometimes you get.

Ultimately, about generations before us, Gen X or after us as Gen X, as they bounce around, they move around, which obviously hybrid is a part of that, you know, they've got to work from anywhere attitude or, you know, I can, you know, why not employ me in Turkey because I can do my job in Turkey. I just might be on a different time. So if you all gap a little bit earlier or no, I can do my work from anywhere.

They've got that mindset, but I think they also have a mindset of I'm moving around all this. Where's the next step up for me? And so I do see when I'm working with people, maybe slightly earlier in their careers. There's a lot of sugar going on, which is.

It's not what I believe is the right thing. I think exceptional leaders choose to be leaders and they choose to be leaders because they want to make other people better. Yes.

Regardless of their context, salary, authority, ego. Yeah, the word I think another word that potentially should be carefully used by leaders is the word I. Yeah, because that's something as well. It's, you know, replaced I with we.

Yeah, I think that's what we should. Yeah. No, we should.

Yeah. And I do think there's a good question that you can ask that one of our four leaders, Victoria Roos Olsson asked this great question in one of the books that we published. She said, do you want to be a great leader, or do you want to your team to be led by a great leader? And those are actually different questions.

They're very fundamentally different questions. One of them says the idea of I'm doing this for me. Yeah.

And the second one says I'm doing this for the team that I lead, which is a much healthier way to approach it, not an easier way to approach it because it's got much more demands, but ultimately it will make you a better leader because you've got that realisation that I'm doing this for the people I lead, not for me. So with that in mind, then, do you think if people really understood truly what a great leader, what it means to be a great leader, what's required, the concept around you actually do this to elevate others and elevating others obtains the results. It's an outcome.

 The results are an outcome of your leadership. Do you think fewer people would actually take up leadership positions if they realise the truth? I think probably yes. And so years and years and years ago, I used to run a sales leadership program for a big corporate.

And one of the things we often asked people when they're going in was like, OK, so as a salesperson, you're coming in and you want to be a leader. So you're standing in front of us to say that you want to earn less money and have the headache of people leadership. And that's you've got a whole group of people that are saying should that, oh, that's the next step of my career.

Well, I think when you look at sales is actually the next. Why does it have to be a next step? You can be an amazing individual contributor and keep earning and earning and earning and earning and do the thing that you love. What we typically find is the greatest performing sales person is not always the greatest performing leader.

But there's something differently wired in your head. So I think I think ultimately there is a. There is a dichotomy that that not everyone is wired to be a leader, but everyone can choose to be one. And if you're not wired to be one, but you do choose to be one, that just means that it's like a muscle you might exercise or take a little bit longer for it to grow stronger.

It doesn't mean you can't, because I fundamentally believe, and we fundamentally believe that leadership is a skill that can be learned. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so, too. Realise to do it.

 You know, that question is that a leader is born or born or made. And the answer is yes. Yeah, absolutely.

But the thing is, as well, a leader is not shouldn't be their own expectation should be they should know everything and everybody and everything about everybody increasingly in this world. Yeah, leaders don't know what the teams are doing. Yeah, but it's also a good leader is.

And this is something that Dr Jeff Standridge said in the in the podcast as well, that one of the key things about a good leader is actually knowing what you don't know and then hiring in or absolutely going to creating a place, your strengths and hearts, your weaknesses. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. So at the core of all of that is behaviour change then or mindset change. How that what is that? Because it's not just reading a book and going, well, I'm going to do I'm going to create a system that's different.

It's surely much more wide reaching and far reaching than that. Yeah, 100 percent. It's it goes a little bit about what I was saying is that is that behaviour or behaviour doesn't exist in a vacuum.

It's there's other pieces around it. Our behaviour drives our results and our behaviour is driven by our mindset. And but it's not a linear continuum like that.

It's actually a circle that says our mindset drives our behaviour. Our behaviour drives our results and our results then reinforce our mindset. Yeah.

So, for instance, if I have a mindset of hybrid working is ineffective because I don't know what my people are doing. So I need to be all over breathing down their necks, checking in there was one leader that I spoke to who was forcing her team to send her a report at midday and 5 p.m. about what they'd achieved in the previous three hours. But that mindset basically is the mindset of.

My team can't be trusted, which we'll come back to, because I think that's mostly the issue around hybrid. Hybrid is not the issue. Hybrid is the thing that is blamed for all the other things going on underneath.

But if the mindset is, I don't trust my team or my team can't be trusted, then I become a micro manager. That's my behaviour. The result I get is my team do not deliver anything unless I'm breathing down their neck.

So it reinforces my mindset that my team cannot deliver without me. So it becomes a cyclical piece. And typically what you find is mine often mindsets are rooted in.

Ineffective kind of ideas that roost in things like I can't trust you or they're rooted in everyone needs to be my friend, you know, that that makes an ineffective leader. If you want to be friends, then don't be a leader. You know, I'm going to be friends with everyone to be to be respected is better than be liked in my view as a leader.

It's just actually you're going to because friends, you might you might shift might be differently or you might have an ineffective mindset that's based on the idea that everything is about money or everything is about possessions and actually more effective mindsets that drive effective behaviour change are rooted in things that are more enduring are rooted in that actually things like I my desire is to be really honest and my desire is to contribute and help people rather than have something that's out there that the value is within me. So ultimately, if someone reads a book, I think research says maybe 10, 15 percent of them will totally shift their behaviour, which is great that 10 or 15 percent. If someone reads a book and practices it, that starts to go up.

