Are you striving for greater happiness at work?

In the latest episode of the Happier at Work podcast, I sat down with the insightful Angharad Ross to discuss the dynamics of workplace happiness and successful transitions in the corporate world.

In this episode, Angharad reflects on her 15-year corporate career and her mission to help individuals and organisations navigate career changes and transitions. She emphasises the importance of creating the right environment for individuals to succeed and stay in their roles, shedding light on the critical impact of the onboarding process on employee retention.

Angharad's experiences navigating through different roles and organisational cultures offer deep insights into the challenges and opportunities individuals encounter when starting new positions. She discusses the need for clear communication, understanding of different working styles, and the essential balance between culture fit and culture add within organisations.

The conversation touches on various elements, from the stages of adjustment individuals go through when starting new roles to the impact of organisational culture on new hires. Angharad advocates for comprehensive onboarding processes that go beyond functional introductions, encompassing tailored training for leaders and the nurturing of diverse perspectives within the workplace.

The main points throughout this podcast include:

• The importance of creating the right environment for individuals to succeed and stay in their roles.
• The critical impact of the onboarding process on employee retention.
• Insights into the challenges and opportunities individuals encounter when starting new positions. 
• The stages of adjustment individuals go through when starting new roles
• The impact of organisational culture on new hires.

Connect with Angharad

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angharad-ross-225b223b/

Website: www.risecmc.uk

Do you have any feedback or thoughts on this discussion? If so, please connect with Aoife via the links below and let her know. Aoife would love to hear from you!

Connect with Happier at Work host Aoife O’Brien:

Website: https://happieratwork.ie 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aoifemobrien/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happieratwork.ie/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/happieratwork.ie

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HappierAtWorkHQ

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HappierAtWorkHQ 

Previous Episodes:

https://happieratwork.ie/202-leveraging-strengths-and-setting-boundaries-with-lucy-gernon/

https://happieratwork.ie/201-redefining-your-own-career-success-with-gary-crotaz/

https://happieratwork.ie/197-the-journey-to-workplace-happiness-with-rob-dubin/

https://happieratwork.ie/178-fulfilling-your-potential-and-finding-joy-in-your-work-with-soma-ghosh/

Angharad, you're so welcome to the happier at work podcast. I know we've had a couple of really interesting discussions, so I'm really excited to see where this podcast episode is gonna go. It's like us having a conversation, except we're secretly recording it. Well, maybe not so secretly. But you wanna give people a little bit about your background and what brought you to doing what you're doing today?

Yes. Thank you very much for having me. Happy Hour Works is one of my favorite dog walking podcasts. I'm very excited to to be talking with you. So my name is Angharad Ross, and I'm on a mission to help changing roles be a more successful and a smoother experience. And that comes from my own experience, which has led me to do what I do today. So my background is big corporates. I've worked in corporate health care global organizations in mainly commercial and strategy roles, working with big retailers like Tesco and Boots.

And a few years ago, I wanted to focus a lot more on the bits I really loved about my role, which was helping my team get to where they wanted to go, helping the part of that experience, I was finding that people were coming to me and saying, oh, I'm starting a new job, and I'm feeling really scared or overwhelmed. Different people come with different things, but can you help me? And so I naturally found myself getting really involved and really passionate in that process of starting new roles. And then I started to read some stats that 1 in 2 newly promoted leaders or executives fail within the 1st 18 months. 20% of people starting a new role leave within the 1st 45 days. And these stats haven't changed in 15 years. And I just thought, there's got to be something that I can do to help with this. In my 15 years of my corporate career, I changed roles 13 times, worked it out the other day.

Wow.

That's nearly once a year. And it's a big change and a big transition. And there's not as much support as you'd think out there for people going through that. It should be exciting, an amazing learning opportunity, but it also ends up being overwhelming, kicking people's confidence, leading to lack of clarity and direction. So there is it's a real mishmash, a cocktail of things going on. And I support people and organizations to make that successful and smooth.

