Janet Hitchen's career has seen her advising leaders at companies from Apple to Nespresso, as a trusted guide in creating best-in-class communications strategies. Known as a 'rebel woman', she asks the questions that create breakthroughs, in ways that get everyone on board.

In this inspirational interview, as part of the #MakingHybridWork Lockdown Leadership Conference 2021, she'll be discussing the cultural shifts organisations need to make, to allow their teams to thrive with hybrid working, and how to communicate them in ways that get people excited, instead of scared, about change.

Listen now to discover:

• Why starting with 'how' gets hybrid back-to-front
• The danger of making decisions from the view of power and control - yet why so many organisations are falling into this trap
• How gaslighting employees back into the office risks becoming the new epidemic
• The one core thing that has changed for employees, which means that 'business as usual' risks an exodus
• The single most valuable thing a manager can do right now, to get their teams on board
• How to avoid homogenised group-think and bring cognitive diversity into hybrid-working decisions
• How to communicate our hybrid-working decisions in ways that inspire people to thrive, instead of getting them searching the job-hunting websites
• 
  

Shownotes and access to all of the interviews in the conference are here: www.makinghybridwork.com

I can't wait to share this interview with

you with Janet Hitchen, who is a world leading internal communications consultant

who's worked and advised leaders the likes of Apple and Nespresso.

And in today's interview, what we're going

to be covering is why starting with how is getting hybrid back to front?

We're going to look at the energy with which we make decisions, whether it's

control or fear or whether it's empowerment.

We'll look at how to create a genuine

level playing field, how to make sure everybody feels their voice has been

heard, and how to communicate the decisions that we're making on hybrid

working in ways that inspire people to thrive and feel like they belong rather

than getting them searching the job hunting websites.

So this is for you, whether you're an

internal communications or whether you're leading or advising a team or manager on

how to communicate hybrid working decisions and how to make those decisions

in a way that put people first but without compromising on results.

So over to Janet.

I want to introduce Janet, I know some of you joining us today know Janet already,

but Janet's career as an internal communications and culture consultant has

seen her advising leaders from companies as diverse as Apple and Nespresso.

And she's a trusted guide in creating the best in class communications strategy.

She's known as a rebel woman and she asks

the questions that create breakthroughs whilst getting everybody on board.

And that's exactly what we're going to be talking to you about today.

So hello and welcome, Janet.

That's a lot to live up to is now.

And I think we're going to do that and more today,

what we want to start with today is

looking really at the process of how do we create the hybrid environment? What is the

culture that we need to create and how do we get people on board?

And Janet, I want to start with a real bugbear of mine. I know that you've got

some really great stuff to say is everybody with hybrids seems to be

starting with how the mechanics, how many days a week, how far distance to the

desks, what do we do about how to make this work?

And starting with how is getting hybrid back to front.

I'd love to hear your take on the question.

We should be asking ourselves instead why

everything starts with the why.

Simon Sinek said it best and we seem to have forgotten that.

And it's really, really interesting.

This is a whole new challenge.

Nobody's done it before. It's brand new.

And yet everyone seems to have thrown out all of the best practice

and jumped to the to the how, because that's the bit that they're all a little

bit really concerned, worried and and anxious about.

But actually, that's not the bit that the employee cares about.

First and foremost, the employee cares about the why,

I think, yeah, we can get to the how we can get to the how far is my desk away and

do I have a one way system and all that sort of fun stuff.

But we can alsosorry.

Somebody is just trying to tell me what's typical isn't it.

Something starts and someone calls you.

So I think it's why I think we need to get straight.

And what we need to do is

from an internal communication standpoint,

go back to the basics, write the brief, understand the problem you're trying to

solve and sit in that problem for a little bit.

So understand this from the employee perspective.

How are they feeling?

And this is where I think we always talk in Intel comes about.

No. Do you feel sometimes you talk about say

we talk a lot about a line, but here I think the biggest thing is feel

because we've all been through.

A chaotic 18 months, we've been through a really crazy 18 months.

And everybody's feeling different.

Everybody has a different sense of where they're at.

