Latest / Smart Business Growth with Nicky Miklós / The CEO's Loneliness Epidemic with Mel Kettle

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The CEO's Loneliness Epidemic with Mel Kettle · Smart Business Growth with Nicky Miklós

• 0:04
  Nicky: Welcome to the Smart Business Growth Podcast with Nikki and.
• 0:08
  Nicky: Ness.
• 0:11
  Ness: We would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of country, the Turrbal and Bunurong people of Brisbane and Melbourne respectively, where Nikki and I both work and live both work and live.
• 0:29
  Nicky: Today we have Mel Kettle joining us, and if you are a business owner with a team or a leader with a team, then this episode is an absolute must for you.
• 0:35
  Nicky: Mel is an internationally recognized expert at fully connected leadership and communication.
• 0:40
  Nicky: She has more than two decades of experience in this space and is really passionate about leaders and teams that want to achieve that real connection, the sustained engagement.
• 0:50
  Nicky: She's also the host of podcast this Connected Life and the author of two books the Best-Selling Fully Connected and the Social Association.
• 0:59
  Nicky: Now we touch on many important areas of effective leadership.
• 1:03
  Nicky: We talk about communication with conviction.
• 1:06
  Nicky: We talk about the loneliness of CEOs and executives.
• 1:10
  Nicky: We talk about how to become that leader that people feel like they know you love you, trust you and the environment that you're creating, not only for yourself, but also for your team and the people around you.
• 1:23
  Nicky: So, without further ado, enjoy the episode and we'll see you on the flip side.
• 1:28
  Nicky: Mel, we love to talk people leadership on this podcast.
• 1:32
  Nicky: We love to gain insights around peak performance and the impact of these things on results in business.
• 1:40
  Nicky: I'm really curious to pick your brain.
• 1:43
  Nicky: What does it mean to have boundaries at work?
• 1:48
  Mel Kettle: It's a question I've been thinking so much about.
• 1:50
  Mel Kettle: Obviously, hopefully, most listeners will be aware of the importance of having personal boundaries at home and at work and when it comes to how you work, when it comes to your relationships, how you manage your time, how you manage your tech.
• 2:04
  Mel Kettle: But something that I'm really interested in and doing a lot more work around at the moment is what does it mean to have boundaries in the workplace and how do leaders and employers and managers make sure that the workplace boundaries are not constantly being breached and organizations have natural boundaries in place.
• 2:23
  Mel Kettle: They just don't call them boundaries.
• 2:24
  Mel Kettle: They call them things like a strategic plan, an operational plan, policies, procedures, processes, and so how do you make sure that people adhere to these, and not just the processes that you need to follow for, say, for recruitment, but the processes that you've got and the policies that you've got once you've got people working?
• 2:43
  Mel Kettle: So people take a job because of the work.
• 2:47
  Mel Kettle: They're intrigued or they're curious about what the work is and they like the sound of it.
• 2:51
  Mel Kettle: They take a job because of the person who's interviewing them or the person they'll be reporting to.
• 2:56
  Mel Kettle: They feel like they have a rapport with that person and they take a job because of their perceived notion of what the organisational culture will be.
• 3:03
  Mel Kettle: I'm sure I'm not the only one who's taken a job and been told okay, here's the way we work.
• 3:08
  Mel Kettle: Here are our office hours.
• 3:10
  Mel Kettle: For example, this was pre-flexible working time.
• 3:16
  Mel Kettle: Lots of my employees would say we work from 8.30 to 5.
• 3:18
  Mel Kettle: We're 45 minutes off for lunch or whatever that might look like.
• 3:19
  Mel Kettle: I've only ever had one employer in all of my years of being an employee who said to me at the end of my first week when I stayed way past 5pm.
• 3:27
  Mel Kettle: She said to me we finished work here at five.
• 3:30
  Mel Kettle: If you can't do your job in the hours that you're here, then we need to have a conversation because there's something that's gone wrong.
• 3:37
  Mel Kettle: Either I'm not giving you what you need, or you don't understand what you need to do, or you've just got way too much work and either way, it's my responsibility as your leader and your manager to make sure that you don't overwork beyond what we're paying you consistently.
• 3:53
  Mel Kettle: Wow.
• 3:56
  Nicky: Wow, who was that?
