I spent the first, I'm going to say, at least 25 years of my life being the most rampant people
pleaser that I think could ever exist and walk on this earth as I like, grew through my leadership
roles, grew through work. I came to learn very abruptly that those of us who are just going
through life, people pleasing, avoiding all the difficult conversations, all the conflict. It is.
Yes, it's a protection mechanism, but it can also be quite manipulative and I think some of the
nicest. And when I say nice, as I'm referring to the word nice throughout this episode, I mean, keep
the peace. I mean, avoid the conflict. Nice. They're going to give you the compliment. They're going to
be lovely. Like everything's going to feel comfortable and you're going to win the approval
in the moment if you're being nice. Some of the nicest people that I have ever worked with and,
you know, even being friends with those people can be the most manipulative. And I think I have
accidentally been there, too. I've accidentally been that person who I'm being so nice, avoiding
all the conflict, avoiding saying the hard thing that I forget to be kind. And when I'm referring
to the word kind throughout this episode. So if you Google the word night, you will get things
like pleasant, agreeable, satisfactory. That's what being nice is. But if you Google the word kind and
look at the Oxford Dictionary definition, kind is to be caring about other people is to be generous.
And so niceness is very much like keeping the peace comfortable in the moment. If you are being
a nice person, you are going to you're going to not upset anyone today, okay? You are going to
avoid the difficult conversation, but avoid also the awkwardness that comes with that difficult
conversation. Very nice. But if you are kind, on the other hand, it's just a slight difference. Being
kind is being generous, being helpful, caring about other people, and therefore saying the thing that
needs to be heard, saying the thing that needs to be said. And I think, like I say, this niceness, this
people pleasing concept, just like ruled my life for the first 25 years. And it was only through
leadership at work, I started to see how having these difficult conversations with people, even
when they're awkward, even when they might upset people in the moment, was the only way that I
could, like, accelerate my career, but also like start living true to who I really was. And so
today we're going to discuss all the aspects of nice versus kind, why we have to stop being nice
and stop being kind, and how that really impacts us inside work and outside of work, but also to
take it a little bit deeper in that it's not just a case of stop being nice and stop being kind.
Being nice can actually especially doing it after, I would say the age of like 2425 can be a bit
manipulative. When we avoid saying the thing and avoid the conflict, it can potentially be
manipulative because you are trying to manipulate the view that someone else has of you, and it's
not always the best road to choose in life. So we're going to discuss all of that today. But
welcome back to the boardroom, guys. We are well into this podcast now. It's been an absolute
journey, kind of getting used to building this, getting used to creating it, talking in this way,
having the option, you know, as I mentioned in the beginning, one of the big reasons for me starting
this podcast was just the ability to have depth, because you will have seen most of my work
through social media, but their social media is like 60 to 90 second video at best. And so what I
really wanted to do here is have the ability to discuss some of these topics just in a lot more
depth, and if you've followed me for any amount of time, you will have heard me say, stop being nice
and stop being kind. But I have never really gone into depth on that. I've never really kind of
explored all the facets of that. And so the place I really want to start is a conversation. One of
the most difficult conversations I've ever had to have in my leadership career was I had to tell
someone they had bad body odour, and the reason that conversation was so hard. I mean, you will
know, like if you've ever had a friend who has body odour someone at work, it the the idea of
telling someone that feels awful. You don't want to hurt their feelings. You don't want to upset
them. Like you don't want to broach the elephant in the room. It feels awful to even consider
saying it, however, when you're in a team. So at this point we had like, I want to say, there was
maybe 10 or 12 people of us in that team, and I was the ops director already at that point, so
very much responsible for the people in the room. And this person was about to become a manager. So
he was, um, we'd all come back in after Covid, and he was about to build out his team and become a
manager. And I knew that if his team members came into work and experienced the same thing that I
was, which was the body odour, it would potentially diminish the respect that he he had. It would
potentially like upset those team members. They would have to maybe have that awkward
conversation or they would be going home talking about it. So I had a decision to make. Be nice.
