[00:00:00] Hannah: Hello, and welcome to this episode of the awfully quiet podcast. I am still buzzing from the conversation I just had. You can imagine going into podcast interviews. Introvert me is always a little anxious. Am I going to be able to hold a conversation for 60 minutes? What will the vibe be? Why am I doing this again?

Hmm. But truthfully, with today's guest, I could have gone on and on and on. She is an absolute rock star to me. Instagram celebrity, someone I can't believe I landed on the podcast and honestly a true inspiration on all things leadership and making it in corporate. Today I have Heather Elkington on the podcast.

She is a leadership speaker, coach, and writer. Heather has an epic career story. She started her own leadership journey when she was in her early twenties, working for Harrods and has since then added killer experiences to her resume. Having built and sold a 2 million pounds business has held director level positions in corporate and has now gone on to teach millions of leaders around the world, how to become more effective.

Authentic leaders in this conversation, Heather and I delve into what makes great leaders and specifically what aspects of introversion lend themselves to great leadership. Believe me when I tell you this goes far beyond the usual innate introvert qualities, such as listening and empathy. We touch on how introversion lends itself.

To having difficult conversations in the workplace, negotiating sales, all the way to building powerful connections and a strong career network. Heather beautifully brings to life the difference between being nice and being kind and tells such powerful career stories. It is really hard to listen and not want to lean into leadership positions.

Right away. I have taken so much away from this conversation, and I know you will too. I'd love to hear from you if this leaves you feeling motivated and inspired to consider leadership for yourself too.

Now, without further ado, let's dive into the conversation. All right. Well, Heather, thank you so much for joining me today, and welcome to the Awfully Quiet Podcast.

[00:02:34] Heather: It's an honor to be here. When I saw you reach out and had a look through your content, it's really, it's something that's really needed, I think. I think there's a bit of under representation for. Introverted leader. So I'm really happy to be here.

[00:02:48] Hannah: I'm so glad you're saying that. Heather, before we dive into your career story, are you extroverted or introverted? What's your personality?

[00:02:56] Heather: So I'm going to have to ask you a question to tell me, you're gonna, how would I know?

[00:03:03] Hannah: Where do you take energy from? How do you feel after spending time socializing? Do you need a lot of time for yourself? What would, what would you say gives you energy?

[00:03:14] Heather: So I get a lot of energy when I've helped people.I do struggle. I would say I could do like two or three hours of socializing and then I leave. Like I'm always the first person to go home if I've ran with friends, if that tells you anything.

[00:03:29] Hannah: Yeah, that, that certainly does. I mean, introversion, extroversion exists on a spectrum. You're never just one or the other. And there's obviously a lot of in between. So if you say you do enjoy socializing to a certain extent, but then you're going to need your alone time and you're the first person to leave a party, maybe that skews you more towards introversion, but there's a lot of other elements to it.

But, yeah, I

[00:03:53] Heather: strange, like, I could quite happily stand on a stage in front of a thousand people and get, have a mic, and talk, and, you know, help and share education, but I would struggle to, yeah, socialize for longer than a couple of hours. So I have no idea at what point

[00:04:13] Hannah: What do you do after you are on stage?

[00:04:16] Heather: Go in a bath and sit in a dark room with a candle.

[00:04:20] Hannah: That tells me that that screams introverted to me and is part of a lot of the misconceptions around introversion is it will often tell you that you can't be on stage. You can't perform in front of audiences, which introverts absolutely can do, but it's most often how you then choose to regain your energy, replenish your energy.

And if you say you'd rather go home and have a bath than socialize and have drinks with everyone in the audience. That says something.

[00:04:49] Heather: Yeah, absolutely. Interesting. Okay. Oh, I've learnt something already.

[00:04:53] Hannah: Well, great start. I'd love to dive into your career story, and start with what you call on socials, your weird career.I always love an unconventional career story.

I love when, you know, people don't have that straight line and you seem to have a great career story in a sense that you started out in leadership. super, super early. So tell us a little bit about your weird career.

[00:05:19] Heather: Yeah. So I did, when I, when I start the weird career story, I usually start at the point where I left university and got a job as an assistant manager at Harrods. Because that really, to me, is where my career began. It's where I was kind of full time, a hundred percent dedicated to my work. But that didn't just happen by accident.

I had a lot of questions around that. Do you have family connections at Harrods? That's impossible. And so it didn't, my career didn't start there. This story doesn't really start there that I was 21 years old when I worked at Harrods. I started working when I was 15. I worked three jobs while I was at school, while I was doing my A levels, like higher education.

I gave up my lunch period at school and my free period that I was supposed to be studying. I worked with our dinner service team at school. I would serve my friends lunch food, pasta king, as they called it. to get paid to do that. I worked, my mum had a shop and I worked in my mum's shop at the weekend and then I also worked as a waitress in just one of our local restaurants.

When I went to university I, anyone who's been to university, I was just broke, like completely broke. Barely had any money to my name. So I had to get a job pretty quickly. I started off just kind of working in bars and like nothing really too special. Just hopping around different bars, nowhere that I really loved.

But then I got a job in Holland and Barra as a supervisor. A supervisor is kind of like a step from someone working on a supervisor in retail. It's like the step in between. Being an assistant on the shop floor and being in a management position. And I worked in that supervisor position for quite a while while I was at university.

I actually had a full time job and then I would just do studying like after working. And so, yeah, and I did a business management degree. That was my profession. So not that I learned anything from that or that I recommend anyone needs a business management degree, but. When I then left university and applied for, I think I got that job in Harrods about six weeks after I graduated.

