Adapting to Change: Building Agility for Leadership Longevity in a VUCA World with Ian Handley

Ian Hanley, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at With You, With Me, shares his diverse career journey, from failing to join the Air Force to becoming a geospatial imagery intelligence analyst. 

He discusses the challenges of transitioning from a military environment to corporate life, including dealing with anxiety and the importance of adapting to change. Ian emphasizes the need for organizations to focus on current skills and potential rather than past experience, using With You, With Me's Potential Assessment software to help businesses assess and develop their workforce. 

He highlights the importance of growth-driven conversations and relational capabilities in fostering a dynamic and adaptive workforce.

• Mindset is key - Embrace and get comfortable with VUCA by reframing uncertainty as an opportunity for growth.
• Always ask why – don’t be afraid of what it might uncover (read up on Simon Sinek's Golden Circle).

If you’re looking at how to foster skills growth aligned with organisational needs, and unlock the potential of your workforce/teams, please reach out via LinkedIn or via the WYWM website. https://withyouwithme.com/ 

Books Ian recommended: The Irrational Ape, Thinking Fast and Slow, and The Art of Thinking Clearly. 

Follow Ian on LinkedIn: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianh/ 

Thanks for listening. Feel free to follow the Leadership Longevity conversation on LinkedIn as well.
Just click here

Transcript

Dianne Flemington: 0:20

Dianne, hello, listeners and my special tribe, welcome to the leadership longevity podcast. I'm your host. Dianne Flemington, hello tribe. Welcome back to another episode of the leadership longevity Podcast. Today, I want to introduce to you. Ian Hanley, I came across him in a magazine that I well subscribe to, are a part of which is in training and development. And he wrote an article on the strategic advantage of continuous learning realizing the ROI on learning and development. Ian is a organizational development specialist, and he's the vice president strategic partnerships at with you, with me, the website with you, with me.com, which is a people focused in service and Development website, something definitely worth checking out. But Ian's background is super unique, and I really wanted him to share his story with you. Hi, Ian, welcome to the podcast. It's great to see you here.

Unknown: 1:27

Hi Dianne, thanks for having me on. I'm excited. Yeah, good.

Dianne Flemington: 1:31

I think what your message is super important for our leaders to hear is very much based in that VUCA conversation and in the world of Bucha, for those who aren't using that language, Bucha stands for, you know, volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, and what Ian speaks to is a real, personalized experience that now he's moving into a professional experience for others. So Ian, if you don't mind, I was super intrigued and hooked by your story from the article I shared with the tribe earlier. Do you mind sharing with them? You know your version here today of what Where did what was that? What's that story before? With you, with me, where were you and what were you up to? Just share some of that with us.

