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Lead The People is your guide to unlocking your true potential as an authentic leader. Hosted by Dr. Matt Poepsel—The Godfather of Talent Optimization—this podcast dives deep into the art and science of what it takes to lead at the next level. With insightful conversations and practical strategies, each episode equips executives, strategic HR pros, and aspiring leaders with the tools it takes to boost performance, inspire teams, and drive meaningful impact. Whether exploring the latest workplace trends or tackling real-world leadership challenges, Lead The People offers an enlightened approach to leadership. Embark on a rewarding journey to become the leader your people deserve—the leader you were meant to be.
Lata Hamilton (00:00):
When change comes knocking on people's doors, it triggers their survival instinct. Even if it's something so simple like, "Oh, we're just changing this process a little bit." For a lot of people that's like, "Okay, well what does that mean for me? What does that mean for my role? What does that mean for what I do? Am I going to be needed anymore?" And that actually triggers the survival instinct because their job is their livelihood. It's putting food on the table. It's putting a roof over the heads of themselves and maybe their family.
Matt Poepsel (00:34):
I just had a fabulous conversation with Lata Hamilton. Can't wait for you to hear it. I just wanted to highlight a couple of the things we talked about that really left an impression on me. The first one is how she talked about how change itself really ignites someone's survival instincts. So we're going through a lot of change right now. She talks all about it, but she also talks about the very natural reaction that happens. So we need to be empathetic about, need to be aware of that and realize what we're navigating regardless of where we are in the change process. She also talked about how change certainly comes from the top down. We see that all the time, but she advocates for grassroots bottom up as well. And this creates something that she calls magic in the middle. And I really love that, that sense of partnership between the top and the bottom because both are valuable perspectives obviously, but it's nice to think that we can create that magic in the middle.
(01:22):
And finally, she's going to teach us a technique called chunking up. And this is really about how we can start to leave our current perspective, maybe elevate that a little bit, and start to talk about how we don't just have to appeal to the rational side of things when we're going through change, but really get at that hard as well. So it was an awesome conversation. I can't wait for you to hear it, so I'll let you get to it.
(01:48):
If you think change comes in waves with enough space between each one to catch a breath, that gap is gone for most teams. Today, we're going to get into what happens when change stops being an event and starts being the weather and why the leaders who hold up are the ones who read the room as closely as the roadmap. Our guest has led change efforts that have touched more than 100,000 people working with some of Australia's biggest companies. She's Lata Hamilton, founder and CEO of Passion Pioneers. She's an accredited change manager and NLP practitioner in her book, Pioneer Your Career Change is a global bestseller. Lata, welcome to the show.
Lata Hamilton (02:19):
Thanks so much for having me. I'm super excited to be here.
Matt Poepsel (02:22):
I know you're all the way over in Australia. I'm halfway across the globe. It's morning for you. It's afternoon for me. I have no idea what's going on, but I'm just so happy to see you.
Lata Hamilton (02:31):
Thank you. Yes, it's great to be here despite whatever time differences there are.
Matt Poepsel (02:36):
Certainly, you've got to be very busy these days because as a change expert, that's all I see everywhere I look. People are changing. We hear about transformations, things are topsy-turvy all over the place. And so my first question for you, Lana, is probably a pretty obvious one. Change is necessary. We all see it. We're all living through it. Why is it so hard to pull off?
Lata Hamilton (02:54):
I think that when we think about change in the past, we thought a lot and a very traditional way of thinking about organizational change management. And if your listeners and viewers don't know what organizational change management is, it's anything that's changing in an organization. So what we do is we move people from doing things in one way to doing things in a new way. And we do that through communications, training and business readiness, making sure they've got everything that they need for the change. So it could be like a new process, a new system, a new team structure, the move to remote work, the move back to the office, anything that's changing in an organization we can support and help people get informed, inspired, confident, and ready for the change. So in the past, change used to come sort of in ups and downs. You would have a period of stability and then there would be maybe a big change or a transformation, and you'd focus on that for a period of time, and then you would be able to catch your breath, have another period of stability, and then the next change would come.