Don't say anything. Don't upset him. Don't hurt the peace. You know, this is going to be an upsetting
conversation and upsetting thing for someone to hear or have the courage, have the guts to lean
into that awkwardness, knowing that this is something that that person needs to hear in order
to, like, grow in order to, I guess, just get over that, that thing that they have and probably no
one's ever told them before, which makes me really sad. So I had the conversation. I literally just
messaged him on slack and was like, can you just come and meet me in the kitchen quickly for a
short conversation? I met him and I said, look, this is going to be a tough one to say out loud, but I
wanted you to know that you do have bad body odour and that was it. And I just said it. I just
ripped off the plaster, said it out loud, and in the moment he was really upset. He was embarrassed.
He was definitely a bit angry at me. Like I remember him being a bit like emotionally
triggered and sort of angry, almost blaming me a little bit and questioning, and that's all. Okay.
That's all. Okay. And you will recognise, you know, if you've ever had a difficult conversation with
anyone. Friends, people in your team told them something that you know is going to help them in
the long run, but is hurtful in that moment. You will know that in that moment, some of that
frustration and anger is going to come out at you because you are the messenger and you just have
to get so comfortable knowing that that's okay and it won't last forever. And it's okay that they
feel those anger, frustration, whatever embarrassment, and you're going to have to kind of
hold space for some of that. But knowing that in the long term, not only are you helping to grow
that person, helping them to get through something, you also will build respect. Like we all have that
friend who is slightly too honest, who will say the thing that no one else is willing to say. We
respect them, generally respect them so much because we know where we stand with them. Okay,
every now and again something they say may cut through, cut a little deep, twist the knife a bit,
but in general, we respect them so much more because we know that they're not hiding anything.
And then the conclusion to that conversation as well was he went home that evening, literally
messaged me the next day, came in to work, messaged me and was like, Heather, we've sort it out. It just
so happened that me and I think him and his partner were washing their clothes and drying
their clothes in a part of the house that was smelly, so it wasn't even actually body odour. I
think it was something to do with the way they were washing their clothes and they fixed it. It
was sorted literally overnight. And then I went on to have an incredible working relationship with
that person for years and years to come, still friends with him to this day, even though we don't
work together, because I didn't avoid that thing. The respect was built in that moment. Another
difficult conversation I've had to have recently was with one of my closest friends, whereby and
this is going to. This may sound so like petty because it's about wedding stuff and but if
anyone's going through the wedding process at the minute, you all know that organising a wedding,
lots of drama comes up. Lots of, you know, there's relationships that have to be talked about. And
for me, one of the difficult conversations came up whereby I was the maid of honour for one of my
best friends last year, and I couldn't make her maid of honour for my wedding this year because I
have two really, really close friends and I could have made them both maid of honour. I know this
sounds so petty saying out loud, but it's like I could have made them both maid of honour. But we
only have five bridesmaids. I didn't want to kind of, like, dilute the role, and I just. I wanted my
maid of honour, who is my best friend, Hannah. I wanted that role to to for her to know how
special she is, know how much she means to me. And so I had to kind of text one of my other friends
who potentially had some expectation around being maid of honour and just say, I love you, but I'm
going to just have one maid of honour. And she was so good about it, and I ruminated over that
conversation for about five days. Should I say something? I don't want to leave her in the dark.
Should I just make her maid of honour? I still want her to know how loved she is because it
didn't ruin my relationship with her. It wasn't supposed to be. You know, like I love this person
more than you. I just really only wanted one maid of honour, and I'd kind of made that decision. And
if you're going through the wedding process, you will know it's very easy to make people pleasing
decisions because there are so many people, family, friends who want a say, who have an opinion, who
make judgement, and it is so easy to fall into, oh, I'll just do this because it will make that
person happy. You really, really have to. Because weddings are so expensive, so time consuming and
so important. Like it's such a special day that you have to make decisions based on what you and
your partner want and what's best for the both of you. And so I sent her that text. We had the
conversation about it, and she was fucking brilliant as I knew she would be because she's an
amazing friend. She was like, Heather. I'm so grateful you told me. Um, but honestly, I respect it.