Unknown: 2:18

Yes, I've had a relatively varied career. When, when I finished at year 12 down in Tassie, I was pretty terrible at school. Pretty much failed Maths, English science. Excelled at performing arts and computer science somehow. So the only two subjects that really drew my interest, so I had a bit of a family history in the Air Force, and I thought I'd give that a go. Why not? I saw a recruiting ad for an air traffic controller, so I thought I'd try and sign up. Who knew you had to be really good at maths to be an air traffic controller. So a fail didn't quite get me in, but the military took this they put you through a bunch of aptitude testing, essentially some personality and aptitude testing. So rather than going in with the mindset of this person has applied for this job, they go in with the mindset this person has applied to join the military and what roles would be suitable for that person. They presented me a list. There was one on it at the time. It was called a geospatial imagery intelligence analyst. I was like, that's cool. No idea what it was. They couldn't tell me much about it. So not knowing what I wanted to do anyway, I thought, why not give it a crack? And ended up doing that for 10 years. Great experience. I learned so much from it. But it's also a double edged sword. They employ people into those types of roles and into into the intelligence space based on attention to detail. Yeah, so high attention to detail, high reasoning capability, spatial awareness and level of creativity as well, because you have to synthesize large amounts of information and that that fit, I guess, why? Now realize, in retrospect, is kind of a conflict with the military culture, and being one of those personalities that doesn't matter what personality test I do or team profiling we do, I'm always the divergent, and I'm always just that little bit further out than everyone else. So spending 10 years in an environment where the way I like to work or the way I like to think wasn't necessarily fostered and I was, I was taught to think in this highly analytical space has left me in an interesting space. When I left, I left with a diagnosis of anxiety, which which was. Once again, in retrospect, I now realize was because I started to analyze everything and go into detail on every minute thing that I would see. And it's taken me a very, very long time, only till very recently, to actually realize the longer term detrimental effects of trying to trying to fit into an environment and do a role that doesn't necessarily match who you are as a person, and actually, the role is probably the wrong word. The role was a good fit for me, the environment and the culture wasn't creating that conflict, and that sort of followed me through my career. I bounced around a little bit. I started teaching at TAFE for a few years in spatial sciences, bounced around a couple of universities, just doing some random post grad degrees. Young me never would have even thought that I could go to university, how I've somehow gone and started a Master's of neuroscience. For whatever reason, maybe I like punishment, and so teaching at tape, I was hired as a software instructor at a leading, leading Australian software company, ended up moving through to their National Training Manager and starting to build a technology adoption capability. So picking up my first real direct reports alongside a number of indirect reports and coordinating between a lot of clients and sales. It was very different stakeholder relationship and some things, some things I did well, some things I did pretty poorly, in retrospect, particularly around how I communicated with people, because I'm such a detailed, exploratory person. And then I realized, sort of after three years doing that, that that I'm a very purpose driven person, and selling software in a commercial environment, or selling training, selling technology adoption wasn't really right for me. So with you, with me, stood out being a veteran myself, with you, with me at the time was very, very much centered around getting veterans employment using a similar methodology to how I was selected into the military. A lot of veterans don't have demonstratable experience or skills that they can take into the workplace. So that spoke to me, and I wanted to be part of it. I part of it, and more or less that's that I've been here for a few years. We've had our ups and downs as a company and and now part of the senior leadership team and helping helping employers, I guess, to just think differently about the way that they select and manage their talent. And now, to to your point around Bucha before, is, how do organizations take a different look at the way they manage their talent, acknowledging that the the environment of working in the market that you're working in is much more volatile, meaning we've got to be much more reactive to it, and we've got to help our staff do that. We've got to help our staff gain skills that are future proof. We've got to help our staff navigate the world of AI and the risks that imposes to both the individuals and the business and we think we've found a really good way of doing that, which is pretty exciting,

Dianne Flemington: 8:47

yeah. How what you know? What do you want the tribe to know about with you, with me and min? Is there anything that we can do to support or anything that's useful for us to know to support what you're up to in that organization,

Unknown: 9:02

yeah, look, I think the biggest, the biggest thing to take away from, from with you with me, is journey is, and my journey, in that fact, is learning to deal with Change like change is going to be the only constant we hear that in every business textbook, every podcast, it'll come up at one point or another. So the sooner we acknowledge that. And if I put my my neuroscience hat on here, we hate change. Humans do not like change, that we're in an environment that is happening faster and faster. So the sooner we can acknowledge that, and the sooner that we can take a mindset that it's not going to go away, but every little change also isn't going to end the world. Stop thinking too far ahead. Start focusing on now. How can I set. Myself. How can I set my team or the organization up for whatever happens next? And that that has really led to where with you, with me landed in terms of skills management is, how do we help individuals keep their skills as current as possible. Because, okay, yes, we've got an inkling of what skills are going to be in demand in future, but the next major technology change is going to change that again. So So rather than thinking long term and linearly linear about about both business and your personal life, it's more about just being present. And coincidentally, that goes back to every psychological textbook that's pretty much ever, ever written. Thinking forward or backwards is not healthy for us, or trying to plan too far forward or backwards is not healthy for us. So stay now, do what you can now.

