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Kingsley Aikins - Good work doesn't speak for itself... But you can! · Difference Makers Podcast

• 0:13
  Sinead Donovan: Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to you all to this episode of Difference Makers Discuss.
• 0:19
  Sinead Donovan: I am delighted to be joined in the studio today by Kingsley Aikins, who is well, I don't even know how I'm going to introduce Kingsley because he is just such a guru in the world of networking, in the world of relationship builds.
• 0:35
  Sinead Donovan: And he has just launched a book or written a book, Networking Matters, published by Charged Accountants Ireland.
• 0:42
  Sinead Donovan: And Kingsley is going to talk to us today about the importance of networking, the importance to the profession, the importance to the world at large.
• 0:49
  Sinead Donovan: So that is my introduction.
• 0:52
  Sinead Donovan: But Kingsley, you're very welcome and thank you for coming in to us.
• 0:55
  Kingsley Aikins: And thanks for having me, Sinead.
• 0:56
  Sinead Donovan: Not at all.
• 0:57
  Sinead Donovan: Kingsley, can you try, and I know this is going to be really difficult in a few minutes, but can you try and introduce yourself to the listeners and tell us about your journey?
• 1:06
  Kingsley Aikins: Okay, my journey.
• 1:07
  Kingsley Aikins: Well, look, I'm I'm from Dublin, Ireland, born educated here.
• 1:11
  Kingsley Aikins: Mum was an Irish teacher, dad had a business, which I interesting enough, he he started working for that company when he was 14 and he left it when he was 77.
• 1:21
  Sinead Donovan: Wow.
• 1:21
  Kingsley Aikins: 63 years in one company.
• 1:23
  Kingsley Aikins: Wow.
• 1:23
  Kingsley Aikins: So I often think, you know, the changes we've seen in the world, that ain't happening anymore.
• 1:28
  Kingsley Aikins: In in the old days, you know, um people outlived companies, you know, and and it's just all changed.
• 1:34
  Kingsley Aikins: So um school and college here actually went off to France and played a season of rugby over there.
• 1:40
  Kingsley Aikins: Now I wasn't a great rugby player, but I was I got I I got on a team over there and played for a season, got beat up um and had to give up rugby.
• 1:46
  Kingsley Aikins: But I enjoyed it.
• 1:47
  Kingsley Aikins: I was on the Leinster team at the time, so I I was okay, but wasn't great.
• 1:52
  Kingsley Aikins: I of course wanted to play for Ireland and all that, but that was never going to happen.
• 1:55
  Kingsley Aikins: But one thing I did learn from rugby, a couple of things I learned from rugby.
• 1:58
  Kingsley Aikins: One was that um, you know, there were some great players on my team who went on to do wonderful things.
• 2:04
  Kingsley Aikins: Captain was a guy called Dick Spring who went into politics.
• 2:07
  Kingsley Aikins: Scrum half was a guy called John Robby who played for in South Africa.
• 2:10
  Kingsley Aikins: Philip Orr was the problem.
• 2:12
  Kingsley Aikins: So so it was I I do believe that to a certain extent, there's a guy called Jim Rohn in America says you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
• 2:20
  Kingsley Aikins: So I spent a lot of time with these people, and some of that kind of rubbed off.
• 2:23
  Kingsley Aikins: Um, so after that episode was all over, I went to London, I did a postgrad, and I joined, Sinead, you're too young to remember, Corostructala, which is the Irish Export Board.
• 2:34
  Kingsley Aikins: I remember and what you normally do is spend a few years there, and then they'd post you overseas.
• 2:42
  Kingsley Aikins: That's what I really want.
• 2:43
  Kingsley Aikins: I want to post, I was very keen to get out of Ireland.
• 2:45
  Kingsley Aikins: You know, I I think you know the old line, who knows Ireland, who only Ireland knows?
• 2:49
  Kingsley Aikins: In other words, if you want to know your country, you've got to go away and spend time away.
• 2:53
  Kingsley Aikins: So I was very keen to go away.
• 2:54
  Kingsley Aikins: And I put my name down for a posting.
• 2:56
  Kingsley Aikins: I'll never remember, I'll never forget what happened.
• 2:59
  Kingsley Aikins: There were five cities up for grabs.
• 3:01
  Kingsley Aikins: It was Moscow, um, Sydney, um, Lagos, Glasgow, and then the glamour posting, Limerick, right?
• 3:10
  Kingsley Aikins: So I got Sydney.
• 3:12
  Sinead Donovan: Oh my goodness, wow.
• 3:14
  Kingsley Aikins: Dirty job, somebody's got to do it.
• 3:16
  Kingsley Aikins: And when your country calls, so off I went and I spent eight years there in Sydney, and it was fantastic.
• 3:22
  Kingsley Aikins: But when I arrived there, I didn't know a sinner in Australia.
• 3:25
  Kingsley Aikins: I met a lot of sinners when I was there, but I didn't know anybody there.
• 3:29
  Kingsley Aikins: And I my mum gave me the name of a neighbor's son who lived in Sydney.
