Rather than trying to "fix" people or show them rungs on a ladder, social mobility comes from recognising individuals, giving them psychological safety, and allowing them to fulfil their own potential.

Diverse workplaces thrive not because of tokenistic inclusion efforts, but because different voices at the table lead to better outcomes and more successful organisations.

Dan and Pia are joined by Arad Reisberg, Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor at Brunel University of London, campaigner for social justice and social mobility, and co-founder of the Social Mobility Leaders Forum.

Three reasons to listen

• Reframe your understanding of social mobility as social justice, focusing on creating opportunities for people to fulfil their potential rather than just climbing career ladders
• Create an environment where people feel comfortable being their authentic selves by asking powerful questions and actively listening
• Build more diverse, successful teams by recognising that different voices at the table lead to better outcomes, challenging conventional thinking about "hiring for fit"

Episode highlights

• [00:09:32] What is social mobility?
• [00:15:24] How social mobility helps business
• [00:18:59] How to implement social mobility in your organisation
• [00:26:31] Arad's media recommendation
• [00:29:43] Takeaways from Dan and Pia

Links

• Connect with Arad via LinkedIn
• Arad’s media recommendations: the Inward trilogy by Yung Pueblo:
  1. Inward
  2. Clarity & Connection
  3. The Way Forward
• Track and improve your team performance with Squadify
• Leave us a voice note

Restaurant franchises can be powerful environments for leadership development, especially for young people. When managed with intentionality, these seemingly entry-level jobs can provide significant opportunities for personal growth, skill development, and career advancement.

Melissa Nuttall, along with her partner, is the franchisee of a quick service restaurant in New Zealand. In this conversation with Pia and Dan, she lays out how good customer service and continuous training create positive work cycles that benefit both employees and customers.

Three reasons to listen

• Achieve broader business goals while reducing cognitive load on staff
• Develop young team members into capable leaders through progressive responsibility
• Create safe spaces for growth regardless of employees’ long-term career plans

Episode highlights

• [00:08:38] Helping the next generation of leaders
• [00:14:21] Turning a culture around
• [00:18:23] Creating a stable launchpad for new careers
• [00:24:38] Leading with kindness and humility
• [00:27:58] Be mindful of your leadership shadow
• [00:29:20] Mel's media recommendation
• [00:30:11] Takeaways from Pia and Dan

Links

• Connect with Melissa via LinkedIn
• Track and improve your team performance with Squadify
• Leave us a voice note

While many teams focus on building trust to improve performance, it's actually clarity that needs to be addressed first.

Research shows that teams need clear roles, goals and processes before they can effectively build trust and collaborate. This represents a significant shift from traditional thinking about team development, and the data shows that improving clarity drives up trust results, whilst working directly on trust doesn't impact clarity scores.

In this episode, Squadify’s Chief Data Officer, Juliet Owen re-joins Dan and Pia to discuss the role clarity plays in driving team performance.

This episode will help you

• Build team trust by first establishing clarity around roles, goals and processes rather than focusing directly on trust-building exercises
• Create effective one-page team documents that capture why the team exists, their collective goals, and non-negotiable behaviours
• Drive better team performance by shifting from individual KPIs to collective team goals that encourage collaboration rather than competition

Episode highlights

• [00:09:34] How teams are coping with change today
• [00:15:30] What we mean by trust
• [00:20:03] The trust gap
• [00:26:29] Case studies on building trust
• [00:33:12] What can you do?
• [00:34:59] Pia and Juliet's media recommendations
• [00:37:24] Takeaways from Pia and Dan

Links

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, by Patrick Lencioni
• You Can’t Ask That – Pia’s mdia recommendation
• The Ministry of Time, by Kaliane Bradley
• Connect with Juliet via LinkedIn
• Track and improve your team performance with Squadify
• Leave us a voice note

Humans are crucial to AI adoption. While AI technology continues to advance, its effective implementation in business depends on people working with it rather than being replaced by it.

Inclusive AI means finding the right balance between technological advancement and human insight, rather than seeing AI as a simple push-button solution to complex knowledge work.

Susi O’Neill is a consultant, author, and speaker on frontier technology. She helps organisations implement AI effectively, analyses AI trends, and distills insights in her newsletter.

Three reasons to listen

• To move past the hype and see how humans will continue to be essential in an AI-enhanced workplace
• To start implementing an effective approach to AI adoption in your organisation
• To develop a more balanced perspective on technological change than the one propagated by Silicon Valley

Episode highlights

• [00:05:19] The nebulous nature of AI
• [00:11:17] Change is the constant
• [00:16:06] The falacy of the competetive advantage
• [00:18:16] Inclusive AI
• [00:26:18] How do we use AI responsibly?
• [00:29:05] Squadify's AI governance
• [00:33:06] Take your first step into AI
• [00:37:41] Suzi's media recommendations
• [00:40:32] Takeaways from Dan and Pia

Links

• Track and improve your team performance with Squadify
• Leave us a voice note
• Connect with Suzi via LinkedIn
• Rethinking the Hype Cycle – Suzi’s newsletter
• Women Leaders in Tech Outpace Men Counterparts in Generative AI Adoption
• Channel 4 Corporate AI Principles
• Supremacy, by Parmy Olson
• Threads (1984)
• Offal

Leaders who are respected are 12x more likely to be seen as effective than those who are simply liked. This is because respect is tied to competence, fairness, and consistency.

Respect in leadership isn't about titles or status, but about treating team members as capable adults rather than children. This helps avoid learned helplessness among teams, and creates environments where people feel safe to take risks, speak up, and even fail without fear of punishment.