When I did the application, it wasn't as though I was starting from a completely blank slate. I had supervisor experience, I had lots of like, speaking to customers in retail. I had a business management degree that I could put on my CV. I was very, very good at speaking to people. And so, by the time I'd got to that point, there had already been quite a lot of kind of working in the management profession in some way, shape or form, I just never had a management title.I joined Harrods with, had a team of it was between like six and ten people depending what day it was and what shifts we were on. Harrods is A very, very busy retail environment. There are a thousand, I think there's, I think there's 5, 000 members of staff in one shop, which is, yeah, it's, it's huge and it's insane and it will teach you a lot about the person you are when you're running around for 10 hours, with no rest.

So. Assistant manager in Harrods. I then moved into, I just couldn't handle the shift patterns. It was giving up every weekend. It was evenings. It was, I remember I almost had to miss Christmas at home because I had to work until late on Christmas Eve and I couldn't get back up to the north where my family are.

I was working down in London and it was just too much. I couldn't, it wasn't sustainable for me. So I quit. And moved into a PA role. Essentially, it was like an executive assistant role for a SAS business founder. Now, anyone who is looking to get any kind of experience in leadership or just maybe they're quite junior coming from school, coming from university and just really want to throw theirself into the world of work.

I cannot recommend getting a PA or an EA or a job that sits next to A CEO more. You will get thrown in at the deep end. You'll get to see all the incredible things that the business owner, that the CEOs do on a day-to-day basis. You get to see inside their inbox. You get to see how they speak to clients.

I was only there for about a year. But, learned so much. So, so much. So that is, that is the advice I'd hand over to anyone. If you are wondering where to start with your career. Find an EA or a PA role and quite often people don't go for those roles because they have some sort of like strange branding.

They don't think they're very valuable roles when actually they really are.

[00:09:55] Hannah: Yeah, I love that you're saying that because it wouldn't be, you know, nobody would likely strive for a position like that coming out of university or even like in their early career stages. But as you say, there is so much to learn in these positions. What is what I wanted to take away is that you had from this role that you would say almost set you up for leadership in your career.

[00:10:22] Heather: Ooh, I would say learning that everyone is winging it all the time, CEOs,

[00:10:29] Hannah: Nobody knows what they're doing. Yeah.

[00:10:31] Heather: the founders, the business leaders, they all have insecurities, deep fears. They have anxiety. A lot of them are introverted. They,

[00:10:40] Hannah: love that.

[00:10:42] Heather: yeah, people think we see. Our seniors or people who are in these higher positions in business as really unreachable, and they know what they're doing.

They've got lots of experience. They know exactly how to talk exactly how to manage people, etc. And when you sit close to those people. You realize that actually they're also just trying to do their best and nobody has got it all figured out. And I think in that role in particular, I definitely learned that those people aren't unreachable.

And when, when I then moved through into Sage, which is the core, the big corporate company, my first experience of working in a company that size, my first experience, definitely within corporate. We had a CEO who was obviously a CEO of a FTSE 100 company, like a lot of people see that person as completely unreachable.

They see them as like some being that you can't speak to or you can't ask for help from or, you know, all you can do is kind of say their name and hear the name and occasionally they might walk past you if they're visiting your office and you'll be like, Oh my God, did you see the CEO today?

[00:11:52] Hannah: Yeah.

[00:11:54] Heather: But from working really closely with founders and CEOs, I knew that that person was just another human being trying to do their best.

And so it really gave me a lot of confidence when our CEO was around. Even the fact now we have like Teams and Slack to just message them and say like, I want to say, I saw you on this campaign the other day, I thought you did a really great job. It's really interesting to me because I'm. Working on X and this topic of conversation is really important to me.

So I just want to say thank you for bringing it to the forefront of what our company is talking about. And I just did that sometimes. Sometimes he wouldn't reply, but sometimes he would. And it was a really. That was it, it's just finding, closing that gap between, you think your seniors are kind of these untouchable, experienced people who, for some reason in our head, they have a higher value than us, and they're further ahead in life and, Actually, they have a lot to learn from you as well.

And so to not fear them and just reach out when, when, when we need help.

[00:13:03] Hannah: Yeah. And that feels like a bold move to somebody who's introverted, like to, to come up and speak to senior leadership or even, well, even just writing them a team's message or a zoom message, whatever it is. But I think there's something really valuable in what you're sharing is that you build. Some kind of common ground, like you had a topic that you reached out about.

It was not just to advance your career or to like, you know, kind of self promote yourself. It was because you saw them somewhere and you just left them a message and said, look, this really resonated with me. I wanted to just leave this with you. I think that's very genuine way. Of reaching out and connecting of that, how

[00:13:47] Heather: then I was moving up, I was making the move up to Manchester with my partner at the time. So I worked in London, we're moving back up North and, I was having, I think it was my 25th birthday party and my uncle was there. My uncle said to me, Oh, you're moving back up to Manchester. I'm starting a company.

This, his company was tiny. It was like a small startup. I think he had one member of staff at the time. And he was like, I was like, this feels like an interview. Is this an interview? He was like, yeah, it is now. So I joined that startup as the second member of staff. It was him. He was one of the founders and they had another founder.

and for the first kind of year or two, it was very scrappy, like very scrappy startup world. We were all expected to do all roles, kind of the fun part. Startups are really fun like that. Everyone expected to do every single role. And we didn't really have that much structure in place. It was just, let's figure this out and make it work.

But we built a really special community around the pro around our product, a really special community within the accounting industry. And then over the course of. The next kind of four or five years, we took that business from zero through to two and a half, almost million in ARR. We sold it to Sage, which are a FTSE 100 seat, FTSE 100 company.

I went from being just in like an executive in the support team, right through to the operations director, where I would be overseeing the operations. Multiple teams. In the end it was five different teams within marketing, the development of the product, success. and yeah, then we, we sold the business to Sage.

