LIVE EPISODE live-04 · 19 June 2026 · 1:08:11
LIVE! Can Cultural Intelligence actually improve performance at work? With Polly Collingridge and Bernadette Thompson OBE
Featuring Polly Collingridge
LIVE! Can Cultural Intelligence actually improve performance at work? With Polly Collingridge and Bernadette Thompson OBE
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Welcome to the LinkedIn Live on Cultural Intelligence
What CQ actually is — the four pillars: Drive, Knowledge, Strategy, Action
Why CQ matters in complex organizations (and the post-COVID NHS reality)
interview#cultural-intelligence#organizational-culture#nhs#post-covid
Is CQ something you have or something you learn?
CQ is not finger-pointing — it's everyone's responsibility
interview#cultural-intelligence#responsibility#accountability
How people respond to CQ training (and the discomfort of self-awareness)
interview#cultural-intelligence#training#self-awareness#discomfort
The 10 Behavioral Preferences in practice
interview#behavioral-preferences#cultural-intelligence#assessment
Listener question — where should leaders start?
Show notes
LIVE! Can Cultural Intelligence Actually Improve Performance at Work? — with Polly Collingridge and Bernadette Thompson OBE
Guests: Polly Collingridge — UK General Manager at the Cultural Intelligence Centre, CQ-certified facilitator with a background in global mobility, intercultural training, and employee well-being; and Bernadette Thompson OBE — Director of People and Culture at North Middlesex University Hospital and Community Services, associate facilitator at the Cultural Intelligence Centre, and the leader behind the CQ rollout at Barts Health NHS Trust.
Most of us have sat through an inclusion training program that didn't change much — maybe a workshop, a follow-up email, and then it's back to normal. But what happens when an organization moves past the standard checkboxes and actually puts Cultural Intelligence (CQ) to work?
In this special LinkedIn Live episode of Truth, Lies & Work, Al and Leanne dive deep into the framework of CQ — an evidence-based, academically validated skill that measures your ability to relate to and work effectively alongside people from different cultural backgrounds.
They explore a remarkable real-world case study at Barts Health NHS Trust, where training thousands of staff members delivered measurable improvements in engagement, team dynamics, and patient care in one of the most pressurized environments imaginable. Plus, they break down how leaders of any size organization can use CQ to reduce toxic conflict, improve retention, and build a workplace where everyone belongs.
🔥 Key Takeaways From This Episode
1. What CQ Actually Is (and Isn't) Cultural Intelligence is not a rigid rulebook on how to behave, nor is it just basic cultural awareness. It is a distinct, measurable capability divided into four core pillars: Drive (your motivation), Knowledge (understanding difference), Strategy (planning for cross-cultural moments), and Action (adapting your behaviour).
2. The 10 Behavioral Preferences Workplace misunderstandings often stem from deep-seated preferences rather than malice. From expressive vs. non-expressive communication styles to how people handle disagreement, mapping these preferences helps teams collaborate seamlessly — and stops small frictions becoming toxic conflict.
3. The Real Cost of Poor Culture High employee turnover, costly legal tribunals, and skyrocketing absenteeism aren't just HR headaches — they're massive financial drains. From tribunal payouts to bank and agency staff costs, investing in culture is always the more cost-effective option.
4. Baking CQ into the Employee Lifecycle To prevent training momentum from fading into the background, leaders must systematically embed CQ into operational processes — from recruitment checklists to pre-disciplinary reviews. At Barts Health, that meant everything from leadership capability frameworks to "capability of the month" conversations with staff.
5. The Hybrid & AI Twist Distributed hybrid environments and the rise of cognitive offloading to AI make human-to-human cultural intelligence more critical today than ever before. When you can't read a room over Zoom, CQ becomes the skill that keeps teams connected.
👥 Meet Our Guests
Polly Collingridge Polly is the UK General Manager at the Cultural Intelligence Centre. As a CQ-certified facilitator with a rich background in global mobility, intercultural training, and employee well-being, she has been partnering with organizations since 2022 to build sustainable, long-term cultural frameworks.
- Connect with Polly on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pollycollingridge
- Cultural Intelligence Centre UK LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/cultural-intelligence-centre-uk
Bernadette Thompson OBE Bernadette is the Director of People and Culture at North Middlesex University Hospital and Community Services, and an associate facilitator at the Cultural Intelligence Centre. She spearheaded the operational rollout of CQ at Barts Health and has spent her award-winning career figuring out exactly what it takes to make people truly belong at work.
- Bernadette Thompson OBE Website: bernadettethompsonobe.co.uk
- Bernadette Thompson LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bernadettethompson
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work. What you're about to hear is from one of our recent LinkedIn Lives, a live panel discussion where we dig into the big questions shaping modern work. If you'd like to join us for the next one, just search for Leanne Elliott— that's me— on LinkedIn and hit follow. We announce them there first, and we obviously launch them there first. Right, let's go. into it after a quick message from our lovely sponsors.
Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all. Every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation, into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Nice.
Al ElliottCheck out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Sorry, talking of which, dogs. Yeah, if you do hear some dogs in the background, I'm sorry, we somehow seem to have just collected dogs and they're usually pretty good. But the only time they will make a noise is when we are actually live, which is—
Leanne ElliottWhich is what we're going towards now. Are we there?
Al ElliottGeorgia? Yeah. Okay.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Not quite yet.
Leanne ElliottWe're still starting soon.
Al ElliottBut usually what happens is this bit does go live, so we'll assume we're live. Whereabouts? So whereabouts, just out of interest, Polly, whereabouts in the world are you?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)I'm in Hampton in southwest London.
