Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Are you tired of the same old, surface-level conversations about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)? Look no further. You Must Be Woking is the podcast cutting through the noise with unfiltered, candid discussions on the real challenges and opportunities in building genuinely inclusive workplaces.
Join hosts Craig Richards and Dawn Hurst as they tackle tough topics from cancel culture and unconscious bias to psychological safety and leadership accountability. We're here to challenge norms, bust myths, and provide fresh perspectives that drive real change, not just performative actions.
Whether you're an HR professional, a leader, a DEI champion, or simply someone passionate about fostering belonging and equity at work, you'll gain actionable insights and a deeper understanding of what it really takes to create a workplace where everyone thrives.
Subscribe to You Must Be Woking and join the conversation that dares to go beyond the buzzwords. It's time to get down to business.
speaker-0 (00:00.564)
Is coaching a buzzword or can it truly be a leadership superpower? We're about to find out. Welcome back to You Must Be Woken, the podcast where we have honest and sometimes tough conversations on the topic of diversity and inclusion with her, Hurst.
speaker-1 (00:15.446)
And him, Craig Richards. Today, we're going to be exploring what many of our listeners have asked about in terms of coaching and mentoring. We're going to explore what the difference between the two is and ask those big questions. Is this really the tool leaders need to create a more inclusive workplace?
speaker-0 (00:35.778)
Spoiler alert, it is, it's a superpower, it's a game changer.
speaker-1 (00:40.091)
And thanks for watching.
speaker-0 (00:48.014)
Shall we get into it today then? as always, we like to start off the episode with a news story or an article relating to the topic. And the one I found this time I thought was really interesting. So this was a report done by LinkedIn's Workplace Learning Forum in 2024. And it said that now 47 % of all companies are planning to invest in career mentoring and coaching. And I thought, wow, that's a...
huge shift in the number because I wouldn't have put it at that number. I think some companies do invest in those things. But I didn't realize it had shifted to nearly half of all companies now are investing in coaching and mentoring. So I thought, well, you we've got to talk about that then, right? Because what do we think? Is it a good investment, bad investment?
speaker-1 (01:36.014)
Oh, it's a terrible investment, clearly. And who've run mentoring programs for a million years. But I guess, yes, it's a big step, but people are only just getting wise to the impact of this whole topic in my view. know, if there was one thing to put in the toolkit to create an inclusive culture, coaching, mentoring programs,
speaker-0 (01:38.734)
Says two coaches.
speaker-1 (02:04.27)
absolutely should be in there because it has direct grassroots impact. yeah, sensible investment.
speaker-0 (02:11.79)
I could not agree more with that sentiment. And one of the things that we talk about quite a lot, and we have talked about quite a lot on this podcast, is the fact that most people don't wake up in the morning and think, I'm going to be uninclusive today, or I'm going to exclude people today. It's usually down to a lack of awareness or education that, you know, and usually when you give people that awareness and education,
they can adapt their behaviors and, you know, completely engage in that inclusive workplace, etc., etc. Coaching and mentoring is the quickest and most successful way to nail that straight off the bat, right? Yeah, So for the benefit of our listeners who perhaps don't know the difference, we should probably articulate what the difference between coaching and mentoring is because there's a stark difference, right? So do you want to have a go at it?
speaker-1 (03:06.808)
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm going to use my words here in terms of, if we think of coach and we go back to sport and we think about what a coach does in sport, that's exactly what a coach does in business. So they're focused on performance, they're focused on specific goals, they're focused on improving that overall package.
of the individual. And they do that by challenging measurable outcomes, usually a coaching passport. And it's usually over a set time scale. in our case, we tend to do blocks of six coaching sessions. It's very structured and the whole purpose is that you're unlocking potential. mentoring, I always describe as the guide.
So, whereas your coach is your coach, your mentor is your guide. And this is typically a more long term relationship. You know, we recommend at least 26 weeks in a mentoring relationship. they tend to share, mentors tend to share knowledge, skills, they're often from the similar sector or have some similar experience to ourselves. And mentors can be in our lives for life.
They're often more experienced, they're sharing experiences and they will help people find the answer. So when we talk about is this an essential tool for leaders, understanding the different language of a coach and a mentor are critical because we use those interchangeably in different situations as a leader.
speaker-0 (04:49.558)
I love that. What a great way to describe it. I often talk about the mentoring relationship as being a little less formal than a coaching relationship. And mentoring is usually a direct transfer of knowledge, right? So you're usually saying, I did this, why don't you try that? Right? That's a good way of helping people and learn and etc. Whereas coaching is much more about you, it's much more tailored, it's much more formal and structured. And in my mind, it's much more about
you, not me. So as the coach, it's about unlocking what's already there, even if you don't know it's there. Yeah. And that for me is the is the magic of coaching and mentoring is, know, mentoring is a really good tool for knowledge transfer. And coaching is a really good tool for development and developing leaders and developing individuals to rise to challenges, occasions, whatever's going on for them right now.
speaker-1 (05:45.888)
Absolutely. And there's many, many different types of coach and mentor. And, you know, I've shared this before, my early career was as a sports coach and that's all about performance and mindset. Whereas in the business world, we're trained and qualified as executive coaches, looking at performance, looking at strategy, looking at the gaps leaders and execs have got.