• 3:56
  Nicky: What business was that?
• 3:57
  Nicky: Yeah, that's right.
• 3:58
  Mel Kettle: Actually I was the marketing manager for the Brisbane Festival at QPAC.
• 4:01
  Mel Kettle: It was back in 2000.
• 4:03
  Mel Kettle: I'd come to Brisbane from Sydney where I worked a consistent 75 hours a week and when I said to my boss I'm really not coping with this, he just basically said too bad, so sad, that's what you have to do.
• 4:16
  Mel Kettle: And then, unsurprisingly, I burnt out and crashed and burned quite spectacularly and so by the time I moved to Brisbane I was quite broken.
• 4:24
  Mel Kettle: And I think the time I moved to Brisbane I was quite broken and I think the beautiful woman who hired me I think she saw that because she nurtured me and she just really looked after me, but not only me, she was like that way with the whole team and she was really she genuinely cared about our physical and mental wellbeing while we were working for her and I had never experienced that before, had to an extent, but not the same extent and I certainly didn't experience it after that job in the same way that she led with that.
• 4:55
  Ness: It's amazing and what a leader you know to be able to match what it is.
• 5:02
  Ness: We call them unwritten ground rules, right?
• 5:05
  Ness: So this and I see it often in the businesses that I've consulted to it's everyone gets so excited when they get a new job and you know the culture's this and it's so, oh, it's going to be amazing.
• 5:17
  Ness: And then that first meeting you go to and everyone's yeah, we're on board and we love this strategy or this thing and we're going to do it.
• 5:24
  Ness: And then as you walk out, the person next to you is going we're never going to do that.
• 5:27
  Ness: And as a new employee going, oh, hang on a minute.
• 5:35
  Ness: But I don't understand because it's the way things get done around here is different to the way we state we're going to do them.
• 5:39
  Ness: And I really see this as a huge issue for leaders in business, whether it's your own business or whether in a corporate space, because sometimes it can feel like you're going against the grain.
• 5:52
  Ness: And I remember similar situation.
• 5:55
  Ness: You know around long hours.
• 5:56
  Ness: I'm sure we probably all got long hours stories, but a workplace that I worked in where my hours were the same, it was like I finished at, I think, 5 o'clock If I left any time before 6, I would feel so uncomfortable and there would be comments like oh, part-time today, are we?
• 6:12
  Ness: Yep, and I'm like, why should I feel bad about just doing the hours that I meant to do?
• 6:20
  Ness: But everybody stayed, like most people left around 7.
• 6:24
  Ness: That's not what was sold to me, that wasn't the promise, and now that I've had a lot more, I was very young then so I was trying to find out how I fit into that organization and whether, you know, I had to compromise what I my needs were in order to be able to fit in and belong, or I certainly didn't stand up and say anything about it, whereas now it's interesting.
• 6:44
  Ness: You know that ability to push back, but sometimes you're pushing back against an embedded culture that is led from the top, and you know I've worked with owners of businesses that have done.
• 6:56
  Ness: One of the guys I started working with, I think he was doing like 80 hours a week, similar to what you were.
• 7:02
  Ness: So it's that, how are you representing what you stand for by the way that you behave?
• 7:08
  Ness: And that meant he was tired, grumpy, angry, you know, like not fulfilled, disconnected from his family, disconnected from his friends that he never saw because he had young children, you know, and just this toxic environment gets created and the reality is he was not productive.
• 7:27
  Mel Kettle: Yeah, A massive part of the work I do is with leaders and teams to help them communicate with conviction and to talk about what does it mean to communicate with conviction?
• 7:35
  Mel Kettle: And if you're all of those things, if you're tired, if you're crumpy, if you're stressed because you're at work and you're missing a really big milestone for one of your kids or for your partner, then you are never going to be able to communicate with the right conviction because you're not leading yourself first and prioritizing what's genuinely important to you.
• 7:56
  Mel Kettle: And you know there's certainly times where you need to put other people first, but as leaders, if we don't lead ourselves first, then we really we're not going to be effective at leading others.
• 8:05
  Mel Kettle: And I feel like a lot of people forget that, particularly when you're in an environment where it is the norm to work long hours or to constantly be under stress.
• 8:14
  Ness: Mel.
• 8:14
  Ness: What's the solution?
