Lisa Virtue [00:00:00]:

Helen, thank you so much for being here and spending time with me today and across the pond, across the world. I just appreciate you so much.

Helen Honisett [00:00:07]:

It's a joy to be here. Lisa, thank you.

Lisa Virtue [00:00:09]:

As we get started, we're going to talk about learning to love leadership, which is such a great topic because we know so many people end up not loving it. And we see a generation of going, I don't want to be a manager. I don't put myself in that risk. So I can't wait to dig into this topic with you. And before we do that, why don't you just tell the audience a little bit about you and what your work involves now. Thank you.

Helen Honisett [00:00:31]:

So I'm Helen Honeysett and I'm CEO and founder of Defy Expectations. And we're an organization that helps corporates make good leadership decisions. And we do that by truly understanding what is a leadership issue and what is a business structural issue. Because I think one of the reasons we'll come onto this a little bit, why leaders are really struggling to love leadership so much right now is because they're expected to work miracles in environments. Even if you parachuted the best leader in, they wouldn't be able to actually execute change because the issues are structural, their process assistance, how the organization is set up, et cetera. And we help organizations manage and figure out how to do that because when you do that, leadership or leaders bloom and at that point the teams do as well. Sustainable growth and sustainable results is an outcome, and an inevitable one at that.

Lisa Virtue [00:01:23]:

Yeah. Oh, these processes and systems really do make a difference, don't they? Yeah. Even if you drop Jesus right in there.

Helen Honeysett [00:01:31]:

And that's, that's the thing we think, you know, sort of change the people and the organization will change and actually know the two different things. And actually you need to do both at the same time.

Lisa Virtue [00:01:42]:

Yeah, for sure. Okay. So as we dig into learning to love leadership, we're going to focus on, of course, what can leaders do when they are in that situation and just when they're maybe things are going well too. And managing people, leading people, it's hard, human to human. I always say throw humans in the

Helen Honeysett [00:02:00]:

mix and throw all that stuff.

Lisa Virtue [00:02:02]:

Although we know with research there are tried and true best practices and things that we can definitely try. But then also flexing and being flexible is really important. Right. As a leader. So as we go in, I know you've been known for turning around struggling teams yourself. And so when someone asks you what do you actually do when you're, you're the One dropped in and you are able to turn that team around, you realize it came down to truly caring about the humans, right? And this is one reason I really can relate to you. Cuz I was given that comment once from a fellow leader who I saw she was doing great things with her own team and I thought, well, she really cares about her team. Like, they seem like they're friendly and bonded.

Lisa Virtue [00:02:43]:

And she looked at me one day and she's like, man, you really care about everybody. And I just went, is this to do? Like, I thought that was natural and normal and come to find out, no, not all leaders actually care. So what does that look like in practice for you when you first step in with a struggling team?

Helen Honeysett [00:03:02]:

Well, I think it's fair to say that 99% of people don't rock up to work to suck at it. People don't turn up wanting to do a good job unless they have been so badly damaged in that organization already that they're, they're. What's happened is they're just disengaged or they don't understand or the expectations completely mismatch the market in which they're operating. So for me, the moment I walk into any team, it's figuring out what is actually going on right now, it's listening. Quite often what I found was the people who were in these teams were real experts. They knew their customers, they knew their markets and, and it was their markets and their customers that were a little bit of those outliers. Either they were, you know, high margin, but not many of them, or mass volume and not particularly great margin. But these were markets that didn't necessarily fit the narrative of the rest of the organization.

Helen Honeysett [00:04:01]:

And they'd been talking and talking and talking and talking about what their marketer needed and what their customers needed, and no one was listening. And so just that first step of walking in and not saying a word, one of my first sales managers said to me, helen, you've got one mouth and two ears. Use them in that ratio with your customers and you won't fail. And I found that that's really true with teams as well. People just want to feel as though they belong. They want to feel as though they've been listened to. They want to feel as though they. Their opinion, their view, their expertise, their experience matters.

