Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Ndlela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify, leave us a rating and a review in what you'd like for us to discuss on this show.

Now, let's get communicating.

Now, let's get communicating with Patrick Mullarkey, hailing all the way from the UK.

He is a learning and leadership professional from Scale Up and Start Up Environments.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show.

Hi, Patrick.

Hey, Roberta.

Great to speak to you.

How are you today?

I'm doing fantastic.

How are things over there?

They're good.

Just to manage expectations and apologies in advance.

If you hear barking in the background in the other room, that's our dog.

I'm at home as we record this.

I've got a wife and son asleep upstairs.

I've got a dog that should be asleep in the back room, but might be set off by foxes in our back garden or something like that.

So don't worry if you hear like shouting or barking, it's nothing alarming, but yeah, it's great to be here and great to meet you and your audience as well.

Thank you for being here.

So give us a little bit of your background.

Yeah, sure.

So I'm a learning leadership professional.

What does that mean exactly?

So I design, deliver, create learning experiences, curriculums, resources for working professionals.

Originally, I started out in a more corporate environment, and originally I started out as a HR generous before moving into more formal L&D, and gradually I've moved into sort of in between tech teams, digital learning through to most recently, scale up and start up environments.

Just someone who's very passionate about learning in the workplace and organizations and how they benefit commercial realities, but also individuals in terms of realizing their potential and everything in their own space and work lives as well.

And I'm a strong believer around bringing your authentic self to work.

And so much of what we do in terms of professional growth and development is actually not just about the job we do, but actually our calling and career as well.

So that's a little bit of an overview of me.

And like you said, based out of the UK, but works internationally across the EU and clients and organizations in the US and beyond.

That's me in a nutshell.

And of all the careers you could have chosen, why learning and development?

Good question.

It's based on a mistake, frankly.

So when I first came out of university, I remember thinking very deliberately, I want to be in a role that gets me around people, that gets me involved in whatever the notion of a people element is in an organization, or without having a clue of the reality of what a HR function was.

I was like, that's it.

That's what everyone keeps telling me is the people function.

Now that is notionally correct, but I don't mind saying, I talk about a lot now, I was kind of on that career ladder of like HR advisor, going into HR, BP, I was like a HR officer was my last role in HR.

I was not suited to that kind of work at all.

And it was only when I started doing some studies, some formal studies that I actually realized, while the learning coaching, the learning design and delivery, actually, this doesn't feel like hard work, the effort I put into studying those kinds of aspects, this actually feels like I'm in a state of flow.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I was.

And so I was just drawn to that.

And within, I'd say, a year or so of getting exposed to that in my formal studies, when I was still working in the HR field, I decided I've got to go full time into a learning development role.

And about three or four months after that decision, I was delivering workshops in the UK and then flying out to the UAE not long after to deliver my first stuff overseas.

So it all happened pretty quickly after that.

But once I landed in learning, the thing I love about it and still love about it now, over 10 years later, is it's solution-focused.

When you're having conversations with teams, individuals, leaders, it's more often than not, they're looking to change something for the better for themselves or the people they work with.

It's not a, how to put it, it's not like a correction.

It's just trying to realize an opportunity of people's potential again.

And that's what I love about it.

So it's always creative.

It's always full of great ideas.

You never know where it's gonna take you.

And I really enjoy it.

How do you identify and package the problem and then decide, okay, we need to find the solution for this.

So let's have a course, facilitate something in order to get this solved.

Yeah, this is a great question.

And the historical connotation, when I first started working in the people space, and it's still present to a certain degree, is you have managers or senior leaders say, I'll just throw a topic out there at random.

My people need to get better at presentation skills, or they need to get better at sales skills.

And it's actually based on a perception and assumption around their own understanding of the problem.

So more often than not, half the role and the work I'm doing is trying to explore and do some discovery work by saying to leaders, actually, that's fantastic.

You've got a notion, an idea of what a, we'll use the word problem, might be, or an opportunity to change something in your team.

What's your metrics?

What's your measures to actually validate your assumption?