I I mean, there's so many different avenues we can go down to, so many different things that we can talk about. And it's so relatable to me as someone who I haven't quite changed roles 13 times, but, you know, it's, I was gonna say it's 5. It's definitely more than 5. Maybe it's be between 510, something like that, but I know the struggle of starting in a new role. And I think one of the other things to to illustrate or to highlight why we connected so well is we're coming from that similar type of background. So the kinds of organizations that you previously worked in would have been the kinds of clients that organizations I worked in, the global market research companies, would have had your companies as clients, basically. I think we just had a lot of similar interest, a lot of similarities there, and a lot of mutual connections as well, which which really, really helps. But those stats, I I mean, I'm like, where do we start? 20% of people leave within 45 days.

And and I suppose from what you're saying and how like, one of the things I'd love to dig into is both sides of that equation. So from the individual side and and, you know, this is something I'm particularly passionate about from the individual side. How do I make better career decisions for myself? And then from an organization side, well, how do we create that environment where people want to stay and they want to stay for the long term? They want to feel fulfilled at work and do their best work. So any thoughts on from an individual perspective, like, why do you think people leave within 45 days?

I think you're right that there's responsibilities on both sides. Mhmm. You know? But from an individual's point of view, I think I hear a lot about it's not what I thought it was going to be. Yeah. And I think sometimes that's maybe a lack of clarity in the recruitment process, but also it not being clear when they get into organizations. There's a lack of clarity when they start. So what does good look like here? Mhmm. Does that fit with my values? Am I gonna get along here? I've had a role change a week before I started at a new company.

Wow.

It it can it's not always what you expect it to be when you start. So there's a lot of that, but intention to quit is usually one of 3 things. There's a dissatisfaction with the job. That could be it wasn't what I thought it was or I'm not enjoying this. A lack of commitment to the role in the organization, and stress. Those are usually the 3 kinda top reasons that anybody would consider quitting. But when you start a new role, that's almost magnified because there's so much uncertainty around those three areas and there's extra stress. There's extra lack of clarity.

It's just like everything is so much more intense in those 1st 3 to 6 months. And layer on top of that, that you're much more likely to feel lack of confidence. Imposter syndrome, which I know is something you're very passionate about. It's a very intense time. So I think those usual reasons to quit are there, but they're magnified when you're walking into a new situation. So there's from an individual's perspective, those are definitely things that are on their mind.

from an organizational perspective, you can hear even just from that list, there's lots that they can be doing to create the right environment for that person to succeed in those areas and to be happy and to stay. And 70% of people who experience an amazing onboarding experience are more likely to stay for 3 years plus.

Wow. And like what you're talking about ties in somewhat to the research that I did. It wasn't directly about onboarding, and it wasn't directly about quitting, but it was more about how do we get better levels of engagement. But But within that, I looked at things like intention to leave, and, and I looked at how long do people stay, not directly related to the onboarding as such, but in relation to the alignment and the fit within that organization. And that's something to me that's screamingly obvious that during that process and maybe we take a step back and be like, before we get to onboarding, there's an entire process of hiring someone. This is when, obviously, when you're starting in a new job. But also, if you're moving to a new role within a different team, there's an entire process

you

But there's so much that that we can do on both sides. And, again, as an organization or as a hiring manager or as someone who is involved in the interview process, it's about being as transparent as possible. This is what it's like here. This is the problem we need you to solve rather than kind of sweeping things under the carpet and hoping that once someone joins, they're not gonna notice all of the issues that are going on. And then from an individual's perspective, being really open and honest about what you can do and what you're prepared to do and what you're really looking forward to in terms of challenges in the new role. I think from both sides, it's really, really important to be open, honest, and transparent about those things.

Absolutely. I think communication is often where a lot of this falls down, isn't it? That that leads then to this lack of commitment, lack of, understanding when people start their role. It all starts way before. It is that moment. And there's a there's a balance between this idea of sort of cultural fit and making sure that we're bringing in people who are right for where we want the organization and the role to be going. And I certainly had an experience

where I was brought into

an organization because I was so different. And I don't think I was really aware at the time that I was being brought in to help the place be a bit different. Around the same time, a few of us with similar backgrounds, similar backgrounds, similar personality styles were brought in. And looking back, I wish they just kind of said like, this is going to be a bit different for you. This isn't our usual way of doing things, but we would really love you to bring some of this drive for results and pace that we can see that you've got naturally and from your previous experience. We'd love more of that in our organization. Instead, I kind of went in knowing the culture was going to be different. Had the shock of my life.

