Welcome to the very first episode of The Boardroom. This is the podcast where we talk about
all the kind of scary, weird bits about leadership conversations that happen at work that usually
happen behind closed doors. The reason I have decided to start this podcast is just because I
in. Whether it was work situation, social situations, and career development situations for
the longest time just always felt like an outsider. You know, when you have to have those
like small talk, niceties, kind of conversations within your career, whether it's when you're
giving feedback or, you know, you feel like you need to soften it up, give people a shit sandwich,
whatever. I just always felt this sense of like, oh my God, this should not be me. I should not be in
this position. I don't feel old enough. I don't feel experienced enough. How do I run away? Like
how do I get out of it? But as I moved through the world of leadership, I just very quickly became
aware that everyone and I mean literally everyone, is winging it. Like every single person you know
is winging their way through work. And that's not to say they're bad at it. I'm not taking away the
fact that a lot of them have brilliant experience, maybe have degrees or whatever. It's just that
we're all winging it. And I think I found my way into a lot of those boardroom meeting rooms when
I was quite young, like 27, 28 years old. I found my way into those boardrooms with people who were
decades and decades my senior and had this very sharp sort of realisation that everyone is
winging it, and I want to just open up some of those boardroom conversations. So we're going to
talk about literally everything from career, work, personal life. Like nothing is off limits in this.
I am currently in a dark room with just our producer and with t shirt. And so, um, you know, it
feels like we're kind of alone, and I do not know if anyone's ever going to listen to this, so I'm
going to be very honest, probably going to say far too much. But, you know, another reason for me
starting this podcast was I am very used to creating things for social media. So
60s, 90s, short snippets, carousels, whatever it may be, and breaking down very complex
topics into a super simplified format for you guys to all go and use, and I know that's helpful.
However, there is so much nuance to the world of leadership, to the world of careers development
and our lives that we need to just go deeper on. And so this is an opportunity for me to just go a
bit deeper with you guys, go a bit deeper. I'm kind of seeing this as like therapy. I used to go to
therapy and I stopped recently, so I'm like, maybe this is going to be another opportunity for me to
do therapy with myself, with you. One of the kind of sparks as well. The catalyst for me starting
this podcast was also the fact that I started to listen to a lot of personal development, whether
it's audiobooks, podcasts, media, literature out there. I listened when I tell you a lot, probably
over an hour every single day. I am just learning and ingesting information, and something I've
started to realise more and more recently is all of our favourite podcasts are very much scripted.
They are, I'm sorry to say it. Like very much ChatGPT script and people are reading off a
teleprompter and I started to become very aware of that. And I think AI like I'm not anti AI
necessarily you know we use it in the business. We use it to like drive a lot of automation and
productivity. But something that I am really against AI infecting let's say is the creative
world. I think the creative world, the world of art and literature and production and the media
should be protected as much as possible. Like this for me, is an outlet. It's creative. It's something
that I just need. I need to hear people's raw, unfiltered, honest, unedited thoughts. So that is
exactly this. There is no script. I have a piece of paper in front of me with like six bullet points
on of notes that I want to cover, but other than that, everything is completely unscripted, so it
might even feel weird to you to hear something that's unscripted because you may be so used to
hearing the script of things now. So anyway, that's where we are. The boardroom. Today's topic I was
thinking really hard. Like, what's the best topic to begin this podcast with? Because there is so
much we could talk about and I have so much data on managers, leaders at work on career development.
Okay. And the reason I have this data is because every few weeks or so, you'll see me post on my
Instagram story saying, what is everyone struggling with the most in their leadership role
right now? And every time we get hundreds and hundreds of responses, and every time we get those
responses, we put that into a spreadsheet. So I now have literally thousands and thousands of data
points, all anonymous, of course, of what managers are struggling with the most in a leadership role.
