Welcome to Leadership Journeys.
I'm psychologist Leona Deakin,
and I'm delving into the minds of successful women
to find out how they've achieved the things that they have.
In our last episode, we heard from Chief Crown Prosecutor
Siobhán Blake.
She talked about how being driven to change the world
and also having an optimistic outlook was so critical
for helping her to work in the very emotionally charged job
of prosecuting violent crimes against women.
In this episode...
I suddenly realised they're all blokes.
And I actually went through the whole list of 5,000
and I could find 73 women.
So I said to my boss,
we haven't got any women in the sample.
And he said, we don't want to study about sex and stuff.
Just get on with it.
If you want to do it, do it in your own time.
Say that to me, it was red flag to a bull.
I'd like to be the kind of person that does affirmations before bed,
but, you know, I can't be bothered.
Is it possible
to be a great leader using traditionally feminine qualities,
things like empathy and collaboration?
Or do we all need to be hard lined, risk taking strategic thinkers?
Today on Leadership Journeys, we have two for the price of one.
We have the wonderful Professor Beverly Alamo Metcalf,
who's a psychologist that has specialised in leadership
and done groundbreaking research in what it means to be a great leader.
And her lovely daughter, Juliette Alamo Metcalf,
who is a chief executive of their company Real World Group.
Welcome, ladies.
Thank you very much.
So we have three psychologists in a room.
I was just wondering, is there a collective noun for that?
Do we know? Like, what would that be?
An anxiety of psychologists?
Yes, I was thinking an analysis,
but I think an anxiety is better than that.
So it's lovely to have you both along with us.
Better if I can start with yourself.
So with Leadership Journeys, we're really looking at people's journey
towards where they've got to in their career.
You're now an emerita professor of leadership studies
with the University of Leeds.
At what point in your background did you decide on psychology?
Was that something from school or university?
It was definitely from school.
I went to a kind of strict confidence school in Wimbledon.
And every fortnight we had marks in front of the whole school.
600 girls were in the main hall,
and we were called by each form to come forward.
And then those people who had A average over the previous fortnight
get clapped.
Then those who A minus come forward and stand in front of those who had A
and got clapped.
And then we go to the B pluses.
And every fortnight myself and another girl,
I better not mention her name because I found her on the web the other day,
we were lucky if we got a B minus.
We're usually C plus average.
And this happened every fortnight, even as an 11-year-old,
my first daughter.
I mean, it terrified me because I was always last in the class.
Such public failure.
I was so in front of the whole school.
Every time, every fortnight I've been called out.
And people used to put all sorts of things in their shoes
to try and faint or find some excuse to get off.
We called it fortnightly marks.
But I got so angry as time went on in the school at the crassness
and the lack of sensitivity of the nuns and the other teachers
to not understand what damage it does to the children who
come lower in the class.
And it actually made me very angry.
And it drove me wanting to work with young people, with kids,
and with children who had low self-esteem.
And I wanted to be an educational psychologist.
I thought, I'm going to be an educational psychologist
and find out, explore more the basis of children's self-esteem
and self-concept.
That's why I wanted to become a psychologist.
I didn't quite know exactly what it was.
But I thought, I'm going to try and do psychology.
But sadly, I failed at school.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I left school with one A level grade
E. So you can't become an educational psychologist.
I am so surprised by this story, Beverly,
having known you for a number of years.
And what a great academic you are.
I think it gives all of us who have struggled at school hope.
But fortunately, amazingly, there was this training college
opening up the year that I left school in Yorkshire,
because I used to live in Surrey.
And you could do psychology and do education
and become a teacher.
In order to be a psychologist, actually,
you have to be a teacher for a couple of years.
So I applied to that school at the college.
And I got in on one A level grade E.
Amazing.
And then I studied psychology and education.
And I absolutely loved it.
You could see the personal benefit because
of what you'd been through.
Do you think that experience gave you
any particular resilience?
Or did it just leave a kind of negative mark behind?
Did it give you anything positive,
do you think, when you look back?
Yes, I think it gave me a focus.
The rebellion against things that I
thought were hypocritical or ridiculous rules
and petty regulations enabled me to focus very much on my values
and saying, well, I'm going to do something about it.
And I think we can improve things.
Yeah, and going to change the world in my own way.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Yeah.
So it's very modestly.
And that young version of Beverly,
who got the place on the course in Yorkshire,
what would she have thought about you ending up as a professor?
Oh, I mean, there's no way.
Absolutely no.
One A level grade E. Always the last in the class.
Because that was the academic self-image that I had.
It was a failure.
But I knew that I probably had something
to offer with kids in the classroom.
So I thought, at least I can be a teacher.
And I really, really loved my teaching practice.
Having come from the leafy suburbs of Surrey
and then doing teaching practice in places like Dewsbury
and Bristol and that way, as they say in Yorkshire,
I just loved being with kids, particularly those
who were quite challenging.
And gifted in ways other than academic,
but were rebellious themselves.
I loved just listening to their stories
and kind of giving them some acknowledgement of what they
were was unique.
There was something great about them as well.
And I really loved spending time.
Because when I eventually did my final teaching practice,
I was working in a secondary modern school
that was called at the time in Dewsbury.
Very challenging family backgrounds
for many of the kids.
And I wanted to work with the children who
were regarded as remedial was the term.
It was that hideous term.
And it was wonderful.
They could write stories.
Spelling might not have been terribly accurate,
but they could write stories.
And I remember reading out a story once to the class.
