Speaker 1: Hello listener. This episode is a little bit different because
Speaker 1: I'm interviewing someone from my team at Inventium, Ali Sully.
Speaker 1: The idea came about after I published my Leadership Lessons
Speaker 1: episode from twenty twenty four and a lot of people
Speaker 1: contacted me wanting to know more like how bad did
Speaker 1: it get and more importantly, how did we fix things?
Speaker 1: So who better to unpack this with than one of
Speaker 1: my amazing teammates, Ali, who lived through what was Inventium's
Speaker 1: hardest year by far. Together, we pull apart what it
Speaker 1: actually feels like inside a team that is kind of unraveling,
Speaker 1: when trust cracks, when burnout creeps in, and when even
Speaker 1: the high performers start to fall apart.
Speaker 2: It's a pretty raw.
Speaker 1: And human look at what happens when good intentions backfire
Speaker 1: and how you can start to rebuild when the damage
Speaker 1: is already done. Welcome to How I Work, a show
Speaker 1: about habits, rituals, and strategies for optimizing your date. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, doctor Amantha Imber. I'm so excited to be
Speaker 1: chatting to you Ali, because we've worked together for a
Speaker 1: couple of years and I was saying to you when
Speaker 1: we were thinking about this episode that you don't often
Speaker 1: hear podcast conversations where like the leader of a team
Speaker 1: is chatting with a teammate's experience of a time that
Speaker 1: was really challenging.
Speaker 2: So I'm really grateful for you joining me today.
Speaker 3: My pleasure. I'm excited.
Speaker 1: So I want to first start with unpacking the pretty
Speaker 1: hard year that twenty twenty four maybe like a little
Speaker 1: bit of twenty two three, but certainly twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: was for Inventium and I've certainly done a lot of
Speaker 1: reflecting on where I think I got it wrong. And
Speaker 1: I'm also keen to hear from you, like what were
Speaker 1: the hardest things? So, Alie, what was some of the
Speaker 1: tougher moments for you in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: It's really interesting because I feel like there are a
Speaker 4: few moments that kind of came together at some sort
Speaker 4: of pinnacles through the year, and I guess my lowest
Speaker 4: point in reflection I was thinking about this last night
Speaker 4: was there were quite a few people that left in
Speaker 4: a row, and because we had brought in a bit
Speaker 4: of hierarchy at the start of the year, I was working.
Speaker 3: Very very closely with one or two people and.
Speaker 4: Not the rest of the team, So I think that
Speaker 4: had its own issues that made it tricky to begin with,
Speaker 4: in that we were all working as high performers but
Speaker 4: not working together. And I was thinking about this last night,
Speaker 4: thinking about the super Chickens experiment around you know, high performing,
Speaker 4: productive chickens and how they bred them over a number
Speaker 4: of years, but they actually ended up pecking each other
Speaker 4: and not being as productive as the team that was cohesive.
Speaker 4: And I thought that was such a good little summary
Speaker 4: of where we were at.
Speaker 3: We're all just high performers, but we weren't working together.
Speaker 4: And I think when that, you know, we had a
Speaker 4: series of people leave, and the point at which my
Speaker 4: key confidante left, I guess that was a real low
Speaker 4: point for me and I realized how siloed we were
Speaker 4: in that way because I thought, well, first of.
Speaker 3: All, how can I leave me?