Leanne ElliottNice.
Al ElliottBeautiful. Fancy.
Polly CollingridgeBernadette? Rainham in Essex. We're live.
Al ElliottGeorgia, whereabouts are you? I should know this. Let me guess, you're in Melton Mowbray where the pies come from. Joke. I'm just terrible at remembering things. Leigh, we are live. You do your thing.
Leanne ElliottHello, everyone. Hello. Yeah, as Al just said, if you didn't hear that, if you do hear some, some little puppy dogs in the background barking, there's not a lot we can do about that. There's a bit of a thunderstorm starting here. So, We'll see how that goes, but I'm sure it'll be fine.
Al ElliottIt's not like the internet is affected by thunderstorms, is it?
Polly CollingridgeUh-oh. No, it'll be fine.
Leanne ElliottLet's just move on like it's all gonna be fine. And today we are talking about something really, really interesting, cultural intelligence, and specifically what happens when an organization actually puts it to work. Most of us have sat through an inclusion training program that didn't change much, maybe a workshop, a follow-up email, and then pretty much back to normal. Cultural intelligence is a very different proposition. It's a framework backed by research, built around measurable capabilities. And when it was put to work at St. Bart's Health NHS Trust, one of London's largest and most culturally complex hospital trusts, something truly remarkable happened. As of June 2026, Bart's has trained more than 3,300 people across a workforce of around 24,000. 1,500, with at least 325 of those being senior leaders, not to mention 22 certified internal facilitators. The programme is still live and the Trust remains committed to going even further. And the results have shown up where it really matters. So staff say they have understood their colleagues and patients better, approach difficult interactions differently, and become more intentional in everything they do. And in turn, staff engagement has improved. and dynamics have improved, and patient care has improved. And bear in mind, that's in one of the most pressurised, culturally diverse workplaces in the world. And Barts is just one of around 30 NHS trusts now working with this framework. So today we want to know, how did they do it? And what did they learn? And what can leaders outside of the NHS take from this? And to help us answer that, we are joined by 2 people who were right inside it. Polly Collingridge is the UK General Manager at Cultural Intelligence Centre. She's a CQ-certified facilitator with a background in intercultural training, global mobility, and employee wellbeing, and has been working with NHS trusts across the country since 2022, helping organisations build cultural intelligence as a practical, lasting framework rather than a one-off training event. We are also joined by Bernadette Thompson OBE. Bernadette is Director of People and Culture at North Middlesex University Hospital and Community Services and is an Associate Facilitator at the Cultural Intelligence Centre. She led the operational rollout of CQ at Bart's Health and since has taken that learning into other trust settings, including King's College Hospital. In 2021, she received an OBE for services to diversity and inclusion. She has spent her career asking one question: what does it actually take to build a workplace where everyone belongs? And today she has got some answers. Between them, Bernadette and Polly have seen this framework work in some of the toughest environments imaginable. So let's get into it. Polly, Bernadette, welcome to Truth, Lies and Work.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Thank you.
Polly CollingridgeThank you.
Leanne ElliottWe are also going to go to our associate producer, Georgia, throughout the conversation. So please do join in, put comments below with thoughts that you might have, any questions. We will bring these to Polly and Bernadette throughout the episode. I should say as well, if this is the first time you're joining us, we are Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture. And we are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. the audio destination for business professionals. I almost forgot, and I say that at least twice a day. My name is Leanne, I'm an HR director and occupational psychologist, and this is Al Elliott.
Al ElliottMy name is Al, I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd together we help you build amazing workplace cultures. So let's get into it. And Polly, I want to start with the basics. I don't want to assume anything is, is known here or that anything gets misunderstood. Can you describe for us what cultural intelligence And maybe if there's a leader who's heard of the term, but isn't quite sure what it actually means, can you explain it in a way that we can all understand?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Absolutely. And I think, I mean, I can't tell you how many times I do explain what CQ is to people, because it's not yet a household term, you know, known in the way that IQ and EQ is. I wish it were. But I think what I tend to do when I describe cultural intelligence is I start by saying what it isn't. So I think there are so many terms bandied around out there— cultural awareness, cultural sensitivity, cultural competence— and people do use these interchangeably, not really necessarily understanding the difference between them. And what I would say is that cultural intelligence doesn't provide a rulebook for how to behave with different cultures, because we don't want to stereotype or assume that anyone from one culture will behave the same as everyone else from that culture. So it's not cultural Awareness. This is a skill. Cultural intelligence is an evidence-based skill, as you mentioned in your intro, that is rigorously academically validated. And essentially it is the ability to relate to and work effectively alongside people who are from a different cultural background to you. So it's a form of intelligence, just like IQ, just like EQ, and it's shown to be distinct from personality, personality traits, which are more fixed. So When we talk about cultural intelligence, we talk about navigating different cultures, and usually the first that come to mind are international cultures, right? That's where the kind of original research of CQ came about from. But the notion of culture is broad in the way that we use it today. So we could be talking about nationality, but we could also be talking about race and ethnicity. We could be talking about generational culture. We could also just be talking about team culture, the difference between your team and and those that you work more closely with. It could be the difference between radiology and the emergency department. It could be marketing versus IT, or it could be the culture of your profession, the culture of working within the NHS, say. So cultural intelligence, I'll give you a little bit more just because I think it sets us up for everything else we're going to talk about. It's made up of 4 main capabilities, and these are drive, knowledge, strategy, and action. So it's not just cultural awareness. This is about how motivated, how driven are you? to interact across cultures, like how much do you actually care about it? Because let's be honest, if you don't care about it, you're probably not going to try that hard to get better at it. And then there's the knowledge piece, which is like the cultural awareness part. So that's part of cultural intelligence, but it's more than that. So that's the, what do I know about different cultures and how they're similar and different to my own? And then there's the strategy piece, which is— How do I go about sort of planning for an intercultural interaction, and how do I, do I Do I reflect on it afterwards? Do I do something with that? And then finally, action is the kind of part that everyone sees. How much do I actually adapt my behavior? So when we talk about cultural intelligence at the Cultural Intelligence Centre, CQ, I'll call it now for short, that's what we're meaning. And we have this psychometric tool, which is an assessment, takes about 15 minutes to do, that measures people's cultural intelligence, those 4 main capabilities. various sub-dimensions I won't go into. It also captures 10 culturally influenced behavioural preferences, which tend to cause the most misunderstandings and conflicts in the workplace. They could be things around how you express yourself, communication style, and your attitudes towards power and leadership and that kind of thing. I'll stop there because that's quite a lot, I know, but hopefully it sets us up for the rest of the conversation.