(03:52):
And we're just not seeing that anymore. Change is just coming thick and fast. It's never ending. The impact of it is increasing as well. So now, particularly with the advent of technology, the number of people who can be impacted by a change is much broader. And in terms of numbers and potentially also location, national, global, et cetera. And then just the sheer pace of change has increased as well. So I think it feels like everybody is almost like change isn't a single one-off thing anymore. It's just ever constant and just always coming.
Matt Poepsel (04:28):
You mentioned that it's almost like we used to do work one way, now we're going to do work a new way. And you mentioned so many of the different things that can change about work. And I think that some of these are designed to make work easier, more productive, more efficient, more effective. But the change process itself carries a bit of a tax. So you don't just get to have all those benefits without crawling through some broken glass sometimes, I think.
Lata Hamilton (04:50):
Yeah, absolutely. If we think about organizations, we often break it into what we call business as usual teams. So if we're working on a big project or transformation, we usually have the project team or the transformation team. And then you'll have the business as usual teams who are the teams that do all the work day-to-day all the time. Sometimes you might hire in some additional resources or experts or consultants like me or people to work in the project. And so there's this really big concerted effort. And I've worked on some transformations that have gone for two, three years. So there's this really big concerted effort, but the idea is that you then are putting it into the business, you're handing it over to the business, you are having the business adopt that change. And for them, it's almost like they're having to do that on top of their day job.
(05:36):
They still have to keep the services to the customers or the clients or the community, whatever is your organization. They still have to keep all of that running. They're having to do all of this and learn what is this change? How am I going to do that? How am I going to do things in the future? How do I troubleshoot when we go live? They're having to do all of that on top of their day job. So it is a lot of discretionary effort. And like what we were talking about, the fact that there isn't those periods of stability anymore. It's like people are sometimes working a full-time day job and then constantly having to add on the additional work, the additional changes, the discretionary effort. So the burnout is really real. The change fatigue is really real. And if we look at where it's coming from, it's coming from the pace of change, the lack of prioritization in organizations.
(06:24):
Instead of focusing on one or two really big ticket items that would really move the dial. It's like lots of little rats and mice change, then sort of medium-sized initiatives, then the really big transformations. And all of that's constantly coming at people all the time.
Matt Poepsel (06:40):
Yeah. And I think my leader listeners, they're absolutely can relate to this. I think you'll get it from every angle and it is constant and you're going through your own process when you're absorbing change, but then you're also looking after the team. Sometimes you're looking upward toward maybe some seniors. And so it's a lot to juggle when you're getting it from every angle. And it reminds me that you had told me that there's a couple of different positions we might find ourselves when it comes to change. One is we might initiate it. Maybe it's at the team level or maybe we're a senior leader and we're announcing the change. We made the decision. We need to now hand this off so people can put this into place. Sometimes you're cascading that change if you're somewhere in the middle between execs and the individual contributors, for example, or you might just be on the receiving end.
(07:23):
It could be affecting you. That's how it is. So can you tell me a little bit more about each of those positions we might find ourselves in relative to a change? And let's talk about those big changes that you mentioned, like return to office or some of the other digital transformations.
Lata Hamilton (07:37):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think you hit the nail on the head. If we're thinking about emerging leaders, rising stars, people who might be in those middle manager or they're kind of in the middle of the organization, they're not at the tippy top and they're not the frontline teams necessarily. They are often the ones that are almost like the ham and the sandwich. They are squished in the middle because of exactly what you said. So in a lot of cases, a lot of the work that I work on are big transformations. It might be a big organization, they might be wanting, let's just say, a digital transformation. I think everybody's had that experience before. So maybe it comes from the top down. We're going to do this digital transformation. Maybe we're putting in something like an enterprise resource platform. It's going to touch multiple functions across the organization.
(08:23):
It's going to transform the way we do sales. It's going to transform the way we do finance. It's going to transform the way we do work planning and operations. Maybe it touches everything. So that's being driven top-down. And your job then as a leader is going to be to make sure that you absorb all of that information and then to be able to talk about and cascade that information to your people, to your teams. And if you've got multiple layers below you, it's really important that that cascade continues all the way to the frontline teams. You might, in some instances, be the one standing in front of frontline teams, but in many instances it might actually be filtering down and it can absolutely get lost along the way. And at any point in time it might drop off and the cascade kind of ends. The waterfall kind of ends.