I said, let's listen to this story that's so and so written.
And I read it out.
I said, do you know that's brilliant?
That's better than I could have written at your age.
And I expect you to go to university.
And they sort of laughed and giggled.
Years later, that young woman, Bernadette,
came up to me in the department store in Leeds and said,
are you Miss Salome?
I said, well, yes, I was.
I changed my name, but yes.
She said, I'm Bernadette, whatever it was.
And I said, oh, Bernadette, yeah, you're
at such and such a school in Dewsbury.
I said, so what are you doing?
She said, I'm a medical student.
I said, oh my god, that's wonderful.
She said, you won't remember this,
but one day you read out my essay.
And I was in the remedial group.
And you said, I expect you to go to university.
And you didn't laugh.
And she said, I always wanted to be a doctor,
but nobody in my family, nobody said
that you can go to university.
So that really fiercely drove my ambition
to work as an educational psychologist.
But I had this dilemma, 1A level, couldn't do the BA degree,
except somebody said to me at college,
if you do a second A level and pass before in your first year,
because it was going to be a three year teacher training,
if you do an A level and pass it,
you can do the BA degree and stay on for the fourth year.
So I said, well, what A level?
They said, well, why didn't you do maths or French?
Well, I failed those.
Why didn't you do this?
Why didn't you do art?
Well, I failed that in second year.
They said, but at least, just have a try.
I thought, God, I haven't got to memorise anything.
I'll just do it.
Why not?
I'd do it.
And I was rubbish at art.
But I got my second A level, E, grade E in art.
Brilliant.
And that's what enabled me to do a BA to then work as a teacher.
So by hook or by crook, Bev, you were
going to become the person that could help those children,
weren't you?
You were going to become that psychologist.
So there was a drive going on there.
And also a willingness, it sounds like,
to just take any opportunity in any avenue,
even if it wasn't maybe the traditional one.
So I think what's fascinating in what you wanted to find out
was that whole thing of the basis of self-esteem.
And there's so much out there, isn't there,
about in that kind of self-help psychology world
about self-esteem, the importance of it, how to build it?
What did you learn about children and their self-esteem?
And what helps to build it?
I think one of the most powerful areas that I read about
was about the power of expectations
of significant others on children.
Teachers are significant others.
Parents, obviously, are significant others.
And the expectations of those people,
authority figures around us, or people who care for us,
has a profound impact.
What they expect of us, positive or negative,
we are likely to fulfill.
It influences the way our self-beliefs.
And I read some fascinating articles
about Pygmalion in the classroom and the power of teachers'
expectations on children's school achievement.
If the teachers had negative expectations,
the children achieved very poorly.
But if they had positive expectations,
they achieved beyond expectation.
And so that tied in absolutely to my anger
about the school and the expectations of the teachers
and how publicly they were denigrating the kids.
And you can see that.
I mean, that's not just children, is it?
That's also adults.
I'm just thinking of a lot of the work
that we do as psychologists when you're
working with an individual and you're coaching an individual.
And you are giving them that positive reassurance
about their ideas, about what they want to do.
And you're being that person, maybe,
that's got a positive expectation of them.
And sometimes you see that transform
in how they go out into the world,
because you give them someone who's a cheerleader, maybe,
in some respects.
That's absolutely right.
That's why that takes me to the next stage in my career, which
I suddenly realized leadership is not just
about the power of teachers on kids.
It's about, in any organization or any relationship,
the power that a great boss has on their colleagues,
on their staff.
That's why I got so excited about leadership.
I thought, my god, it can be in any organization in the world.
This is exactly we can transform organization society
by getting leaders, the right people as bosses.
I just love the enthusiasm.
And I have to say, because I'm a massive fan girl of yours,
Beverly, as I'm sure you know.
And I think you, when I was a young psychologist hearing
you talk about how great leadership happens
at every level, it's not just that senior person who's
the charismatic leader on the hill.
It's every single line manager, every single team leader
is having that impact on us, raising our stress,
raising our motivation, raising up all those things going on.
So I mean, just brilliant.
I just wanted to jump to Juliet here,
because I'm just watching you watch your mom talking about.
Did you know that she had that experience at school?
Is that something she talked about to you?
Yeah, no, she does talk about it.
And I think she sort of brings it often into her presentation
when she talks about leadership in general.
And I think it's a really, I think
people find it quite inspiring to hear that you don't
have to be academic.
You don't have to have a certain background
and a certain aptitude for school or education
in order to succeed.
So yeah, no, she does talk about that.
My academic career was a lot easier,
especially given that I had two academic parents.
There was a lot more support because of their aptitude
for and their interest in education,
especially post-school.
And so I benefited from it.
So I didn't have the same challenges,
but totally, it's inspiring, isn't it,
to hear her talk about that.
What's really fascinating me about you, though, Juliet,
is having a mom that was a psychologist.
And John was a psychologist too, wasn't he?
Did you have any choice?
Could you have gone to be a dentist?
Was that on the table?
Yeah, well, absolutely.
I did originally want to be a lawyer.
And I sort of got to kind of 15, 16,
that would be the career that I would take.
And I think it was something about,
I thought it'd be fun to wear a wig and the gown
and all that kind of thing.
And stand up and argue.
But then I sort of,
because my parents talked about psychology
with such passion and enthusiasm,
from different angles,
like, you know,
they would talk about the education psychology,
things like that.
And they would talk about my mom.
I do call her mom at home, but just on this point,
for the purposes of work and the podcast,
I call her Bev.