But if someone's reason for reading a book is that I really want to change their mindset is my I might be wrong, it starts to go up. And so ultimately, if you're in the behavioural space like we are, it's about realising that actually the first and most important thing you need to do is reflect on where I am right now. However, it might be the most useful way to do that.

We use a 360 so people can start to understand what's going on. But what I again, I work for the organisation, so I would like our 360, but our 360 is based on the frequency response. But that I think is quite powerful and quite nice because it's not saying does Adam delegate? It's saying how often does do you see Adam delegating? Often do you see Adam setting clear goals for people, not just saying does Adam delegate? So that frequency response is always useful.

So reflection has to be the first and then you absorb content because if you absorb content off the back of reflecting on where you need to go, you've got contextual reason to it. They need to practice in a safe environment and then you need to apply. So that idea of reflect, absorb, practice and apply is what really shifts behaviour change.

And that's the start with reflection. I'm not making this is part and parcel of one of the stats that I've read just recently was something like 83 percent of leaders have never had any training to be a leader, which is a frightening statistic.

Yeah, 56 percent of organisations don't provide leadership development.

Wow. The average age that someone becomes a leader for the first time globally. Late 20s, early 30s.

The average age that someone receives their first leadership development is late 30s, early 40s. And talk about the decade. Yeah.

I mean, the behaviour that's the bad behaviour is just because obviously a lot of people when they're in the junior stages of their career, they learn from the leader and they learn how to be a leader from the leader. So if you've got terrible practices or inefficient or you micromanage all of those behaviours, those mindsets are then passed down and reinforced to the next set of leaders and are moved and twisted by their own individual mindset. And it's frightening that that statistic.

It is. And it's also the other thing is that that first time leader, that first level leader who's doing it for the first time, we typically give them the hardest leadership role that there ever is. And that's not just because it's first level.

The first level leader drives everything. You know, they carry the culture. They actually are closest to the results.

They drive customer service because they're typically managing the people who do the customer service. Now, what I'm talking about is that typically that first leadership role is a player coach role where they're still responsible for something individual, their individual results, but also expected to then lead the team as well. Leadership is hard enough on its own, but then it's saying, well, actually, no, you've not learned leadership yet, but still do your job, but also do the leadership on the side of it as well.

Yeah, which is impossible. You can't do that. Yeah, indeed.

Not really. Well, it's the thing is it requires that mindset shift to say that actually I am a leader, realistically saying what are the things that I'm doing? How do I have collective results? Again, it requires that mindset shift first of all. Yeah.

About what are some of the activities that I'm doing? Because a lot of leaders think about activity. Yeah, they do. But the mindset shift, first of all, is like, OK, I'm a leader, not an individual contributor anymore.

So then what are some of the things I need to have a mindset shift around? So one of them might be actually how I have one performance with my team. Yeah, because actually the most efficient thing to do is to say one to one is about checking on how people's work is doing. Whereas actually, if my mindset is one to ones or a way to engage that team member, that becomes much more effective.

But it requires more of me as a leader. Now, again, the same thing around the age-old thing of delegation. Now, the natural, more efficient thing to do would be to say to someone, oh, you know, I'm going to tell you why you're going to do it, what you're going to do and how to do that.

Whereas actually the more effective thing to do is to help people get clear on the why behind the what and let them decide on the how. Within parameters of that, you know, a lot of first level leaders say, oh, I'm going to give great feedback. OK, are you good at receiving it? A lot of leaders, you know, say that, well, you know, particularly that first level, change is done to me.

And the moment they think change is done to them, that means change is ineffective with their team. So actually, how do I realize that no matter where change starts, I'm the source of it? And then the last piece is actually how I look after myself. Yeah, there's a lot of these very early, early career leaders.

They wanted this leadership thing, whether it's for prestige. But I don't see most of them honestly saying I want this because I want to make my team better. It's because I've earned this or, you know, I was the best performing team.

So, of course, I need to be put up on the pedestal now. Problem is, in the moment you promote the best performer, team performance goes down. So we're also giving a poison chalice because we're promoting our absolute best person and giving them different things to do.

So with all of that coming at them, along with the new hybrid world, this this idea of actually the way I think about it becomes more important because that way I'll take more effective actions and get more effective results. Absolutely. And the whole person paradigm as well around your team and understanding, you know, you spoke there about one to ones and those ones, one to ones of them, they're your team to talk to you, not you to talk to your team.

This isn't I'm going to dictate down this is now I'm going to share up, actually, you know. And that's a very important part of listening to what's actually happening in the business, what's happening in the team, what's going on with the customers, et cetera, et cetera. As you say, most of the leaders, a lot of their teams are very much customer focused, customer facing. So actually they're at the sharp end.

100 percent. Absolutely.

 So, it's actually a really quite a powerful position in many ways, because if you've got a voice within the organisation as a leader, that information is so crucial to the sensors within the business. Yeah. I mean, sensors in terms of feeling, not yet blockers.

And that's the thing that regardless of where you are on the leadership hierarchy, if you were the CEO, senior leader, middle, whatever it is, there is that realisation that people who are the first level leader, whether it's a supervisor or team leader, actually, we should involve them more in decision making. Yeah, because people who have been faulty at the work have a better understanding of cause and effect than someone who is within 50, 60, 70 feet of the work, sitting in an office somewhere. That person who's leading on the front line gets this decision has that effect.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And that means, OK, we're not saying we devolve all decision making to them, but they're a voice that should be heard.

So, OK, you know what, senior leader, you're going to make this call. You know, invite everyone back to invite. Tell everyone you've got to be back in the office.

Let me tell you what the cause and effect of that is going to be. But we don't I don't see a lot of organisations asking that for that first level leader. What impact will that have? They just say, sort it out, please.

