Carla Miller 00:00
Welcome to the Influence and Impact podcast for female leaders.

My name is Carla Miller, and I'm a leadership coach who helps female leaders to tackle self doubt, become brilliant at influencing and make more impact at work. I've created this podcast to help you to become a more inspiring and impactful leader.

We'll be talking about all the different topics that affect you as a woman leading today. Think of it as personal development meets professional development, and I want to become the leadership BFF you didn't know you were missing until now. This week on the influence and impact podcast I'm talking to Aoife O'Brien about how you can be happier at work. Aoife is the founder of happier at work, which is a business with the mission to support organisations in retaining top talent. She's passionate about fit, and specifically how creating the right environment can help individuals to reach their full potential and support organisations to thrive. She is a self-professed data nerd and has spent over 20 years working in market research in the fast moving consumer goods industry, with clients like Coca Cola, Unilever and Heinz to solve marketing problems using data analytics. She has been featured by several media platforms and public speaking events talking about impostor syndrome fit employee engagement and productivity, and she has her own podcast happier at work, which like this one features a combination of interview based episodes as well as solo podcasting, and has over 45,000 listens in more than 50 countries. She has lived and worked in Dublin, London, Perth and Sydney and has an MSc in work and organisational behaviour, a diploma in executive and life coaching, and a certificate in career coaching. Really loved talking to Aoife O'Brien. And we explored all sorts of really interesting things like how you can tune into your strengths and values alignment. So let's roll this episode for you. So I'm delighted to have ether on the show. Welcome. How you doing?

Aoife O'Brien 02:20
I’m great. Thanks, Carla. It's absolute pleasure to be here. And so delighted to to get stuck in to start talking about, you know, all of these really important work related topics.

Carla Miller 02:28
Absolutely. So shall we start by you just telling us a little bit about your background and how you came to be focusing on this area of being happier at work?

Aoife O'Brien 02:41
Absolutely. Yeah, so my background just actually, it's kind of different, I think to a lot of people, I worked in market research in the fast moving consumer goods industry for about 17 years. And I lived and worked in Dublin, in London, in Perth and Sydney before returning to Dublin again. And it was a career that I absolutely loved. It was solving marketing problems using data. So really kind of getting into that delivering presentations to clients and working with global organisations like Mario's and Unilever and Heinz, and then some local organisations as well, kind of smaller, local businesses. So it was something I really, really enjoyed for a long time. And but there were some experiences that I had at work that kind of, let's say, put me on the path that I'm on now.

So when I was living in Sydney, for example, I experienced some frustrations at work where they were making a lot of promises they didn't deliver on and they promoted a male colleague to be my manager, he'd never managed anyone before. And they promise me that promotion. So you know, there was a couple of things going on there. And when I returned to Dublin, then to work, again, a job that I loved for a long time, and I got on the kind of roller coaster then open down and up and down. And I love it that I hated this. And ultimately, in the most recent road I was in in that corporate organisation, I wasn't definitely wasn't working to my strength. And I deliberately chose that path for me. And we maybe will kind of explore that in a little bit more detail in a while. But, you know, I chose that for me. But ultimately, I wasn't working to my strengths. And I'm the kind of person anything I do. I like to do it with excellence, and I wasn't able to deliver on that. And so I left that and I went on to do a career coaching certificate, and then a diploma in life and executive coaching and a master's in which you may have seen on social media I've just recently had the official graduation for so I completed that master's nearly two years ago now but with COVID and everything, we weren't able to actually celebrate it in person. So we have that celebration this week, which is amazing. That Master's was in organisational behaviour. And I think when I went in to do that straightaway, I was just like, my eyes are lit up. I was learning I was being challenged. It was all of the stuff that I was really, really interested in. And, you know, the combination of the research element and the data, which is all of the kind of my background as well, I absolutely loved it. And, and I suppose what steers the business? Happier work in the way it's gone now is I asked one of my lecturers, you know, I told her about the situations I had at work. And she said, oh, what that sounds like something to do with fish. And you know, some people call it like, you know, culture fair, some people prefer to call it things like culture out for me. They're kind of like, I don't want to say they're absolutely the same thing, because they're not, but for me, I kind of use them in the same way. Because if someone's not adding something like how do you know what an ad is, versus someone who fits in but for me, I didn't fit in, in those organisations. So I did my research, dissertation, all about fit and any sort of assignments that I had, I wanted to tailor it so that I could build on the knowledge and the information I had around this idea of fit. And for me, that's what drove happiness at work. And, and so I kind of boiled it down to these three things. And if you think about it, and I've started talking more about, on happiness at work, and what that means. And for me, it's these three things about values alignment, so when your values are not aligned with the organisation that you're working in. So we'll take the the example in Sydney, where they were making promises they didn't deliver on that went against my values, when your needs are not being satisfied at work. So when you when you don't have when we talk about what those needs are, if they're not being satisfied, when you feel frustrated, or if you're not working to your strengths, which I wasn't in my most recent role in corporate, these are the three factors, I believe, that really contribute to our happiness or unhappiness at work.

