179. Leadership Pet Peeves: Mel Loy and Prina Shah's Sh*t List

SPEAKER_02 0:03

This podcast is for people who know that the workplace can and should be better and are ready to do something about it. You learn practical ways to change organizational cultures and human behavior without passwords, without box teaching, without performative leadership. I am the boss of Freena Shark Consulting, working with executives, leaders, and teams to create work cultures and environments that actually work for people. I am Freena Shark. I specialise in organizational culture change and human behavior change. I am all about making work better with people who give a damn. So if you think I can help, contact me via LinkedIn. I am here to help you to find decent ways to change the workplace. Let's do this.

SPEAKER_03 1:02

Mel, what do you expect? Words. What are you an expert in?

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Well, uh, you'd think words, but also today. So that could be that could be challenging. Uh change comes is my area of expertise. And uh some of you are joining us on Prina's podcast, Ways to Change Workplace, or my podcast, Less Chatter, More Matter. And so I bring a lens of uh communication, obviously, but also a background in behavioral science and change management. So we're bringing that lens to these conversations. And this is number five of our five-part series on all things leadership and what we see, what we don't see, that we want to see more of. And this is the finale. So we are delving deep today, and it's gonna be a fun one.

SPEAKER_03 1:49

It is now Mel sent me in this topic a while ago, and I was like, yes, Mel, I've got a lot to say on this. Do you wanna just do you wanna describe what the topic is?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

It is our pet peeves when it comes to leadership. Yeah, and there's a lot of them. We've had to we've had to narrow it down.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

I've been I've been preparing for this one because I've got like four or five pages of noise. Even though you are a comms expert, I really want to ask you about this one. I'm gonna chuck you into the deep end of thing. Yeah? Okay. DML, this is like an agony out session. Okay, this really is because I've got a real life situation happening with a couple of clients. DML, I have an issue with a couple of clients where I really need your advice. They have decided, this is all of last year, they took off the phone numbers of everyone's um signatures. So from now on, you cannot phone anyone, right? Wow. I find that really challenging as an external person purely because I'm all about the conversation because an email ain't gonna land. Internally, I had a conversation with um the beautiful person, you know, at the front of the desk who I meet each time. So she's the face of the organization, in my opinion. So she's a receptionist. And I asked her, what's this about? Blah blah, I won't name her name. And she said it's really giving her a lot of annoyances as well, because these people don't have their phone numbers on the bottom. So when she goes to search on the online directory, uh staff directory, people have taken off their phone numbers there as well, Mel. What's happening and why is this happening?

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Talk to me. Oh, honestly, I think it's a misguided attempt at efficiency. That's that's where I think this is coming from. Uh, you know, people and privacy probably as well. Yeah, particularly if an organization has ever ever had any issues with that before. Like I I remember back in my corporate days, my phone number was it was on my emails and those sorts of things, but it was put out on a Facebook group. Um, as it was a group that was protesting about, I think it was Murdoch papers and you know, Murdoch just being misogynist and yeah, you know, the usual. Uh and because I was actually my number and uh email address were on the website of the company as a media contact. So they've taken that as media meaning advertising. So their whole thing was we need to pressure companies to stop advertising in these papers. Now I had nothing to do with advertising. That was the brand and marketing department, I was corporate affairs. Uh, but they had pulled together this spreadsheet, put it on their Facebook group uh with 60,000 people on there or something. And myself and a colleague just started getting bombarded with text messages and emails and phone calls. And I was trying to figure out what the hell's going on. You know, it took me like a day or so to unravel this. But I mean, for that reason alone, sure, take your number off if that's going to be the way it's used. And I've so I can understand people being gun shy about it. But by the same token, unless you have a viable alternative like, you know, uh like a book a call link on your signature where you can actually book in time to have a phone call, then I agree it's it's not a great look from a customer service point of view that I can't reach my stakeholder in this business. Yeah. Uh but also, yeah, it's gonna annoy the crap out of the receptionist who now just becomes a switchboard every day. And it doesn't say much about the transparency and openness of your business either. And I think we mentioned this is in another episode. Anything that sends a message is a form of communication. So taking phone numbers off your email, what kind of message does that send to people internally and externally? About who you are as a company and your brand. Uh, and that's that's what I would be really thinking hard about. So either provide a viable alternative or put those numbers back on there.

SPEAKER_03 5:46

Genius, genius. Okay. Uh the receptionist, I'm gonna throw another one at you, still in still in the same vein of the topic that we're talking about. Phone numbers have gone, and the receptionist said to me, I didn't even consider the privacy thing, and your experience is horrible, but a good, horrible pace study of why this happens. Lessons were learned. And I need lessons learned a lot. The receptionist's opinion is that they've taken people's phone numbers off there because so many people are uncomfortable with having a freaking phone call now. That doesn't surprise me. Can we talk to me more?

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Look, I'm a little bit like that too, only because I'm so busy. So I'd rather somebody just text me and go, Are you available? Because I will if I am, absolutely, I'll call them. You know, if not, I'll just say not right now. You know, that sort of thing. Um so for me it's just a politeness thing, but I do see that a lot, and I'm sure it's been spoken about at length about younger generations in particular, avoiding phone calls um as much as they can, preferring text messages. Yeah. Again, you've got to balance that with well, what's actually good for the business though. And yeah, it in this case, I don't know whether it would be good to the business. So I would really be interested to to unravel what are the outcomes they're trying to achieve by doing this.