We want everyone back. You make that happen. And they know it's going to be an uphill battle.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's a 500-year-old paradigm, an office in that sense.

Although having said that, if you look at the East India Trading Company, they had a remote working policy back in 1756. So it's not what the office is for, isn't it? It's saying that, you know, that that Slack research said 70 odd people want a hybrid environment. That means they want the office.

Yeah. It doesn't mean they want remote. Actually, there's a smaller group of people that said they want remote and a middle group of people that said we want office.

Hybrid means I want the office for human connection, not for work. It's one of those things that I've had a couple of CEOs get really frustrated and say when people are coming to the office, all they're doing is yapping and chatting. And that's what the office has effectively become for now.

You know, if I need to do work, if I've got something, a project to get done, I work from home. If I'm actually, you know what, I want connection with the people around me, I'll go to the office. Yeah.

It's, you know, it's about realising that the office has always been for human connection. And that's that. And that's sometimes a frustrating thing to say that actually human connection is valuable.

So we shouldn't take that away. But also don't say to people, you need to be delivering head down results in a space that is not really designed for that anymore. No, it's not.

It really isn't. I know this is something that John and I talk about quite a lot. It's about what is the office for now anyway? We did a podcast on it, actually, and how offices and this can be a challenge for facilities, IT office managers in the future.

You know, creating almost like a WeWork style office that has zones for things. You don't have a desk anymore. Yeah, there's multiple hot desks.

It's activity. You know, what is it I've got to do? Well, I only need the boardroom because I've got 20 people for two hours and I'll just put that. But that is that is a mindset shift that is required for us as human beings.

So the people going to the office as well as could be used to having a desk. And actually, if you say you want a hybrid, you can't have it both ways and say, I want my 20, I want my 24-7 desk sitting in the office, but I'm going to be using it 20% of the time. OK, well, that's a territory thing needs to get over.

The idea of territory, actually, what we're in there for that is and to your point as well about saying that the ultimately is how do we enable people to because this is the thing, same as parking people, hey, get worried about, oh, there's no there might be no parking. I best get there. I mean, I commute in from Milton Keynes Station.

They did a fantastic thing. They took away a third of the spaces, built a multi-storey, but haven't opened the multi-storey because it's too expensive. So there's a third less spaces.

That means I'm terrified about going to London, whether I'm going to get parked. So even if I'm going in for like a midday meeting, I'll get I'll get to the station at 7 a.m. So I know there's parking and find something else to do. Wait in the coffee shop until off peak happens, whatever that is.

But desk is the same way. I'm worried that I won't have one. Yeah, if I go in there, unless I've got one assigned to me, that's my desk.

So actually, well, that's a human problem that can be solved technologically. Yeah, very much so. I mean, laptops.

I mean, oh, my goodness. They've been around a very long time now. And the fact that you can take this laptop with you no matter where you go, you can go and sit on a beach somewhere.

If you really need to do as long as you've got a Wi-Fi connection and you can connect up to the technology, then it makes it so much easier. So, yes, I mean, it's the most frequent thing that people say, you know, if an organisation back in the day said, everyone, ladies and gentlemen, we're moving offices. Guarantee the first question people say is their parking.

Yeah. And it's exactly the same as we're moving into a hybrid model. Will I have a desk? We will guarantee that you will always be able to have a desk for the air or you will always be able to have a space for the activity you're coming in for.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But we're never going to shift that mindset if the CEO is saying, oh, he's coming in to work.

Yeah, that requires a desk that requires this session. You want to come in for connection that's going to drive the activity and result we're looking for, whether it's collaboration, whether it's just human connection, whatever it may be. If but if the if the paradigm is you're coming back to do work nine to five in front of your laptop.

Then, of course, I need a desk. Yeah, it's just logical. It follows on, right? We've been trained that way for hundreds of years that if I'm in the office, I need a desk.

No, no, no. Actually, what we truly need is a space that can help me be effective and productive in what I'm doing to carry out the task. Either me, my team or multiple people.

You know, I've even taken this theory one step further than this and believe that in the future you won't necessarily have a job role. Specifically, you'll have a set of expertises that you will then travel around a business using your expertise, your knowledge, your experience to solve problems within the business. It might be for a short time, might be a long time.

What you might do is gather people around you from within the business that have got complementary skills that work on that project, that that issue, that challenge together. You solve it and then you move on to the next thing. Now, OK, that's a little while into the future, maybe.

But that's I think the office and people will reflect actually the nature of how businesses change, particularly with the fact. And I don't necessarily get onto AI right now, but the way AI is going to come and disrupt the workplace generally and make menial, repetitive tasks disappear very, very quickly because the speed of change is even faster than Stephen Barth that was talking about and the computer scientists back from the 80s. I can't remember his name now.

So change is happening all around us. I want to move on to a stat up to because we're limited in time. There's something that my founder, John, was talking this morning and I was talking to him about interviewing you and he came up with the stat here that there's a 40 percent.

This is connected with their kind of levels of leadership. First level leaders kind of not truly understand what it means to be a leader. But this isn't necessarily leaders, but it's just within the workplace.

Now, there's something like a 40 percent increase in long term sickness, people signed off from work. And I think then the stat was like 400,000 people signed off largely with mental health issues. And it's put down largely in younger generations, younger, younger generations.

And it's down to poor leadership because of either micromanagement or the opposite of micromanagement, that kind of hands off, you know, kind of just left to get on the station application. And of course, too high workload. So we've got this we're still seeing burnout.