Helen Honeysett [00:04:35]:

And once you do that, you then get onto the problem solving, you then get onto the figuring it out. You then get on to building the plans. But I can always remember whenever I was dropped in, they're like, we want you a 90 day plan or whatever it is. And I was like, well, it's going to be, I'm just going to sit there and listen and then I'll give you my 90 to 180 day plan once we've built it with the team. Because actually that first bit of walking into any situation as a leader is if you go in all guns blazing or complete jazz hands, it's just a mess. Listen first, get everybody to teach you what they know.

Lisa Virtue [00:05:11]:

Yeah, I would, I would love to dig into this a little bit more with you because I have seen really good leaders show up saying that they listened or thinking that they listened and the team has a much different experience of that. So where you, I know you've experienced this yourself, but also with the leaders that you work with, do you have any stories or examples of times that a leader's like, well, I listened to what they had to say and you're

Helen Honeysett [00:05:36]:

going, oof, yeah, absolutely.

Lisa Virtue [00:05:37]:

There's, there's.

Helen Honeysett [00:05:38]:

We call it listening to understand and listening to respond. And all of us, and this is one of the interesting things where even leaders don't rock up to be bad that the nine times out of ten they don't have bad intention either. But the way we've been raised through school, the person who was best was the one who put their hand up the fastest and knew the answer the quickest. So we have been taught to listen, to respond. How quickly can we answer what the other person's question is? And that has become a way for us to track our value, to build our esteem, to make ourselves feel better. So there's dopamine hits that go with it. It's a little doggy treat piece. And that's how we have all been taught.

Helen Honeysett [00:06:21]:

And the problem is listening to understand requires you just to basically put that to one side and go, my opinion, my views, actually how I value myself here isn't the top priority in any way, shape or form. It's making the other person feel as though they've been listened to. So instead of coming up with the answers, you're coming up with questions that allow the other individual then to dig deeper and to share and to. And that's how people feel listened to. It's not the sitting there going, yeah, because actually nine times out of ten what's happening is your brain is going, I so want to say something. And you're going, no brain, you cannot. I have to pretend that I'm listening. So it's going to sit here and stay silent, nod a bit and it's those differences.

Helen Honeysett [00:07:08]:

Whereas you are listening and you're listening to deepen and continue the conversation, but with a, with a question.

Lisa Virtue [00:07:16]:

Yeah, I love it because here I'm sitting here nodding and smiling. Of course, there's a time and a place for that too. But what you're describing also is this beautiful idea that coaching mindset, right, where it's not your goal is not to provide the answers for the other person, it's for them to self reflect, for them to pull it out and they might surprise you. And I think leaders have a hard time with ambiguity or the unknown coming at them because they want, a lot of them want to control it. Like, okay, I'm going to hear what I want to hear and I'm going to take that and I'm going to control this next step. Whereas maybe you'll discover something that will help you be a better leader if you listen to understand. Right.

Helen Honeysett [00:07:57]:

In defense of leaders, I'm going to sort of say it's not really their fault. So if we go back 150 years to some of the start of the major corporations, there was no access really to information. And I even look back to the beginning of my career where, you know, if we wanted to research a customer that we were going to be targeting, we were phoning up their receptionists and asking what their addresses were. And you know, it was. There wasn't the access to information we had there. And so the leaders were expected to know more, they had done more, they'd been in their roles longer. Leadership was often a reward for longevity and loyalty. And so actually there was a lot around leadership that came with experience of what the people for you who were working for you were doing.

Helen Honeysett [00:08:44]:

Yeah, and you had the information because you had the network, you had the people. That's not the case anymore. I have never worked or led a team where I know more than they do. And it's a different mindset. It's a really different mindset. Yet the leaders who taught me, who I saw while growing up in my career, they hadn't lived to this information overload. I mean, we went through it all together. And so I think it's, I think there is a different shift.