• 3:32
  Kingsley Aikins: I rang him and I said, I don't know anybody.
• 3:34
  Kingsley Aikins: Can you introduce me to the local Irish business network?
• 3:37
  Kingsley Aikins: He said, There isn't one.
• 3:38
  Kingsley Aikins: So I said, Look, why don't we set one up?
• 3:40
  Kingsley Aikins: So we got together like 12 people one night and we had a dinner.
• 3:44
  Kingsley Aikins: We called ourselves the Lansdown Road Club because we're rugby guys, and then in a spirit of sort of sporting ecumenism, we dropped the word road.
• 3:53
  Kingsley Aikins: So it's the Lansdowne Club and it's there today.
• 3:55
  Kingsley Aikins: It is the biggest Irish business network in any city in the world.
• 3:58
  Kingsley Aikins: They have their St.
• 3:59
  Kingsley Aikins: Patrick's Day lunch next week.
• 4:01
  Kingsley Aikins: I was talking to Theresa Keating, who worked with me and has been running it ever since, and she said that they put out the call for people who want to buy tickets, and a thousand sales were done in 20 minutes.
• 4:13
  Kingsley Aikins: So it was a wonderful kind of.
• 4:15
  Kingsley Aikins: And for me, it was a nice kind of legacy I left.
• 4:17
  Kingsley Aikins: And I met when I was over there, I was trying to find somebody who'd be a great name to head up the Landstown Club.
• 4:24
  Kingsley Aikins: And I wrote a letter to a guy called another name you'd probably remember, Tony O'Reilly, head of the H.
• 4:28
  Kingsley Aikins: J.
• 4:28
  Kingsley Aikins: Hines Food Company in the United States.
• 4:30
  Kingsley Aikins: And he, a huge big name, me and nobody.
• 4:33
  Kingsley Aikins: And I wrote to him and I couldn't believe it.
• 4:35
  Kingsley Aikins: He wrote back and he said, I'd love to be involved.
• 4:37
  Kingsley Aikins: I'm building networks of Irish people in business all around the world.
• 4:40
  Kingsley Aikins: And thirdly, he said, and I couldn't believe this, he said, Would you be free for lunch?
• 4:44
  Kingsley Aikins: Because I'm coming to Sydney.
• 4:45
  Kingsley Aikins: Would I be free for lunch?
• 4:46
  Kingsley Aikins: I was gonna say no, I'm busy, Tony, but but I said, love to meet you.
• 4:51
  Kingsley Aikins: I met him for lunch.
• 4:52
  Kingsley Aikins: We talked about rugby for about two hours and lots of other things, and I ended up working for him for 21 years.
• 4:58
  Kingsley Aikins: So I moved to America and lived in Boston for 15 years, and I ran a thing called the Ireland Funds over there.
• 5:06
  Kingsley Aikins: But of course, the glue that made everything work was networking.
• 5:10
  Kingsley Aikins: And if I hadn't learnt to be reasonable at networking, I don't think I would have made any progress.
• 5:17
  Kingsley Aikins: So that's it in a nutshell.
• 5:19
  Sinead Donovan: Now there is so much to unpack there.
• 5:21
  Sinead Donovan: Can I just for the listeners say, ran a thing called the Ireland Funds?
• 5:25
  Sinead Donovan: I mean, the thing called the Ireland Funds is huge and is one of our I don't know, uh a showpiece for for Ireland philanthropy almost, isn't it?
• 5:33
  Kingsley Aikins: So land networking and and it was well here's this you know, Sinead, we had a huge history of emigration from Ireland.
• 5:42
  Kingsley Aikins: So in in history, in total, 10 million people have left this island.
• 5:45
  Kingsley Aikins: It's an unbelievable number.
• 5:46
  Kingsley Aikins: That's the bad news.
• 5:48
  Kingsley Aikins: But the good news is 10 million people left this island because we now have a global empire, not built by military might or force of arms, just the fact so many Irish people went and had to go, and of course the famine had been the big driver.
• 6:01
  Kingsley Aikins: In fact, Tony, I remember when I met him first, he said there was a time when the Prime Minister of New Zealand was called Muldoon, the Prime Minister of Australia was Keating, the Prime Minister of Great Britain was Callahan, the Prime Minister of Canada was Mulroney, and the President of the United States was Reagan.
• 6:17
  Kingsley Aikins: I mean, that's one of the great tribes of the world.
• 6:20
  Sinead Donovan: Okay, so before we alienate all the listeners, we're not going to just go into Ireland history, but it is amazing.
• 6:25
  Sinead Donovan: And and one small uh snippet there, you mentioned the Lansdowne Club.
• 6:28
  Sinead Donovan: I went to Sydney in '97, '98 as a young church accountant.
• 6:32
  Sinead Donovan: And I went to the Lansdowne, uh, St.
• 6:34
  Sinead Donovan: Patrick's Day.
• 6:35
  Sinead Donovan: It is one of the showpiece events for the Irish down there.
• 6:39
  Sinead Donovan: So it's it it is um uh it is, and I know it's still going strong as you say, so it's amazing.
