Credible Leadership - with Jenni Field

Sarah: Hello, and welcome to this episode of Athrú Communications Podcast, where we're exploring how you can transform how you communicate across cultures and differences. I'm your host, Sarah Black, the founder of Athrú Communications. And I'm joined today by international speaker, author, podcaster, researcher, and business communications consultant, Jenni Field.

Jenni specializes in helping leaders and teams use communications to take people and organizations from chaos to calm. She's an expert on credible leadership, relationships at work, and how to make more impact with communication. Her research has included work on communications with deskless worker, spoilers, spoiler alert, it's cultural.

al Internal Communications in: 2021

Jenni: Hello. Thank you for having me.

Sarah: It's lovely to see you. So much that we could talk about today based on just that introduction alone.

Jenni: So much. Where should we start?

Sarah: Where should we start? One of the things I'd love to talk to you about is quite often when I talk to business leaders and communication professionals about culture, they immediately go to regional or national, um, or global. But I know from working with you that one of the things that you're particularly good at is looking at the cultural tensions within organizations and sometimes between organizations and I'd love to hear more from you about that.

Jenni: Definitely. So I think the work that I've done around that taking you from chaos to calm means that I'm quite often getting involved in quite tricky situations. And it might be a merger and acquisition.

It might be that people aren't doing what you want them to do in different parts of the organization. And people don't really know why. And all of that can often come down to cultural. So if you've got a merger or acquisition, you've got different cultures and organizations coming together. You've got different norms, you've got different.

Um, practices that are acceptable, different ways of communicating, uh, all of those things exist in two or three organizations that come together. We worked with one client where six organizations came together. That's huge. Regardless of your volume of people, that's still six different cultures trying to come together.

Uh, so that's very challenging. And equally, you mentioned the deskless worker research that we've done. And that is a cultural difference in organizations and we know that so many people at work are deskless workers, you know, whether it's in hospitality, in healthcare, in manufacturing, they are culturally different to office workers.

Office workers are culturally different to them because of how we're taught, because of our skills, because of how we work. All of those things mean that we think differently, we speak differently, we use different language, all of those things play a role, and that causes friction at work, and it makes it hard to get stuff done, and that's why, for me, the root of everything is communication and relationships, and if we can improve that at work, then we It'll be a much better place for everybody.

Sarah: So you talked about the chaos that comes up when we've got this kind of cultural disconnect or cultural kind of friction, if you like. What are some of the things that you tend to do to, and I know it differs from situation to situation, but how do you start to move towards the calm?

Jenni: So it's all about context, isn't it? But you have to start with listening. So we'll always start with some element of listening, often with the leadership team, because there's often challenges and frustrations there, and we need to understand what they're trying to achieve and also what they perceive are the things that are wrong because they might have one view and actually it's something else.

So we'll often start with those conversations and then it's about seeing the environment people are in. So it's making sure that whatever you're trying to look at, if it's a chaotic situation, you have to see people in their environment, which makes everybody really uncomfortable, because it's like having like an observer in the room.

But we, you know, we've done work where we've just gone in and observed meetings to try and help people improve meetings because they weren't working well. And, and you can very quickly start to see, and that is sort of listening as well, but it's, it's seeing that environment if you're looking at manufacturing firms or people are changing offices.

What's that physical environment people are in? And it's giving people that space to talk. Quite often, we don't allow for that when we're in organizations because we're moving so quickly and we want to get everything done and we've got this busy culture that's been existing for us in society for a long time, that we don't pause and stop and think, actually, what are we doing?

Why are we doing it? So that's a lot of what we do is we challenge some of that pace. That's We listen and we look around and observe and see what's happening. And from an outside perspective, you can, you can really see it with sort of fresh eyes.

Sarah: And I think probably it's helpful as well to have, and I know that you do this as a collective team, like we all come to it with different perspectives.

Jenni: Yes.

Sarah: And so hopefully we bring some of that into the room when we're observing and listening so that we can go, Oh, I never thought of that before.

Jenni: Yeah. And that has to be intentional. You have to have a team that is from different backgrounds and different perspectives. Otherwise, if I'm just going in everywhere, I'm just going to, I'm going to come in with the same perspective every time.