And that's when we kind of pivot a little bit, or I try to anyway to say to you, can we talk to the people who are actually at the coalface office, who are involved with the challenges you're exploring or expecting to explore in the coming months?

What's their lived reality?

And more often than not, that's where you get the dynamic and start.

It's almost like a blank map you have up to that point, and then you start to kind of fill some coordinates in.

Once you speak to people who actually are faced with reality or the challenges of trying to improve their own performance or improve certain skill sets, that's where you get the real nub of what a problem or opportunity is in an organization.

I strongly believe a lot of organizations actually have good intent, but either a lack of good data or perception or poor assumptions around actually what some of the challenges their teams face.

And to build on your question as well, to some of the solutions, like what informs different solutions.

A lot of the time, actually, it's a case of communicating more effectively in organizations, being more deliberate around, okay, do people understand what resources or support are in different places or even different processes to actually realize, oh, this isn't a education piece per se, it's actually a comprehension and realizing where is that process or tool when it's needed just in time, rather than forcing someone to be sheep dipped into a workshop or a module online, wherever it might be.

So there's a bit of a tangent.

Does that help a little bit though, around kind of like when we explore problems and build out solutions?

Yes, as you said, sometimes leaders have an idea, but it's not exactly the right diagnosis for the problem, which then brings the question of, are team members able to clearly communicate what they need?

I think.

And articulate it well enough for the leader to know that, okay, you need to go and learn the skill or go to this course because I understand exactly what your problem is based on what you said.

Yeah, I think that's when you get into a wonderful layer of human dynamics then as well, because some of that, what comes out of those kinds of conversations is actually, well, what is this uncomfortable surfacing or sharing of the individuals that are being managed and led by, because there could be some stones you pick up.

And this is where it gets interesting being a learning professional.

You're like that third party who's neutral, and it's kind of like, hey, no returns, no, you know, Vegas rules or chattin house rules, as we sometimes say in the UK, there's gonna be no issue with anything you say here, but like, I've got some symptoms, but what's the cause of your challenges or issue here?

Let's talk it through.

And then that kind of feeds into again around validating assumptions.

And you might have a brief from a senior leader, but it's always telling, if you say, for example, that there's an urgency to move or have an output, let's just use a workshop.

It's a classic example of like, I want my people to go through or experience a workshop.

Great.

How are you gonna measure or validate what they're doing differently as a result?

What's the behaviors or the changes you expect to see in the following two to six weeks?

If you're absolutely wedded to it.

Sometimes it's like, don't know, don't care.

Just, I just want the habit and outcome while action bias is okay.

Oh, spend the budget.

They said we must spend the training budget.

Exactly.

And I understand as well, there's some optics and politics to some of this.

Every organization has its own microculture and dynamics that are going on.

But it's those individuals willing to ask those questions who often will find those innovations and ideas at source around actually we can become more efficient or do or deliver a service better by being thoughtful around this stuff and asking deliberate questions around it.

And then if you're able from the learning side as well, as a learning professional, someone is listening to this or someone in the people space, if you're able to resolve for a problem a team didn't even realize they had, and then hand them back budget, resource or time that they didn't use up and waste, it actually really helps build trust in terms of your roles, being an honest broker and say, look, I'm happy to facilitate in the most general terms of that word, facilitate creating a solution, but actually let's create one for a problem that's a reality for your team.

That sounds all very, I suppose, kind of generic to a degree, but it is the reality I find of organizations and team leaders, they often, there's a bias towards action without perhaps having a bias or a preference towards testing their own assumptions.

And the final thing I'll just throw in on that is, I'm guilty of it as well, in terms of I must think, oh, a solution or this approach has worked elsewhere.

This set of stakeholders, their personas, this would be a great match for what I see or believe.

And you've got to temper that.

And that's as well what I see in managers and leaders is their own experience, when they were more junior perhaps, or they had a really positive experience or a massive uptick in terms of their development in their career, they projects and that kind of unconscious bias around like projecting what the actual solution is to a problem that really doesn't need it.

It's common and it's all good intent, but you've really got to measure and manage that kind of intent against actually, is this valid?

Is this useful?

And is this going to deliver the change and things we need to see differently?