That was one of the harshest and scariest processes of my entire life because M& A. Mergers and acquisitions are terrifying because you're kind of losing a piece of your baby and the thing that you've been building for so long, but also it's like tens of millions of pounds of a deal and I'm stood there presenting in front of all these executives at a corporate company, which I've never been part of a corporate before at this point and I'm presenting to them.

They're asking me really difficult questions. They're asking me about future proof in the company and the development of the product and the whole time just winging it. Just winging it and using all the experience that I had to do the best job possible. We sold the company, moved into corporate, all the team, myself and all the team.

And then I was there for two years working with different, multiple teams in corporate in different departments and all the fun stuff that you get in corporate.

[00:16:22] Hannah: did you, let me pause here because I'm super, super interested in how did you manage that transition from being in almost like a startup environment where you wear all the hats and where it's all about growing up to a certain level. To being in a corporate environment where there's lots more structure, a lot steeper hierarchies, I would imagine.

And all of a sudden teams to manage people to manage, processes to manage. I would imagine those had extremely different types of muscles that you need in those, in those two different roles. How did you manage that transition?

[00:16:57] Heather: yeah. So they do need two different types of muscles, but the kind of, the startup world, I think the corporate world can learn a lot from the stock world and this. is where a lot of my teachings come from is that actually when we moved into corporate, we were given quite a lot of freedom over how we wanted to manage the teams, the products, the marketing, we were given a lot of freedom.

And it was kind of like having a round peg in a square hole in that we were, the way that we were operating, our team was still very startup y. But what was great is that, The company gave us lots of freedom and it was amazing to see how you could, how you could merge those two types of cultures together.

So for example, when I would push back on meetings, on toxic meetings, for example, like every single company has them, I would push back and start to say no and say like, this isn't a good use of my time, people in corporate, even though that was quite unknown, people would be really grateful for it and be like, Yeah, actually do need to have it this long.

And, or when people would use really long acronyms, for example, like the BD, yo, whatever, something. And I'd just be sitting there and like, I've got no idea what that means. Sorry. Can you tell me what it means? And people would just laugh and be like, yeah, we don't really know what it means either. And I don't know why we use the acronyms.

And I think there is a lot of people in corporate appreciate startup culture. And I think if we can. Take a lot of the learnings from startup and from the scrappy early stage, kind of bootstrapped, we've got to figure it out. We can't just throw money at a problem. We have to find a creative solution. Then yeah, I think corporates would really appreciate that and do really well. And that's kind of where I am with my leadership training is I get messages all the time, like, but this won't work for corporate or, but this is too corporate, it won't work for small business. And I'm like, actually both.

There's a right way to manage people in any organizational structure. It doesn't matter if there's 20, 000 employees or 20 employees, your team still needs to be there. Respecting and looking after exactly the same way. and so, yeah, I'm trying to just not create a divide between small companies and large corporates because we all need the same type of training and the same sort of outlook on the way that we run our teams.

[00:19:28] Hannah: I really like that perspective. And when you talk about respect, did you ever struggle with Getting respect when you were, you know, you were in leadership positions really early on. And then when you transitioned from the startup environment to corporate, did you ever face challenges with being respected or did you feel like that came naturally in a certain, to a certain extent?

[00:19:53] Heather: Respect exists within you. So the answer is yes, I did have challenges with feeling respected, but looking back, that didn't really matter. The reason I probably wasn't being respected is because I didn't respect myself. I didn't, I felt all of this imposter syndrome. I didn't turn up to work thinking, I'm a great leader.

I can help these people to become amazing. I can give them opportunities. I can help to grow and develop them. I would go into work thinking, Shit, I hope no one catches me out today. Oh my god, I hope I don't have to have a difficult conversation. Oh, but I'm not good enough for this position. I've not had any training, so I don't know why I could be here.

And when that's your internal monologue Of course, you're not going to feel respected because you're going to be so pigeonholed. Your vision is going to be constantly thinking that person said a negative thing to me because they don't respect me. This person hasn't hit a deadline because they don't respect me.

Instead of, actually, I am a great leader. My inexperience is my superpower. I'm here to learn and grow and help other people. And instead of constantly worrying about saying the right thing, How do I worry instead about how can I? Help this person to come on this journey with me. How can I be more vulnerable?

How can I be more authentic? How can I figure out what their goals are? And we can go on the journey together. So I definitely did feel as though people didn't respect me in the early days of my leadership career, but in hindsight, that was nothing on them. It was all on me. I didn't respect myself. I didn't have any confidence in my leadership.

And so why would you think other people respect you?

[00:21:33] Hannah: Yeah. And what you're saying is it's a lot about self talk. It's a lot about what you say to yourself, the mindset that you bring to the table. And I would imagine. Every leader starts out that same way, right? You will always have your first leadership position. You will always feel imposter syndrome to a certain extent, but coming at it from a position of, you know, this is how I'm supposed to feel.

And I can't feel any other way. I can't possibly have the confidence already. I must be winging it for a little, you know, certain amount of time. And then it just kind of solves itself. And you mentioned a couple of things there along the way. Along the lines of, you need to show, you know, vulnerability, being authentic.

inexperience is my superpower. I love all of these things. And they're often not mentioned when it comes to leadership skills or leadership capabilities. No one will ever tell you, Oh, you need to be vulnerable or you need to be authentic. But I love these. Are there, are there more of these that you would say, Thank you.

really stand out about leaders in, in their early careers. And what are some of the, like some of the things that you should be guided by?

[00:22:48] Heather: Yeah, so I'll start with the authenticity because it's important that that's quite a big shiny word that people throw around all the time. But the real important question is what does that actually look like day to day, like how do I be authentic. And so what you have to realize is people entering the workforce now, and people who have been in the workforce for the last 10 to 15 years have grown up in a world Dictated by social media filters, fake news being lied to by politicians and news channels and everything else.