I'm going and doing left, right, and center at my usual pace in my usual way. And I am irritating people left, right, and center, not getting things done. And I was deeply unhappy. I thought I'm not going to make it to a year. This has been a massive mistake. I don't know what I'm doing here. And I think if it had been communicated early on, we would love you to bring more of this and this, but we're not there yet. Yeah.

So this is how we operate. This is how we get stuff done. For you, that might be a bit different. So here's how we're gonna support you to help us, and this is why we really want you in this role.

Yeah.

Yeah. Rather than me spending the first 3 or 4 months just annoying people and doing things wrong in their terms

Yeah.

And thinking it wasn't the right place for me. I ended up being there for a very long time when I figured out what unique role I could bring and how I could blend my previous experience and my natural tendencies with what was already brilliant, but different about that organization to help try and bring the best of both worlds together, which is what I think they saw from me originally.

Yeah. But

then they said it. Yeah. Would it just been so much easier if there'd been that awareness and understanding? Just say it. And and I don't think I was super clear at that age either what my values were, how I was different. Mhmm. Because I'd only ever been at that point in one company. I'd grown up in that company, if you like. Didn't know any different.

So I didn't realize how different it could be

Yeah.

And how different I could be Yeah. If I was open to letting the organization and the culture shape me more.

It's it's funny, I think. I mean, you've brought up a few things there. One of the things I would love to touch on is this idea of pace because I think different people work at different paces. I tend to be really high paced. I don't know. Is that natural? I don't know. Is that something that I learned from 1 or a few of the organizations that I worked in? But it really frustrates me. And probably other people get annoyed that they not that they can't keep up pace, but that I'm going too quickly and I'm not bringing them on that journey with me to say this is where we're going and things change a lot, and they they can change quite quickly and priorities might change.

And the way we do things might change because I like to be innovative as well. So Mhmm. Pace, I think, is it's something that's really important to understand. And I think for people listening today, have a think about where you are now and is it at that nice pace that you like to work in? Certainly, for me, in one of the organizations that I worked in, it was heavily, heavily bureaucratic. And to do anything required several levels of approval, let's say. And, like, that for me was stifling to try and do something. And and the example I always think of is to send out a local marketing email to our clients in Ireland required approval from 1 of 2 marketing specialists based in the US. So, globally, anyone who is sending a local marketing email through the, you know, through the platform as opposed to directly emailing clients but through our marketing platform had to get approval for the branding, for the wording, for all of that kind of stuff from people in the you know? And it's like, if we want to do something quickly, like, that's definitely not how to do things quickly.

If we want to innovate, there definitely wasn't room to innovate because trying to challenge how things are done, it's like you go through all of these layers of bureaucracy to try and chain make any changes, let's say, and decisions were often at a global level as opposed to the autonomy at that that local level, I think. So pace, I think, is something that's really interesting. And I'd love to explore a little bit about how did you have this realization that you were kind of a bit different, that you didn't quite fit in? And how did you make that transition then to, I actually love this, and you ended up staying for much much much longer?

I think quite early on, I realized I was a bit different. And I think that was a lot I think the pace was an obvious one. There were certain things that are more obvious than other. Pace is definitely one of them, but also assumed level of responsibility and autonomy.

Okay.

So I came from an environment where there was high level of autonomy, almost to the point of if something went wrong, it was your fault.

Yeah.

And it was never intended to be like that, but it's it's naturally ended up being that way sometimes. So I was used to taking full responsibility for everything, and I'd just go and do something. And then people were like, Well, it's not your business. It's our business. And that was an interesting terminology. And I leave work and think, that's different. And there's some really lovely things about that. I can get more help.

Oh, it's not just down to me here. And I think so I think the language that people use, the feedback that you get, and the obvious initial differences and ways of working, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It just helps you understand where you are versus where everybody around you is, or what role you want to play in that environment, that new environment. And at first, I just thought, oh, yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna try harder to involve other people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But it didn't come easily to me because I'd been brought up, trained, if you like, in one way. And I just thought maybe it's not for me. Maybe I can't do it.

Yeah. And

And I was like, well, just from a CV point of view, I'd like to stay here for a year. I'll I'll keep going. I'll keep trying.

Funny, that CV thing, isn't it? We all I know. I have to stay here at least. And, you know, we all have our own ideas of how long we should stay in a role so it doesn't look bad on our CV. And, like, this is obviously for another episode, but the whole use of CVs for the purposes of job applications is just beyond me as well. I'm like, why are we still using CVs in this day and age? It's ridiculous.