But in addition to that, you can have all sorts of different mindset coaches, spiritual coaches, all sorts of different things that build up. Same with mentoring, you know, the range of mentoring programs can be internal, external mentors, we can do it in groups individually, reverse it, all sorts of good things that make this such a versatile set of tools.
speaker-0 (06:38.134)
Yeah, and it's so helpful for particular challenges. It's interesting, isn't it? Because if you think about it in that space, actually, business mentoring or business coaching is quite a new phenomenon, really. But it's existed in things like sports, as you said, for years and years and years. And then over time, what eventually started happening was we started saying, we could do that in business, right? We could do that in my organization. And then more people started doing it. More people started doing it.
Which is why I love that stat at the beginning about 47 % because, know, how amazing would it be if we can get that number to 75 % of organizations adopting it? It might impact productivity rates, which are declining around the world, right? Because we might see a shift, the stats are phenomenal when it comes to coaching and mentoring. We'll cover those in a bit more detail later, but imagine that shift.
speaker-1 (07:30.322)
I think this is part of the maturing of the business world, isn't it? know, coaching, mentoring, perhaps sat in the fluff pile previously because the impact was immeasurable until recently.
speaker-0 (07:47.126)
Yeah, it's interesting you say that because I was going to talk about this a little bit later, but I'm going to bring it in now actually. There's sometimes a reluctance, I think, of leaders or individuals to take on coaching. So they get off at it and then they go, no, I'm too busy or I've got, it is too expensive or whatever, right? They find a million reasons not to do it. And I always find that quite fascinating that there's a stereotype or there's a kind of a myth around coaching.
that says if you have a coach, you might be seen as weak or whatever. And it's usually, dare I say this, and I'm stereotyping now, but it's usually either new leaders or leaders who are transitioning into a new role that feel this reluctance to engage with a coach. And sometimes I think that comes from a bit of imposter syndrome. So they think, well, coach is going to challenge me and therefore I might get found out about being a new leader or in this new role or whatever that is.
And I genuinely think that that's so the wrong way to look at it. But I understand why people do look at it that way. What do you think about that?
speaker-1 (08:53.482)
Yeah. So I always say to my coaches, this is the difference between good and great. And we need to make those steps to be it. You know, if David Beckham in 1992 had said, I don't need a coach, he'd probably been playing for Ackrington, Skepp and Stanley.
speaker-0 (09:10.18)
Who were they?
speaker-1 (09:12.27)
So the reality is we all can benefit from different elements of a coach, but I think it does carry some myths and legends around it is filling a weakness as opposed to that movement from good to great.
speaker-0 (09:30.892)
Yeah. And I think that the transition point, and particularly for new leaders or for leaders moving into what I would describe as the next level of leadership, I think that transition period is so critical for organizations that why wouldn't you put a coach in place to support individuals through that transition period? It's usually some big resistance to individuals stepping up into a new role. And we've got to be really careful as an organization.
that we don't allow that period to go on too long because it can impact performance, can impact culture, all of these things. you know, for me, if I was running an organization and we were bringing in coaching, I would be making sure that every leader that transitions into the next level has a block of coaching to support them through that period.
speaker-1 (10:17.258)
I think you make a really good point and that step change is so dramatic to move from good to great in those transitions. But I also think at the upper end of that ladder, if we have individuals who've been in post for some time and have no intention of moving up sideways or indeed out, they too are ripe for coaching. And that may mean that they have two different coaches a year to
work with them through different elements, but to keep sharp and keep that move from good to great to exceptional is hard work. I know you and I have spoken about how hard it can be to have the right coach.
speaker-0 (11:03.544)
That point is so important as well about matching with the right coach. And I say to leaders all the time that I'm working with, do not ever be afraid to say, I want to try a new coach or, you know, a decent coach won't be offended if you say it's not working and I need to find someone else or I would like to try somebody else, right? Because a decent coach will understand that match is so important and it doesn't really matter.
It's not about us as a coach, it's about you as the coachee. You should 100 % not be afraid to switch a coach if you feel the need to do that because the match is so important.
speaker-1 (11:35.853)
Thank
speaker-1 (11:43.618)
good coaches should be encouraging that. You know, you have a life spanning coaching. It's different to mentoring. There is so far you can take somebody as a professional coach and then we should be the ones saying it's time to switch now. Yeah.
speaker-0 (11:59.534)
No, definitely. That brings me nicely on to skills. It's almost as if we planned that seamless link, but brings me on to this what makes a good coach. And I just want to share bit of a story, right, because I love this story. But let me just read it out and then we'll talk about it if that's right. So in 1992, a young man was being interviewed for a computer science job at a well-known software company. He'd been through several interview stages, which included working through streams of algorithms.
going through quicksorts and bubblesorts, using minimum data structures and minimum memory, showing off his computer science acuity. He was exhausted and thought to himself, surely this must be the end. Not quite. He had to answer one more question. It was a question that caught him off guard. What if you were standing on a crossroad and you see a baby fall? What will you do? This was 1992. It was before the cell phone era. So he thought about it for a while.