So I think unless we understand that feeling and we understand how that

communication is going to affect us and affect the people that we're communicating

to, we're doing our the employees a real disservice.

And I think the other thing is employee insights.

So that was part of that briefing process.

You might think, oh, well, we don't have

you know, we only have formal employee surveys.

OK, fine.

You've got an employee survey, but what informal information do you have?

Have you been running town hall meetings?

Where you have Q&A is every month. Every week.

Have you got

coffee chats with your CEO where people are asking specific questions?

What questions are they asking?

This is about temperature checking and understanding how people are feeling right

now, because where they were at the employee survey that might be once a year

is probably not where they are right now with the information that's happening.

So I think it's making sure you have really good, solid insights.

And if you don't have those insights, go find them.

I don't think oh, well, we got how we got to get out that quickly.

No, you don't.

It's more important to get it right first time, because if you don't get it right,

first time, you're going to spend a long time working your way back to then work

your way back down the way to work in the right way.

So don't create more work for yourself.

Do it right first time.

And how do you find these employee insights?

One second is almost just decided to come into the house.

Interesting.

While Janet is just having to deal with

that, this builds a lot on the work that I do.

So I work a lot with people on Imposter Syndrome.

And it's the power of the word 'because'.

When we can use the word 'because' when we're asking somebody to do something,

it's much easier for them to feel like they've actually bought in.

If we've got leaders saying we need you to come back into the office for this many

days a week because it removes the fear, it gives people a reason.

It helps them to feel like they in some

way been involved, and it gives them that sense of connexion with the decision.

One of the other things that I know that you've got some great views on, Janet, as

said, so many of these decisions are being made from a place of control and fear.

Maybe you could talk about that a bit. I think it's really interesting.

We're doing a lot of reading

and reading of articles, I'm not seeing other people posting on LinkedIn, so I'm

seeing a lot of stuff, the same stuff that's getting churned.

But I kind of go towards and yes, it's more American.

But I think it's really interesting

because I think it's still very relevant for for us here.

And a lot of people work for American companies.

So it's kind of, you know, it's important to get a full spectrum.

And so I've been looking at things like

The New Yorker and I've been looking at Inc and Wired and Fast Company.

And actually even today I looked at something on the Atlantic.

And I think what's really, really

interesting is the word that is now starting to be used is gaslighting,

which is really quite, quite a big word and not a word that we've

heard before in a corporate or in a sort of a business environment.

It's more the word that we've heard.

You know, when your ex-boyfriend dis appears or, you know, something

something like that is more that kind of thing that we've heard.

This is really interesting and it's about the use of language.

And I think you and I were talking just

before this, Clare, about how what's happening is people have been talking and

using terms that sort of say, we know that you want to come back to the office.

We know you've missed the office, do you?

If you haven't done any of that employee

inside work, if you haven't understood the why and then you're telling me how I feel.

Yes, I do feel gaslighted.

And that will get

is that the right word?

And that's not OK.

That's only going to compound people's anxiety.

That's going to compound people's

the challenge that you have and make that even bigger.

I think where are some of those pieces coming from?

At the beginning of lockdown down one, I posted a piece about remote working

because I've been remote working for ages a long, long time with remote teams

internationally, having a team who was all around the world.

So we went in one place at one time and it was really interesting because somebody

sort of challenged me on it and said, but how do I know what they're doing?

Like what?

And it was a long time since I'd heard that kind of opinion

expressed and I thought, OK, that's that's really interesting.

All of is the work being achieved?

Are you achieving your objectives as are things happening?

Is your company making money? Yes.

Right. Okay.

Well, in that case, it's all good.

Why do you need to sit over like an overlord?

You know, this is no longer,

you know, sort of a cotton factory or cotton mill in the 19th century.

This is a little bit strange.

And I think some of that is about fear.

And there's a huge fear on, well, what does this mean?

Does it mean I lose control?

And I think there's a huge amount of work that can be done.

And I think HRT is learning development teams could really, really support line

managers here, particularly line managers who are getting who are going to have the

brunt of this information, such as how to deal with to understand where what is that

fear? What are you actually afraid of? Have those fears, are they justified and

work through do that work, understand if those fears are justified? Because if you

just have the I'm afraid, therefore we react, that's what we're going to do.