• 8:15
  Ness: Because if people are resonating with, that's me, because the culture that I'm in doesn't allow me to leave on time without having that inner guilt, or I am that, ah.
• 8:29
  Ness: What do I do about it?
• 8:31
  Mel Kettle: There's not one solution, because it really depends on the circumstance, but I feel that if you're in an organization where people are constantly working longer and getting stressed and cranky, the first thing you need to be doing as a leader is recognizing that and asking questions about why do they feel this way, why do I feel this way, and are there things that we're doing that maybe we can stop doing, Maybe we can delay doing or maybe we can just delete completely?
• 8:57
  Mel Kettle: One of my clients we were talking about doing a big piece of work together last year and just before we were agreeing to the deal that came to me and said we need to postpone working with you because our executive team have recognized that everybody is way too stretched and to put a training and development program in would probably be the straw that breaks the camel's back ironically, because you're there to help us.
• 9:21
  Mel Kettle: But he said what we've decided to do.
• 9:23
  Mel Kettle: We looked at the seven or eight or 10, however many key projects that we've got and we've halved them, and so it's going to take us six months to unravel and to realistically take those core projects off the table, to negotiate with our stakeholders and to talk about why we're not doing them within the timeframe that we'd originally agreed to, because we've recognised that it's time for us to put the health and wellbeing of our people first, and I could not be annoyed about losing this big project because they were doing exactly what I was going to be telling them to do, and they didn't need me to tell them to do it.
• 9:57
  Mel Kettle: So there's so many.
• 9:59
  Mel Kettle: That's one way that you can just look at what have you got going on and do you need to have all of that?
• 10:04
  Mel Kettle: And if you do need to have all of that, then how can you find more people to help you with that?
• 10:10
  Ness: And what I'm hearing in that is it's got to start from the top.
• 10:13
  Ness: It does.
• 10:14
  Mel Kettle: It does.
• 10:14
  Mel Kettle: It's like well, it's basically a change program.
• 10:16
  Mel Kettle: It's changing how you think, it's changing how you act, and if you don't have that driven from the very top, then it's not going to happen.
• 10:29
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• 10:33
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• 10:48
  Nicky: All you have to do is click the link in the show notes.
• 10:51
  Nicky: It's definitely really interesting to even hear the different perspectives around this.
• 10:57
  Nicky: Mel, I love your examples that you shared.
• 10:59
  Nicky: They were so different.
• 11:00
  Nicky: You know your example in Sydney and then coming to Brisbane and the complete opposite of that and I was really curious, as you were talking about that and it was mentioned a little bit around, what was the impact to output.
• 11:13
  Nicky: So with those two, they're just a great almost case study for us to reflect on the output of the longer hours, the stress you said that led to burnout, which a lot of our listeners and you know we can relate to, versus the output of, and also that must have been quite shocking to have someone say that to you.
• 11:32
  Nicky: How incredible, like if we've got to have a conversation, if you're after five, what's your observation of the quality of output between those two different scenarios.
• 11:41
  Mel Kettle: With the first one.
• 11:42
  Mel Kettle: I was working for a global marketing agency and running all the events for Microsoft, so the agency I worked for had won the contract to run all the events for Microsoft in Australia.
• 11:51
  Mel Kettle: The person who negotiated the contract for the firm that I worked in did a great job for Microsoft.
• 11:57
  Mel Kettle: She didn't have an understanding of what it took to run an event.
• 12:00
  Mel Kettle: So consequently, we ran 300 events in one year with a team of six plus a couple of resources and some people from Microsoft.
• 12:09
  Mel Kettle: Unsurprisingly, my entire team and I burned out.
• 12:12
  Mel Kettle: I churned through a few people, we got a few extra people in at key times, but not really.
• 12:17
  Mel Kettle: We were just this core team of six and they were amazing.
• 12:20
  Mel Kettle: We all did amazing things and we achieved.
• 12:23
  Mel Kettle: We ran every event, but at great personal cost to all of us.
• 12:28
  Mel Kettle: The other job was marketing manager for the Brisbane Festival.
• 12:32
  Mel Kettle: That year year again I had a great team of people.
• 12:35
  Mel Kettle: That year the festival was the only performing arts festival in Brisbane to make a profit and it was the biggest profit they'd ever made in their history.
• 12:43
  Mel Kettle: So that is what happens when you treat people well.