Carla Miller 06:46
It's fascinating. There's so much that we can talk about that apologist if you heard a very low flying fighter jet, just go past that.

Aoife O'Brien 06:53
I did not do that. But that sounds pretty exciting to me.

Carla Miller 06:56
Yeah, to all the tracks, but there's always something going past. So tell us a little bit about what your business does. And also you have a podcast too, don't you?

Aoife O'Brien 07:06
I do. Yeah, I have a podcast. I launched the podcast in August 2019. It's called Happier at Work as well. And you know, talking about subjects related to leadership equity. So supporting women to get to those more senior positions that work, we talk about the future of work, what does that look like talking about the four day week, the five hour a day, flexibility, you know, all of those kinds of really important things that like the future of work really is now I talk about engagement and belonging because I think those are two interchangeable. So from an individual's perspective, it's the belonging piece from an organization's perspective. Maybe it's more the engagement. And that's what they're talking about. And productivity and performance, something that when I was incorporated, I was hugely interested in I was always reading up like, how do I be more productive? How do I shape my day or shake my week to get more stuff done. So they're the kind of four themes that I talk about in the business, then I work with clients in a few different ways. So I do speaking, coaching and training around various topics relating to happiness at work, I run a couple of programmes one is called happier at work and the other is imposter to empowered. So that's all about impostor syndrome and helping women particularly But some men take the programme as well. I do bespoke kind of training and courses with organisations around people analytics. So how to use people data to make more effective decisions at work. And kind of going back to my roots. More recently, I do research. So that's publicly available research or I do bespoke research for organisations as well. So analysing data they already have or doing bespoke surveys for them. The public research them I make make available to anyone who wants to sign up to it. I did one on wellbeing at work last year, and I'm just in the process of analysing and kind of drilling into the detail on what I did on impostor syndrome recently, as well. I will be looking at things like the great resignation in general but the impact that the pandemic specifically has had on women because I think that's something really important and I haven't seen any research to come out about I've seen research for America, I've seen research Canada, I haven't seen any for the UK I haven't seen in for Ireland, on this specific impact of the pandemic hat on weather isn't like women who are leaving the workplace. There's as you know, why is there such a shortage of workers at the moment? All of these really important questions, I think that needs to be answered.

Carla Miller 09:44
Excellent. What a wonderful mix of skills that you can bring. It sounds like you have now found out how to play to your strengths

Aoife O'Brien 09:51
I’m trying this is this I think what you know, and you'll know yourself with running a business, you kind of have to have your finger across multiple days. burning things. So I am learning what I enjoy. And interestingly, I love the detail of editing the podcasts, for example, but I know that my time is better spent doing other stuff. So I've outsource the editing and the producing of the podcast. And I'm getting support from a VA with some promotion of the podcasts and you know, she's going to start taking on more and more work. So I'm trying to, you know, slowly but surely let go of all of the things that I have to do in business and really focus on what my core strengths are. And something else actually, I forgot to mention is happiness audits. So just kind of checking in with individuals or organisations to see well, how happy how happy actually, are you? Or how happy is your organisation? And what levers can you pull specifically, in order to dial it up a little bit in order to make it a happier working environment? Or in order to increase your own happiness at work?

Carla Miller 10:54
Do you see companies aiming for happiness at work? I know I'm working with a company at the moment they've got happiness index. And that's really useful and is providing exactly what you said some really useful feedback. But are we now at a point where companies are valuing happiness at work? Or is it just the employees that are

