Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. By the end of this episode, please remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review. With so many culture changes around the workplace and everything having become more global since the pandemic, my guest today, Zoe Fragou, who is Greek and works with clients around the world, is an organizational psychologist and an executive level leadership coach. She is here to talk to us today about how communication plays a role in workplace culture. Everything when changes in the workplace, how leaders can communicate more effectively. Before I go any further, please help me welcome my guest Zoe. Hi Zoe. Hi, Roberta. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you for being on the show today. Welcome. Tell us a little bit about yourself. You already said most of it. I am an organizational psychologist and a business coach. I specialize in employee training, team building activities and culture change projects. I also have private clients that are coming to me for soft space training or burnout sometimes or mental health issues that are caused by toxic workplace all over the world. Basically, I'm just trying to bring more health in corporate culture. We're going to talk about the other stuff that you mentioned, but soft skills training, which is what we drill more and more on this podcast. When it comes to soft skills training, for instance, Google had this project oxygen that they embarked on where they talked about how the top leaders, I think they surveyed about 10,000 of them, the top leaders, the seven characteristics that they had. were all soft skills. It had nothing to do with your program better than the other person. It was all about insight into others and being a leader and being motivational. What is it about soft skills that is gaining more and more traction in the workplace? I think that what has changed is that we realize more and more that hard skills can be trained and should be trained. But what you can't teach someone is personality. So personality hiring has increased a lot. I think that the more the time passes, the more corporations invest in human capital. So when did you start coaching the leadership, the executive leaders? I think it must have been five years ago already. All right, so long before the pandemic, well, few years before the pandemic. Exactly, yeah. What got you into that? How did you think, you know what, there is a need in here, let me go and fill this gap? Well, I'm a psychologist by training. I also have a clinical license. So I was actually doing my internship in the psychiatric hospital of offense where I was doing alcoholic rehabilitation, but I was always more business oriented and I guess I was always having a bigger interest in how corporations work and how to build a really healthy team where there is no toxic competitiveness where people can actually flourish. And I do believe that our workplace and our work. is something we should be self-identifying with. It's a very important part of who we are. We spend there minimum eight hours per day. So it's a really important aspect of our personalities. But at the same time, it shouldn't be the only. And at the same time as well, it should be a part where we feel proud of and it's easy for us to express ourselves. I guess the more things I was learning and the more I was growing, I realized that there is a gap there. And I felt that it made sense for me to go and see how I can be fruitful and add some value. Speaking of that, I don't know if in the last years it has changed, but does this thing of leave your work at work when you come home, leave work in the boardroom. And what happens is sometimes because of this, we think being more productive means doing more work. So we take our work home. and we do it on weekends and after hours and while having dinner with our families. So it seems like as the years go, we don't know how to make that separation, which now leads to burnout and the thing to be witnessing. Sorry, go ahead. This isn't necessarily though a private problem, a problem that one or two people have that they can't leave work, home. There is in general an orientation towards quantity in society and not necessarily towards quality. And there are a lot of people that don't understand At the end of the day, many things are work. Learning a new language is work because you open up your horizons. So you might be, you know, adding value in a different aspect of your job or going outside and networking with people that also could be work, doing something that relaxes you could be the same thing that will open your door into being more creative or having this amazing new innovative idea. And I think we should be normalizing balance. I think that one has literally flown out the window because you talked about a toxic, competitive work environment. Because we've been made to believe that if I work more than my counterparts, I'm more likely to get the bonus and the promotion and hopefully climb higher than them in the corporate workplace. So we think the more I do, the more my career success, so to speak. Well, it is the old generation standards and how they used to work. Back in the day, they didn't really have HR departments the way we have them today, where they know how to create KPIs that are actual useful and that are actual fair. So back in the day, we used to believe that the one who stays back the more and the one who burns the oil, the night oil, and spends the more hours in the company, that's the person who's more productive. But thankfully right now, our HR departments usually create KPIs that are really showing who is the best and who is the talent. But at the same time, that doesn't mean that the leadership is understanding these new forms of KPIs. Personally, I have advice in companies where, although all the data showed that, for example, this employee is just a really slow employee, that's why they stay so much