Leanne ElliottAbsolutely, Bernadette. Brilliantly explained. And what I'm curious about, Bernadette, you've had a very, um, a huge career in inclusion and belonging in the workplace. When you first encountered the CQ framework, what made it feel worth investing in?
Polly CollingridgeSo I think for me, anything really that targets creating better environments for, um, The workforce is important to me. One of the reasons why I got into HR is because I wanted to make a difference to people. And I think really particularly in the NHS, I always say, going back to COVID, when we clap for the NHS post-COVID, we forget some of the really pressurized environments that our frontline staff have to encounter with. And so creating an environment, anything from my perspective, Mm-hmm. that will support getting better outcomes for our people certainly always tickles my fancy. I always say that in order to create an inclusive culture and that sense of belonging, it's not going to be one thing. You know, you need— I always use the analogy of, you know, you're a plumber, you want to fix a tap, you need more than a spanner. You need other tools in the box. And so for me, When I heard about cultural intelligence, I was like, oh, okay, this is an additional tool that can be used to create an environment where people can thrive in the workplace. So for me, yeah, it was, um, anything that can create better environment for staff is something that I would always want to look into.
Leanne ElliottAnd from both of your experience, is CQ something that you either have or you don't, or is it something that you can develop?
Polly CollingridgeSo I think going back to what Polly said, she mentioned the 4 capabilities, and that's the good thing about it, right? With regards to a capability, it's not set in stone. It's not, oh my goodness, I'm never going to be able to improve. So if you work on it intentionally, over time, you can improve. And Polly mentioned the 4 dimensions: drive, knowledge, strategy, and action. And with regards to the psychometrics, when you get your result, for example, you could be anywhere along the continuum. So it's about, What do I need to do to improve in that particular capability? So over time, it's being intentional. And it's like anything else. If you're an athlete and you don't practice, you're not going to be able to do that, the 22 seconds in 200 meters, whatever the target usually these days. So it's about being intentional with developing those capabilities in order to get the best out of your interaction with people across different cultural contexts.
Leanne ElliottAnd you have worked in some pretty complex organizations, Bernadette. You mentioned COVID there, which just threw another layer of complexity over everything. From your experience, what does a workplace look like that lacks cultural intelligence?
Polly CollingridgeI think I better give the disclaimer of COVID I joined the NHS post-COVID in December '21, so I wasn't there in the thick of it. I wasn't there. I was one of the people that clapped. on the sidelines during COVID But I think, you know, you can see when an organization isn't that right, when they have a very poor culture. And the thing that Polly mentioned is, a lot of the time when you talk about culture, most of the default is to cultural background. But I think it's really important to know that we have 4, nearly 5 generations in some organizations working together. Yeah. And my experience as a Gen— I'm sharing my age now— my experience of the Gen X is different to my daughter, who's a Gen Z. My experience of the Gen X is different to a colleague who is a millennial. And so when we talk about culture, it's really getting that firm understanding that culture is more than one thing. I think that is so important to understand. So in an organization, what could that look like if you have a poor culture, if you have very low CQ? And it starts by the interaction with people, the breakdown in relationships. And we know what that leads to. It could lead to absence because of stress, because of sickness. It could lead to an increase in employee relations cases, grievances. It could lead to, if we think of outside of the NHS, a different context, those deals that would, those big deals that you're hoping to secure with someone from a different, let's even say nationality, something goes wrong with that interaction, the deal doesn't get done. So it shows up in different ways. But certainly from my perspective and my experience, I'm a public sector person for most of my career. It It shows up in the lived experiences of staff. It shows up in complaints. It shows up in sickness. It shows up in productivity. And generally, most public sector organizations, we have staff surveys. You can just tell. You just need to look at the staff survey. You kind of know what's going on, and you can kind of see where the fires are and where you need to really intentionally focus. So it shows up in different places, but certainly in my experience in the public sector, you just need to look at the staff survey and you can see what's going on in an organization.