Speaker 4: But also during this time, but also who are these
Speaker 4: other people in my team? And I actually didn't know,
Speaker 4: you know, I didn't have the same level of trust
Speaker 4: with everyone else on the team. So I think in
Speaker 4: around that way, you know, coming back to those tough moments,
Speaker 4: had I seen what was coming up, it kind of
Speaker 4: started to unravel for me at that first part of
Speaker 4: the year where we were working so siloed in that way,
Speaker 4: And yeah, I remember so many times where this was
Speaker 4: apparent and at that moment where I thought, wow, I've
Speaker 4: lost that one person. But there were many times through
Speaker 4: the year and I remember each of us working towards
Speaker 4: our own goals and this moment where I was snowed under,
Speaker 4: you know, consulting was snowed under with what we were doing,
Speaker 4: and then the other areas had their own priorities and
Speaker 4: using loop and all of the tagging in all of
Speaker 4: the different tasks, and one day where I was like,
Speaker 4: oh my goodness, I don't know how I'm going to
Speaker 4: get through, and then in came you know, fifty different
Speaker 4: pings and dings of you've been assigned this task, you've
Speaker 4: been assigned, and I just thought, Wow, I know they've
Speaker 4: got their.
Speaker 3: Priorities, but we have ours.
Speaker 4: And there really was no overlap for quite a lot
Speaker 4: of that time, so that made it incredibly difficult as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I look back at some of the decisions
Speaker 1: I made in the first half of the year where
Speaker 1: I had stepped back into a leadership position, I definitely
Speaker 1: I remember why I put some hierarchy and different group
Speaker 1: things of people in place because to me, and it's funny,
Speaker 1: like you can put so much thought into a decision
Speaker 1: and be aware of research, but then they can just
Speaker 1: be terrible decisions.
Speaker 2: And I look back and I know why I made the.
Speaker 1: Decision, but it was a really bad decision in hindsight
Speaker 1: because having more hierarchy.
Speaker 2: While I think it was you know, like I.
Speaker 1: Think it's natural to sort of, you know, want to
Speaker 1: feel that sense of progression, I felt that was necessary
Speaker 1: for some people in the team to have that feeling
Speaker 1: and that responsibility. The unintended consequences were that it really
Speaker 1: divided the team and having the different areas and we were,
Speaker 1: you know, we still are a small business. I think
Speaker 1: we were, you know, around the sort of ten to
Speaker 1: twelve mark, which as a CEO, like ten to twelve
Speaker 1: people is too many direct reports and so there needs
Speaker 1: to be some kind of structure. But I have huge
Speaker 1: regrets about those decisions because I think, you know, as
Speaker 1: you've highlighted, they didn't lead to positive behaviors. I also
Speaker 1: think that you know, what happened in the middle of
Speaker 1: the year, we had a change of leadership, and I
Speaker 1: know that that was really hard.
Speaker 4: For you, yeah, incredibly hard. I think it's natural for
Speaker 4: new leaders to come in and we see this all
Speaker 4: the time with organizations that we work with, with leaders
Speaker 4: coming in and really keen to imprint something into the
Speaker 4: organization very early on, and there can be some assumptions
Speaker 4: around how you've worked before and that that will work
Speaker 4: in the new organization. And I completely respect that need
Speaker 4: to feel value straight up. But with inventingum, I think
Speaker 4: the ways of working were under fire quite early with
Speaker 4: new ways of working with new leadership, and had that
Speaker 4: been at another organization, potentially it wouldn't have had so
Speaker 4: much a resentment towards changing workplace practices. But because that's
Speaker 4: who we are, that's our DNA, it's what we help
Speaker 4: other organizations to do, is to work better and to
Speaker 4: be happier and more productive.
Speaker 3: So when the ways of working were under.
Speaker 4: Fire with things like you know, the meetings culture changing
Speaker 4: to be in line with a lot of what we
Speaker 4: don't teach around you know, meetings going over time and
Speaker 4: not being effective and not really having a real clear
Speaker 4: purpose to meetings and some of these things that when
Speaker 4: you're used to working and I think when you've been
Speaker 4: you know, so intense about the practices that we've put
Speaker 4: into place, that that was a really confronting place to be,
Speaker 4: and I think it led to a lot of people
Speaker 4: being offside from the very go. And you know, it's
Speaker 4: very hard for a leader to then pull everything back
Speaker 4: after that has been the case.