Helen Honeysett [00:09:14]:

There's been an evolution in leadership without there really being an understanding by many organizations. That means leadership is now a distinct skill. You don't become a leader by being the best salesperson. You don't become a leader by being the best engineer or software designer or whatever it is. Leadership is a job in itself and it's Very, very different now from what it used to be when you were literally just skills training and supporting those individuals with a smaller set of skills.

Lisa Virtue [00:09:45]:

You're so right that it was very much who's the subject matter expert? Who does this most efficiently? Let's promote that person because then they can teach and train everyone underneath. And that's very knowledge based. And exactly what you're describing is, especially now with AI and we're seeing all these tools like this knowledge, information age. Yeah, it's out there. The knowledge is out there. People know what they're doing, doing technically. And the leader, what is it that they need to be bringing? Like what is it that the humans need at work from a leader? It's not necessarily this very straight line mentorship, like, mentorship for sure is also needed in the workplace. But when it comes to the leader, this strategy showing up for the humans, it's exactly right.

Lisa Virtue [00:10:27]:

Like that's a whole different skill set. That is something that people need to train for into practice. And it's if you're a technical expert, typically you're not getting a lot of that experience. Right.

Helen Honeysett [00:10:38]:

And I think we need to also start looking at that combination of leader and individual contributor sitting at same levels hierarchically in an organization and being rewarded in same ways as again, that whole concept of you move up an organization and then as you move up, you get given more and more people actually diminishes the real subject matter expertise and the different ways of thinking and the different ways of approaching that we also need. And so I think, yeah, in the world of AI where we've got so much information, ideas, different ways of looking at stuff, you know, we have thought partners, AI is brilliant. It's sort of playing that role of thinking partner. How do we then create organizations which maintain that expertise that they need, but also those skill sets around uniting around holding space, around helping people understand their potential, helping people be motivated, helping people build resilience, all of those skills. And it's actually far more aligned with sort of the coaching, counseling arm than it is the subject matter expert in many ways nowadays.

Lisa Virtue [00:11:50]:

Yeah, we need both of those parallels. I love that individual contributor leader compensation's similar because when an individual contributor is so brilliant at what they do, you lose a lot of that when you promote because most organizations still today, they're going to compensate you more when you lead people and then you get away from the work more and more because of all these other demands and things people need. And then all of a sudden I see it all the time with People that are like, I don't know if I want to lead people anymore. However, I have bills to pay and I need to do this over. I need that consistent income. I need this and that. And the only way I can do that is, is to have a leadership title so that I can get compensated. Love what you're talking about there with the compensation packages.

Helen Honeysett [00:12:35]:

Yeah. And shout out, actually, to an organization that has been doing this well for 20 years, which is Cisco. They have this thing called Cisco Fellows. And if you become a Cisco Fellow, you can go all the way up the grades, but it means you're an absolute master in your field and you'll never expected to manage or never expected to sign off people as expensive. Your job is to be that master. And they saw it very quickly. And it's a very elite group. It's not as though there's hundreds of them.

Helen Honeysett [00:13:03]:

It actually is a really interesting way to maintain that expertise in the organization. Because you're right. If you all of a sudden get elevated to a role with it, the package with it, the compensation with it, the benefits, and then you realize how much you hate it or you immediately become disengaged from the organization. But you're not going to go anywhere. You're literally going to stay there and become, you know, the rotten apple in the barrel, unintentionally. But it's just if you've been turned off the role because you don't feel fit and suited for it, but there's no way out, Right?

Lisa Virtue [00:13:40]:

Yep.

Helen Honeysett [00:13:41]:

That's just going to be demoralizing.

Lisa Virtue [00:13:43]:

Yes. And this is when we segue back to, like, learning to love leadership. Love everything. We just talked about bringing it kind of full circle is when people are mismatched. That's when they tend to not have that love for leadership anymore. And when people see people mismatched above them, they're like, I don't want to. I don't want to do that mistake that person made or their parents or whoever they're looking to. Right.

