Heather Langton - Spark | The Great Unlearning of Leadership

0:00Hi, I'm Lisa Oakley, Director and Founder of People Associates and I'm excited to be here with Heather Langdon, Chief People Officer at Spark. Hey Lisa. Good to have you. Heather joins back in 2013 and was appointed People and Culture Director in 2019. She's over 20 years experience as a human resources professional with a proven track vehicle for business transformation, talent management, leadership development and succession planning across a range of industries, things like FMCG, retail, hospitality, technology and communications, very fast-paced industries. Across her career, Heather has held various senior HR positions and delivered a number of critical initiatives, including being a key architect of Spark's leadership and development program to build high performing teams and leaders. Can't wait to hear more about that, but for now, Heather, tell us a bit about what you're passionate about at the moment. Wow, what do I star? That bio, that's intense, Lisa. What I'm passionate about, well, from a professional context, there's a lot to feel really

1:00passionate about right now for all of us. I think the big passion point for me is really thinking about the operating model for Spark and its next future iteration or context. With that, there's a lot to think about, you know, the famous acronym AI, there's a lot to think about, but I'm more invested or interested and passionate about thinking about what that means for us as humans and how augmenting how we work actually just opens up so many possibilities as opposed to, I guess, often we hear all we think about, the things we don't know, or is it going to fast or what are the guardrails? That's all important, but I'm particularly passionate about what's possible in that regard. Very good. And coming back to leadership development and how important it is for us as leaders to sort of embrace this change, lead this change, albeit what's the analogy, you know, flying the airplane while we're building the airplane. What is important about leadership now that you think we should take into the future?

2:03Wow, like this is my passion point. At times in my career, I've actually been asked to step away from leadership development and do some other things because I always gravitate back to what's possible or what's necessary. So, I mean, the buzzwords around at the moment are all whole true, around adaptive leadership, coping with ambiguity, resilience. I actually think it's probably slightly more profound than that, and I call it the great unlearning for leadership. So much of what you end up talking about with a leader or even yourself is what else do I need to do, what else do I need to add? How do I need to add some more skills into my leadership, Kitei? That's all really well and good, but what ends up happening is just leadership overwhelm, and I think every single scenario ahead, even more so than maybe five years ago, is about unlearning what got us to the place that we are as leaders today, and rethinking and resetting. Sure, you'll take some stuff with you, but resetting and re-learning what's going to work ahead

3:07is going to ensure that really that next generation coming up behind us, and the one behind them, which you and I both have one of those we later at home, they need a whole lot of different stuff from us. This is the biggest intergenerational moment from a leadership point of view that we could imagine, older workers, younger workers, people that don't necessarily carry the same ethic when it comes to work as leaders, lots of myths to bust for leaders and people coming in. So yeah, I think it's the great unlearning moment. Love that. Okay, so unlearning and also leadership overwhelm, I like that, because I am one of those people who would instinctively go, what else can I do? What other thing do I need to add into the list of things that is already on my plate, but actually lately I've been thinking about leadership as being not leadership as doing, who you are and how you show up, as just as important as what you do and at what kind of pace. And even more so, and I think that comes to leadership to your point being the how,

4:07it is about how you embed just little things that are adaptive every day. I mean, gone are the days I hope, this is a little bit controversial, of the annual development plan that we all kind of asked to set, because it gives us a sense of security that we're being invested in, and that there's things on the horizon for me to develop as a leader, as a professional, but actually I think it's more a quarterly conversation around what things have I noticed about myself and my impact over the culture, and what can I think about in the culture ahead, and what's necessary for that, because that's keeping pace with what's happening around us, as opposed to trying to extrapolate our in a year's time, where do I need to be, and then wishing and hoping that the development you get on the way through delivers on that. And I think it is more incumbent upon individuals to say, here is where I need to be to maintain or move the dial on my relevance, and as part of that, could my organisation support me with XYZ,