Speaker 1: It is hard to rebuild trust once trust has been lost. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know a couple of things that I found quite
Speaker 1: hard is Firstly, and it's something that we've heard other
Speaker 1: leaders say in our own research and inventium, but I
Speaker 1: had this really acute fear of just like what if
Speaker 1: I say the wrong thing and what if I'm canceled,
Speaker 1: Like in the same way that like high profile people
Speaker 1: have a fear of cancelation. I felt like as a leader,
Speaker 1: I feel like every word I said was just under critique,
Speaker 1: and I therefore I felt like I silenced a lot
Speaker 1: of what I wanted to say, just simply out of fear.
Speaker 1: And I think that the unintended consequence of that is that,
Speaker 1: you know, as a leader, we're told to be authentic
Speaker 1: and be vulnerable, But because I was censoring myself so much,
Speaker 1: I feel like I hid a lot of my experience
Speaker 1: that might have actually been useful for people, which will
Speaker 1: go into in terms of what happened in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: because I felt that was quite a big change for me.
Speaker 1: Something else I felt like it was kind of happening
Speaker 1: before twenty twenty four, but seemed to get a lot worse,
Speaker 1: which I think had a really negative impact on the culture,
Speaker 1: was what I think of as triangulation where someone will have, say,
Speaker 1: some critical feedback for someone else on the team, but
Speaker 1: rather than going directly to that team member, they will
Speaker 1: go up the chain to their manager, for example, or
Speaker 1: just someone else that you know that might be their
Speaker 1: confidante on the team and not necessarily their manager, and
Speaker 1: then you have this triangle effect. And I got to say, like,
Speaker 1: I think everyone of the team knows how much I
Speaker 1: hate that behavior I saw that particularly happening.
Speaker 2: Like, what was your experience of that triangulation?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting because you know, I wasn't privy to
Speaker 4: a lot of the conversations at that time where a
Speaker 4: lot of those big discussions were happening, But being in
Speaker 4: the outside part of the team of those conversations, I
Speaker 4: think there was times where that became a bit of
Speaker 4: a silo in itself too, and a bit of backchat
Speaker 4: around what was happening, and then in our little streams
Speaker 4: talking about things but actually not having a clear message
Speaker 4: up and down. And I do think when you are
Speaker 4: seeking safety in amongst change with which I think we
Speaker 4: were all doing and with you know, we're in fight
Speaker 4: and flight for a lot of that time, for quite
Speaker 4: a long time of thinking, oh my goodness, so we
Speaker 4: were going to be around anymore, what's happening?
Speaker 3: Like what's going on here?
Speaker 4: Quite high pressure on every So I think that's seeking
Speaker 4: of safety and you seek out that person that's your confidant,
Speaker 4: and so all of those conversations happen behind. So I
Speaker 4: certainly did, you know, have some conversations like that myself
Speaker 4: and know that that was happening around as well. And
Speaker 4: you know, I know we'll talk about the future state,
Speaker 4: but I can. I was reflecting on this last night
Speaker 4: around how different it is where those conversations are just
Speaker 4: aired straight away and nipped in the bud, compared to
Speaker 4: some of those ones that were swirling around. Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: a hard one because I think under that pressure, that's
Speaker 4: what we automatically do is to go to that safety.
Speaker 3: So yeah, interesting during that.
Speaker 1: Time, Yeah, it's so funny how the most instinctive thing
Speaker 1: to do is also the least constructive thing to do.
Speaker 3: Absolutely coming up.
Speaker 1: Ali shares what pushed her to quietly start browsing on Seek,
Speaker 1: the moment that began to rebuild trust between us, and
Speaker 1: the day everything finally broke, an ugly cryphone call that
Speaker 1: changed how we work together. If you're looking for more
Speaker 1: tips to improve the way you work can Live. I
Speaker 1: write a short weekly newsletter that contains tactics I've discovered
Speaker 1: that have helped me personally. You can sign up for
Speaker 1: that at Amantha dot com. That's Amantha dot Com. Tell
Speaker 1: me about getting on Seek, Allie.