Aoife O'Brien 11:13
Do you know what Carla it's a really funny thing, because I think the nature of the people I'm connected with on social media and the nature of what I do, and what I'm interested in, what I'm being shown are organisations where they are talking about that kind of stuff, you know, they are talking about happiness at work, in literature that I read, and this is kind of random stuff, but they might just throw in something at the bottom saying, oh, and your employees will be happier. So you know, and this is kind of pitches, say from other businesses doing things that are wildly different to mine, but the result is, you will have happier employees. And so I think it's getting a lot more traction in terms of people being interested in it. And, you know, if you look, and I don't have the stats to hand, but there are some that I that I remember, but like happier working are happier employees, the sales in those organisations increased by 37%, you know, if everything points up when employees are happier, you know, so it's not a case of like, oh, wishy washy, and if our employees are happier, then you know, that's good. But it's actually scientifically backed to say, if your employees are happier, actually, they'll be more engaged, they'll be more productive, they'll perform better, they'll have higher sales, they'll, their customers will be happier as well. So there's all of these links between happiness. So it's not just a case of individuals wanting to be happy, therefore, let's make that happen. It's if we create a happier working environment for our employees, then these are the kinds of results that we should expect, they will increase in their productivity levels, they will have increased performance, increase sales, and you know, all of these really, really important things. And I often you know, this is kind of something maybe offer a debate as well. But if you put your people first and you don't focus on the prophets, the prophets typically will follow. But it's taking that leap of faith to actually say, okay, if we're focusing on our people, and taking the eye off the profits, because as you'll know, yourself, and with the clients that you work with Carla, you know, if there's short term focus on okay, I'm I'm come from that background as well, you know, the commercial background where it's like, we have to close the quarter, up X percent. And so we'll do anything in our power in order to do that. And there's a real drive for this short term mentality of this quarter, and then at the expense of next quarter. So next quarter, you're going to have to go out and work even harder to find more revenue. So for me, replacing the focus on profits on a short term onto people and how to create these better environments for people. The ultimate aim is to make people happier at work, but then that will result in increased profits, and probably a really roundabout way of saying that bush, you know, putting your focus back on people and individuals will result in higher profits.

Carla Miller 14:15
It certainly rings true. I think. There's a Richard Branson quote along those lines, as well about focusing on the people.

Aoife O'Brien 14:22
Yeah, look after your employees and I have that on LinkedIn. Actually, at the bottom of my LinkedIn, I've got a quote from Richard Branson saying exactly that. So you know, look after your employees, and they look after your customers, essentially, because we have this mentality sometimes that the customer is always right, and we're putting our customer first and all of this but if you really look after your employees, then they're going to be the ones who are looking after the customers at the end of the day

Carla Miller 14:47
Absolutely. Yeah, I love that.

Aoife O'Brien 14:51
Well, no customers no business, you know, that's the reality.

Carla Miller 14:55
Yeah, right and, and we, there's so much we could dive into one of the things you mentioned, when you were telling us your story was that you, you took a role that didn't play to your strengths. And that was a decision that you made, what was what was going on for you, as you were making that decision?

Aoife O'Brien 15:13
Yeah, really great. And I probably didn't fully consider it, it's only really in retrospect, I can see know how, how important playing to your strengths actually is. But at the time, the option was to stay doing what I was good at. And what I really enjoyed, which was in the analytics team, or on this will be reporting to someone on the leadership team or to take a role on the leadership team. But in a department I was less interested in and less, maybe less good at, you know, I couldn't, I put my own stamp on it. But I know that I could have been way more successful had I been in a leadership position, say on the analytic team, rather than in the servicing team, which is where I was. And so from me, and I can see that now, and I can look back, and I can say, I probably would have made the same decision, again, given all of the circumstances that it was and given who I would be reporting to, and given the opportunity that presented itself, but it was very ego driven, it was like, I want to be seen as a leader, I want to be on that table, I want to be with those people, as opposed to being at the other side. And actually, what it ended up was, it kind of isolated me from other people with a very awesome them culture where you had if you're a manager or in the leadership team, there was kind of us, so I was in that oath part. And then there was them who are the employees. Again, I can see that now. At the time, it felt very isolating for me, because I felt like there was a great distance between people who were formerly my peers, and then being on the leadership team kind of set me aside from them. But then also looking back, you can see wow, that's got a totally send them culture, you know, that I, I'm, I'm kind of glad I'm out of that situation now.

Carla Miller 17:05
I see that a lot. I quite often have people come into the Influence and Impact group and they're like, so my boss's job is a nightmare. And I've just been offered my boss's job, because they're leaving, and they have a real torn between the two decisions of do I stick to actually something I do? Well, and I really like, or do I take this? Because it's an opportunity? And can you step away from an opportunity? It's something about opportunity and potential that's very hard to resist? Isn't it? Even when you sat there and gone? That job is a nightmare? I'd hate to do that. And then you find yourself going? Okay. Yeah. I for it as well. It's like doing is ego it's those values as well, isn't it? It's, you know, success. If success and achievement is a value to you. It's about how you define that. And often, I guess you buy into the organisation and society's definition, which is status and seniority and salaries.