5:07not sort of out the gate and all sort of bells and whistles and things like that, but to your point, whether the conversations happening weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or six monthly, there needs to be a conversation about what skills do I need, how do I reflect and learn and adapt and adjust, and I think the word that you said, which stands out to me, is impact, just because your leadership style has had impact for the last three or five years, doesn't mean that if you keep on doing what you have been doing, that it will. That's going to translate to meaningful impact in any way, shape or form, in future, which is quite a frightening thought. I think, and I think that's what probably inhibits some leaders from even leaning into notice things, or feedback from others, because it does feel a bit scary if something's pointed out, it's like the whole edge, you know, all I feel like I need to get a bit fissured. As soon as you say it out loud, people are going to hold you to account for it. So I think it's about normalising, I was talking with one of my team before I came here this morning,

6:07normalising offerings, like the whole reformer, but he's offerings in the moment, or as close to the moment as possible, takes, staying out of the tail and lets people know that you care enough about them to have noticed their impact in that moment, and that you are willing to, the fact you're willing to offer it, but you're also willing to help them with it. Once people get used to that more in the moment, noticing in feedback cycle, then I think, then you're cooking with gas, but this whole space and distance lends itself to people saying, oh, I'm not quite good enough, or I haven't done what I should have done, and that's why I'm not getting the promotion or whatever the outcome is that they want it. So consistency and sort of habitual feedback as part of your culture, which I'm sure you have at Spark, I'm sure. From my experience working there, it was very clear about what was working, what could be better. We definitely have the adult-adult pace, which I think is important. We're here and we've all got accountability and choices in life, and it's not just about work performance, it's like we come to work,

7:10but we're performing all day, every day in our lives. We definitely have that, but I haven't done research as to why, but I have noticed that probably since the times of COVID, when things became a little bit more physically distanced, and then there was a sort of almost a separation and work forces, that maybe people are a little less inclined to want to offer something they perceive might fall hard. It might not necessarily fall hard, but they've convinced themselves that that could look like conflict, and probably I won't do that today. But I think what I have a sort of a saying and the team replay it back to me now from Brenna Brown, unapologetically plagiarised, which is clear as kind. So if you want to be an unkind person, don't offer the clarity that the other person needs, but if you want to be a leader that leads with kind, then that's all you have to do. In my phrase, I don't know where I got this one actually, but I probably plagiarise it from somewhere, is that leadership is synonymous with clarity.

8:11You can't be a leader if you're not being clear. You're just creating confusion there. I think sometimes that clarity gets confused with having all of the information to be able to pass on. So again, it comes back to your point of the wash in the how. It's actually not always having all the information to your point. It's just clarity about this is the direction we're heading, we don't have all the answers. But yeah, I think that maybe that's the leadership overwhelm moment, many of us face into on any given day as I better be all buttoned down here and have it all in order to help people to feel better about largely usually as an unknown situation or circumstance. So even if you tried really hard, you probably couldn't give them everything that they needed. Well, I think that shows up in the comment you made earlier around the intergenerational workforce, right? So you know, I've worked with some fantastic leaders that have been subject matter experts in their time. And they've got to a point in their career where they're supervising other folks now who have come through and kind of overtaking them in terms of their subject matter expertise, just given the nature of sort of pace and change in the environment. It doesn't really matter what functional specialisation you're talking about could apply or be relevant.

9:15You know, marketing is a good example. Engineering is an example. You know, human resources is an example. We can learn from folks that have come through only recently in a starting out their careers, which is interesting as knowledge kind of becomes a little bit more commoditised as opposed. So how would you recommend a leader shows up or how are you sensitive? How are you saying those dynamics play out in the work environment? So now that I guess it comes back to your first question, what am I passionate about? The other passion point is really how do we facilitate or unlock that intergenerational kind of momental transfer of what motivates them, what they need from us, how we adapt. Yes. So the concept, well, it's spart, we refer to it as two-dharma at the moment, which is really about internships and unlocking knowledge. And I guess some people might see that as a pipeline of the future workforce being conditioned to the way we do it today. I see that really differently. And with the last intake that we had, I had three reverse mentors that I said to them, I would like someone to help me to kind of unthink, re-learn, cast out,