Speaker 3: Yes, I was on Seek for a few weeks.
Speaker 4: I was very open when we had that final discussion
Speaker 4: about what's going on, and I felt this incredible weight
Speaker 4: on me actually of like it's not me really to
Speaker 4: be doing, you know, not voicing how I'm feeling and
Speaker 4: not being transparent.
Speaker 3: I'm very transparent.
Speaker 4: Person, so I feel like I had this incredible burden
Speaker 4: on me, and I remember that moment.
Speaker 3: I've said to you, by.
Speaker 4: The way, I've been looking at other jobs and feeling
Speaker 4: like sorry, but yeah, it was you know, I know
Speaker 4: that other people were and I thought, you know, there
Speaker 4: was a point at which I thought, potentially, maybe I
Speaker 4: won't be around, Maybe my head's on the chopping block,
Speaker 4: maybe the company's not going to be around.
Speaker 3: Maybe this is a chance.
Speaker 4: You know, there were so many unknowns, and I think
Speaker 4: also I was so burnt out with what was going on.
Speaker 4: There was an incredible amount of you know, we were
Speaker 4: all working very long hours, but there was a lot
Speaker 4: of that incivility in the in the team, of like
Speaker 4: not working cohesively, and so I think at that point
Speaker 4: I started looking, and you know, I looked around for
Speaker 4: something that I had never looked for, which was pay.
Speaker 4: I thought, if I'm going to be this miserable, I'm
Speaker 4: going to look for a high paying, miserable job.
Speaker 3: So looking for you know, leadership.
Speaker 4: Positions here, and I just thought, because I'm so values driven,
Speaker 4: I was like, this isn't me, Like, this isn't what
Speaker 4: I want to be doing. So I think that did
Speaker 4: lead to my decision eventually to stay and to help
Speaker 4: rebuild what I really valued and knew was the DNA
Speaker 4: of Inventium.
Speaker 3: But yeah, at the time, it was looking for direction.
Speaker 3: I guess as well.
Speaker 4: In the I really didn't have any direction in the
Speaker 4: uncertainty of all the change.
Speaker 1: Building trust I know was really important, and I think
Speaker 1: it's fair to say there were probably a few moments
Speaker 1: for you where where trust was built between the two
Speaker 1: of us, because as context, we didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: to do with each other for probably your first I
Speaker 1: don't know, six to nine months at Inventium, and I
Speaker 1: know that one key moment for you was in August
Speaker 1: last year where you were credited in a particular well
Speaker 1: being surveyed the GLWS, the GLWS which stands for the
Speaker 1: Global Leader Leadorship Well Being Survey, and I think we
Speaker 1: were thinking of using it with clients, and that led
Speaker 1: to me just being a guinea pig. And you've done
Speaker 1: many debriefs in this survey. Can you tell me what
Speaker 1: happened on that day where we got together and we
Speaker 1: got together in person feed to debrief me on my results?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I remember.
Speaker 4: So the survey in itself is very thorough and it
Speaker 4: goes through all aspects of work and home life, so
Speaker 4: you know, it's an incredibly vulnerable position for you to
Speaker 4: put yourself in. So I was quite aware of the
Speaker 4: fact that we hadn't necessarily built up that trust as well,
Speaker 4: And I remember at one point when we started diving
Speaker 4: in and you said, I don't know how much to
Speaker 4: give because how much I need to keep my sort
Speaker 4: of position here and that professionalism, and how much I
Speaker 4: need to give over to the survey and these results
Speaker 4: and being open and honest, and and you said, I'm
Speaker 4: just going to go for it because I'm only going
Speaker 4: to get out what I put in.
Speaker 3: And at that moment, I think.
Speaker 4: It just opened up vulnerability for you, vulnerability for me
Speaker 4: as well, to just be present with you with that,
Speaker 4: And I think that moment was a real starting point
Speaker 4: for that really strong trust that then continued.
Speaker 3: To go to where we are today.