And she was also still my bridesmaid, so it was still like a really special ask as well for her
to be one of my bridesmaids. And it was. I ruminated over that conversation for days and
days. Do I send the message? Do I how do I speak to her? How do I say it? Do I even tell her? And I'm so
glad I did. Because now we're three months out from the wedding. This happened like a year ago,
three months out from the wedding. And it just means I get to have all the people I love around
me. I've been so honest with all of them. They all know kind of exactly what what? I guess I don't
know what position, I guess weird, but like what? I guess I need them to help me with. So that was
another difficult one. Just as an example, another big example where people pleasing really came
into play for me was I remember the first time, this was probably the first time I ever had to
have a difficult conversation at work, which was I worked at Harrods. I was an assistant manager on
the shop floor in the chocolate hall, and I had a team of about eight people, and we would have like
4 or 5 of those people on the shop floor at any one time. Everyone worked shifts. The shop opened. I
remember what was, I want to say like eight till eight most days. And we I was managing shift
patterns. And as you know, when you work shift, if someone's late for their shift, if someone cancels
their shift last minute, it has a huge knock on impact on the rest of the team. And there's a
member of the team who she was older than me. She'd worked there for longer than I had. She had
lots of like, inbuilt relationships with people in the team already. People tended to like her
respect. I don't know, that was probably in question, but just liked her like she was a big
voice on the team. Yet she kept letting us down with shifts, with lateness, and it had this huge
knock on impact on the team, and I knew I had to have a conversation with her about it. So this is
going back to like 21 year old Heather first proper management role. I'd been in supervisor
roles before, but proper first proper like the buck stops with me kind of thing. I'd identified
that this was a problem. So one day I plucked up the courage to go and have the conversation. Just
take it to the side and say, look, your lateness is deeply impacting the rest of the team. Um, it's,
you know, it's hard for us to manage these shift patterns as is. You're requesting shifts. We're
giving them to you. But when you turn up late, even by just 15 minutes, it's really impact. Someone
else has to stay to cover that. They might miss a bus. They may then end up getting home an hour
later than they had to. All because you just missed your bus in the morning for the 10th time
this month. And so I know it seems so small. I know it seems like, yeah, that's an easy conversation to
have. But 21 year old me, speaking to the person who was like liked the most in the team was just
really tough. But one of the things that happened to me that changed my mind and opinion on this
idea about nice versus kindness was when it happened in reverse. So it happened to me. Someone
gave me some really difficult feedback that upset me in the moment, hurt me in the moment, but turned
out turned into this like huge growth opportunity. So I want to rewind you to it was 2020,
2019, 2020 and we were going through the sale of go proposal to sage. So go proposal I've mentioned
before was the business that I worked inside. I was the second member of staff. It was a tech
company. We sold proposal software to accountants, and we scaled that business up to multi millions
in revenue and sold it into sage. Who? Sage who? Big Footsie 100 tech company, one of the biggest tech
companies in the world. And as we were going through the sale of go proposal to sage, one of
the ways that a business is valued. So like how many millions of pounds it will sell for
essentially is like one of the key metrics that they look at is how ingrained in the business is
that founder. So how much does the business have a dependency on the founder? Now, the founder of that
business was very deeply ingrained. He'd built it from the ground up. He was a big visionary. He was
like, um, a influencer in the accountancy space. And he was brilliant. But the business did rely on him.