• 6:44
  Sinead Donovan: So well done.
• 6:45
  Sinead Donovan: Well done on that.
• 6:45
  Sinead Donovan: Yeah, that's tough.
• 6:46
  Sinead Donovan: Um, so I I I think that's phenomenal.
• 6:49
  Sinead Donovan: I think what we've learned from that is whatever you turn your hand to Kingsley, you do uh not just well, but you bring it to the nth degree.
• 6:56
  Sinead Donovan: But talk to me a little bit about when it kind of hit you uh that networking was kind of so important and so needed and and an art.
• 7:06
  Sinead Donovan: I think you do describe it as an art or something that you can learn.
• 7:10
  Kingsley Aikins: Yeah, I mean, I think it's I don't even not even sure if it's an art or a science, it's a process.
• 7:14
  Kingsley Aikins: It's a process.
• 7:15
  Kingsley Aikins: Yeah, and if you follow the process, you have a greater chance of success than if you don't.
• 7:18
  Sinead Donovan: Okay.
• 7:18
  Kingsley Aikins: To a certain extent, in my case, it was a needs must.
• 7:21
  Kingsley Aikins: I I had no choice.
• 7:22
  Kingsley Aikins: I didn't know anybody in these places.
• 7:23
  Kingsley Aikins: And I've been to countries and lived in countries where I didn't know anybody when I arrived.
• 7:27
  Kingsley Aikins: So it was a terrific mechanism to get there.
• 7:30
  Kingsley Aikins: But I have to say, Sinead, when I started out in my career, I hated networking.
• 7:35
  Kingsley Aikins: I thought it was a sleazy, slimy activity for inauthentic people, you know, late at night in a bar, flicking out business cards, looking for a sale, looking for a job.
• 7:44
  Kingsley Aikins: You know, you wake up in the morning, you find somebody who's business card and they turn up your trousers.
• 7:47
  Kingsley Aikins: Where did that come from?
• 7:48
  Kingsley Aikins: What happened last night?
• 7:50
  Kingsley Aikins: So I just thought it was a horrible thing.
• 7:52
  Kingsley Aikins: And then sort of over time, I I think I learned probably three key lessons.
• 7:57
  Kingsley Aikins: I mean, the first one is that I read an article once that said the number one predictor of career success is being in an open network.
• 8:04
  Kingsley Aikins: Now, a closed network would be, let's say you had a party and you invited everybody you knew and they all knew each other.
• 8:11
  Sinead Donovan: Yeah.
• 8:11
  Kingsley Aikins: Whereas an open network is where there's a lot of diversity, there's a lot of difference.
• 8:15
  Kingsley Aikins: So I kind of copped on on that point.
• 8:18
  Kingsley Aikins: The second thing I realized is that I think the two most important words in the English language for all of us when it comes to our careers is actually other people.
• 8:30
  Kingsley Aikins: So if you think about it, Sinead, you'll never get a job unless other people agree to it.
• 8:34
  Kingsley Aikins: You'll never get a sale unless other people agree to it.
• 8:36
  Kingsley Aikins: You'll never get a client as an accountant unless other people agree to it.
• 8:40
  Kingsley Aikins: So other people hold the keys to your career progress, and not just professionally, but you'll never get married unless other people agree to it.
• 8:48
  Kingsley Aikins: So so I you know, uh it's all about then connections, relationships, all those things really, really matter.
• 8:56
  Kingsley Aikins: But here's the irony in all of that that although everybody agrees it's really, really important, people don't teach it.
• 9:02
  Kingsley Aikins: Schools and colleges don't teach it.
• 9:04
  Kingsley Aikins: I mean, you're just expected to be kind of good at it.
• 9:07
  Kingsley Aikins: And I think I got a piece of advice, and I wonder how many of your listeners got this advice when I was starting out in my career from my parents, which is work hard, keep your head down, keep out of trouble, and let your good work speak for itself.
• 9:22
  Kingsley Aikins: But actually, that's pretty poor advice because good work doesn't speak, other people speak.
• 9:28
  Kingsley Aikins: Yeah, and if nobody knows how you're contributing to your organization, to whatever you're doing in life, guess what?
• 9:35
  Kingsley Aikins: They move right along to somebody else.
• 9:37
  Sinead Donovan: Yeah, it's it's absolutely fascinating what you say, and and I I really want to get into the whole thing about that you you you didn't necessarily like networking because I can relate to that hugely as a young charged accountant.
• 9:49
  Sinead Donovan: Um I kind of railed against I I was brought up the same way, and my dad and my mum would say, you know, work hard, quality will shine through, and and you'll get your just rewards.
• 10:00
  Sinead Donovan: And I started getting a bit annoyed because I'd see people, as I saw it, playing the game around me, and they were getting maybe further on than I was.
• 10:09
  Sinead Donovan: And it took me a long time to realize that playing the game okay, it was said pejoratively, but but it didn't necessarily need to be a bad thing, it was about representing yourself, it was about, as you say, making connections with other people and and kind of selling yourself.
• 10:24
  Sinead Donovan: And that's what networking well, it's interesting because in in your book you say networking is much more about giving than getting.