This was a computer science question that he had not prepped for. So he said, I'd run to the closest phone booth and call 911. The interviewer got up and told him the interview was over and walked into the door. The young man was stunned. What happened? He asked. And the interviewer said, you need to develop empathy young man, because when a child is crying, you pick them up and you hug them.
In the end, that young man became, he did get hired and is now the CEO of that same software company, Microsoft, and his name is Sachin Nadella. And he talks about this story regularly when he does talks at Harvard and other institutions around the world. And the reason he talks about it is because he said that lesson that he learned straight away about empathy.
is one of the most powerful tools in leadership. And he genuinely talks about teams being able to build better products if they have more empathy, they can resonate with their teams better if they've got more empathy. And for me, empathy is the number one skill for a coach to have. I think it's the best skill you can have as a coach.
speaker-1 (14:02.811)
Interesting. Yeah, I love the story. And I love the sentiment of empathy being the strongest. guess that's not always possible when you're a performance coach. You know, sometimes to be a pure performance coach, you're having to push individuals beyond their comfort zones, whether that be in sport or business or to handle a crisis. And therefore, I think the empathy
speaker-0 (14:04.173)
Love it.
speaker-1 (14:31.21)
Anchor is incredibly important to recognise that it's not just about tell.
speaker-0 (14:37.174)
No, and I get that and I don't think you should hold back on pushing individuals and challenging your coaches in the right way. But I think empathy gives you that insight into who they are, allows you to go deeper, build a relationship, understand what's important for them, link it to their kind of purpose in life. are they, you know, those kind of things. If you don't have that ability to be empathetic in those ways, you can't build those connections with each other.
And it's those connections, I believe, that allows you to challenge in the right way or unleash their potential. So I just think empathy for me is like the number one skill. And I call it a skill because some people have challenged me on this in the past and said, is it a skill? Is it a trait? Is it behavior? I call it a skill just because I think you can learn it and you can develop it over time. Being more empathetic and I just think you can learn it. That's why I call it a skill.
I just think managers, if we could train them one thing or coaches, we could train them one thing. It would be how to develop your empathy and how to develop that in that area. Because if you can do that, you make better connections with people.
speaker-1 (15:44.83)
I agree. And I think the extension of that is not only listening, but hearing. Because, you know, we all hear words, but do we actually hear the message? And I think that comes right back to empathy. Often my coaches are trying to tell me something that they're not comfortable to come out and say immediately. And our job is to unpick and actually hear.
speaker-0 (16:09.866)
And I have a coach for my coaching practice and she challenges me on that skill around understanding deeper meaning in practice when I'm working with individuals in coaching. So, yes, we want to challenge individuals in terms of their performance and where they're going, but how do we get them to connect that to who they are and why it's important and stuff?
when we can make those connections with individuals. Wow. Yeah. Okay. That's for me, that's when it becomes that superpower, right? Yeah. And that's the bit where I talk about coaching being a superpower. If you can make a connection between somebody's work with their life purpose and that kind of stuff, like they can become unstoppable, right?
speaker-1 (16:42.126)
I
speaker-1 (16:59.224)
Absolutely. And support that with some good mentors. Unstoppable.
speaker-0 (17:05.304)
Love that. Love that. Okay. I'm conscious as well, companies that are looking into coaching now as a kind of a method are taking it a bit further, right? So I love this story, but I won't go into too much detail around it, but you can just Google it. It's out there. But companies are now replacing traditional performance frameworks or perform and develop frameworks with
coaching frameworks and they're moving leaders to this place of being coaches rather than managers managing performance. I really love that idea. I think we need to be a bit careful with it and do it in the right way. But the companies I looked at who have done a really good job in this space, Google, so they've replaced their performance management framework with a coaching framework for leaders. Adobe, Salesforce, some of the biggest players in that space have now
adapted traditional command and control style, managing performance on a monthly basis into much more training leaders to have coaching conversations with individuals in their teams. And the reason I really like this in particular is because it puts feedback right in center, doesn't it? It gives leaders confidence to give feedback more regularly.
speaker-1 (18:24.608)
It does. It also plays beautifully into the power of an inclusive culture because instead of us doing a sheep dip approach, we're doing a genuine equitable approach. So we talk about equality or equity in this approach. It has to be tailored to the individual. You're forced to do it. There is no alternative. So by very nature, people are getting exactly what they need.