I would agree. And as I would always say to people who my friends that come to me and things and say, oh, I'm worried about a gap on my CV if I go traveling. So I took a year to go traveling. And I say from a hiring manager perspective, I would have actually been really interested

in that. What, you know, what led you to do that?

What did you learn? Yeah.

What can you bring from that? And I think most people now, most organizations have got much more of an open mind about that.

Yeah.

But in many ways, I was glad I had that perception because it made me stick at it a bit longer. Yeah. And then on any change curve, we talk about kind of 8 weeks to really start going through the process. For new roles, they say about 3 months to feel like you know what you're doing, 6 months to be really performing, a year to be really have seen a cycle through. So it does take time. Time is definitely gonna be part of it to understand how do things get done here and how do I best bring my best self to this situation. So I'm glad that I did give it more of a go because I started to notice that this different way of doing things have some really lovely benefits for me. And also I started to see greater, I think, diversity of thought that I haven't necessarily experienced before because I came from an organization where a lot of people were quite similar.

And sometimes that's incredibly powerful. I'm not saying that there's a right or wrong here at all. I just was experiencing something different that I personally liked. I thought, Oh, actually I should try and do that a bit more. I think I needed a why to start being different. I needed to see the benefit of being different. I needed to experiment with talking to people differently, being different in meetings, remembering to put a meeting in before making a decision and just going and doing something, new habits.

Yeah.

And I started working that way. And I thought I can bring some of that pace in. I can excite and motivate people to get more of the pace going that I need. But I also need to accept that if I want that diversity of thought, I want the support, I want the collaboration, I am going to have to slow down a little bit and do things a bit differently. And when I started getting into a groove with that, I started to learn more about myself. I started to be much more open minded. I was like, oh, I really like this. And, you know, didn't mean I wasn't frustrated often with various elements of it.

But nowhere is perfect, especially if you're trying to I wouldn't say I was consciously like, let's make a change. But I wanted to help. I wanted to help it be better, bringing my ideas of best practice and thoughts in to make it be better. But it wasn't easy. But I am glad that I did it. And I think going to an organization that did care about things like doing personality profiling and workshopping that as a team and understanding the impact that our styles have on each other's communications. There was a there was this feeling of that greater tolerance, I suppose, that led to an understanding that, yeah. I'm a bit like that.

You're a bit like that. Means we're probably gonna have to be a bit more careful with the way we work. And that led to huge amount of self awareness in me that I haven't had before. And that I still it's a lifelong journey, but it's still something I really draw on. Yeah. So I think that when you're in a completely different environment like that, if you're open to letting it shape you a bit, take the best bits, bring what you've got from elsewhere. Can you actually make a difference? Can you make it be what you want it to be? Those are my reflections from that experience, but this wasn't an easy time. And because I was quite relatively early on in my career, it was real learning.

I think I'd look at it a bit differently now and probably save myself a lot of stress and emotion.

But was that conversation ever had? Like, this is this is my question is you noticed. You're like, oh, wait a minute. I'm a little bit different, but I'm similar to some other new people who've joined. And you upon reflection, you're like, oh, they brought me in to kind of bring a bit more pace to this organization. But was that conversation ever kind of brought to light? Like, did you have that conversation ever with someone, whether it was raised by you or raised by someone else?

Not that I can remember. And I don't know if they consciously brought us there was 3 or 4 of us that stank. I don't know if it was conscious from their point of view. Yeah. I think they were like, oh, that would I can see that that approach would be really useful.

Yeah.

We want to be more results driven. We want to be more analytical. Let's let's bring this in. So I don't know if it was conscious. But no. That conversation was never had. I remember in my interview, one of the interviewers said, oh, are you quite blue? And I said, I'm sorry. What does that mean? And they said, oh, oh, are you very analytical structured, etcetera? I was like, yes.

I am. That is absolutely me. And they were like,

but you have blue and red.

If you're

if you have the paste, then it might be a bit of red and kind of red balance between

very blue red for those that that do or or DC for those that do DISC. I'm a DISC practitioner. If anybody's into that, which I massively am, because of this experience I had, I think think I really see the value in it. That no one ever said, oh, as an organization, typically, we are quite green. Yeah. I obviously wouldn't have understood those concepts at the time, but it could have been explained, I think, a bit differently.

