Transcript
Well, hello, everyone. I, I’m actually quite curious about where our podcast will go today. And within the first few minutes of talking to Felix, I, I thought, oh, I wasn’t expecting this. So this might be the title of our podcast. But before we, we go any further, Felix, do you want to just introduce yourself to everyone and maybe give a little bit of background on who you are? Um, what work you do and in particular what interests you. Yeah, of course, perfect. Thanks so much, uh, Anami for having me on your podcast.
Yeah, I guess, um, yeah, let me, let me start by introducing myself and, and sharing about what I’ve done so far and, and maybe what, what the dentist that I’m trying to make, uh, in the universe maybe. So, um, yeah, I’m Felix, um. I guess my background is, is I’m a social scientist. I’ve, I’ve lived 15 years in London and really spent most of that time, uh, in the market research and innovation industry. I’ve been running, um, a company called CSpace for a very long time and, uh, yeah, and I guess that was a very formative experience for me, um, running a business in a people centric way, winning awards on best place to work and best agency together with my co-MD Phil.
So I’ve learned a lot about co-leadership, about, um, empathy, about trust and. That really then inspired us to start uh our our new business called Within and I guess the kind of the hypothesis that this business is founded on is that in short relationships are the source of results so if you put trust in relationships first in a leadership role then. You have the foundations for performance uh already achieved in a way, and I think a lot of the world today is focusing on technical skills, is focusing on rushing things through and and uh forgetting the human skills in leadership.
And I guess that’s, yeah, that’s what we are trying to kind of make a difference uh on. Thank you so much. And I think there’s a lot we can explore in that context, but I have to go back to the unexpected. So, just for those of you listening, we started the call. We normally do a little bit of a prep on a call and then switch into podcast mode. And I said to Felix, Hi, how are you? The typical, Hello, how are you? How’s it going? And he went, I’m good, I’m good enough.
And I went, hold on a second. That’s interesting. And in particular, because recently I’ve been having conversations with a few people around good and good enough and what that means. And Felix, you gave me a really interesting answer, and you also linked it to, yeah, to happiness. Do you want to repeat that? And then, then I’m, I wanna, I wanna explore that a bit more. Yeah, yeah. I, I often feel people, um, have a really strong focus on trying to be happy, wanting everyone else to be happy, and I just don’t think that’s that, that that’s what we should be, uh, thriving for.
So I’m, I don’t need to be happy to be on your podcast. I don’t need to be amazing. I just need to be good enough and, and most of the time I am good enough to, to be able to do what I need to do and I, I guess, you know, I’m focused on trying to be engaged and trying to feel alive and, and feel attention. And that’s enough for me. I don’t need to be happy because that’s maybe the beginning of, of, um, unhappiness if you’re happy all the time.
Yeah, or if you’re striving to be happy, right? Because I think we we I I read a really, maybe you’re also familiar, right, but actually there was some research, I think a couple of years ago that people who tend to read a lot of self-help books actually become even more unhappy and depressed. They have a curve of You know, experiencing joy or a, uh, a drive to change. But then when they fail, or when they’re not able to sustain what the, the self-help book tells them, that’s when it almost takes them 3 or 4 steps back.
So. But if we look at happiness, and you also said something else, you said in your intro that, um, You know, you, you as a business within. The focus really is on potentially human skills, the link to performance, so leadership development, human skills, and a link to performance as opposed to the technical, um, topics which a lot of organisations focus on. But I have a question for you. Do we have to be happy to perform well? Uh, well, I personally would, would say no. I, I don’t think that that’s a requirement.
I also think, you know, work, I don’t think is supposed to make you happy or, or the modern workplace is, I think a lot of the issues come because people have very high expectations of the workplace should deliver for them and guess what, it’s very often not going to be happiness like your boss is not gonna deliver happiness for you. If anything, you’re gonna create some of that yourself and if you, if you think you go into work so that they make you happy, you’re in for a big surprise and I think that’s where a lot of the malaise that we see in the in the in the discussions about different generations and and uh how workplaces to live against that are kind of lopsided in my mind so.