Speaker 4: But yeah, that moment, I think had you been guarded
Speaker 4: through that and not really shared openly and honestly.
Speaker 3: I would have known and I would have been like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is just us.
Speaker 4: Now, we're just going to skirt around the edges as
Speaker 4: we all have been doing for six months. But I
Speaker 4: think that really showed great faith in me and absolutely
Speaker 4: more faith in you. From my perspective as well.
Speaker 1: I know that one of the hardest parts of the
Speaker 1: year was when retrenchments were happening, and you know, I
Speaker 1: mean retrenchments are just awful for the person that is
Speaker 1: losing their job. I've never been through it myself, but
Speaker 1: I've had close friends go through it and have seen
Speaker 1: just like what that experience is like for several people
Speaker 1: that are really dear to me. And it's also if
Speaker 1: you're a leader with even an ounce of empathy, which
Speaker 1: most leaders are, it's a really hard and awful decision
Speaker 1: to make. And I would say those decisions that I
Speaker 1: had to make were preceded by months, literally months of
Speaker 1: sleepless nights going there must be an alternative. And I
Speaker 1: know for you it was really hard because some of
Speaker 1: the people involved were people you were very close to.
Speaker 1: And I'd love to hear about how those moments, again,
Speaker 1: like on the topic of trust, that I was able
Speaker 1: to do that consciously or unconsciously in a way that
Speaker 1: helped us build our relationship.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think this was a really pivotal moment. As
Speaker 4: you know, I was in quite a bit of grief
Speaker 4: land this point of time. You know how I managed
Speaker 4: to get an ounce of work done.
Speaker 3: In that moment?
Speaker 4: It was Yeah, I was quite flawed. So I do
Speaker 4: remember a moment that just really flawed me in a
Speaker 4: good way where you know, we've been through this before
Speaker 4: in a couple of weeks earlier, and that hit me hard.
Speaker 4: But then when that continued to happen, it just really
Speaker 4: ground me down. And I remember, unlike what probably your
Speaker 4: instinct was, was to keep calling and to check in,
Speaker 4: just regular consistent messaging and letting me know that you
Speaker 4: were there without forcing it on me at a time
Speaker 4: when I wasn't ready to talk, and then when I
Speaker 4: was finally ready, I think it was a couple of
Speaker 4: days later, whereas I just need some space. But a
Speaker 4: couple of days later when we did actually talk, and
Speaker 4: rather than going into justifying or you know, coming up
Speaker 4: with anything from that you thought would help me, your
Speaker 4: first reaction was, what do you need from me? Do
Speaker 4: you need me to listen and for you to vent
Speaker 4: or do you need me to reassure you and work
Speaker 4: out a pathway forward here? And I've never had that
Speaker 4: before actually from a leader, because in times of change,
Speaker 4: I had always had leaders that had gone away, thought
Speaker 4: about it and come back to me with what was
Speaker 4: going to go on. So it was really different and refreshing,
Speaker 4: and at that moment it also put that back on
Speaker 4: me to reflect on where am I at with this grief?
Speaker 4: And I think at that moment I was like, actually,
Speaker 4: I need you to reassure me. I need us to
Speaker 4: start working through the steps.
Speaker 3: What are we going to do? How are we going
Speaker 3: to get out of this?
Speaker 4: And again that trust that we were able to build
Speaker 4: and collaboration on trying to envision a different future, that
Speaker 4: was really pivotal for me.
Speaker 1: I know that another pivotal point happened in the back
Speaker 1: half of the year where you had a massive workload
Speaker 1: because the people that had left been retrenched. You picked
Speaker 1: up quite a lot of work and there was a
Speaker 1: moment where another teammate threw a whole lot of work
Speaker 1: on you, even though they.
Speaker 2: Probably could have made the time to do it themselves.
Speaker 2: Tell me about what happened there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this was a real low point. I'd actually forgotten
Speaker 4: about it till recently because I put it in the
Speaker 4: back of my mind.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you're right. I was just swamped with work.