We can then, of course, analyse all that data and pull out like the biggest, most important
struggles. I also get it from things just like conversations I have with people. I always make
notes on my blog in the making, which a lot of you guys will be subscribed to. And in the making, I
ask people when they join us for the first time, what is one thing you struggle with the most
right now? And they tell us in paragraphs and paragraphs of detail what it is that they're
struggling with. And so if anyone knows a manager at work struggles more than anyone else on the
planet, I promise it is me. And so it's just to unearth a lot of those, because something I want
this podcast to be is almost like a precious realisation for you all that you really are not
alone because I think hearing other people's struggles, obviously I don't like it, but it really
helps me to feel less alone. And I think a lot of the struggles and issues that I had back in the
day when I was managing, you know, managing five different teams, whether it was on a harried shop
floor or whether it was in Big Tech, I thought I was alone. I thought I was the only person on
planet Earth that had these issues. Turns out I wasn't. All of us had the same issues. So the
problem that comes up time and time and time and time and time again for all of us is what do I do
when I'm managing friends? So that could be you joined a business, you are part of a team, and then
you got promoted and you kind of made those friendship bonds with the people on the team. It
could be that you've been hired in as a manager, but you've just got really close to some people
because maybe they're similar to you or you like them or whatever. It could just be that you've
hired friends, you know, that happened to me as well. I hired friends into my business, whether
it's now or like in the old business that I used to work in, I'd hired friends because I knew they
were great at what they did, and they were there and looking for a job. So all of us, at some point
in our career, find ourselves in this situation where we are managing a friend at work. So in this
episode, we're going to go through what that can look like, the struggles that that can bring up.
We've also got an in the making reader that's messaged in with a dilemma about her exact
scenario, about managing her friends and some of the awkwardness around that. So we're going to dig
into all of that today. The first thing I want to tell you is it is okay to be friends with people
at work. I think for a very long time, the corporate world in particular has told us set
fierce boundaries, don't make friends, don't cross any barriers with people at work like you can't
do that. And I'm here to tell you that is bullshit, because ultimately we're human beings. We are
going to make bonds with the people that we spent. We spend more time with these people than our
family, right? Like we spend more time with people at work than we do. Are our actual friends outside
of work? If a lot of us, if we're going into an office every day, you're around these people all
the time, every single day. It would be impossible and kind of like inhumane to not be friends with
them. So that's the first point, is it is okay to be friends with people. That being said, we just
have to be aware of a few different things that can come into play. First of all, bias. Now there is
1,000,001 different biases out there, but you have to be very, very careful of favouritism. So if
there is someone, maybe you've made friends with them because they're very similar to you. That's
just called similarity bias. You've made friends with someone, they're similar to you. Maybe they
have the same interests as you and that's okay. But what you then can't do is favourite them
because favouritism can go a really long way. It can start small with just things like, you know,
giving people more airtime on a meeting or not giving people small bits of work to do because
you know that they're overwhelmed. Maybe. So you give it to someone else, even though that other
person is overwhelmed, and it can start small with lots of things like that, but it can very quickly
develop into toxicity, into other people feeling as though, you know, they see it, like they feel
that favouritism, they feel that bias. They may leave. Or I would say even worse, you end up giving
those people that you like and favour. The promotions, the pay rises, you put them up for
opportunities. I remember a situation and this was back in like 2018, whereby the business I was
working in, we were going to a conference and we had the opportunity for someone to stand on stage
and do a speaking slot, and quite a few members of the team, like, wanted the opportunity and the bias
inside me. I remember feeling it almost physically wanted to give it to my friend, aka the person
that I knew the closest. The person who I knew wanted this just because I'd had the
conversations with them about it. Um, but I really had to check myself and be like, does this person
actually, like, have they earn it? They deserve it the most. Are they the most qualified or do what
do I need to kind of really take a look and step outside and go, no, there's other people who have
worked harder for this and therefore deserve it. And if you just really make sure that you have
that like really strict bias stopper over the decisions that you're making, that goes a really,
really long way. Now I'm going to read out to you the person's dilemma who's messaged in because I
think a lot of us will resonate with this. So this has been messaged in by someone on Substack. I got
promoted to team lead about eight months ago. The team I now manage is the same team that I came up
through, including my closest work friend. We'll call her Sophie. We used to go out for lunch every
day, moan about the same people and cover for each other when things got hard. But since the
promotion, she's been really off with me. Not necessarily horrible, just really distant. But what
I wasn't expecting is how much I feel like I was doing something wrong every time I had to lead
her. Last month, I had to give her feedback in a 1 to 1 about missing a deadline, and it's something
I honestly wanted to let slide, but I had the conversation. I delivered it professionally, but
she didn't take it very well. And the bit that's really messing with my head is this I know things
about her life that me, her new manager, probably shouldn't know. I know why she's distracted. I know
why she's a little off. I know what she's got going on at home. And I'm sat there in this 1 to 1,
using my manager voice to deliver this difficult conversation, to deliver this difficult feedback.