Leanne ElliottAnd Polly, across the Trust that you have worked with and other organisations, does that match what you typically see when organisations are struggling with CQ?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they come to us and they've got these problems with, you know, employee engagement, or sometimes, you know, you're talking about NHS or other NHS organisations, because they are— I kind of like working with the NHS because they're not afraid to share the problems they're having. I find that when I work with with private sector organisations, they tend to be a bit more cagey about some of the challenges that they've got. But certainly with the NHS, they are very, very clear about the levels of burnout that they're experiencing. They talk about, sadly, they talk a lot about, increasingly, about the lack of civility in the workplace. That's really a big one right now. But yeah, increasingly, discrimination and harassment, particularly against minority ethnic staff. They talk about Just the general pressure of having to do more with less, and then just tempers sort of fraying. So that just feels like a common theme. And I would say that, you know, we probably see that to slightly, to a lesser extent in the private sector, but it's still many similar problems. And one of the things that I was thinking about when Bernie was talking was, you know, sometimes these kind of cultural problems aren't seen to be cultural initially. You know, they might seem like just innocuous The stuff that we all experience or we have experienced in our lives in the workplace, like it's always the same few people talking in the meeting, or you feel like perhaps you weren't invited to contribute and you felt like you did have an opinion, but you weren't included. These little things that can build up over time. I think it can start there and then, without wanting to get too big too quickly, I think that the particular geopolitical climate and just general polarization and so on is just really kind of—
Polly CollingridgeYeah.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Making these things even more problematic or just sort of even more prominent in the workplace at the moment.
Leanne ElliottAnd as you said, there's so much, so many conversations happening within the NHS and outside at the moment around incivility and the impact that has on performance and on patient care. So, I'm really interested to learn how CQ can help in terms of this environment and build this sense of inclusion and belonging. Bernadette, you were essentially involved in the CQ rollout at Bart's Health, and there were outcomes, you know, from staff engagement, improvements there, team dynamics, and patient care. What do you think drove that?
Polly CollingridgeI think it's going back to the 4 capabilities, and the thing about CQ, it's not finger-pointing, it's everyone taking responsibility. for themselves and how they build their capabilities. And that's the, I would say, beauty about CQ. While you can do this as part of a team, but it really starts with you. You know, what do I need to do to work on my drive, my knowledge, my— what strategy do I need to deploy, and how do I need to kind of nuance my action? And so for me, it's really Getting people to think about, well, what do I need to do differently? How do I need to be in an interaction? Well, it didn't work last time. What do I need to do differently? And if everyone is playing their part, it comes together. And so, you know, from my perspective, when we were rolling it out, sometimes we rolled it out for 25 random individuals in a room who came from different specialties. And the good thing about that is everyone would bring their perspective and share their experience and learn from other people. What I did like about rolling it out was about hearing different stories and hearing people say, oh, okay, I could apply this to this scenario, and I probably could get a different outcome. And that's the thing. And then you had the other dimension where people would come together as teams to undertake the training. And you kind of, along the way, you can kind of see the aha.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Yeah.
Polly CollingridgeOkay. Oh, okay. You know, it's not really the rest of the team that has issues, it's actually me. I need to work on myself. And so it's all about, you know, whatever dimension, however the training is rolled out, it's really focused on what do I need to do to get the best out of my relationship. And if everyone in an organization is systematically saying, well, I'm going to see a patient, what do I need to know about this patient? What do I need to know about the community of this patient? What do I need to know about to get the best out of my interaction? And it's everyone being intentional, and that's where the results come from. Am I saying that all the issues across all the different trusts where this has been rolled out has been solved? Not at all. But for those who have gone through the training, they're a bit more intentional about how they interact with people. And it's not just about just rolling the training out and then That's it. One of the things that we did, certainly within my 18 months or so at Barts, was what other— when we train people, how can we bring them together to reflect? How can we hear some of those good news stories? What can we do to ensure that cultural intelligence is rolled up across the employee lifecycle? What does this look like when we're talking about— performance management? How can we apply this to recruitment? So really making sure it's something tangible that we're able to apply it across our processes to improve our processes. One of the, the improvements that we deployed at King's College Hospital, for example, at the time, was looking at our pre-disciplinary checklist. Because we realized, when we looked at the data, there was a disproportionate impact on a particular community who would be badged as aggressive. But the question we asked was, were they really aggressive or were they expressive? And so there was a question we introduced into that pre-disciplinary checklist to say, have you thought, could there be an element of cultural nuance in this that you need to consider before making this referral of this person for—
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Polly CollingridgeYou know, to a disciplinary protocol. And so if everyone is looking at how they behave, if we're improving our processes, you begin to see better outcomes. In large organizations, oh my goodness, it takes time. During my tenure at Barts, we trained 1,500 people. Polly mentioned we've got 25,000 people or other Barts. And so the smaller the organization, the quicker I would say you can see the whole organizational change. It's really great when you do it in teams, because then it gives you a language to talk about some of the differences. And you remind yourself that, OK, that your low-power distance, that your high-power distance getting in the way. So, you know, cultural intelligence, it's focused on the 4 capabilities. But during the course of rolling it out, we talk about behavioral preferences and how—
Leanne ElliottHmm.
Polly CollingridgeYou know, when we talk about difference, people behave in different ways. You know, we all have different backgrounds. We have— we grew up in different contexts. And so some of that comes to bear when we come into the workplace. But if we're all thinking about, what do I need to do to adapt and flex to get the best out of my conversation? What do I need to know about Al? What do I need to know about Polly? What do I need to know? Um, about Laura to get the best out of my interaction. And that's just simply, um, what it is. And so if everyone is playing their part and being intentional, we generally started seeing better outcomes. The clinicians were thinking about, well, what patient am I going to see? What do I need to do differently to get the best out of, um, the patient? I always use my mum as an example. Um, my mum is of a certain vintage, where she will ask the doctor lots and lots of questions and go off on a tangent. Now, if you have a 10-minute rule to see every patient, you just cut my mum off, you know, and she could be a bit disgruntled. Whereas if you're seeing someone like me that fears everything— needle, blood, everything— I want to go into the GP and literally rush out as fast as I can. And so you could think about how much time do I need to give to these 2 patients to make sure that they have a good experience? So it's really thinking about—
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Polly CollingridgeWhat we need to do as individuals to adapt and flex. And during the training, you know, I always say to people, you will hear a lot of adaptation and flex being mentioned, because that's just what it is, all of us doing our bit to get the best out of our interactions.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast, that's us, by the way, and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common.