This is probably the biggest thing that every organisation, you know, one hand, its leadership skills, the other hand is burnout. So, are we talking another pandemic here? Are we? Yeah. Where are we with that from your mindset, from your side? I think it's a really interesting thing, because as I share with you, a lot of the work that I'm doing is with senior executive teams and working on trust nationally.

I think everything you've talked about is not a is an issue of trust. Yeah. So, what we know is trust in organisations always affects to other variables.

And most people would say, oh, trust. Oh, let's talk about fluffy kittens for a while. And no, there's three key things for me that trust.

Number one, trust is not just a social virtue. It's an economic driver because trust always affects to other things. It always affects speed and cost.

When trust in an organisation is high, speed goes up, cost goes down. And the opposite is also true. And number two, trust is a leadership skill to be trusted and to trust other people.

And if it's a skill, it can be learned. So, three key things. It's an observable performance multiplier.

It's the number one leadership skill probably that we need right now and have ever needed. And this is going to be learned. But also the impact it has on some of the things that you're talking about.

Harvard Business Tribune did a decade of research on self-reported high trust organisations. So and by that means that the people said, I work in an organisation that I feel is high trust. Started in 2017, or they published in 2017 after a decade of research.

There’re some really interesting things that they found. They found that in organisations that report high trust and bearing in mind that the ability to work successfully in a hybrid model is foundationed on trust. So in organisations of high trust, there are 13 percent fewer long term sick.

So there's an absolute drop. There is a 74 percent drop in reporting of less stress, in reporting of stress, so it drops by 74 percent. People report having 106 percent more energy.

And here's the absolute kicker for me. People in high trust organisations reported that they were 29 percent more satisfied with their life, not just their work life. Yes, it's really, really interesting.

And then your point about burnout. People in high trust organisations reported 40 percent less burnout. Yeah.

And so ultimately is a trusting and that's why for me, the whole concept of hybrid is a really important thing is that actually to John's question about, you know, are we facing a new pandemic? I wonder if we're facing a new epidemic of low trust. I don't know if it's a total pandemic yet, because I think it varies by industry and it's not totally going to affect every human being yet. But so I think ultimately there has been this amazing, amazing thing that happened in the pandemic.

I remember talking to an organisation that ran a ran call centres for insurance. Massive organisation was speaking to them in late February, and they said that one of the things that people are always asking for is remote working or hybrid working. We can't do it.

We do. We just can't do it. This was February time before we knew what was going to happen.

Spoke to them in late March after the first lockdown, and they'd made 1534 people remote workers in less than a week, less than a month before they said can't be done. So he said, speaking absolutes. Yeah, indeed.

And it's this it's this really interesting thing to say that actually organisations and leaders typically earned massive amounts of trust. Yeah. During the pandemic.

Like not all of them, because there's the technology product that went up the most in terms of sales was the mouse wobbler during the pandemic. So there's a trust issue. Yeah.

You know that thing that means I don't go red or away on teams or Zoom. It's just it's going to keep wobbling for me. Yeah.

As a technology product that shot up as, you know, along with Zoom, we're having my mouse wobblers go. But most organisations and a huge amount of trust. Yes.

During the pandemic. And a lot of organisations are now squandering that or CEOs are now squandering it by how they talk about the idea of, well, we all need to come back. You know, I could trust you when I had to trust you.

But now I have a choice. I'm not going to. Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? It's now I've got the choice.

I choose not to trust you, which is probably a result of now that the start of 56% of people. If it was Owly, I think it was they did a survey not so long back. Owly made the little desk recording machines to do conference calls and stuff like that.

So they did a survey. Fascinating they did it. But 56% of your team would leave if they were told they've got to be back in the office five days a week.

So there is a really good example of this is why leaders and businesses need to learn trust. Now, that's the question, Paul, can trust be taught and learned? Absolutely. As I said, it's one of the three things.

Trust is a is a is an observable performance multiplier. It's a leadership skill and it can be learned because it's not. It's not just a noun and a verb.

That's the mindset you have to have is trust. Yeah, the ultimately the feeling of trust is dependent on activities of trust. It's both a noun and a verb.

So trust is both something you feel, but it's also something you do. And I would say that I would say yes to that question because FranklinCovey have been teaching leaders how to lead with trust for almost 20 years now. And again, my job the last two years has been doing that with senior execs.

So, to say no would be slightly problematic. But it's but it's there's a team that and we did really cool work in terms of actually how we can assess levels of trust on a team. We've got some really nice assessments that allow us to do that.

We've been working with a team in banking in Dubai. And what was really interesting, they're probably the team where we've seen the most progression on the trust assessment that we do. Like typically what we see, there's a delta between how people talk about themselves and how they talk about other people.

The most human beings are wired in the it's not me, it's you. That that tends to be the moment we think that's the problem. Well, that's kind of the problem.

But what's really interesting is we saw this huge growth like between three and seven thousand basis points growth in trust in this team. And you can pinpoint down the fact that the leader who didn't get a great review on her assessment, she sat back and listened. Tell me.

And then she clarified expectations of this is what I expect of you as leaders. These are the behaviours I want from you. I want you to show loyalty to each other.

I want you to demonstrate respect to each other. And I want you to deliver results. And her team were able to come back to her and say, we are as a group going to commit to these behaviours for you.

We're going to always clarify expectations. We're going to talk truthfully and we're going to practice accountability on that. And then when you start to get that reciprocal nature of here's what here's what I'll commit to and here's what I'll commit to as a leader, you start to get that that trust and growth.

But it's about knowing that we can behave our way into trust, or we can behave our way out of it. We can actually still talk our way out of trust, but we can't talk our way back in. So, you can both talk and behave your way completely out of it.