That feels incredibly 19th century.

If you understand that you're you have you're afraid of something.

You're afraid that there's something

that's going to happen because this is all new.

This is all different.

This is change in everyone collectively is going through it.

Then actually, we need to do some work around where's that fire coming from?

Is that fear founded?

And how could you actually make that if it hasn't been working?

Well, OK, fine. But if it has been working.

What can actually moving to Hybrid working

for you? Is there an opportunity? Do you have a lot of extroverted thinkers? Do you

need those people to be working together and therefore they would benefit from

coming together, but maybe once a month? Once a week? What and what does that

actually look like? What is the work that you're trying to achieve and how do you

get there? And then if you do that collaboratively,

you have your why as to what it is that you're going to to achieve.

And I think we're jumping to communicate

some stuff too fast at the moment because we haven't sat in the problem long enough

to actually understand what it is, what we're trying to do. Why is that? Why is

that going on and how employees are going to feel at the end of it?

And I think those are such important points, Janet.

And I'm seeing so many organisations are starting with the decision of how many

days a week, and they haven't necessarily thought through why they haven't really

understood what is that going to do for our teams?

And they're creating systems that will allow people to come in on random days,

meaning that teams will never actually have a day together.

And instead we could be looking at, well, what do we actually want to achieve while

we want people to be able to have those watercooler moments?

Great. What process do we want to put in

place that facilitates that? How are we going to handle people having flexibility

of choosing which days to come in and still make sure at least once a month

there's a team day where people actually get to connect rather than just bringing

their laptop in and doing the emails at work that they could have done from home?

And I think the other thing as well is

that we there are lots of companies who've been doing this for a while now.

There are fully remote companies.

A friend of mine works for a Start-Up that is fully remote.

They I think they come in once a quarter, something like that.

They used to they used to connect 14 days.

And then and then everybody went back out remote KPMG.

They're huge. They've been doing this for ages.

Why is there no case study on what KPMG have been doing?

Why are we not looking to them and saying, well, you guys have been making

two days a week out of the they actually forced people out of the office.

They do not come in two days a week.

We don't want you here.

And that was about real estate.

And you know, how many bums on seats do you want at a certain time?

They've got those teams have been making

this work because, you know, when I last looked, KPMG were doing all right.

So what are they doing?

How have they managed it?

What have their own managers got?

What support they have?

And I think where were those case studies where we can actually say so?

People can't sort of think very simply that it's.

Oh, well, that's a start up. We're not a start up.

We're not like that where we're not, you know, 20 something and cool.

That's got nothing to do with it.

This is about the type of work that you do and understanding.

Can that be done together or apart or hybrid or however.

But I think that's that's been sort of really I've been really interested.

There's been lots of jumping into a space.

And I think you and I talking about this

earlier today, sort of a this is brand new.

Nobody's got the right answer yet.

And there seems to be a land grab for what the right way to do this is.

And we don't know that yet.

And everybody seems to be a little bit

nervous that there needs to be a right way and a wrong way.

And actually, there's not there's lots of different ways and everyone's going to

have a different way of being able to do this.

This is an opportunity to rethink things that haven't been working.

This is an opportunity to allow, you know, people who've been asking for

flexible, working for huge amounts of time and have been told, no, we can't do that,

to say, OK, well, we've made it work, we can do that.

But I think the land grab for the narrative has got to stop.

Absolutely right on that. And it's a great point.

Come up in the comments and everybody

who's with us live, do feel free to use the chat here.

So I think the point about control and fair is so important.

I believe some of it boils down to managerial skill set being based on

physically ensuring the work is being done rather than adding value.

Such a great point.

And as you've just said, Janet,

we've actually just done this for fifteen months.

And yes, for some companies it hasn't worked, but for so many it has.

And to suddenly tell staff that what

they've moved heaven and earth to achieve over the last 15 months is somehow now

invalid and they can't keep doing it, isn't going to work.

And something I'd like to cover next is one of the things in life is our values.