And all I can think is I know you and this is so strange. Nobody told me the promotion would feel
like a loss of a friend as well as a win. Is this normal? And did I just lose my best work friend in
the process of becoming her boss? So much to unpack here. I think the first one is just let's
talk about this. The fact that because I don't think this is just managing friends at work, I
think this is managing anyone. When, you know, people have got things going on at home, what do
you do? Because a lot of us in those moments shy away from then giving difficult conversations. So
let's talk about that one first. If, for example, you ask people, is everything okay? And they offer
up information about things at home that aren't good? Of course, in those moments we want to apply
as much empathy as we possibly can. So I usually will if people have got something really
difficult going on at home, I try not to get too involved with that thing. So what I mean by that
is a lot of managers tend to cross the boundary a little bit between helping someone professionally
and in work and supporting them with their home life. Now there is ways that we can help and get
involved, but there has to be a boundary. So, for example, I remember there was a time back in the
day when I was working in an old business. We had a member of the team who had just been diagnosed
with depression. Okay, so really serious stuff, really difficult stuff to help manage someone
through, but more difficult for him. And in the moment when he told me the first thing that I did
and this was the biggest mistake, this was one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made. The first
thing I did was try to fix it. Now, as you know, you you cannot fix depression, especially as an
outsider like depression. The only way we can get through it is just supporting someone and then
that person kind of working through it themselves, especially not a manager. What a manager can do in
that situation is give them as much space as they need to come through it to come out the other
side of it. Give them some compassionate leave. Ask. Just ask questions. You know, I think something I
should have done in that moment is set regular sessions with that person to say, like, look, let's
have a session every week on a Friday at the end of the week and see how work could positively
impact you gain through this, as opposed to negatively impact, because that's ultimately what
we want to do. We don't want work to be a reason as to why that really difficult mental health
issue could be getting worse for them. So I want to make sure that work is helping. If coming into
work is the thing that's helping them, then let's continue to like let that blossom. The the mistake
that I made was trying to jump in and fix it. And so something that I did was offered to pay for
his therapy and was trying to get him to go to therapy was like pushing him, pushing this therapy
on him. And I knew just a month later when it turned out that he hadn't been going to these
therapy sessions, I learned the lesson that you actually can't fix problems like that for people.