speaker-0 (18:52.024)
Yeah, love it. And it's, I just think it's so good. The other thing I think it does for me, because coaching by its very nature is much more about asking questions and unlocking the potential that exists within individuals. And it's not that directive, do this, I've done it this way before. What it creates, I believe, is more sustainable development for leadership, right? So, and what I mean by that is the amount of companies you and I work with,
where we go in and one of our first observations is all of the leaders are operating at one lower level than they should be, which forces everybody else down a level. So they're two in the detail, they're two in the weeds. Coaching almost forces them to move back into the right space and operate at the right level because instead of direct knowledge transfer, which says, do this, I've done it this way in the past, coaching forces leaders to ask their teams, how would you do that?
What do you think is the root cause? What have you tried already? You know, those type of questions suddenly create a different dynamic, which forces individuals to then think for themselves, raise their own development games, and it means leaders can operate at the level that they're meant to operate at. I just love that, right? If we could fix that in organizations, leaders operating at the right level, how amazing would that be?
speaker-1 (20:10.606)
Absolutely. And, you know, I come back to throwing in the mentoring piece to support that because the reality of some very experienced individuals, you know, whether you're looking for a particular sector specialist or you're looking for a female leader who's been there and done it as your mentor, to support in that triangle with the coach and the mentor and the individual is equipping them for
absolute success.
speaker-0 (20:41.686)
Yeah, love it. Should we talk a little bit about the reasons why organizations don't do it? And I want to spend a huge amount of time on this, but cost is usually a good reason, isn't it? it's expensive, et cetera, et cetera. I counter that, as I would with most development interventions with saying, actually, the cost of doing nothing usually outweighs much more the cost of investment in the first place.
Part of the reason you might feel that way is you're not tracking the impact. So I think it's always important to be able to measure the impact of what you're doing. And then, you know, when I think about that cost, I always say to people, how long does it take someone to get up and running when they start in a new role? Right? That's three months, usually getting up and running, finding their feet. If you could shorten that to a month, how much quicker, how much more productive, how much...
better with your organization be with a coach, you can do that, right? What happens when a leader needs to learn new skills or sharpen existing skills? How long do you wait before you allow that to kind of trickle on without putting some form of intervention into to tackle that pretty quickly? Coaching short, sharp, can happen in a really impactful way pretty quickly.
speaker-1 (21:59.648)
massively. And I think it comes back to the lack of tangible measurement historically, because we understand how to measure performance, whether that be financial or output or profit, whatever that looks like. But we're not so confident, or haven't been so confident to measure the impact of things like coaching and mentoring. And therefore, if we can correlate directly
the power of coaching to increasing performance by 20%, the cost is negligible. It's pennies compared to what it would look like. I also think, you know, the wrong coach historically can have tainted individuals view of why this topic is not as impactful as it can be. But I think those people who've had the experience of the right coach.
just feeling invincible at a different level.
speaker-0 (22:57.39)
I love that. Well, actually, again, seamless LinkedIn. It's like you've read my notes today. So I asked one of a couple of leaders, I asked, to describe how they would describe the impact of coaching. And this is what they said to me. So it moves me from good instincts to strategic instincts. I love that. I that was quite powerful. Another one said, it helped me move from being liked to earning trust and respect.
speaker-1 (23:26.296)
Yeah.
speaker-0 (23:27.308)
I thought that was pretty cool. And then my favorite one was, it helped me from navigating complexity to mastering complexity. thought, that's quite powerful statement, isn't it? The senior leaders that I've worked with and their kind of attitudes to what it's done for them and the impact that it's had on them individually. quite like
speaker-1 (23:47.758)
I love that. And particularly when they're at that transition phase of either moving through the organization or indeed out of the organization but upwards. I think that can be the confidence difference, can't
speaker-0 (24:02.664)
Yeah, definitely. And before I want to touch on mentoring a little bit more as well, because I think we've leaned into coaching, mainly because I'm obsessed with coaching. think it's a superpower. You are a big champion of mentoring. So I do want to come back to that as well, because I think we run quite a lot of mentoring programs for organizations. So I'm not against mentoring in any way. But let's just do some of the stats on coaching for a second if you can. So I was doing a bit of research for some of the impact where coaching is measured.
speaker-1 (24:10.594)
I keep bringing us back to metric.
speaker-0 (24:31.95)
and has been measured and therefore the impact. And I didn't realize it was as high as it is. So 70 % increase in individual performance as a result of coaching, 50 % increase in team performance as a result of a leader being coached, and then a 48 % increase in overall organizational performance as a result of coaching. Huge stack.
speaker-1 (24:56.866)
massive stats. That's great, isn't it? And you know, any business leader weighing up the cost and risk and impact, hearing those statistics, even if it was 10%, you'd take it, wouldn't you?