Aoife O'Brien 18:03
I was going to say actually, yeah, it is this whole society's definition really, isn't it? Like you progress through the ladder. And that's, that was the ladder. And, you know, the other options, I think, were more and more lateral moves. And I know, there's a lot of companies promoting that I'm I can see the benefit of that. But for me at the time, it was like, No, I want to, you know, I want to be running this company someday. So I wanted to kind of get into that position. And it's not to say that I did a terrible job doing what I was doing, you know, I improved the systems. And like, that's kind of how my mind works. I saw what was working, what wasn't working, and I was able to go in and improve what it was that was happening within the team, I grew the team as well, you know, I hired more people into the team, because that's what we really needed. You know, there was there was loads of things that I did really, really well. But I can see now that that I could have had a bigger impact. If I was on a different team or doing something else or really working more powerfully to my strengths. I think

Carla Miller 19:01
we've actually, I've just come off a call with my be bolder group, which is my confidence and assertiveness course, and we've just been talking about identifying, we use Gay Hendricks model of your zone of genius, so of excellence, of incompetence. And I was reflecting on the fact that when I ran that session with leaders, often they are quite aware of their strengths and their their zone of excellence and genius. When you run it with people earlier in their career, which I just did. There was a real mix there. Because I think as you evolve your career, you work out what you want to do more of and you get more feedback. How if someone's earlier on in their career, and you're saying that understanding and owning your strengths is really important. How do you go about establishing what those strengths are, especially if you're experiencing that impostor feelings imposter syndrome that you also specialise in

Aoife O'Brien 19:51
I mean, it all ties in really together let me address the imposter syndrome piece to start with because for me, and this ties in And back to our needs, which I can expand on a little bit as well. But one of our basic psychological needs is a need for competence. That means, like feeling capable of doing the job. And so when you started anything new, it's likely that you feel like you're totally incapable of doing it, because you haven't done it before. And oftentimes, and I've heard you talk about this on the podcast in the past, Carla, oftentimes, leaders don't set clear expectations for what really good actually looks like and leaders don't set clear expectations of what does your role actually entail? You know, beyond just having a look at the job description? What is it that I'm here for. So if you don't have those clear expectations, and you're performing, and you're not getting that feedback, the feedback is so so important as well, to get that feedback to say, and I've made this mistake in my career where I didn't provide feedback in cases where I should have provided proactively because when someone's doing a great job, you sort of forget, and you assume that they know they're doing a great job. So it brings back the importance of providing feedback to people, you know, and telling them what they're doing with, especially focusing on what they're doing well, rather than, you know, trying to trip them up and trying to cut them out doing stuff. That's, that's actually wrong. So that's kind of what I'd say about the imposter syndrome piece. And building on that if people want to discover what they're good at. Like, if I think back to school, we did all sorts of assessments and different things like that, to to determine the kinds of things that you're good at always, always really good at maths, and maybe languages was fell down slightly, but maths was always something I was really good at. So even thinking back to, you know, what do people tell you that you're good at what and sometimes we don't know what our strengths are. And because something comes so naturally and easily to us, we assume that everyone can do it as naturally and easily as we can. And I think for me, it's just trying stuff out. And like, I'm continually learning what additional strength I have, like I when I was doing the masters. One comment that one of my lecturers made about an assignment I did was, you're really good at synthesising information. That's the kind of the terminology she used very academic. And it's something I do at the end of every podcast episode, I do a synopsis, I pull out the key points that were made. And I put it into the summary. And I say, Well, what actions can you take as a result of this? And that's something that I never knew was a strength of mine, I just thought, Oh, can't everyone do this, you know, so you might pick up clues as to what you're good at, from what people say to you, from just doing stuff from getting feedback from trying things and not being afraid to fail and not being afraid if you're not immediately good at something. So you'll pick up different little clues along the way. There's also some brilliant and you know, I can share the links to put in the show notes as well. There's some really brilliant tools online. Some of them are free tools that you can check and, you know, answer a series of questions to find out, well, what are my strengths? And how do I really focus on these areas of strengths? And how do I bring more of those into the work that they do every day?

Carla Miller 23:11
I love those I am I used insights was one that I came across in my career. And I was really related to that, because it was simple. And it was colours and I understood it. And I never really understood Myers Briggs until I did the 16 personalities test, which is one of the free ones. And then I Googled my assignment iron FJ, which is fairly unusual, I think. And I googled the results. And when you did that it was coming up saying you should be all about leadership and people development and vision. And I was it's just described me. So having used Myers Briggs, because I just found it. So I found all the initials to counterintuitive to actually, I'm now a big fan of using that and taking what has value not putting yourself in a box, obviously. Yeah, actually, sometimes, like you said, it's useful to have something external that prompts you to do your thinking.

Aoife O'Brien 24:10
That's exactly yes, I'm ISTJ. And that's more focusing on like the data and the analytics, which makes a lot of sense. Now, the thing with Myers Briggs, and this is something that I learned as part of the Masters is that it's it doesn't have that reliability. So like if you take the test again, you might come out as something else. If you take the test in different circumstances, you might have something else. So sometimes I come out as an extrovert, but mostly estimators and introverts. So you know, it really just depends on when you take it but exactly like is a car to take what is beneficial to you and that helps you understand more about yourself and build your self awareness. And then you can you can leave the rest you can park the rest.