SPEAKER_03 7:07

Brilliant question. So, what are the outcomes you're trying to achieve? Do you try to achieve by doing this? I feel, and this is just my judgmental opinion because it's really frustrating me from both of these organizations, is that someone's just had this ninja reaction and they've gone to like this let's placate everyone and let's just remove phone numbers as a result situation. But yeah, interesting. So, organizations, if you're listening and if you've done this, really consider why you've done this. Yeah, but also tell us why.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

We'd love to know. We're genuinely curious.

SPEAKER_03 7:36

Help us out.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Yeah, we'd love to know.

SPEAKER_03 7:38

Brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

Well, there we go. That's one. Take your phone numbers off. We give me a pet peeve of yours. Let's discuss. All right. One of my top five is communication versus broadcasting. And what I mean by this is I go into an organization and we're we're talking about the change comms. And one of the questions I ask is, how much do people already know about this?

SPEAKER_04 8:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

And they'll be like, oh, we mentioned it in a town hall six months ago, or it was in an email a few weeks ago. So they should all be aware. And yet you've broadcasted a message, that doesn't mean you've communicated a message. So there's no understanding. People haven't, it's not memorable, it hasn't sunk in. And when you consider that the amount of noise that we are getting every single day in our in our lives, it's ridiculous. Like the average person gets 121 emails a day. Times that by how many inboxes you might be managing, how many days a week, then text messages, teams, chats. I mean, the productivity that's lost by those workplace apps is huge. Um, you know, social media content and messages, etc., etc. So we are being bombarded. And you think that something you mentioned off the cuff in a town hall six months ago is going to be remembered, keep dreaming. It's not happening. Um, and the other thing is too, yes, you might be aware of it because you're living and breathing it every day.

SPEAKER_04 9:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

But your audience isn't. So they don't have that sense of context, but also nobody cares as much about your project as you do. Nobody cares. Sorry. Yep. Uh so that's kind of the gripe. But I guess why it's a problem is what that does is when you just think you've ticked a box and you've communicated and you've actually broadcast, you're slowing down change makes it really hard to get through because people don't have the depth of understanding that you need. They don't have the change readiness that they need. They don't understand how you know this work aligns to your strategy or your purpose as a business. You're going to have poor engagement. So the fix is really think about your audience first and then tailor the approach to meet their needs, meet them where they're at. All good comms start with who, not with why. The why's different for everybody. But your who helps to direct, well, what's the best channel to reach that those people? What's the best voice to use, the most influential voice? What's the timing that's going to work best for them? How do we position this messaging with those people? All those things. So that's my pet peeve number one. That's brilliant.

SPEAKER_03 10:14

And I'm sure I I'm gonna add to this. So once you really work out that, so consider the audience first and then meet them where they're at. So you've talked about the channel, you talked about the voice, you've talked about the time, um, and how to position the message. And you know, some parts of your workforce might be far more visual. Yes. Some might be far more auditory. Uh, and so if you really consider it in this aspect, you can really, really target it, target your messaging in the right way. And then another thing I'd add as well is when you target your messaging in this way, you could reuse this messaging as well. Eat, sleep, and repeat. Because as they say, with important communication, you have to communicate, communicate, communicate, repeat, repeat, repeat, communicate. Right. But the more information you have in different various formats, the better it is for you to share your message and land your message to the different ears that we all have within the workplace, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:08

100%. I always say repackage in three different ways. Because repetition is great, but after a while it becomes white noise if you're just saying the same thing in the same way. Yeah. So repackage the same message, you know, maybe it's yeah, an audio message, maybe it's a graphic, as you talked about, or an email, whatever it might be.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Um, but the other part of communication rather than broadcasting is also checking people actually understand it. So again, what are the feedback loops that you're putting into this? How are you checking that that comms landed that people actually are aware and do actually understand? And asking a question like, do you understand this change? Most people are gonna go, yep. Because they're like, sure, whatever. Yeah, I totally do. You know. But then when you actually ask a proper question like, tell me what you think this change means to you, that's when you get to, oh no, they've got completely the wrong end of the shtick here, or great, things have landed. Either way, you get really good information about what you keep doing, what you stop doing, what you change. Perfect.

SPEAKER_03 12:12

So it's user testing early on from your comms perspective to see if that comms is actually firstly landing. Yes and number two, being understood.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Uh-huh, exactly. Now, Karina, I know that one of your pet peeves is professional ghosty.

SPEAKER_03 12:28

Yes, CD. Tell me all about it. Professional ghosting. Mel, I am sure you have had this. I have had this for sure, right? So you email someone and then you just see it nothing. Nothing back. No, I really had this in my corporate days. As a consultant, no, I don't really get it as much because I work with people who want to work with me. Corporate days though? What the hell? And you know, like I've been out of the workforce now for a similar time to you, actually, nearly five, six years. So I know why it happens, okay? So people are super busy. You've talked about this, I've talked about this. People can be avoidant. So hey, I'll just avoid. Ignore that email. It's not a priority. Uh the ownership is unclear as well. So I won't email. But professional ghosting kills me. Um, have you come across this first off?

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Yeah, absolutely. And you still occasionally get it as a consultant where um, especially when you give it to a proposal. And so you've had like multiple conversations with people. Oh yeah. You spend hours putting this proposal together and then silence. Nothing. Yep. And you follow up and you've like, yeah, okay. Cool. Um, but yeah, absolutely in the workplace. Uh seen it before when you've asked for things and don't get it or whatever. So yeah, totally get it.