And we are so on our guard about people being fake and we assume senior leaders, we assume people in positions of power exist up there with the fakeness

[00:23:43] Hannah: Hmm.

[00:23:43] Heather: And so people are craving authenticity now more than ever before, and actually. You are more valuable and more respected as a leader if you can be authentic at work and what that looks like, and I kind of put authenticity and transparency into a very similar part.

What that looks like is transparency around what's happening within the business. So don't treat our employees and our team like. Juniors. We don't want to treat them as though they are, they can't see numbers. They can't see behind the scenes. We don't want to inform them about decisions that are being made.

Essentially just treat them like children. That's what we don't want to do.

[00:24:25] Hannah: Yeah.

[00:24:25] Heather: And instead, just someone told me this many, many years ago, which was every human being is amazing. Every single person that comes into your company could be the person who rockets the growth, who becomes the next CEO. Every single person, it's what you do to them that will decide which direction they go in as to whether they're engaged and driving towards targets and happy and making bold decisions, or whether they just switch off and don't love it.

You have, you can tell them which path to go on by your actions. And the way we can be more transparent is. Showing people what's going on behind the scenes. Like we used to do something called a stakeholder report where every month we would show our team to P& L the, how many like new clients we'd brought in, how many clients we'd lost.

And it would really just help them to see what was happening. In, up in the senior, like this mythical world they thought just didn't exist. They had to just get up and do their job. But by showing them those numbers, it just brought them closer. It showed them that we trust them. We love and respect them.

And so transparency is a big one there. Being authentic, I would say. If you go to work and you feel as though you have to be professional, so that could look like I'm gonna do professional with the, inverted comments. You feel as though you have to dress a certain way, you have to straighten you back.

You have to, I don't know, you have to like look busy all the time. You have to put on a telephone voice. They are all signs that you are inauthentic at work. Those are the things that. Your team will smell from a mile off just because you think you've given off. The vibe that you love wearing suits and you love having a posh voice and, you know, you love having a straight back.

Again, we've grown up in this world of filters and fake social media. People aren't stupid. We know that no one loves to do those things. So I would just really, like, have a bit of a life. audit and just have a moment to talk to yourself about how you show up at work. It might be that you love wearing suits and that's okay, but if you're uncomfortable all day and you have to sit in funny positions and you put on a telephone voice so like you don't say certain words or you try to pronounce words differently to how you would normally, how can you just change that and pull it back?

Because our teams will do as we do. So if you turn up to work stiff backed in a suit, indifferently, your team will feel as though they aren't safe to be themselves either. They will feel as though, okay, this is the standard that I have to live up to. The standard of fakeness and professionalism. So I'm, you know, I don't want to get fired.

I'm going to have to turn up to work looking like this too. So yeah, I would just, authenticity is a real sign of a true leader. If you can turn up. And kind of adopt all the things you might normally see as flaws. Like for me, I think in the early days, for me, that was my accent because I'm from the North of England.

I've got very much a Northern working class, a strong accent. And when I was like working at Harrods and working in a startup in London, I became aware of it. I wasn't even aware I had an accent until that point. And then I became aware of it. And I don't know. I don't know how much you're aware of like the dialogue.

Sort of stereotypes in the UK, but if you are from the South, it's kind of associated with like Wealth and honor and like high up positions. And if you're from the North, it's very much, there are some good stereotypes around it being friendly and

[00:28:22] Hannah: Hmm.

[00:28:23] Heather: authentic, but it also kind of lends itself to being a bit more stupid and like not educated, essentially, they are the stereotypes.

So like, for example, you would hire, it's quite common for you to hire people from the North for call centers because they think the voice is like, More down to earth and more friendly, which is great, but also when you're trying to be in this position of authority and everyone around you has a Southern accent and you're very clearly the odd one out, I just became really insecure about it. But it took me a few years of undoing to realize it's me. Like it's, it's, it's okay. I don't, you have to be okay that, and this is where the, one of your, your biggest insecurities can actually be a superpower. Now, sometimes people will even refer to me as like, Oh, that Northern girl, the Northern girl.

and it's, it makes me stand out. Like,

[00:29:20] Hannah: it means, it's not negatively connotated, it's, it helps you stand out in a way.

[00:29:26] Heather: exactly.

[00:29:27] Hannah: northern girl.

[00:29:28] Heather: Yeah, that North, the Northern girl. Exactly. And so it took me a while to really accept that. And when I did, I realized I had a whole different vocabulary that I was like holding back, but then you just, yeah, you just kind of sit with it and think, no, this is who I am and I'm proud of it.

And some people might label me with a certain brush when they first meet me, but. Yeah. And they're not the type of people that I want to be working with.

[00:29:55] Hannah: I love that. And that's exactly what I'm looking to do with the awfully quiet ones. And I would imagine that a lot of introverted personalities do exactly that. you refer to some of the, you know, you have tos. And I would imagine that a lot of introverts, I know myself included, will often try or will often think that we have to.

Be and act a certain way at work in order to come across as professional and that will often include extroverted traits, being outgoing, speaking up in meetings, being a little louder, putting ourselves in front of audiences and, you know, doing a lot of things that we think we have to. in order to be seen, in order to be visible, in order to be seen as leadership material to a certain extent.

Now, is there anything in there that is a red flag to you in terms of leadership material? What would you say is a real leader and can introverts be great leaders too?

[00:30:58] Heather: Yeah. So I had a very introverted manager on my team. He was, I would say if, if introversion is a scale, I would say he would be really, really far to the introverted side. And he was very quiet. He didn't. Even with like, even kind of struggled to speak up in meetings whatsoever. And it took a long time for me to be like comfortable with it because I was constantly, I was like, am I doing something wrong?