Dianne Flemington: 11:03

Here's there's some language you said to me once about reframing uncertainty as an opportunity for growth. Yeah, can you speak more into how do we do that? We said change is something that's a human condition, but we resist it. Do you know we? Do you know why? Why do we resist it? We keep getting told that it's a we resist it as humans, and that's still something that happens, and it's been an ongoing conversation for as long as we can remember. Yeah, what's the why do we resist it? Um,

Unknown: 11:41

it's, a, it's a completely natural response to the unknown. So it's your fight and flight. Our flight and flight was designed that when we encounter a new animal, we're cautious, or when we when we encounter a new a new species or something that might be edible, we're cautious about that. So we've got our own self preservation first, and that has not evolved as quickly as our environment around us has evolved. So we approach change with caution, and many of us, like myself, who tend to over analyze and overthink things, approach that with a very heightened degree of caution around well, what are the possibilities, what's it's going to cause, and that then ultimately starts to trigger a stress reaction, and the longer you spend in that space, then the worse off it is like for your whole health, your physical and your mental health. So So change is is something that, yes, you probably should always approach it with caution, because you don't know, right? You've always got to have a fallback option, whether it's in business or personal, you need something to fall back on. But it's also quite exciting. There's so much happening, and we don't know what's coming next. There's so many opportunities, if you're willing to exploit them, when they come across and see where you end up, like when I was in the Air Force, like first when I joined, I had this picture of a lifelong career in the Air Force, and very much got out of that space by the time I left. But then when I left, then I started forming this, this, this image of Executive Business Manager and but what I've actually learned is I find other things that interest along the way, and that's nothing to be afraid of. Jump at those opportunities when they come, because it makes a much more well rounded and I think, healthier as soon as I've started, as soon as I've stopped trying to forecast ahead all the time, personal and professional, I seem to apply it to both and not be able to switch it off. As soon as I've started to really focus on that and really dial that down, I've been much healthier. I've been more present at work. I've been more present with my family. Super important, because I've got a young, 14 month old, my first son, at the moment, so and that's been a major goal of mine, and

Dianne Flemington: 14:31

that's a big change. That's a big lifestyle change, especially

Unknown: 14:36

since, like, the way I think, like I spent 10 years trying to teach me to think in one way and one way only in a culture and and dynamics that I didn't fully understand or agree with. So that change in itself is huge for me. I've got to do I'm. Do 10 years of learning, that's a bit under third of my life.

Dianne Flemington: 15:05

So what are your some of your tools that you're using to navigate this change for yourself?

Unknown: 15:12

Um, what a bit I've been doing a lot more reading, and I know I've given you some links for a few of the books that helped me sort of get started on this journey, and they're really about understanding yourself better and understanding humans better. Understanding what our biases are is very important. I've got a lot of ingrained biases. A lot of them have been developed over hundreds of years of evolution. And understand, starting to understand how they work, starting to understand how you think allows you to occasionally step back and take a bit of a helicopter view back down on yourself, on your environment, on your on your interpersonal, interpersonal and your interpersonal dialog and look for, look for areas and look for things that that aren't necessarily healthy. Look for opportunities to to get out of your own head and collaborate better with the people around you. That's that's really what it started and that's really what got me to where I am right now, in a personal place of, well, yeah, I do need to take this seriously, right? I'm 34 years old now, and I've got my first son, and I need to actually start looking after myself, because all of the warning signs of deteriorating mental and physical health have been there for a very long time, and I didn't intervene because I had goals, and I was running at my goals.

Dianne Flemington: 16:59

So what's been the biggest challenge for you in this transformation

Unknown: 17:07

that it's a good question, I think the biggest challenge for me is to Try and stop thinking

Dianne Flemington: 17:21

yes. Good luck with that one.

Unknown: 17:26

It's to try and stop thinking. Is to try and stop analyzing everything and then and just try and be present. I'll be thinking 10 years back, 20 years forward, at the same time, while trying to do something now, and like some of the areas that I've struggled with in the last probably 18 months, is is the environment the business is in at the moment where we very much need to focus on here and now outcomes. And I needed my team to focus on here and now outcomes, but then I'm off planning growth strategies for some of our customers for two three years ahead. Well, we've actually got to get to two three years ahead first. So that's been really difficult, but also really refreshing. When I do manage to do it. There's, there's some interesting things in behavior change theory as well. That's been that I learned through university, and it's kind of coincidental that I'm going on this personal journey while I'm learning so much about people. But it is about that. It's, it's, don't try and change your behavior. Just Hey, day one, go and change something you actually do have to just take a step back and watch how you behave, behaving, what your triggers are. What scenarios do you react in that that, let's call it an unwanted behavior, and then think about how to intervene, because if you try and intervene straight away, then you can't actually measure your any sort of improvement, and then you can't reinforce that change. So so I guess that's another sort of battle that's in my mind, is that, well, sometimes I do have to let that thinking go, because if I don't, then I'm not actually going to be able to make the change that I want to. And then at the same time I want to make the change here and now I don't. I'm not the sort of person who likes waiting. I just want to get on