SPEAKER_03 13:45

I just think it's freaking rude.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

It can be, yeah. I think a couple of the other reasons why, uh, one of the big ones is the messenger effect. Tell me more. So basically, this is a bias that says who sends it matters more than what the content is itself. So if I don't like you, I don't know you, I don't trust you, there's a good chance I'm just not going to do what you want me to do. I'm just going to ignore it. Whereas if the same request and same message was sent from somebody that I like and that I know and trust, okay, I'll probably do it. So I think the messenger effect has a big part of that. Uh, but also when it comes to things like proposals, for example, maybe people are just shying away from it because of, oh, I don't want to let people know they're rejected, you know. And it's like, I'm not gonna cry. I'd rather just get some feedback on why you didn't select me so I can think about that and you know. And move on. Um But yes, I do think the messenger effect would have a big part of of that as well. Okay, that's fascinating.

SPEAKER_03 14:48

Um So how do we fix a prena? How do we fix it? How do we fix it? I think it's really anal. And that I used to speak this with my tuning, but you know, working in HR teams, my team could not afford not to respond. And sometimes, unfortunately, that's what happened because of the fact that you know we had our own individual mailboxes, then we had two other mailboxes that we were managing. Well, things slid. That's the other reason it's not true. It's human beings. When it's it off the doubt. Human, human, human uh yeah, error. Absolutely. So in that instance, especially for the service email mailboxes that we had, we had um I set up just we have to respond within 48 hours. If we don't, then we need to get back to people to say, hey, email received, but we're working on it, or we'll get back to you at whatever time. Because you cannot leave people hanging, especially when you're a professional services team. That's one thing. Another thing as well, I mean, if you're finding this within the workplace, which I did with a couple of people, messenger effect, I think was the issue now. I've come to realize. I just walked up and had a conversation with them. So we'll can just have that conversation. Um, and I guess the third part as well now is knowing about the messenger effect, consider who actually sends that message. If it shouldn't be you. I mean, unfortunately, we work in this hierarchical situation where the messenger effect is especially prevalent because we've created these levels of seniority, you know? So someone else's voice might be far more important. So I could have then back in the day asked my manager to send that message instead of me. It would have completely landed differently.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Yeah, yeah. Or you recruit that person's manager to talk to them too. Because again, if I don't know your manager, then why would I care? Um, and be like, well, they're at another team asking me to add to my workload, why would I do that? Um, the other thing is too, you make a good point about group mailboxes because of course, internal comms, we always had 20 million of the bloody things. Um when it's everyone's job to monitor it, then it's nobody's job. So you can't just say, hey, that team needs to look after that mailbox. What's the system? So one owner a day, for example, you know, you're on a roster system. So it, you know, Mondays, Prina manages that monitors the mailbox, Tuesdays, Mel does it, Wednesdays, Leanne does it, whoever.

SPEAKER_04 17:02

Cool.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

That way it's you know that there's somebody who's actually responsible for it that day. You spread the load around, but you make sure it's done. Because it's like when you ask, you know, when it's an entire family's job to take out the rubbish, uh-uh. The rubbish doesn't get taken out.

SPEAKER_03 17:19

I don't know. So what I used to do going back to my corporate days is um there'd be one admin person looking at everything that's coming in, and then they'd allocate it to us based on you know the colour code. Like triaging sort of thing. I'd have Apple because it'd be more senior stuff, and then some other people who are working on change projects, the change stuff would be theirs, IR would be other people's. So yeah, yeah, that helped, but sometimes it didn't help when we were really busy as well. But we've got ideas of how to deal with it. Malapra would jump into another issue I almost now. Similar concept in terms of uh the messenger effect. I used to have one one one manager in my corporate days who said, Prina, if it's a difficult message that you're emailing about, then just wait until the end of the day on Friday and then press send. Who am I? Who am I? What are your thoughts on that one?

SPEAKER_00 18:18

That's a terrible piece of advice. Oh talk about avoidance, but also if you receive that thing on last thing on a Friday, you are gonna be stewing about it all weekend and come in on Monday completely pissed off or upset or angry or whatever, you've made it worse for yourself. You've made it so much worse. And also, if you have to send a bad message, why are you doing that by email? Why aren't you picking up the phone? Maybe because there's no phone numbers. But why aren't you having why aren't you having a conversation so that you can, you know, have that opportunity to explain and ha get them to ask questions and those sorts of things. Exactly. Terrible piece of advice. Don't do that. Don't do it.

SPEAKER_03 19:00

What not to do is remember also within the workplace, I always uh state that that witch in front of you is your teacher, the good stuff, but we especially learn from the bad stuff.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

That's really your big teacher there, isn't he? Yeah, 100%. I think it's a Nelson Mandela quote. Um, you know, we don't win or we fail, we win or we learn. And that to me is huge. Like I'm not a huge fan of that concept of, you know, safe to fail. Yeah. Because fail, it's one of those words, and I'm going off the beaten track a bit here, but fail is one of those words that feels like so final. But if you learned from that and you're able to apply that learning to something else, then it wasn't a failure. It was just an experiment. It was a learning. You move on. Um so yeah, anyway, that's a total tangent for me.

SPEAKER_03 19:48

No, no, no. I'm gonna work with you. So, one of your issues, one of your pepps, I know is the urgency miss. Oh, urgent. Chicken licking, the sky is falling. Talk to me about the urgency miss. What is it, first off?