Speaker 4: It was the week leading up to Christmas as well,
Speaker 4: so there's already high stakes in getting things across the line,
Speaker 4: and had been working collaboratively and so I had thought,
Speaker 4: we're going to get this done together across the line
Speaker 4: and having looked in, you know, there was a message
Speaker 4: come through that I'm not going to have time to
Speaker 4: look at that. And then when I went in to
Speaker 4: see what was taking precedent, you know whether I can
Speaker 4: help out with that as well. We're all just hands
Speaker 4: on deck at that moment to get things through for
Speaker 4: clients before Christmas, and they'd chosen to go on a
Speaker 4: client's end of year party extravaganza. And I think it
Speaker 4: was two things. It was I was flawed by again
Speaker 4: that individualistic approach to work. That is not the fundamentals
Speaker 4: of how we work together at Inventium and especially now,
Speaker 4: but it had become the way that we were working
Speaker 4: with individual goals and individual priorities. But yeah, the other
Speaker 4: thing was I was just I had zero capacity and
Speaker 4: I was just thinking, what am I going to do?
Speaker 4: I literally cannot do this. I'm going to have to
Speaker 4: work twenty four hours a day. I think because of
Speaker 4: all of the moments, and it was those small, consistent
Speaker 4: moments over time, it wasn't one thing that led me
Speaker 4: to think I really trust Samantha. It was all of
Speaker 4: these check in moments and being vulnerable and honest with you.
Speaker 3: I decided to pick up the phone.
Speaker 4: You were in NUSA at the time, so it was
Speaker 4: sort of this moment of going, I can't call her,
Speaker 4: but I had reached the bottom and I just ugly
Speaker 4: cried to you on the phone and I thought, you know,
Speaker 4: I never thought I would be doing this, And yeah,
Speaker 4: it got to that point and I was like, I
Speaker 4: just can't do this, and you jumped on and helped
Speaker 4: me for that day to get over it, you know,
Speaker 4: to get that work done. But that was, yeah, incredibly
Speaker 4: low point and probably a real reflection of where we
Speaker 4: had got to as pretty much the lowest point I
Speaker 4: think as a team.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember getting that call from you because I
Speaker 1: had taken a week of leave and I didn't expect
Speaker 1: to be contacted, I don't think. And then yeah, when
Speaker 1: you called me, I just remember just just I just
Speaker 1: need to help, Like it doesn't really matter that I'm
Speaker 1: on leave. It's like I just need to get in
Speaker 1: here and help. And also I thought my knowledge of
Speaker 1: the project is different to Allie's, and two three hours
Speaker 1: of me doing some intense work is the equivalent to
Speaker 1: you probably taking two days to catch up. So I
Speaker 1: just thought that decision makes sense to me.
Speaker 4: I think it really set the tone as well heading
Speaker 4: into Christmas for us to take into the next year,
Speaker 4: because it could have ended very badly where I went
Speaker 4: across Christmas and thought that's it for me, I'm out.
Speaker 4: But instead that moment where we came together in crisis
Speaker 4: really solidified what that was for us as a company.
Speaker 4: I think for the next year.
Speaker 1: Today was just part one of my chat with Ali
Speaker 1: because we kept on talking. Next week, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be releasing part two of our chat, where together we
Speaker 1: unpack exactly how we set that reset button. We're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about the off site that really changed,
Speaker 1: the tiny rituals that rebuilt connection, and the moment I
Speaker 1: realized my fear of saying the wrong thing had finally disappeared.
Speaker 1: Make sure you hit follow wherever you listen to this
Speaker 1: podcast to be alerted when next week's conversation drops. And
Speaker 1: if you know someone who'd benefit hearing this pretty honest
Speaker 1: chat about leadership, please share the episode with them. How
Speaker 1: I Work was recorded on the traditional land of the
Speaker 1: Warrangery People, part of the Cooler Nation