Yeah. Yeah.

Which might mean that sometimes you might need to consider this or consider that. But having been in that situation myself, receiving new people into the team, and I think this is a general challenge with onboarding, is so much of employee engagement satisfaction sits with the manager. We know that. There's that old adage that people don't leave organisations, they leave managers. We talked about intention to quit without dissatisfaction with a job, lack of commitment, stress. Managers have such a huge influence on that. But having been a manager and been a leader, you're going a 100 miles an hour. Mhmm.

You've got

this new person joining. You put together an induction plan, and I would call it induction, not proper onboarding, especially Oh, yeah. I know now. Get them up to speed quickly because I need them up to speed because of the team. You forget to stop and think, This is what we're like here. These are great things. These are things that might be so easy. I hired this person.

I have met this person. I think that this might be what they need in order to be successful here. How can I help them?' And you don't get the time often, or the organization doesn't put enough emphasis or focus on encouraging you to do that thinking, I think? There's a lot of focus on, Yeah, yeah. We'll give them the support. We'll make them feel welcome, of course. But what I talk about now in terms of onboarding is so much more than just support, make you feel welcome, get you up to speed, functionally introduce you

to a few people. Onboarding should be about

so much more. And that manager link, manager training on things

like, I

knew what

engagement was. I knew what engagement was. I knew what engagement was. I knew

what engagement was. I knew what training on things like, I knew what engagement was and retention was. Did I have some tools and effective strategies to put in place? Probably not. Or if I have been taught them, I certainly didn't know how to live them.

Yeah.

I was just moving at a 100 miles an hour.

Yeah.

As we as we said, that's my that's my pace. And it's another thing that you've got to do on top of everything else. I understand it's awful because it's this people. But sometimes it it does get that way.

Yeah.

And as the person coming in, you're like, oh, I've got a really busy manager or my manager's quite senior. I don't wanna bother them. Yeah. I don't want them to think they've made a an error hiring me. Like, I can't hack it if I say that I'm struggling a bit or I'm feeling a bit wobbly. It it's really difficult to create the right environment for and to to have those conversations because I think people are so busy and because they forget that what they're used to is not necessarily what everyone else is used to.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot to be said, and you're so right. Like, I hear a lot of people talking about onboarding these days. And when when you said that word induction, I was like, oh my god. That's what we've been doing all this time is induction, which is here's some scheduled time with some people in the business that you need to know, and they'll give their opinions on how you're gonna work together or what the company is like and and things like that. Here's some online training that you can do, and the rest is is kind of sink or swim, you might say. I have a friend who recently started a new role, and she is experiencing exactly what you talked about.

My manager is so busy. I can't go to her. And then if I do ask questions, she'll think she hasn't got a clue and I've made a big mistake. There's always this fear. And and so I think it's so important as managers to make that part of your priority. I'll put my hat up and say, I certainly didn't because I didn't know about these things. We're not taught these things when we work in organizations. And that's

what I suppose my sorry.

Go on. Yeah. Yeah.

Lisa, I think I think that's why I'm so passionate about doing what I do because I do think you need someone from outside to say, for your organization, these things are going really well, and this is your style, and that's great. Certain people are gonna find these things really easy. Other people are gonna find this really difficult. What you need to put in place is x, y, zed.

Yeah.

And also from an individual perspective, people hire me because it's a confidential safe space to have these conversations.

Yeah.

Yeah. And it's so needed to have that almost, like, external perspective on it because we get so lost in our own organizations and our own version of normal.

Yeah. Well, this is it. Like, you know, everything that you're saying and and you mentioned earlier about letting the organization shape you, it's a two way process. It's an environment that you find yourself in. You contribute to that environment, and that environment contributes to you and how you show up as well. And it's kind of it's an evolution. And, again, this is from tons and tons of research that's been done over the years. It formed part of my secondary research.

It didn't kind of make it to the final cut of what I included, but it's something that I learned about and maybe hadn't really thought about. You just think culture is this one thing, and then you join an organization and you have that same kind of attitude or values or you don't. But actually you're shaped by both. And and I think from our previous conversations, and we've sort of touched on it from today's conversation, is you went from one organization, and that's all you knew, to entering this very different setup, very different pace, different values, different ways of operating. And it's really jarring, I think, when something like that happens, when you were especially when you weren't expecting it, where you're like, oh, it sounds like I'm gonna be a great fit from based on the conversations I've had during the interview process. It sounds like, you know, I'm gonna be a great fit in into this culture. And then it's a bit of a shock where you're like, wow. These people are really different.