Leanne ElliottWe both use And we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. And you're not going to say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s— the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Leanne ElliottThe audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless. Seamless. Tell us about your latest episode. Well, we're talking about cultural intelligence.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)We've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business, how to be a better leader, by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)It can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)I am.
Al ElliottGo and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)So come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Keep that in.
Leanne ElliottAnd how do people respond to, to the training? Because from what you, you were saying there, Bernadette, and what you mentioned earlier, Polly, in terms of the, the psychometric that sits behind CQ, is there quite a lot, an element of self-awareness building in this training, in, in education, both about how we perceive the world and others perceive it? And how do people react to that? Is there any discomfort?
Polly CollingridgeDo you want to— I see you leaning in, Polly, like, let's go!
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)No, no, no, feel free, feel free. No, I think that there is sometimes discomfort. Not everybody wants that level of self-analysis. So just talking more generally, I think some people do shy away from that. But one thing that I think is a great opener, and I'm sure Bernie is going to talk about this, is the behavioral preferences, because that's less— so there's no right or wrong with behavioral preferences. You know, if you're direct or indirect, if you're expressive or not expressive, you know, the whole thing is presented as It's OK, right? And that, for a leader, might be uncomfortable. If you're convinced that direct communication is the way— and it might be in a multinational organization, because ultimately, you probably need to bring your more indirect communicators into a more direct way of communicating, but you have to bring everyone together to do that. But if you're convinced that your way is the only way, you're going to have to do some slightly uncomfortable rethinking. But with the behavioral preferences, even those who don't love self-analysis are generally quite curious to see where they show up and how they compare to their team members. So that's what I was going to say, but I know— Yeah. They kind of literally put up their behavioral preference maps kind of in the staff room. Or I don't know, you tell the story.
Polly CollingridgeYeah, absolutely. And you could use the behavioral preferences in different ways. But I'll go back to, I'll use my, it's always safe to use yourself as an example, right? And so I went through the training, even though, you know, I was leading the program. And I remember when I saw my kind of psychometrics around the 4 capabilities, I'm like, You don't say? Me? Of course not. But, you know, when you reflect on it, it was strategy. It's really thinking about, I'm going to meet this group of people, what do I need to do? Really reflecting on that before you jump into the meeting or you jump into the situation. And, you know, that was my lowest capability, so I had to work on that. I had to take it on the chin, like, OK, you know, I can work on that. But when we talk about behavioral preferences, one of the things that my teams, and I think since then I've had 2, 3 teams, and we've gone through the psychometrics and we've got a team sheet on the wall around behavioral preferences. And I'll use one as an example. No matter how I try— and I'm looking at my hands now— no matter how I try, I am very expressive. There is no way I can communicate with my hands not moving. It just won't happen. My hand, my head, my eyes, you know, I could maybe for 2 seconds, try and concentrate and not be expressive, but I'll give it away. I just can't. That's me. That's how I am. So I'm very expressive. Now, if I'm in a bad mood and someone has wound me up, or there's a particular point that I need to make, it won't change how I— my hand might just be—
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Polly Collingridgebit more animated. My head might just twist a bit more and my eyes might widen. Now, there are people who will go through the same situation and they're non-expressive and very calmly, well, I get this said to me a few times, calm down, mum. My daughter who's non-expressive, it's all right, mum, you can calm down. It's all right, calm down. And so think about how those 2 different people receive their interaction with people. The non-expressive person can be perceived as they don't care. They're very chilled about this. You don't really care about what's going on. Whereas someone like me, I could be perceived as, oh my God, she's a bit of an alarmist. Calm down. It's not that. But it's understanding the 2 different perspectives. There is no right and there is no wrong. What do you need to do to adapt and flex? And I specifically talk to leaders. If you are a leader and you've got someone like me in my team, in your team, and I come to you with, oh my God, oh my God, something happened, just try and match my energy, just turn it up a bit, you know, just so I actually feel that you care about what I'm talking about. And vice versa, someone like me might need to chill out so that I'm not frightening the whole, you know. And so it's For me, it's when you see that plotting against the 10 behavioral preferences, you stand back as a team and we say, right, with regards to our stakeholders, what do we need to do? Because if all of us are on this side and we're interacting with people that might be outside of our behavioral preference, what are we intentionally doing to adapt and flex. That's one thing. The second thing is around within the team. You can see maybe on one side, the team is very expressive, and you might see a few people who are not expressive. How are we interacting with them? How are we making them feel? So with these kinds of discussions, especially in teams, that are really valuable, because then there is no right, as Polly said, and there is no wrong, their behavioral preferences. But how do we get the best of our communication, uh, with people? And it's just so important to understand that better.