She would talk about leadership and transactional analysis
and, you know,
pigmailing effect and things like that.
And so I already found it really, really fascinating.
And I guess I was slightly concerned that,
I think I had a misperception about what law was going to be.
I thought that there was,
I thought I was going to enjoy the research and everything.
I think I confused barristers with solicitors.
And when I heard about the reality of being a barrister,
I thought, actually, you know, that's not me.
I'd rather do the research thing.
So I ended up,
I was going to do psychology anyways,
a first degree,
so that I'd be a specialist in law
of one kind or another.
Well, psychology, obviously.
But then I kind of got a bit hooked,
and especially in my third year,
when I did took the module in occupational psychology.
Then, yeah, that's when I kind of decided
that that was the career for me.
I did have a conversation with somebody
about doing a masters in law instead,
but now I don't know what it was.
I think it was, yeah,
it was in the enthusiastic passion
that they both had for psychology.
I can imagine.
I mean, just hearing Bev talk just now, you could see.
You mentioned about the pigmailing effect.
So Pigmailing is the novel that My Fair Lady was based on.
That's right.
So the pigmailing effect in psychology,
presumably that's all about changing people's environment
and that affecting how they see themselves
or how they behave.
Probably better if Bev explains,
is that there's quite a famous piece of research
around expectations in school and pigmailing.
Do you want to explain?
That's right.
Yes, the study was called Pigmailing in the Classroom.
And it was about a school in New York
where the head teacher and her staff were concerned.
The school was located in a very disadvantaged area.
And she wanted to understand why some of the kids
were underachieving.
So the psychologists came into the school,
Rosenthal and Jacobson,
and they distributed an intelligence questionnaire
to the children.
And they said to the teachers,
we'd like to test out how valid this instrument is
because it's quite difficult to test children's intelligence
at a young age.
So we're going to divide the children into three groups,
high-performing, high levels of intelligence.
Those are average and those are low level.
And we want different teachers
to work with the different groups.
And we'll come back in a couple of weeks
and assess the kids in terms of what they've learned
over the previous two weeks.
The children, inverted commas,
of high academic intelligence exceeded way beyond
the children quotes of low intelligence.
And the teachers said, well, that's a good test, isn't it?
And the psychologist said, well, what do you mean?
We've randomly allocated the children to the groups.
The only thing that's different is what?
Our expectations.
You were told these kids were bright.
You were told these kids weren't.
And their children performed exactly to your expectations.
That study, Pygmalion in the classroom,
is named after the My Fair Lady
in the story of Pygmalion,
and transforming a statue because of his love for the statue.
So it's had a very powerful impact, very powerful impact.
But psychology is a lot in psychology.
Now there's a bit that was repeated
in Harvard Business Review study
of psychology and management,
where different managers were allocated
to different groups of staff.
And they were told these are really high performing staff,
and others were told, well, a bit low, the average,
and so on.
And guess what?
The staff performed exactly according to their expectations.
I think there's a deep moral and ethical responsibility
for anybody, any leadership position, supervisor,
team lead, actually any human being,
to be aware that your expectations of me,
or other people in your team,
will have a powerful impact on my belief in myself.
Because, and psychology time after time after time
shows, provides evidence,
that if we have negative expectations of people,
we will only see the negatives.
They won't perform as effectively
if we have positive expectations.
And so much so that people who are supported by bosses
or team leads, who have positive expectations of them,
surprise themselves in what they can achieve.
Because there's so much self-confidence and respect
that is transmitted as well as, I believe you can do this.
You know, I also respect, I value you, you're unique.
This is critical what you do.
So all that is transferred in that.
And that's what leadership is all about.
Oh yeah, and I can relate to that just from my best ever boss
that I had in my personal life,
who was a guy who would push me out of my comfort zone.
And some of the things that he sent me off to do on my own
as a consultant were terrifying.
And I'd be driving along in my car,
but remembering that he was like, I'm right here.
If you need me, pick up the phone, but you've got this.
You can do this.
And I didn't believe I could do it,
but the fact he believed I could do it
meant I got in my car and I went and did it.
And I didn't know.
And did it well, I bet.
It was like a magic trick.
I don't know, you'd have to ask the clients, Julia.
I'm not sure, but hopefully I managed to just get through it
without, you know, particularly messing up.
Can we do that for ourselves,
have that positive expectation?
So does that have to come from somebody else?
I think it raises a really important point.
It's what's going on in our head
in terms of how we talk to ourselves too.
And one thing that we mention regularly
is that the power of optimism and positivity is profound,
not only in terms of leadership
and your expectations of your colleagues and your team,
but when you go to bed at night,
and you know, are you the sort of person who goes through,
I think, oh my God, I didn't do that right.
Oh, I forgot to do that.
Oh, look at the way I looked.
I just didn't say that.
And we go through this litany of negative things
that we remember.
And we don't remember the positive things.
And I remember somebody once saying,
if you had a friend who talked to you
the way you talk to yourself,
would you go around with them?
Because we are, you know, our brain is absorbing
the positives and the negatives.
It becomes the truth.
Garbage in is garbage out, and you get garbage out.
So internal self-talk is absolutely critical.
And remembering that that voice in your head is you.
I think some people think that comes from somewhere else,
like some kind of remote knower of all things.
But it's actually you talking to you, isn't it?
That's right.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
So let's talk about the leadership research then.
Well, tell us a little bit about your leadership study,
because it was quite a unique study, wasn't it?