(09:12):
So what we do in change is we try to provide a lot of diverse resources so that however you lead your team and the people who you're leading lead their teams, things like talking points and packs that can get cascaded, like informational slides, training resources and things that can get cascaded. And the idea for that is that there is some research, I think it was luck in 2006, and it found that people are nine times more likely to adopt a change if their direct leader has spoken about it with them or communicated it with them. So cascading change is probably one of the biggest things that you will do as a leader. However, there might be times, as you mentioned, where you initiate change. So having a base level of change management understanding where you are the person who's coming up with the changes, not coming from a higher directive.
(09:59):
You are like, "I know we need to transform or change this thing, maybe this process or this product within our team." And so you are the one driving that. And often leaders, they're not given just the basic change management skills of how to really deliver a change, not just about change, but how to actually deliver a change to their teams. And they don't necessarily have the consultants or the extra resources to help them, but you still really need to follow that change process or bring in some of those change tools and techniques in order to get your people on board and engaged on the journey. And then the last thing is to remember that regardless of whether or not you are cascading the change or you are initiating the change, you too are receiver and a recipient of the change. So as you are trying to help your people understand and go through this new world, you yourself by the very nature of change, because it's cascading down, it might be something like an operating model change where your job is actually affected, is actually impacted, is actually on the line.
(11:01):
Or it could simply be the fact that because of the changes that are happening, your team's going to change the way they do or who they interact with, or a change that you are initiating might transform the work that you do. So you're constantly battling these different fields and you have to navigate across all three at once often.
Matt Poepsel (11:20):
And I think also change takes place under different time horizons. So if you're in the middle of cascading a change, let's say there's been a big push towards digital transformation, AI, something like this, and you're like, "We've been working at this for a while, but we're kind of in the middle of it. So we're not seeing daylight just yet. People are still raw, but we're making it happen." But you're also a part of some pretty senior executive meetings and now they're starting to plan for a reorg and you're like, "Oh my gosh, now I'm on the receiving end of this and I'm still dealing with this other raw moment over here." This is where it really stacks up to your point about these changes. We don't wait anymore for stability because we're not convinced we're ever going to get to stable again, but I don't know that we've done the math fast enough on what all this stacked change is taking a toll on us.
Lata Hamilton (12:03):
Absolutely. And a lot of digital transformation or the introduction of AI is with that end goal to have a more streamlined workforce often. Everybody kind of knows that at the heart of it. And that's one of the reasons why the only thing you really need to know about the psychology of change is the fact that when change comes knocking on people's doors, it triggers their survival instinct. Even if it's something so simple like, "Oh, we're just changing this process a little bit." For a lot of people that's like, "Okay, well, what does that mean for me? What does that mean for my role? What does that mean for what I do? Am I going to be needed anymore?" And that actually triggers the survival instinct because their job is their livelihood. It's putting food on the table. It's putting a roof over the heads of themselves and maybe their family.
(12:47):
The end view is to end up doing an org redesign. And then the challenge is the fact that you are trying to both deliver a change into an organization and then trying to also transform the operating model of that organization. And too many times it's not done well. Too many times it's like all of the tasks that those people are done. We saw the mass layoffs with AI over the last sort of month where it's like 4,000 people have been laid off. Where did all their work go? AI is not at a place at this point in time to have been able to pick up and take on all of that work. And that's what those organizations are finding is that they laid off all of these people to open up the investment for AI. They got that quick cash, but what suffered in the meantime?
(13:34):
What customer service metrics have gone down? What risk has been opened up? What compliance issues have opened up? What safety issues have opened up? Because actually all of the tasks, roles, responsibilities that all those people did, there was never going to be enough time to properly see where those things should go and sit in the new structure and the new model.