• 12:47
  Ness: You know they turn up.
• 12:48
  Mel Kettle: I turned up at work and I did a full day of work at work, whereas in my other job, where I was in the office for 12 hours or 14 hours most days, come three o'clock, I was ready for a nap.
• 12:59
  Mel Kettle: I was not a functioning human, but there was this expectation that you'd stay there, and so we all did a lot of busy work rather than focused strategic work, and then, because we were doing so many things and we had so many balls that were being juggled, most of us weren't sleeping well, because we were lying awake at three o'clock in the morning catastrophizing about all the things that could go wrong, as you do when you're under extreme stress.
• 13:24
  Nicky: So there's that impact to the bottom line in terms of the effectiveness of the output, but then there's also impact of bottom line around staff retainment, around staff engagement, around healthy, happy humans, and even, I think, that emotional and psychological impact, of course, you know, with the burnout, et cetera.
• 13:42
  Nicky: But even just enjoying where you are, I mean you left, you know, I'm sure that imagine a whole team burning out I just can't, I don't even want to.
• 13:50
  Nicky: But I want our listeners, our, you know, I know we've got business owners, we've got business leaders listening.
• 13:56
  Nicky: It can be very hard to create change in this space.
• 13:59
  Nicky: So we hear you.
• 14:01
  Nicky: We say that we've been a part of it and that's why I wanted you to share those really tactical outcomes, because A even if you don't do it for yourself, do it for your team members, which means you've got to start doing it for yourself.
• 14:13
  Nicky: You can't say one thing and act another.
• 14:16
  Nicky: I remember having a conversation with a client who was like yeah, but I say like go home on time.
• 14:20
  Nicky: I'm like cool, what time do you go home?
• 14:22
  Nicky: Oh, I'm always probably two hours off to finish time, like great.
• 14:26
  Nicky: So what are your actions teaching?
• 14:27
  Nicky: Your team members and I and I mean we might think that's Captain Obvious, but when we actually ask ourselves that question, it's like she was like, oh, you know, kick in the guts.
• 14:38
  Nicky: Yeah, you're right.
• 14:40
  Mel Kettle: and so that's exactly it.
• 14:42
  Mel Kettle: If you don't model the behavior, then your people will follow you.
• 14:46
  Mel Kettle: You're their leader, they'll follow you, and if they trust you, if they know you love you and trust you which you would hope that most of your team would, because that's what you want in a good team then they will do what you do.
• 14:58
  Mel Kettle: Yeah, because you, and whether you say one thing and do when you say one thing, but you do the other actions speak louder than words.
• 15:05
  Mel Kettle: Yeah, and so how do you change your behavior?
• 15:08
  Mel Kettle: Now?
• 15:09
  Mel Kettle: If you've got a lot of work on and you are not able to delegate some of that out, then leave the office and maybe even if you desperately need to do a bit of work at home, then do a bit of work at home, but don't let them see you don't send emails at 10 o'clock when you're saying no, we don't work late.
• 15:27
  Mel Kettle: Yes, schedule them to go at nine o'clock the next morning, but don't schedule 50 emails to go at nine o'clock.
• 15:32
  Nicky: Yeah, next morning, but don't schedule 50 emails to go at nine o'clock Wow, you were really productive in that one minute.
• 15:40
  Nicky: And I think the other thing is, if you need to do that and also then look at the core root of the problem, because that is also a band-aid solution for the impact on your team, which is a responsible thing to do, and look every now and then that might have to happen, but if that's the norm, if this is a day-to-day behavior, I think a key message from today's conversation is don't accept the status quo.
• 16:04
  Nicky: If this episode could be a call to arms for anything, it could be.
• 16:08
  Nicky: Ask the questions.
• 16:10
  Nicky: Don't just accept that this is the way it's being done.
• 16:13
  Nicky: What could you do to start being curious about how change could be influenced?
• 16:19
  Nicky: Even the example you shared, mel, about you know the big project you were working on, this business was bold enough, courageous enough to say we're cutting our projects in half and there's probably a short-term impact on that.
• 16:33
  Mel Kettle: But what's the long-term gain, and that's something that you need to think about, and I also think you know if you're a business owner.
• 16:38
  Mel Kettle: How often do you ask yourself why did you go into business?