What's important to us tends to be quite

that unless we go through a big life change like, say, becoming a parent or

getting married or getting divorced, it can change your values.

What's important to us

as can going through a global pandemic and suddenly our entire sense of self and

world turning upside down, what we've seen with so many people is

suddenly they're realising, I don't want four hours a day on a train.

I don't want two hours a day in a car.

I want to be able to see my kids when they get home from school.

I want us to be able to have a family dinner.

I want to be able to go to the gym.

And it's not five o'clock in the morning.

People's values have changed and they're going to be voting with their feet to find

organisations whose working patterns match with their values.

And I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, Janet.

There's really interesting, I read this as I say, I've been doing a lot of

reading and I read an article the other day that said actually within the

pandemic, lots of people have been finding new jobs, but a lot of people haven't been

moving job because I thought, oh, security, I've got to got my thing.

If they're not kicking me out and I'm not

I've not been made redundant, then let's just stay still for a bit.

So actually, for quite a large number of people, there's a lot of pent up.

This was I wanted to move.

I couldn't move.

Now was the time to move.

I've noticed an internal communications.

There was a huge number of job

opportunities at the moment taking mid level.

I think there's a huge, huge number of

companies that are sort of realise, oh, we do need internal communications.

This really will help us.

Whether they actually understand how that

communicate internal communications is going to work is a different matter,

because it seems to be they seem to be all over sort of a little bit all over the

place with sort of the the jobs that are being offered.

But I do think if you've got that pent up group who wanted to leave anyway and

suddenly they hit a pandemic, the brakes have been put on.

That's not good.

Then you've got the people who, as you say, will suddenly be told.

Right. Well, you need to come back in.

I have some friends who have been told

you need to now come back to the office and they had to move country.

And they are no longer in the country of

their of their office, and when they've sort of said, look what

we've been doing this job for 50 months, we've been doing great.

We're having, you know, we've delivered

we're doing everything that you want us to and more

they've been told yet doesn't matter.

You need to physically be in this location.

And I hear things like, well, it's tax law or tax law needs to catch up.

Don't just cite tax law.

If that person has been doing a really

great job and those two particular people have left, have left

their company not because they wanted to, but because they had to.

So I think there's suddenly going to be this workforce that becomes incredibly...

Instead of sort of sitting and we're standing still, we're not staying put, w

e're going to find a lot of people moving about and moving.

Previously, we've known people move for managers.

That's still going to happen because it

might be my manager suddenly said I need to be in five days a week.

And I think that's a crock.

Or we might think actually they don't want me in at all.

And actually, I really need to be with people.

So I need to find somewhere that does that.

I think there's going to be a huge amount of movement.

I really, really do.

I think it's going to be really

interesting to observe, do I have any of the answers?

No, but I think it's important to look, to observe, to listen and to to analyse

why are people doing what they're doing, why the movements being made

and where are people migrating to?

I think it's I don't think there's going to be one or the other.

I think it's going to be really

interesting to observe at least over the next 18 months at least.

Absolutely.

I think there's going to be an awful lot - for leaders who are watching this

, either with us live or on the replay - there's going to be a lot of us needing to

watch out, because we're going to suddenly find that some of our key players are just

going to leave and we'll be confused as to why. And there's a strong chance that

whatever the decisions we've made on Hybrid working will influenced that.

And as you said, Janet,

it's not just people saying, well, hey, actually I want to work from home four

days a week because this is now important to me.

There will be the people saying, no, I want to be in every day and I want to have

the right to do that because I hate having to sit on my bed and have my dressing gown

in the background on live streams with clients.

And one of the things that's really

important, I know you and I have talked in the past on it, is that Leaders'

Super Powers is going to they're going to need to include understanding that there

are so many diverse opinions on this that is no right or wrong.

There's no way to please everybody.

But we need to try and find flexibility

within ourselves and our organisations to allow everybody to now have the working

experience that meets their needs and values.

What are your thoughts on that one?

I think it's huge.

I think it's listening is an underrated skill.

And I think in the beginning there's going

to need to be a lot of listening that happens.