But you can never talk your way back into trust. You can only behave your way back into it. And more leaders get that.

And the more leaders that don't get that. Now, it's weird. And as I've been talking more hybrid stuff, you get the updates on LinkedIn.

Yeah. And I was really intrigued because there was a software company that popped up on my LinkedIn that said, show your show your people that you trust them, monitor their activity. And oxymoron, if ever I heard.

What is going on? And it was a company that would install effectively spyware on every machine and organisation to track activity. And so, it creates transparency and will create trust. And I was really intrigued.

I was like, do I go down the rabbit hole of this? That's weird to me. The number one transparency absolutely is a behaviour that creates trust. Absolutely is.

And it should be reciprocal. But the reason for installing software like that, if that's a fundamental lack of trust, then you're never going to earn trust from installing spyware and data and that's a really, really interesting thing. And obviously, that's my mindset to go.

Why would you do that? Yeah. Obviously, organisations wouldn't be advertising on LinkedIn that technology if they weren't a success behind it. But I would love to hope that that organisation, when they are selling and getting their technology to people, I would love to hope that they care about the reason why someone is hiring them.

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, this is a big part of leadership as well.

We've spoken about behaviour change, leadership skills. You know, you speak that spoke there about three core things. Trust being one of the most important things right now, particularly in the hybrid way, but also care.

And that comes, I think, for me under the trust banner about truly caring about the team, the whole person within your team, because you've got X amount of individuals on your team. And this also kind of leads into a little bit about the office itself and the change of that or reflects on how an office could potentially be built for very different mindsets for some people, you know, typically in a sales role. If you use the cliche, they're outgoing.

They work from anywhere. They'll, you know, stand on an ironing board and they'll chat with anybody, whereas some people within the team, they don't want that. They just want to go and tap away at their computer.

They'll have a quick chat at lunchtime or go out and do the shopping. They'll go and do their work. So they need a quieter space, you know, and there's every shade and colour of difference in between, because we are a neuro diverse bunch.

And as a leader, as an organisation, being able to support that as much as you can within your culture, your office space as well, which your office space should reflect your culture. That is making steps towards building trust, transparency and open people to good work. And probably one of the most important things is understanding productivity.

Rather than presentism or micromanaging and all the really old-fashioned ways to, you know, oh, it's just about results. Some jobs. No, you know, like as a as a creative, as somebody who does design.

Yes, you've got deadlines, but how on a daily basis, you know, you gave that example of somebody at 12 o'clock and five o'clock. Right. What have you done today? It's like, well, how do you explain that as a form of productivity? You know, so again, meandered around the point.

Again, it's a mindset thing, isn't it? But actually, if we want our people to be productive, then it's not about mandating them sitting at a desk. It's not about having software on that. For me, productivity is rooted in enabling decisions for people.

And there's three core decisions that have to be core of any productivity solution that anyone's going to talk to you about is how we are helping people to make. So the first decision is effectively about discernment. So it's really about how we're making choices about what to focus on.

Yeah. So what decisions we're making about what to focus on. Then the second decision is about effectively say it's kind of decision management and then it's energy management.

So the first thing we've got to manage is how people are making decisions about what they're working on. The second thing we have to manage is how people imagine their attention because you can decide that you're going to work on something important. But then if your attention gets distracted, so you will realise that actually we do have to help people in terms of how they're managing their attention.

And the last thing we have to help them manage is their energy. But actually, if you want truly productive workforce, it's about saying, well, actually, there's are three key management skills. We have to teach leaders and individuals, decision management, attention management and energy management.

Yeah. And those three things, it flows from how you choose to help people manage their decision making can be any number of things. Franklin Covey do that through things, ideas like the time matrix, which is like the Eisenhower matrix and how people choose to how you help people choose to make better decisions about their attention.

Again, we have ways of doing that. You know, we've got a classic idea about those organisations called Big Rocks and then the idea of how someone manages their energy, but it doesn't matter who you're working with or how you're doing as an organisation. It doesn't change the fundamental issue that if you're considering productivity, it's about decision management, attention management and energy management.

That also has to flow back to hybrid as well. It's just like, how is our hybrid model allowing people to make decisions? Are there some decisions that need to be collaborative? How is our hybrid model allowing people to manage their attention? Because ultimately, my attention that I have when I'm working at home is different from the amount of attention I'm able to give if I'm at an office. So actually, how am I making more effective choices about what level of attention I need to be able to achieve the things that I think are important? And then what level of energy do I need? There are different people, different things.

Some people get energy from going to the office. Some people get energy from being at home. Yeah.

And actually, going to the office drains their battery, whereas other people going to the office charges their battery. So it's understanding those things as well. But again, it doesn't move away from fundamentally decision, attention and energy.

Yeah. And you'd know that. I mean, coming back to the one-to-one scenario by letting your team talk to you about how they are and what's going on in their life and within their role, you get to understand the individual much more clearly rather than how are you doing? Have you hit that target, et cetera, et cetera? That's not what the one to one is for.

One to one is about saying, you know what, actually, are you on track to hit that target by making effective decisions? Is your attention distracted by something else? Because the problem is that oftentimes we're asking people to focus on delivering important results and tasks. But day in, day out, they're faced with urgent stuff coming to their emails and their stuff is typically distracting because it's urgent. It's that it is acting on me, whereas most of the results we're asking people to deliver, especially as they get more senior, is results that require them to act on the result.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is why it's not just enough to say, I'm going to prioritise that. We then absolutely have to manage our attention.

Because we love the education badge. Yeah, little endorphins. Well, that's the thing that notification badge is so powerful because it triggers two absolute things in it triggers FOMO.