more than anyone else. But in their minds, that was considered loyalty. And more commitment. Yes, and commitment and that they prioritize work and they really value work and that's why they stay so much. Even if this particular person didn't have any particular results that were better than anyone else who was finishing work two or even three hours before them. Right, so now KPI is more the standard and not the time factor. They should be, yeah. More and more companies are introduced to these kind of systems but as to how they actually evaluate people based on these systems is another conversation, I'd say. Right. A conversation that I think the pandemic and everything moving to Zoom brought about because how does a leader know that their team is being productive when they are home all the time, when everything was on lockdown? Were they able to evaluate that? Well, this should be a very good opportunity to trust your KPI system or evaluate your KPI system or create a KPI system because all you have to support your claim of who's the best employee, if all you have is your eyes, then probably something's not functioning well in this organization. Of course, you don't know who's working. If you're not able to literally physically see them working, then there's an issue there. And you don't need COVID to tell you that there is an issue there. These leaders should have found solutions way before COVID to be able to evaluate who's doing the best work, not based on their personal judgment that can be very easily be manufacturers of prejudice, but based on actual data. Which also it brings in the communication aspect of, so when things transferred to Zoom, did they have systems where you communicate more effectively because now I can't just come to your cubicle and say, Hey, Zoe, here's what I'm thinking. Did they develop new systems, better ways of communicating and keeping tabs on everybody, not keeping tabs to check if you do your work, but their wellness. Are you okay? Are we still a team? Yeah, that was also important. Many new systems were introduced, but it wasn't very easy. I think that for many corporations and many people, this switch and this digital transformation, especially in cases. where it was forced and it wasn't an active decision, but it was a result of COVID. I think that it also created a lot of boundaries issues in a sense that at least before, at one point you would close your PC, you'd close your laptop and go home. But then when you are home all day, it requires a lot of maturity both ends to respect the boundaries that after a specific hour, although I'm home and although I'm confined and although I don't really have anything else to do, I will stop working. because I need to do other things. So it is a bit of a paradox, but many people actually experience burnout during COVID. Were those some of your clients? Yes, some of my clients as well. And the reason was that they didn't know how to stop or when to stop. And then their bosses or their managers also didn't put this active stop. It was very easy to say, okay, yeah, it's nine in the night, but it's not like you're going anywhere. We are in confinement. So can you check his email? Can you respond to this? Have you read that? And as a result, for many people, confinement after confinement, it was a circle after another circle where they were just working and nothing else was happening. Even the weekends, there was no distinction, nothing. Because you're all in front of a computer all the time. For many people. And if you add to that, all the home barrier that existed for many people, like having... for example, a spouse that was also working from home or having children that they had to learn how to use the laptop so that they could go to school. So for many people, this was an extra burden that they had to deal with. It was so much, so many changes so quickly, totally drastic, everybody had to adjust. Earlier we spoke about feedback, leaders giving feedback. What have you found in your work has been some of the challenges that they face when giving feedback, when communicating to their employees? I would say that there are three different challenges. One is that people not always express clearly what they have in their minds. And this can be happening either because they don't really know what they want to express or because they actually don't have a way to express it clearly. Then the second thing is that nobody teaches necessarily people how to give feedback. So as a result, what they end up giving is either a comment or just a critique, but not an actual productive feedback that's going to help the other person move forward. And then the third thing is that on the other hand, many people are not trained themselves to receive feedback in a healthy and positive way. Therefore, they tend to knowing how to filter it so that they can keep what they need to keep in order to move forward and become better. And therefore what happens is like you said the leaders are not trained on giving feedback and if then on the other side this person is going to be offended then it becomes very tricky then how do they move forward? Is that where they come to you for training and coaching? Some of them yes then there are others that don't really move forward. There are others that move on their entire careers, not knowing how to give feedback or how to receive feedback. So they just exist, without necessarily helping anyone evolve or without necessarily involving themselves. There are many, many people stuck in the same loop, where it's everyone else's fault, but never their own fault, without understanding that they might be the common denominator in all of the stories. So I wouldn't say that feedback. or communication or evolution or progress are values that should be taken for granted. These are all things that if you don't actively work on them, then they will very actively or possibly abandon you as well. That's right. Especially as