Sonya Law and Ron talk about Human Resources and People.

Yeah, that's right. I'm the wrong side of the date line. I met you, what, about 15 years ago or so in Australia with Soler, right?

Correct, yeah.

For the last year or two, you've been on your own. You ventured off the corporate trade will or whatever the hell treadmill, and now you're on your own.

Yes, completely vulnerable.

How about you give, I call it a thumbnail sketch, how about you give everybody who's listening a little bit of an idea of your background?

Yes, certainly. So I started out actually consulting as a recruitment consultant straight out of uni doing HR. And then when I started my family, I moved into education and teaching and actually early childhood. So kindergarten, I really believed in the fact that people's personality is really formed in those early years. So it's a really important stage for a teacher to nurture children's learning so that they enjoy learning over their lifespan, which is important. Then once the kids were grown up, headed back in corporate. into pharmaceuticals, water utilities, and then more recently some mining construction with Saler Hatachi, which was a fantastic opportunity to work in a leadership team for the last, yeah,10 years.

Amazing, isn't it? Yeah. I didn't know you were in early education. My mother was a teacher, a kindergarten and grade one, and I've always said, that the best teachers have to be at the young ages because that's really what forms the student's idea of what school is all about. Some of them end up hating it. Some of them, hopefully most of them, end up loving it.

Absolutely. And I followed Maria Montessori's way of learning and that when you spark a child's interest, that's when you start teaching. and you give them as much time in that interest as possible and build around it, scaffolding around it. rather than in a set curriculum as you get further into your education, it's more set and it's about sort of pushing children into a certain curriculum, whereas in kindergarten it's more, well, what is their interest and how can we build sort of around that and Vygotsky's philosophy of play and that's how we best learn and I think as an adult we learn best when we're having fun, you know, nothing much changes. So I've tried to bring some of that into my... HR sort of training and learning and development.

I spent about six years teaching people how to teach at university. And so that channel you talk about, that funnel where you're teaching to a curriculum, used to drive me crazy. And one of the things that I felt was a responsibility, my responsibility in transferring to my students was for them to learn how to teach their students to teach themselves.

Yeah.

That like you're saying with the younger people, if you can get them interested and then, you know, take advantage of that as we get older, it's still the same challenge. It's, it's, it's, it's an amazing thing as, as little people, we never really think about it, but the world around us sets goals for us. Right. Whether it's the teacher in grade school or your parents at home or the church or your athletic clubs or music, whatever it is, the world around you sets the goals. You get into high school and all of a sudden you're starting to set your own goals. Nobody helped you determine how the heck to set up a goal, set a plan, set objectives. And not everybody does that. So now you get out into the business world. And who the heck sets the goal for the employee?

So the employer does, whereas where the magic actually happens is where there's an interaction between the employee and the employer. So you both, you know, you both come up with what those goals should be. Of course, there's going to be, you know, the goals that all get cascaded down and you're employed to do a job and that's what you do. you know, top three that are the business goals. But when it's done really well, it's actually asking the employee, what goal do you want to add onto it or what opportunity do you see? Because they're in the best position to know what interests them and what is really going to be a game changer in terms of, you know, adding value to the business. But often it's just pushed down. It's one way.

That's pretty tough though, isn't it?

cough and it causes disengagement and it doesn't really like do I am I really valued what I'm thinking I'm really just a number I'm yeah that's

why I call work just another four-letter word for most people it's uh I go there to get my pay and then I go home and and and when I leave the building I I just close my mind that stays back at the office and I I get on to my life it's It's transactional. It's amazing, isn't it? And I believe that's the majority of the employees that are out there. Yes.

And that breaks my heart to think that people work that way. It really breaks my heart because they're not living their full potential and therefore it's not enriching their life and then they're not going home happy and then that's not fueling their relationships in a positive way. And, you know, we're only on earth for a short time. I believe people, you know, we should respect people and involve them in the goals that they set for themselves, you know, at work. They spend so much time at work. It's a disservice, I think, you know, when we think we can just push goals down and not involve people.