Leanne ElliottAnd it's an interesting framework to have these conversations around, isn't it? I, I totally relate to what you were saying there, Bernadette, because I'm, I'm quite reflective, but when I'm excited about something, I will talk a lot quicker, I'll use my hands more, and my voice might get a bit louder. And that was interpreted in my earlier career before I could explain explained myself as me being emotional to a way that it was almost weaponized at times when there were large workplace decisions to be made. I mean, Polly, is that, is that something that people in the training also share with you? Maybe a darker side of people, I guess, lacking the cultural intelligence to understand how, you know, team members might be expressing themselves and what that means?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Yeah, I think that comes all the time. It's these kinds of little micro details that you hear that people share about Oh, we're more expressive, they're less expressive. And the problems exist in the assumptions that each kind of camp are making about each other, as Bernie said. Basically, the concept of what's polite or what's rude is cultural. The concept of what's respectful and not respectful is cultural. So, if you're really expressive and whatever, you might seem unprofessional to some people. You might seem, as you said, overly emotional or not serious or not able to handle something or whatever. To someone who's not, Who's less expressive. So yeah, I think it's really common that we have these differences, and I think it's really interesting because we use these nouns all the time in the workplace, like respect and trust. And certainly the NHS, I know this notion of what's polite or not. The respect one's interesting, just the very— like, it can be even nonverbal, it can be eye contact. So around this, for us in our culture, in Western culture, certainly in the UK, Making eye contact feels like the very least you can do when somebody's talking to you about something important. But somebody literally the other day, and I won't reveal who, was talking to me about the fact that someone they just employed just wouldn't look them in the eye when they were talking, and they just couldn't tell if they were really listening or not. And it was— this person was from a different culture to the manager, and it was just so obvious to me that that was— it could also be that they're neurodivergent. In fact, that was also one other thing. And I suppose this is maybe the point at which to say, it's complicated always. You're not just one, it's not just one cultural problem because culture is so intersectional. You might be from a different, you know, might be not from the UK and you might be neurodivergent and they may, you know, from a different generation and all of these things are coming into the mix. So having the CQ framework and the behavioral preferences is like a first step to just kind of, maybe it's this, maybe it's that. It's just a way, like a simple sort of way through what can feel like a real minefield, I guess.
Leanne ElliottI want to talk to you both about leadership buying, but before we do, let's go to Georgia, Associate Producer. I'm seeing comments and questions coming in. Georgia, what are people saying? Yeah, so we've got Danny Wareham asking, what are the first steps you would recommend starting with when addressing a low CQ environment? It's a great question.
Al ElliottGreat question. Do you want to start, Polly?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Yeah, I think, well, for me, it would be asking questions, asking a lot of questions. This is obviously if it's like a prospective client coming to me, just trying to find out what's going on. I don't know, Bernie, whether you want to sort of come in with an NHS angle of sort of being on the other side.
Polly CollingridgeSo I think for me, it's really important to understand what is going on in the organisation. And you can see that from the data. Data is king, you know, qualitative and quantitative, not taking the numbers in isolation. The voices of the people in the organisation explain what the numbers are saying. And so you could look at, for example, representation data. Okay, you look across the board. I use London, for example. The population of women in London is— let's use the NHS. 75% of the workforce in the NHS are women. Oh, when you look at the top table, oh, hang on a minute, there are not many women who are directors. What's going on there? Okay, let's look at the staff survey. Let's look at the gender pay gap. Let's look at the lived experiences of women. And so you kind of look at it. Bullying and harassment. Okay, let's look at the data. Who's complaining about this? Is it the people in the more junior grade, or is it upward bullying? Is it senior people? And so you look at the data, you get, um, staff networks are brilliant people to give that, um, qualitative analysis, um, as well. So it's bringing all that together and then recognizing where are the hotspots.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Polly CollingridgeWhere should I start with first? Because sometimes what I've found in organizations, an organization that will remain nameless that I worked with many years ago, there was an issue of bullying and harassment. And they just said, well, we'll just do a whole organization approach. I'm like, that can't work. Where are the hotspots? And when we broke it down, out of the 14 directorates, there were 7 divisions who really They were outliers. So why are we going to waste our energy on focusing on 7 who are doing really well? So let's look at those 7 forensically, and let's look at what the issues are. And so from my perspective, first step, quantitative, qualitative data, understanding what is going on, what are people experiencing, and talking to— sometimes you would have, shall I call them listening circles, speaking to the most senior leaders.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Polly CollingridgeSpeaking to the most junior person. I remember working within another organization, um, and, um, one of the leading leaders said, well, I don't recognize this. I said, well, therein lies the problem. People within your organization are saying this is their lived experience navigating your organization, and you don't recognize it. Uh, there's a popular quote that said the culture of an organization is set by the worst behavior A leader is willing to tolerate. And so leaders, any leaders listening to me on the call, I always say, you know, it starts with leaders. You are the people that set the direction, and you are the people that can turn that ship around. And so it's really making sure as well, Danny, that that top table has a focus. How do they show up? What is their behavior? How are they making sure that the— how are they creating that sense of belonging? Is there a say-do gap? They say one thing, but they berate people in the corridor. So I'm a bit harsher on leaders because they have the power to turn that ship around and start to make sure things matter. You know, that saying again, that what gets measured gets done. If it's important to the leader, usually in the hierarchy, it will be important to everyone else. So yeah, those are my reflections.
Leanne ElliottQuantitative and qualitative data, Bernadette, you're talking my language and I love it. I know you're talking Danny's too. And then there's leaders, oh, chef's kiss. Uh, Georgia, I think we've got a question as well about implementation in, in large organisations. Absolutely, yeah, Bev Blackmore-Locke, sorry. Um, yeah, so once the initial training momentum slows down, how do you prevent CQ from fading into the background? What structural or What systemic changes did you have to bake into the Trust's daily operating to ensure that shared language stays alive 12 months later?
Polly CollingridgeCome on, Bev. Come on, Bev. I mean, I want to give Bev a hand clap. She's really putting us through our paces today. But no, but you're absolutely right, Bev, because you see, what gets done in organisations is, well, we've done the training, tick, and that's it. We've done the EDI training, we've done cultural intelligence, you And that's it. But it can't be, because if we're just training people without testing how they're applying it, it's so important. And so that's why I mentioned looking at the employee cycle, make sure it's baked into the employee cycle, make sure it's baked into recruitment, make sure it's baked into the organizational processes. One of the things that we did at Barts, we— I introduced newsletters.