10:18understand more about what is your background so that I can be a different kind of leader. Well, the receipt of that was so impactful for them because they were like, well, you're a CPO, you want to know what we have to think. I was like, it's incumbent on me to know, because I'm insanely curious. And I kind of want to almost want to know everything, which is probably still a weakness or a derailleur from a CPO point of view. But that's the unlock, is finding ways to facilitate pathways in, but this reciprocal kind of exchange of knowledge. What that also does is it removes power imbalance. That's right. And culturally, for me, power imbalance is something, be aware of the shadow you're casting at all times. That's almost something I over-engineer to kind of show how accessible I am. And I'm out on the floor, because when you don't think enough about what a perceived power imbalance could be, and particularly for that next generation, or even the older generation,

11:18who are equally as worried and concerned about what will this mean for me? There's my job going to be around. I don't want to stop working. Gone are the days where people just want to give it up. So I probably haven't answered all your question properly. I think your question was broader, and talks to the dynamics and the environment and sort of what you're seeing and what's working well and what we could do in beta. But it sounds like it's a lesson in intergenerational learning, and facilitating that in a way that people feel comfortable and safe. And with the more mature generation, which I'm probably heading closely towards, actually, but with the more mature generation, one of the things that we've been exploring is what support can we offer to them if they do want to keep working? But in a way that's very different to today. Because they have such incredible, like you said, this industry that I'm in, has such inherent knowledge and context and legacy. And you can't do any of that digitisation, automation, you know, you put whatever buzzword you want across it without that context.

12:20So enabling them to work differently, think differently, be part of the workforce differently. There's so many different ways you can be creative, is what I'd say. So less policy, just more creativity. And what I love about having worked at Spark and seeing from the outside, you're very good at taking what are challenging, employment relations, sort of context here in New Zealand and going, how do we work with that and make it work for us and our people? So I love that innovation and I love that creativity. Yeah, thank you. Awesome. We do try. You have had a fabulous career and long may that continue. Great to see you in the role that you're in and the impact that you've had for the length of time that you've had. No doubt to be effective in your role. You need to understand customers, finance, technology, risk, all the things that make an enterprise leader a good enterprise leader. So if this is a thinking, gosh, how do I be a great CEO? How do I be a great enterprise leader? What's the secret? Oh, wow. I'm still searching. Okay. No, it isn't every day and every way and it does change a lot.

13:22Like I do think a lot about, you know, any given moment. So say I'm in with the board. Like now how I think about my board interactions compared to when I was first a CPI, CPI is just worlds apart. But they're still filled with, how could I think about that differently? Or have I represented customers well in here? Do the board who are, you know, two degrees of separation removed from what's going on? Do they understand enough about what I've been curious about? So I do still bring it back to, I'm insanely curious about what's going on. You know, last week I was in Christchurch. If you said, someone said to me, what did you do as CPI? I couldn't actually tell you exactly what I did in that day as a watt. But I know what came out of it. And that was, I learned a lot more about what's happening with our customer profile and demographic in Christchurch. I learned a lot more from our team on the front-line around what they need to serve those customers. So it's more equation steps as opposed to, I got to know everything about customers.

14:22And I do think the secret because I learnt this the hard way when I was an HR business partner when I was, let's call it 30, that was a long time ago. Maybe it was before that actually, it was probably more mid-twenties. I thought the secret was to know everything inside and out before anyone asked me. And I held on to that for years. So I would learn. It's tough place to be. I learned collective agreements and progressive enterprises, all probably ten of them at the time, from front cover back cover, in case somebody asked me something about what was in that document because that was my job in HR. So I almost, that became a self-affilling prophecy for years until magically I realised it's about the people you surround yourself with. And the other secret source is the power of asking incredible questions. So I'm not afraid to ask the question, even if it's something that's not in my territory. So in an executive meeting I'll go, well why do we think that about brain sponsorship? As a purely like, why do we?