In fact, we spend more time at work and with our co-workers than we do with our families.

Yeah, absolutely. It's remarkable. You have a great day at work. You go home and you're buzzing and everyone benefits from that.

I never could understand that because I can't be schizoid. I can't separate myself into two or more people. I'm jealous of people that can do that because I sure as heck can't. But one of the things that, and I've done this for years, and you might have heard me say this over the years, And when I had a team of people that worked with me, I used to ask them three questions a couple of times a year. What do I do that you like that I do and you want me to continue? What do I do that you don't like that I do and you want me to stop? And what do I do that really doesn't matter to you? And they got used to me and they started being honest with me, which is, you know, that's part of the dilemma, isn't it? Trust. If they liked that I did it, then, okay, that's fine. And I had a decision to make as to whether that's something that I needed to continue or if I could delegate it to somebody else to do.

If they didn't like that I did it, was it necessary for me to do it? Was the style, was it my communication that made it bad? And if they didn't understand why I did it, what the heck was I doing it for? Which is kind of... And the other thing that from my perspective, this is a very selfish perspective, but I always tried to work myself out of a job. And what that allowed the company to do was put me into different things. Because as you know, I got bored easy, so they would keep throwing these things at me. And I see that happening in almost every client that I've been in. that the employee doesn't, they're not engaged because they have not been asked to be engaged. And it's remarkable to me. Like one person cannot be anywhere near as smart as the 10 or 20 that they work with every day. Put it all together and it's a very powerful tool.

And the only vehicle that I know that everybody talks about that would help us there is a performance review. And I know you. written about it. You put a blog out about the year-end review discussion. Could you talk a little bit about what you believe those things do and how they could help us?

Yeah, I think, yeah, there is definitely a place for performance reviews. Like you said, the world around us sets goals for us. So we're always working towards a goal and it's no different in the workplace. So when the goals, you know, I always sort of in my role, I always looked at, well, what are the managing director's top three goals? Because they really should be mine on a daily basis, not just a yearly basis, but daily. And, you know, are they the top three? Do they need to be changed? So yes, there's a, you know, a point in time, you know, where you have a performance review, but it's also important important to have informal sort of discussions in case, you know, the goalposts have shifted, which invariably does as the world is evolving and sort of changing. So there's a number of things which you sort of touched on.

Sometimes what happens with the goals, they're kind of superfluous, so they're redundant and actually relate to what's going to change the needle in terms of the business. And they don't directly... work towards achieving the strategy or the goals. So the first thing is really to get alignment between where the business is heading in that point in time and are all the goals aligned to that. And as you said, to involve the employees to what they see because they're in the best position to see how they can improve things in their particular job or their particular department. That also requires a level of sort of openness of the manager to have those conversations, you know, not only at the six month and year end, but, you know, throughout the year, because none of it should really be a surprise in those formal reviews. These conversations should be happening daily.

You hear so often that, you know, there's not the Monday morning to set the task or the Friday morning to look back and reflect, which is such an important discipline. It engages the person, makes sure they're on track, gives them feedback if they have to self-correct. So mid-course, it requires an approachable manager too. So a manager which, as you touched on, you know, where you've got trust and you feel comfortable to suggest new ideas. you know, in formulating those goals or particularly, you know, changing those goals. So, and there needs to also be a comfort around, you know, mistakes and when things, you know, don't go well, you know, what are we going to do and how are we going to sort of get back on track? And another point that you made is around such an important point where people sort of protect their jobs. So they're just going in, let's just get this over and done with a ticker box.

And then there's a number of behaviours that come out of that. I'm not really going to tell you what I do as well as I'm not going to tell you things I could do better. I'm not going to share information. And there's this complete silo. So it's like this deception. Yeah, we're all deceiving each other. You know, we're all heading down this road and we're going completely different directions. And the last time I checked, we're all going to end up at different points, not achieving the strategy. So, you know, and that's on both sides. So already you can see that it's quite complex, really, to do it well. Not impossible. You really need to have the structure, the relationship, the approachability.