And so I'll always pick different people to be in my team, depending on what I'm doing to bring a different perspective for me so that I'm making sure that I'm not bringing any bias into that because it's so easy to do when you've done it for years.

Sarah: Yeah. Um, I want to touch a little bit on hybrid. Um, and how, how can organizations build culture when people are not seeing each other talking to each other?

That, which can lead to a lot of chaos. And also it's a lot of like sort of personal cost in terms of loneliness, disconnection from work, all of those things. What are your thoughts? I know that you have got thoughts on this, curious for you to share them.

Jenni: Uh, what are my thoughts on the hybrid piece? So, where we're at now is it is a point in time where we need to start making some quite firm decisions.

Mm-hmm. So hybrid really came about as a, as a term and as a, as a culture from the pandemic. It's been three, four years since. since that time and people have tried this, you know, come back to the office and people are trying all different things. And we have to have this sort of test and learn piece, but we sort of have to make some decisions now about what kind of culture we want to be.

And within that, we have to make some decisions and investment in our communication and the skills around communication. So for hybrid to work and for it to build a culture, there has to be a new set of Things that make that culture, otherwise you're just lifting and shifting, which is what we did in a crisis that isn't sustainable.

So if you want to have a culture that's really innovative, then how does that show up day to day in whatever environment you're in and how you communicate and how you allow people to work? Uh, and, and how do you make time and space to think about what that looks like? And that's the thing for me with hybrid is we lifted and shifted in a crisis.

We then mildly panicked about then what that means forevermore. We're still probably slightly panicking about what this means. Is it okay to say everyone comes back to the office? We're really wrestling with some of that. Um, and we have to start thinking about, and that's stepping back again, right? What is the culture of this organisation now?

Or where do we want it to go? And how does that show up in terms of how we work, how we talk to people, how we communicate? All of those things, uh, and you just have to be more intentional about it in a hybrid world. You, you know, there's a great book about the hybrid sort of digital connection, which name now escapes me.

I'm going to look at my bookshelf, Digital Body Language. There it is, which is a, is an excellent book about how we need to connect in a digital world. And I think that it's so important with the hybrid piece that you might think you're just firing off a quick email. Um, and you've just used your initial to sign it off, but if you're in a position of power, that would signal to the reader that you might not know very well, but you haven't got time for them.

And all of these things matter. So it's that intentionality around your communication to help create the culture that's important.

Sarah: And then if you're working in a global hybrid workplace, you need to layer the, you know, that's going to be completely, you know, how that's going to land with someone who doesn't think about, you know, some of the values that you might hold in the same way.

Jenni: Yes, yes. Completely different.

Sarah: Yeah. Um, the latest research and the latest book is about credibility. What does credibility mean to you?

Jenni: Oh, what a great question. I won't read out my definition, it's quite long. Um, so for me, credibility Read the book, folks. So what does credibility mean to me? So credibility for me is about being, being believed and being followed, and that's ultimately what you want as a leader.

I think we're quite quick to try and say credibility is doing what you say you'll do, nice little short snappy things, but that's not enough. To be credible is actually quite nuanced, it is different in different cultures, and it's different depending on what you value, which is why when I was looking at it, the eight practices of credibility came up, because it's not just this short snappy, you know, phrase, it's not just one thing, it's made up of lots of different things that you have to have.

Almost an equal measure to be credible, you know, you will have sort of slightly more and there's different sort of levels depending on what you're doing, but to be credible, believed and followed, which is what you want as a leader, you have to think about things like empathy, your capability, your likeability and those things.

Sarah: Yeah. And I love that you said it does flex across cultures. Um, do you think that working on this sort of the eight practices of credibility will help leaders become better at leading across different cultures, whether that's organizational, functional or, or national?

Jenni: Yes. Um, because the book talks about being able to apply sort of frameworks within the practices.

At the same time, getting to know yourself, so you know how that would show up, and your people. Okay, so if you're leading a team of 10 people, or if you're leading an organization of 10, 000 people, how you lead will be different, because you can't possibly know 10, 000 people's individual preferences and then try and manage this, it's impossible.