• 10:32
  Sinead Donovan: Um and talk to me a little bit about that.
• 10:36
  Kingsley Aikins: So if you think um I've got a problem, I need something for myself, so I'm gonna go network.
• 10:43
  Kingsley Aikins: I mean, what happens is that becomes obvious to people that all you want from them is a transactional relationship, you want something from them.
• 10:51
  Kingsley Aikins: Whereas I came at it from a sort of a different sense of you know how can I help other people?
• 10:56
  Kingsley Aikins: How can I put my network at the disposal of other people?
• 10:59
  Kingsley Aikins: How can I add value to other people?
• 11:00
  Kingsley Aikins: And it's based on, I guess, probably the simplest premise of all about life and in general is that the more you give and the more you have become known as a kind of a giving type of person, it kind of comes back to you.
• 11:11
  Kingsley Aikins: You're never quite sure how and when and where, but it just does.
• 11:15
  Kingsley Aikins: And I think people have to make a decision to either believe in that or not.
• 11:18
  Kingsley Aikins: And I think you know the world we're living in now is transactional, confrontational, protectionist, isolationist.
• 11:27
  Kingsley Aikins: I mean, it's it's a pretty gruesome time we're going through right now.
• 11:30
  Kingsley Aikins: So I think if ca hanging on to some of those, maybe they're old-fashioned 19th century thoughts and ideas and ways of behaving, I just think that it's it's critical for our our own lives.
• 11:41
  Kingsley Aikins: And also, I think we all want to belong.
• 11:43
  Kingsley Aikins: I'm a big fan of the notion of belonging, whether it be to a country or a region or a city or an organization.
• 11:49
  Kingsley Aikins: Um, and again, these are I think these are all sort of soft concepts, you know.
• 11:56
  Kingsley Aikins: And I think um and I think soft power is a very interesting concept.
• 12:00
  Kingsley Aikins: I mean, there's a guy called um Nye, Professor Nye in Harvard, he's written a book called Soft Power.
• 12:06
  Kingsley Aikins: And soft power is the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion.
• 12:11
  Sinead Donovan: Okay.
• 12:12
  Kingsley Aikins: And uh, you know, and and yet we're living in a very confrontational kind of environment and world right now.
• 12:18
  Sinead Donovan: Is that not a bit manipulative, what you just say?
• 12:22
  Sinead Donovan: Is that not the art of manipulation?
• 12:24
  Kingsley Aikins: Well, manipulation to me sounds pretty negative.
• 12:26
  Kingsley Aikins: Yeah.
• 12:27
  Kingsley Aikins: You know, and I would prefer things, were concepts and ideas like cooperation, collaboration, okay.
• 12:33
  Kingsley Aikins: Although sort of slightly softer, and I guess it's maybe the other side of that coin.
• 12:38
  Sinead Donovan: Which it so often is, isn't it?
• 12:39
  Sinead Donovan: That there is two sides to and it's how you describe it or or or how you refer to it.
• 12:44
  Sinead Donovan: Come back to a comment you said there about that you you you you initially found didn't like networking or found it a bit a bit sleazy, and maybe found it, I don't know, you didn't say you found it hard, but you've obviously mastered the art of networking, Kingsley.
• 12:58
  Sinead Donovan: And I you believe that it can be taught.
• 13:02
  Kingsley Aikins: Yeah, I think we tend to mix up networking and sociability.
• 13:06
  Sinead Donovan: Okay.
• 13:06
  Kingsley Aikins: I think we tend to think somebody who's really sociable is by far the best networker.
• 13:11
  Kingsley Aikins: And in fact, and and I think people find it hard to buy into the following comment is that actually introverts can be better at networking than extroverts.
• 13:20
  Kingsley Aikins: And why is that?
• 13:22
  Kingsley Aikins: Because they do it with decency and authenticity and integrity, they ask questions, um, they listen, they start sentences with who, what, when, where, why, and how, and finish with a question mark.
• 13:32
  Kingsley Aikins: Whereas the extrovert kind of wants to wow you, wants to impress you, looking over your shoulder to find somebody more interesting to talk to.
• 13:39
  Kingsley Aikins: And I think in any group, maybe about a third are introverts, maybe a third or so are extroverts.
• 13:45
  Kingsley Aikins: But I think a third would be where I think I fall.
• 13:48
  Kingsley Aikins: I'm an ambivert.
• 13:49
  Kingsley Aikins: So an ambivert is somebody who I love out and about, I love social events, I love all that.
• 13:55
  Kingsley Aikins: But I very much need time on my own.
• 13:57
  Kingsley Aikins: I need time, you know, to recharge.
• 14:00
  Kingsley Aikins: And I think there's a difference between being lonely and being alone.
• 14:04
  Kingsley Aikins: And that said, I think loneliness is one of the great crises of our times.
• 14:08
  Kingsley Aikins: And networking is an antidote to loneliness.
• 14:12
  Sinead Donovan: But but by what you've said there, you do need to work at it to to get good at it.
• 14:18
  Sinead Donovan: Is that fair to say?