It's interesting that, you know, Why in the world would talking with a co-worker be difficult?

People are scared.

We all put up walls, right? Everybody uses the term silo. But if I'm reaching out to you, why in the world would you smack me in the face? Why wouldn't you embrace the fact that I'm trying to help? And yet it's a common response, isn't it?

Yeah.

A silly little illustration. I was hired on a contract to fix a system problem, but I was put into the parts department. And the general parts manager was not part of hiring me. I was hired by the vice president of finance and the data processing, the IT guy. But I worked in the parts business on a parts problem. That man did not talk to me for six months. Now, I'm 22 years old,21 years old. I'm hardly threatening, for goodness sake. What the heck is the matter with that old guy? You know, isn't that strange?

Yeah.

Okay, so let me tell you the rest of the story. A year later, he worked for me. And we did have a lot of conversations after that. And he told me that he was upset about somebody else coming and messing around in his department without his approval. And that is part and parcel of this whole darn discussion. I have never had in my life, and I asked every damn year, a performance review. Not once. Isn't that ridiculous?

Absolutely.

And yet everybody that's ever worked for me, ever, anywhere, in any circumstance, we do exactly what you talked about. We have informal discussion. I know where they are all the time. I know what they're happy about, unhappy about, what's happening in their life and everything else. I'm a nosy guy.

That's rare.

Why is that? Are we as secure as people, do you think, Sonia?

Well, on the surface, they say they're too busy. They don't have the time. And on the surface, they say that, you know, and also they're kind of scared, right? Like he had that situation where he had all these sort of fears. But the really important. part that you've said is that conversations so um you know it's quite simple really for there to be um good working relationships there needs to be communication and in communication there needs to be feedback and there's a really important process of listening to the other person so this doesn't always happen unfortunately like really give attention to that person in that point in time. That's the greatest gift you can give. To ask the questions that you ask, not fearing the response, knowing that you're going to build this trust, that that person's going to feel listened to, which is really... you know, very visceral and human need to be listened and understood to express oneself.

If we don't express oneself and communicate, it can result in all sorts of manner of disorders within the workplace and particularly around mental health. And then you're really pushing people up against a corner and sort of, you know, it's difficult. But coming back to... the end of year performance or in the way that you handled things, that you understood that you can't fix a human problem with a process. You need both. You need people on side so you can create change within processes, within spare parts. You need those conversations. You need to build a dialogue. There needs to be feedback. They need to feel safe, you know, that sense of security, which is so important in that motivational theory of Maslow's, you know, that safety first. Otherwise, people are going to kind of create those difficulties and silos, which is not good for the organisation because essentially when we do a job, we have a responsibility.

you know, responsibility to fulfil that job in the way that the organisation wants too. So it happens on the other side as well. You know, we can't go too... left of what we want to do, it has to be aligned with the organisation. So the responsibility is with the business or with the employee and the accountability that the manager provides by having those conversations and those reviews comes in the form of those conversations and the reviews too. And that doesn't happen a lot either. where the manager holds that person to account on their soft skills and potentially their metrics. It's just like, oh, yeah, tick, tick, tick, you've done all these things, whereas you're missing an opportunity to help that person to grow and develop. Of course, that feedback from the communication needs to be done in a certain way so that it's received and it's taken on and you need to support that process after the review.

and to explain why it's important to achieving the overall goals because it's never really personal. I believe people come to work to do a good job. At the end of the day, it's the environment or the manager or something that's a miss, that's creating that sort of misstep. But I do believe, and I'm an optimist, I believe people are basically good and they come to do work, you know, do good work. And it's up to us to kind of figure out, well, what's gone amiss and, you know, how can we correct that? What's the gap? And how can we work on that together? But that requires care and compassion. And, you know, that takes time. So we keep coming back to, you know, in business these days, what do we have? Where were we most limited? It's in time. There's the return on the investment. If you invest some time in people, you're going to achieve the strategy and get the rewards.