speaker-0 (25:11.427)
Sure, 100%. Anyway, sorry, let's do some mentoring as well, because I know you're very passionate about mentoring.
speaker-1 (25:18.03)
I guess I am passionate about mentoring because I also have had the privilege of having mentors throughout my career who have literally changed the way I approach situations, not by giving me the answers, often by leading me through mentoring speak. So what have you forgotten? What are the risks? How else could we do that? What's a different approach? All of those things. And that has kept me true.
alongside having a coach as well and being a coach. We've run some of the largest mentoring programs around the world and we're very privileged to have done that. you know, when we come back to stats and impact, one of the ones I'm most proud of in the UK is an organization, an industrial organization, who was experiencing large
retention issues, particularly amongst their female colleagues. They had had some embedded traditional issues in terms of how people were treated in the workplace if they were different and actually had very few professional females within their operation. So we embedded a mentoring program into their organization which was focused around female, which I don't always
advocate for, but in this particular incident, it was appropriate. And we brought in some fabulous external mentors from across the country and really professional female who'd it, seen it and been there. And what we found was that over the course of three years, we saw a massive increase in the number of female within the business to the tune of about 60.
new female. And what we saw more interestingly was how many of those were within the manufacturing and the project delivery part of the business. And both of those increased by over 100 % in both cases. We also saw that the broader diversity succeeding in those operational areas increased.
speaker-1 (27:38.766)
200 % at least in all of the key characteristics. But perhaps the most impactful statistic, and I'll leave it till last, is that when we started this program, we were seeing about 57 % of females leaving the business. Three years later, we saw none.
speaker-0 (27:58.252)
Wow.
speaker-0 (28:02.22)
Wow. Wow.
speaker-1 (28:04.514)
So the impact where we talk about financial impact and we use our statistic from Oxford University of 30,614 pounds per person times that by the number of leavers, we look at the impact of having innovation and creative thinking in the production facilities and the manufacturing facilities. We also see the power of
the confidence build in people pushing for management and leadership roles. And that was a relatively inexpensive program. We used some really fabulous mentors.
speaker-0 (28:47.756)
I'm smiling because we have got a great pool of mentors and coaches, we? I'm really proud of our team. They're so good.
speaker-1 (28:55.64)
they are. And I'm very proud of what they achieved. And to see the beginning of that program and the confidence and the appreciation from the business of that pool of talent compared to two or three years later was massively impactful. you know, the question we get asked is how can I increase representation? How can I
make sure my business is more balanced. This has to be in your toolkit.
speaker-0 (29:29.036)
Yeah. No, I couldn't agree more with that. so it just talks to me a little bit, right? Because we've debated this internally as well. And when we set up the mentoring schemes for our clients and things, we have this discussion quite a lot. So it's probably important that we cover it off. Why is a mentoring scheme like the one you've just described, that manufacturing organization, different to everyday mentoring that takes place in organizations? What's different about it?
speaker-1 (29:55.862)
Yeah, I mean, we obviously have the privilege of being able to audit a lot of organizations and take a look at their mentoring programs. And, you know, a lot of organizations do the best they can, but they're not mentoring experts. so the first thing I would say is a mentoring program is designed and delivered by experts. The second thing is the robustness. So you apply some of the robustness that you would apply to a coaching program, to a mentoring program.
And what I mean by that is all of your mentors are trained mentors. They're trained in how to be a mentor. Mentoring training programs are hugely popular. Your mentees are also trained how to be a mentee. And that's a big differentiator because often they don't know what to expect. A very clear program around structure
within the mentoring parameters because you're often working in a 26 week program. And that would look at quality control measures within that whereby your mentoring expert would join the first meeting, the fifth meeting, the 10th meeting, for example, to check that the impact is sufficient within the relationships and the relationships are working. But also setting objectives for each
of those meetings. We tend to do 90 minute mentoring meetings and again, the mentor will guide. Remember the difference is we're not a coach, we're a guide as a mentor. Why did you do that? What could you do different? What are the, all of those kind of what and how questions. And
Also, at the end of each mentoring round, the 26 weeks, there's a measurement of impact. And therefore, the objectives that were set in the mentoring contract at the beginning are then reviewed, evaluated and measured and circled back where necessary. you build lifelong connections.
speaker-0 (32:10.754)
Sure. And I think that for me is that that's that big differentiator, isn't it? Most mentoring programs are less formal than the ones that perhaps we or other organizations deliver on behalf of businesses. And the reason they're less formal is because they exist and they're good and they're, and you know, they had, they had value, right? I'm not saying don't do them, but a more formal structured one you can measure, you can monitor, you can specifically use it for a
particular challenge or a particular goal that you've set. for example, if you want to create a more inclusive organization and you want to help establish leaders, understand the next generation, you could do a reverse mentoring program, make it formal and make sure that you're monitoring and measuring the impact that that's having on the organization. Easy, nice tick in the box, right? You could do...