Carla Miller 24:50
Absolutely. So we've talked about strengths you've referred to needs a couple of others needs fit in or how do needs fit in to your career decisions and happiness in the workplace.

Aoife O'Brien 25:04
Yeah, it’s really interesting that you use the term fit, because that's kind of where all of this sprang from is that I was doing this research about fit and what it means to fit in at work. And so the three core elements of fitting in at work that I did my research on, and what I found from, from other people's research, and I was able to kind of build and add to that were values, needs and strengths. So the needs element that I looked at, is we have three basic psychological needs at work, we have the need for autonomy, we have the need for relatedness, and we have the need for competence. So autonomy means control and choice over what you do and how you do it. And the interesting thing is, oftentimes, we think, and we talk about giving people more autonomy, but there is, you need to find that balance. So it's not just a case of giving someone a whole load of autonomy. And I think the pandemic has taught us that, like, people had so much autonomy over their time, suddenly, overnight, you know, you have the freedom and you have the flexibility. And sometimes that can be bad, because maybe you're lacking in direction, you don't know, which which way you should go, you're not sure exactly what you should do. And you know, it can creep in in your boundaries, where you're working all hours to get stuff done. Because you know, because you can, because you have that sense of volition over what you can do. So it's about finding that balance. So giving people in the guidance and enough direction and enough, you know, setting of clear expectations, but also giving them the freedom to choose how they do their role. And, you know, and and then as an individual being aware of where your needs are being frustrated. So do I maybe not have enough direction from my manager? Do I have? Or are they micromanaging me like that's the kind of the two extremes are you're feeling a bit like you're floundering because you're not getting the support that you need, or you're being totally micromanaged. You're being told how to do stuff, and what to do and when to do it, and all of those kinds of things. So that's autonomy. The relatedness piece, then is about how well you get along with the other people that you're working with. And, you know, any leaving speech that I've heard, any, in any organisations I've been, it's always been like, oh, and I really miss the people. So really, like, what makes work, are the people that you work with. And it's making sure that you're in the right place that you actually get along with those people that you have stuff in common that you can talk about things that you have each other's back. But the other piece, I think, too, relatedness is how you relate what you do on a day to day basis to the bigger picture of what you are trying to achieve in your life. So how does this fit in as part of my overall career picture?

Or how does this relate to what the company is trying to achieve? And do I believe in that? And am I playing a part in what the company is trying to achieve? With their objectives? And do I see the role that I play like, is it very clear and obvious to me, and as a manager, making that connection for people and saying, you know, and this is the contribution that you're making, this is, you know, this is the role you play, and this is how you fit in, in the bigger picture of what we're trying to achieve. I think it's really, really important to make people feel included, like they're actually contributing something to the bigger picture. And, you know, even beyond that kind of separately, it makes it, it's really great if it's a bigger picture that you can get behind that you can believe and when I look back on my own career, and this is the only really kind of from a reflection perspective, it's it's looking back and saying, Well, I helps those big global companies to sell more stuff like is that really, at the heart of what I want to do when it comes to work? And maybe it's not. So it's kind of looking at it from a purpose perspective as well. And then the third element is this piece around competence. And it's really important from a competence perspective, because we need to feel a little bit challenged. So it's fine. Again, finding that balance where you if you don't have enough competence, and you feel like you're not good enough, maybe you feel like a bit of an impostor, like I can't do this. You need to, you know, seek out that feedback to see how you're doing as a manager, you need to give feedback to people especially if they're doing a really great job and you just assume that they know they're doing a great job. But at the other end of that you could be feeling really comfortable in your role and you're not feeling stretched and you don't have a great sense of challenge.

So you know, feeling like you're and you know, people want to read up more about this. Daniel Pink wrote a great book, around all of these kinds of concepts. He calls them different things. He calls them autonomy, mastery and purpose. But the mastery pieces like As humans, we always want to feel like we're, we're in control or were able to grow we're able to develop or getting better at things And I think that's really important part of feeling happy at work is feeling that sense of challenge and that we're able to master what it is that we're accomplishing.

Carla Miller 30:10
It would be really useful if all line managers understood those needs as well. I mean, presumably, there will be times when you can't adapt the job. So it meets all of those needs. For someone, but do you encourage people to ask their line managers?