He'd built the marketing. The marketing was built off of his face. The emails came from him. The
sales were done by him. The development of the product was generally like he came up with the
ideas and then passed them over to the devs. This everything, just every corner of the business did
heavily rely on the founder. So this is where at this point the ops director role came in to go
proposal. That's where the opportunity came from, because we needed someone to systemise the
business to essentially remove and to systemise and remove every single aspect of the business
away from the founder and put it back in the hands of the team to delegate to systemise, to
automate. And so that's where I got the role, and I went through that process, spent about 12 months
going through the process of systemising this business from the inside out. Which is why, like
when I talk about being an ops nerd, this is what I mean. And this is why I think we've been able to
build so much with clustered, which is obviously our new SaaS tech platform. Um, for managers, for AI
intelligence inside your culture, also with fresh leadership world. And we've got a team of three. We
have a team of three people. Obviously we have brilliant like functions of the business that we
outsource, but ultimately we are able to be very lean because we systemise everything. So anyway,
I'm getting off track. So fast forward about a year. We're going through this process of
systemising the business. We're about to sell it. And when we get to these last sales conversations
whereby were stood in boardrooms selling the business, selling go proposal into sage, it has to
be me that does a lot of the presenting, because if it was the founder that did it again, it would
show that the founder was, you know, the key dependency inside the business. So it had to be me
that did these presentations. There was one day we'd gone. So Sage's headquarters in London is at
the top of the shard. They may have moved now, but I believe they were, but they were at the top of
the shard at the time, 17th floor. And they had one of the big fancy boardrooms, like you could see
all of London. Incredibly beautiful. There was about 25 people seated in this boardroom, and we
went in to do the presentation. Me and the founder, I stood up, delivered this presentation. I'd been
so nervous to do it. Like this is multi, multi tens of millions of pounds. This deal I had practised
1,000,001 times the night before and I'd been like pacing up and down. I'd been so nervous
practising breathing, understanding how to, you know speak, etc.. Get into the meeting. Deliver the
presentation. Walk out and I'm like, you know what? I think I've smashed that. I think I did a really
good job. The founder pulls me to the side and says, Heather, I just need to give you some
feedback. I'm like, ah, here we fucking go. So I just need to give you some feedback. And he said, you
speak so fast that people in the room are really struggling to understand what you say when you
present. I just need you to slow down, like take a breath, slow down. And in the moment. So we'd come
out of this presentation like maybe two minutes earlier. In the moment, I was embarrassed. I was a
bit annoyed. I was a bit like, I'm selling you a fucking business, mate. Like, how dare you give me
this feedback? Like, just let me kind of live in this ego moment, you know, celebration moment. But I
processed it, went back to the hotel room that evening and kind of started to look at how to
slow down my talking. I started watching YouTube videos about, you know, how to present, how to slow
down my talking, how to give a great public speech. Speech and eventually started listening to
podcasts about just about how to get better at that process. All off the back of this feedback. If
you ask a therapist why you speak so fast, a therapist will tell you it's because you think
you're boring people, so you speed through as much as you can. You just speak as fast as possible
because you think no one could possibly want to hear what I have to say. So you talk as fast as
possible. Try and get it over as quickly as possible, and you don't have confidence in your
own voice. Essentially, you think you're boring people. You don't have that confidence in your
voice. So I went on this journey of finding confidence in my voice, just watching YouTube
videos, practising. I used to go to an organisation called Toastmasters. It's a global organisation,
completely free, non-profit. You go and you stand in a room with anywhere from like 10 to 20 people,
and you do a five minute pitch and you practice your public speaking in front of people and you
all complement each other, give each other feedback, help each other. And it also just helps
you practice. I then eventually I went to a conference and did a talk at a conference. Still
terrified. Nervous, fearful, but did it and practised it and had the courage to do it and
practice my cadence. Fast forward to today. I'm literally my voice is my entire career,
whether it's, you know, social media, this podcast that you're listening to. I've just been to the
Cayman Islands to do a talk on a stage at a conference, being paid all expenses paid, and paid
a big old fee to stand on a stage and speak in front of hundreds of people. All because I found
that confidence in my own voice, because I had the courage to, three years ago, start posting videos
on TikTok. And I just looked back at that moment when I got the feedback from that founder outside
that room. And I think if I hadn't have heard it in that moment, even when it upset me, even when it
made me embarrassed and angry, there is a potential that I would have never gone on that
journey of finding the confidence in my own voice. And one of the big reasons why I started posting
on TikTok in the first place was because when we moved into sage, I got asked by the learning and
development Director Inside Sage to run leadership workshops for our aspiring managers.