Otherwise, it's a waste of money and time.

Exactly.

You also deal in psychometrics, and some of them...

A little bit, yeah.

A little bit?

Is it okay if I ask you a question about it?

Sometimes we wonder when it comes to psychometric testing.

One, are you testing to see if I should work for this organization to begin with?

And are you testing to see if I do get hired by this organization?

Am I going to be placed in the right position based on the psychometric evaluation?

Yeah.

So I would say for any psychometrics, a couple of caveats.

First is, it's a snapshot for a moment in time.

So often, like when I'm setting one up for some of the ones I'm accredited in, like we do like the disclaimer in terms of the comms or before people complete the paperwork, so look, be conscious of where you're just coming from before you complete this.

If you had a bad day, if you've had a dramatic or not being too over the top, a traumatic incident prior to completing that kind of documentation, it will cast a shadow over what your response, your emotion, your feeling is towards it.

Had it years ago where there's a slight tangent, but where a candidate turned up for a job interview after seeing an accident on the train on the London Underground on the way to work.

And they become so focused on the process that they were like, I want to do this, I want to be here.

And we were like, this is not fair on yourself or like kind of give yourself the space and time to do that and just kind of step away.

So I would always say that in the context of psychometrics.

One thing I would say is managers often, I want person ABC for problem or skill set XYZ, which I need in my team.

What you got to keep in mind is job descriptions and specifications are there to try and act as criteria to assess someone's ability to perform in the role.

Psychometrics are more about looking at your preferences.

If I use myself an example, if I really had to, if I really wanted to, I might be able to carve out a career in financial services.

I don't think I'd be very good at it.

You know, it would take years.

My brother, on the other hand, has a great career in financial services because he has a preference for more of that data led, introversion, detail orientated.

Whereas me, I'm big vision, big ideas, extraversion.

Those are our separate preferences.

But in terms of intellect, work ethic, debatable, the work ethic maybe.

But like in terms of intellect, we're not that far apart, but preference wise, we're in very different spaces.

And that's what psychometrics, I believe, like I would say they can shine a light on.

Someone's preferences in terms of a work dynamic culture, in terms of how a team operates and where that individual might fit in.

I'm very cautious around using them for recruitment purposes.

I've personally never used them.

I've used them in the space of say, say team building or team coaching dynamics or one to one coaching people who are curious to use them.

And the other thing I'd say is they're not binary on a scale.

So I use the introversion and extroversion as like a joking comparison of my brother and me.

If you put us in different social scenarios, our behaviours will change around who we're around, what we observe our own roles to be, what we observe others to be, their roles socially.

So for example, for anyone listening to this now, if you go to a bar on a Friday night with some friends and just grab some dinner and drinks, the way you behave and arrive might be quite different if, say, you went to a bar and we're going to dinner drinks with your CEO for a professional meeting for whatever reason.

I don't know why you'd be going on a Friday night for dinner and drinks.

It's not a fun Friday night, to be honest.

But the dynamics change, even though you as a person, you're still the same person, but your observed role in that scenario and your behaviours from it will change.

And that's why psychometrics be interesting because they can shine a light around.

In certain instances, your responses have shown that you have a preference toward this aspect in this context of the psychometric versus say this other competing aspect.

But again, I'd say that's where it comes back to.

It's important about the mindset and frame you come to with the questions that you're looking at and completing.

And then the person assessing it or teams using it for whatever purpose, they realise that it's not going to be fixed.

So, for example, the psychometrics I've done for myself, my own profile, radical changes over a period of four to five years, just because you go through life, you go through different life events, and it informs your bone behaviour.

Yeah, you spoke about organisational culture.

And one thing you've said is, do you help leaders nurture organisational culture?

I like to think so, but culture is so fluid, and culture really is not owned by a leader or one individual.

It's a collective thing.

It's about the behaviour of the collective.

And the way I like to bucket it, it's like kind of behaviours or actions you want to encourage, behaviours or actions you accept, and behaviours and actions you ignore.

So at all ends of the spectrum.

So I always like to think about the teams I've worked with, the projects I've worked on.