Aoife O'Brien 30:27
Yeah, I think it's important from a from both perspectives to be able to discuss what needs are in there, just the three basic psychological human needs, if those needs are not being met, or, you know, and we often talk about needs to be met. But those it's the kind of the fine line between having too much autonomy and having too little autonomy, having too much competence versus having too little competence. It's finding that the balance between the two, but there's additional needs that people might have as well. So we talked earlier, we touched on this idea of having status and power and sense of achievement, it could be a higher purpose, it could be self expression, there's loads of different needs that people have. And I think, you know, if someone had asked me when I was working in corporate, what are your needs out there, like, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, you know, but you certainly know when your needs are being frustrated. So if you want to figure out what your needs are, and have those open discussions, then it's about understanding, where you're feeling a little bit frustrated at work, and maybe what's not working, it's, it's likely that it's an unmet need, it's something that is going on mess for you, and really drilling down to understand what that is, I think is important. But from a manager's perspective, it's important to make sure that your staff needs are being satisfied that there that there, you know, you're saying that it's hard to, to kind of satisfy across all three of those basic psychological needs, I would argue that we can at least try or at least show that we're trying to satisfy those because different people will have different needs around autonomy, if you if you're early career, you will have less of a need for autonomy and more of a need for direction and being told what to do and how to do it. Whereas if you're later stage career, maybe you're, you have a great sense of autonomy. But if you've got a micromanager, then you're feeling really frustrated by that, because you feel like you have no sense of choice, and it kind of impacts on our confidence, then, you know, I've had micromanagers in the past, if someone's telling you what to do, they're trying to control your time in some way, then we feel really frustrated by that. And so from my perspective, it's really important to make sure that those needs are all being, you know, that they're all I was gonna say they're all being ticked with that science, like, it's just a box ticking exercise, you know, it could be constantly evolving. So checking in on those things, I think is important and having an open and frank discussion about them.

Carla Miller 32:55
Absolutely and I think when I said that I was thinking about the competence, one and thinking about someone like me, who once I've done everything, once I've got no interest in doing it for a second year or third year, like I need to keep growing. And so sometimes the individual outpaces what the role can be adapted to deliver, but I really like so Kim Scott in radical candour, talks about this idea of rock stars, rock star, being at a rock star stage in your career, and being at a superstar stage in your career. So superstar stage, or kind of approach is very much about ambition and moving up as quickly as you possibly can. Rock star is about that mastery in depth in your role. And you can be it's not that people are rock stars or superstars. But you could be in either mode at any point in time, and I liked that idea that actually, you don't have to be moving upwards to have that increase the challenge, you know, build your competence levels.

Aoife O'Brien 33:57
Yes, I love that. And I think, I think for me, that's the way work is going, you know, we kind of started the conversation talking about this idea of being promoted and wanting to kind of be highly ambitious, I think, you know, with all the conversations I have around the future of work, I think the future of work is more of a flatter structure, where you're working more on team based projects, where people are bringing their own unique strengths to the table. And you know, when it comes to managing people, it's promoting people who enter those management positions who are great at bringing out the best in other people, you know, and it's, it's really having that sort of focus, I think, in the future of work. And I think it's really important to have those lateral moves. So you can go deep into the roles that you currently have, you can do job crafting, to add elements to it and, and all of the really inspiring career related stories that I read and that I listened to are related to people who have in some way created their own roles. So that like, one example, that springs to mind is someone who who had an interest in social media? So she volunteered to take on the social media management when, you know, no one wanted to touch stuff, they were like, oh, no, I don't, you know, you're not gonna get any recognition for that. And she built it to such a place where she actually ended up hiring people into a team. And that became her full time job. And she was the leader of that team, you know, so thinking about what you're interested in, and being able to craft your own position, it's not available to everyone. But I think if those opportunities exist, or even to make a lateral move, so that you're, if you're getting bored, and you feel like you want a new challenge, and you want to learn something new, is there something that you can do, that's maybe not a promotion, but that is somewhere on the same level as what you're doing, but it's something brand new that you can, that you can learn how to do that you can even kind of learn a little bit more about.

Carla Miller 35:50
And the third area that you mentioned was values.