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Oh, it is this idea that, well, everything is urgent. But the idea it it's urgent because it wasn't planned well in the first place. That's usually what happens. There's a bug. Go away. There's a lack of understanding around just getting organized, planning well, and thinking about sorry, there's a bug on my glasses. It might go away. No. I just saw, sorry again. So lack of organization, lack of planning, a lack of understanding of what is urgent. What does that actually mean? And things are really urgent. For most of us, we are not saving babies. We are uh there's a great saying, you're in PR, not ER. You know, what is urgent? And you'll know the thing is too, when you're constantly focusing on the urgent things and just putting out fires, basically, you can't focus on the strategic stuff, the big stuff that actually matters, because it stops being your work stops being about quality, it starts becoming about becoming about quantity and speed. And the result is you get people who are burned out, you get people who are really frustrated, who are totally disengaged. So the urgency myth is very real, especially around this time of year. Um we are recording this just before Christmas, and every year in my business, in the month or so leading up to Christmas, everything all of a sudden becomes urgent. And again, it's just a lack of organization, a lack of planning. And then you get to Christmas like I can wait till January. And that's what we got. Yeah. So if that's the case and it was never urgent in the first place. So what about you? Have you come across this? I've been a culprit of this.

SPEAKER_03 21:51

I've been a bad person. Okay, okay, okay. We live and learn story time, story time, story time. Working in corporate days. Of course I thought I Frigging important, and everything I sent out was urgent, you know. Uh, so let's talk about HR days. Okay, so when I worked internally, um, let's talk about so my team needs to manage the performance and development cycle. Every organization has that. It's a fun thing that everybody loves, not okay, and then we need to deploy all of our calls, all of our training, all of our upskilling uh just before the end of the financial year. The worst time of the frigging year to do it because all of the organizations are working on budget planning and strategic planning for the next financial year. They're also stressing out to close off this financial year, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then here comes HR merrily along to say, oh, let me add this other mandatory by the way to do uh onto your uh plate now as well. Bad, bad. The amount of feedback we got in relation to that and the amount of kickback we got as well was good learning. Okay. So missing point there. So I think sometimes you think in your little own little echo chamber of HR or PR, whatever world we're working in, that this is the most important thing. But the lesson here I'm trying to state is that we need to consider the whole cycle of the workplace and what's happening across the whole organization. And the larger the organization, the tougher this is, I know. Um, but we really need to try and align uh to the cycles of heavy uh peacantroughs.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

That's really good. No, it's such a good point. Uh, you know, thinking about what else is going on in their worlds that, you know, my thing is the least of their problems. In his wife, it is the least thing they're worried about. It's the thing that's so nice to have, the thing that can get shoved, you know, until later in the day or not at all. So I think from a fixing this problem uh perspective, as an organization, as a team, you need really need to get clear on your criteria of what is urgent and why versus what's not urgent and why. So as a team, is it urgent if okay, if people are going to be hurt or you know, damaged in some way, absolutely it's urgent. If it's a safety risk, 100,000%, that is urgent. Um if it is, you know, you got to do your performance review by the 30th of June, maybe that's not as urgent. When by your criteria, actually the budget for the next year is an urgent piece of work, because without that, you don't get these things. So I think it needs to align to A, people's safety, but B, well, what are the strategic priorities? If it aligns to a strategic priority, then yes, that's that's more urgent. But if it's not or hasn't got a a deadline on it, like, you know, a piece of equipment's going to be no longer supported as of a certain time, then why have you put a deadline on it? And what could you be spending your time on instead?

SPEAKER_03 24:55

Yeah. I think another big lesson I learned as well is to really work well and really be friends. First of all, get to know my internal comms partner, because she was a gone. Oh my gosh. And one thing that she knew, which the rest of us didn't know, is the full gamma of stuff that was, you know, being comms out. So if I was trying to compete against other stuff, she'd say, Prince, good luck, that ain't gonna happen. Recharge your project to land in a couple of months' time instead. So even before I started my projects, I just used to check in with her and and then allocate work around that, you know.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

That was actually that's a huge benefit when I've worked in internal comms teams, which I did for most of my career, is you do get this helicopter view of the world. And, you know, I've actually said to this has happened, no, I swear. Um, I had a person in HR come to me and go, we want to do the next engagement survey on X date.

unknown 25:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

And I'm like, do you realize and there's another team within your team that's aware of this that were actually kicking off a restructure on that same day, that same week. So that would be a terrible idea. But again, they're in the same team and they hadn't even connected the dots. So it's a really it's a nice place to be. But one thing I do want to tap into is the urgency thing. And I know one of your pet peeves is about the late night ping. Tell us about it.

SPEAKER_03 26:14

Someone's just had this brilliant idea, okay? And then they just send this email out or even sometimes messages out if we're really close, yeah. Boundaries. I mean, in Australia, we've got the what's the legal thing? Right to disconnect. Right to disconnect. Right? So we all have a right to disconnect after nine to five, whatever hours you work. But let me explain. So these late nine pings, these late night pings sometimes happen because if you know you're excited, you've just had this wonderful brave heart off an idea, and you can't just stop to wait until Monday morning to send that message through. Or it's poor planning. It's like shit, man. I just forgot, and now it's in my head, and I've gone wrong with this, you know, load in my head. Okay. So that's a big issue, and it's really unfair to dump that onto other people. Have you come across this in your world?

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Yes, and I have been a culprit.

SPEAKER_03 27:08

Yeah, yeah, we all have. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

There's a little bit different, I think, when you've got an understanding with somebody. So, for example, April and my team, we pee each other at all hours, but we know we don't have to reply. It's just like, oh my god, I've had an idea. Or I found this article or whatever, right? So there's no expectation of replying. Um, I try not to do that with clients and my staff on a weekend. Like I do uh schedule emails to go out early on a Monday morning instead. Can we just stop that?