Lisa Virtue [00:14:07]:

As leaders in their world, in their life. So you shifted from this concept recently of love leadership, which is showing up with love as a leader in the workplace, to helping people learn to love leadership. So what does that mean in real terms? And why do so many people. We talked about a little bit, but do you want to expand on? Why do so many people hesitate to go into that leadership route?

Helen Honeysett [00:14:31]:

Absolutely. Well, love leadership for us was very much a methodology. It was a leadership style, and that's great. And it's really impactful. But it doesn't solve the problem that we're seeing, which is leaders who are disengaged and especially that sort of director to SVP layer where the pressure's coming down, the pressure's coming up. They're really stuck. They've got no support network because not a huge amount of developmental coaching is put into this layer either. That's reserved to the C suite.

Helen Honeysett [00:14:59]:

And so they're feeling unloved, unsupported, and they want out. And because also the stress that they've got, and I'll come onto this a little bit, they're physically, mentally and emotionally wrought and living in a place of survival. So there's, there's a load going on there that. But because we saw the problem was not necessarily yet another leadership style, but actually the fact that leadership has to be seen as something that you want to do. It has to be a vocation. It has to have some degree of desire in it. It's not a reward. Because actually there is always going to be a sacrifice.

Helen Honeysett [00:15:35]:

When you're a leader, no matter what, you're a leader of a team, a family, whatever it is, as a leader, there are times when you have to suck up how you feel and what you want to do for the best of the organization or the best of the team or the best of the family, whatever it is. If you're all moving towards a shared purpose and you're just not feeling like it today, tough. So there is a degree where actually leaders need to want to be in this long term, understanding that we're all human and we all have days where we suck, but. And we don't want to get out of bed and that's okay. But actually we're also really willing to carry on putting one foot in front of the other in those times because we're there to help a team because we love being in that privileged position of leading. The other thing that we've seen is leadership has really. The reality is in most organizations, those who are named leaders aren't leaders, they're managers. They're just very senior managers.

Helen Honeysett [00:16:31]:

They're chasing numbers, they're managing processes and they're making sure KPIs, OKRs, whatever acronym you want to use, are being tracked and deliverable. That's not leadership, that's management. When we talk about getting people to learn to love leadership, this is about developing others. It's about uniting teams, it's about moving towards goals as one, we're not saying goals are unimportant, but it's how you get there, not the fact that you just get there. It's about looking at what could be. So what is that? Horizon visioning. So how do you see strategically where you could be going? Those sort of aspects are leadership. And yet again what we're seeing is again and again people are being, that's being pushed out of their roles to hit their targets.

Helen Honeysett [00:17:14]:

So it's about repositioning leadership for us instead of just going, hey, here's another leadership style that we know works and there's a methodology that goes with it. She let's step back because 99% leaders don't need that. They need to be set up to succeed. And I'll come back to that bit. But be then given a real clear view of what it is that their jobs are, not just the targets they're chasing.

Lisa Virtue [00:17:37]:

Yeah, clarity of expectation. Right. So one of my taglines is crush goals without crushing souls, which includes your own and the people that you lead. So that that balance of okay, we're in a business setting or an organization that has goals or we're here for mission of whatever that is. And there's humans that you need to care for. You know, you can say love, you can say show up for whatever that is that of how you show up for others. And so that balance becomes really off centered for people. So when you've, you've been burnt out, I know this is why times, I don't know how many times I've been burnt out, I should go back and really analyze.

Lisa Virtue [00:18:18]:

Definitely I can tell you a couple times for myself too. And part of that for me was some misalignment or realizing like I'm not the, I'm not the cog in the wheel that's going to keep this thing moving. I'm the one that's going to come in, help with the change, bring up the culture and then I need to move on. Otherwise I get burnt out. Right. So we all have different places that we need to realize and it takes a long time. It takes, it's hard for us to admit that sometimes because when you go into a job interview, you don't want to be like, I'm going to be here three, five years and then I'm out. Now it's starting to be a little bit more palatable to be able to say that.