15:23You know, it's not an understanding. It's not trickery or, so, yeah, secret sources, not afraid to ask the questions. You don't need to know the answers and just be out there with the people who are actually delivering on all of those facets of being an enterprise leader. And presumably, collaboration and allies across that exact top table, because if you want your engagements, have every results to show up that we are an innovative, collaborative organisation, you want that to be happening right from the top. And you want it to be raw model, right? Yeah. And I think executive tables are really a really fascinating study in other themselves. Like everybody talks about governance and studying governance in New Zealand. And I do think there's quite a lot to unlock at an executive table level because you can't feel the accountability for your domain. And that's why you're there, right? And you take that really seriously and you're passionate about on your self problems and that. And then you come together to your point to collaborate on enterprise wide outcomes. That isn't always a really organic natural shift for, let's say, six to eight humans

16:27sitting around a table trying to move really fast. So it does require ongoing work, it does require ongoing kind of shared understanding, chicken, it does mean surfacing some things between each other that sometimes people don't like doing. So I don't think it's an easy unlock. And that is the role of the CPI was to try and help unlock that. And but sometimes you find yourself sort of in the middle of that as well. Indeed. So there's probably the hardest part of the job is balancing. Being the enterprise leader, being a really great member of the team, helping that team to build what they need to do, looking after your own team from a domain expertise point of view and then caring about all of the stakeholders, including investors. I love building on that. I'd love to understand your kind of philosophy, your vote, Shar. We kind of get pegged as these employee advocates or, you know, decision support pegs, you know, the cry. I said I had to do this.

17:28What really fundamentally when it all boils down, what is our role now and into the future from your perspective? Yeah, I fundamentally believe it boils down to partnership. So and that again looks different on any given day. I think people confuse partnership with you almost need to try and align on everything or get to the same outcome. But it's not it's not called people pleasing for a reason. And so being a truly great partner is the same for finance. So I don't think we're special in HR. It'll be the same for legal or any other kind of centres of excellence that are there to enable the organisation to go faster or be better or deliver more. So in that partnership realm though, I don't know about you, but in our personal lives we're certainly not experts at partnership all day every day, exactly. And we, you know, some of us learn more about ourselves in our personal lives around partnership. Sometimes we're some really hard circumstances and situations.

18:29And I think that having done that in my personal life is kind of unlocked more of that fundamental belief I have that HR is about partnership. And that means knowing who you are, knowing what you believe in, having a point of view really open to hearing the other perspectives and points of view, not being wedded to. This is the solution and we've got to go there. And you know, so if we spend as much time I guess worrying about being a great partner in our personal lives as we did, you know, applying that to how we show up every day inside an organisation it possibly wouldn't be that hard. We probably apply some of the same techniques or principles or ideas and thoughts. Yeah, so I don't have anything more fancy than that about HR. I mean, I have some things that I think it is not and shouldn't be, but then there's some things that have to hold true, like, you know, talking to someone about health and safety. You've got to have a foundational layer of have you got the right checks and balances in place. So you've got to be the custodians or the guardians of making sure those foundations are in place

19:34from which to build the partnering house. Gotcha. But they're probably 10% of their equation if done well and the 90% is that human interaction and understanding and holding each other to account. So many places we could take that chat and lots of life lessons learned that apply in your personal life or your professional life. I hear you. I hear you. One thing I think that every HR professional should do, and I've got really hooked on it lately, is mediation qualification. Oh wow. There's five days. It was quite an in-depth thing. I did mine through Amons, the association of medias, I've tried it the other way around it goes, and Resolution Institute, I mean Braw as well. The reason I'm saying this was that everything you just described about being in that exact team meeting, being that piggy in the middle, not necessarily having all the answers, and that in a pressure cooker environment, when you're trying to make a decision quickly, your job, and it's the same with click to bugging. It's the same with any sort of facilitated, most sort of dispute or grief as a conflict.