So you don't want to speak up because I'm like creating the wrong environment for him, but introverted leaders are a real. special type of human, because we have, when you are sat in a boardroom with 20 people and everyone is shouting across the room and trying to get their opinion across, things don't get done.

And there is a real, like, It's something I'm realizing recently is you don't always have to have an opinion. And I think people assume that when we get given a level of authority at work by a, like a management title, whatever that looks like, we assume that we have to have an opinion on everything. So when we're sat in a meeting at the end of the month to review KPIs, The traditional leadership sort of stance is like, you tell us what to do, leader, you lead us in, you lead us, tell us where to go next month, you tell us where we need to go, what direction we need to go in, when actually it's a much more effective leadership style to just ask questions.

If there's a quiet space in the meeting, point it to someone else and give someone else the spotlight. And there is definitely a real space for introverted leaders to rise at the minute because, I don't know, the world's just got too many, the world's got a lot of loud leaders, a lot of people speaking loudly across a boardroom table.

I would, I would also say, yeah, so I'll go back to the point about, It's, we don't always have to have an opinion. So I would be sat in rooms and this is in no particular job. This happened in all areas of like the working world, where you'd be sat in a room with lots of managers and everyone will be shouting and everyone kind of fought for their opinion to be heard because you think that's going to get you a promotion.

Like if I'm the loudest person in the room or everyone knows my name, if my opinion, if my opinion gets chosen, then like it makes me special and it makes me a good manager. But actually, I think the world is really waking up to those people who are happy to take a backseat whilst everyone else is shouting around the table, but maybe at the end just say, like, I'm happy to go with, or my preference is to go in this direction, or even just to send an email afterwards to whoever's hosting the meeting.

I didn't manage to get a chance to speak, but. This is my preference, and it doesn't make you any less of a leader. It definitely wouldn't. As someone who was in a position where I managed managers and was in rooms with lots of leaders, that person would really stand out to me as someone who was very kind of well held and very emotionally intelligent to be able to just take a back seat in a room, listen to everyone else.

And then find a space, a quiet space for their opinion later.

[00:34:28] Hannah: Yeah, I really like that. And I often find that introverted leaders and not speaking up, it creates almost like this little bit of power. It's like, you want to know their opinion. All of a sudden, you're really interested in what this person has to say. So, I like that there is. Opportunity in remaining calm or remaining quiet in situations where everybody speaks up and where everybody's loud.

And you also reference that now is a good time for introverts to rise because apparently where, you know, businesses are facing dynamics. in the world where a lot of the same old, same old doesn't seem to be working anymore. And so there is an opportunity for more introverts in leadership positions. What I often perceive is that when it comes to going for leadership positions, introverts tend to lean back just because they think they, you know, again, have to be a certain way, or they need certain skills that they don't have.

What would you recommend anyone who is? potentially considering a leadership position, but it's not quite sure whether or not it's for them. What are some of the considerations you would urge people to have or to make before attempting to go for a leadership position or even figuring out whether it's something for them?

[00:35:53] Heather: Yeah. So leadership is hard. And this is the advice that I would give firstly to anyone, no matter whether they were introverted or extroverted. The questions I would start asking myself is if you're considering whether to go into a leadership position or not, you don't have to have all the answers right now.

You don't have to be the most courageous person. You don't have to be ready and willing to have difficult conversations. But what you do have to be is someone who is willing to feel fear, but move forward anyway. And so there may be situations in your life where, I don't know, I always think sports people are really, really good examples of this.

Where like, I don't know, if you're running and it gets really hard, what do you do in that moment? Because it's not easy for anyone, but you will either give up or you will say, yes, it's hard, but we continue. Thanks. And if you are someone who can do that, that will set you in great stead to be a leader because a lot, about 80 percent of problems in leadership and management can be solved by having more honest and difficult conversations.

The reason people don't is because they want to avoid conflict. And having those difficult conversations doesn't look like a shouting match, people being really loud, people being really confrontational. Quite often it's just a case of bringing someone into a room and sitting them down and saying, I've noticed this thing and I just want to open up a conversation about it because it's starting to concern me or it's starting to impact performance. If you've, if that terrifies you, the thought of doing it, that's okay, but it's what do you do next? Would you ignore it or would you go, okay, this is quite scary, but I'm going to do it anyway. And that is really to me, whatever in your, whatever is in your head at that point, whether when you're running or you're about to make a scary decision in your life.

Or when you're about to have a difficult conversation with a friend or a family member. Do you get excited about the thought of thinking, Okay, this is really scary, but let's go anyway. Or, Would you go, no, I prefer actually comfort and staying where I am, because that will give you the answer as to whether you can be in a leadership position.

And it doesn't matter how introverted or extroverted you are.

[00:38:20] Hannah: I want to stay a little bit with the, with the difficult conversations because my gut feel like my initial reaction is, oh, difficult conversation. Like avoid, I'm a huge conflict avoider. I know that about myself. I love harmony like nothing else, but I, at the same time, I can't live in conflict. So I will always address it.

I will always find a way to move through it. What I'm thinking and what you're describing in this situation where you have to have a difficult conversation is that introverts or introversion actually lends itself to some beautiful qualities that could be really helpful in these situations in terms of like bringing the calm or like bringing or putting people at ease, being able to truly listen to somebody else.

speaking less and listening more. And those could be great qualities to actually be great at, at having difficult conversations. What would you say is really, really important in having difficult conversations? What are some of the tips that you have or some of the things that you would do, maybe even conversation starters to get the difficult conversation going?