And if you don't, well, that creates, as you know, a whole bunch of issues that really then becomes about firefighting, reacting and, you know, de-risking the company and litigation. All sorts of things can happen when you don't listen.

Yeah, it's an interesting conundrum. The expression today is you need to have the right people on the bus.

Yeah, it's like, oh, God.

And so when you got on the bus in Melbourne, are you still the right people on the bus when we're at Noosa north of Brisbane? And the answer in all likelihood is no. So, you know, and that for North Americans, that's like from Los Angeles to New York sort of deal that the needs of somebody in California are totally different than the needs of wants in somebody in the state of New York and New York upstate and downstate. I mean, it's people are different and everybody wants to do a good job is my number one belief in human nature. Kind of like you, I'm an optimist. I believe everybody wants to do a good job. I always believe that everybody can do more than what they think they can.

Yes. Yes.

And then the third leg of that stool, from my perspective, is that everybody's fundamentally lazy. You and I included. So somebody has to take us to that promised land of doing more than what we think we can do, and it ain't going to be us.

No, it's going to be a coach.

We're lazy, you know. Now, if you're lucky, your spouse does that. At times, your children do that to you. If you're really lucky, your boss does that. Again, different things for different people, just little anecdotes. I was hired on a contract. We both agreed that I would become an employee. And as I've already told you, you've heard me say I worked myself out of a job, so I had other opportunities. So my boss at one point was a son-in-law of the owner, and he was the vice president of parts and service. And I went into him one day. I said, Tom, you need to give me more work because I haven't got but half a day of work to do. Yes. And I don't know what to do in the afternoon. So rather than me stand around here or sit around here not doing anything or going for a walk in the yard, I'll just go home at noon and I'll come back the next day. And he said, no, don't do that. I'll get you something to do. A week passed. Nothing happened.

A week passed. Another week passed. Nothing happened. So I went home at noon.

So

that's Monday. Tuesday, I did the same thing. Wednesday, there's a note for me on my desk. Come see. So I went to see him. He said, I understand you're leaving at noon. I said, yes. That's what I told you I was going to do. I was asking you to get me more work. He says, well, don't go home at noon anymore. I'll give you more work. And he did.

Yes.

I did it again to him three or four months later.

Yeah.

And he told me, go away.

Yeah.

So there's the circumstance that that individual did not understand the capacity nor the ambition or the drive, whatever stupidity you want to call it, of the individual that he was working with.

100% wrong.

And I think the boss has. The boss has to be able to figure that out, and I don't know who's training them to do that, Sonia.

That's an extremely good point. On the weekend, one thing I was exploring was capacity. Capacity. And I was using it in different contexts, but you think about an engine has certain capacity. Well, people are much the same. You only ever work to a certain capacity that's kind of set for you. essentially. But it's really, as you say, the manager's job to recognise, you know, what your capacity is and then stretch you in order to get that high performance. And that's really where, you know, you get every, you know, you have a high performance organisation. It's a mindset. And often, you know, particularly in the space you work in and I work in, it's very technical. So people... are usually hired into management and people management roles for their technical ability, but perhaps haven't had the training and education in terms of how to manage people. And that's really, you know, what's important.

99% of my conversations are about people when I'm talking to technical people. They're like, technical, fine, but the stuff that keeps me awake at night and I just can't get my head around is the people side. It's almost impossible. you know, constantly working on that professional development in terms of leadership. And that really starts with understanding ourselves and doing the deep work. Who am I as a leader? How am I showing up every day? And that requires feedback from other people. So we need to be open to feedback and to ask for it. And that's a lot very uncomfortable for some people. but that's a really important sort of process, that continual professional development, being open to feedback. How can I improve? How can I get better? Because we've never really got there.