SPEAKER_03 27:39

We can schedule emails, people. Let's remember, let's use technology.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

That's it. I think you can also do a delay send on some testing apps too, can't you? Yeah. Um and if I do get super excited about something, I'll just write myself a note. No, because I know I'm gonna I get excited and I'm like, I don't know. I have to write down or I forget about my exciting idea. Yeah. Um but also sometimes that's good. It gives me a bit of an incubation period before I go tell anybody about my idea. And I'm like, oh that was crap. But yeah, like I have been a culprit. Uh and again, I think this ties into that urgency piece as well, where every now and then I'll get a text message from someone doing, oh, I'm sorry it bother you, but but sorry, I'm sorry it bother you on a Saturday, but yeah. Uh and you go, Well, are you really that sorry if you're doing it?

SPEAKER_03 28:31

Why, why? I love that. So, but but but the trick around that is have the conversation on expectations so we can so I know that even if you text me on a Friday afternoon, I don't have to respond to it. That's just you sharing your ideas. And the big, big lesson here, we've got technology at our hand. Yes, let's use it for good. If you want to send that email, still send that email, but schedule it to land on a Monday morning or whatever time's appropriate, which is a work time. And we could do that with text messages as well, can't we? Hundred percent.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

It's not hard. It's not hard. Just ask a millennial to help you. Well, you know. Well, working. That's it. Yeah. AI or help. AI can do all sorts of things now. I mean that's another one that you I know is on your list. And these are another two pet peaks of mine. Oh, hedging and weasel words are jargon. Okay. Tell me all about it.

SPEAKER_03 29:26

Okay. Jargon. So TLA's three letter acronyms, first off, within an organization. When you walk in, oh my gosh, it's a different language. And I feel when you're new to a workplace, it takes around six to twelve months to actually understand the lingo and to really fit into that, okay? So jargon. And sometimes we just use jargon to make ourselves sound more important than we are. We don't need to do that. We really have to remember that there's a workforce that's super diverse, you know, from an age perspective, from a background, race perspective as well. So plain English is the best way. And I know from a comms perspective, especially rich in comms, what's the age that we need to write to?

SPEAKER_00 30:03

Is there is there specific? Yeah, so it it I mean guidelines uh differ a little bit, but it's typically around the 14-year-old or grade nine level. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:12

So imagine, imagine that we don't do that in the workplace. We don't write for, you know, a 14-year-old's brain. And we really should. We should really simplify all of our messages. Um, and then the other big, big bumper I have is hedging and weasel words. And by that I mean is at words that don't give you a complete answer and they leave you hanging, right? Yeah. Tell me more about this, because I know this is an issue for you.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Gosh, yeah. So there's probably a couple of things there. One is you made a really good point that people often use jargon and big words because they think it makes them sound smarter. And we know that's actually the opposite of what is true. There is a great piece of research from 2009 in regularism. Probably heard me talk about this before. Uh, but by a researcher called uh Daniel Oppenheimer. And the title of the paper was The Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilised Irrespective of Necessity. And the subtitle was The Problem with Using Long Words Needlessly. And so what he did was he had an academic article written in its original academic language, and then a plain English version of that same article. And different groups were asked to read a different version, and then they were asked to rate how intelligent they thought the author was. The people who had the plain English version rate the perceived intelligence as much higher than those who had the academic version. And it's simply because they could understand it. You know, how does anybody know how smart you are if they can't understand you? That's not gonna happen. Um and, you know, we live in a world where our audiences are so diverse. Everybody's got a different background. The story of literacy in our world is such a recent story. You know, we were never made to sit and read emails all day. Most we're at a, I think a literacy rate in Australia of about 99%. But of those, only about, I think it's about 15% are level four or five literacy. So that means that you can understand large words and read academic papers and those sorts of things. Most people are level one to level three. Okay. That's it. So literacy, yes, I can read and write, but to what extent? And when you think about how diverse our audiences are internally and externally, it doesn't make sense to use big words. Um the other thing you mentioned is, you know, the acronyms. I mean I've worked in organizations where they give you a big list of acronyms when they onboard you. Go here and go. Learn these. If you've learned like cool. Uh and again, plain English is useful. But um the other thing you mentioned was weasel words. And we see this all the time. And it's honestly, I feel like it's a form of backpassing, you know. It's trying to be vague because I don't want to be beholden to anything. Yeah. But people see through that and they look at you and go, what are you hiding? Yeah. You know, why are you trying to spin this? People aren't stupid. So the smartest thing you can do is be as concrete as possible, which builds confidence as well. You know, there's a lot of research around concrete language and how that does build confidence in the messenger and the message. Okay. Uh, but also use plain language, like you said, that level of about a 14-year-old. Yeah, you will reach about 80% of your audience at that level. When you start to write more than that, it drops off really dramatically.

SPEAKER_03 33:40

Okay. I'm gonna ask your help for something else as well, because I see this in the workplace. I'm throwing this one at you. Using the active voice and using the passive.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

Okay, so I have views. Yeah, so passive voice, please don't use it. It's very it's used a lot in academia. Um, but it's not very direct. It tends to make your sentences longer and more convoluted. So if you don't know, the formula for active voice is subject, verb, object. We used the computer, not the computer was used by us.

SPEAKER_04 34:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:16

So straight away you can see one's much shorter and much one's more, much more direct. Yeah. Uh and once you start to recognize active and passive voice, it becomes a red flag everywhere it pops up where you read it.

SPEAKER_04 34:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

And there's it's a really simple fix. Ask AI to fix it, go through your writing, go find all the passive voice, rewrite it as active voice. Don't even have to do it yourself anymore. Uh, but it is much more direct. It gets to the point, people are time poor. They don't have time to try and figure out what you're trying to say. I know. It's just it's just mumming mumbo jumbo.