[00:39:34] Heather: It's really funny, actually, because a lot of time, a lot of the time when I'm training people about how to have a difficult conversation. One of the things I train them in is being quiet, is shutting up, because quite often as leaders, we will say the, so let's say for example, someone's performance isn't where it needs to be, or they haven't hit a deadline and we just want to pull them up on it.

It's not a massive deal, but we just don't want it to continue. So we have the conversation. and we pull someone into a room and quite often what happens is, And this will lend itself to extroversion, I think, is, we'll pull someone into the room, we'll go, I've observed this has been happening over the past couple of weeks.

I'm not really comfortable with it and I want to get your performance back where it needs to be. And then, what should happen, is you be quiet. Because at that point, you need to hand the accountability of the situation back over to the team member. You need them to explain to you what's been going on, if they need extra support.

You need them to feel really accountable to explaining what they need and ha why this problem's occurred. But what usually happens, Is the leader will sit there, they'll explain what the problem is, and then they'll go, but I do understand it's been quite busy recently, and I don't want you to feel bad about it, and like, it's okay if it's just this, and I know the deadline was quite harsh, and is it because, and then we'll just continue and continue and continue, and we get, and it's because none of us like conflict, and so when we bring conflict up, we then try and like dampen it as much as possible, and go, but it's okay, and we don't have to argue, and everything's fine, but actually, That causes a lot of damage because you're putting words in someone else's mouth and it's, it's there.

They have a problem. You want to bring it up with them and now you need to listen. You need to listen, hear properly, understand, and then take action together based on what they've said. And so it's funny because I'm essentially, when I train people how to have those conversations, I'm trying to train them to be more like an introvert and to just, you know, say less and listen more.

[00:41:42] Hannah: I love that. So almost like create a safe space, create a safe environment where people are likely to open up. And then just start by asking a question, you know, what's been going on with you? What's been happening? How are you feeling this? I'm noticing this and this. Tell me more about that.

[00:42:02] Heather: it's like, it happens a lot with the salary review process. When, when I just kind of explained to people how to get a salary review, how to get paid more, when people go into those conversations, They will quite often say, I want to talk to you about my pay, I don't think I'm being paid enough, maybe they'll say a number, and then they'll go, but I do understand we've had budget cuts recently, and I know you said you promised, and like, we've been talking about it for a few months, and I know you might not be able to do it right now, but I was just wondering if there's any chance you can do it in the next few months, and maybe this is me saying too much, and they just go and go and go and go.

And it's the same with any sales conversation. We're always either selling or being sold to, and every conversation ultimately is sales. And there is so much power in being quiet. There's so much power in people, people call something an awkward conversation. Like if someone says to me, Oh, it's a little bit of an awkward conversation.

I'm like, well, I didn't feel awkward. It's just silence. To me, it's just quiet. It's peace. I'll just sit and hold that silence. I'm quite happy with it. So there is probably a lot of power there in introversion, because we definitely need more listeners and hearers and understanders than we do speakers and talkers and ex talkers.

[00:43:19] Hannah: I got a lot more than I thought I would. we started out with difficult conversations and all of a sudden introverts are great at it. Now we're talking negotiation and sales. I've never heard that before. And, yeah, but what you say makes so much sense in terms of like, we don't need to fill every void with, by saying something.

We don't need to ask all the questions often, just starting the conversation and then being quiet.I also, what I also wanted to touch on is the sentiment of like being nice versus being kind. And I heard you talk about this before, and I think that's something that I certainly often struggle with in corporate, because I think.

I'm too often trying to be nice and, because I, because I think a few people know the difference between being nice and being kind. So, please talk to us about what's the difference and why do we need to be more, you know, rather kind than just being nice and pleasing everyone around us.

[00:44:24] Heather: Yeah. So let me tell you a story. I, when we were going through the sale process of selling GoProposal into Sage, we had just Presented the final presentation. Again, this, this deal was tens of millions of pounds. It was all hinged on the decision of Sage, whether they were going ahead with it or not. And we just finished this final presentation.

It was hours long. We were at their massive headquarters in Newcastle. We had, and then we had like a fancy dinner booked afterwards. And I'd done this presentation, then gone to dinner with all these senior, senior leaders in a huge 2 billion pound corporate. And when the dinner finished, I stepped outside and James said to me, he's the founder, he was with me when we were selling it.

He said to me, I just need to give you some feedback. You talk, you talk way too fast. I can't, I can't understand anything you're saying. And I have just delivered one of the most important presentations of my entire life, sat through dinner with some of, I'm not going to say important people because I don't think anyone's more important than anyone else, but people who potentially make a huge difference on my life, depending on the things I was saying, sat in this room.

And he gave me that feedback and I was so annoyed. I was like, how dare you tell me you made me, made me feel rubbish. I didn't say these things, by the way. These was all going through my head when I was sat in the hotel room afterwards. It's like, how dare he say that? I feel like crap now. It's all gone so well.

And now I just feel like I've ruined everything. So my head's racing 500 miles an hour. The next morning I wake up and realize it was one of the biggest gifts I'd ever been given was for someone to give me that difficult feedback. Because we did the deal, it went through so the, my fast speaking didn't impact it that much, but actually I went on over the next couple of years to start to kind of sit in the fact that maybe I wasn't the best speaker.

I went through some public speaking training, listened to podcasts, read books, all about when you talk too fast. It stems from this idea that what you're saying isn't worth listening to. And so you try and rush through it because you don't want to bore people. That's where it stems from in people. And we try and speak, we try and get through what we're trying to say really, really, really quickly, because we believe it's not really worth hearing.

That's why when you hear some of the best public speakers in the world on stage, They are, they're so calm, their voice is so slow and it comes across so confident and powerful because they have had training to kind of undo that inner monologue that says what they're saying isn't worth listening to.