Leanne ElliottOh, yeah.
Polly CollingridgeWhat is the capability of the month? Engaging with people who have done the training. Come and tell us, what have you been up to? We had, shall I call them podcasts, not as suave as this one, NHS-style podcasts, webinars on Teams. Let's just call it that. Let's just call it what it is, right? Where we brought people together to say, well, how have you been applying? And it was across different specialties. So hearing from the nurse, hearing from the midwife, AHP.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Polly Collingridgebe doctor, consultant, and so on and so forth. Um, we also, um, had reviews. So when we launched it, we were quite intentional. We had a launch day to remind people on this date we launched it. One year on, we came together to say, but how is it working? What have we achieved? Um, and one of the— I think the best things that we did— well, certainly that I did, I, I did. I wish I had done more at the time. Created, worked with an organization, Communication Practice, I think it was called. Cyrus Lowe, just find Cyrus Lowe. But we worked with them. It was absolutely brilliant. And so we developed some bite-sized scenarios. It was fantastic recruitment, and it was having a one-to-one. Doing it the really rough way, the uncultural intelligence way, and then again during the recording, the right way, and using that as a tool, bringing leaders together to say, let's watch this video, only about a 5-minute clip. Tell me what you're seeing. I mean, it's timeless. Whenever we do this, and I did it a few weeks ago in my health unit, I mean, the line managers, just, you know, the commentary that was coming through that, oh gosh, no, you wouldn't do that. And that's CQ in action. So it's really what can you do with an organization to bring it to bear? And one of the things also, making sure that the chief executive— so at the time, we had Alwyn as the chief executive at BART, and then it moved to Shane de Garris. And whenever we called an event around cultural intelligence, Shane was always there. He is always there. And he's not one of those chief executives that would just pop in for 2 seconds, say a few words, and run off. No, he will stay. And so that sent the signal that it matters. And so, yeah, those are the kind of things that we did. It's tough in a massive organization. It really is. It's so much easier in smaller organizations because you can kind of reap the benefits almost immediately. But I always say cultural change takes time. And so for those senior leaders, chief execs, permsecs, some that I've worked with, they said, well, can you come in and do this? And in 12 months' time, I'm like, whoa, slow down. It took you about 25, 30 years to get to this culture. It's going to take more than 1 year to get you out of it. And so what I always say to organizations, don't just become, oh, we're doing cultural intelligence today. We're doing— I know. You just pick so many different things, and you don't sustain. What is important is doing one thing, focusing on the initiative, 5 years down the line, so you can see the outcome.
Al ElliottI have a question for you, Polly, but before I go on to that, is there anything that you'd want to add or comment on what Bernadette's just said?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Yeah, I just, I completely agree with, obviously, with everything that she said. I think it's just how do you keep it sustainable? Having the leadership buy-in is absolutely critical. I know that was going to be your your next question, Leanne, but that's just a key piece of the puzzle. So yeah, I think that's— there's other bits and pieces I could say, but I think they might come out. So go for your question, Al. Cool.
Al ElliottWell, it was about leadership buy-in. And I think this sounds like something that a senior leader goes, well, of course, I'm going to sign off on this, because this sounds like the right thing to do. But are you— does that mean that necessarily they are on board with this? Is it difficult to get people on board with this, Polly?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)It's definitely difficult because people don't know what CQ is. We sort of started off talking about that. So I think that's a challenge. And I think they think, oh, it's just one other thing. Sort of some of the misconceptions are that it's just another thing we've got to get our heads around, like another initiative, another thing to tick, you know, another box to tick, another sort of inclusion initiative. Oh, we haven't got money for DEI right now. It's not the right climate, you know, All of that sort of a thing, that's the typical pushback. So for me, the challenge is to get them to understand that CQ is not just about DEI and that inclusion and belonging are the bedrock beneath all of the other sort of organizational development initiatives that Bernie's already been talking about, like talent retention and recruitment and onboarding and change management and, you know, What do you do when you've got to sort of bring, you know, merge 2 departments together or whatever else it is, you know, whether it's NHS or beyond that? There are so many reasons why CQ provides this kind of linking piece for lots of what I see as often quite fragmented different initiatives. So I would try and talk about that and talk about what's the cost or the risk of you not doing this. But in order to get there, they really have to understand first of all what CQ is. So that's the challenge for me. It's a sort of— there's an education piece before they realize that they've been sort of getting by without this thing. But then the other challenge is, is that to do it and to feel the impact, as Bernie's been saying, you've got to do it properly. So there's a sort of leap of faith. And that's why I'm excited by the work with Barts, because, you know, whatever it is now, 4 years on from when they first launched it, and still being in the sort of cash-strapped situation that All NHS organisations are in right now. They still consider it a strategic priority and they've understood that they're in it for the long haul. And that's the thing, I think you need to just be— yeah, keep at it and kind of keep the faith, but you've also got to do all of these things to keep it alive. So it's sort of somewhat unsexy for this day and age. It's not a quick fix, it's not a silver bullet, one workshop isn't enough, it's much more It's a longer process that's going to sometimes be a bit difficult at times, but it's worth it in the end. I don't know if you want to add anything to that, Bernie.