Yes, it was.
It was a bit groundbreaking.
So tell us a little bit about that, why that was special.
Well, one thing I should mention is that when I did my PhD,
which was in leadership, and it was published in 1980,
finished in 1982.
Sorry, I viewed the research that existed at the time.
It was all American.
And it was all based on basically white men
studying white men.
I was the kind of grafted during the research.
And I looked through the names.
We got a whole print out of the names of the people who
we would be sending surveys to.
I suddenly realized they're all blokes.
They're male.
There are very, very few females.
And I actually went through the whole list of 5,000.
And I could find 73 women, females, in that list of 5,000.
Now, at that time, books were just
starting to come out on how organizations
are different for women than for men in terms of your experience.
A very important book came out written
by Judy Marshall, a psychologist in Bath,
called Women Managers, colon, Travelers in the Male World,
talking about how different organizational socialization
was for women and men.
And several other books, Carol Gilligan in the States
was writing about.
We have very masculine cultures and the masculine criteria
for how to do the job and behave and all that kind of stuff.
So I thought, well, we're doing a study of career development
in British managers.
We should have women in the sample as well.
And we should know about their career.
So I said to my senior researcher colleague, who is my boss,
I said, we haven't got any women in the sample.
The literature is talking about women's experiences.
It's different for men, shouldn't we?
And he said, we don't want to study about sex and stuff.
Just get on with it.
I said, well, but the literature is saying it's different.
They said, well, if you want to do it, do it in your own time.
And you say that to me, it was red flag to a bull.
We couldn't do it because it's about sex
and we don't have the time.
And that kind of narrow mindedness, bigotry.
I did do it.
So I sent out, I contacted women in medicine, women in media,
women in finance, women in the BBC.
I managed to get an advert in Cosmopolitan.
And I had a great ambition to be in Cosmopolitan
for another reason, actually.
It was multiple orgasms, is what I wanted to be in.
Because they were talking every article in Cosmo.
Very Cosmo.
But I was inviting women, please,
we need women managers, women managers.
So we got a massive sample of women managers in the end
to complete it as well as men.
And we distributed the survey and we
found that what motivates men were more things like finance,
money, security, reward, opportunities for ambition,
career ambition and stuff.
For women, it was about being developed,
having opportunities to lead teams.
It was all about relationships, basically.
The quality of relationships at work and the culture
were the ones that drove their career.
I wanted to make a difference.
And so while I elicited, I then went
on to elicit constructs of leadership.
What makes a boss with men and women?
And got them to talk about their best boss and their worst boss
and the bosses in between.
Say, what do they do differently?
We found that the male characteristics in general,
the themes were about being analytical, being ambitious,
being a high level of cognitive complexity, political skills,
so risk taking.
And the women were things like honest and transparent,
wants to take others with them, is
passionate about developing their stuff.
Totally different concepts of what
makes a good and a bad boss.
And so I kind of skipped from the career development study
to the research that we did around,
I did when I was at Leeds on how men and women perceive
leadership differently.
And yet I said, but all the leadership models
are American based on men, studying men.
And largely in the US corporations,
I was concerned that we, I was running programs,
we're talking about leadership, using the American models,
because they were the only ones that existed.
So you did your own research.
I did our own research.
And this was, am I right in saying
this was the largest piece of research outside of the states
at that point that had been done on leadership?
I mean, even outside, including the states,
it was the very first, it was the largest study ever
of understanding what is the nature of leadership.
We wanted the research to not be about asking bosses
what makes them great.
We wanted to ask staff, what is it
that made the difference for you?
Think of bosses who've had a really powerful, positive
impact on your self confidence, your sense of fulfillment,
your motivation, your well-being at work, engagement,
all those positive things, job satisfaction.
Think about the best bosses you've had and the worst
and those in between.
What is it that, how did they differ?
If you want to talk about leadership,
it's about how I influenced you or my team,
then don't ask me what makes me a great leader.
Ask my colleagues, my staff.
Ask your staff.
And so what did you discover?
What did people say?
And it was the first deliberately inclusive study.
We're sorry.
Yes, no, sorry, carry on.
But we were determined for it to be gender inclusive,
but also by ethnic background inclusive, by level,
by occupation group, by age, by sexual orientation.
We wanted to be as diverse a population as possible.
It became the largest investigation ever
of leadership.
It involved initially 4 and 1 half thousands of people
in the NHS and local government.
But we then were asked to do the similar research in FTSE 100
companies.
And so we listed constructs of leadership for men and women
in FTSE 100 companies.
Came out the same model of leadership.
So eventually the whole sample became around 6,000.
But the model of leadership that had emerged,
the behaviors were upside down of the heroic.
It was much more like the servant model of leadership
in the sense that it was much more complex than the heroic
ones.
It's about how can I create the environment
and the conversations for my colleagues, for my team
to give their best?
And how can I strengthen their self-confidence,
their sense of job satisfaction, their sense of fulfillment,
their sense of feeling valued, realizing what they do
is absolutely critical, and increasing their effectiveness,
supporting their development and coaching?
It was a completely upside down from the heroic.
And we call that model engaging leadership.
And we don't know whether it's different because it
was done in the UK, whether it was done.
I mean, it wasn't to do with the sector,
because the FTSE 100 companies were saying exactly the same
thing.
People were saying, you can say throw money at you
if they want to motivate you.
But we haven't got the time to use the money.
And we've got enough money anyway.
If only they would say thank you.