So maybe it is, it is relevant to think about, OK, what, what can I expect of work and what can’t I expect of work. And as a result, maybe what other areas of life do I need to find some of the things that work will never deliver for me because it’s, it’s work. Um, and that’s, that’s maybe a starting point. But how does this concept of good fit with performance? So isn’t, when we talk about performance, isn’t it Performance means, and one definition of performance could mean that we need to strive to be the best.
Or maybe I’m answering the question myself, the best we can be. But yeah, how does good enough fit alongside performance? Because I think in a performance culture in a business, typically we’re always striving to be better than we are. Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s it’s maybe coming back to your question like, do you, do you have to be happy at work to be able to perform well. And, and I guess what I would say is that, you know, like if you’re in a high performing team or, or at least in in one that that we like to see, I would argue that you do have a high trust environment you have strong relationships between peers but also between you and your boss.
um, but that doesn’t mean that you will be happy all the time. More often than not, it might also mean that you are under pressure because you have collectively you have to overcome a challenge, you have to. Uh, you know, win certain growth targets or kind of achieve, uh, transformation which will be difficult, which will be challenging and which will create unhappiness for some time, maybe not the whole time, and, and the idea that you then because of these relationships and those bonds, you, you get over those challenges into of oh we’ve we’ve achieved this together that.
You know, maybe creates happiness for some time, but it definitely creates a sense of achievement, and then you’re ready for the next challenge. So maybe, maybe being content, being engaged, being seen are use metrics versus uh being happy at work. Yeah, and I like the word content. But if we switch gears for a second, why do you think organisations tend to focus more on technical skills or technical areas when it comes to leadership and development as opposed to Well, leadership as as opposed to developing human skills.
And if you say human skills, what do you mean? Yeah. Well, I guess let’s start with why organisations uh over index on focusing on technical skills. One, I think it’s, it’s easy to, uh, deliver, you know, you can teach someone financial skills, you can teach someone software skills, you can teach someone. A project management software or delegation even um and it’s, it’s relatively easy to administer and it’s, it’s OK, easy to measure the impact so you can say how um confident are you in this skill now and then you do the programme and you measure against hopefully if you’re a good uh LND manager and then you can say, OK, we have seen an uplift in skills development and we can now say this person has been skilled now when it comes to human skills um and that could be.
The ability to be empathetic or the ability to uh truly listen to someone without giving them advice, without judging them. It could be the idea of um understanding what motivates someone and what doesn’t motivate someone. It could be the, the idea of. Fostering camaraderie or a sense of community within the business that you’re running, those skills are relatively difficult to learn from a PowerPoint and also it’s difficult to measure because of course, you know, at CSpace we want best, best, uh, place to work, best agency. Can I now make the case that that was really down to people centric management?
it’s maybe, you know, 10%, 15%, I can make the case, but lots of other things also contributed to that so. The, the, the measurement piece of trust and relationship is quite tricky to kind of make the case that that actually did did move the needle on, on revenue. Mhm. And I, I you mentioned empathy there. How can I, how can I, how, how do you define empathy? Because again, um, a bit like a broken record this morning, but how can you illustrate empathy if you don’t, and maybe it’s, maybe, again, I’m answering the question, but how can you illustrate empathy if you don’t necessarily I think that we should all strive to be happy.
Yeah, I’m not sure, but I think, I think I see lots of leaders do is, is maybe try, try and be sympathetic. So they’re like, oh, I, I, I see, you know, I can see why this is hard, but they don’t really truly. Uh, in, in people’s shoes. They are, they are kind of, um, they’re trying to fix stuff quickly so that this feeling goes away for that employee. So they want to do is opposed to making them, etc. right? And maybe that’s the, the. Yeah, and maybe because leaders think they need to fix all the problems.