Matt Poepsel (13:54):
And I think that these things are really systemic. Everything is connected in ways that we don't always appreciate. And I wouldn't say it surprised me, but it's something that really I have my eye on, is the fact that when we start seeing companies laying off a lot of people or they're slow to hire new entry-level employees because they think AI might do it at better economics, what we don't realize is that even if that's not my company, let's say I'm a CEO and I'm saying, "Well, we didn't do that." Well, yeah, but the market did, and your people are still nervous. They're skittish because they're seeing what can happen. And you're like, "But I didn't cause this." And you're like, "Yeah, but you know what? When you go on LinkedIn and you see yet another, you're like, is this going to come for us?" And it hurts trust and it creates that survival instinct even if you haven't made that sort of decision directly.
(14:37):
And certainly if you have, that happens too. So I think it's just one of those things where there's never been a better time or more acute need for leadership than when we're going through change. So I'm really glad we're having this conversation. And I want to shift gears just a little bit to think about executives. When I talk about executives, a lot of times I say, "You know what our challenge is? We just don't have a lot of leadership death." And when I talk to the people who work for them, they say, "You know what the problem is? It's up. It's the executives. They're the problem." We can set that aside for a second, but I know in our conversations, you've told me about executives who might launch a transformation. They signed off on it, they want it, but then underneath they actually resist their own decision process.
(15:12):
Why does that happen? And what does that look like when it is happening?
Lata Hamilton (15:16):
It's happened so many times with my consulting clients. I have my own independent consultancy, and so I get to almost see behind the scenes of some of these transformation and work directly with boards and work directly with executives and see exactly what's happening. And you're absolutely right. Often they are the ones that signed off on the project. They are the ones that signed off on the transformation. They signed off on the millions of dollar budget for this piece of work. And in some cases, I think it's shiny object. So they're like, "Oh, well, we need to go and do this." In some cases, it's simply because of legacy. I have worked with several organizations who were doing digital transformations and their systems were 20, 25 years old, no longer supported by the vendor. They had no choice but to change. And so it's almost like either it's shiny object, "Oh, this looks great.
(16:02):
We want to go do this and get distracted by something that they haven't actually figured out what it's going to do in the organization." Or it could be we desperately actually need to deliver a new system, implement a new system because our current one is not fit for purpose at all anymore. We have absolutely run it into the ground. And then in other cases, it could be that the directive came from some regulatory or compliance risk or some issue that's happened. And so it might not have been their choice. And then other times it's, oh, well, particularly with people, more people changes. Sometimes it might be culture changes or we want to bring in this new development program or whatever it might be from a people perspective. It's like we should be doing that, but we don't actually really truly believe in helping our people have a great experience and develop.
(16:49):
A little
Matt Poepsel (16:49):
Bit of lip service in that case. Yeah. They might say we have some culture issues. You like, "All right, fine. Go ahead, let's do something. Let's announce some big program." But you're like, "Okay, anyway, let's get back to work." And you're like, "Wait a second, we didn't put this into place yet." And they're like, "Yeah, we're moving on."
Lata Hamilton (17:03):
Especially with investors, and often investors might drive some requirements for things like ESG, like environmental sustainability governance. They might drive expectations of how a business is going to be run and operated, but the executives don't actually truly believe that, exactly what you said, lip service. So you have these executives signing off on these big transformations and projects, not truly believing in them themselves. Unfortunately, there is this real challenge where, if you've heard the phrase, the fish stinks from the head down. If that's the energy, if that's the vibrancy and the emotion that's coming from the head, it really does not set the change up for success. I don't believe that change should only be top-down leader-led. I really believe in having a balance of top-down leader-led and grassroots bottom-up. And I like to say that the magic happens in the middle. So I understand that it's not all on the leaders, but the leaders are, and the executive particularly are such an important part of it.
(18:05):
They have to truly believe it because that lack of belief and that cynicism at that level, even if all the words that you say are correct as an executive, the energy comes through. And this comes more to my neurolinguistic programming. So NLP, neurolinguistic programming, which is the study of excellence in behavior, psychology, and our emotions and communication. And so it's almost like that energy flows through regardless. And then what actually we find happens is the project can be going, humming along, doing its thing, creating its solution, et cetera, et cetera. And then we end up with roadblocks halfway through or towards the end or even at implementation from those executives. And it's happened to me on different projects before, and particularly on one project, the solution was almost ready to go and the whole thing just got canned. And I checked in with that consulting client a couple of years later.