You know, it's important to keep striving to get better and then you don't get into that lazy state, right, of, oh, I know everything and there's nothing to do here, there's nothing to see here and that sets a hold. message to people that are working around you as well. If you lift, then others lift and it's a, you know, you can feel it when you go into an organisation. If, you know, there's a lot of chat up, there's an energy to the department, you know, the managers, you know, out working the... the floor um maybe he's got safety gear on because he's also just been down on the shop floor so he's not you know he's not in his office with a door shut and that always sort of worries me but someone that's in their PPE just been on the shop floor talking to the guys and then he sort of moves around the different departments he's taking all that information is generally a sign that he's doing that sort of anyway and you know that's where you really get the performance but unfortunately if that manager is unaware or no one's told them because you see a lot of that too.

You know, I hear COs say to me, my SLT team are disengaged, you know, but no one's asked them, you know, why that's the case and what they can do to support them. So it needs to actually happen at the very, very top and then sort of work its way down. And it's a... It's constant learning. We're striving. We never really there yet, and it requires coaches and consultants and people often external to the business to do that. But that's a...

It's a tough case. You mentioned something, and I love expressing it this way. When you're 16 years old and somebody says you have a lot of potential, that's a wonderful, wonderful thing.

It is, isn't it?

If the same person tells you you have a lot of potential and you're 66, what the heck have you been doing the last 50 years?

Sad, isn't it?

It is, and I'm afraid that we have underutilized the talent of so many people. Yes. And that's such a waste for both the employer and the employee. Everybody starts off enthusiastically. They got a job. They want to get here. They want to work. They want to do a good job. And everybody starts that way. Every company wants that person to become a self-reliant producer.

Yes, yes.

But in between, we have all of this formality, the onboarding, the introductions, the walk-arounds, the training, blah, blah, blah, blah. And depending on the direct supervision, They either become careful or cautious when they get criticized all the time for what they did or disillusioned because nobody pays any attention to them. And it's all the fault of the leader. All these technical guys, you and I deal and gals that you and I deal with, the engineers and the mechanics, et cetera, et cetera, they manage process. They're used to that. They try and manage people. You can't manage people. You lead people.

Yes.

And there's a real world difference, you know. And the other thing that I'm a strong advocate about is that I believe management is involved in three processes. One is everybody has to understand what it is we're trying to do, and that's all a communications gig. Yes.

Yes.

And everybody, the leadership will want to have everybody committed to accomplishing all those goals. Yes. But they miss the fight in the middle. Yes. I want to let everybody have an opportunity to fight with me, argue with me, debate with me, whatever term you want to call. Have an argument. That's a mathematics term, not a fight. Yeah, yeah. Where they've got to accept that what we're trying to do is the right thing to do. And only if they come to that conclusion, will we be in alignment going forward?

Absolutely.

Nobody allows that fight or let's change that. They don't like the fight. They don't like the conversation.

Yes.

You know, it's that annual review. The leader is not good at communicating and a lot of the technical folks are not.

Yeah.

Then the once a year forces them to sit down and let's talk. Let's be people together. And unfortunately, there are many people have been trained on how to do that. So we need that. That's a gap that needs to be filled. And maybe we should put a class together on how to conduct a performance review. I don't know. But just being able to sit down. One of the things I used to do in a classroom, Sonia, was to ask people to give me five things that they would like to change about their job to make it better. Then another list, give me five things that are a real pain in the butt to do. And then another list, give me five things that would really make your life better. So everybody gets busy at the tables and they start making these lists. And then we talk about them and I put them up on a whiteboard or a flip chart or something. And you know, what's remarkable to me is those lists very often have two or three things in common across all three.

Yeah. Yeah.

And you know what I do then in front of the room? I said, okay, fine. If it's going to make the job better, it'll make you happier and it's not a pain in the butt. Yeah. Why don't you do it?

Yeah.

What's wrong, folks? What's the matter with this?

Yeah.

There's no answer to that question. They look at me like, oh, my God, you're from another planet.

Well, yeah, it's like you've unleashed them. Well, I can.