Lisa Virtue [00:18:50]:

But that's another shift we're seeing in the market too. Like that alignment with the right style of leader or how you show up is burnout. So let's get into your burnout. Tell us a Little bit more about when you burnt out and what you learned from it.

Helen Honeysett [00:19:04]:

So the first time I burnt out, the actual core reason was personal. But what I did was because I didn't understand how to deal with a lot of the personal pressure is I completely buried myself and my work because that never stopped. And I literally found an opportunity to work 20 hours, seven days a week, non stop, plus international travel on that, plus everything that goes with it. That was just. I am doing this because I'm not going to deal with what happened here. And I very quickly realized I had a horrific moment actually where I got home from a long haul trip. It was 10 o' clock at night. I was physically at about 6am in the morning and I thought, well, I need to sleep, so what I'll do is I'll grab the bottle of vodka, sat down and was watching a Community.

Helen Honeysett [00:19:57]:

I don't know if you remember, but yeah, Community was on tv. So this is a long time ago now. I just was literally pouring neat vodka thinking this would, this would knock me out, it'd be great. I'll get a good night's sleep and I'll be up the next morning. And I can remember getting to the bottom of the bottle of vodka and going, oh my God. That happened quite quickly. And then stood up, walked to my bedroom, walked down the corridor, dead straight, put my hand out and realized that my vision wasn't blurred and I wasn't shaking. And I thought, Jesus, I am, I am in a mess.

Helen Honeysett [00:20:26]:

And that was the real wake up call because I thought I was seriously high performing. I was getting everything down that needs to be done. I was. But what I was doing was drowning everything that was making me me. Okay. And that happens in many ways. The second time I burnt out was actually due to really bad leadership. I was experiencing the leader at the time.

Helen Honeysett [00:20:46]:

And he openly admitted in a room that he hired strong women and then. Cause he liked to break them. I mean he was that stubborn. Um, and we were, I can remember there's a room about 24 of us and we all just sort of sat there and went. And Sara was in the room going, ah, this all makes a bit of sense now.

Lisa Virtue [00:21:02]:

And I was, thank you for sharing.

Helen Honeysett [00:21:05]:

Thank you so much.

Lisa Virtue [00:21:06]:

Thank you for sharing.

Helen Honeysett [00:21:06]:

All of a sudden these pennies are starting to jump and I'm now starting to see that. I'm not mad, right? But everyone was in the room going, did, did, did, did he really just say that? This was about nine months into my journey and I started

Lisa Virtue [00:21:23]:

again.

Helen Honeysett [00:21:25]:

I was so questioning myself. And that was deliberately being caused because it was constantly phone calls at 7 o' clock on a Friday evening. I had two young kids at the time saying, I need this by 8am Monday morning. Has to be done. Didn't have to be done when we actually started digging it. It wasn't needed till three weeks later. That's on this done. But it was really, really deliberate and I, I again, due to the fact that I was self worth, wasn't where it should be.

Helen Honeysett [00:21:56]:

And I think there's a lot of work we'd have to do on ourselves as leaders. I was constantly trying to prove myself, prove, prove, prove. And in a very, very different way I ended up in the same place and I was physically, mentally and emotionally depleted. I was emotionally completely numb. I was physically so tired that, you know, but I was still going, still working up those airplane steps. I was still delivering 20 hour days, all of those sort of things. And I think this is one of the things sometimes we get wrong about burnout when we're looking at people and we see someone who's sort of in a collapsed state and they go, oh, they're burnt out. Actually the people that worry me most are the ones going, I can do that, give it to me, I'll take on more.