And that difficult feedback that James gave me was one of the biggest gifts I ever got because I went on to, Be a public speaker, build courses, eventually write a book, use my voice to educate millions of people across the globe that if I hadn't had that feedback, I could have potentially never got there.

I could have been held back because I didn't have confidence in my voice because, I don't know, it just might not have been well received because I was speaking way too fast. I still speak fast, but it's nowhere near as fast as I used to speak. And, yeah, I just, when we deliver feedback. You have to focus on the growth of the person sitting in front of you.

And this is the difference between nice versus kind is, if you Google the word nice, The words that will come up from the Oxford Dictionary as synonyms are like pleasant, agreeable, satisfactory. It's words that are very much about seeking approval in the moment. So you would say the thing that the person on the receiving end would receive really well in the moment.

Which? When he gave me that feedback about me talking fast was not nice. It was not a nice thing to say. It hurt me. But being kind, on the other hand, when you Google the word kind, comes up with words like generous, caring, and it is ultimately about knowing that what you're saying in the moment might hurt that person.

It might cut deep. It might not be the nicest thing in the world for them to hear. But you're telling them because you can see the growth potential if they just become aware of this thing. And it's really important for leaders to stop being nice and start being kind because it's, it's just a longer play.

It's like saying, I know what I'm about to say might hurt your feelings right now, but I can see a world in which you can grow from this and do, go on to do amazing things because you've had this feedback. So I need to give it to you and I'm going to put it aside. Any feelings of uncomfort that I have right now?

Yeah.

[00:49:27] Hannah: in a sense, it also puts the other person above your own feelings, because if you are being nice and you seek approval, it's all about you, right? It's like fueling your ego of like, Oh, I want people to like me. I want people to think that I'm a great leader. I want to give them positive feedback. I want them to feel comfortable and good and engaged, but it essentially doesn't help them if you're holding back.

Feedback that would potentially help them grow, that would potentially help them develop. So, being kind, being generous, being caring, as you say, it's almost like putting yourself second or just kind of putting the other person, the person on your team first and making sure that they receive what they need to hear from you.

So, it's almost like coming back to something that you said earlier about. You know, not treating somebody as a child, treating somebody as an adult. And in that way, you're as a leader, you show up as an adult. And as somebody who was like eye to eye level, here's something that I really want to leave with you because I think it can help you. I really like that. Now, Heather, I appreciate that. I, you know, had to cut you off in your career story here and there, because I really wanted to stay in some of those moments. But you ended up leaving corporate, didn't you? and likely not from a perspective of all, you know, what corporate is not for me.

I hate corporate. I, you know, want to leave. What was your motivation to leave corporate? Thank

[00:50:58] Heather: So I I started to get asked questions in corporate about how I was doing so well with leadership. I was getting huge scores. So in court, in most corporate companies, they have like anonymous surveys that they send around to the team where you score managers, you score culture, you score how you feel about your work and they're all anonymous.

And in those. Feedback surveys, I was scoring really, really high globally for leadership and engagement of the team and how happy the team fell and our targets. And so I started getting asked questions from the learning and development section of the corporate company. Like, how are you doing this? Can you run some workshops?

I started to run workshops for like aspiring leaders, for people within my senior leadership team on like goal setting, OKRs, lots of different things. And the feedback was always really well received. And it was always along the lines of like, these are things we never get taught. I feel like these are things that we all kind of know, and a lot of experienced leaders might learn them over 20, 30 years of leadership experience.

But these aren't things you ever see in leadership training. And it was things like how to have difficult conversations, how to manage difficult employees, the mindset tools that you need, which is one of those mindset tools is be kind, not nice. Having the courage to be disliked in, in favor of the longer goal instead of just winning the short term approval. How to actually hold your team accountable, which a lot of that comes in silence. Like there's so many ways we can hold our team accountable and get them feeling accountable to like hitting targets, how we can re engage them if they feel a little bit lost, so much stuff. And people were like, this is so unique.

We've never been taught this before. We've never learned this before. and yeah, so I just decided it was July last year. I decided it was time for me to take the leap. I wanted to go travel in any way and see a bit of the world with my partner. So I was like, at the time when I left corporate, I kind of thought I might go back.

And I was like, I'm just going to test out the business self employed thing. And then you get a bit obsessed and start to get excited. And I started to see that actually I gave a lot of my time away for free to, to research and speak to people in varying degrees of like sizes of companies in different roles.

Yeah. And understood the landscape of leadership across the globe, which is just so few managers are ever given training. And even if they are, even within their own organization can feel really lost, like scared of saying the wrong thing. Unsure how to be authentic. Unsure how to, if their team are completely disengaged and they've been tasked with taking the team on and re engaging them, just having no idea how to do it.

So I launched a blog, which is called In The Making, the concept being we are never the finished article. I was having people who were coming to me after 50 years in a leadership position, who still felt as though, especially because the working world has changed a lot, felt as though they had no idea what they were doing.

So In The Making is my blog subscription that, It's just full of frameworks and like community. Lots of people commenting and talking to each other about how they can be better leaders every day. I also just built out a course, which is like a six week transformational course for leaders, for new managers to go through, which will take them from feeling like a teammate to feeling like a highly respected leader in the space of six weeks.

So that's launching in a couple of weeks time. And we'll be available to purchase everywhere. and yeah, I just haven't looked back since it's been a wild ride. I've been in lots of very big, like institutions, big corporates, delivering workshops, and I've had the opportunity to speak, I've got a TEDx talk coming up in July about how to properly manage Gen Z.

So yeah, that's where I am right now. And I'm just excited for what the future holds. Yeah.

[00:55:09] Hannah: also on your public speaking journey of like being told you're speaking too fast all the way up to your TEDx talk. And obviously you do amazing on podcasts whenever I receive you in video. So,such an exciting journey. What do you say that? Because so many seasoned leaders reach out to you for advice, did some of it come innately?