Because I was just having all these wins in leadership. There is a potential that when
opportunity came across my desk in, you know, 2022, whenever it was that if I could have said no,
maybe I wasn't ready for it, maybe I didn't have the confidence to do those workshops. They sent me
all over the world to run these training workshops internally. And you all these moments of
feedback is such a gift for human beings. It it hurts. It's a real like stab to the ego. It really
hurts us. But it's such a gift. And I think when I got to see that the other way around and
understand how impactful it is to be told something, because you can you can look at that
founder, you can look at the person who gives you the feedback and think, what a twat. You know, how
annoying, how frustrating. Blame them. That's not me. Or you can take a bit of ownership for it and go,
you know what? That person's gone out of their way to tell me the thing that no one else dare tell
me. They've gone out of the way. They've put their awkwardness to the side and said, I am going to
tell you this thing that I think you really need to hear in order to grow. And now why are we not
seeking it? Like looking for that feedback all the time? Like I am now, someone who is so obsessed
with this feedback. We have our one on ones this week with the team, and in that one on one, I
always ask if there's one thing you could change about the way I manage you. What would it be? If
there's one thing you could change about the team culture? What would it be? Because I'm constantly
feedback is such a gift that you actually can't expect people to give it to you. You have to go
and find it. If you really want to grow and learn, you have to go and find it. And I've learned this
like really hard. Now, as a business owner in the I, it's so easy to avoid getting feedback on your
services on your product. The first time we run fresh Start, I avoided any negativity. I was like,
let's get the testimonials, let's get the good stories, the positive stuff, without realising.
Actually, you know, 5% of each cohort may have things that they could say that would really help
you improve it for the next cohort. That would make it five times more successful next time. And
it wasn't until the cohort two and three where I started to say, actually, we need to hear the hard
stuff as well. And it's tough because I've put so much effort and love and energy into building
this thing inside. Fresh start, which is our six week course for a six week bootcamp for new
managers, by the way. I've put so much love and energy into this thing that I don't want to hear
the bad things. I don't want to hear if anyone's unhappy with it, because you should be happy
because I built it, that's just not the case. And so we now go looking for feedback. Every time I
run workshops with teams, I'm like, tell me everything. I can take it. I want to hear the good
stuff. I want to hear the bad stuff, the ugly stuff. I can take it. And it feels hard when you first
get that email. I got one recently. I ran workshops with this incredible business in Australia, and I
asked them for feedback afterwards and I was like, look, I can take it. And it was quite a new format
for me because we were the way that they ran was the team were all sat around a table together and
I was delivering it remotely. So I was like, look, give me any feedback on the format? What worked
well, what didn't. And he sent me a list of ten bullet points, most of them really great, most of
it really good feedback. Talking about how, like me telling stories really helped people connect, blah
blah blah. But inside those ten bullet points was also the feedback that when the format is
delivering one person on zoom to lots of people in a room, it can feel quite, um, jarring. Because
obviously, if I'm saying there's anyone got any questions? Everyone in that room is looking around
each other thinking, is that person going to ask, is that person going to ask? And when you have it
on zoom, where you've got like individuals sat on their own at their own laptop, we can use the chat
function. People can put their hand up using those functions. All good. When you're in a physical room
with people, people can just put their hand up. People can like, understand them, read the energy
of the room. All good. But when you mix the two, something gets a little bit jarring. And that was
such good feedback, because now I know that if ever that, you know, if ever I run workshops
remotely again, I just make sure that we have a way of either splitting those people up or I go
to them. Whatever. Um, but all this feedback just helps us move forward. As a business owner, we
cannot avoid it as a leader. We cannot avoid it. It hurts in the moment, it stings in the moment, but
we need to know it in order to grow. But I want to hear from you. Comment wherever you listening to
this as a comment function. Comment on this episode and let me know. What is the hardest
conversation that you've ever had to have, or what conversation are you avoiding because we can talk
about them in the next episode. Don't use names. Keep it anonymous. Um, but we can talk about them
in the next episode. Like what conversations are you finding really tough? And then something else
that I really want to broach here is this idea that I recently explored on a Substack post of
mine, which is is people pleasing? Is niceness just manipulation in
disguise? And I think before the age of and I always like to think of 24, 25 as when my
prefrontal cortex fully developed. So I kind of like any mistakes that I made before the age of
like 24, 25. I kind of just write them off as like, we're just growing up. We're just we've got a lot
of growing up to do, but everything after that. It's not that we can't make mistakes, of course.