They operate in such a different way than I do. But having some sort of a framework or guidelines or something to ease that process, I think, is beneficial on both sides. Another thing that I found in my research is that it takes 3 years to really embed in an organization. So if someone stays there for 3 years, they're more likely to stay for much, much longer because that's when loyalty starts kicking in and that level of commitment, the emotional connection with the organization kicks in after 3 years. That's not to say that an onboarding program needs to be 3 years, but we start need to start thinking in the longer term of, how much is it gonna cost and managers being held to account for people leaving? How how much does it cost when someone leaves an organization within 45 days, within a couple of months, whatever it might be? It is huge, but managers aren't necessarily held to account about that. And if it was, you you can bet that they would make that time for a more fulfilling onboarding process and give more time. And, again, I put my hand up and say that I wasn't unaware of these things previously, and so I didn't do it when I had new members of the team. You just sort of are you're you're providing them with information about how to do the job rather than giving them a full experience of this is what the organization does, and this is how we work together.

And to build on that and, Howard, I love what you had to say about, like, a disc profiling, understanding different personality styles, what the organization needs to do or what the manager needs to do to support the individual, understanding what level of support the individual will need based on their style and maybe a a clash or how things might be done differently. I think it's so important to highlight those kinds of things.

No. Absolutely. And there needs to be a structure to onboarding, but there needs to be the flexibility for that style and that customization, particularly for more senior people where there's much more expectation to shape a role. So when I got a couple more stats for you here, right? Over a third of organizations have 0 onboarding, no structured onboarding at all. And of those that do, only about a third of them have anything that lasts beyond a few weeks or a month.

Yeah.

And investment in onboarding is really low, which shocks me every time. Because people say when people leave, it costs roughly 3 times their salary to replace them. That is much higher if they leave within the 1st 45 days or 18 months because of those upfront costs. Absolutely. So it just really shocks me. So you don't wanna be too structured, but it has to be something and it can't be too short. Because as you've said, it takes time and there are different milestones that people have to reach in order to be successful, fulfilled, happy, starting in a new role. And it's not just new organisations.

This is when they're promoted. As you said, they change teams or functions or countries. So important to help manage the change. So I sort of developed a cheesy acronym because it's easy to remember.

I love a cheesy acronym.

Love a cheesy acronym. So I I always think about flight because we want people to take off and be flying. Right? And that stands for foundations just get the basics right. Like reach out to them before they start, ensure someone takes ownership for them. I think there's times when people are like, oh, someone's starting on my team tomorrow. They should

have thought

to think about getting a laptop and an email address set up for them. Yeah. Yeah.

We laugh about it because it's true.

I know. Yeah. I've been there.

No functioning IT for the first 2 weeks. So that's f for foundations, l for leaders, because you do have to tweak more and give even more tailoring for leaders, in particular. I for induction, that's the bit that most people do. That's the easier bit. G for goals. We talked about expectations and communications that has to start really early on. And explained, it has to go both ways. This is what we as an organization are looking for from this person, this role.

This is what we would love from you uniquely. What do you want from us and this role? What is this for you and your career? Should go both ways. And this is how things get done here. This is what we want you to help us on this track, etcetera. And the H is for holistic development. So it's not just like, oh, we have a nice development commercial academy that you go through or whatever. It's tailored to be much wider and training. Exactly.

It happens. It's a catalog of training. We expect you to have ticked everything off before you get promoted. Brilliant. That's gonna make me great at the next level. So that holistic development, that whole person development, everything from, you know, how you relate to other people

then finally, t for training for managers. We talked about them

a lot. Then finally, T for training for managers. We've talked about them a lot today. Training for managers is so, so important. And I don't mean just like when I went on my first line leaders training, which was an online course where we learned about models like VUCA and stuff. Thought provoking. Interesting. Did it help me be a better first time manager? I'm not entirely sure it did.