Dianne Flemington: 19:30

with it. Yeah, you mentioned the word measure in there, and that kind of hooked me, because when I work with the leaders and the leader we talk about in the tribe, how do we measure these intangibles? Right, when we do transformation work, whether it's with ourselves or with our team members, how do you measure what are Yeah, I wanna, I wanna, I wanted to just go down that. I know we haven't had any preliminary conversation about it, but what are some ways that you measure your difference? Yeah.

Unknown: 20:00

Yeah, so first, well, first thing you've got to clearly identify what it is you want to change. And it can't be something that super high level, like I want to I want to change the way I communicate with others. It has to be something very specific, such as, I want to reduce the amount of times I interrupt people in a meeting, or I want to reduce the number of times I get distracted during a meeting and only pick one thing, because you can only focus on one thing at all at once, like trying to do too much at once same in the work environment, I think one of your last episodes I had to listen to spoke to the broader concept of cognitive I would load. So if we just take on too much, then you can burn yourself out trying to change yourself. So pick your one thing, make sure it's very, very specific, and make sure it's something you can measure. And by measure I mean don't try and stop doing it. Try and notice when you're doing it. So it could be, if we're in a meeting, and say, I want to stop interrupting people, I've put a little notepad next to my desk. Every time I do it, I don't necessarily stop myself or try and correct it. I just put a little tick mark on there, one of the textbooks I actually read, like, if you're at a pub, then you're trying to stop smoking or something. Each time you get a craving, take, like, a coin out of one pocket and put it into another pocket. Doesn't really matter, as long as you can sort of get an idea of how frequently it's occurring and in what settings then stop afterwards, after that meeting, have a look, okay, and then just spend two, three minutes self reflecting on what triggered that, what happened before and what happened after, to try and understand what triggered that. Then you can actually start to re associate. So Santa's very difficult to stop something, but it's much easier to to adapt that behavior. So so maybe had spit balling here, maybe instead of interrupting you, you start to put what you want in chat, or maybe you start to raise your hand at the point, press a little hand raise button at the point that you've got that and that little behavior adaption can then lead to another adaption, to another adaption, until you get to your target behavior.

Dianne Flemington: 22:35

Ah, brilliant. I like the small steps. We're big advocates here in the tribe around stacking habits like building up to that ultimate transformation of behavior change. So that's a really great tip. I like how those get measured. Because, you know, a lot of us work in theory around numbers, especially when we want to translate behavior change in organizations to ROI and so we talk about, okay, so we have a behavior that is showing up as talking over somebody or not letting people share their ideas. And to your point about, just note how often this is happening and being able to deliver that the frequency in which this is not happening now is actually the tangible output or the impact from, yeah, brilliant.

Unknown: 23:24

And then you can measure it, and then you can potentially reward it as well as what's your what is so if I've interrupted people 40 times this week, maybe I'll set my target for 30 times next week. And if I, if I reach that target through the whole week, then reward yourself like that is a good step forward. Yeah,

Dianne Flemington: 23:48

reward. Yes, please. I wish people would do that more reward and celebrate more brilliant.