It's just more now. I know if I don't have a difficult conversation, I'm not avoiding it just
because of society and maybe safety and pressure, I am making a conscious choice to avoid that
conversation. I'm making a conscious choice for comfort. Therefore, is niceness. Is this concept of
niceness actually just manipulation? This is rife in the bigger the organisation gets, and you start
to get the clicks and you start to get the silos. People who are really nice to your face, really
nice to you on meetings, you know. Oh, thank you for pulling that together. Thank you for doing that.
Yeah. Everything's fine. No worries. If not, everything's all good. Yeah. Then go behind your
back and we'll be like, oh, I didn't think that. That's what standard of work was up to par. I
thought they were really negative. I thought they brought a bad energy today, causing drama behind
the scenes, yet never having that difficult conversation with you to your face. We can
disguise it as niceness because that person is complimenting us in person. We can say, oh, they're
really nice, they're really lovely. Maybe they're just a bit shy, or we can just. Or we can actually
call it what I believe it is, which is it's manipulative, like, especially as we move into
adulthood, like no longer can we afford in leadership especially, we are responsible
now for the happiness of human beings inside work. We're not responsible for them all the time, but
inside work, making sure that work positively impacts them in their life, and it challenges them
and fulfils them and doesn't have the opposite impact, which is it's negative. They hate it. It
makes them anxious. We can only do that if we stop avoiding these difficult conversations. And so the
question I want you to ask yourself, it's a tough question to answer, but this is one I have had to
really unpack recently. Is my people pleasing? Is it actually help?
Like, is it actually because I'm just too nice? Or am I working so hard
to protect this version of myself that is liked, that people like that people want to
work with? Because it's easy? I'm easy to work with. Which one is it? Because when
the longer we keep avoiding this conflict, it's hurting no one but you. It's hurt no one's career
but yours. It's hurting no one's happiness ultimately, than yours. Because those people will
eventually find the things out. They will get that feedback, but it'll come from somewhere else. That
person who had body odour that wouldn't have, you know, that wouldn't have been ignored for much
longer. Someone else would have told him. He would have found out in a different way, but maybe not
in a way that that was as kind as I could do it. Maybe not in a way that was as respectful as I
could do it. Maybe his new team member would have come in and, you know, like just lost a bit of
respect for him because of that problem, because of that issue. And he would have found out that
way, I don't know. And it could have damaged his career. But it's like I just I have to ask myself
this question all the time. Am I truly doing this because I'm just being nice and avoiding conflict,
or am I doing it because I just want to protect? I want to be liked. I want to be liked by everyone.
Well, being liked and being respected are two totally different things. Um, I had
bosses in my life who I actually found a bit annoying and frustrating, but I
massively respected them. Um, because they would tell me what I needed to hear. They would ask me
the hard questions. They would challenge me. They would push me. They would always be respectful.