It's almost like you have to give people permission to disagree with the boss.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

I'm in Stuttgart, Germany, at a very large American corporation at their European distribution center. And I'm normally early. And the managing director of the business arrived. And I'm sitting waiting for him. And I'm watching this. And at that time, I'm about 26 or 27. I'm still disrespectful as hell. And here he comes down the hill. And as he went by, everybody stood up. That's Stuttgart, Germany. Now, I'm hardly obedient. But every single one of those people, boom, up they came. And you kind of wonder about that. Nobody's going to question him. If they asked him to go across the street and there's five lanes of traffic at 70 kilometers an hour, they'd still go do it. What in the heck is wrong?

And they become reckless organizations.

Well, I'll give you the rest of the story. This is 1973. And the building that was the main distribution center for this company, when I walked in, the lights went on. It was completely automated. Because that leader wouldn't be able to handle having the people to do the work based on what I saw. And you've seen it. Like you mentioned it. You walk into a business. You can feel it. Oh, yeah. This place is good. I want to be here. Everybody, hey, wow, this is cool. Yeah. You walk into some other places, it's like a bloody mausoleum. Donk.

Yes. Yes, it is.

It's culture, isn't it?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

How do you create culture? Or how do you change culture? I ask you the easy question, Sonia, then I'll shut up.

Yeah, I guess when I first come into an organisation, it's intuitive, much like yourself. There's an intuition. You're giving examples of stukka. You're watching for signs, signals, traditions. You know, you're noticing language, what words are used and what time. And who are they? You know, is that a manager and employee or how they talk to each other's colleagues? Is everyone the same? So for me, when you talk about changing culture, you have to first come from a place of intuition and understanding and that's usually a lot of listening and asking questions. that usually you're surprised that they haven't been asked before because they're like, oh, I haven't been asked that before. And it's a really simple question of what is it like to work here? I was recently with a client and I asked them about their culture and I said, what is it like to work here? And they said, they're the CEO, I've never been asked that before.

So, okay, so first you need to articulate. CEO, why do you love working here? Why do you work here? And then people, everyone I ask in the organisation should know that, either for themselves or, you know, what resonates for them. And it's having those conversations right from when we're recruiting. So it's getting the right people in, in terms of there's that alignment with, as you say, where we're heading. what our strategy is and that's all aligned, not just in a they can do the job but there's an actual fit. A lot of my interviews would be just a conversation to begin with. Are we aligned here before I start delving into the technical? and the behavioural questioning and the panel interviews and psych assessments, all those sort of things that follow, let's just have a conversation first.

So to change culture really goes back to understanding what's there, having the reviews in place, the feedback in place where people are understanding where everyone's heading. you know, what they need to do, what their role is. You talked about that understanding that's really important. What is it that what I do, you know, impact the whole organisation? Because we're stronger together. We're a community together if we work in that way. And then it becomes a very sort of natural sort of evolution and process. But it requires those uncomfortable conversations that you talk about and accountability and responsibility on everyone's part to share the load. Yeah, you can change culture. It takes time. And it is a process of, you know, the people that don't align, there's usually a natural attrition as well. because some of those things just aren't working anymore. They weren't ready to make the jump or develop or, you know, do what was necessary.

So they kind of self-select out. I mean, that's a natural thing in environment, you know, in the world, self-selection. So a lot of these things sort of play out sort of in an organisation, which is essentially a living, breathing organism. So it's much the same thing. I take a lot of what I observe from the natural world exactly that to how an organisation kind of moves and evolves. But it's, yeah, it's a tricky one, but it can be done, takes time, has to happen at the top and flow all the way through and it takes everyone, you know, playing their role. Yeah, hiring, you know, optimistic, of course, people like yourself, Ron, that understand it.

It sounds simple, but actually hiring managers or promoting managers who exhibit the behaviours that you want in the organisation that become the values and the culture and the way that you do things around here is a really important part because when you have someone who's perhaps not working in the way, you know, that's befitting to the culture, it's... It's really isolating for that person and for those around them. Yes.