Aoife O'Brien 35:53
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think it's like, for me, it's at the core of happiness at work, in my view. So I went in doing the research, and the thing that surprised me the most, I think, was this idea of needs, and how needs are related to happiness at work and, and whether or not we feel this sense of fitting in where we are. And the values piece was, you know, most people were kind of talking about this already, you know, it's like, are the values pieces interesting, but it's the needs then. So the needs kind of underpin whether or not you feel aligned with those values, as well. So by increasing people sense that their needs are being met, you can have an impact on whether they feel like their values aligned with those of the organisation as well. So the values piece for me is, you know, and as I mentioned, something that I do, if I say, I'm going to do something, then you better believe that I'm going to do it. So when someone is making a lot of promises to me, and this is this can be in a personal aspect, as well as in business or as well as career, if someone's making a lot of promises that they don't deliver on that really, really goes against my values. And it really, you know, really frustrates me. For me, the important part of values is making sure that in the first instance, that we're hiring people into an organisation whose values align, and then in order to retain them, it's reiterating that these are our values, this is what we stand for. And if you go to the competitor down the road, and I know in the time of the great resignation, that's a real challenge for people, but to reiterate that, it's not going to be the same, that their values will be different, and they're not going to get the same culture, as we have created in this organisation. So like, that's, for me, the really, really important thing, what you'll find with values, Carla is that that they might say, you know, and I've worked in organisations where they say, Oh, we have this value of simple and it was the most convoluted, complicated bureaucratic organisation I've ever worked in. So it's making sure that your values actually ring true, the values are being lived, that the values are being recognised internally, and people who espouse those values are the ones who are being recognised and promoted into those, you know, the, the kind of important projects are important positions within the organisation. So for me, like, it's, it's so so important to find that that values match and, you know, that's, it's something that I'm trying to do a bit of research on myself to see is there a way that we can do this to avoid the pain of going into an organisation where you really feel like oh, this, and you feel it in your gut straight away, if you know, you've walked into a situation where you like the this, this is not the right place for me at all. And it's costly from a individual perspective in terms of time and energy and from an organization's perspective in relation to time and money. You know, they've invested a lot of money in hiring in taking someone on in making that decision. And if it's the wrong decision, then it's, it's, yeah, it's very costly mistake to make.

Carla Miller 38:59
Yeah, I think with all three of those things you've talked about, you can tell quite quickly when you're in an organisation that you think this this need isn't going to be met or this line manager is not going to meet that need at all on the values piece. I'm in complete agreement with you on I done quite a lot of work with organisations and how you translate those values, which are a list of like aspirational words, that organisation into tangible behaviours and leadership behaviours that as you say, absolutely need to be embedded so that people are not just measured on what they do, but on how they do it and their impact on other people. So I think that's such an important culture piece, but yeah, I sometimes illustrations on developing the values and sometimes they can be quite aspiration.

Aoife O'Brien 39:52
Yeah, well, I mean, that's it. So you have values that they say they have, you have the values and, and whether you have values written on them All right, whether you have no values don't whatsoever, you still have values in the organisation. And that's the behaviour that people have. And, and people learn from other people. So, if you don't have a clear set of values, then it's those at those leadership positions who are behaving in such a way, whether they are excluding people, whether they are, you know, kind of being more inclusive, whether they are very kind of structured in their approach, whether they deliver on what they say they will deliver. So, if you have someone who's saying, oh, yeah, I'll do that, and then they don't, that's setting a precedent for what's acceptable to do, it's kind of like the boundaries piece, you know, it's whatever they can kind of get away with, and that becomes the norm then and within the organisation, then it's okay to say, I'm going to do something and then not do it, because that's, that's kind of the precedent that's been set. But it's so so important, I think, to have a clear, clearly defined what behaviours are expected, but also what behaviours are not expected. And so if we're saying this is the value, then this kind of behaviour is not accepted, it's not acceptable to exclude people, it's not acceptable to gossip, it's not acceptable to you know, whatever those things might be.

Carla Miller 41:16
Absolutely. And I think a lot of this has been ringing true for me for a long time. I'm interested to see how inclusivity diversity belonging maps onto it, because I think now more and more we are embracing and looking at things through that lens. And the way we've traditionally done things doesn't actually make everyone give everyone a safe or psychologically safe environment to work in. What are your thoughts on how that fits into this whole jigsaw puzzle?

Aoife O'Brien 41:46
Yeah, for me, the really crucial piece when I talk about this is that diversity of thought so you know, I think the difficulty is if you bring a whole load of people who look like me who same like me, who have the same education as me, they probably think, like me. And so it's really important to bring in diverse thinking. So people who don't look like me, who don't have the same educational background, who don't have the same and work history, who maybe came from a different industry completely, you know, all of these things, I think, are really, really important. And so when we're bringing someone into an organisation, for me, it's, it's important to check for values, but then also check for diverse thinking. So do they think slightly differently, maybe they're neurodiverse, maybe they have a different background, maybe they're a different race, maybe they didn't went to a different university, bringing in that kind of diversity is really, really important as well. I think from a, you know, from a profit perspective, it's really important to have those diverse voices. And, and one thing, you know, being a woman and kind of being a supporter of other women as well. The one thing that always springs to my mind is when Apple, I have my iPhone here beside me, but when they created their health app tracker, on the iPhone, just the kind of generic one that you get when you buy a new iPhone, they didn't have a period tracker on it, because when they were designing us, there weren't any women on the team to think, Oh, I think maybe, you know, something that I track on a monthly basis maybe needs to be included in in this. In this tracker that we have. Now I use an external app, before they even had that help track health tracker, I've used an external app. But if they had a woman on the team, she might have spotted that straightaway. But actually, you know, if you don't have a woman on the team as they didn't, then those kinds of things are not going to get picked up. So it's thinking about who your audience are, who are your customers? And are they reflected in the team that you have? And especially at that senior team?