Yeah. What might be happening that I don't know about. Yeah.

And that's exciting. What exciting stuff is happening that I don't know about? And it also triggers fear. What's happening that I don't know about? So it's actually a double trigger, that little notification bell going.

There's something happening that I don't know about. and there's something happening. I don't know about it.

I want to know about it. You know, it triggers both of those issues for people. Yeah, so we've spoken about leadership.

We've spoken about leadership in hybrid working. We've spoken about decision-making. We're talking about behaviour change.

Now, one of my favourite quotes from Franklin Covey is, and I'd like you, in this context, to really explain what this means, because behaviour change is... Now, let me just read... I'll read the quote verbatim. Well, I know it anyway. It's, with people, slow is fast and fast is slow.

Now, that's like, what? So could you just... Because behaviour change takes a long time. Anybody who's been in a leadership role understands that you can't... There's no flicker switch and it happens. You don't automatically trust.

Leadership takes a long time to understand and develop, and so does behaviour change. So what did Stephen, Dr Covey, mean when he said that? I mean, basically, you've just explained it, that you can't flick a switch. So, with people, fast is slow, and slow is fast effectively means that, if you want to flick a switch and force people to do something, that's fast.

And flicking a switch might be anything. So, right, everyone back in the office. Yeah.

But the thing is, the moment you try to do something fast with people, the moment you try to be efficient with people, you start to slow down because you've got to go back around again to confirm it with this. You've got to do that. You've got to reconfirm things.

Or people are not happy with that. They're not happy with this. And so it's the ultimate fact, the moment you try to be efficient with people, you become ineffective because you're going to have to do the same things over and over and over again.

And isn't it better to get people's hearts first by slowing down and listening to them? Yeah. And then go forth. There's another quote that Stephen said that I really enjoy in this context as well, is that he said, I think in a lot of organisations, we now have mushroom management.

He says, we keep people in the dark, cover them with manure and expect them to grow. Yeah. That should be on walls.

And that works for mushrooms, but it doesn't necessarily work for people. Absolutely. I don't think it works for many people at all.

I think that's an absolute... That's the ultimate thing, isn't it? That with people, the moment you try to do things fast, people are not flipping the switch. That with people, actually, you've got to get them to flip their own switch. You can't flip the switch for them.

So actually, you've got to slow down up front as a leader and think about engagement, getting people involved. If you don't get people involved, they won't be committed. Yeah.

And again, this comes down to your decision-making, your prioritisation, your expectation of what's realistic in the time, triplet, quadruplet, whatever the case may be, rather than go, right, I'll get this done in a week. Because we're all on this train track of achievement, of productivity and efficiency, and we don't necessarily understand what that truly means. And you're making a decision potentially in isolation without understanding, particularly first-level leaders, you make a decision to a more senior person that you're responsible to on behalf of your team, but without consulting your team, then that could go really badly wrong.

Yeah, 100%. And again, it comes back to trust and communication and all sorts of things. It does, indeed.

So very important in business, in leadership particularly, and generally within business is consistency. So how would you suggest that you keep that consistent company culture in this hybrid setting? Because that's, you know, a lot of managers, as we've heard earlier, you know, a lot of leaders said that's one of their biggest fears. I think it was 56% of leaders said culture, the culture disseminating into, you know, internet.

Yeah, HR people, it was Gartner who said HR people get, and love the idea of a hybrid culture, but worry that's going to affect the company culture. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think it's a fair worry.

So I think for me, there's almost a preamble to talk about, which is, it's not about hybrid. Ultimately, culture, if you build it intentionally, you can survive anything, but culture just happens. If you're not intentional, it's like, if you don't choose your culture, you're still going to get one.

You know, but ultimately, it might not be quite as effective unless you choose what that culture might be. And I think for me, there's a really interesting piece that we've made lots of things about hybrid. And often what I'm seeing is hybrid is almost becoming a smokescreen for the real issues in cultures and businesses.

So there's a company that wanted to engage with us to help support them roll out a hybrid policy model, which was going to be basically a one for all policy with some level of nuance about escalation and whatever, but effectively a one for all policy that says, this is how we deal with a request for hybrid working from someone. This is our policy across many, many different job roles and across more than a thousand people. And they said, FranklinCovey, can you help with that? We said, well, let's have a conversation about it.

And what was really, really interesting was the more I dug, the more it wasn't about hybrid. The more it was about was, we don't trust our managers to have difficult conversations that require nuance, and that might mean that different people have different situations. So let's put in place a policy.

We don't trust our managers to have a conversation that means Adam is going to get this way of working. And we don't trust our managers to be able to explain why that's fair for Adam. And it's that idea, isn't it? Of fairness, equality and equity and all those things that actually it is not the same for everyone.

But that's why I'm seeing a lot of that. You know, the Elon Musk quote you said on an earlier podcast, you know, he thinks back to the office is the right thing and working from home is morally wrong. I would say, love him or hate him, Elon Musk, he was hiding a different thing there because he was making it all about fairness.

Yeah. It is unfair. OK, well, let's talk about the corporate structure of the Western world before we talk about unfair is if it actually isn't fair to pay a worker the same wage regardless of the job function, they do.

Wouldn't that be fair rather making it about, oh, it's morally wrong to do that? Or is it the truth that actually the way capitalist structure is set up is that different job functions have different results and different compensation for that and maybe different ways of working from that? But I think ultimately that's an example of CEO trying to deflect one conversation away by making it about hybrid. Now, I'm seeing a lot of that happen. The hybrid is hiding something else or we don't trust our managers to have difficult conversations or we don't trust this, we don't trust that.