• 14:19
  Kingsley Aikins: Like everything in life, practice makes perfect, you know.
• 14:22
  Kingsley Aikins: Um and the more you practice, the luckier you get.
• 14:24
  Kingsley Aikins: Yeah, well that was scary player in golf, you know.
• 14:27
  Kingsley Aikins: And uh I I I would buy into that, you know.
• 14:30
  Kingsley Aikins: And if you make it part and parcel of your kind of of of you as an individual, but also as an organization, part of the house style.
• 14:38
  Kingsley Aikins: So, you know, culture, the definition of culture, I think the great definition is the way things are done around here.
• 14:43
  Kingsley Aikins: And if you have an organization that reflects that, I think it's a it's a huge positive.
• 14:49
  Sinead Donovan: Okay, and and and in your book, you do actually go into a little bit of detail as to the steps or the process that makes a good networker.
• 14:58
  Sinead Donovan: Do you want to try and share that with the listeners?
• 15:01
  Kingsley Aikins: Yeah, I mean, um, as I said, it's not really an art or science, it's more, it's more a process, and there's four steps to it.
• 15:07
  Kingsley Aikins: Yeah.
• 15:08
  Kingsley Aikins: Um, and it's research, it's cultivation, it's solicitation, it's stewardship.
• 15:12
  Kingsley Aikins: My job in in the United States with the Ireland Funds primarily was to raise funds um for for projects, in this case in Ireland, but it could be for any country.
• 15:22
  Kingsley Aikins: In fact, the funny thing was the first event we had with a gu with Tony O'Reilly and with Dan Rooney, who owned the Pittsburgh Steelers, um, we we ran a big event to launch this idea, this concept in New York, it was in the Waldorf Astoria.
• 15:36
  Kingsley Aikins: And the dinner was the event was so unsuccessful.
• 15:39
  Kingsley Aikins: The only reason we had a second event a year later was to pay for the first event.
• 15:43
  Kingsley Aikins: And that's $700 million ago.
• 15:47
  Kingsley Aikins: So another lesson I learned, nobody starts a large organization.
• 15:51
  Kingsley Aikins: Everything starts at zero.
• 15:53
  Kingsley Aikins: I mean, when you think about it, the 21-year-old son of a Syrian migrant called Steve Jobs and his 27-year-old buddy called Steve Wozniak, in a garage in Cooper Tina in California, made the first bits and pieces of an Apple computer and sold it.
• 16:08
  Kingsley Aikins: It's a three trillion dollar company, but that's where it started.
• 16:11
  Kingsley Aikins: And around the corner, there's two guys, Bill Hewlett and Doug Packard, with a printing company.
• 16:16
  Kingsley Aikins: Walt Disney's cartoon came out of a shed at the back with his cartoon.
• 16:20
  Kingsley Aikins: I mean, even you know, people like Facebook started in a dorm, uh, you know, Amazon started in somebody's front room.
• 16:26
  Kingsley Aikins: Ryan Eyre, you know, started with one plane and 18 passengers in 1985.
• 16:31
  Kingsley Aikins: You'll do 220 million passengers this year.
• 16:34
  Kingsley Aikins: So I love that notion.
• 16:36
  Kingsley Aikins: And it applied to the the world of that I was involved with in the US.
• 16:40
  Sinead Donovan: So everything has to start somewhere.
• 16:42
  Sinead Donovan: Is there though with the current generation, and I love the and when I say the current generation, the the younger people, and and and I just want to say this first.
• 16:52
  Sinead Donovan: I love the younger people, they are brilliant, they can teach us so much.
• 16:56
  Sinead Donovan: Um, but I I think they've I think they've got a hard time.
• 16:59
  Sinead Donovan: It it they almost want immediacy or need immediacy because that's what they're growing up with with everything around them, and then they also have the pressure of social media.
• 17:09
  Sinead Donovan: And sorry, we're bobbling around topics here, but it comes back to your what you said about loneliness.
• 17:14
  Sinead Donovan: And sometimes I think that the young people today, whilst they have maybe 300 friends on Snapchat or a thousand followers or whatever it may be, they can be very lonely.
• 17:25
  Sinead Donovan: I mean, are you seeing a difference in how the youngsters need to network than what we did 20 or 30 years ago?
• 17:32
  Kingsley Aikins: So we didn't have any technology really in in our time.
• 17:36
  Kingsley Aikins: So we actually had to do it all the kind of the old-fashioned way, which now is there's options out there, and of course, technology is phenomenal and it's wonderful.
• 17:43
  Kingsley Aikins: I'm not in any way a Luddite or against technology, and I think AI is going to be brilliant in lots of areas like healthcare and things like that.
• 17:51
  Kingsley Aikins: But I I'm always conscious of reading a book by a woman called Sherry Turkle, and the book was called Alone Together, and and and she said that the bizarre, the ironic thing is that technology, which was designed to bring us all together, is actually having exactly the opposite effect.
• 18:07
  Kingsley Aikins: We're all alone, she said, in front of a screen.