And we talked a little bit earlier about the different types of mentoring programs. It could be one-to-one mentoring for a specific challenge that you're going through, an organizational redesign or whatever that is. And we can mentor leaders through that process or individuals through that process. know, group mentoring I love as well. So I'm a big fan of group coaching, group mentoring as well, because I think you can help teams to form, shape themselves, work better together.
overcome particular tasks and obstacles. I'm really a big fan of that kind of team dynamic that sits within it as well.
speaker-1 (33:36.128)
And you made a good point earlier when you were talking about coaching, know, matching of the mentor and the mentee is one of the most critical parts of the process. And that's the expertise. I see so many couples of mentor and mentees fail because that wasn't done robustly. And one of the most impactful programs we've run and continues to run is one of our global manufacturing organizations.
who do a cultural mentoring program. So they're a global organization. They're working in 80 countries around the world. And one of their criteria was that you must be matched with an individual who is from a different culture, a different country, and they will tackle challenges together through different eyes.
speaker-0 (34:29.994)
Love that. I genuinely love that. We do quite a lot of that with our mergers and acquisitions work, don't we? Where we're trying to get teams to work better together across the globe. Yeah, really powerful. other thing I just want to bring up on the informal mentoring programs, because I think these are a bit of a risk to an organization and we should pull that out as well and help people understand why that's a risk. So traditionally in informal mentoring,
arrangements in an organization. That matching process is, shall we say, weaker, maybe. That's a nice way of putting it. And what we need to be careful of is you don't create in and out groups. So I get mentoring because Bill likes me, but my colleague Pam doesn't get mentoring because she doesn't have a relationship with Bill and Bill's now too busy to mentor her as well as me. So she doesn't get access to mentoring or whatever in the same
way. And there's a lot of that in informal mentoring arrangements in there.
speaker-1 (35:32.64)
I think there is. And one of the biggest danger areas of course is that because I have a certain job title, I'm a great mentor. And the reality is there has to be a mentor job description and there has to be a mentor skill requirement. And we decline quite a lot of people with large job titles because they don't have the criteria to be a good mentor.
And so many organizations I see where they'll say, of our exec are mentoring some of our more junior colleagues. And you look at the exec and you think, lucky junior colleagues, they're having a ball. So it is really important that it's a robust process because not everybody can be a good mentor.
speaker-0 (36:22.018)
Tough. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, I'm very conscious of time. Shall we do so what? What should organizations do then? So if you're thinking about coaching a mentoring for your organization or you've got existing programs that you want to take a look at and understand whether they're doing the right things and hitting the right marks, what's the so what bit for you? What do you think organizations should be doing?
speaker-1 (36:46.648)
So the first is to commit, recognise that this is a key part of your toolkit. The second, of course, is to procure the right partner, the right coaching partner. That doesn't necessarily have to be the biggest or the slickest or any of those things. Make sure you're speaking to ex-coachies and genuinely looking at the impact of the testimonies.
and cross-referencing those and that they're recent and all of those good things. And also make sure that you collaborate in the design of the coaching programs. Be really clear on what your expectations are and then allow the coach, coaching experts to do their stuff.
speaker-0 (37:33.814)
Yeah, I love that bit about the alignment, right? And the design of what you want the program to be. So for me, the number one tip for leaders is if you have coaching or mentoring in your organization, A, put a bit of structure around it, but B, that alignment with your strategy is so important, right? Absolutely. you know, well-meaning individuals who might be creating these programs or delivering these programs or delivering these coaching sessions for you,
might not be aligned to the direction of travel for your organization. So check, you'll be surprised how many are coaching individuals or mentoring individuals on things that are over there. And it has no meaning or direction towards your strategy and where you're headed as an organization, what it is you're looking to achieve. That alignment and that design of programs is so important to make sure that it's then delivering the impact you're expecting from it. And I'm always surprised by how much
leaders don't know whether the coaching programs are, or mentoring programs are aligned to their strategy or their goals and objectives.
speaker-1 (38:37.998)
I think it's a really good point. And also remember a coach or a mentor is not a therapist. Very, very different things. And I know it's a topic close to our heart. We've seen it cross the line and we need to be very careful of staying in lanes.
speaker-0 (38:44.525)
Yes!
speaker-0 (38:57.016)
Yeah. And a good coach will absolutely make that line clear. They won't hesitate to say, actually, I think we're bordering into a different place here. Well, let's come back to where we are. But it comes back to this point about who volunteers to be mentors and mentees, right? And dare I say this, it's the usual people that volunteer to do these things. And actually, that's again, is why a matching process is important because we don't want, you know,
love Betty in the canteen, but Betty who's going to, you know, wants to be everyone's friend and therapist. That's not a good mentor. Even if Betty has been around for 25 years and knows the business inside and out, a good mentor is about the right skills to transfer that's aligned to your strategy to achieve your objectives.