And what I can see happening is certain

line managers who in that fear are jumping to the I have to have the answer

to the most valuable thing that you can do

right now is listen and understand what what is your team make up?

What what is the work that actually happens in your team?

And this is about how does that work take place?

What is the thinking work?

What is the creative work?

What are the innovative work?

But also what's the executional stuff?

How many meetings do you need?

Have you had more meetings or fewer meetings?

What does that actually look like?

And actually take this as an opportunity to do a full reset?

I think there's a huge opportunity to do that.

But I'm really I'm worried about lone managers.

I'll be really honest.

I'm I my heart goes out to them.

I think they've got a really tough job

because yet you can't please all of the people all of the time.

And I think it's about figuring out what

is the right thing to do all day is somebody who sort of says, I don't want

to work in the way that you've all collaboratively decided.

Can you look at ways to redeploy that person within your organisation?

Are there better suited roles for that person now?

I think there's a lot there's a huge opportunity here, but it's it's massive.

It's absolutely massive.

I can understand why

teams are sort of kind of going, OK, let's have a collective sort of inhale

and let's have a moment, because this is going this this is going to be huge.

I think one point as well that is really interesting is how you're communicating

this and how you're asking your line managers to communicate this.

People will also start to leave companies

based on how your culture has been affected by these changes.

And have you got a culture that has that says one thing, but actually because of

what's happening right now, because it's a because it's new, because

it's different, instead of being the culture that you

aspire to be, you've become a culture that you actually are.

And that's not what people have joined.

They've joined the aspirational version,

but not the actual version of what you are.

And does that mean that people are feeling?

Less certain about where they want to be,

less positive about the fact that they want to stay.

I think this is really interesting,

particularly this communication piece at the moment, how the knock on effect that

is going to have culturally on my managers, on the whole organisation, I

it's really, really fascinating at the moment.

Absolutely.

And building on what you said about the most important thing a manager can do

right now is really listening, with that communication we need to be

finding ways to make it really clear to people that it's OK to speak up.

You know, the example you just gave of everybody in a team has collaboratively

decided this is how the team is going to work.

It takes an enormous amount of courage for

that one person saying, "actually, this doesn't work for me," to speak up, rather

than either resent it or vote with their feet.

So I think some of that communication is

w e are also here to listen.

It doesn't mean we can pander to every

need - that's going to be hard - but we're here to listen.

And that builds to a question that we've

got from the audience here on the live round of the session

is how does the sense of fairness play out in a hybrid environment?

It's difficult to balance out flexible working for knowledge workers with front

line operational workers who don't have that flexibility option.

I'm not expecting you to have the magic wand for this, Janet, but from a

communications point of view and a cultural point of view, what could

organisations be doing or asking themselves on that?

I think it's about clarity and it's a great question.

I think it's about being clear about what

you are going to do, because if you are a front line

operational worker with no flexibility option.

That should be clear from the start, so

let's take an example of a retail employee.

If you're working as a retail employee,

you know that you can't do that job from anywhere other than that space.

You have a choice to do that job or to choose to do another job.

And so it's very clear, and I think it becomes very clear within

within the job role and the type of role where what the options are, there are some

which are very, very obvious, like a retail employee.

If you work at Janet Lewis, you have to be at Janet Lewis.

If you are in a store staff member,

if you are in Janet Lewis, but you are

behind the scenes and you work in I.T., then you might not need to be.

And I think that's then about we start to

to review roles based on what is the flexible option.

And some people have been doing that for years.

I know that there are certain websites

that you pre pandemic that would be where you would go.

I want to work flexibly.

I know that I have these out outside of work obligations.

Therefore, I will go.

I use this website because this is where all the jobs that offer the options that I

want and need for my life, that's where they all are.

I can go and find that

this just means that that is now across.

It just becomes bigger.

And I think it's really interesting to see people advertising roles at the moment.

I see some roles that are advertised and

they say, yeah, remote, remote is absolutely fine.

Others are very clear.

No, you need to be in the office and you

need to be in that specific geographic location.

I think that sort of we've all talked about this before.

It opens up well, if if I could work for a company in the US.