(19:00):
They still hadn't gone live. And all the work that happened, and the interesting part of that was the frontline teams wanted it. I spoke to the frontline teams, I spoke to the teams that were doing the operational teams. They actually were the ones that were excited about that change. They really wanted it. They could see the benefits and the improvements and things like that for it. And it was a real shame that actually it was at the executive level that it ended up getting blocked. And we do have often a generational difference just by the very nature of corporate careers. We're often who's sitting in boards and executives are baby boomers who haven't retired yet. In the past, they would be already retired, but people are living longer. Lifestyles are obviously improving. And then sometimes they haven't done proper succession planning or benching of new talent to come up and to be able to take their roles.
(19:49):
So they're staying in these senior executive board and executive team positions for longer. And then that has a flow-on effect down into the organization because they're doing things the way that in the '80s and the '90s, that was what worked. That was what helped get them to that place. But the way that people respond, the way that the world is today is changing. And you can't be an executive anymore and lead the same way that you did 20 years ago, 30 years ago. Everything has changed in the way the nature of work. Remote work is just one example of that. We saw so many mandates of return to office being driven from that senior level. If I'm working from home with a consulting client, I do way more work at home because I'm uninterrupted. When I am in my client's site, I'll use that to have coffees, have meetings, have face-to-face workshops, do more with my clients.
(20:46):
So there's this real kind of almost mismatch. And I think if you are one of those emerging leaders, if you are one of those rising stars, you might sometimes have to coach up. You might sometimes have to be the person who helps to get those executives to come on the journey and to shift how they're thinking and what they're thinking around the change because without their commitment, without their true sponsorship, it's really, really hard to deliver big changes.
Matt Poepsel (21:12):
And you mentioned from an NLP perspective, neurolinguistic programming, there's different techniques. What do you recommend for, let's say, a level down leader who's like, okay, I need to coach up. A lot is right. I got to coach up. Either I know something they don't, or maybe they're kind of not giving the endorsement. I need their energy to carry this forward the way they've asked me to. What are some techniques that a senior leader can use to manage up to the executive team, for example? I
Lata Hamilton (21:38):
Bring in a lot of neurolinguistic programming, coaching tools and techniques into my change leadership generally. But one of the most powerful ones that I've used personally a few times now is when you're doing a future state workshop, so you might lead a future state workshop including with the executive or including with the board. And then there's a particular activity, it's called chunking up. So it's a particular technique. And the idea around chunking up, it's a neurolinguistic programming technique. You can use it in a million different ways, but the way that I will often use it with my clients or teach it to my students is that the higher up you go, the higher level you are, the more agreement that you'll get. The lower level you go and the more detailed you go down, the more specific you get, the more variance of opinion or disagreement that you get.
(22:31):
And so when you are working with executives or when you're working with any group actually who's resistant, you want to try and get them more high level chunked. And we're going through this with a client at the moment. Everybody's so focused on the technical functionality of this new system. And there's questions and there's issues and there's confusion and everything like that because everyone's down in the weeds. Everyone's down in the detail. So what we want to do is we really want to chunk people up. We really want to get them higher level because then you're going to get more agreement and get people connected to something bigger than all the weeds in the detail. And here's where the NLP stuff comes in, bringing in not just the head, but also the heart. And so the way that you use this tool is you simply ask one of two questions.
(23:14):
You can ask what's the highest intention of that? Or the question that I use more is what's the purpose or what's the purpose of that? So it could be we're running this digital transformation for what purpose? For what purpose do we want this digital transformation? And then the answer might be so that we can optimize. Great. What's the purpose of optimization so that we can make things more efficient? What's the purpose of that? What's the purpose of that? And what you'll often get to is this really high level value, this really high level experience. With different clients, it's been connection. With other clients, it's been empowerment. With other clients, it's been happiness. With other clients, it's been living our best life. Something really high level that everybody can get behind. And a couple of examples where this has been so fantastic is I was working with one project and I was working with the finance person who was kind of project managing.