SPEAKER_03 34:47

And it has no it has no ownership to it. That's it. It really bugs me. That kills me, especially. So I've got some examples here. So I've got a cheat sheet, because I really go off on one with many a kind of helping. So, uh uh uh a passive voice. A proposal will be written to clarify the project to the client. What the hell? When, what, how? Yeah. Versus, I will write a proposal to clarify the project to the client by the end of the week. Own it, girl. Own it. Yep. Okay. Uh now, stressy teams. An intern will be hired to handle the excess workload. Thanks. My department will hire an intern to help with the excess workload. My blah blah blah. Yeah. How much better is that for me to do that?

SPEAKER_00 35:33

It's so much more personal too. I guess instead of an internal, like a sounds like a robot.

SPEAKER_03 35:40

Yeah. And then uh last example, the event details were finalized at the meeting last week, versus we finalised the event details at the meeting last week, and this is everything that we learned. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

I think a big part of what we're talking about here is writing like a human. Yes. You wouldn't talk that way if you were having a conversation. Why do you think it's different if you're putting it in a written word? Um, and yes, of course, you need to be careful more careful in written stuff from a you know, uh re a l that a leak risk and those sorts of things. But you wouldn't talk about that in real life. So why would you write like that? You're talking to human beings, talk like a human. There's a bill.

SPEAKER_03 36:27

I'm gonna jump onto this one, okay. About pet peeves. I know one of yours is the meeting madness culture. Loads of people have talked about this, loads of people have written books about this. Tell me more about the meeting madness culture.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

What is it first off? Uh, it is when people spend more time in meetings than actually doing the work. So your your calendar is always chokers from eight in the morning till six pm at night. Maybe you're lucky if you've got a 15-minute pea break in there somewhere. And there's always a source of pride in that with some people. But you spend so much time in meetings and get loaded up with all this work, and then you have no time to do the work because you're always in meetings. So you know, it's one of those this meeting could have been an email type of scenarios. But what it means is like it happens because there's a lack of governance, first and foremost, around channels. So I did notice the other day, I can't remember who it was, I shared it on Instagram. One of the CEOs from one of a fairly big company has decided that uh he's of the same opinion. We're just in this meeting matter in this culture. So he no longer has meetings and he's told the whole organization we do not have meetings on Wednesdays and Fridays or something like that. Yep. It's like it's just wasting too much time. And he's absolutely right. Um, there is so much we could do differently, and in terms of that collaboration's important, all those sorts of things. But did you really have to meet for that? Um, and I think so it's a governance around your channels, yeah, lack of clarity on the priorities and the actions.

SPEAKER_03 37:59

Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Because if you're just meeting for a progress update, then there's something wrong.

unknown 38:04

That's it.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

Doesn't it move somewhere? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

Um go. Tell me your thoughts about meeting madness cultures, right? So often it's a it's a result of indecision. I just don't know what to do, therefore I'm just gonna drag Mel and her brain into the meeting, right? But then another thing I think people love to do is friggin' pontificate. Blah, blah, blah, blah, just get on with it and make a decision as well. Sometimes you yeah. Sometimes people can overdo it from a meeting perspective and collaborate and collaborate and over-collaborate, like just make the frigging decision and have a meeting about that, perhaps. Then it will be a richer conversation.

SPEAKER_00 38:45

Yeah. Uh look, and as somebody with ADHD, you've lost me in the first five minutes. If I can't see a point to this, and if you're just going over and over and over things again for the sake of you know, it's almost like if I repeat myself, then people will agree with me. That yeah, that's how some people use it. You made your point. We heard it, but we don't agree with it. Move on. Can we just get to why we're here?

SPEAKER_03 39:11

I mean in this conversation we haven't even talked about neurodiversity, we haven't talked about presentedism as well. The more we get, the more I'm gonna switch off, you know? And that all leads to a bad organizational culture as well, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 39:25

100%. And I think there's something else we need to think about with this meeting culture too, is how much does it play into proximity bias? So this has been uh proximity bias is something that has been much more, I guess, put in the spotlight since we've gone to a hybrid working model. Where the more time you uh spend visible to people, the more likely you are to get better jobs, better like a promotion, be handed the better work, even if you're not as productive or as effective as a person who works fully remote. Um it's it's proximity. You're just seeing you're seeing more. So, how much of this is just because we want to show up and go, We're here, I'm busy, look at me. As opposed to just get it done. Yeah, very performative if that's the case. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:17

Wow, wow, wow, wow. Okay, goodness. I love symmetry about that. I'm getting towards the same kind of conversation. My mind, expet peeve. No owner and no next step. And this often happens in those crappy meetings that we just talked about.

SPEAKER_00 40:33

Have you come across this? Oh, totally. And it's one of the things I do at the end of meetings, and I started being a lot more harsh. Well, not harsh, I guess just more direct about it uh over the last few years, even before that. We're just ended the meeting, right? So who's doing what? And then you um no no no who's doing what? What like what are we actually doing? And when are we doing it by? And you know, that does then force people to actually think. Sometimes though it kicks off a whole other conversation. I've I've then you're like, why am I doing it? Um but yeah, absolutely. Like if you've booked a meeting without a point in the first place, then of course it's just gonna go around in circles and then you just nobody nothing changes, nothing comes out of that.

SPEAKER_03 41:20

So then going back to that point, so how not to do that or how to avoid that is to yeah, book a meeting, have a clear agenda and the outcome that you want, put those bullet points into your uh meeting invite. I had a brilliant manager I used to work with where he'd have that. Then, because we've got brilliant technology, we've got sexy rooms that we work in as well, he'll pull up the meeting agenda to keep us on track on the conversation. And then before the meeting even ends, so 15 minutes before the close of you know our time, he'll say, Okay, now we need to summarize action, who's gonna take this on, what are we gonna do as the next step, who needs to be consulted, who needs to be informed, all of the good stuff. But it's using that last 15 minutes really, really well, and just chucking it back into agenda and then emailing all of us again, and off we went merrily. Knowing, knowing what was, you know, on my to-do list, knowing what was on Mel's to-do list, and knowing what's on April's to-do list.