If only they would ask for opinions.
If only they would listen to us.
If only they would show some appreciation.
So this new model of engaging leadership
kind of exploded in the sense that we
published the academic articles.
And people became very excited and interested in it.
And as it happened, Leeds University,
the vice chancellor at the time, Alan Wilson,
was keen that professors formed spin out companies so
that we could translate research into something
of value to society.
So we were encouraged to form a university spin out company,
which we did do.
And that was the real world group.
2001.
And that has become known as the real world group.
So before we ask Juliette about that,
because that's her baby now, isn't it?
Showing a genuine interest.
Showing genuine concern.
That was a behavior that.
That's one of the 14 that we've mentioned.
But that was the most important one, absolutely.
It's all about valuing and showing genuine concern
and understanding what it's like being me in the organization.
So the boss and trying to understand what it was like.
See the world through my eyes.
That's what it's about.
It's about being like a good parent, frankly.
It's everyday stuff that we should be doing.
Yeah, it's the positive expectations, coaching.
All those things.
Yes, absolutely.
When I'm coaching as a psychologist,
I often use your research question.
When I'm working with a leader, let's say,
who isn't having the impact that the organization
might want them to, or maybe they don't want that impact.
They don't know why it's happening.
And I will often say, tell me about your best
ever line manager.
And the qualities that come out, they'll be,
oh, well, it was someone who had time for me,
who listened to me, who actually knew
what was going on in my life, who knew my ambitions,
who knew what I was good at.
And it's always, and then you're like,
okay, so how were they doing that?
And it's such a powerful, because I think,
sometimes our concept of what a leader is
is different to our lived experience of being led.
Yes, absolutely.
And I think that was the lovely thing about your research.
And it's a very feminine,
stereotypically feminine behavior.
And yet it's something that, well,
men do it very well as well.
There's lots of men who show that genuine concern
very well, isn't there?
But stereotypically, it's about that relationship
and interest, some of those feminine qualities.
Is that right?
It absolutely is, but it is also,
I should say it's about building a shared vision together.
It's about encouraging people to question,
to challenge, to challenge each other,
to challenge ideas, to generate ideas.
So it isn't just the so-called quote, soft stuff,
although the soft stuff is, as somebody said,
the hard stuff actually,
because how do you get the best out of people?
But it goes beyond, and it's about dealing with,
how can we get different groups of stakeholders together?
It's about how in our team are we gonna decide
what are the values by which we are going to do things?
It's about how can we achieve high levels of effectiveness,
things we have to accept, but in a way which is engaging?
And how can we come up with strategies
for how we can do that by maintaining people's motivation?
It's all those things, but the important thing,
it is more quotes, feminine,
but I think we need to transform that characteristic
as saying this is what leadership is about.
But it's been, leadership has been gendered
as a masculine form of leadership,
a much more transactional task for orientated.
And it's tough, well, we've got to settle,
focus on our goals and our targets,
we've got to make this happen.
But hang on a moment,
we know that the most effective organisations and teams
are those that do it in a way which also encourages
the engagement of people,
increases their job satisfaction, their motivation,
their sense of ownership of these goals.
What I think is lovely listening to you to talk
about your whole career journey is,
not only the kind of tenaciousness,
I love that story of being told,
do it in your own time, and you're like, right, I will.
You just see that kind of grit in your character
and that unwillingness to give up on what was your ambition,
which was to make a difference initially to children
and then broadening out to making a difference
to just people's experience of work.
Having observed your dad coming home,
a bit brow-beaten maybe by his boss
and those kinds of things.
But then I think really the glue to all of that
is your passion, isn't it?
It's that enthusiasm.
When you talk about your research,
when you talk about the psychology,
you can just hear how much you love it.
And I think for people who are wanting to
make their own career as successful
and as rewarding as possible,
there's a real lesson in that.
Follow your own passion.
What lights you up?
And then put your energy there.
Because so many people I work with, they're kind of bored
in their world and they don't really know how they ended up
on that particular career ladder.
And it isn't their passion.
It's maybe something that somebody at school suggested
they do, all these kinds of things.
So I think that's lovely.
That's absolutely true.
But I also think that people must,
they can do it at any time in their career.
The wonderful thing about life now
is what with hybrid working too, you can do it anywhere.
You can do a job in a different part of the country.
There are much more opportunities.
The world is open.
So go for it, even if you're 40, 50, even 60.
Think of things that drive you passionately.
You can start to forge your own path.
But that's why leadership must be about
how can I excite my colleagues
to follow their strengths and passions
when it's really tough, when life is challenging,
when we've got so much pressure at work.
How on earth?
And I think the way to do it is to say,
look, gang, this is what we have to achieve.
And these are the reasons why we have to make this happen.
But listen, there's a whole pile of different ways
we can make this happen.
Let's get together or break up into small groups and discuss,
how can we make this target or achieve this goal
in a way which is consistent with our vision and our values
of how we want to work together as a team?
So people have, they are writing their own scripts.
And this is what, I mean, hopefully people can tell
why I'm a fan girl of Beverly.
And if I could carry you around in my pocket
and just keep wheeling you out, that would be amazing.
How do you feel watching Juliet running
Real World Group ever?
Well, she's had to run it at a time when it's most complex,
the range of projects, the breadth of the projects.
And she's got so many spinning plates.
She's got so many different activities
because there are so many things that are happening.
But she's also, she's got to think not only about the quality
of, because all our instruments, our individual or team
instruments or culture instruments
are based on research.