(24:08):
And I kept saying like, "Well, why do we want this new system?" And she's like, "For financial reporting." And I'm like, "Nobody's going to care about that. I get that that switches you on. Nobody's going to care about that." And so I used this technique just one-on-one with her, and we got to the point where we realized that it was for better decision-making. And then I was like, "Great, for who? Who are we doing this for?" And she's like, "The community," because that was a really community-focused organization. It's why a lot of people got hired by the organization or wanted to apply for the organization. It's why they showed up to work. So we ended up calling the program Make It Count, Empowering Better Decision Making for Our Community. And we kind of had tagline where it was like every asset, every dollar, every person, every decision.
(24:50):
So it wasn't just about financial reports. It was actually themed and had messaging and things around this broader thing that everybody, no matter what level of the organization you could get behind. And another quick example is I was running this more of a future state workshop with the board, so with a group of people in a room. And I ran this again. And when we first started, the owner of the business was in there, and he was pretty closed down and pretty graph and things like that. And by the time we got to the point as we went through this process, he realized that the reason that he was essentially in business was to be able to have his people live really good lives and have time with their family and to be able to fund their lives and their existence. And it was so far-fetched from the enterprise resource platform, which was the transformation.
(25:39):
And he had tears in his eyes. The relevance and the resonance of getting to that moment where he realized who it was really all for had nothing to do with the system, had everything to do with people. And that's where you'll often get to. It's actually about the people. Ultimately, the reason why we're doing this is so that people have a better experience in some way, shape, or form. So that is one of the most powerful tools. You can use it up, you can use it down, but if you use it up, it can be one of the things that helps those executives really truly connect with what is the reason that we're doing this? Why should I actually be committed to it? And to get them reconnected to the importance of the work, because who knows why they originally signed off on it?
Matt Poepsel (26:21):
And for listeners to the show that are regular listeners are going to hear in this, we constantly talk about the three major systems inside of organizations, right? Performance, people, and purpose. And that last one rarely gets the attention that it deserves. So what you're teaching us a lot is to don't skip that step. Sometimes you want to chunk it up and start there and make sure you're articulating that purpose. And the other skill that it brings back that I say is an essential leadership skill right now is storytelling. And what you're doing is you're pulling those stories out of leaders who've kind of forgotten the importance of storytelling about why we're doing these things or maybe they fell in love with their part of the story around financial reporting. Isn't that great? And you're like, "Well, maybe for you, but we're going to need kind of a different story for everybody else." Those are really great reinforcements of some things we talk about quite often on the show.
(27:07):
So thank you for that. I want to actually shift gears for us. We're going to play a fun trivia game. It's the way I always like to end my podcast interviews. And I saw that in one place you describe yourself as a burst of energy with a big heart and big hair. And I don't have any hair, so I can't really relate, but I thought we would get ourselves a trivia question about hair. Here it comes. What protein is human hair primarily made of? So this is a multiple choice question. Is it A, melanin, B, keratin, or C, calcium? Those are our three choices, Lada. What do you think?
Lata Hamilton (27:39):
I think I'd have to say keratin.
Matt Poepsel (27:40):
We're going to go with keratin on that one. So audience, if you're playing along at home, as I know you are, which protein is human hair made of? Melanin, keratin or calcium? We want keratin, and that is absolutely correct. It's a tough fibrous protein that forms the structural building blocks, not just of our hair, but also nails in the outer layer of skin. Look at this. We dominated AI today, Lata, just like you knew we would. How about that? I've got an even better question for you though, which is where can my listeners go to learn more about you and connect with all the great things that you're doing? Yeah,
Lata Hamilton (28:10):
So come visit my website. So it's latahamilton.com, and you can grab my free ultimate guide to change management. It's really helpful if you are just learning about change management or if you want to reinforce some of these things. I do talk about some of these concepts and ideas. And then obviously come follow me on LinkedIn. I would love to see you over there. Come shoot me a DM and say hi, and yeah, would love to connect.
Matt Poepsel (28:32):
I love it. Well, listeners, I'm going to have those links for you in the show notes. You're only one click away from getting connected with Lata and learning about all the great stuff she has for you and getting that great resource. Lata, thanks so much for sharing your insights today. I've really enjoyed the conversation.
Lata Hamilton (28:45):
Thanks so much for having me. It's been fantastic.