Robyn Djelassi is a Chief People Officer, non-executive director, and coach. She runs her own HR consultancy working with organisations across Australia, with a focus on helping organisations achieve business results through their people.

Her approach to HR is a little different from the warm-and-fuzzy cliché that has permeated the industry, but is done with heart.

Robyn’s ADULTS leadership framework

• A: Accountability over approval. Don’t lead to be liked; lead to be trusted.
• D: Debrief, don’t rescue. When mistakes happen, resist fixing them for your team.
• U: Uncomfortable is useful. Don’t smooth the edges; people grow through the stretch.
• L: Let go of control. Ask “Have I made it clear what success looks like?”
• T: Trust before proof. Trust people before they’ve earned it.
• S: Say less, ask more. Use questions to help people think for themselves.

Episode highlights

• [00:09:03] What new leaders think leadership is
• [00:10:37] The "cool mum" approach to leadership
• [00:14:12] What we mean when we talk about respect
• [00:15:39] We're getting psychological safety wrong
• [00:20:07] Findings from Google's Project Aristotle
• [00:23:43] How to garner respect as a new leader
• [00:24:39] Robyn's ADULTS framework
• [00:30:32] Robyn's media recommendation
• [00:31:57] Takeaways from Pia and Dan

Links

• Connect with Robyn via LinkedIn
• We Used to be Journos – Robyn’s podcast recommendation
• Track and improve your team performance with Squadify
• Leave us a voice note

Too many "best places to work" lists focus on performative, low-cost perks like free breakfasts and dog-friendly offices. But they ignore fundamental issues like fair pay, reasonable working hours, and meaningful parental leave.

Companies often use marketing language to make minimal benefits sound impressive, like claiming "enhanced parental leave" when they're barely exceeding the statutory minimum. This creates a disconnect between how organisations present themselves and the actual employee experience.

Amy Wilson is a commercial consultant advisor, with a background in marketing, who helps companies grow and founders focus on what matters. She mentors young and underrepresented founders, and she joins Dan and Pia to discuss her LinkedIn post critiquing The Times’ Best “Places to Work" list.

Three reasons to listen

• To be mindful of performative workplace benefits that don't actually improve employee experience
• To identify misleading claims about "enhanced" benefits that barely exceed statutory minimums
• To understand how organisational silos and conflicting KPIs lead to workplace policies that prioritise appearance over substance

Episode highlights

• [00:06:48] What constitutes a good place to work?
• [00:10:55] Amy's response to the New York Times Best Business to Work article
• [00:17:09] Allies in name only
• [00:22:14] Why aren't companies doing the right thing?
• [00:25:27] Are things getting worse?
• [00:26:39] What can we do about it?
• [00:33:20] Amy's media recommendation
• [00:36:08] Takeaways from Dan and Pia

Links

• Connect with Amy via LinkedIn
• Amy’s response to the Sunday Times Besst Places to Work article
• Halt and Catch Fire – Amy’s TV recommendation
• Building a thriving culture from the outside in – Episode 58, with Tom Wedge and Marcus Swalwell
• Track and improve your team performance with Squadify
• Leave us a voice note

Effective change management hinges on the quality of our conversations. Asking questions can be an exertion of power, so motivational interviewing seeks to bring clarity and ensure information is shared in a way that respects the recipient's readiness to receive it.

Jeffrey Wetherhold is a change management professional who helps organisations and teams navigate difficult changes. He specialises in motivational interviewing and uses this approach to help teams have more effective conversations during periods of change.

Three reasons to listen

• To learn how to structure change-focused conversations
• To help you make more effective affirmations instead of offering general praise
• To learn how to share information more effectively, to ensure others are ready to receive and engage with it

Episode highlights

• [00:07:17] Motivational interviewing
• [00:10:28] Making specific affirmations
• [00:12:48] Ask, offer, ask
• [00:15:26] When to ask questions
• [00:19:23] How to become a better listener
• [00:21:19] Fitting motivational interviewing into existing skillsets
• [00:22:46] Busynesss overriding business
• [00:28:22] Guiding, influencing, or leading conversations
• [00:31:28] Reflect more, ask less
• [00:32:58] Dan's media recommendations
• [00:35:11] Takeaways from Pia and Dan

Links

• Connect with Jeff via LinkedIn
• Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, by David Silverman, Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, & Chris Fussell
• Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference, by Rutger Bregman
• Track and improve your team performance with Squadify
• Leave us a voice note

The “traditional” understanding of hybrid working is being challenged as organisations try to implement more structured approaches, creating friction with employees who developed their own interpretations of what hybrid working means during the pandemic.

Matthew Davis is an associate professor at the University of Leeds. He specialises in organisational and business psychology, with extensive research experience in workplace environments. He researches and consults on hybrid work patterns, and studies how companies are adapting their workspaces and practices.

Three reasons to listen

• To understand different generational perspectives on hybrid work, from senior leaders pushing for office returns to younger workers concerned about isolation and development opportunities
• To navigate the evolving definition of hybrid work and how it varies across organisations
• To better grasp how employee choice and control over both where and when to work has become central to how workers define hybrid arrangements

Episode highlights

• [00:11:54] What is"hybrid working"?
• [00:17:14] Is hybrid always a positive?
• [00:23:39] What do workers want?
• [00:24:31] Hybrid's benefits for inclusion
• [00:27:28] What hybrid is missing
• [00:30:57] Caveats on returning to the office
• [00:37:23] Matthew's guiding principle
• [00:40:50] Matthew's media recommendation
• [00:42:10] Takeaways from Dan and Pia

Links

• Connect with Matthew via LinkedIn
• The Prophet and the Idiot, by Jonas Jonasson
• Track and improve your team performance with Squadify
• Leave us a voice note