speaker-1 (39:44.778)
bust recruitment process for it. Quite. doesn't make you popular. Trust me, I've had to sit many an exec down and go, no, sorry, you haven't met the skill criteria.
speaker-0 (39:54.08)
Yeah. And it is so important, particularly if it's a targeted program, right? And you're doing it for a specific reason. Yeah. Okay. Love that. Yeah. So for me, biggest, biggest, one of the biggest things you can do to invest. I would probably start with a mentoring program or a coaching program for leaders or whatever it is, just to test it in your organization, see if it works, make sure you can align it. When you see the impact of it, and if you track the impact,
You'll then want to do things like change your frameworks around performance and development and all of that kind of stuff. And all of which is great. And I would encourage it, but you have to do it properly. So make sure you're getting the right support to make that transition to a new framework, et cetera, et cetera. And make sure your teams have got the support to do that design properly. And again, alignment with your strategy is all important for this sort of stuff. yeah, but I just think any...
leaders as an individual, invest in yourself, go and get a coach as an organization, invest in coaching for your leaders and your teams and invest in mentoring for your teams. It's one of the best development programs you can have outside of traditional classroom learning. I didn't go further and say it's better than that.
speaker-1 (41:07.434)
I think, you know, to layer on top of your point about development, which is a great one, you know, where we're talking about creating inclusive cultures, this will speed up that process for you.
speaker-0 (41:19.663)
Yeah, 100%. And it's more cost effective than putting 10 people in a room and learning. It genuinely is, isn't it?
speaker-1 (41:27.444)
the arbitrary activity that people do to increase diversity.
speaker-0 (41:32.11)
What we often do, and just on that point, because I love this, some of our training courses are then we deliver a training course and then we do coaching straight afterwards to really embed the learning. That's quite a powerful, we call that coach and focus, don't we? So we do a bit of learning and then we coach to focus on the learning and then embedding the learning. And I love that when we do those kinds of programs because that's a really great way of embedding the learning. They reckon you retain about 20 % of what you learn in the classroom.
add a coach and focus to the end of it, that rockets to 80, 90%.
speaker-1 (42:06.094)
I've got a live program at the moment within the automotive sector with a very resistant team at the beginning. And we're coaching, focusing, and we're doing our do it tasks every week. And the impact is huge.
speaker-0 (42:19.618)
Yeah, love it. Okay, very, very conscious time because we could talk about this all day long. So we've got a few listeners questions this week. I think you've got some and I've got some. The team have been very creative now and they've stopped the envelope and they've given us individual questions for each other. think that's a boat for the benefit of our listeners. This is where we hand over the microphone to you, the listeners, and we open up to your questions. We don't get sight of what we're going to be asked. So it's unsighted and uncensored.
But you get to ask us some questions. So I've got a question for you, that's why. So this one Dawn has come from Beth on LinkedIn. And she says, Hi both love how informative these pods are. Please keep them coming. Thank you, Beth. Very kind of you. I have a question for both of you. And would love to hear about a time you felt truly included or by comparison, excluded within your careers today.
speaker-1 (42:50.043)
question.
speaker-1 (43:15.95)
My mind went straight to excluded. So in my case, I've worked throughout my career in very male orientated environments, working within football, working within manufacturing, civil engineering, some very, very male environments. And I won't mention where it was, but I remember being the only female.
speaker-0 (43:20.162)
Not the US, isn't it?
speaker-1 (43:44.736)
manager in the room and the much more mature men in the room asking me to make the tea. And this wasn't that long ago. And when I can remember starting to do a presentation using a really snazzy piece of software and they were more fascinated with the software than the content, which said to me, they're just not listening. And it was ahead of their time.
So yeah, wasn't the right environment for me. In terms of feeling immensely included was actually in the same sector a few years later where I'd kind of built up a bit more credibility. And I sat around the board table and had quite a lot of influence within that environment and actually found that some of those same individuals were leaning into me on a very, very critical program.
So it's interesting how over the course of five years and same sector and similar characters, you can experience both.
speaker-0 (44:52.622)
Yeah, do you know, my example is exactly the same. It's the same organization where I felt excluded and included and the inclusion came after I established my credibility. How funny is that? So mine was I started my career working for a very well-known pub company in the UK. It's where I did all my training around leadership and I cannot speak highly enough of the work that they certainly did back then.