• 16:42
  Nicky: It's one of my favourite questions.
• 16:44
  Mel Kettle: I've been in business for 18 years this year.
• 16:46
  Mel Kettle: I can't quite believe it's been that many years.
• 16:48
  Nicky: That's like an adult child now.
• 16:49
  Mel Kettle: That's amazing, I know, I know, I know I'm going through all of the teenage angst right now, but one of the things that I started like I started my own business for two reasons, or for three main reasons I wanted to be my own boss and I wanted to have control over the work I did and who I did it with and how I did it and when I did it.
• 17:13
  Mel Kettle: And I wanted to have 12 weeks of holidays a year, because four weeks was not even close to enough.
• 17:20
  Mel Kettle: And I wanted to work part-time.
• 17:23
  Mel Kettle: And I was working in the public sector and the head of HR of my department rejected my application for part-time work because I didn't have children and he did not understand why a woman in her 30s without children would want to work part-time work.
• 17:33
  Mel Kettle: Because I didn't have children and he did not understand why a woman in her 30s without children would want to work part-time.
• 17:35
  Mel Kettle: And so I left.
• 17:37
  Mel Kettle: I know good, wow, but as well, when I like and for the majority of what I do work, I do work part-time.
• 17:44
  Mel Kettle: I try to only work four days a week, but that isn't to say that there's weeks where I'm doing weekend work and late night work, working every minute that I'm awake because I've got a lot on.
• 17:54
  Mel Kettle: But then when I don't have as much on, I take days and you know I give myself permission to not sit down at my desk until two o'clock on a Monday afternoon.
• 18:03
  Mel Kettle: So I'd take Monday mornings off.
• 18:05
  Mel Kettle: And last year I experimented with not working at all on a Monday and that was a total disaster because I felt like I was playing catch up for the whole week.
• 18:13
  Mel Kettle: So even if I just do an hour on a Monday morning prepping for the week ahead, working out what I have to do, who I have to call, making sure I've got, you know, all of my presentations are ready to go for the week ahead, and, you know, getting that mental space and clarity, then that's fine.
• 18:29
  Mel Kettle: And then I always try and finish by lunchtime on a Friday and again, if I'm in the flow then I'll keep working through that.
• 18:37
  Mel Kettle: But I give myself permission to stop and that has been game changing for me.
• 18:42
  Mel Kettle: I don't quite have 12 weeks of holidays most years, but actually I probably do, because I don't tend to do very much work in December and January, like I finish mid-December and I don't normally start again until the last week in January.
• 18:56
  Mel Kettle: But I might do little bits and pieces and then I'm getting a lot better as I'm getting older.
• 19:01
  Mel Kettle: My stepson doesn't live with us anymore, so we don't need to think about school holidays for holidays, and so we're trying to take more holidays, with no work.
• 19:12
  Ness: And I think what I'm hearing in that is the know, is the ability to.
• 19:16
  Ness: You know you said, come back to purpose and sometimes, when it comes to running your own business, you can do that, particularly if you've got a team and if you've taught them or delegated well to them and set up structures in place.
• 19:28
  Ness: But I wonder, you know what are some of the challenges perhaps for the CEOs, for the senior leaders in bigger businesses that have teams that are the barrier to being able to create change?
• 19:41
  Ness: Because I hear what you're saying.
• 19:42
  Ness: You know let's reconnect, let's set some boundaries.
• 19:45
  Ness: You know, sometimes it can be I certainly experienced this in my first business.
• 19:51
  Ness: It can be so hard because there's nobody there with you.
• 19:53
  Ness: There's no one.
• 19:54
  Ness: You know you've got to be the leader for everyone else, and so sometimes we role model that in a way that doesn't represent what we really want.
• 20:03
  Ness: So we work late or whatever.
• 20:05
  Ness: Sometimes it's just a really hard gig because there's no one else there.
• 20:09
  Ness: You can't just like turn around and talk to someone and then you go home to talk to your partner and you go.
• 20:13
  Ness: They just don't get it.
• 20:14
  Ness: And then you know you've got to be the be-all and everything and the role model and just it's a lot.
• 20:20
  Mel Kettle: Right, it is a lot.
• 20:21
  Mel Kettle: And I certainly felt that way in quite a few of my jobs where I was, you know, the person at near the top of the food chain and they weren't my business, as I was an employee but just that sense of loneliness when I was writing my book that came out about two years ago-ish.