20:36It's about going, could your perspective and could your perspective both hold true? And how do we find a way forward, or a world where both of those things can be true? And I think there's a lot in the area on dignity and respect and understanding each other's perspectives and feeling validated, and all the things that are kind of tricky to navigate when you're going at pace. But I just learned so much about communication doing that, and constructive problem solving, you know, to find the problem in the 98, rather than just ideating and irritating people, because you're one stupid head of what we're actually, what's the record we're trying to solve for you? Getting people on the page? Yeah. I probably can't expect to hear that approach or framework being really useful, which I'll probably go and have a look at it, although I don't like the idea of mediating. But it could definitely be useful every day. You probably do, every day. But I think, and they would have, I'm sure, covered this. For me, it starts with just noticing. So your earlier question was, where had you stay across all of that enterprise-wide,

21:36kind of knowledge in people's needs? And more often than not in any meeting, I'm more listening for what people didn't say, or the art saying, or the quiet, or some of the conditioned behaviours, we might all have, we all have them, you know, we'll all look down at a laptop at a point in time, or we'll type, or we'll be on our phone, or all these terrible things that technology have done to us. But I think having regard for everyone in the room, or another thing that I'm always really conscious of, I think it stems back to my childhood, actually. It was, you know, when you used to pick who's going to be on watch team, and they'd be like, oh, take Lisa, I'll take Heather, and you'd never want it to be the last. Well somehow it's translated in a kind of a cultural leadership ideology. I have that if we're bringing leaders or people into the room, I'm one of the first to say, oh, you can sit here, or there's lots of seats, or do you know everybody? Yeah, of course. Because when I first joined the organisation that many years ago, 13 years, I can remember being HR in a room and being referred to, or that's HR, not even by my name.

22:38And I can remember being in meetings where nobody even asked who I was a while was there. So this sort of regard for humans and human nest does not mean we're ever any of us, including Megan and Gettipurfit, but it is that regard. Yes. I think that mediation framework, that's what that's giving you, is regard to two different spectives. Perspectives and worth dignity and respect. So in a very collaborative, mona enhancing. Absolutely. Right, very, very human. I feel like HR, human intelligence, needs to be the thing in the future, rather than necessarily AI. Shall we move on to the tech, though? What do we need to know? Can we take or leave when it comes to technology? And how's it going to impact the way in which we work? Look, I think when we're talking about it, the pace and the scale at which it could disrupt is the thing that's worrying most of us. And I don't know that it worries me. It intrigues me often. I'm like, wow, that's totally different to the other day. I was sitting with someone yesterday at a board meeting,

23:38and we were trying to create, for not for profit, we were trying to create a new dashboard for the trustees to quickly see the kind of five key barometers. And I said to the person next to me, I said, oh, I'm sure AI can do that for us. She said, I'm just going to take a photo and upload it into co-pilot now. So we were sort of bystanders in the subcommittee so we could be on the peripheral of the meeting. Well, within 10 minutes it had created a dashboard. Wow. That was just everyone was like, wow. So I think that there's a lot that we need to know about the technology and not necessarily how it did that, but the fact that it can and how can I. So there's sort of a baseline skilling that's incumbent on all of us. Now, will we keep pace with the pace that we won't? So then it's incumbent on all of us to have someone who is deeply or morbidly fascinated on the tech side. So I'm a firm believer in a tech mentor. I have one who's moved overseas, but we haven't even managed to have a first session because we're too busy

24:38worrying about the human intelligence that goes with. But I think that, again, that's part of me taking a responsibility for trying to keep pace with how that tech skilling needs to go. Tech mentors are brilliant idea. But I think the bigger part, and you mentioned the human intelligence, that's often not even really to... I was starting to be talked about, like, actually, if you're going to be using AI, actually, more of the sludgery and drudgery, as I call it, then your context and your decision making and your insight generation and your relatability with others, these are all the things you need to dial out. So we are actually putting that firmly in the middle of the new leadership architecture that we're building. And we're mainly focusing in on our middle layer of leaders because I feel like often they can become the forgotten ones. And actually, that human intelligence to be able to influence up to a senior leader, to be able to influence out to a multitude of stakeholders, because workforce is a partner, vendors, their own peers, and then down through their teams,