They weren't necessarily arseholes. Like, there's a difference. There's there is a point where someone
can just be cruel. Um, and you will come across those people. And I think it's very easy to make
that distinction because, you know, when that feedback isn't coming from a good place, you know,
when that message, you know, is just someone acting out of their own fear and frustration and
therefore you'll know when to not take that on. But the majority of the time, if someone goes out
of their way to give you that feedback at work, I'm just grateful for it. And so I've had many
bosses who, you know, I don't. They annoy me. I don't necessarily like them because I'm frustrated by
them on a regular basis, because they hold me to really high standards, but I respect them. And
wouldn't you rather be that, like, wouldn't you rather be that boss to someone else? We're not
here to just make best friends with everyone. We're here to challenge, fulfil, build respect, grow
people. If you have a team member that's in your team, this is the way I see it. If I have someone
that's in my team for, let's say, 2 to 3 years, I think that's the average career span these days
anyway. If I have the honour of having someone brilliant with me for three years, my mission
while they're with me is just to grow them as and fulfil them and challenge them as much as
possible. So wherever they go next, whatever career they're they pursue, if they stay in my business
or go elsewhere, they just leave better. They leave more supported, less anxious, more skilled,
feeling more confident in themselves, a better version of themselves. That's it. And that doesn't
come with them liking you all the time. I'm sorry. You can't. You can't be liked all the time in
order to do that. So stop being nice and start being kind. Today is what I would say. What
difficult conversation do you need to go and have? What conversation are you avoiding? Friend, family,
person at work all it all fits in together. It all becomes one. Um, and I would also say
no. What hills you want to die on? There are some hills that aren't worth dying on. There are some
pieces of feedback that are so far gone and I would not say with your team, sometimes this is
with family, I would. I will say this sometimes with family, there are some things that are so far
gone that it's almost like I'm going to protect my peace here, but know where your boundaries lie.
Know where your standards are. Like, hold those high standards for yourself and other people
around you. Expect nothing but the best from yourself. And yeah, go and have that difficult
conversation today. Now, this podcast isn't sponsored by anyone external because it is very
new, but it is going to be sponsored technically by custard, which is our new product. So custard is
a manager intelligence platform that we have built. We've built it with professional class AI.
So this is not a vibe coded product. It has been built with very kind of strict strong data
regulations in place. So what custard will do is survey your team as a pull survey. We are fighting
against those crappy annual surveys that literally no one uses and becomes no one even.
It's hard to even get the team to fill them out, and it's even harder to actually use that data
because it's so out of date and so big. So we use weekly pulse surveys super quick for the team.
Literally takes the team like less than 30s to fill out the answers. You then as a manager get a
full dashboard of data, full dashboard, understanding how your team feel. But then and
this is the most important part, that we do not even have competitors in this space, because what
we've built is so brilliant. We use AI mixed with all of my resources, everything I have ever built.
So all of my YouTube videos, Substack articles, and fresh start. All of the all of the resources and
leadership workshops I have ever built to give you exact practical actions. You as the manager to
tell you exactly what to do about it. So to take how your team are feeling and the actions that
you need to take to improve the culture inside your team, to level them up to become a better
leader. A lot of it will be around having these difficult conversations. And so go and start a
free trial of custard. Today it's completely free to get started. You can use it as an individual
manager or you can use it across the business. We have some great bundles. If you bring all of your
managers in and level all the leadership team up at the same time across the business, improve the
culture. So as a podcast listener, we always have very sneaky special offers on because we disguise
these offers in the podcast because we know that you are our most the audience that we're most
grateful for. So thank you for making it all the way here. So go to the show notes. There will be a
link in the description where you can claim whatever podcast stuff we've got on. We've always
got great ones on. And so go to the link in the description right now. And I'd love to see you
inside clustered. Other than that, I think the only other question I want to ask you is this is the
first episode where we've brought in more plants, we've got more plants. So if you're watching the
video version of this, just tell me, is this too many plants? I kind of like the jungle vibes, but
just tell me, is it too many plants? Do we need more plants? Um, what do you think? This podcast is
still relatively new, but we are going nowhere. We plan to keep going and keep going because it's
just so much fun and so helpful. And we know that this is the kind of education that, I mean, I need
it, it's therapy for me. But we are still figuring out the set. We're just making small changes each
week. So tell me what you think. Any feedback is very much valuable. And please subscribe. Please
review us. That's so helpful. As a new podcast you can click whether you're on Spotify, Apple, Amazon,
YouTube, click like, click subscribe and leave us a review. Because again, all helpful in talking about
feedback. It's all helpful okay. Thank you. I'll see you next week.