• 20:36
  Mel Kettle: One of the pieces of research I found was by Harvard Business Review that found that approximately half of CEOs express feelings of loneliness and 61% of CEOs believe that loneliness hinders their ability to do their job.
• 20:50
  Mel Kettle: And I certainly know, when I've been in leadership positions that's how I felt.
• 20:55
  Mel Kettle: Because who do you talk to about it If you know you don't want to talk to your boss because they can fire you if they feel that you're not up to it.
• 21:03
  Mel Kettle: You don't want to talk to your team because they look up to you and feel that you know and you don't want to show weakness or vulnerability a lot of the time, which is a whole other conversation to have about why that can be important.
• 21:15
  Mel Kettle: And you know I did my partner either I didn't have a partner at the time or when I did, he didn't get it because he hadn't done a job like that, and so he's great at listening, but he's not very good at giving advice around these things because he doesn't know what to say, and that's totally okay.
• 21:32
  Mel Kettle: So where do you go?
• 21:33
  Mel Kettle: That's why I think you know group coaching programs with people at your level are so important, and finding mentors from outside of your organization or even outside of your industry, who've experienced that, who can help guide you, is really critical.
• 21:49
  Mel Kettle: And you know there's places you can go.
• 21:52
  Mel Kettle: It's just how do you know where they are and what they are?
• 21:54
  Mel Kettle: And then how do you deal with that in the workplace is the big question, and I don't know the answer.
• 22:02
  Mel Kettle: I can only know what I did, which often didn't really work.
• 22:06
  Nicky: Yeah, it's the 1%, isn't it?
• 22:09
  Nicky: Sometimes it doesn't have to be a huge solution that is groundbreakingly, awesomely massive.
• 22:16
  Nicky: It's what's the one thing I could do, and perhaps it's looking on LinkedIn and seeing if there's somebody reaching out to them or what I'm kind of.
• 22:24
  Nicky: What's coming up for me in this conversation as well is the connection from this loneliness and you know powerful statistics there, mel the connection from that to then the hustle harder, the work.
• 22:35
  Nicky: So, if you know, they've seen CEOs and senior leaders and even business owners are feeling that loneliness that contributes to that cycle of working harder, of working longer hours.
• 22:46
  Nicky: It's that purpose, isn't it?
• 22:47
  Nicky: It's something it contributes to identity as well and feeling like I'm contributing and distracting from the real problem and then the flow on effect of that to their all the things we talked about, with being optimal energy and feeling great and impact a team.
• 23:05
  Nicky: So if we bring it back, if you're listening and you resonate to any of this that we're talking about, first of all, we see you, we're here.
• 23:13
  Nicky: Actually, you can reach out to any three of us.
• 23:16
  Nicky: We're all on LinkedIn just genuinely for that connection, and if it's not us, maybe it is.
• 23:23
  Nicky: You know what's that first little step that you can take to reach out to somebody because you're not alone.
• 23:28
  Nicky: I think that's another big message you are not alone.
• 23:32
  Nicky: We've experienced a version of what you're going through at some point, and there are so many people out there that also have.
• 23:40
  Mel Kettle: I feel like the most comforting thing for me about reading that research that was in HBR was knowing that when I was in that phase, that so many other people were as well, and so knowing that you're not alone.
• 23:52
  Mel Kettle: Last year I read or not last year, sorry, in 2020, I read a book called Together that was written by Dr Vivek Murthy and he was the Surgeon General in the United States when Barack Obama was president, and I loved that, his book.
• 24:05
  Mel Kettle: He talks about the impact of loneliness on society, and one of the things that he says is one of the best ways to overcome loneliness is to do something kind for someone else, and so if you're feeling lonely, then what's something kind that you can do for someone else?
• 24:20
  Mel Kettle: So, if you're a CEO who's really lonely in your job, is there something that you can do for your team that benefits all of you, because you won't be the only lonely person in your organization?
• 24:31
  Mel Kettle: Beyond Blue tells us that one in two Australians feel lonely every week, and so what is it that you can do together as a team to laugh, to have some joy in your life.