She's got to keep up with the research as well as make sure
that our instruments, when we credit people,
are used properly and appropriately,
as well as having a strategic vision for the organization.
And as well as saying, well, we've
got to survive in terms of financially.
So I think she is dealing with it in a remarkable way
that neither John nor I could have done it.
I mean, we wouldn't have wanted to do it,
but we couldn't do it.
But I feel a little guilty that Jules has kind of helped us out
at a really tough time.
But fortunately, she has very genuinely and thoughtfully
sort of adjusted her career in order
to enable the company to keep running and then to grow
and to grow internationally.
I do genuinely enjoy it.
But my mom's my biggest fan girl, let's be honest.
She's going to think the sun shines out of my posterior.
And rightly so.
So you've got to take what she's saying with a pinch of salt.
But no, I genuinely do.
I do genuinely enjoy it.
I love the freedom.
And I love the thought of working for somebody else
just filled me with dread as much as it could be easier.
Well, you might get one of those horrible bosses.
Well, exactly.
Then I'd have the politics to deal with.
And I do know that I could walk away if I wanted to.
And it wouldn't be like, oh, god, that's
devastating for everybody.
It genuinely wouldn't be.
It would be, well, that's just the next phase
of our transformation as a company or in our lives.
But I genuinely am happy.
So we've sort of recently moved back
into a lot more consultancy, a lot more people have asked us
to help them by starting with top teams
and actually implementing our tools.
Because for a while, we were pivoting
towards trying to do pretty much only psychometric tools.
So we've been through a very painful growth period recently.
I think it's what Bev's alluding to,
where it's been incredibly a huge amount of work
to pivot from psychometric tool provision
to a huge amount of consulting projects,
and all of which is so preciously important to get
right.
One of our chief differentiators is just how much we care.
We just can't and we can't not, basically.
It has been quite painful.
But I've got a very supportive board.
And obviously, Bev's incredibly supportive.
And my colleagues are fantastic.
And we're recruiting more and more effective people to help.
So it feels like it's temporary.
And things will get easier again.
It's really fulfilling to have to be given the opportunities
that we're given to help people and to be
able to have that impact.
You cannot underestimate just how enriching
it is to have that opportunity to help people in that way.
Because I know you're really interested and passionate
about positive psychology.
And just listen to you talk then about you've had a tough time,
but it's temporary.
And actually, it's having a purpose and a value.
And it's progressively getting better.
And these are all the kind of tenets of positive thinking,
aren't they?
So as well as having supportive people around you,
your board, Bev, and your colleagues,
for you internally, in your head, your kind of way
of getting through it, have there
been things that have helped you stay positive
and committed and resilient?
I'd like to be the kind of person that does affirmations
before bed, but I can't be bothered.
I'm so tired.
It's lovely to hear that.
It makes us all feel better, Julia.
I guess we've always had quite a positive mindset as a family,
haven't we?
So I guess that really helps.
So it's not something intentional.
I mean, I guess I'm quite lucky in that way.
My predisposition is towards being more optimistic
than, and don't get me wrong, I do get down
when things are overwhelming and stuff like that.
But it's just generally like, but sometimes, I
think optimism can be, you'll know better than me,
Leona, with the work that you do.
Sometimes it can be counterproductive,
because you keep pushing for something that's never going
to happen.
You never give up.
I do, I think it's partly optimism,
but it's also a desire to avoid the alternative, which
is working with somebody else.
And what does that optimism mean?
So you had a positive mindset in the family.
So how does that manifest?
So those microbehaviors, if we were
to observe you as a family using that positive mindset,
what are the things we would see and hear?
That's a really great question.
I'm just trying to think.
It's hard to put my finger on it.
I guess we've just always been like, well,
I don't know, just the way.
I don't know how to express it.
It's a great sense of humour, though, haven't we?
We've always lost it.
Yeah, I don't know what it is.
It's just, well, a lot of it is actually
to do with my faith, I suppose.
Because my faith is very, very important to me.
It's always been.
But also having fun and a sense of joy in things,
you know, and a celebration of humanity.
I love that.
I think we are in an incredibly privileged position.
You know, A, we are incredibly lucky that we do what we feel
passionately about.
My god, it's so wonderful.
As you say, I can get excited about it so easily,
because I'm doing my godness.
I get paid for doing this sometimes.
I say sometimes.
But it's also, I mean, this relentless sense of optimism.
And I mean, realistic.
Sometimes it's a little unrealistic.
But we have a sense of deep hope and optimism
about being able to make things better
and help organisations to make them better places,
where people spend most of their waking hours.
And by the way, how they feel about work,
they take back to their family, you know,
and they get to spend through the kids and partners
and relationships.
So aren't we lucky that people enable us to come in and work
with the boards, with the top teams, which for us
has been a critical thing.
Our stuff is not just about leadership.
Leadership is also about creating the culture,
the way we are together, how we as colleagues work together
daily, the comments, the way we make our comments.
And even when I'm not around, so it's got to be,
we've got to get to the people at the top.
We are the only people who can say, by the way,
here's the feedback.
This is how you've rated how effective you are at articulating
or communicating clear vision or being an organisation that
values turning mistakes into learning opportunities.
You said how good you are, but look at what your colleagues
think, the people below you who are then leading
the people below them.
They don't see that.
Nobody other than us can actually do that to the board.
Nobody in the organisation can say to eyeball the execs
or the non-execs and say this, but we have that.