OK, well, it just means that my time zones are different.

So I'm OK as long as I'm okay with doing that.

So I think it's the fairness is about being clear about what that role is,

where that role is, what the opportunities are, and it's about clarity.

And then it's and then it's the individual's choice.

If you if you make it the individual's

choice, if you impose it on the individual and the individual.

But I've been doing my job really brilliantly and now you're imposing

something on me that I don't want that's different.

If somebody says I can actually make a

choice and I choose to do that or I choose to leave.

But that's OK.

As a choice, exactly, and as you said earlier, Janet, it's also about us having

the flexibility inside ourselves to potentially ask to be redeployed

if we feel it's not fair and it's something that is important to us, that

value has come to the fore, then we need to make that choice.

OK, I don't want to be there at the front line anymore.

I want to be doing it differently.

And one of the things that's heartened me is looking at traditional industries where

there are people who've had to be in the

office, in the knowledge workers, as described in the question,

where it's been the assumption that they couldn't do it from home.

Like, for example, in banks, people who are working on the trading floor,

traditionally they've had to be in and they've been in throughout the pandemic.

There are now international banks that have discovered we can actually pay for

licences for them to have exactly the same software at home.

That means they can do it there, they can do it securely, and it's having no

negative impact whatsoever on the results that we're getting.

So sometimes as an industry, we need to

get away from that homogenised group-think into looking at, well, OK,

if this is really important to this group of people, this segment of our teams, what

could we do to meet that need that doesn't negatively impact the organisation?

How could we be more flexible instead of

just doing that stress based computers as an idea?

Is it a wrap up today, Janet?

Well, I'd like to talk about is bringing Cognitive diversity into the

committees and the teams that are making these decisions.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

And if anybody's got any final questions

for Janet, please let me know by the chat and I'll bring them in at the end.

I think it's absolutely essential, isn't it?

I mean, it's

if you have a group of people who are all the same.

And by that I mean diverse as a diversity, they all look the same.

But cognitively, they are all the same

because they all have the same challenges, issues, etc.

then you're not going to get anybody who

will raise their hand and say, well, have you thought about what it's like for a

working mother if there were no working mothers on the committee?

And we've we've seen this previously.

We've seen this throughout the pandemic where things have happened and then

suddenly someone is going, what did you think about this group of people?

And think, oh, no, we didn't think about a group of people.

We didn't ask them because we didn't have anybody on the committee who was he was

thinking about that group of people and that group of people turns out to be women

and just, you know, fifty one percent of the population.

It's absolutely vital.

And I think it's really interesting.

I think with something that we can learn from

Germany, in Germany, they have workers,

councils, and a lot of people kind of go to workers councils.

Really, it's really complicated.

You know, it stops everything.

It makes everything go much more slowly.

But actually, in previous lives, what we saw was when you work together with that

workers council, workers council represents all different types of of

employee and everybody votes on who those employees are that will then support them.

So it's up to everybody to decide how they

get that their cognitive diversity within that group.

That group then is Torg.

It's the employee voice in the room.

And I think having the employee voice in

the room is vital and it means that you don't get that group

think that, you know, lots of either leaders who maybe all

look and have similar outcomes, similar sort of family set up or similar

sort of, you know, all of a similar age, or you don't have an H.R. team who are all

who will sort of look similar.

You end up with

a diverse group who think in diverse ways and who are thinking about this.

And if you don't have that cognitive

diversity, then you need to have some sort of question list to figure out.

Are you thinking about all the different

types of people in your organisation and all the decisions that you're making,

or are you asking the right questions before we even get to the decisions?

Are you actually asking all of the right questions?

Because if you just make decisions and you completely forget working mothers.

What percentage of your population have you just completely discounted?

And coming back to the communication piece when you communicate to them,

well, you don't have their insight, you've not considered how they feel.

So it's it's not going to land well and

they are probably going to end up feeling desolate.

So you are going to go into that sort of negative cycle.

So having the maximum amount of Cognitive

diversity, having the maximum amount of diversity.

And making sure that all different types of your audience are, you know,

you get input from and you're not going to be able to please

all of them, but it's about considering it.