• 18:10
  Kingsley Aikins: And sometimes when I do these workshops with corporates, I I ask people, you know, when you think back on your life, you know, what were the most memorable experiences of your life?
• 18:18
  Kingsley Aikins: Were they with other people or were were they with in front of a screen?
• 18:22
  Kingsley Aikins: And everybody will give the obvious answer to that.
• 18:26
  Kingsley Aikins: So yes, there is those, there are those opportunities.
• 18:29
  Kingsley Aikins: I I think when when you think about young people and people of our generation in terms of their network, they need to have a personal network.
• 18:38
  Kingsley Aikins: And we all have that, friends and buddies and mates and all that good stuff.
• 18:41
  Kingsley Aikins: And what's nice about that is that they're all doing different things in different places.
• 18:44
  Kingsley Aikins: So the possibilities of referral and advice and suggestions is good.
• 18:48
  Kingsley Aikins: We need to have a strategic network.
• 18:52
  Kingsley Aikins: That means we need to identify the people who are going to help us get to where we want to get to in our own careers in the next five to ten years.
• 18:58
  Kingsley Aikins: The third thing is we need to have an operational network.
• 19:01
  Kingsley Aikins: In other words, you know, we need to have a respectful relationship with the people with whom we do our work that will allow us to be efficient and effective operators.
• 19:10
  Kingsley Aikins: We don't have to hang out with these people, we don't have to go to pub on a Friday night with them, but we need to have a respectful relationship.
• 19:16
  Kingsley Aikins: But then the fourth thing, and I think this is more current and segues back to your question.
• 19:21
  Kingsley Aikins: I think now we need to have an online network.
• 19:23
  Kingsley Aikins: Because here's the thing, Sinead, if I Google your name, the first thing that comes up is your LinkedIn profile.
• 19:30
  Kingsley Aikins: So if you don't have one, that says something, or if you have one, it's a bad one, that says something.
• 19:35
  Kingsley Aikins: And like it or not, we live in a world where people are either googling or being Googled.
• 19:40
  Kingsley Aikins: You know, that's that's just the real politic of the world that we're in.
• 19:44
  Kingsley Aikins: So I think um, you know, that's that's a new layer that's been added into relationships and networking.
• 19:50
  Sinead Donovan: Yeah, and and when we were talking earlier, uh Kingsy, I think you said there's we're not on we're not an ad for LinkedIn now, but there's 1.4 billion people on LinkedIn, but only what did you say, less than 1% or just 1%, greater than 1% post.
• 20:04
  Kingsley Aikins: Correct.
• 20:04
  Kingsley Aikins: I mean, I I did training for LinkedIn the other day and in Dublin here, and they have their European HQ here, the few thousand people working for them from all over the world, they're fantastic people.
• 20:14
  Kingsley Aikins: But they were telling me that you know, 1.4 billion people in the world have told this company, here's all my education details, here's all my work experience, here's you know who I know, and you can have it, and you can have it for free.
• 20:25
  Kingsley Aikins: Wow, that's phenomenal.
• 20:27
  Kingsley Aikins: So they are the depository of incredible information, but less than one percent of people post.
• 20:32
  Kingsley Aikins: So, you know, a lot of people are lurkers, if you like.
• 20:35
  Kingsley Aikins: They just, you know, they they use it and they watch it.
• 20:38
  Kingsley Aikins: Every every class I teach in companies, I ask how many people are on LinkedIn, and every hand goes up, you know.
• 20:45
  Kingsley Aikins: So, particularly for business and particularly for professions, I think it's important.
• 20:50
  Sinead Donovan: And does that posting bit maybe come back a little bit to what we talked about earlier?
• 20:53
  Sinead Donovan: The two things one, give in to get, because if you actually post really good content, you're kind of giving, and that might help your network.
• 21:01
  Sinead Donovan: But then also the you know, the working at it and the the working at the networking and the working at, I guess, selling yourself or developing your brand.
• 21:11
  Sinead Donovan: And we hear this a lot, Kingsy, you develop a personal brand.
• 21:15
  Sinead Donovan: Yeah, what's your view on that?
• 21:17
  Kingsley Aikins: What a turn off.
• 21:18
  Sinead Donovan: I know, I know, yeah, yeah.
• 21:20
  Kingsley Aikins: So, look, and I'm always nervous about talking about the topic because it does make you sound like a tin of beans, right?
• 21:27
  Kingsley Aikins: But here's the thing, Shine, you know, we all have a personal brand, whether we like it or not.
• 21:33
  Kingsley Aikins: In fact, bizarrely, not having a personal brand is having a personal brand, if you kind of think about it.
• 21:39
  Kingsley Aikins: I love the definition.
• 21:41
  Kingsley Aikins: A brand is a promise that lives through an experience that creates a memory, that leads to loyalty, that results in clients, sales, accountants, you know, all that kind of stuff.
• 21:53
  Kingsley Aikins: I I I love that definition because I think it touches on all the different elements.
• 21:57
  Kingsley Aikins: So the question is, you know, um Do you want to determine what your personal brand is, or do you want other people to determine what your personal brand is?