And so there just has to be this line between like empathy, giving people the space they need to
get better, to flourish, to grow compassionate leave, compassion, empathy. But that also has to be
a line. And that line, I think, sits at the point where you're no longer helping them. So, for
example, you know, if my empathy goes too far. The person may not hear the thing that they need to
hear in order to grow. So, for example, a month later, once I'd been notified about his depression,
if a whole month had passed and his work was really going downhill, he was really struggling
and I thought, I'm just going to ignore it. I'm not going to say anything. I'm just going to leave him
to it because I know that he's struggling. I know he's got depression and I don't want to make it
harder. I don't actually think that that helps in any way. I think having the conversation as
awkward and difficult as it may be to just say, look, I know you're struggling. I want to help you
through this. I want to help give you some space. But work is really suffering. Like, how can we work
together to get this better? What do you need from us? What do you need from your work to help you
get this better? What do you need from your work to help you get through this? I guess to go back
to the point, which is, you know, if you know someone's got something going on at home, like how
do you help them through it? I think there has to be a point where we give them empathy. We
understand, we give them space, we give them care. There has to be a point where, as a manager, you
recognise that actually the most important thing you can do to help them is still to have the
conversation, is still to show them where their work might be missing, but do it in a way that
allows them to see that you're making space for their mistakes and for their growth, and for their
learning. Where we really get into difficulty with friendship versus manager relationships is
something you have to know about. Friendship is it's equal. It should be equal. A friendship should
be both people putting in the same amount of effort to nourish a relationship. A manager
employee, a manager team member relationship is not equal. There is already a power imbalance. You
know, there is already this understanding that as the manager, you have a set of responsibilities
that you have to help them with, and the employee has a set of responsibilities that you help them
with. It's not an equal relationship. You already start off on an equal footing because you're paid
differently. You may have more experience than them. You're coaching them, you're guiding them,
you're mentoring them. And so there has to be this clear distinction between friendship and manager
employee relationship. If you are in a situation right now whereby you have someone in the team
who was once your friend and you're unsure like how to manage them, something I think is really
powerful is having what I call a relationship reset. So have a point in time and it could be the
end of this week. It could be the end of next week where you go after this day we are resetting this
relationship, and all that relationship reset can look like is having a really in-depth
conversation with them about how your roles and responsibilities have changed, and also about how
you now need to show up and the boundaries that you need to set. And, you know, try to get some of
that awkwardness out in the open explaining, I'm going to have to give you feedback. I'm going to
have to hold you accountable. But please know that when I do that, it's all with the intention of you
growing. It's all with the intention of I want us to get better together. You know, I've been
promoted and I'm really proud of it, but I feel as though I'm shrinking a little bit because I'm
acting awkwardly around you. And it may be something that I'm just taking on. You know, it
could. And this is the truth. It could be something, as a manager that we have internalised, and the
other person may not even feel it. That other person actually may really respect you, really
look up to you, be very ready and willing to take on your mentorship, guidance and coaching. And
because we are human, we have internalised this idea that they don't respect me. You know, they
don't want to listen to me. It's awkward. And so just by having that reset conversation can really
help to yeah, I guess, like reset that relationship and really take it from a friend friend
relationship to a manager employee relationship a lot of the time as well, when you have those
conversations with people. I've had them a few times throughout my career. Now you will be
shocked by the other person's response because this person was your friend for a reason. This
person was your friend because you saw something great in them. You had a sense of like love and
care for them in some way. And therefore, just by you becoming a manager doesn't undo that. It
doesn't. They're not a bad person. They're not against you. They're not competing with you. It's
just that the dynamic has shifted. It really has. And I guess as human beings on planet Earth, we
just have to recognise that and have the conversation with them. Something really important
we have to talk about here, which is that there is a huge difference between being liked and being