SPEAKER_00 42:15

Yep. You raised a couple of other things there. One thing about having an agenda, it's great for people who might be more introverted. Totally. Because if you get uh everybody in a room would say, right, here's what we're talking about today. There's people who have more introverted personality types who need time to digest the information and then come back with questions. Yeah. And in the meantime, us extroverts are just processing out loud and not actually really contributing a lot to the conversation. So you having that agenda gives everybody time, not just you, but gives different thinkers time to prepare and be able to contribute really well during the meeting. Yeah. Um, because I've had that thinking time. I think another trick I've learned is have a safe word. That sounds, I know, a bit sexy, but it's not. Um But as a team, yes, again, again, as a team, agree on a word that you're allowed to just shout out if things are going off track. So it's jellyfish, pineapple, koala, whatever it might be. And if that just it's a bit funny, it makes people laugh and go, oh yeah, yeah, okay. Put on the parking lot, whatever, move on. Um, but anybody can yell it out like jellyfish, like oh, yep, you're right, we've gone off track, bring it back. So have have a symbol. Some people have um, I've seen, you know, a teddy little teddy bear and you get to throw it at somebody like park is like um and again, like you said in one of the other episodes, you've got to have a trusting culture there. That's you know, you some some leaders would just lose their minds if you tried to do that. Yeah. Um but if you can have those little rituals or symbols or things that you agree on to help keep you on track, that's always helpful too. Because then it's not just the leader saying, Stop, do this, do that. Everybody's giving you the feedback that you need to shut up. Totally, totally.

SPEAKER_03 44:04

Big lessons I've learned from you. So the agenda is really important for people who are especially the slower thinkers, the deep thinkers, because then they come pre-prepared. And I'm telling you, those people come really freaking prepared to the news. That meeting is rich, so rich. Uh-huh. I love the idea of having a safe word when things go off track as well. That's cool. Okay. Limited.

SPEAKER_00 44:27

What's your safe word gonna be, Priya? It's very it's gotta be something quite visible that people can, you know. It snaps them out of the chain of thought, too. Yeah, yeah. Because all of a sudden I'm seeing a pineapple. But 10th floor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well might be wombat, because I love wombat. My favourite animal. Um, okay, another one. I I think we've got time for at least one more. And one of the, and I know this is a pet peeve of mine too. Forwarding without framing.

unknown 45:01

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 45:01

Tell me all about it. Gosh, forwarding without framing. That is just so passive aggressive. You know, I know you're busy. I know you're super busy. And I get this sometimes from clients. I'm sure you get this as well. I'll just get an email forwarded to me. I'll be like, uh, what do you want me to do with this? Do I create a course out of this? Is this a consulting engagement? Like, what's the point of this? Okay. So consider before you start to forward an email why you're actually forwarding it. Give some context if you're forwarding the email as well, because the person receiving it will have no freaking idea why they're receiving it. So context is really, really important in this respect. What about you?

SPEAKER_00 45:37

Oh, yes. For the love of God, just even just highlight the bit in the email below that you want me to look at. But also, I think a really good lesson learned is be careful of what you're forwarding on. And would the people that you're for like who wrote the original email trail five emails ago be okay with you forwarding that? Um, I've seen examples where somebody had replied to a request going, oh, like we've got nothing better to do, and ultimately that ended up in a meat email train that was sent back to the CEO. Oh shit. Now, luckily he took it very humorously. Um, but not everybody's gonna have that good luck. Also, you might present yourself in one way to your immediate boss, but is that how you would want to present yourself to the CEO or somebody else as well? And then think about all the email signatures and everything else that are included on there, if especially if it's an external, like from a privacy perspective. So do yourself a favor and do everybody else a favor. If you're going to forward something on, copy and paste the it out of the original email and say, I received this from blah blah. Here's what I think. What do you think? So don't just go FYI below. Yes. What what do I do with that? Why are you even sending it to me if it's just an FYI?

SPEAKER_03 46:52

Yeah, yeah. And remembering that all of these emails, all of the work stuff that you're doing at work, actually belongs to work. So sometimes HR can actually open that kind of worms and investigate the emails that you've been sending. And I've been on the other side of you know the email uh screen to be the investigator, to look at these emails which have been forwarded. And sometimes crappy emails get forwarded just from a gossip perspective, you know, the jungle drums, all of that kind of stuff. So be very, very mindful that this email is not is not private, it's not just yours. The company owns all of the data that you are inputting, all of the data that you're sending, the company owns this material, not you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:33

And not only that, think about it from a leak perspective. So I call it the career mail test or the daily mail or the sun. How would you feel if this email ended up in that newspaper? How would that look for you? How would you what would your family think about you if they read that? You know? Um Yeah. But also remember, especially in Australia, even something you've written on a post-it note is subject to freedom of information laws. So if there's ever an inquiry, which I've seen this happen as well, the Royal Commission into Banking, um everything, everything these that people had ever written on any notebook, in any word document, in any email, had to be surfaced and sent into a public inquiry. So you just gotta be careful. You've got to be really careful. If it's too sensitive for an email, then it should be a conversation. Definitely so.

SPEAKER_03 48:29

That was brilliant. I don't have anything else to add. Um it was any other permit. So we missed anything.