One of the interesting things also, South America years ago used to have all of the key leaders take a year off every five to ten years, depending on the company. Just go do whatever you want to do as long as you're learning. It doesn't have to do with the company at all, but... Grow your mind. Open your head. We'll pay you for that.

Yeah.

So, you know, in this performance review, again, zeroing back in on that, and I believe that's tied to culture, I would like every single person to have a personal goal.

Yes.

Not necessarily a job goal or a family goal, a personal goal.

Yeah, definitely.

Dye your hair. Grow your hair. Learn an instrument. Learn another language, whatever it is. And as an employer, I would encourage them to take whatever classes learning they have, and I'll pay for it as long as they pass.

Yeah, absolutely.

Have you seen anybody do a performance review that involves a personal goal setting section or session?

No, they'll put sometimes like soft skills and values, but not, you know, what are you going to do personally? Sometimes self-care, definitely. Like what are you going to do for yourself in terms of self-care? But I think what you're saying is more try something new so that you become the... you know, a learner again. So usually when we're learning something new, it opens up another part of our brain, which actually makes you more receptive to new ideas and innovation within the organisation. So there's a direct link there. No, I haven't seen that. I think that would be a great way to improve innovation within the organisation. Yeah, receptivity.

I swam as a teenager. Well... for a long time of my life. And one of the good things about swimming, it's not a team sport and you're competing with yourself. You're always trying to beat your time. So it's competitive in a different way. And it's marked me or it's made me because there's no end to that. Oh, it's brilliant. Your capacity, like you're talking about, your potential, same thing. How good can you be? And it gets, you know, go back to what would you do if you weren't afraid? Standing on the blocks, I used to say this to everybody, is it doesn't matter who's there. It doesn't matter if you win or lose. I could be last in the pool. If I beat my time, I won. I could be first in the pool, and if I didn't beat my time, I lost. And I'm a competitive jerk, so I'd be sick before I left home. I'd be sick once I got to the pool. And I struggled with this as a person. Did you need to win or were you afraid to lose?

And I had national records for years, so I didn't lose very often. I had to stop because I couldn't come to grips with that. And finally, at some point later, I realized that there's no difference. It's a big circle. To win and being afraid to lose are exactly the same thing. needing to succeed and failing are exactly the same thing. It's just a degree of gradation. So all of a sudden I was not afraid of failing on a project or on an exam. I was terrible on exams, by the way. So that's not a good example. But I think there's a lot more people like me that in many cases you're afraid to fail, but you're more afraid to succeed.

Yeah.

It's, you know, people are more interested in hearing about your failures because it makes them feel better. They don't want to hear about your successes because they're not achieving that at the same level. So this discussion on annual, informal, weekly, daily, whenever you can have a chance. How's your daughter doing in school? I understand your son broke his ankle playing soccer. Just being engaged, being involved, showing empathy that you care. All of those things, they're all human characteristics. But the technical world in which we live, is that engine working or not? It's a black and white question, isn't it? We're not used to the nations of gray.

Yes, absolutely.

It's a very strange world, isn't it?

Extremely, extremely. It's the most basic human thing to talk and to communicate, yet we make it so hard for ourselves. Yeah.

I've enjoyed this chat, Sonia. Thank you very much. You bring a very nice perspective to a very difficult subject. Anything you'd like to? Leave us with as a closing coda?

I think the power of language, you know, the power of language is having that reflection to notice our thinking because our thinking becomes our behaviours and our actions and how we conduct ourselves in the workplace in life is really important that that's congruent. think about what seeds we're planting when we're talking with people, actually notice the words and the language and the tone in which we're using it. I think as leaders and as managers, we have such an impact on people and be kind, be gentle, be patient with people. We're all on a journey, we're all at different stages and give the same to yourself. you know, to be kind, to be patient, be gentle.

That's a wonderful ending. Thank you very much, Sonia.

Thank you.

Thank you all for listening. I appreciate you. Look forward to talking to you the next time.