And a lot of times it's about perception.

And as part of the communication, what you can do is you can talk about that process.

If you've got a wonderful process where the employee voice has been in the room

and you as an employee feel represented and feel like you've been hurt, you're OK.

They did. They were talking to somebody.

That was that was my sort of circumstances.

So perception is you then being heard.

So you are less likely to feel desolate.

You can include that as part of your communication plan.

We spoke to X number of employees.

We spoke to a cross-section who were who covered this.

You can give that information.

And people feel colleagues and employees feel confident

that they have been represented as decisions are made.

And it's about, yes, you want them to feel

right, but you also want the perception of what is being done to feel right,

because it might be that you made all the right decisions and you did all the right

things and you got all the right people in the room.

And Cognitive diversity was amazing.

But if you don't communicate that well,

perception might be that you didn't talk to me.

You didn't bother with me.

You didn't listen to me.

I still feel desolate and I no longer belong in this organisation.

Exactly. So you've got to do both.

There's got to be what you do and then how you communicate that to make sure that the

perception of what has been done is actually what has been done and what.

Absolutely. That's brilliant, Janet.

And everybody, I've got one last thing I'm

going to say with say to Janet and ask her about that.

While I'm doing that, I'd love to hear from those of you here with us live.

By the way, what is your big light bulb from today?

What is the one thing that you're taking away from what Janet has shared so far?

So one of the things that's really important to people is feeling inspired

right now because people are on their knees.

We've got sessions in the conference on how to prevent burnout because people are

exhausted if somebody is a manager rather than an internal communications expert on

it and they've got to communicate a policy to their team. What would be the one piece

of advice you'd like to wrap up with today to give that manager on how to communicate

decisions or options in a way that inspires rather than scares people?

Put yourself in their shoes.

OK, be the employee and.

From an end, it's all about it's about empathy, if you go in and you're nervous

and you just fire something out there and then you leave.

How would you feel if your manager had done that to you?

So I think a lot of it is about putting yourself in the employee shoes.

You should know if it's your manager.

Hopefully, you know your team. You know them really well.

You've been really close to them.

So you know how they're feeling at the moment.

And that means that you can,

with the standard communication that you pack that you may get.

You can then dial certain things up and

down depending on how your team will take it.

But put yourself in their shoes.

How are they going to be feeling?

And then in that first instance, listen

and don't feel that you need to have the answers.

And if you even if you don't want to

answer at all, just take take say, you know what?

I'm going to write down all of your questions

and make sure that you are actively listening.

Take those questions away

and then come back what you do, something that kind of goes because you've got

everybody in the room who you are, what's going to happen.

And it's very emotional.

You need to take the emotion out.

Listen, allow people.

And is there a survey where they could

fill it in if they don't want to say something out loud, allow people to be

lots of different ways to be able to express what they're feeling

and then reconvene to be able to respond.

And I would do it and I would do it like that and always, always put yourself in

the shoes of the people who you are communicating to.

That's brilliant, Janet.

And I particularly love your advice about it.

If not for the line manager to have every answer, it's OK for them to say, I'll take

away your questions and find that answer, because often the answers that are given

in the heat of that moment will then be the wrong choice, the wrong decision.

That's absolutely gold dust. Fantastic.

So we've got lots of great food for

thought, listening, consulting and empathy.

Fantastic advice. Thank you for an excellent session.

Allowing Anonymous is a great idea. Absolutely.

Thank you so much, Janet, and everybody who's joined us live.

I hope that's inspired you today.

And I'd love to hear from you as we wrap up your one thing.

You're going to do what you want, action

you're going to take as a result of the session.

And Janet, if people want to connect with you, is it all right if we send them over

to find you on LinkedIn or do you have a way?

Let's do LinkedIn. It's nice and easy.

Read it.

I'll make sure that your LinkedIn link is below the reply on this.

Thank you, everybody, today.

Thank you so much for sharing your time and your wisdom and your inspiration.

And I can't wait to hear what people are going to go and do this stuff.

Bless you and thank you so much for being part of this.

Thank you, everybody who has joined us live today.