25:40that's the begun lock, right? And so really putting the attention on the human intelligence components with that baseline level of everybody does need to know enough to be able to use the technology that for me is what's going to close the divide. Very good. We are very grateful to Spark for your products and services. You just keep New Zealand running. And I know that Spark is a reasonably well-resourced, ludge enterprise by New Zealand standards. What could smaller New Zealand businesses learn, knowing how you want to supercharge the economy and grow that sector? What can smaller New Zealand businesses learn from Sparks approach around technology and for leadership, even if they don't have those resources? Yeah, well I think the positives gone of the days where you need to be a big organisation to invest in a massive leadership development programme and curate it within an inch of its life. Like everything's moving too fast for that. So actually what we all have access to, even by your great

26:40podcast is little glimmers of, if I'm thinking about developing, I don't know, there might only have two leaders, there might just have one leader. What are the avenues that I can use to unlock that, because it brings a bit to that earlier point where I was saying it's not a big elaborate, you know, do this, do that, you need to go and do a PhD and everything. For a lot of us in those small medium businesses, that's about just unlocking the potential of up person, which actually is well within our reach. Now you can look to Spark for ideas about what some of those things could be, and actually we're very giving with, here's the ways we've done it, I wouldn't recommend this to a friend, this was way too big even for us. So I think it's not just learning from Spark, but learning the learnings from Spark. I'm very accustomed to saying we really didn't nail that, or that took us, you know, four times in total epic fail, but we knew it, there was something in it so we kept going. So I think picking up those nuggets is available. Actually even the text skill inside, the micro credentials,

27:43this is not meant to be an editorial, but I was in Napier with the charted accountants a few weeks ago, and they asked us some of the question, well you're all big, what can we do to get ahead of this AI curve? When it's just me, you know, processing my payroll and you know, Sandra out the back and bobs out, you know, and that just real New Zealand economy stuff. And I said, well actually the best way is it's 10 weeks, it's a micro credential, it's designed for a small business owner, it's a hundred and don't quite me, 170 bucks, and it would be the best way for you to feel even just a little bit more empowered about what's going on, so it won't solve everything, but I'm absolute firm believer in journey of a thousand miles, which it will feel like for a small to medium business at their pace, just start with one thing. You know, another friend who owned a business, they said, just start using Gemini to do some of your thinking when you are out and about, that can take away, that now they're probably used Gemini more than I do. So it is like spark and me personally, it's about paying it forward.

28:46I came from a family of small to medium business owners, I always thought when I went into spark, I don't know about you, I was like, wow, where are all these people from? And what are they doing? I mean, we're a much leaner, nimble organization now for a lot of different reasons, but you know, that can feel overwhelming when you look at that from the outside. You think, oh yeah, well you can, because you've got cash. But actually, you know, if I look at the size of my team and what we manage to produce that's quality and meaningful, on a pro-rated basis, it would probably be similar to running a small to medium business. Yeah, yeah, in every penny counts, no matter what size does. It's so good for sure. Okay. You spoke about moving well-being from sort of each of the organization into the way that the organization operates. I've got a sort of a well-being without the woo type saying. But what's worked, and what have you learned, doesn't work? How do we kind of maintain our resilience in the context of all this change? Yeah. So if I talk about what worked or what we did to help it to work,

29:50it was actually during COVID, and for me it was about the privilege that some of us might have to have access to people to help us with our well-being, whether that be in that moment, I really needed a psychologist personally, and I had this moment where I thought, wow, I can just go get me one of those. I mean, there was a long wait, but I could go and get me one of those. And then I was thinking about the pandemic and the context of our organization like everybody, what will happen? What if there isn't an ability to do what we're doing right now? What if people's families overseas, all those living in the future? What if all that happens? So we devised a way to take, I guess, some of our other well-being spend that we had that maybe didn't have such a clear, tangible access point, and we brought into psychologists some to the spark staff, but with independence. And then we were kind of available to, you know, for people to access in really confidential ways,