Do you feel like some of it was common sense to you and it just felt like second nature? Or would you say that a lot of great leadership is also what needs to be learned through courses and training and can be acquired? What's the share of like something that comes to you innately, natural behavior or, you know, all the way to skills that you can acquire.

[00:55:55] Heather: I'd say it's a mix of both. So I. I have been in, let's say, formal leadership positions for like seven to eight years, and I made a lot of mistakes. Like, so many wrong things done, said, situations dealt with in bad ways, team members dealt with in bad Like, I've made all the mistakes in the book, and When I, this was probably like in the middle of my journey, working for the StartUpGo proposal, I just started to ask for help.

I didn't necessarily go through any formal courses, but I would ask people who were just a few steps ahead of me, how are you doing that thing? And eventually I started to find community amongst like managers and leaders in other startups. Where we would just go to one another to ask, like, how are you dealing with this situation?

How are you, how do you approach this kind of conversation? so, a lot of it felt like Like I had it within me because I'd never been formally trained, but actually in hindsight, a lot of the skills that I acquired and a lot of the confidence that I acquired came from asking for help and partnering with people and asking people for advice.

And the one thing that is inside me that is definitely nature. And so this has never been learned and it's been inside me since school is that I am not I'm not afraid to be seen trying at all. Like, I'm not afraid to be the worst person at something. I'm doing a half marathon in three weeks time with a, with a group of eight friends.

I'll be at least half an hour behind all of them, but I don't care. Like I was the person at school who I would dress weird. Like I've got so many awful pictures I could show you. I just used to wear the weirdest things. I turned up to prom, to my prom, I wore like a black dress that I just wrapped a load of black belts around because I used to like, What was the band called?

My Chemical Romance, and I just wanted to look like the lead singer. I'm just, and I had these chunky black wedge heels on that were like a brick. I wanted my feet to be bricks. Honestly, I was, I was a

[00:58:10] Hannah: You were ahead of their time then. I think some of

[00:58:13] Heather: Yeah, we'll say that. That's the kind we'd say. But I just, I've never been afraid to be seen trying or to be the odd one out.

And in fact, Actually the, the opposite is true in that I've always been afraid of fitting in, like I've always been afraid of being someone who just follows the crowd and does the normal route and, and fits in and I've just never, ever, ever had shame or embarrassment with being seen to try. And if I could kind of pass over one massive piece of advice to anyone listening to this, it would be just ask everyone for help. It, there is so much, we trust people so much more when they, we trust the person so much more who tells us they don't know than the person who pretends to have all the answers. And so if you are in a leadership position, and you think that because you're in this formal position, you have to know all the answers, you have to, Have the answers to everything.

You don't want to kind of let people know that you don't know stuff. Just really try and let that go because there is so much power in accepting that you don't have to be perfect. All we're looking for is growth. And when you start to ask people around you for advice, even people in your team, they don't have to be people senior to you.

There'll be people in your team. In fact, everyone in your team should be better than you at something. Ask them for help with it, ask them for advice with it, ask your managers for advice, ask your family, if people in your family are doing great things, friends, lean on any sort of network that you've got.

And that's actually how you build a network, by the way, is asking people for help. That's how I built a network, asking people for help, what they can, if just asking people for advice, people love to be asked for advice. and eventually, eventually you just, you can be the one helping others and you get to learn lots along the way.

[01:00:03] Hannah: Heather, now I want to do a whole other episode on how to build a network asking for advice. I feel like that's the most introvert friendly. and I think that's the only way you can go about building a network, because all too often, we're afraid to like, take up space, take up people's time. But as you say, asking somebody for advice, is, they'll appreciate it.

People love to be asked for advice. So, I'm not going to open that kind of kind of worms now, but I'm so appreciate you saying that and I feel like where we can. And, and, something else that you said that was beautiful was don't be afraid to be the odd one out. Don't be afraid to be awkward. you're not afraid to be seen trying.

That is a beautiful sentiment. And I think it lends itself to anyone who is looking for a leadership position is not quite sure yet, but. Hopefully it gets a little more courage to lean into it from this conversation.

[01:00:57] Heather: Definitely.

[01:00:58] Hannah: Heather, tell everyone where they can find you. You reference your newsletter, you reference a course that's coming up, let my audience know where they can find you, connect with you and, potentially jump into the newsletter.

[01:01:10] Heather: Yeah. So Heather Elkington on LinkedIn or Leadership Heather on Instagram and everything that I've mentioned is linked in, you know, there's funky link in bio things that we've all got. You'll find everything on there, along with just lots of free content and education as well. And my DMs are always open.

So message me if you have a very specific question and I can either help send a voice note or make a video about it.

[01:01:35] Hannah: I love that.

[01:01:36] Heather: And just get, if I was to say one thing about building a network as an introvert, which, by the way, I hate, it's one of the most, I find it the most uncomfortable things to do, is network.

Just get very used to saying the phrase, please can I ask you for some advice? Because people, people love to feel helpful and you get to learn a lot along the way. And quite often you will make great friendships and people will come to you and say, can I ask you for you some advice as well? And you're like, of course, but you're never going to turn anyone away if they ask you that question ever, are you?

[01:02:08] Hannah: I love to be asked for advice.

[01:02:10] Heather: exactly, it's great. So just get really comfortable asking the question, please, can I ask you for some advice? And that's all networking is, asking people for help and giving help in return.

[01:02:23] Hannah: It is, isn't it? it, it takes the daunting out of the concept of networking. Absolutely. Heather, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a pleasure talking to you and I have so many notes I've taken so much away as I know will my audience. So thank you so much for taking the time.

[01:02:39] Heather: Thank you so much. It's been an honor.