• 22:05
  Kingsley Aikins: And your personal brand is a lot to do with your reputation.
• 22:08
  Kingsley Aikins: And your reputation is what people say about you when you're not in the room.
• 22:11
  Kingsley Aikins: Jeff Bezos famously once said.
• 22:14
  Kingsley Aikins: And your reputation, not only does it sort of follow you around, it often precedes you.
• 22:21
  Kingsley Aikins: People have a view on you, even before they've even met you.
• 22:24
  Kingsley Aikins: So whether people find this distasteful or not, is the world that we we live in.
• 22:29
  Kingsley Aikins: So I think your your own your personal brand is an important thing.
• 22:33
  Kingsley Aikins: And the reality is people are going to be checking you out, you know, and and there's ways and devices for people to find out about you.
• 22:40
  Kingsley Aikins: Um and so I think it is important.
• 22:42
  Sinead Donovan: So to a certain extent, even if you mightn't like the term, you do have a personal brand, so you may as well own it and and and drive it in the direction you want it to be driven in.
• 22:51
  Kingsley Aikins: Well, and driving is a good analogy.
• 22:52
  Kingsley Aikins: I mean, do you want to be in the driving seat or do you want to be in the passenger seat when it comes to your personal brand?
• 22:57
  Kingsley Aikins: You know, and do you are you happy to let other people to determine what it is?
• 23:01
  Kingsley Aikins: So without and it's a difficult one to get the definitions right because it does smack of smarminess, of being a self-promoter, of being, you know, all those slightly negative things.
• 23:11
  Kingsley Aikins: On the other hand, you know, we know from from just products, you know, products people pay more for a brand than they do for a product.
• 23:21
  Kingsley Aikins: You know, they will pay an extra.
• 23:22
  Kingsley Aikins: So if you want to make an impact, and we're in this world of instantaneous connection and impact, I think it's worth thinking about the topic.
• 23:30
  Sinead Donovan: Okay, that's fascinating.
• 23:32
  Sinead Donovan: That's really that's that's really fascinating.
• 23:34
  Sinead Donovan: Um we're coming up towards the end of session of episode one of this, but the good news, listeners, is we've got an episode two with uh Kingsley because there's so much to discuss and unpack.
• 23:44
  Sinead Donovan: But um you've mentioned a few times the soft skills, and um to bring it a little bit back to the profession, but but but it's the profession and it's it's the wider business.
• 23:55
  Sinead Donovan: Um I I I personally I'm involved in uh in the education of accountants, and I've just come back from a week's workshop, and we were discussing hugely about the need to really focus in on the human skills, and um, you know, the some people do call it soft skills.
• 24:14
  Sinead Donovan: I I'm talking about things like um negotiation, like relationship bills, like communications, and and we believe in the profession it is really going to be vital that we teach our accountants of tomorrow those skills because um because they're gonna be needed, especially in the advent of AI when that might take over technical.
• 24:35
  Sinead Donovan: So sorry, that was a long-winded way of saying.
• 24:38
  Sinead Donovan: What is your view on those human skills?
• 24:43
  Sinead Donovan: How much importance should we be giving them um at the moment?
• 24:47
  Sinead Donovan: And and again, how can we teach them if it's not by osmosis?
• 24:55
  Kingsley Aikins: So when you think about it, I mentioned at the beginning, like schools and colleges don't teach soft skills, they teach hard skills, and and you have to have these hard skills.
• 25:04
  Kingsley Aikins: Hard skills get you on the ladder, soft skills get you up the ladder.
• 25:08
  Kingsley Aikins: But if progress in school or college is a function of a grade, a score, a mark, a metric, and it's got nothing to do with the person sitting beside you.
• 25:17
  Kingsley Aikins: And and then you get into the real world of work, and there's a whole series of things that count but can't be counted.
• 25:24
  Kingsley Aikins: So resilience and determination and grit and attitude and humor, and as we say here, crack, they all count a lot.
• 25:31
  Kingsley Aikins: They all matter a lot, but they can't be counted, so they tend to be discounted.
• 25:36
  Kingsley Aikins: And that's a gap, that's a shame, you know.
• 25:38
  Kingsley Aikins: So I think that that's sort of first point to be that.
• 25:41
  Kingsley Aikins: I think there's a series of things, skills, if you like, um, that go to make up this this kind of mosaic of of soft skills.
• 25:50
  Kingsley Aikins: I think being a really great listener is one, which again, listening's not taught.
• 25:55
  Kingsley Aikins: Most people listen, I say they listen for the gap.
• 25:58
  Kingsley Aikins: Most people listen purely to wait to jump in with what they want to say.
• 26:05
  Kingsley Aikins: Most people are narcissistic listeners.
• 26:07
  Kingsley Aikins: In other words, you know, if if you said to me, I'm I'm thinking of buying a car, you know, I bought one last weekend, the guy wanted 20,000.
• 26:15
  Kingsley Aikins: I jump in and say, I got one the week before for 30,000.
• 26:18
  Kingsley Aikins: It's a fantastic car.
• 26:19
  Kingsley Aikins: I mean, we tend to hijack conversations.