• 24:40
  Mel Kettle: Maybe it's a morning tea, maybe it's just a shared meme One of my clients during COVID during 2020, when we all went into lockdown had a photo a day challenge for her team where they all had to go outside and take a photo of something that had a theme for each day.
• 24:59
  Mel Kettle: And she did the theme for each day so that they couldn't just scroll back through their phone and share an old photo, because she knew her people and she knew that they were wedded to the desk and she wanted them to have at least five minutes a day in the fresh air.
• 25:11
  Nicky: Yes, I love that that is amazing.
• 25:15
  Mel Kettle: It just took off and she said not only was it good for them, but it was.
• 25:19
  Mel Kettle: She said I got the most benefit out of this because it forced me to go outside.
• 25:24
  Mel Kettle: It forced me to have this little nugget of creativity every morning to share the theme for the morning.
• 25:29
  Mel Kettle: She said I never pre-planned because I looked forward to doing that every morning.
• 25:33
  Mel Kettle: And I think that's the other thing.
• 25:35
  Mel Kettle: What are you doing in your life and what are you encouraging your team to do so that they have something to look forward to every day?
• 25:42
  Mel Kettle: And they have something every day that they do that brings them joy, and it might be something in the workplace or it might be something in their personal lives.
• 25:50
  Mel Kettle: But how do you bring more joy into work?
• 25:53
  Mel Kettle: Because when you have more joy, your people are healthier, they're happier, they're much more likely to share their vulnerabilities and their frustrations, they're much more likely to be kind to others, and that is what is going to help your team grow and thrive, so that you can be focused and get the outcomes that you want as a team and an organisation.
• 26:14
  Nicky: That's amazing.
• 26:14
  Nicky: I think that's such a powerful message.
• 26:17
  Nicky: And just before I hand back to you, ness, I also want to put a perspective out there around during those years of COVID, we were kind of forced to get creative, and so I want to sort of bring to the forefront the fact that are you still being creative with these different ways and ideas?
• 26:34
  Nicky: Because I think a lot of people aren't.
• 26:36
  Nicky: I think that we've gone back to a hybrid way of working, or even office way of working, like it's just become the norm now, and so are we being as creative around how to find joy?
• 26:46
  Nicky: I absolutely adore that nugget, and let's get creative again.
• 26:51
  Mel Kettle: I wrote an article a couple of years ago when the book came out I can't remember who I wrote it for, but it was.
• 26:56
  Mel Kettle: I'll send you the link that you can put in the show notes and it was all about how do you find joy at work when you hate your job.
• 27:01
  Mel Kettle: And I feel like we need to acknowledge that there's a lot of people who do hate their jobs and they see their work.
• 27:07
  Mel Kettle: It's not a career, it's a job.
• 27:09
  Mel Kettle: They see it as a means to an end and I absolutely know that.
• 27:12
  Mel Kettle: I've had people in my teams and that's been their view.
• 27:15
  Mel Kettle: And that is okay, because not everybody wants to have a big career, Not everybody wants to get promoted.
• 27:21
  Mel Kettle: But you need to acknowledge that you will have people for whom they come to work, they do their thing and they go home and they probably feel immense relief when they walk out of the door.
• 27:31
  Mel Kettle: And so what is it that you can be doing to make sure that those people see value and purpose in the work that they're doing?
• 27:38
  Mel Kettle: Because we know that when we see purpose in our work, when we see the value in the work that we're doing, that we do get more joy out of it.
• 27:45
  Mel Kettle: So if you're doing a job that's menial, that's repetitive, that's actually really quite boring, how can you put a bit of creativity into it?
• 27:56
  Mel Kettle: How can you make it a bit easier?
• 27:58
  Mel Kettle: I used to work in well, I worked for the Office of Fair Trading for quite a few years in government and they had a call centre where, I swear to you, I do not know how some of those people sat in that call centre day in and day out and dealt with some of the issues that they were having to deal with.
• 28:14
  Mel Kettle: Some of them would have been so incredibly frustrating.
• 28:18
  Mel Kettle: Again and again and we also know, you know, a lot of people who ring call centres are lonely and they don't want to get off the phone, so they ring up with these things that might not really be important or might not be relevant for the person that's answering the phone, but you can't hang up on them.
• 28:34
  Mel Kettle: Or people who are human don't want to hang up on them, but you can't hang up on them or people who are human don't want to hang up on them.