respected. And when we aim to be friends with people too much, it's often because we are chasing
that need to be liked. When we want people to be our friend, to see us as a friend. We're all pally,
friendly, blah blah blah. It's because we really want that, you know, approval, people pleasing us
off other people. Whereas when we shift to respect and by the way, most of the time you can't have
both. You either get the approval or you get the respect. When we shift a respect, it often means
sometimes losing friends, like we always have that friend who is a little bit too honest. And
sometimes in the moment when they're too honest with us, we're a bit pissed off with them. Like we
don't necessarily like them in that moment. It may hurt. However, I guarantee that friend is the one
that you respect the most because you know where you stand with them. They never lie to you. They're
just honest with you. And in a workplace relationship. Be the person who tells people if
they have something in their teeth, like be the person who gives the feedback when it's small,
when it's a small, solvable thing in the moment. No, it's not going to win you the approval from
people because it can feel a bit awkward, like it hurts a little bit. Especially if you tell someone
they've got something in their teeth. Even for five seconds, they feel a bit embarrassed. It feels
a bit awkward, but 10s later it's solved. We move on and that person's very grateful that you told
them. And quite often I've been in this situation so many times. You look around the table and go,
why did no one else tell me? Now I'm suspicious of other people in this room because why did none of
you tell me? And this person has, and they've put themselves in this awkward position to go and
tell me. That's what you have to remember when it comes to these friendships. To be honest, any
dynamic in leadership, um, but specifically these friendship relationships, because not trying to be
liked anymore, when we move into a leadership role, we're not there to make friends ultimately. But we
are there to grow. Help people. Coach people. Move people through. And in order to do that, we have to
sacrifice this idea of being liked to make sure that we can build the respect with others. Now, I
want to end this episode by talking about the best manager that I've ever had. I think it's
something we have to really appreciate here, guys, is that leadership at any level can be a really
lonely place. So if you're a business owner like I am, we know it can be lonely because it's you that
all the decisions fall on. It's a very highest last decision maker. Quite often you can feel as
though you can't build those bonds with your team. So it can feel lonely if you're a middle manager
or in a senior leadership position. I think that's one of the hardest positions to be in, is to be in
the middle, because you have this sense of like you're given things from above that you have to
act on. And quite often we don't dictate what those things are. So we get given, you know,
strategy changes, metrics changes, um, initiative, new initiatives that we have to now send through
to our team. And we have had no say in it. Sometimes we don't even agree with them and that
can be a really hard dynamic to manage. But then we of course have the other side of the coin,
which is like we have our team then pushing back, maybe not taking accountability, not pushing hard
enough, and we find ourselves very firmly in the middle. Um, and sometimes we flip either way. Like
sometimes we agree with the SLT, we just wish our team would suck it up and do it. Sometimes it's a
complete other way where we really respect and understand exactly why our team is frustrated
with something, but we ultimately can't do anything about it. We'll talk about change in
another episode because I think managing through change is really important. But I guess what I
want to leave you with here is the fact that loneliness in leadership is huge. And like I said,
whether you're a business owner, you're a middle manager, you're in the SLT leader. Loneliness in
leadership is really tough, but what you have to find is you can no longer be the person who is
going out to lunch with people at work, gossiping, spreading rumours, sharing lies, getting involved
in the workplace drama, the workplace politics. Because yet that's what most managers do. I'm not
gonna lie. That's what most middle managers are doing all the time. But that will forever keep you
in this zone of manager. It will never move you into the leader, where people want to follow you
and want to like back you and feel supported by you and feel respected. You have to try really
hard to kind of be okay with a bit of sense of loneliness at work, and find those relationships
in other people, like find a really solid group of friends outside of work, even just one friend. I
think just having one close friend is more than enough. Having a really supportive partner like
that's so important. Guys. When you start to move up through the ranks of these leadership roles,
you need someone at home who is in your corner because your days are going to be hard. They're
going to be busy. You're going to have 1000, 20,000, 30,000 decisions to make. I think the stats are
the average person makes 35,000 decisions every single day. For a leader at work, that's three X's.