• 26:22
  Kingsley Aikins: We want to jump in, we want to give advice, advice, advice, but it doesn't work because it's not their advice, it's your advice, you know.
• 26:28
  Kingsley Aikins: So listening as a form of activity, listening not just to what somebody says but what they're going to say next, being curious.
• 26:36
  Kingsley Aikins: I I actually often think we live in a strangely uncurious world.
• 26:40
  Kingsley Aikins: People don't really show much interest, etc.
• 26:42
  Kingsley Aikins: So being a great listener, I think, is an incredible skill in networking.
• 26:46
  Kingsley Aikins: Um, but I think the other one I love is uh the notion of serendipity, luck and chance.
• 26:52
  Kingsley Aikins: And the question is, can you make luck happen for you or does it happen to you?
• 26:57
  Kingsley Aikins: You know, and of course there's bad luck out there.
• 27:00
  Kingsley Aikins: We could get cancer or knock get knocked down the street, etc.
• 27:03
  Kingsley Aikins: But but I am a believer that you can actually make these things happen for you.
• 27:08
  Kingsley Aikins: Or put it this way luck, serendipity and chance don't happen lying in bed or sitting at your desk.
• 27:14
  Kingsley Aikins: They happen when you're out and about, when you're in motion, when you put your talents on display, when you talk to strangers, when you seek out unlike-minded people and opinions and ideas, you know, all of those things, I think they increase the possibility, maybe probability of luck happening.
• 27:31
  Kingsley Aikins: And when you look back on your life, luck plays a role in all our lives.
• 27:34
  Kingsley Aikins: I mean, Daniel Canneman, the great writer, says success is about luck and skill.
• 27:41
  Kingsley Aikins: And he said great success is about a little more skill and a lot more luck.
• 27:45
  Kingsley Aikins: So it's a big part of our lives.
• 27:48
  Sinead Donovan: It is, but but I think what you're saying there is you you can work on increasing the chances of a lucky opportunity.
• 27:56
  Sinead Donovan: And and with that, Kingsley also maybe the ability to take that lucky opportunity, which can sometimes be a risky decision.
• 28:06
  Kingsley Aikins: Yeah, sure, sure.
• 28:07
  Kingsley Aikins: I mean, I think you know, we hope we can't live in cotton wool sort of situations.
• 28:13
  Kingsley Aikins: We we we have to actually push ourselves out there a bit, and particularly in a world where, you know, lifetime employment and lifetime loyalty are things of the past.
• 28:23
  Kingsley Aikins: I mean, we you we used to think about the escalator model of a career.
• 28:27
  Kingsley Aikins: You join a company, you join the currency company, you do your exams, you move up, and you just keep moving up and up and up to the corner office, a bit like my old man did over 60, 70 something years.
• 28:37
  Kingsley Aikins: But um, but that's not the way things are now.
• 28:41
  Sinead Donovan: No.
• 28:41
  Kingsley Aikins: You're gonna be moving and changing and and and the world's gonna change, and even the events that are going uh geopolitically around the world are gonna have impact in all our lives.
• 28:50
  Kingsley Aikins: So we need to be open to the notion that it'll be, you know, you're gonna be moving sideways, upwards, downwards, you know, it's it's your career is I'd say it's it's not an escalator, it's a jungle gym.
• 29:04
  Sinead Donovan: Absolutely.
• 29:04
  Sinead Donovan: And and certainly one of the things that we're seeing is that that career longevity, as in to the age that we're working to, is likely to get longer.
• 29:12
  Sinead Donovan: So it's gonna it's gonna jump around, but it's gonna go on for longer.
• 29:15
  Sinead Donovan: So it's it's how to keep that passion alive.
• 29:18
  Kingsley Aikins: Yeah, you know, I as you can see I'm in my third act, you know.
• 29:22
  Kingsley Aikins: Um, and the reality is, you know, 50% of the people who reach 60 now reach 90.
• 29:28
  Kingsley Aikins: So people are gonna have this very interesting period of life after they've finished with the kind of traditional conventional career, but what are they gonna do?
• 29:37
  Kingsley Aikins: What and sometimes they have to do something, but they are gonna live longer than any other generation in history.
• 29:43
  Kingsley Aikins: And so that's an interesting phenomenon.
• 29:46
  Sinead Donovan: Oh my goodness, this is just fascinating.
• 29:48
  Sinead Donovan: You are giving so many takeaways.
• 29:49
  Sinead Donovan: I'm still back at the first thing you said, which was the five people you spend the most time with shape you, and or whoever saw that, and I'm thinking in my head, who are those five people, but I'm gonna leave the listeners with that question as well to maybe think about that.
• 30:03
  Sinead Donovan: So I think this is a good time to take a break with part one of our discussions with Kingsley.
• 30:09
  Sinead Donovan: Um, however, we're gonna continue recording because there is so much more to unpack, and we will join you again for part two of the chat with Kingsley at the start of the next series of Difference Makers Discuss.
• 30:22
  Sinead Donovan: Thank you for sticking with us and stay well.