• 28:38
  Mel Kettle: So how do you manage that?
• 28:39
  Mel Kettle: But how do you manage a job where you feel stress or you are like what is it that you do to bring those little sparks of joy into your job, for you and for the people that you're working with, both clients, customers and colleagues?
• 28:52
  Ness: And I think you know one of the things we've mentioned about the creativity during the COVID sort of lockdown period.
• 28:58
  Ness: I wonder whether we're still being creative now, if we've sort of come back into the way that was the way of the past and like just let's get on with it.
• 29:06
  Ness: Yeah, I don't think we are.
• 29:08
  Ness: I feel like you've shared so many nuggets of gold with us that there are so many takeaways from this, but as we wrap up, we love to end on something that we can suggest to our listeners and viewers on YouTube to do within the next 24 hours.
• 29:24
  Ness: Nikki loves to call it an actionable action, and I'm going to leave it open for you to go, because we've covered quite a few topics here.
• 29:30
  Ness: We've covered boundaries at work, we've covered loneliness, especially at the CEO level, and we've covered sparking joy and finding joy in work for our teams.
• 29:39
  Ness: Leave us with a little nugget of gold that someone can actually take action on in the next 24 hours that is going to help them to really focus on peak performance for themselves and all their teams.
• 29:54
  Mel Kettle: I'm going to say the thing that I said to pretty much every single person I spoke to during COVID and since is is what are you doing today that brings you joy, and what will you do tomorrow that brings you joy?
• 30:06
  Mel Kettle: And before you go to bed tonight, have a think about something that you're going to do tomorrow that you love, that will give you a few minutes of joy, or a few hours of joy, so that you go to bed looking forward to something.
• 30:19
  Nicky: Oh, powerful, and there also was a sprinkle of other actions that people can do throughout this episode.
• 30:26
  Nicky: So we definitely have over delivered today.
• 30:29
  Nicky: Thank you so much, mel.
• 30:31
  Nicky: Thank you very much again for joining us.
• 30:33
  Nicky: For those of our listeners who would like to, or viewers hello viewers who would like to friendly stalk you.
• 30:39
  Nicky: Where might they find you?
• 30:41
  Nicky: Oh?
• 30:42
  Mel Kettle: so my website is melkettlecom, and if you just Google my name, mel Kettle, I own the first five, six, seven pages of Google.
• 30:51
  Mel Kettle: If you pop my name into LinkedIn you'll find me.
• 30:53
  Mel Kettle: Instagram, you'll find me.
• 30:55
  Mel Kettle: Twitter you'll find me.
• 30:57
  Mel Kettle: Yeah, I'm always happy to chat.
• 30:58
  Mel Kettle: If you have any questions, get in touch.
• 31:00
  Ness: Thank you so much and we'll definitely put the link into show notes around how to find joy at work when you hate your job.
• 31:06
  Nicky: I want to read that Nikki, I don't have a job Surprise.
• 31:13
  Ness: And some links in for your book and for your website.
• 31:16
  Ness: Thank you so, so much.
• 31:17
  Ness: It's been such a fabulous conversation.
• 31:19
  Ness: It's fully connected.
• 31:20
  Ness: We'll put that in For those that are watching.
• 31:23
  Ness: You would have seen the book being held up For those that are listening.
• 31:25
  Ness: We'll put the link in.
• 31:27
  Ness: So thank you so much.
• 31:28
  Ness: Thank you, listeners and viewers, and we'll catch you next week.
• 31:32
  Ness: Thanks so much for having me.
• 31:33
  Ness: Thanks for listening to today's ep.
• 31:38
  Ness: If you loved what you heard, connect with us over on LinkedIn and let's continue the conversation over there.
• 31:41
  Ness: Nikki and I are obsessed with helping businesses install smart business growth strategies and leveraging people leadership for peak performance.
• 31:51
  Ness: We bring two business minds and two perspectives into your business, and our number one goal is to make sure that your business is thriving, your team are thriving and you are thriving.
• 32:03
  Ness: We offer a 30-day business diagnostic taking you from chaos to clarity in just 30 days.
• 32:10
  Ness: Are you curious to find out more?
• 32:12
  Ness: Send us an email or go old school and give us a call.
• 32:15
  Ness: Until next, next time, happy listening and here's to thriving in business and in life.