Helen Honeysett [00:22:36]:

I can make it and I can, I can work it, I can fit in. Those are the red flags for me because that twice when I really absolutely, physically, mentally and emotionally hit the wall, I was still going, you can count on me, you can count on me. I didn't drop a hole from a work perspective. And so burnout was very different and the drivers were very different both times. But where I ended up was very same place. And what I realized was that actually there was a load of drivers coming in from trying to prove myself, which was a self worth issue. But also there was a lot of stuff going. You know, I had my training, my degrees in physiology and pharmacology.

Helen Honeysett [00:23:15]:

So I've understood how the human body's works for many, many years. And I understood the physical responses around our nervous system, fight and flight, all of those things. And this wonderful brain of mine which went, oh no, it's just far too simple. You know what they're telling you to do, to manage your nervous system and actually set yourselves up for success. It's far too simple, therefore it won't work. Yes, this is a lovely trick that our brain likes to do.

Lisa Virtue [00:23:42]:

Yeah.

Helen Honeysett [00:23:42]:

So whilst both times when I was in that sort of state of oh my God, this is where I Am and I need to now start backing up and doing something. I then went into this frenzy of trying to find everything I could to cure myself in inverted comments to, you know, sort of find all the productivity hacks to make myself better because I was the one that was wrong, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But actually what I really just needed to do is go back to the simplicity of this human body, which we're all in, and just accept it for what it is, but also accept the power that it has to cure itself, to heal itself, to manage itself, to regulate itself, and give in to some of that simplicity. And so for me, when it comes to learning to love leadership in a way that doesn't crush your soul, as you say, crush your goals, don't crush your soul, is actually A, making sure that you value and worthy your soul first, but B, then just the little micro practices that you can do every day to set yourself up for success actually makes you more loving, more open, more able to hold space for others and listen to them and engage with them. You know, your brain is more online, so you're more focused, you can deliver more. You can get so much more done in a day just by really simply understanding how all of this works, rather than I'm sort of waving my hands over my body, how our body works, rather than just the bit between our ears, which is the thing that we worry about the most.

Lisa Virtue [00:25:13]:

You also just described the hardest thing of life, but I'll say also in business is to keep things simple or to simplify down. Steve Jobs has a beautiful quote around that too. Simplicity is key, right? So everything you said just resonates. I come from an athletic management background and working with athletes and coaches of athletes. And when I started in this space, I was like, it's all the same, the mindset and the mind body connection. I was like, we are running. This is why there's so many sports analogies in the workplace, right? Like, it literally can be a sport if you let it and it can feel very competitive, right? And so, yeah, that mind body connection's so key.

Helen Honeysett [00:25:53]:

But it's quite interesting. I was talking to another individual who's just come out of 18 years coaching elite athletes in the, in Europe. And he said, but the difference is he's just moved into executive coaching. He said, the big difference is that I'm seeing is soccer players are expected to shine for 90 minutes at the weekend and maybe for 90 minutes again during the week. But executives are meant to shine for a hundred hours a week. Yep, we're Just that expectation of what is performance. So the other thing that we're trying to do with leaders is really get them to understand what are the critical areas of performance, where do they have to perform. Whereas where the.

Helen Honeysett [00:26:33]:

Can they just take their foot off the gas a little bit and be at 60%? Yes.

Lisa Virtue [00:26:37]:

And where, where do you practice? Because that's the other difference, right? Athletes, they're practicing, they're working out, then they show up to this. I love this analogy because it's so true. Like athletes, that is their work is the practice, the nutrition, the body work we've done. And so we talk about self care for people and it gets, you know, oh, the bubble bath is not self care. Oh, we need to stop talking about these things. Well, there is a very foundational level to your point of like caring for your human body is what makes the mind and the performance at its peak. And so we do need to, and I would love organizations to see this for leaders where they can, especially those director like again, executives, sometimes there's executive benefits, there's different kind of things we apply to that level. So we allow that to happen where it's like, okay, they're going to go take their time for their massage or whatever where it is.