We've looked at and amplified the behaviours we encourage, and we accept around kind of what does high-performing look like, what is a good role model in terms of respective organisations, culture and values look like.

And I'd always say to leaders, you can set the tone.

Your leadership shadow is long, and so you can set the tone in terms of how and what people believe is the floor for the right sort of behaviour.

It's up to them to help you push the ceiling a little bit in terms of where you take that, but you set the floor, and it's up to you whether it's a floor that everyone feels solid on, really clear about what's accepted norms and behaviours and what's encouraged, or it's up to you to create some smoke and mirrors around that if you're inconsistent, if you're not measuring or prioritising the right things, if you're not perhaps showing up in the right ways in terms of how you communicate and operate and lead your teams.

That's kind of making a floor that's more like, I suppose, a carousel at times.

It's going up and down.

Or you want to create something more solid.

So the stuff, the work, the projects and the content, the stuff I work on, does focus a lot around that culture piece and helping leaders in that space.

But as well, there are lots of bolts of around, what does a good manager, a good leader look like as well, the more practical aspects.

Because what I find is actually organisations, especially first time managers and leaders, they've got great intent, really positive intent.

But sometimes it's just they lack either the confidence or the lived experience of having done the more practical aspects, say around mid-year, end of year processes, dealing with challenging employees, dealing with employees who need all resources and support, who they can see of high potential.

And that's difficult because process can be understood, but people, you have to experience it and you have to live through it a little bit.

Constant moving targets we are.

Yeah, yeah, it's the beauty of it as well.

I joke about it because it's just kind of, the organization of working have recently had a tech focus.

If you're coding, you can look at a website app and say, hey, is the output of this what we're coding, is that a bug or a feature?

Is that something we need to fix?

Or is that something, a feature that we want to keep and amplify?

People don't work like that, where it's just like, look, can I just kind of take a coding count on that person?

Is today a bug or a feature day for Patrick?

Do we need to manage him?

Or it's just a moment in time, and there's so much that goes into it, and it's so fluid, which is the frustrating, but also the appealing aspect of it as well.

Yes, that's why you have people who love working with people because of the dynamic constantly changing.

And they'll just say, I like my certainty.

Please keep me away from people.

I just want to do my job.

Yes, of course.

When it comes to learning, obviously, we always say, it's not instruction and you're just standing in the front and teaching, but facilitating people's learning.

What would you say to that?

Yeah, so again, I grew up, to give people a timeline, I grew up in like, how do I gloss over this?

Without embarrassing myself.

I was coming up as a child during the late 80s, early 90s and entering the world.

I was born in the 70s.

What are you embarrassed about?

I just, I don't know.

I've reached a certain point of 42 now where I feel like, oh, God.

47, you're complaining.

Oh my God, oh dear.

Why am I getting hung up on this?

Anyway, when I was coming through secondary school, then when I went to university in terms of those formal education environments, as a point of reference, we had this saying in the UK, and I think more widely, the notion of the sage on the stage, picture a lecture hall with a lecturer at the front with the knowledge, the input presenting at you, and it's almost like you learn by rote and consumption and just being there, being present, and not actually necessarily learning independent thought skills or critical thinking skills.

What has changed, or I've seen change, and I'm grateful to change this, what's drawn me to the industry, the spaces around actually the notion of facilitating conversations, interactions, and drawing from the people that in my youth would have been just presented at.

Now, actually, they're the authors of their own experience and their own learning.

So for example, any workshop or content I run with a virtual in person, they might say, let's pick a number out, like three or four hours of a session for just for argument's sake.

There could be only like five or six slides covering up some key models or frameworks within that delivery.

But within that, there's a lot of blank space and time where it's conversation-led based on actually, well, what is this group here for?

What's the commercial value or change you want to get from this?

What's the thing you want to do differently as a result of being together?

I'm coincidental in some ways.

I all facilitate aspects of the structure and stuff we've got to get through.

What's more of more value is actually you sharing your own ideas, testing your own assumptions, iterating with your colleagues in a community of practice.

That's for me what facilitation, good facilitation looks like.

Connecting and help people curate their own experiences.