But there are things you can do to demonstrate empathy, there are things you can do to demonstrate your capability, that will enable those people to perceive you as credible, and that's the bit that's important. What we need to understand culturally is of the eight practices, there will be some that will be more important than others in different cultures, or more acceptable.

And one of the one of the eight is vulnerability. And this came up when I was doing a talk recently. where people often talk about how we need to be more vulnerable and how important that is. But in some cultures, that's completely not okay. You know, no one, you know, if you stand there and go, I just don't know, your credibility is going to go through the floor.

So you've got to know what's appropriate. And it might be that vulnerability in those cultures just looks a bit different. It's, it's maybe it's, it's more about, you know, vulnerability is about making a connection to how do you do that without. ruining your credibility by saying you don't know. So it's, it's making sure that you know what's appropriate and what will help people perceive you as credible and dial up those ones in the different cultures that you're in.

Sarah: Yeah. And having read the book, one of the things that I took away from it was a lot of the way that you talk about the practices actually kind of mirrors and underpins the cultural intelligence model. So that kind of self reflection. Um, the planning ahead. How am I going to connect with these people?

How am I going to do these things? The strategy and also building your knowledge so that you do know what you're walking into. Um, whereas I think, unfortunately, a lot of our leaders are stumbling around in the dark. Hopefully no longer, they're all going to read your book, Jenni.

Jenni: We can hope.

Sarah: We can hope. Um, but two of the skills particularly that, I think a lot about in terms of building our cultural intelligence, our listening, which you already talked about, but also being able to take different perspectives and, and kind of hold them and go, well, that's different for me, but it doesn't mean it's worse or better. It's just different.

Jenni: Yeah.

Sarah: Are those things that fit within your credibility model?

Jenni: Yeah. So when we talk about empathy, we talk a lot about what empathy really means, and that is one of the eight practices. And to have empathy is to believe someone else's experience regardless of your own and I tell stories throughout the book, and one of them is around working with a leader who just was so angry that I was sharing this feedback from conversations.

He was going, you're just saying this is fact, and it's not fact because it's not what I experienced. And that's really hard because I had to say, you know, we need to talk about empathy because just because it's not what you experienced doesn't mean it's not what everyone else experienced. And I think being able to, to open yourself up to that, that, okay, this isn't how I've experienced this person or this situation, but it is how someone else has, is so important culturally. Um, especially in organizations where we've got global workforces. You know, we don't, we have such diverse workforces now in nearly every organization I'm working with that someone else's experience is inevitably going to be different to mine because of all of the reasons why our experiences are different. So we have to have that empathy. And as a leader, the reason I talk about credibility over things like authenticity is because of the power that you hold. And it's okay to be authentic if you're not a leader, but if you have power over others, credibility is so much more important.

And quite frankly, you have a duty to invest in those skills of understanding, of empathy, of listening. If you are in that position.

Sarah: I do remember a colleague, and I'll check this with her, but I do remember being in a meeting a couple of years ago with a colleague whose first language is not English, and her saying to me, but authentic doesn't just, there isn't a translation that means, like, the conversation that's going on in sort of the Western world about authenticity.

She was like, there just isn't a way of explaining that in my language. And we forget that sometimes.

There's like all these business buzzwords and concepts floating around that don't necessarily translate.

In the way that we're talking about them. Jenni, fascinating. Thank you. I have asked you for a book recommendation. What are you going to share with us?

Jenni: So my book recommendation is thanks to you. So it's Leading with Cultural Intelligence by David Livermore. And, uh, it's one that I read very quickly and found hugely helpful to think about. The different ways that we need to lead in different cultures and how that plays out from a communication perspective, um, and how that plays out in reducing friction and how it plays out in maintaining, you know, brilliant relationships at work so that you can achieve the organizational goals.

And I know he has a new edition out, so I'm very excited, uh, to pick up a copy of that as well.

Sarah: Fabulous. Jenni, thank you. That was an absolute treat to talk to you, and thank you for stopping by.

Jenni: Thank you for having me.

Sarah: We'll put a link to Jenni's many books. Um And, and also she's got great, she does recommend a lot of great books, folks.

So if you are trying to build your reading list, Jenni is a great person to, um, follow to get tips on things that will help you build your credibility and your communication skills across cultures. Thank you very much.

Jenni: Thank you.