Lisa Virtue [00:27:34]:

But the leaders that are in the thick of it, we don't set them up for success with budgets. We don't give them the time in the day. Right. You're see, you're shaking your head like you see this too, where we are missing a big component of what people

Helen Honeysett [00:27:48]:

need because what we've decided is leadership is a brain sport. And there is this weird disconnect that seems to happen when we're looking at our leaders down an organization that, you know, actually it's those who, it's all about brightness, intelligence, seeing things differently, thinking differently. But actually what we see is, I was talking to another person, they were like, talk about the freshman 15 and then you get the leadership 25. But that's a major red flag. Or a leader's not sleeping very well. Major red flag, too much coffee, major red flag, going to the bar every evening. All of these little compensationary things that we do to give ourselves a break sometimes actually we should be worrying about them more because those are stress indicators on our bodies. And we seem to spend so much time thinking we've got to get our brains working.

Helen Honeysett [00:28:46]:

But it's our body that dictates whether our brain's online or not. If we're in fight or flight, which is a body response, our brain's off because our brain's just worrying about getting oxygen to the muscles so we can run or fight. You know, it's not sitting there thinking, going, I wonder what my strategy will look like in seven and a half years time. But we sort of confuse this. We just go, right, get everyone's brain's okay, we look after the mental health, but what about the physical and emotional piece? Because they are far more somatic so in the body than they are in the brain. And again, I think when it comes to learning to love leadership, learning how to figure all of that out for yourself and then teach it to others is a game changer.

Lisa Virtue [00:29:28]:

Yeah. So. And this is why, of course, the work that you and I do is so impactful and why so many executive coaches have been gone into the somatic work and understanding that connection because it works for people, it really helps them. Right. So as someone's thinking about, do I take that promotion? Should I leadership for me, right? Maybe they've been a subject matter expert and they've. I'll give an example of myself where I, there's times I'll even go away from leadership. I'm like, no, I'm just going to focus over here, I'm going to do this, become subject matter expert. And then this leadership pull happens.

Lisa Virtue [00:30:04]:

Right. I was working for a startup as a coach and I was leading the coaches and training them and then it was, we're going to be a product and we want you to lead this team. Like, no, I want to coach. So some of us, we kind of get pulled into these different leadership opportunities. Whether it's right or wrong, decide and if someone is looking like, do I do this or am I going to burn out like these other people, what should they be considering?

Helen Honeysett [00:30:27]:

So for me, and it comes down to that pull thing as well, if you're fascinated by humans, as long as you're also fascinated by yourself, success, you will be a great leader. If you're fascinated by selling, if you're fascinated by engineering, you'll be a great salesperson or an engineer. It's where your fascination lies. Ruth Wizardspoon recently on Instagram said, don't follow your dreams, follow your talents.

Lisa Virtue [00:30:53]:

I saw that.

Helen Honeysett [00:30:54]:

I thought that was really interesting because I just thought, actually that's a really good lesson. If your talent is getting people to open up to you, if your talent is getting people to talk because you're fascinated by them and you ask the right questions, you'll be a great leader. But don't think that that means that you're not leading yourself, because actually leadership is about role modeling. So leading yourself first so that you can then lead others. But I do think if people just make you go, I just want to learn more, then step into those leadership roles. It's, you know, if it's a circuit board that makes you do that, sit with the circuit board, if it's salesforce that makes you do that, carry on there. But, you know, sort of find those things that fascinate you. And I think that's when we start to see leadership become a skill set all of its own.

Helen Honeysett [00:31:43]:

And then we get people who are great leaders as leaders, and those who are great salespeople, engineers, scientists, whatever it is in those roles. And that way we'll end up valuing both equally.