That is a very precious privilege,
but it also carries with it an enormous ethical and moral
responsibility.
Yes.
So there's that perspective taking, isn't there,
in the way that you're looking at the things that you do
and the value it has, which I'm imagining
means that your reset default position of optimism and hope,
like you have a tough day, you go to bed,
you haven't done your reflections,
Jules, don't worry about the affirmations.
You get up the next morning and the reset is hope and optimism.
We have a privileged role in this.
We could make a difference in this.
And there's something about that reset,
because we all feel down.
We all feel frustrated.
We all feel fed up when things aren't going our way.
But it's that capacity to self-talk your way back up
into something more optimistic, I think,
that's really helpful, isn't it?
And that's what I'm hearing you guys do just
in how you're talking about.
Yeah.
And I was just reflecting as well,
the kind of conversations we've always had as a family.
We've always reflected on how lucky we are in all aspects
of life, that we're just really lucky.
And therefore, that's part of the passing it on thing,
isn't it, the importance of passing it on,
which has always been a really important sort of value
that we've had.
But yeah, it's just like you don't need to do it at night.
It's just the conversations that we have about,
aren't we lucky?
Aren't we lucky?
That comes up a lot.
And I tell that to my son.
And you've always said that.
And dad, too.
We've always talked about how even though we
know and think it's difficult, we're
so lucky because all the things that we have got.
I think that's the biggest thing that I would.
It's kind of like a positive affirmation.
It just doesn't happen at bedtime,
like people pretend they do on Instagram or whatever it is,
you know, because I watch too much of.
And I'm not saying it's easy.
And I don't want to try and preach about it.
So I don't think it's something that it would be insensitive
to say to someone who's got very difficult circumstances
to say, well, just remember what you've got.
Just think about how lucky you are.
But it's that what I want to do in this in part
is to highlight the ways of thinking that can help us.
Well, exactly.
To be more resilient.
And I think that being optimistic and being hopeful
and seeing that actually there's still some value
in getting up and out and on it, even if we are going
through something tough and arduous.
There is something in that.
It's like a juice, a fuel maybe.
But as you say, Julia, it's not easy.
Particularly if you're someone who's naturally
maybe more pessimistic.
But actually, then you've got to rewire that thinking.
And we know as psychologists, that's months and years worth
of effort, not hours and days.
You can't just decide tomorrow I'll be an optimist
and you can't flick a switch.
You're going to have to really put the work into it.
How do I think?
Why do I think that way?
How could I think differently?
All of those things.
So it is tough to do it.
The fact you have it as part of your family unit
and how you talk to each other, despite the fact
that actually Beverly, you didn't come
from this really privileged environment
where you had a lovely school life.
You actually at the beginning were telling us
about this horrible experience of feeling really.
But even so, you came out of that with some kind of inner
positivity.
Oh, maybe one to fight.
Oh, yes, absolutely.
A little scrapper coming out of the revolution.
By the way, I think there are times
we wake up also feeling awful.
But I think the great thing is we can always
have a conversation with somebody,
whether it's one of our friends or whether it's each other.
We will eventually come back to the fact,
as you said to me, well, nobody's died.
Nobody thought we were going through a crisis or something.
What was the other thing?
No one's gone to prison.
No one's died.
We don't know.
Lots of money already.
It's about putting things in perspective.
But I would also pick up the point
that not just flicking a switch, but as Juliet said,
you can change culture in a relatively short period of time
if you can get the people at the top to model the behaviors
or in a department, in an area.
You can transform what's happening
in that part of the organization.
And this is the lovely thing.
I think the behaviors that you talk about in your research,
that's showing an interest, showing a concern,
and that being a really core behavior.
Even if you have the most domineering, autocratic,
command and control character running an organization,
you can absolutely guarantee they're
showing interest and concern somewhere in their life.
They're an amazing dad, an amazing granddad,
a wonderful son, a brilliant brother.
So we all have these facets, don't we?
And we go into work and we put this hat on,
which is the leader.
And we leave sometimes some of those softer,
as you call it, qualities behind, but they're in us.
And so it's just sometimes it isn't
about changing who you are.
It's harnessing all that you are and bringing
that other side of you where you are caring
and you are interested and you do stop talking
about what you want and listen to what
the other person's experience is.
All of those little things that, you know,
everyone's doing them in some aspect of their lives.
Absolutely right.
You put it beautifully, Leona, but it's also,
you can see a mega transformation in people
who can be arrogant or appear arrogant
or pompous or they're aggressive or whatever,
when they get feedback for the very first time.
And we have met people at conferences years later,
still carry around there what we call TLQ 360
and importance and do you remember,
I got this feedback and nobody's had the courage
to tell them what impact they're having on other people.
And as you said, I think at the very beginning
of this discussion, sometimes we can appear aggressive
as a facade to protect ourselves.
Or you said this, but actually it might be,
you know, that can be an aggressive,
somebody who's cold or removed or a bit aggressive
or reacts defensively might be the person
that she's very vulnerable,
but isn't necessarily aware of.
Or nobody's said, you know, thank you for the fact
that you did over the last week,
help me sort out this issue that I had that,
because those sort of people probably don't attract people
to have the courage to go up to them and say,
thank you by the way for something you've done.
Or say, are you aware of the fact that I feel nervous
when you asked me on the spot to tell you something rather.
I can't think of an answer quickly enough.
And that's that whole thing,
which it could be a whole other podcast, couldn't it?
But that difference between our intent and our impact
and the gap in between that.