There's something else going on, which means actually there's other cultural issues. So your point about consistency. And for me, it's about saying that actually, if you're going to effectively have a hybrid culture, you have to be intentional about it.

And you've got to think about that in terms of the mindset you have of leaders who are going to be in this space. But ultimately, you maintain a culture in a hybrid world. Number one is being intentional about how you create a culture of belonging.

How do you create, not necessarily a culture, but a sense of belonging that feeds into your culture? So how do I create a sense of belonging? Ultimately, how do I have everyone on my team say, I'm a valued member of a winning team doing meaningful work in an environment of trust regardless of where that environment is? So that's thinking about actually how do we put the connection time when we're not all going to be at the office? How do we normalise meetings when some people are there, some people are not? It's about actually saying, how do we have everyone feel included? Because your earlier point, we're diverse individuals and diversity is a fact, but inclusion is a choice. And the fundamental issue we have around this as well, which feeds back into hybrid as well, is diversity makes inclusion harder. Yes.

And it's one of the things that I personally hate the most is how it's become D and I, or D and I, diversity and inclusion, or diversity and inclusion. No, they're separate things. You can drive diversity through policy.

You cannot drive inclusion through policy, because inclusion is about how people behave and how they feel. So how do we create that sense of belonging for everyone? And that can be as simple as saying, what are the behaviours we're going to sign up to as a team? So for instance, when we sign up to a team, when we're in hybrid meetings, we will not have little side conversations when we're in a room like that that makes the person who's on the screen feel more unincluded. Yes.

It's about what are the inclusive behaviours that we're going to sign up to? So that's the first thing is about how do we intentionally create a sense of belonging? The second mindset is to intentionally think, how do we strengthen communication? So actually, because hybrid does make communication harder, but it doesn't make it harder, it means you've got to be much more intentional about it. You've got to be, yeah, I was going to say you need to be more intentional. Yeah.

So you need to be intentional about, well, actually, how does everyone hear everything? Do we still have drop-in sessions and things like that? But how do we, because ultimately, culture is founded upon people feeling included and people feeling communicated to. So number one, how do we create a sense of belonging? Number two, how do we help people really understand everything that's going on by strengthening the communication? And lastly, how do we in our culture balance accountability with flexibility? Yeah. But actually, the issue of people delivering their results is rarely one about flexibility or hybrid working, it's one about actually accountability.

How do I trust that that person's going to be accountable for delivering their result when I'm not going to see them every day? And that then becomes a framework that you can talk about, because actually, culturally, you can balance accountability and flexibility consistently by saying, look, everyone, the way we're going to approach this idea is we're going to get really clear on the desired result we want every time. What are the desired results? We're going to get clear on the guidelines within which, whether that's budget, et cetera, et cetera, that we are going to apply to this, deadlines, et cetera. We're going to be really consistent and clear on what resources people have to be able to do that, the office being one of them.

And we're going to get really clear on how we're going to hold each other accountable to it. And then lastly, we're going to agree the level of flexibility that can be applied to delivering this result, from total flexibility to, you know what, we might have to have a team meeting every Monday, or you know what, actually, let's be kind to everyone and do the team meeting on a day where not everyone's going to be in the office, what other teams do you know? It's about understanding that actually, let's define the result we want first, the guidelines to achieve that result, the resources we have to achieve to it, the accountability we're looking for it. And then based on those four things, decide the level of flexibility that we can then apply to the result, not the method.

Yes, yes, yes. You cannot hold people accountable for a result if you supervise their method. I think there's another important part to that as well, which is something that I feel quite strongly about, is being, is plugging that into the whole purpose of why, what challenge or challenges the company is actually solving.

Because that is fundamental to why you are at that business. It's not, you don't just necessarily want to come and be an accountant, you want to be an accountant in a charity, and the charity is really important to you. So the work that you're doing and feeling that it is, yes, it has purpose.

And the purpose of what the organisation is doing, you plug into that as your main thing. Now, particularly now, and with Gen X, is actually I need to feel that what I'm doing is actually has a wider impact on the world. So at the top of that, I would say the umbrella is, actually, I need to feel like this company is actually doing something that I believe in.

Because that involves a different set of emotions as to why you're there in the first place. Well, it's engagement, isn't it? That's the idea that it's actually, am I fully engaged in what's going on here? Am I fully engaged? So I see, this is the problem we're trying to solve. This is what we are part in actually solving that problem.

And this, as a team, is how what we're going to do to actually contribute towards this business solving that problem. And so then having- And that's the real idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But that's the problem I see in a lot of organisations that are hiding behind hybrid or saying they've got no managers to do this, is they're trying to define the flexibility that applies to a role before they've defined what the desired result of that role is, before they've defined the purpose. Now, actually, if you're working with someone, someone comes into you and says, I want total and absolute flexibility in my role. You're not then going, right, how do we get flexibility for them? You're saying, okay, actually, let's work with you to understand what the desired result for that role is.

What are the guidelines for achieving it? What are the resources you have for this? And that's why it's fundamentally different. If someone comes in and says, I want total flexibility in my role, you can't divorce that from their context. We are in roles.

We are in organisations. So if someone comes to you and says, I want total flexibility in my role to be hybrid whenever I like, but they're on the manufacturing line for a Tesla, it diminishes that human being to say, what are you? Are you smoking your socks? That's not possible. No, what you do is you work with that human being to say, okay, what are the desired results for your role? Tesla rolls off the production line.

The guidelines for that happening are there might be, probably there's not much of that can be done remotely, that actually the production line is working at separate times and things like that. The resources for that are mostly all located in one place. The accountability of that is actually how many things are being produced.