Unknown: 23:54

Because so much on the negative, we never actually stop and think about what we've

Dianne Flemington: 23:59

done. Well, yes, and when you bring that up, I always think about puppy training, because when I all the service dogs that I've had through as fosters, we're always focusing on the positive reinforcement. That's how they learn, and applying that in human behavior is so true as well. It's like we pick up and move better when we work in positivity. Rather than focusing on what went wrong, I get there's still an understanding, like a noticing of what's not working, but the affirmation piece, I think we miss a lot of Okay, so what's next for you? Like, what's coming down the pipe for someone who's doing this journey alongside, like a parallel process for you. So what's coming down the pipe for you? Um,

Unknown: 24:41

what I know and I'm kind of comfortable with that at the moment. Yes, there's, there's some, there's, there's a bit of stress and anxiety associated with that in like, oh, suddenly I don't have a clear picture of how I'm going to make my. Money long term and be able to support my family. And at the same time, I'm learning that I really like just following my passions, where they go and and right now that like I do have a passion for business, I do have a passion for for people and with you with means a good fit for me, because we are very much looking, looking at what the future of work is, and how do we adapt to that. And I guess my side interests looking, you know, science has some crossover there, but, but also outside of work gives me, gives me a lot to focus on, which I kind of need.

Dianne Flemington: 25:46

Yeah, nice, beautiful. How can with you with me? Is there anything you want to share with the leaders in terms of, is there opportunity for them, or is this, I heard you mention this specifically around working with vets in order to realign work skills with them. But are there any other opportunities that can support what you're up to? Yeah,

Unknown: 26:07

so there's, there's two things with you, with me does now, but they both stemmed from the one thing. So our program around veterans was very much driven by the founders, who struggled to find work at the time, they and they wanted to fix the problem, so they started a veteran recruitment company. They realized, hey, it's not that people aren't well, don't want to hire veterans as that. They can't get their head around how to hire someone without easily demonstratable experience or qualifications. So the easiest example is me 10 years as an intelligence analyst using highly specialized software, doing a lot of data analytics and everything. But when you look at my my experience and transcript, you see someone who filed maths. You see someone with no qualifications from 10 years. And you see a few things. If you look at my job on the website around I analyze satellite imagery, when, in fact, the experience I gained was so much more, but I couldn't translate that, and 99% of the work I did I couldn't talk about. So there's a lot of people in that same position. So we went on this journey of how, how do you look at someone for what their capabilities are, not their experience? Who are they right now? And ask the question, well, can we also predict what someone's could be good at what skills they could learn as a means of giving an employer a level of confidence that hiring this person is going to come with a lot of a lot of good experience, but also With a lot of ability to learn and motivation and enjoyment for the job, and then bringing every all the other traits a veteran comes across with the ultimate answer to that was yes, and that's kind of led us to where we are now, where we got the two parts of the business, where, on one hand, we are still helping veterans, but a much broader range of diverse individuals get into work, try and change the narrative around recruitment a little bit. From Yes, you've got, say, a graduate program. You might be hiring people directly with their degrees, with no life experience, and then you've got your experienced higher who might have education and experience. But this is kind of a pillar of that missing which is the people that have life and transferable experience from from other areas that you can't necessarily measure. So so that that program has been very successful in in Australia, UK, Canada, and is just sort of ramping up in the US now and then, we build a software program to make it easier for people to go in and sort of do that, that sort of, it's what we call on a potential assessment, so trying to assess someone's potential for certain jobs. So that software, we started taking out directly to businesses to say, hey, you interested in in looking at your workforce like this? Once again, the answer is yes. So we've adapted that now to look at, okay, well, what are the skills that someone already has? What are the skills they could learn? What does the company need? So don't think about bums on seats. Think about capabilities. Think about what tasks do I need to do? What skills do I need to do that task? Then you can see if they exist in the workforce. And you can see if there's a there's a gap to those skills. You can see if your workforce has high affinity. Could they learn those skills really? Easily, or is that actually a capability gap that I might need to go and hire? Help individuals structure learning plans that that are aligned with organizations goals and objectives and their own potential and their own career goals. So set those learn rapidly and quickly, because it's based on what we know you can learn well, and when, when you look at that holistically, we start to see an organization that actually understands what capabilities they need, not what was written on the job description five years ago, and has just been recycled ever since, and was written for that 99th percentile candidate, knowing that you're never going to get it all. What do I actually need for right now? Where are my capability gaps, and how am I keeping the workforce as close to what we need right now as possible. So when the next change comes, the pivot or the gap where we've got to close is significantly less, and that feeds into a whole bunch of things at the workforce level. So workforce planning, change management, digital transformation, hey, we're putting in this new AI capability. What skills do we need to to better enable that, so that that changes from a very structured, linear way of thinking about our workforce to a much more dynamic way of thinking that that has the ability to react very, very quickly to changes in the environment, but it also puts the individuals on on a journey where their skills are staying current. There's a there's an interesting trend. Let's, let's call it a correlation. I don't know whether it's actually relational or not, but when you look at the amount of time that someone spends in a job and the amount of time that a skill in a particular area is still relevant, they're trending downwards very closely together. And so So 2030, years ago, you'd get a job. Your skills that you learned to do that job would more or less be current for your working life. That's not the case now, and if an organization is not giving people the chance to to to learn and grow when there is so much change happening in market. If an organization is not letting their people access the latest technology around AI, like particularly AI, because we're all using it, then where are they going to look for their opportunity to grow? They're not going to look internally. They're going to look external. And I hypothesize as a big relationship there in that when people are looking for the next thing, they're not necessarily always unhappy with the work environment. They're probably lacking that growth opportunity.