And sometimes we can think we're coming over as passionate
and engaging and inspiring,
and the recipients are going,
just please get out of my face and stop micromanaging me.
But you have no awareness of that,
it's in your blind spot, isn't it?
And that's where these 360 appraisals are so valuable
where in a very confidential, safe environment,
somebody external confidentially says,
this is actually what you're doing.
And then it enables that person to change.
So, I mean, I could talk to you ladies all day,
as you can probably tell.
So, you know, reflecting back on the kind of conversations
that we had as a family about being lucky,
you know, Bev and I, and I bet you are too,
Leona, are big fans of Martin Seligman,
who went from studying sort of like deficits
in human behavior to sort of looking at optimism.
And, you know, talked about how, as you alluded to,
you can sort of learn to be more optimistic in your behavior.
But there are, I mean, there are things that,
I'm just really, really always conscious about language,
you know, and having done this master's in the States,
which was taught by people like David Cooper,
who you know is the world authority,
or the author of Appreciative Inquiry.
He talks about words create worlds.
And I always carry that around.
I always think to myself, you know,
how I talk to myself or about the world
is gonna have a profound impact.
So, I've got to listen to language.
And one of the things that I recently reflected on
was that I wake up in the morning and I open the curtains,
and I'll say to my son, oh, it's a gorgeous day today.
Or, oh, it's a miserable day today.
And I suddenly realized how crazy that is,
because a miserable day, it just means it's raining.
It's still a fantastic day.
Yes. It's just raining.
It's just a different day.
Exactly, so I started saying,
it's a great day and it's raining.
And that has helped me as well to sort of,
because I did get quite affected by the weather.
I think, you know, many people,
it's not all of us get affected.
But something like this morning,
it's like, wow, fantastic, I feel great.
If it's raining and windy straight away,
it's often in Geysley.
It's kind of like, oh.
But when I started saying just that,
you know, just changing the language and the words,
I genuinely think it's starting to shift my mindset
about rainy days.
And so, yeah, that kind of would be my tip to people
is just be really, really conscious of the language
that you use.
And as Martin Seligman would say,
go out of your way to notice what's going well.
Go out of your way to notice ways in which,
I use the word lucky,
but the ways in which things that are working for you.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think what you've described there
is the essence of what I'd like to do with this podcast
is to give people that conscious awareness
of how the way they think
and what they say affects their world.
And that's language.
You know, if you are talking about yourself
and to yourself and about the world in negative terms,
that's gonna affect you emotionally.
And that all those things are linked together.
And I think that's hugely powerful.
So I wanted to ask you both
what tips you would give your younger selves.
So Beverly, if I come to you,
so that sort of youngster,
probably in school or just post-school,
what would you say to her if you could whisper in her ear
some tips about her life?
The phrase that immediately comes to mind is,
life can only get better.
I suppose it's that you have strengths
which you will start to discover
as you follow what your dream is,
what your ambition is.
Have faith in yourself and go for it.
Yeah, what a difference that might have made
to her hope and optimism.
Although it seemed like she did okay, Beverly, if I'm honest.
And Juliet, how about yourself?
What would you say to your younger self?
I think, especially at school,
I would have had less negative self-talk
because as I grow older,
I sort of recognize quite a lot of ADHD traits in myself.
And I sort of used to have this self-talk about being lazy,
about being not motivated,
about why am I different from everybody else?
Why can't I knuckle down the study and meet deadlines
and all those kinds of things,
without it being a huge push at the very end?
Yeah, so in hindsight, I'd like to sort of say to myself,
this is just you and that's how you work.
And ultimately, it's gonna cost you a lot of stress
in terms of last minute studying for exams,
and it's gonna cost you a lot of stress
in terms of last minute meeting deadlines at work,
but you'll be okay.
And will it also be a bit of a superpower in any way?
I mean, I can pull all nighters still at the age of mid-40s,
47 I am now.
So, in that way, I guess, I suppose it is,
but I mean, it's a challenge as well.
I think this is a lovely thing though, isn't it,
about getting older, is that you can look back
with that kind of perspective and reflect and think,
if only I'd known,
I would have saved myself a lot of heartache.
No, I just think one of the most important maxims in life is
if you believe you can make a difference,
or if you believe you can't make a difference,
you're probably right.
In other words, transformer, I can't do anything about this.
Yeah, I can.
That, I think, is the most important thing
I've learned in life.
Just the kind of simple message
that I'm always trying to get across to people
when I talk about leadership
and trying to help people to be better leaders
is just about just remembering the importance of humanity,
just remembering that people are human.
Well, obviously, by definition, everybody is human,
and I think we forget that.
It's really nice, isn't it?
Really, yeah.
It is lovely.
Well, it's been an absolute privilege
to just spend this time with you.
I've always loved spending time with you over the years.
I know our professional lives have circled
in and out of each other's worlds quite a few times,
but this has been lovely.
And to get to know things about you, I never knew before.
So if all leaders could just be more caring,
then how much, not only nicer would our working lives be,
and probably more enjoyable,
but how much more peace people would just have in life.
And so I think it's a beautiful, beautiful thing
that you're both doing.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for joining me.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for joining me.
Thank you.
Coming up in Leadership Journeys.
At 5 a.m., I woke up from an explosion.
I took my stuff, like just a rucksack,
but all my clothes, all like stuff in my house,
and I left apartment, and I thought,
probably I will never come back here,
and probably I'll never see my apartment again.