So therefore, flexibility doesn't actually make sense in the context of that desired result in that role. Now, if you want to do something different and deliver a different desired result, but that person is saying, yeah, but how come Adam, who works in finance, how come he gets to be flexible? Because he's got a different result that he's expected to do with different guidelines. And so ultimately, isolating flexibility as the policy we have to manage is not the right thing.

Actually, what we need to do is always contextualise flexibility against the result, the outcome we're expected to produce, how we're expected to produce that outcome and what resources we have to be able to do that and then decide how we're going to hold each other accountable for that. This idea of let's have a flexible working policy. Great.

If that policy is for every single outcome the organisation is expected to deliver, not every single role, but every single outcome the organisation is expected to deliver, then great. Have a thousand flexible working policies or have one policy that says this is how we will handle flexible working culturally. We will handle it by always contextualising a request for flexibility to the desired results that are expected of your job.

We will promise you we will always do that. Yeah, because then it turns it into making it about the outcome, turns it into a decision firstly about the business, then secondly about how the person fits within the business, not the other way around. Because just saying, yeah, you can be flexible is, well, that's the person and that negates actually truly what business is.

If you want to be flexible, there are many, many roles you can do that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I do wonder whether people who, whether that, I mean, that's an extreme example, of course, but people would understand that their role can't be flexible if they've got to put a widget in another widget and that's their job. They can't say, well, I can't do that from home. I think most people know that what they're asking for is perhaps something else.

So my response would be, well, let's just talk about why you want to do that. What is the issue in your life? Because now our personal lives have become so much more prominent in our work lives, the ability to talk about them, et cetera. It's actually childcare flexibility or something like that unique.

But what's really interesting is what you've just said there is, is not what I'm seeing. Right. And let me caveat that a little bit.

It's not what I'm seeing in terms of organisational fit. I think you're right. Most people have got enough common sense to know that if my, if I'm a bartender, I probably can't ask to be a remote worker.

I think most people have probably got that level of... Canny enough. Yeah. Yeah.

They're canny enough for that. Here's what's interesting. Most organisations assume people don't have that level of common sense.

Yeah. Organisations I'm talking to trying to put in these huge wide range and flexible working policies are assuming they're going to have that person with zero common sense come to them and say, I work on a production line, or I work in a brewery, and I want to be a total remote worker. They assume a level of stupidity and they assume that their managers aren't able to handle that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, Reed Hastings said it, we built a policy at Netflix of, well, we got rid of policies at Netflix. We got rid of our dress code and no one turned up naked. It's, you know, and you know, the expenses policy at Netflix was used good judgment at all times.

It's the idea that all these things, how we handle these things are cultural indicators. So cultural consistency is about not saying we have a policy for everything, but is it going to say, we're going to have an approach to this, which recognises your human needs, but contextualises those human needs in the outcomes that are expected of your role. And if that's what we, that's the guiding light that we're going to put, hold our hands up to, then we can, we can give managers development to get some confident in having that sort of conversation.

But so many policies that I see assume that people are going to be belligerent. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

 Not understand that. And actually the policies put in place because of that, that's the outcome they expect. So they built something for the outcome that they expect is a negative one from individual or groups of team members.

 Yeah. Rather than as you say, what it comes down to is that big old T word trust. Indeed.

 Absolutely. And you know, I'm, I'm, I'm not in this utopia that says there's not going to be some people that demand flexible working when it's simply impossible for their role. Of course they are.

Yep. But it's probably the minority. Yes.

 I would venture to suggest that too. So Paul, it's been an absolute pleasure and there is so much more we could talk about here. I think what I'd just like to end on quickly is if people want to know more about what Franklin Covey does, you were talking there about, you've got an event on actually, did you say early July? Yeah.

So I'm in London on the 3rd of July. You can sign up for that either by LinkedIn or by franklincovey.co.uk and then click on the events button. Obviously, you can follow FranklinCovey on LinkedIn, follow me on LinkedIn.

And with those events that I'm in London, but there's members of my team. So you've got a member of our team in France who's in Bristol in, in late June. We've got Peter over in Ireland next week, I think.

So running and the event is all about the idea of this, how do we build that manager capability? What we're talking about is, so rather than deal with hybrid working, how do we build manager capabilities? It's called build the middle because of that middle management group. And it's focusing on kind of four key ideas is the first idea is ultimately about the idea that we need people to, to understand that hybrid working is an imperative, it's not a choice. If we start to go from that, we need to really understand or help leaders understand how do I have those difficult conversations that are going to be part of that? How do I help people to lead inclusive, inclusively in this space around that? How do I help people to become more adaptable? How do I become more adaptable myself in the face of all these things and going, actually, it's not about the hybrid context or the hybrid outcome.

It's about the key leadership skills that are needed in organisations right now. We would say adaptability, leading those hybrid teams, navigating those difficult conversations. These are the skills that leaders need.

And so that's, that's ultimately what our kind of morning event is talking about. So hybrid is not the focus, but it is the context. Yeah, absolutely.

That's brilliant. Thank you so much. And what we'll do is in the, in the notes after this, we'll put a link to some of the events that Franklin, Covey and Paul are running so that people can go and have a look themselves if they're struggling with leading their teams, because hybrid working isn't going away and the challenges around it are still yet to be solved because we're all different.

We're all diverse. Paul, absolute pleasure. Loved it.

If you have got the energy, maybe one day we'll get you back. Yeah, get part two going because there's so much more to talk about and maybe get something live in the future as well. Thank you so much for taking the time to be on the podcast.

 Absolute pleasure, Adam.