So almost. Yeah, over 100,000 decisions every single day. If you're then having to come home and
make decisions on things like you know what to have for dinner and your partners disagreeing
with you. And it turns into an argument because you're both like feeling the sense of raw and in
like sort of frustration with one another. And then that blows up. It's going to start to feel
lonelier and lonelier. And so just make sure that you have someone at home and not to get deep here
because I appreciate, you know, we're going into relationships now, but you really need that
support from the network that isn't inside work because it does get lonely. It gets hard having
difficult conversations with people at work, holding people accountable to hitting crazy
targets is not a normal thing for people to be doing. It's not normal for our nervous system. Like
this has only really come about in the last sort of 100 years, I guess, since the Post-Industrial
Revolution, sort of bureaucratic organisational hierarchy kind of thing. That was many, many, many
big words. But since then, only in the last sort of 100, 150 years of human beings started to put so
much pressure on themselves with work and just be aware that it is lonely and you need those
support networks. So really go out of your way to find them. And when work starts to feel too much,
push back on things like most of us aren't saving lives. Some of you may be, but most of us aren't
saving lives out here. And so push back. If the meetings get too much, push back. If the targets
get too much, just advocate for yourself. And if your partner at home is not supportive, send him
to me and I'll beat them up. That's the only advice I've got. They're okay to lack. The producer
has just shouted at me from the other room saying he really liked that bit. So I'm not going to beat
your partners up. But what he said is when you get so focussed on work and you are very like, highly
ambitious, this career driven person like you and I are, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast
if you weren't. It can get lonely. And if you don't have a support system, it doesn't have to be a
partner. It could just be one really great friend or one really supportive family member that you
can sort of talk about your deepest, darkest fears and worries too. You need to find that
person. Ask for help. Um. You know, even if you feel as though you've lost so much faith and trust in
the people around you. Because I have friends who feel like that as well. Their trust in
relationships has been broken and therefore they put everything into work. But make sure you have
at least one supportive friend who you can share this with, and it feels hard, like it feels so
vulnerable. I have truly, only in the last couple of years, started opening up about the fact that I
just struggle sometimes with anxiety, with nervousness, like when we do, when we're kind of on
the verge of something big. So when we launch this podcast for the first time, I guarantee I'll be
the same. We launch a new product, we launch Fresh Start, um, when we're kind of on the eve of that, I
just cannot sleep. I'm just a nervous wreck. I'm up all night. I'm having to journal all my thoughts,
fears and feelings into my notebook. If I've got to have a difficult conversation with the team, if,
like, something comes up that I've got to broach with a friend, I don't know, I get this real sense
of like nervousness and fear around it, but I won't let it stop me. I will still make sure that
I have the courage to go and do it, but I need to speak to people about it. And for me, that's my
partner. Um, all my friends. Sometimes I just send my friends, just send the girls group a voice note,
and I'm like, guys, I feel really anxious about this thing. Has anyone done this before? Has anyone
been through this at work? Has anyone been through this at home? Ask for help. And it's not always
asking for the big stuff. Sometimes it's just like the tiny. Can I have a five minute phone call with
you to discuss the situation that I've got going on at work, so I don't know what to do if there's
people in your life that aren't supporting you. And I'm making it harder to do the things that
you love. Please take a good, hard look as to whether they really deserve a place in your life.
If you would like us to go through your dilemma, we've got an email address. Hello at the Boardroom
podcast comm. Please send it in. It can be as short or as long as you need. We will keep everything
anonymous. We will never use names. We will never out you. But we may talk through your dilemma. Live
and we can spend some time going through it together. So if you've got one, please email in
hello at the Boardroom podcast. We'll also put that in the description so you can go copy and
paste it. Well, thank you for listening to this first episode. We're going to do these every
single week. I'm thinking Wednesday morning, 8 a.m. I'm looking at t shirts. That right. Let's say that
for now. Yeah Wednesday morning, 8 a.m.. And the reason I like 8 a.m. is the same why we do in the
making on a Tuesday morning at 759. The reason I like an 8 a.m. is because it means you can listen
to it on your commute into work, because that is the time when I used to always listen to my
podcasts was on the commute into work, whether it was walking on my AirPods, in the car, on the train,
whatever. Um, it just gave me that, like energy boost for the day. So wherever you are in your day,
if you're watching this on YouTube, Spotify, wherever you are, um, I hope you've loved it. Please
give us feedback. You can comment on Spotify, you can comment on YouTube. Give us feedback. What
topic do you want us to cover next? Um, what would you love to see? What did you like? What did you
not like? Please let us know in the comments and we will be back next week with another episode.