30:51but without having to do anything other than go onto the internet and contact them and know that spark provided for them to have a number of sessions. So that's been a real privilege and a joy to see that we didn't spend any more money, we repurposed the way we were doing other things to have a bigger impact. Alongside them, we got them to train up or kind of spark certify what we call our Mahita, which is then your trusted, reliable peer network having a conversation like this in a way that people know, oh, this person knows about what's going on around here or they know me or they know enough context to be useful to have a well-informed, well-executed conversation. And so training those individuals up through our business, giving them three to four hours every week dedicated to that, so it's like a hat. So they've got the capacity to do it. So they've got the capacity and the commission. And then that was also the way that we were able to as we changed services or we changed, we moved to clear-head, we were able to have those people talk to people

31:51meaningfully about, it's not just a service that sits on the intranet, he's what it is, and then they became the deliveries of the services. So I guess embedding was the big key. Yeah, and connecting it. So often I'll do a cultural review and I'll sort of say to people, you know, surely you've got access to employee assistance and they go, you wouldn't believe how hard it is. I have to scan a QR code and then I have to send a message to a bot and then the bot has to decide whether or not I'm going to get assigned a cycle to these barriers, right? So I think different service providers and like you say, bringing it from the fringe of the organisation into the heart of the organisation, equipping the organisation, helping people connect others to services that they need, plug-dance, which is a different way to put folks, you know, not everybody needs or wants to have a psychologist in this moment but in a few moments time or in a years time they may find themselves so knowing that it's there is also a source of comfort and security that, when my life changes, which it does, then I know that it might not be a counsellor on a particular subject that I need from a more platform provider, it's actually I need a person to really help me with this.

32:56What I have for more questions here, I'll swing through which are these most relevant. I suppose reflection and practical advice, what's a sort of practice that you have developed or a habit that you've developed that's helped support your either resilience or effectiveness that you think has been official or might work for other people. Oh wow, I'm just going through a reset of my habits at the moment, have you made old James Clear, don't you, on our habits? I did subscribe actually, yeah. I think I've got his workbook every day. I've got his workbook. What's a habit? I do have a few new ones so I've never been particularly good at the continuity of what people call self-care, I just call this like moments of sanity, whatever they are for you. One of them is I do get up quite early. Now I'm not the five AM, I've journaled and I've worked out and I've done all those things,

33:57although that's something for me to aspire to for my habits, but that early hour from five to six and because they have a little person who kind of needs some of my brain capacity before the day starts, that actually just gets me into a place of I have perspective about what the most important things are, even if it's only for the morning. These are the things that need to be nailed for this morning, and it's just my kind of quiet time. I actually this morning I got up and the other that I didn't even know I was doing, so it wasn't by design, but it's become a habit is I'll go outside and look at the sky. I don't know it's the sort of expansiveness that makes me feel a little less overwhelmed or incumbent, because I can feel like that when I wake up some mornings, like if you haven't had a good sleep or you haven't let it go the day before, so that expansiveness, I don't know how it sounds very woo, doesn't it? But it's kind of working for me. I think the other bit was I'm a total advocate for reform of Pilates, honestly, that habit,

34:59even though some weeks I might struggle with two sessions, it's still part of my fabric that has changed the way I think about strength in my body, or just understanding where pain points are being in a room with people who are like we're all collectively there for just good, like it's a community feel. So I mean, I probably have more habits than I realise. There's one at work that I do and that is nine times out of 10 on any given day in the office, which is most days for me, I will go and see my team where they are, because there's too many meetings if I don't make that a pointed habit. I may not be able to actually have an eyeball moment or just a you know eyebrow raised or I'm here, you know, we got this kind of thing, so that's a definite work practice habit that I have. Nice. And leading on from that, how do you preserve your own judgement and kind of humanity when the work is relentless?