a leader. I think as we were mentioning earlier, a lot of companies may promote leaders based on their technical skills, but they don't invest in them being trained more on the soft skills. Yeah, that's very common as well. And because I also have a lot of tech leaders all over the world that I coach, it's very common that especially in the technology sector that someone who is a really good developer or someone who is a very strong has a very strong tech background, they receive promotion after promotion, and at the end, they end up having a big team that they need to manage, but no one actually has trained them into management. So what we end up having is people that are very good at their jobs. But that doesn't mean that I also know how to lead and inspire or share knowledge. So this is, I would say, a gap in tech that exists still today and tech companies should be taking it more seriously, in my opinion, and invest in this area. Yes, I have tech clients as well and with an engineering background, that was always the theme that they're brilliant but they don't know how to get the information across. you obviously coach globally. When it comes to intercultural dynamics, what have some of been the differences that you've noticed with the cultures? Well, there are many differences in the cultures and depending the countries, there are countries that it's very common and normal for them to just leave to work where there are other countries that they're just working to leave. But the biggest differences I would say is between Eastern and Western societies. in a sense that in Western societies, there is a much stronger sense of individuality, while in Eastern societies, there is much more a sense of collectivism and duty and obligation towards the community. And then if the Eastern employee goes to work for a Western company, do they find it easier to adapt or do these cultural differences create quite a challenge? It depends on the level. If they are going to work in an employee level, they're very, very easy to become the scapegoat or a boxing sack because they have a lot of consciousness and they don't know how to be assertive or how to set boundaries and they want to take one for the team. So it's much harder for them to set an active boundary and say, this is where I am. And everybody else should be doing their own thing. But then on the other hand, if they go and start working in an organization in a manager position or a leadership position. then the problem is that they might be expecting a team spirit and the sense of duty towards the organization from their employees, that it's not necessarily very common in Europe or states. Right. If you were to give three tips for leaders on how to be more effective in communicating with their teams, what would they be? I would say number one is self-awareness, because if you don't know what you want to say, you will find a way to say it. So be sure about what your message actually is. Then to structure your message in the most clear and concise way possibly, many times all of us end up believing that looking smart and seeming smart is more important than the other person actually understanding what we're saying. And this is a mistake. So we always should be keeping this in mind that being understood is more important than looking smart. And then the third way, the third tip is that when we give feedback, it's on the feedback, if it offers a solution. Otherwise, it's just an opinion. So if I come to you for feedback, and they say, let's say, what do you think of my hair today? You can say, okay, so you could have done better. Have you tried, for example, creating a ponytail? Okay, that is feedback. Yeah. Or you can say it looks hideous and they hate it. And I don't know what to do with that. You offer nothing to me right now. I just know that you don't like my hair, but I don't know why you don't like them or what I did wrong or what can I do to do better? So that's not feedback. So give better feedback and be clear in your communications. If you were to give any last words to leaders, especially in this environment, you've got hybrid. I don't know if some are still doing their meetings on Zoom. on how to take care of their teams, what would you say to them? I would say, don't assume, ask. If you ask people, usually they know what's wrong with them and they will tell you what they need. So don't assume that you know everything for your team, just go and ask more questions. And asking questions and being an active listener is sometimes more important even than speaking itself. Zoe, thank you very much for being on the show today. And before you go, cause I know you have a lot of rich information that we can still tap into, please give us your social media handles. Of course, you can find me on my LinkedIn, which is Fragou Zoe, and also with the same name, you'll find my website. Feel free to reach out. LinkedIn and the website. That was Zoe Fragou from Greece, who is an organizational psychologist and an executive leadership level coach. Now, if somebody were to ask you in an ideal world, how do you see work culture in an ideal world? I would see it as a place when everybody feels free to express fully themselves and without feeling judged. So they are proud to be there and they're happy to be there and they can give 100% of themselves. and focus on the job and not on politics or what other people are thinking about them. And you are valued for your work and the outcome of your work and not on how you know how to play the game or stereotypes. So, yeah, basically a clean and transparent context where people know exactly what they should be doing and they're happy to be doing it. Words of wisdom from Zoe Fragou. Thank you so much Zoe for being on the show today. Thank you so much Roberta for having me. I had great fun and hope we can talk again soon. For sure, you are most welcome to return to this show. We absolutely enjoyed listening to you today.