The only thing I'd throw in on top of that though is we talked sort of in parts a little bit this around this earlier was what goes into like good learning design, I think, and delivery is a sense of jeopardy as well.

What I mean by that is, people, if they want to read a handout or if they want to go watch a recorded webinar or something, they can do that.

Don't just give them a passive experience.

Give them something that's actually engaging and give them a sense of jeopardy therefore by giving them a chance to put into practice what you're discussing.

And part of that might mean, when I say jeopardy, it could be actually practicing an element that feels high risk, but actually is structured and safe.

It gives them a reflective space.

So one of the things, for example, recent programs I've designed, I've liked to use actors a lot as part of the delivery.

So we might talk about, say, a coaching framework or a certain presentation technique, and they're like, great, okay, we've talked about this.

So it feels like from an academic perspective, this is landing, you're kind of picking it up.

Well, let's put it into action.

Let's move from the hypothetical to the real.

You're gonna walk into this scenario in the next three to four minutes.

This is the criteria or the kind of concept that's in place.

It's gonna be actor in there who has a role to play.

You've got to work through this scenario with them and get them to the point where you've applied the framework at all, wherever it might be.

And having to do that, it gives people two things.

One is a sense of jeopardy because they have to perform.

They don't want to embarrass themselves.

And then two, it gives them a point of reference.

I like to say confidence is like a table.

It needs legs, i.e.

examples, stand up and have a sense of power.

And creating opportunities for jeopardy give people that confidence from the lived examples they have in session to actually do that and then apply it differently when they get out of session afterwards.

So yeah.

And do you think those principles need to be applied more because now we have this global companies with diverse employees and team members, and it's still hybrid.

Some meetings are held on Zoom.

And so if you're a team leader, do you just come there and say, this is the agenda, this is what we're gonna do, goodbye?

Or do you get people engaged and use the same facilitation principles you just mentioned?

Yeah, that term, that word offering, moving people from being an audience to an offer of their own experience, I'm big on that.

So to your point around the diverse groups and audiences, it would be a waste if, say, there's one voice, one dynamic projecting out.

Like I've led teams where they've been based at different locations, different work styles, and being able to draw on their mix of experiences and expertise has only aided the teams we've worked in and the projects we've worked on.

So one of my favorite things is actually to say, look, this is your team, what's the values?

What's the kind of, I suppose, architecture of what we're gonna deliver on and the expectations around it?

So going back to that point earlier, what do we want to encourage?

What do we want to accept?

What will we not ignore as a behavior or a cultural business team that we want to kind of strive towards?

Say to people, give them the ownership for it.

That isn't just like laissez-faire as a leader or a manager.

The roles I've been in say, well, actually, you choose.

I will abdicate accountability or responsibilities because it's your choice, don't worry.

I'll take the paycheck if it's the manager or leader, but you might take all the risk.

But I really like the idea of, so people talk about tight, loose, tight.

So being tight on the outcome you want to get to as a group.

Loose on, okay, there isn't one route or one solution to that.

Let's collaborate and build one out.

And then tight on the measure of the outcome.

So how we actually assess whether we're successful or not.

As a leader or when I work with leaders, I find that they're more comfortable with the notion, okay, I'm happy to be tight on the goal or aim.

I'm happy to be tight on the measures for some input there.

But I'm very, very comfortable being loose.

I empowering my teams to kind of pick up and run with whatever the route, the solution might be and offer it themselves.

That's how you draw the value from working with diverse teams, getting the best from them, I think.

It's the only way to be.

So that everyone feels like not only can they contribute, but that whatever creative idea they have is heard.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Tell us about sneak and the work that you did there.

Yeah, so sneak is, for anyone who doesn't know, first of all, the name stands for, so now you know.

It's like, essentially, it's a, so now you know, yeah.

So it's essentially, it was develop a security platform that provides products that mean, when you're building out websites or apps, the code that's behind it, just making sure it's safe, it's not vulnerable to any risks or say, any leaks or data being at risk and so on.

And stuff I was doing there as part of like a learning team that was building out some of the standard stuff you see on startups and scale ups of like nuts and bolts, programs like onboarding, stuff like that.