Certainly didn't help me with the pressing things of, oh, by the way, you've got a direct report who's on performance management. Off you go. Yeah. Right? And why do I do all that? So I use that as a bit of a loose framework to say what's going really well in flight? What could be improved?

Yeah.

And that's not just in an organizational perspective, but from a manager's perspective and an individual's perspective. Because I think everybody can take responsibility for different elements of those. But there does have to be clarity of ownership. Otherwise it falls between the cracks because people are busy. Because they're not measured on it.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Not being told it's a priority because people forget how much it costs when it goes wrong.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it costs way less to invest that time in the training and the development upfront rather than having to backfill that role when someone leaves because they don't feel valued, they don't feel listened to. One thing, and I'm sure we've spoken about this before, is getting feedback from the employee themselves on the entire on onboarding process.

How do they find it? How can it be improved? How are they feeling in the new role? Is there someone they can go and speak to? And again, coming back to this friend of mine, I, you know, I was kind of making some suggestions to her about how she might approach it and she had some ways that she had approached it in the past. So thinking about, like, this idea that your manager is busy. Yeah. Everyone is busy, but your manager has to make time for you. Like, that is their primary job. They might have other stuff to do as well. And most managers these days have that dual role of being a manager and also having the day job at a more senior level. But they their priority should be developing people and especially someone who's new to the team and not giving that impression.

I think, again, coming back to our perception of people or how people perceive us. If you're giving the impression that you're really busy all the time, then how are you going to engage with people? You know, it makes you feel important if you're busy, if you have loads of meetings going on, if you're doing loads of important work. But actually, if that's causing a disconnect between you and your team, then what's that doing for the long term goals of the business or the long term viability of the business as well? So thinking about, like, oh, I'm sorry to disturb you. You're so busy. But rather, you know, I have certain times that I'm available, for example. Or if it's if it's a genuine emergency, then feel free to call me. But if it's not, then you can hold your offer, send an email, and I'll check my emails at the end of the day, and I'll respond, I will respond then or something, you know. But this idea of always being busy, I think is is it's causing so many issues in in organizations.

I've been there myself. I totally get it. Mhmm. And I actually got feedback quite early on in my first leadership role from my team saying, we just can't get hold of you. We don't know when you're free. And I felt really pulled in so many different directions. But I knew that my team had to be my number one priority. And we ended up having to put in blocks in my calendar that were protected, that were like drop in sessions.

And that worked quite well for that particular team. But it's all about agreeing what's gonna work for the team and communicating that. So I had a boss who used to say to me, If you call me once and I'm busy, I'll call you back when I can. If you call me twice, I know I really need to call you back. So we always have like a little code, a little system.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. But I think it still keeps coming back to communication, doesn't it? What's my expectations of the way we should be working together? But what are your expectations or what are your needs? Yeah. What's gonna work for you? Because I'm conscious I I can be very structured. So putting time in my diary for drop ins works quite well for me.

What's it to do? I don't think it works for me as well. Just that

it works for everyone else.

Yeah. Exactly. If they're a bit more fluid. If they're they're they don't plan stuff in advance as much like I plan stuff in advance. So I'd like to have time blocked out in my calendar for for things like that. But I think coming back to this idea of DISC, that's where that comes in really useful, I think, to have those open, honest conversations about how people communicate with each other. And I'm noticing myself since I learned about DISC, how I communicate. And sometimes I have to sometimes I'm d.

Sometimes I veer into d, which is not my like, I'm I'm generally the, s. I that would be my primary thing. I will be a strong d as well. But sometimes when other people go into too much detail, I I switch off because it's too much detail for me. But I I'm a I'm a strong s and a little bit of an I as well. But d is not strong. But sometimes when I'm sending a communication in email, for example, I have to remember to put in the and how are you at the start because I forget. I launch sometimes straight into that.

This is what I want to say. And, again, that probably comes from from 2 decades of learning how to communicate and get my point across. Because if I think of some emails, and these would be more personal emails that I used to send way back when I used to send emails, you know, we didn't I was gonna say we didn't have text. I'm sure we have text, but I would have sent emails to people to stay in touch with them. And there would be really long, you know, I'd have to go back and look through and see what I was talking about, but they'd be really long and detailed type of things that I'd be sending people to keep them updated on what's going on in my life, basically.