Dianne Flemington: 33:20

Yeah, it's usually. But the the other piece in this conversation that I'm curious about is the relationship piece. So does that fall into the work that potential software offers in terms of being able to assess relational capability?

Unknown: 33:39

Yeah, it does. It does to an extent. So the platform's based on those series of psychometric testing and aptitude testing. So we're looking we're looking at your cognitive abilities and your personality, essentially. And we're doing a lot of work at the moment to integrate capabilities, where we can not only look at not only look at what technical skills you need to learn, but then we can start to look at who in the organization could you learn them from, who's like going to be the best fit mentor, and try and try and match people to to people that they're going to be able to work with, that they're going to be able to thrive and grow with. The other part of it as it enables a very interesting and purposeful conversation between individuals and their manager. That doesn't happen in a lot of workplaces at the moment. Think about every performance assessment anyone in the tribe has ever had, it's very much sit down. Oh, why'd you do good over the last 12 months? Oh, do you have any evidence with you? All those things, I can write it on the report and and us as managers are generally inclined to inflate those a little bit, particularly in the military. But I. Outside as well, where we're always inclined to err on the side of good rather than bad. The conversations that are enabled out of this, this mindset of looking at people's capabilities are very growth driven rather than performance driven. So where are you? Where's your skills? What does the organization need, and what's the opportunity to help you grow here? What's what's the best way of doing that? How do you learn? How do you like to learn? So let's match you with the right training opportunity, or let's match you with the right mentor from another business unit that that you wouldn't be aware exists. And shifting that dynamic and and some of the performance measures from from very subjective to to much more objective measures of cool where we're learning, we're growing, we're keeping up with the business demand. In the anecdotal feedback I've had from the teams using it so far is it's changed the way they're working and the dynamic with the individuals, because they're having much more purposeful and transparent conversations, and not always easy conversations, because when there's a gap between a skill and the organization's needs for someone in your team, you actually have to have a conversation around that. So, so I think, I think it's actually a much more healthier way of doing it than, hey, I've got to go into whatever system we're using and write someone's performance review against a couple, like API, yeah, couple of KPIs that no one really understood in the first place. Yeah,

Dianne Flemington: 36:49

good. So there's almost like an organic, relational people skills. That's it's empowering people to create just from how the program, what it offers, that's great, yeah, and,

Unknown: 37:01

and what? Where else can you apply those skills? So what other roles are in the business across? So you think about a large, large enterprise like those 10,000 US employee places. Think about how many different jobs they've got. Yeah. So rather than me sitting in marketing team, but I've been working with databases and everything for a while, maybe I want to go and join one of the software development teams. Do I have like, do I fit that role? Yes. Do I have good corporate knowledge? Yes. So why would you hire someone off the street? It's easy to teach someone what buttons to press if they've got the right aptitudes and the right and they come in with the right mentality, right great points.

Dianne Flemington: 37:49

So where do would some of these leaders who are decision makers for organizations they work for that are listening? Ian, where would they find you and talk more about this potential?