But I was one of the youngest unit managers to have ever developed and take on my own unit. And I used to get a lot of stereotypes thrown at me about, you know, whether I was good enough and I'm a youngster and up and coming and all of that kind of stuff. But actually after I then established my credibility pretty quickly and I came out a few years later and that same company, those same individuals,
made me feel so included and so part of the organization. Yeah, so it was a real contrast between how I first felt excluded because of my age and then, you know, after establishing my credibility and then coming out, feeling of being included and people looking out for me, taking care of me, making me feel like I'm part of the fabric of the organization was huge. yeah, but it's interesting. We've both had the same.
speaker-1 (46:20.044)
Yeah.
speaker-0 (46:20.554)
Maybe that's a generational thing. It's different now. Maybe not.
speaker-1 (46:22.762)
It be. you reckon it's? Probably not. Sadly, I still see stuff all the time.
speaker-0 (46:32.174)
Anyway, love that question Beth, thank you very much. Now I believe you've now got one from me.
speaker-1 (46:37.962)
yeah. So this is from Neil from Instagram. Hi, Neil. Sent us a DM with a question for Craig.
speaker-0 (46:45.528)
okay. That makes me nervous. Why just me?
speaker-1 (46:48.75)
Really Neil, that's what you want to know?
speaker-0 (46:51.88)
You can't marry me, Neil. I'm sorry.
speaker-1 (46:54.798)
Can you tell us one thing or change that could be implemented easily that organisations could do to make things more equitable for all?
speaker-0 (47:06.129)
wow, one thing that could make things more equitable for all.
Gosh. Given we've talked about coaching today and mentoring today, I would say start with that. Start with coaching and mentoring because if you want to create an inclusive organization, which is equitable for all, you need your leaders to lead the way and guide that. And a mentoring program is a great way to transfer that knowledge of how to do that really quickly. So invest in a mentoring program or in a coaching program.
which will help your leaders understand what it takes to become inclusive and therefore more equitable. There you go. I just leaned into today. Well, what about you? Come on, why would you answer that question? What one thing would you do?
speaker-1 (47:53.934)
probably say something even more basic. Be curious, listen, but hear. Because each individual is so different and just by even having your own scorecard of what do I need to do to motivate Bob compared to Sarah will really, really help with that equitable.
speaker-0 (47:56.408)
Comment.
speaker-0 (48:16.588)
Love that. Okay. There you go. Thanks, Neil. So if you want to ask a question, you can get in touch. Use the WhatsApp voice note to 07467461917 or on all the socials, you must be Woken or YMB Woken and you can find us wherever you like and we'd love to answer your questions. So just before we wrap up, our recurring feature is back, Woke or Joke. I should say to people, I...
treated Dawn to dinner because I lost last time when we were together in Budapest and it was the grand total of A MacDonald's.
speaker-1 (48:51.854)
It was a very nice McDonald's and it was on a trade, so it was really posh.
speaker-0 (48:58.57)
She didn't get the past restaurant experience, but she got a McDonald's in payment for my scores on Work with Joke. So I believe you're setting the challenge for me this time around.
speaker-1 (49:09.176)
got an interesting one. So is this woke or joke? Britain's most woke £2 million Dutch-style roundabout, which needs a three-minute long video explaining how to use it, is due to open next week. The roundabout, currently under construction in Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire in the UK, includes dedicated space for cyclists away from motorised vehicle traffic.
The project is due to open on June the 6th, but has been controversial with locals for its inclusive route for cyclists and pedestrians.
speaker-0 (49:51.21)
Over.
speaker-1 (49:53.024)
So need a three minute long video to explain how to use the roundabouts and you've got a safe space for cyclists.
speaker-0 (50:02.592)
So I want every fiber of my being wants to say this is a joke, right? But having lived in Swindon for a short period in my life where they have the magic roundabouts, have you ever seen this? So Swindon, for those of you that listening outside of the UK is a town in the UK and it has what they call the magic roundabout, which is basically one big roundabout with, I think it's six mini roundabouts all around the outside of it. And if you don't know the area, you don't know how to use the magic roundabout, it can be.
like chaos at times. But actually when it works well, it works really well and it keeps traffic flowing and all of that kind of stuff. But it's quite famous for its magic roundabout. And so it sounds to me like Hamel Hempstead following Swindon's path from many, many years ago, but adding in cycle lanes and yeah, I'm going to say this is, this is true. This is woke.
speaker-1 (50:58.474)
I'm really sad to say you're right.
speaker-0 (51:01.102)
Not because I'm happy about the roundabout, but because I got one right.
speaker-1 (51:04.974)
It's been dubbed Britain's most woke roundabout. And yeah, causing huge controversy.
speaker-0 (51:13.612)
love it. I absolutely love it. I'm going to spend three minutes of my life watching the video now. I'm interested to see why it's so woke and brilliant. Okay, well, listen, that's it for another episode. Thank you for listening. I hope you've managed to take something away from today's episode. And remember, I will always be a champion of coaching because I do believe it is a superpower. until next time, bye from me.
speaker-1 (51:36.99)
and mentoring for all. Bye from me.
speaker-0 (51:39.662)
Thank you for watching and listening. If you liked our discussions and our content, why not leave us a review and so we can reach even more listeners. Also, don't forget to hit the subscribe or the like buttons and the follow buttons on anywhere you get your podcasts from. You can also find us on all the social media platforms at You Must Be Woking or just search hashtag YMBwoking where you can continue the conversation and get involved in the chat after the show.