SPEAKER_00 48:34

Oh, look, there's probably one more, and I know you see this a lot because it is a it's a basic one, but it's all we see it all the time. It's not walking the talk. Yeah. So when leaders say one thing and then do another. And again, everything that sends a message is a form of communication, and when they do that, they show or they send a message that, you know, the values of the business don't really matter. Or they don't, you know, really think that everybody should get along. Or they're not really aligned with the other C-suite or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 49:08

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 49:09

And often I think it happens because they aren't aligned, you know, if they they say yes to the boss but then go and do their own thing, yeah. Um, they might not realize they're doing it either, yeah, all the time. Um, or they've just checked out. They're just going through the motions of managing, not really really leading. Um and it's a problem because, you know, for example, if you're constantly cancelling or rescheduling your one-on-ones with your team, yeah, that uh sends a message you don't care about them, that you don't value their time.

SPEAKER_04 49:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:40

Um if you start, you know, the company values about kindness or something, and then you're caught bitching about a colleague, you know, what does that send as well? And it the result is really poor engagement, really poor, you know, often height turnover. But because people see this and think, well, A, that, you know, this doesn't matter actually, this doesn't matter. But also, this person's not being held accountable for this either. So why should I even bother?

SPEAKER_03 50:08

What do you think? Have you seen it? I have seen it so much. So not walking the talk, not practicing what you preach. And I often see this, Mel, when leaders are in a state of cognitive dissonance. Uh now, cognitive dissonance is when you have been given a message, for example, to deliver from the powers that be, but you don't believe in it yourself. So you're not gonna practice what you preach now. So you have to get to a stage of cognitive resonance, otherwise you're gonna be very, very um negative and your people are gonna see that. Resentment is very, very palpable, you know? So you really need to work out your funk, even if you disagree with the corporate message that is, and either go and learn more about it, have the conversation if you disagree with it, and then try and reframe your language to try and align with that messaging, okay? So you have to walk the talk and practice what you preach, ideally. And Mel, I think this is the hardest thing, especially for middle managers, because you know, they're the meat in the sandwich who actually have to make people happy beneath them and then keep people happy who they report to as well.

SPEAKER_00 51:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree, yeah. They and like we talked about in previous episodes, you know, they're often given the role of the messenger. So if you don't actually agree with what you've been asked to tell your team, yeah, then it's really hard for you to to say it in a really genuine way or say it at all. And and yeah. Oh, yeah. And so the fix is what's the fix? Well, um, I think firstly accountability. You know, if they're not being kept accountable, then who is? Um, but sometimes they just need a bit of coaching to actually realize again, like I said, they might not even be aware they're doing it. Exactly. And so actually just go, hey, you know, when you said this the other day, do you realise that was different to what you said two weeks ago? Or you know, and you know, again, people are so busy, maybe they didn't even know they were doing this. Yeah just gotta have a conversation, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 52:05

Totally. And it's really important to I think the final line in this one, especially, is that if you're a leader, if people report to you, then every single message you're giving, even when you're not giving a message, is really freaking important because all eyes are on you there. 100%. Yep, we didn't check in on yourself and have a good peer network as well.

SPEAKER_00 52:25

Oh, 100%. I think that's a really good point, Prina, around you know, we we don't know everything. We never will. And having a coach, a mentor, um, a peer network, you know, whatever that looks like for you, some sort of support mechanism where you can test your ideas and get feedback. I that's important in any role, but definitely as a leader. Totally. Well, we've talked about so much. We've had many of Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_03 52:50

Oh what does any takeaways from you? What ring jumped out for you in this conversation? Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 52:56

I think uh there's a couple of things you said about the the late night peeing, I think, you know, because I said definitely I've been guilty of that.

SPEAKER_01 53:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:07

Um, and you know, the fact that we have technology at our fingertips that we can use, like even when we do get super excited about something, it's okay. You know, we can we can let it work, we can let it slide. Um but the professional ghosting thing, yeah. Like until you mentioned that to me a little while ago, I hadn't even thought about it. And now I'm like, oh, it is everywhere. And I am so curious to know about this phone number thing that we spoke that you spoke about in the beginning. I so want to know the reasons why they thought that was a good idea. I'm gonna ask you what about you?

SPEAKER_03 53:36

I love your anything. This is I'm quoting Mal. Anything that sounds like a message is a form of communication. Please remember that. Yeah. Uh I love the urgency, miss. You're in PR, not in ER. Hello, not everything's saving babies. No, I think we really need to check in on ourselves and our own self-importance often, because work can get carried away and it's easily done. I was like that, I've been there done that, but we just need to take that pause and remember the world is still revolving.

SPEAKER_00 54:10

And I think one of the things is too, and and this goes back to sort of just a general lesson. The best way to learn is to teach. And for me, like for example, with communication, I became a much better communicator when I started teaching other people how to communicate. As a leader, you might become a better leader by mentoring and and teaching others how to lead, because that's when you really have to think about well, what's good, what's bad, what works, what doesn't, what are the lessons you've learned. Um, so think about yeah, maybe how you could pull that in as a way to get better at what you do. Yeah, the best way to learn is to teach it. Gold. On that we conclude.

SPEAKER_03 54:50

Mel, it has been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 54:52

Ah, absolutely. And you know what, Pruna, I feel like we have enough stuff here to write a book. What do you think? I'm up for that. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'd love to know if our listeners would be keen. Maybe it's 50 leadership peeves and powder and powds and how to quash them. I don't know. That'll be a blue read, I tell you. That's it. Well, listeners, let us know. Would you be interested? Where, you know, we've got no time, but we'd happily do it. We'll make it work.

SPEAKER_01 55:22

All details about this episode are in the show notes. If you like this episode, I'd like you to take a moment and think about at least two people who might enjoy it. On Instagram, I got to do that.