Unknown: 38:02

Hmm? There's obviously our website or LinkedIn is probably the best place hit me up. I'm always for a chat, as I'm sure you'll attest to I do love to dive down a few rabbit holes and explore the possibilities there. But yeah, it's relatively easy to get in touch. And likewise, even if you just want to have a chat about my journey and where I'm going, I'm always open to open to that as well. I think there's a lot of lot of crossover lessons from with you, with me as a business and our growth and my personal growth that I'll find a way to share properly one day. But I do, I do like talking to other people and hearing other people's experiences along that same journey.

Dianne Flemington: 38:55

Yeah, that's definitely and try for those of you listening right now, my experience of Ian is definitely authentic and genuine from the place he talks from, in terms of he's really in this like he's he just speaks from this authentic journey for himself. So if you're interested in what he's been talking about, and interested in more about learning from him and his journey, what I'll do is, in the transcripts and the podcast notes, I'll give you links to find Ian on LinkedIn. You'll also be able to access the website. I'll include some of his book recommendations, which I'm not going to call them out, but there's a couple of them there that are very, very interesting Ian, before we let you go, though the tribe is very much about the longevity space. One thing we all share in common is our leadership success needs to include our health and longevity. So we're always wanting to know from our guests how long and to what age are you wanting to live? To do?

Unknown: 40:00

So I've been thinking, and I don't, I can't put a number on it, and I think that's just very much reflective of the headspace I'm in that that I'll take the next thing that comes to me as it comes to me. But one thing I do know is I want to be around long enough to to see that I've set my son and hopefully, hopefully another, another kid, up for the best life that they could have to sort of be them their best selves, and see them thriving,

Dianne Flemington: 40:36

nice, nice. And when you think about growing older. What scares you about it?

Unknown: 40:44

Biggest thing that scares me is is becoming an imposition. I've always been very independent, and whilst I do like having people close to me the thought of imposing on their lines and their ability to follow what they want to do, yeah? That that definitely, definitely a reality check for me going down that path.

Dianne Flemington: 41:20

Yeah, gotcha Okay. And on a final note, who? Who's the coolest older person that you know, dead or alive, and what makes them so cool to you? I

Unknown: 41:31

think I'm gonna have to name two. I couldn't, I couldn't break these two apart. And both I've met through my time at with you, with me. They're actually advises for with you, with me, both in the UK and they've become, they've become absolutely amazing mentors and a good sounding board for me. So the first one, Sally Walker. So Sally, easiest way to describe her is, at one point in her career, she was, if you read the news, one of one of the UK's top spies. Okay, she was the director of cyber at GCHQ, so the equivalent of the Australian signals director or the National Security Agency in the US, the one who do all the phone monitoring and signals. So she was one of the first senior public servants, women senior public servants in the UK. She has a whole bunch of lived experience navigating discrimination. She had to explain why she needed maternity leave and couldn't return to work straight after her her first pregnancy because of the culture there and the experience she's gained through through navigating those complex relationships and the broader workforce management, she's done some amazing workforce management work I can't value enough and the other one so Jim McLeod, He was a rear admiral in the UK navy. Jim essentially ended up being the senior military HR officer for the UK military. He spent time at Buckingham Palace as the as the defense liaison, and once again, his insight and experience and his lived lessons weren't have really helped me along my personal journey with both of them, the biggest insight They kept sharing was perspective. Take a step back and see if there's another perspective you could take.

Dianne Flemington: 44:06

Oh, wow. Well, you just added this on the perfect No, and I don't use perfect very often, because we're all about the value of perspective, and how can we access it and make and have greater choice from so we don't always have to take on everybody's perspective, but having the access to it is super important in order for us to grant ourselves bigger choice and opportunity. So thank you, Ian, that was a great place for us to end our chat today. So tribe, I'll make sure that you have access to Ian and all his wonderful thinking and doing and everything he's putting out into the world and collaborations he's has part of, but I'm super glad you had a chance to hear him today. Ian, thank you so much for being a part of this podcast. I hope I get to have you back someday soon.

Unknown: 44:51

Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure, as I progress, I'm going to learn a lot more, pick up a few different perspectives, and we'll probably take back a bunch of things. Receptor,

Dianne Flemington: 45:03

brilliant, and we'll check in. Then, all right, you take care, and we'll, near future, check it out. You.