Carla Miller 43:48
Absolutely. I'm redefining that culture fit. Because I think it's like you said it's now a bit of a bad reputation. That term because it's tech is taken to mean are people that do look and think and sound.

Aoife O'Brien 44:01
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that's what you know, I, I kind of struggle. I have been thinking about this because I was challenged on this concept of culture fit. And I do get challenged an awful lot on this idea of culture fit for me. I still call it culture fit. And I'm happy to call it culture fit, or the people call the culture at but then how, how do you define what that actually is? And so if you're bringing someone into an organisation, and you're looking for a culture ad, then you're essentially you're saying you're looking for someone who doesn't fit the mould that we currently have. But then how are they going to feel like they belong like that they can challenge the status quo. And you mentioned you brought up a really important point about psychological safety. It's so important to feel like we can speak up and again, that comes from the top in my view, where you create an environment where it's okay to say no where it's okay to challenge what's being done where it's okay to play devil's advocate And that filters down through the organisation into team level and individual level that it's okay to speak up. And it's okay to challenge how we're doing things, to find better ways of doing things and to speak up if you think that something is not right, or that you think something can be done better, it's so it's so so important, I think to have that level of safety where it's okay to say, you know, to say something to your boss with a fear of being reprimanded in some way.

Carla Miller 45:27
Absolutely. And I think there's, there's the culture side, there's the leadership side, like you talked about, and then there's, there's systemic bias and changing systems and processes to try and get because even as we become more conscious of bias, which I think we all are, it doesn't mean that you can still override it.

Aoife O'Brien 45:48
Yeah, well this is it, it's, you know, and we can talk about the AI that uses the historical information, say, who's going to be the best performer? Oh, well, it's all of these men are the best performer because that's the input. So any data that you look at, it's only as good as what what inputs it's getting, what data you're actually inputting into the to the AI? But yeah, it's it's this idea of being Yes, we are becoming more aware, we're becoming more conscious of the biases that we have. But a lot of our biases are still operating at a subconscious level. And there's no way to tackle that unless you bring it to an awareness level. And I think that's really, really difficult. Because if you're, you're not even thinking about it, you're just operating in such a way that you've probably always operated in, and, and you're not even really thinking like, oh, maybe I'm biassed here. Um, but I, you know, I kind of pick up on myself sometimes when I'm doing it, but that's when I'm conscious about it. You know, that's those are maybe the more obvious biases that I have. But it's the unconscious ones, I think that we that we need to be aware of.

Carla Miller 46:58
Apparently, there's more than 200 of them. I had a really interesting discussion on the podcast about is the CV dead and how to how to use AI.

Aoife O'Brien 47:14
That’s a whole other conversation. I have my own thoughts on that. Yeah.

Carla Miller 47:18
Brilliant. Well, it's been really interesting to explore these areas that add up to happiness at work. And if you wanted to leave people with one thought, or one takeaway from today's podcast interview, what would you like that to be?

Aoife O'Brien 47:37
Yeah, I mean, like, there's, there's a lot that I feel like I could choose from. But maybe the easiest for people to recognise would be just understanding what your needs are at work and identifying whether or not they are being satisfied or whether you feel a little bit frustrated at work and getting to the root cause of what that might be, and being able to hold an honest conversation with someone about how you might get your needs satisfied.

Carla Miller 48:06
Brilliant. And we will obviously link to your podcast and your website and everything and a LinkedIn profile on the show notes so that if people want to find out more and explore some of the courses that you mentioned, as well, then they can do so thank you so much. Lovely to talk to you. I'm looking forward to my visit on your podcast.

Aoife O'Brien 48:34
you so much, Carlos. Absolute pleasure to be on the podcast today. Thank you.

Carla Miller 48:43
If you've listened to the podcast, and you want to know more about how we can work together, here are a few places you can look.

First of all, I've got a couple more freebies. I've got a free PDF on increasing your leadership impact at work, and I've also got a free masterclass on becoming a more influential leader without letting self doubt hold you back. So head on over to the website to book yourself a place on the masterclass or to download that PDF.

There are my open programmes Influence and Impact for women at management leadership level, and Be Bolder a four week live assertiveness and confidence course for women at any level. You can preorder my book Closing the Influence Gap, a practical guide for women leaders who want to be heard. You can also work with me one to one particularly if you're a senior leader, and you can hire me to work in house to do talks for awareness weeks, one of workshops, a series of workshops, or to run my Ifluence and Impact programme or Be Bolder programme in house as a women's leadership or women's empowerment offering. If you want to talk about any of those on my website, you can drop me an email or you can also book a quick 15 minute chat so we can talk about what you need and how I might be able to help you or your organization so I look forward to chatting to you take care.