Uh, they didn’t think I need to fix that unhappiness when maybe sometimes it’s not about fixing, it’s about sitting with that uncomfortable feeling that a person has and just letting it be and maybe, um, the ability to just be, be not OK for some time is OK. And, and if you witnessed in that without someone trying to change you all the time. It might actually make that feeling go away faster versus someone trying to um give you 15 fixes. It’s a bit like, you know, when you say like, hey, boss, I’m, I’m really down right now.
Um, I’m really, I’m not feeling it. And boss says, what about you go for a walk? Have you tried yoga? Why don’t you eat blueberries? Maybe all of that is really quite insulting when you just want someone to say like, oh, I can see this is tough, and then 10 minutes of, of silence. So what are some of the, uh, sorry, some of the skills, or yeah, how do you, yeah, the human skills. How do you, how do you get that across to leaders? Because it’s much easier to say have a blueberry or go for a walk, you know, how do you, how do you help leaders?
Because fundamentally to do that authentically, number one, they need to buy into it and they need to really live it as well. And that’s hard to do if our education. As business leaders up until a certain time, has been really focused on the technical thing. Yeah, it is not easy. What works best and what we are using in our work, we work in groups. So we, we rarely believe that some of these things you can solve and, and, and, uh, can change in a 1 to 1 setting. So we work with groups who are of peers or of, you know, executive leadership teams or, or groups of partners.
That are then participants in this exercise. And we actually practise this stuff. So it’s not like, oh, here are the three steps of how you can be empathetic to someone, but actually, now, let’s do it together. So I share a 2 minute story, and you have to hold my space and you have to listen to me and not fix me, not give me advice, not interrupt me, not kind of, um, tell me that that was hard, but just, just kind of maybe play back what I’ve said to see whether you’ve heard it correctly.
So it’s, it’s doing it and doing it in groups. It’s how I would answer that question. Mhm. Great. So I think what you’re talking about a lot is also something that we’re not comfortable doing in business, often is working with what is within ourselves. And I think your your business name is within. Um, so tell, tell us a little bit about that and maybe also share with us where what your website is and how people can learn more about you. But I’m, I’m curious about this within, and leaders aren’t comfortable doing that, right?
Yeah, I, I guess, you know, a lot of the times people, uh, you know, this is kind of awful saying if you can’t change the people, you have to change the people, which means um if they’re on board, you have to fire them. Um, and of course sometimes that is the case and sometimes you, you can only transform a business by doing some of that. But we would argue that more often than not, leaders are often stuck with the teams that they have inherited maybe and they need to work with them they have.
So what about upskilling the people that you do have by tapping into resources that can really be learned very easily by everyone, whether that is. Uh, listening very carefully whether that is kind of thinking about how can you connect with employees, like what, what might they have in terms of motivation that is different to my motivation and how can I tap into that? How can I create moments of togetherness in a, in a business like in, in a hybrid world? How do I create a ritual that really speaks to people and that really makes them feel seen and feel, feel heard.
And then maybe you have a business where people that don’t always have to be happy, but they feel seen and they feel that they, they belong and they matter and, and that’s maybe, um, some of the skills that we can, we can teach. Yeah, our, our website is, um, with, uh, within.business. Um, that’s the, um, um, domain. And, um, yeah, people can have a look at it and find out more about how we like the how of how we do that, whether that’s through offsites or through kind of more ongoing, uh, programming with, with leadership teams. Wonderful.
So, Felix, I feel like we can talk a lot. And as I said at the beginning, I was not expecting our conversation to go in the direction it did today, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. And, um, yeah, so thank you for your time. And I, uh, yeah, I recommend that everybody have a look at your website again. It’s within.business. Correct, thank you. I appreciate that. Wonderful. Well, until next time, and I’m sure we’ll, we’ll be speaking again. Thanks, Felix. Thanks so much. Take care. Thanks.