And then more latterly, some of the management leadership programs, leading people programs were one of the key ones we had there and some of the wider digital learning stuff that we're trying to roll out as well.

It was a great example to some of your questions earlier around an organization that was diverse, based across the globe, Tel Aviv, London and Boston being like the three initial hubs and then growing exponentially out of that.

During the time I was there, I came in, I was around 400 or 500 people.

It got to 1,518 months.

I just experienced that kind of cliche hyper growth you hear about scale ups.

But the great thing during my time that they held onto and it links into some of the stuff you ask about around culture and leadership is they had a great way in terms of attracting people who are really passionate, high intellect, high expertise, but also very humble in terms of how they approach what they did, which isn't, you can't assume that's going to be the case, especially in organizations that are moving that fast, growing so quickly, but they kind of did a great job of holding on to their values and kind of culturally around how people operate and behave.

I was working there up until around April of 2023, and just there just over two years, four months, I think it was.

So yeah, that was kind of sneaking.

And prior to that kind of different manager consultancies, scale ups and startups and other bits and pieces, and all sorts of kind of different cultural environments as well in that spectrum.

What would you say are the top two reasons they grew so quickly within the 18 month period?

I would say, you know, having a product that's useful and relevant.

So the way I used to frame the onboarding when we first kind of started running was, and this did kind of this evolve, one of the phrase I like to use is, you're making the digital world a safer place for generations to come.

That's what their products, that's what they do.

And it isn't like the official tagline or mission and vision, but it is the reality of what something like that does.

So it's a fantastic space in terms of growth and where the products were helping to serve us as like consumers and organizations within that.

That was the first thing.

And then secondly, it was ambitious and the kind of people attracted and the expertise it brought in there helped exponentially grow out that kind of, that hyper growth or encouraged that hyper growth.

And as an organization, like I said, it kind of tried to hold on to those culture and values, which is very difficult when you grow so fast.

Products in an area that like kind of, we're all conscious of our own digital security as individuals, but all organizations, it's critical to their success to be able to manage that effectively.

So it was providing a fantastic service and then having a bold vision in terms of growth and then the expertise and people attracted to deliver on that as well.

I recently heard that we focus more on processes than people when it should be people rather than processes.

Do you think they also applied that principle?

I've got a theory around with big tech organizations of like, what you have is like coming together of the reason you're there is solely about this, but products has evolved and been built that was built via say agile methodologies, expertise and processes that leads to certain cultural conditions that you have to be cognizant of.

So the ones that thrive and really do well, the likes of a sneak or other organizations you could look up, it's when they combine that process and people piece, when they have a heart in terms of how they treat some of their employees and kind of notions around that.

I think where people say about where process triumphs over people being a negative thing is when perhaps organizations lose sight around certain things that motivate people.

One of the key things is around, are they contributing to something bigger than themselves?

What's the relationship with their manager?

What's their view of senior leadership and the trust within that?

If organizations lose sight of that, trust can deteriorate quite quickly.

And that's where suddenly you fall into the realms of like bigger challenges around retention, attraction, wider performance as well.

So that's as well, I'd say like those features around say, managing trust, having a big vision that people buy into being something bigger than themselves.

And the dynamic between their own immediately leader and manager is quite critical.

What would be your last words of wisdom to a leader who leads a global team?

A leader who leads a global team, wherever possible, if you're making a big decision, take a look around the room.

And if everyone's from the same region or similar region, and especially if they're all from the same or similar region as you, you perhaps haven't got the right people in the room to make a big decision.

You see it all the time in organizations where it's just the nature of certain businesses, where certain GOs or regions, certain execs or leaders get concentrated in them.

What that can sometimes lead to is inadvertent group think around big decisions.

And so I always say to leaders and managers, how big is your tent?

How many people are in there?

And who is in there in terms of representation from different ranks and roles and different dynamics and views?

It helps aid your decision making, but even your implementation afterwards for considerations and stuff you perhaps haven't thought of.

So that's always my advice.

Look around the room.

And if everyone's a bit too similar, whether in terms of role, background, expertise, demographic, have a think on that.