And I think that's really interesting, isn't it? Because there's a danger with these sorts of things to pigeonhole people. You like this kind of thing. You like that kind of thing. And, yes, that's a preference. But it doesn't mean that in actually this situation, I need this. Yeah. And I'm going to want to move quicker or I'm going to want a summary. So we we can't just make assumptions about people just because they have a natural preference or demonstrate a particular style.

Mhmm.

We

still got to be open minded that in different situations, it's going to drive different elements of that and that we are every one of us, different.

Well, this is it. And like you say, it's more about having a preference. I wanted to kinda come back and maybe go a bit a little bit full circle on based on our conversation, and that is this idea of balancing culture fit with where we want the organization to go and why you were brought into that second organization that you mentioned. And this idea of culture fit versus culture add, like, that's a really prime example of that. For me, I always assumed or I always thought of culture fit and culture add being the same thing because you you want to bring in people who will fit for a particular reason, and that reason might be to grow the organization. But I think it's a really strong example of something that's worked really well. So I'd love to understand more about, I suppose, the influence that you were able to have on that and and bring you back to this example of, oh, I might need to set up a meeting before I make a decision and have a conversation about it. And my own interpretation of that is perhaps in the past, they would have had several meetings, but you're setting up one meeting to get input and collaboration.

And the purpose of that meeting is to make a decision. Now I'm making all of these assumptions, but I'd love to know, is that kind of the change that you saw? Like, what did it go from? What did it go to?

I this whole kind of idea of culture and culture apps is really interesting. And when you were talking about it, I was thinking, but I think the reason that they wanted a couple of people that were going to bring something different was still part of who they fundamentally were at a cultural level. Mhmm. Because that valuing different perspectives was something that was always very much there.

Yeah.

So I think some organizations are gonna be up for that and some aren't.

Yeah.

So I think they knew that they wanted to be faster. I think they knew they wanted to be more results driven. And I think they knew they wanted be to have better financial rigor. Not that they weren't good at those things. It just wasn't the primary focus from a style point of view. And so a few of us came in that that was much more naturally our thing. And the sheer volume of meetings to make a decision and the lift of actually focusing on what is the decision that needs to be made here was incredibly frustrating. And I think it still is.

I don't think that changed. I think I got used to it to a certain extent.

Yeah. Yeah.

But I think having someone coming in and going, I'm sorry, What have we just been talking about for the last half an hour? And what decision have we agreed on this now?

Yeah. So I'm gonna go and do this.

You're gonna go and do that. Like, sometimes just having somebody to just cut through and say, are we all okay with this now? Yeah. Not going off and doing it on your own as I started doing. I think it's just about helping it being getting to where you want where everybody wants to get to, but maybe challenging some habits that have been ingrained that may be not as useful. Yeah. And that's just the line of the business. Person.

Yeah. Yeah. This is how it's always been done. This is this is the way we have meetings. This is the way we make decisions, and let's reconvene next week to consider this other option, you know, whatever it might be. Mhmm. But like that, I I've been there as well. But I think that that brings a nice full circle to the conversation.

You know, we did touch on that at the start. But the question I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, what does being happier at work mean to you?

Of course, I thought about this in advance is is the big question. And you know what? It wasn't as easy as I thought to to come up with a real answer because so many things make me happy at work.

Mhmm.

I think work should be a really fulfilling thing.

Yeah.

But for me, personally, I've got to feel like I'm making a difference to people.

Yeah.

And that's why I do what I do. And in order to help me do that, I personally need clarity on exactly what I'm trying to achieve and how I'm gonna go about it. But freedom is my number one value. So I have to have the freedom to be able to experiment with it, to do it the way that I need to do it for me. And it's not always the easiest balance, but to be able to make a difference and be clear about how I'm gonna do that, but be myself while doing it.

Mhmm. Brilliant. I love that. And if people want to reach out, if they want to connect with you, find out more about what you do, what's the best way they can do that?

LinkedIn is a great way to stay in touch. So my name is Angharad Ross, angharad, Ross. I'm quite active on there. So that's a good way to message me or engage, keep in touch.

Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time today. I really, really enjoyed this conversation, and I know that anyone who's listening today who is not currently doing a kind of formalized onboarding process or if they're a manager and they're feeling like they're busy all the time, they don't have the time to give to their team, I think it's it's gonna at least challenge thinking and trying to figure out solutions as to to how to change things. So really, really appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Thank you.