36:01I'm assuming the work is a bit busy, but sometimes we can just get busy, big busy. So how do we kind of preserve who we are in that? Yeah, I'd look, I've never really had an issue with an compass about who am I? I think the days when I do struggle with that would be days where I feel probably that I've over subscribed to trying to help everyone with everything. And because I'm conscious that I can do that, it's actually become less of an issue, because I can almost clock it when it's happening on the way through. Whereas before I wouldn't catch it tall, you know, that night or the next day or the end of the week, now I can kind of see it happening in situ, you know, like watching the movie of you in the moment. So that's having that almost as a mantra like, why do you feel this way right now? Well, generally bring me back to because you're trying to do way too much for everybody and the only person who's going to let anyone down now trying to do that is probably yourself.

37:07So I think that for me is the main way that I mean, I am very cognitively flexible. So I quite like the juggle struggle in the head, which again could lead me to doing too much of that. But also I would say my team know that about me and I'm very open with all of my four goals. And you know, this is what you're probably going to see and when you see it, I don't even need to say to them, when you see it cooler, they just know it's happening. So I'll get a lot of, what can I do to help you with that? And so having that kind of real close companionship that you deeply understand each other is later and it's useful. Nice. Okay. And if you had a room full of HR professionals, they were all aspiring to future CPO type of careers or even just your team. What are some of the nuggets of wisdom that you'd pass on either from your lived experience or just in general what you're anticipating for the future? They need to do or be to equip themselves. Yeah, don't underestimate how much time you need to invest on connecting with people properly.

38:11And that requires kind of trust and vulnerability and judgment, but just connection for connection sake, not connection because you need someone to help you deliver a task. So I'm big on task versus orienting towards, we're all trying to move in the same direction, therefore you're going to need some people. And that then leads to what's the quality of your relationship building skill set, because that is a skill set. That is, you're right. A lot of people sort of lead that a bit to chance or maybe don't think about it. And again, that requires a lot of self-reflection and awareness on any given day. And my car is probably, because I do a lot of a bit commute. The car is the moment when I reflect on those interactions and what was my intent, what was my impact, how is that helping to build relationships or foster or not? So those two for sure, the other bit I would say is, hasten slowly, I do say this a lot. So I look at everything as a system all the time.

39:12And some people call it a systems theory, systems think, you know, I'm not big on academic kind of models, but you know, it is that. And I think being very aware as an HR professional or if you want to be a CPO, there's not going to be a lot of people in any community. And people in any given room, at any given moment, who will know how to do that? And knowing how to do that requires you to hasten slowly as opposed to be a point solution. So it's really easy in HR to get caught up in a moment with a leader, you're partnering with them, they're like, we've got to fix this, they're really motivated to fix it. You really want to please them, do the right thing. Just hasten slowly does not mean going slowly. It just means pause and consider and think about downstream, upstream, over there, who can help with this. What's a perspective we haven't got? And it might only take five extra minutes than saying yes. Probably only needs to take five. Sometimes it only takes 20 seconds once you get really adept at it.

40:12But I would say be the person who's the systems thinker in the room and join all the dots for people who will want to get to the outcome. And that means hasten slowly. Nice. Very good. You've been incredibly generous with your time. Are there any other thoughts on nuggets of wisdom that you had prepared that you wanted to share with us that you haven't had a chance this year? Oh, no, I'm really grateful for the opportunity. I think I can see a future where I'd love to actually have rooms. I think you and I talked about that of HR professionals who might be thinking, is this the path I want to be on forever or do I want to grow into a different just to kind of go, it is all this learned wisdom and experience. And you don't even know that you've learned it until you've made quite a few mistakes along the way. Not with any huge impact, but you know, like passing that on is super, super important. Thank you. We appreciate you. We appreciate your mahi. We appreciate your contribution to the profession. Keep being absolutely fabulous. Thanks, Lisa.