Is that something you're looking to encourage or aspire towards?

Or is that just something you just accepted and stumbled upon?

Because one might be in service to you, the other actually might be doing a disservice to you in the teams you're leading.

Which is the self-awareness piece as well, if they actually do take the time to look around.

Exactly, exactly.

And as well, let's be honest, we get security from the familiar.

Oh, I look around and kind of, I trust these people.

It's human nature, of course, of course.

And I always say, you know what?

It's actually easy.

It's almost like a shortcut.

We all take the same.

We all like conditions for cognitive biases that way, for those shortcuts.

It's just the nature of it.

Human nature for sure.

And what would you say about self-awareness?

It doesn't operate in a vacuum.

Otherwise, that's praise, because self-awareness without feedback, without kind of soundboarding, and I used the word validating earlier, it applies here, validating what you believe to be truths.

It doesn't work if it's in a vacuum.

And so you need feedback.

And sometimes self-awareness is painful, because the reality is someone might help you hold off a mirror to yourself, you might not like what you see, but it's necessary for growth.

Without any feedback, there can be no growth.

So yeah, it's critical in terms of professional growth.

It can certainly be uncomfortable.

Patrick, thank you so much.

This has been wonderful.

I've enjoyed my conversation with you.

Super likewise, and thank you everyone for listening.

And thank you to Kara the dog for not barking.

Appreciate you Kara.

Thank you for being so good during our recording.

And before you go, I believe you have a freebie for our listeners.

Yeah, so I do work with an organization called NACOA.

I'm an ambassador for a charity called NACOA in the UK.

They do some fantastic work in the space for children affected by alcoholic homes.

Like I just wanted to give a shout out to them.

And as well, if you're curious to find out more about them, you could check out their information online.

They're always looking to get more people involved in the cause and how and where they can or raise awareness around what they're trying to do.

It's a massively underrepresented organization in terms of dialogue and politically and socially in the UK.

So yeah, I'm happy if anyone wants to hear more about them to reach out and I can connect you with them.

Yeah, it's just a terrific organization.

Yes, yes, absolutely.

They certainly could use more resources.

And what about Hyper Island?

So Hyper Island, you're saying about the freebies.

I strongly recommend for anyone, if you're in the learning, the leadership management space, check out their resources and tools.

They've got a fantastic toolbox with lots of different activities and exercises you can steal or borrow from.

But also some of just their general resources and content.

It's just very thought provoking in terms of going back to some of what we were saying earlier, testing your assumptions, asking good questions, looking to explore, actually find out more from your own teams.

They've got some really interesting ideas and resources there.

So if you check out the link in the show notes, it will give you a bit more information about where to find out more about them as well.

I'll certainly put the link on the show notes.

Test your assumptions, ask good questions.

Can you imagine how many misunderstandings we could avoid if we did that?

I think that every day just for myself.

So yeah, but we're only human, but at least if you try to do better, you can do better.

Yeah, the self-awareness really does help.

Thank you so much, Patrick Mullarkey, the leading and leadership professional.

Thank you very much.

Before you go, please give us your website and social media handles so we can contact you.

Yes, so my website is biteandbuild.com.

So that's my coaching website for working for e-sports team, some pro gamers and coaching in general.

And my handle really for social media, the only one really to reach out on is my LinkedIn, which is standard LinkedIn address and then forward slash Mullarkey PJ, which is my initials and surname and initials, Mullarkey PJ.

So yeah, come find me.

I'd love to connect.

Yes, I'll certainly put that on the show notes as well.

When I looked you up on LinkedIn, it was the first Patrick Mullarkey that showed up was a very young guy.

And I'm thinking, I did not assume your surname to be that popular and to actually match the name.

It's literally, it's the West of Ireland thing.

So my dad's from Cameroon and my mother's from Amar in the North.

I don't think this bit was recorded before we came in here, but like it's a hugely popular name in the West and it's like, the name means nonsense notion that you're kind of like, all that Mullarkey is like a phrase in North America and Canada.

Mullarkey means nonsense.

This has been fun.

Thank you for joining the Speaking and Communicating Podcast once again.

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