Lisa Virtue [00:31:54]:

Love it. Okay, I have to pick your brain on AI and the future really quick before we wrap up, because when you were talking, it reminded me a professor recently who digs into organization development research said, well, you know, the next round of supervision at the workplace is going to be robots. Robots will be your supervisor. And I went just like stab in the heart of just. That is not. That's the last thing people need. Right. In my opinion.

Lisa Virtue [00:32:19]:

And I am a firm believer that humans need humans to support them at work. I, I think that we're getting it wrong if we're going down that road completely. Now, of course, there's tasks and things like your timesheet, literally supervising the floor, watching things like, sure, that can be handled probably in a different way to allow the humans to evolve the leadership and be more caring and stuff. I'm curious where you're sitting in this space. So put your futurist hat on for me and thinking about the future of leadership. What does it look like in a practical sense? But also you can talk about your ideal world like, where are you? Where are you thinking about this?

Helen Honeysett [00:32:57]:

So again, for me, it's that split between, yes, there will be AI, robot managers and supervisors, but an AI or a robot cannot lead. So it's that split. But also leaders who use AI will replace leaders who don't. But leaders who use AI but cannot engage and lead humans will be replaced by leaders who use AI and can engage with humans. So it's a case of a truly understanding what we mean by leadership. And again, a lot of that sits into the bucket of management, actually. And I think having AI really track metrics such a better use than wasting really good human value on that. So I'm actually all up for that.

Helen Honeysett [00:33:41]:

I'm all up for a huge amount of the management tasks being outsourced. So if I never have to sign off expense report again, yay. If I never had to approve someone's annual leave, if it fits in with all the policies, yay. So there's absolutely bits of management that I think will be taken over. But no matter how good AI gets, is it going to be able to look another human in the eye and spot their potential that they're too scared to admit to themselves? Is it going to be able to deal with somebody who's just lost a parent in the workplace and is struggling with dealing with that grief at home? Because they're having to deal with the grief of their children as well and is using work as a safe place to be, but is really struggling. They're not. That is where humans will maintain ownership of leadership. But I'm all up for management being outsourced.

Lisa Virtue [00:34:33]:

Great tool for a lot of tasks and administration. And, yeah, if it's policy specific and you need something to make a decision on policy, great. And if you meet a heart and a soul and compassion for our humans, let's keep it with the humans.

Helen Honeysett [00:34:47]:

Right.

Lisa Virtue [00:34:48]:

That's what we're beautiful at.

Helen Honeysett [00:34:49]:

And hear what's not being said.

Lisa Virtue [00:34:51]:

Mm.

Helen Honeysett [00:34:51]:

Yep.

Lisa Virtue [00:34:52]:

Yeah. That's what AI can't do. Yeah. Intuition, gut instinct.

Helen Honeysett [00:34:56]:

Yeah.

Lisa Virtue [00:34:56]:

I love it. All right, Helen, thank you so much for this conversation. It's been incredible. How can people get ahold of you? And what else do you want to share with the audience before we wrap up?

Helen Honeysett [00:35:05]:

So, first thing I would say is, I know there's a lot of people out there who look up an organization and go, I don't want to be that. I'm starting to see it now with leaders coming into more junior leadership positions where they're, like, quite happy now. I don't want to move up an organization and I'm sitting there going, but

Lisa Virtue [00:35:22]:

you're really good at this.

Helen Honeysett [00:35:24]:

But, you know, sort of, it's not my job to force someone into something they don't want to do, but do. Separate out the tasks of management from leadership and see if leadership is something you'll be interested in. Because that is so key. People can find me on LinkedIn. Helen Honeyset. There aren't many of us out there. I may be the only one. It's a lot of me.

Helen Honeysett [00:35:43]:

If you Google me or you can find me at defyexpectations.co.uk, which is the company I work with and run.

Lisa Virtue [00:35:51]:

Lovely. Thank you so much for your time today.

Helen Honeysett [00:35:53]:

Not at all. It's been a real pleasure, Lisa. Thank you.