Al ElliottWell, Bernadette, before you do, can I just ask you something quickly, Polly? You mentioned there the cost of not doing it, the risk of not doing it. Is that something, if someone was interested in sort of getting DEI more mainstream in organizations, is there a particular cost you can actually identify saying it's costing you this much per employee? Is that possible to do that?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)No, I think that would be challenging, but I think it's more about what are you spending or what are you losing out on by having a less culturally intelligent organization than you could do? Like, what does it cost to replace an employee? Those costs are huge, I think, and I think that a lot of money is wasted on One of our facilitators in the NHS at a different trust now was talking about spending time using CQ in a formal grievance process, in a sort of formal kind of mediation process. And the outcome was that that employee didn't leave. So how can you weigh up the cost of the training that trained that facilitator who then spent 5 hours or whatever it was with these 2 people to then save that person? But that may have saved the company at least £30,000 or more, depending on whatever they earned and however long it would take. I was looking at some research earlier that shows that apparently the average is at least 28 weeks to get up to capacity, sort of, but, you know, from hiring someone new to them being sort of able to do their job. And yeah, so that's a long time. That's several months of really lost earnings. So if you kind of start looking at it like that, I think it is challenging to measure the exact ROI. And that's our other difficulty because CQ has been shown through all of the research to be related to lots of positive measurable outcomes like greater wellbeing and better decision-making in the workplace and more effective leadership and more psychological safety and more innovation and all of these things that are in themselves measurable and also tied to Sort of essentially more money on the bottom line, but it's very difficult to directly relate CQ to that unless you are very, very intentional in how you measure your sort of training initiatives. So we can measure obviously development in individual CQ with our assessment. You know, you could take it at one point, do an assessment, and you can take it again several months down the line. And if you've seen interventions in the intervening period, you should see an increase in CQ, but that's not enough. For necessarily for a board member or a chief exec to be convinced because they're like, okay, well, what do we do with that higher CQ? So then you've got to try and tie that to the outcomes that they want to see. And you may see a staff survey kind of going in the right direction, greater inclusion, greater belonging, Barts are starting to see that. But it is very difficult to, unless you're actively measuring it in the right way, to attribute that directly to CQ initiatives because there's always loads of other things going on as well. They did do a bit of that at Barts, and I know that Bernie did that, that they designed a survey to try and directly link which people took straight after their training, and I think maybe again some months later, like 6 months or a year later potentially, where they could say, do you use your training in these? And that's how we got those sort of great statistics around improved team dynamics and improved patient care, because people were saying, I am using CQ. And I feel that it's improving my patient care, but that's the only way you can do it that I've come across. I don't know.
Polly CollingridgeI'm going to come in on that point because I'll forget. So I always say there is a cost to the poor culture, full stop. There is a cost. I think it was Roger Klein and somebody else, you can Google it, listeners, who did research, particularly in the NHS, what is the cost of the poor culture in the NHS. How much do you pay solicitors for tribunals? I'll just mention a particular case. Everyone knows that I usually cite this case. Payout was £1 million. There was another case recently, um, £2.3 million payout to the employee. So there is a cost to a poor culture. Let's just look at the solicitors' bill. Let's just look at the damages and the payouts to the— so let's even forget the time that we take when we go, you know, we go through one hearing, and let's just say how much we've paid out. What is the sickness bill? How much are we, you know, from an NHS perspective, the— we are focusing on trying to remove our bank and agency spend. And what does that mean? When somebody's off sick in a frontline clinical role, That clinic needs to go on because we're here to save lives and take care of people. So we need to book a bank shift to get someone to fill in for that sickness. Now, there's the sickness that is linked to somebody genuinely doing some extreme sports, falling over, and that's it, they break whatever. But there is sickness linked to stress, which is linked to employee relations. There is sickness linked to bullying. There is sickness linked to poor mental health as a result of a poor culture. And you can calculate that. And so from my perspective, the focus needs to be on how do we keep a good culture in any organization? Because I always say to my— and I'm speaking to a bunch of finance colleagues tomorrow, and my focus is going to be finance colleagues. Whilst we are talking about finance, can we remember, can we remind people? Because the voice of finance is usually quite strong across the board table.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Yeah.
Polly CollingridgeThere is a cost to a poor culture. And now, are we saying that CQ is a silver bullet? Absolutely not. Whatever you're doing with your DEI training, you do that and CQ. You need to make sure that you throw the kitchen sink at having a great culture, because there is nothing like, no matter what business you're in, whether the NHS, whether private sector, At this point, it's not done by all robots. It is done by people. And so how do you make sure your people are having the best lived experience? Because that translates into their productivity. Now, I can be at work, but if I'm having a horrible time, if my environment is not great, if I feel that people are not treating me in the right way, I'll be at work. But I'm not productive, I'll be giving maybe 25% of my— and so that's what we need to think about when we're trying to say, well, can we afford this? Okay, go do the maths. When you're paying £1 million for one person, you will know that CQ, affording it, rolling it out, it's probably quite a cheap option in the grand scheme of things. I'll come off my soapbox now.
Leanne ElliottNo, I'll come up, I'll come up to you because I'm with you. It's following through the data, isn't it? You know, we know, we know so much about The links between employee engagement and wellbeing and absenteeism and productivity and even profitability and growth rates of companies, but it's following the data through, which takes a little bit of time and maybe a little bit more convincing. What I'm really, really enjoying about CQ, the more I'm learning about it, is how behaviour-based it is. And my beef with a lot of psychometrics that are done in large organisations is they're very much putting people in a box. in a box. You know, you're blue, you're an INTP, whatever. Whereas this sounds like we're talking about behaviour, we're talking about behaviour modification, behaviour change, and how we can show up better, differently for our colleagues, for the benefit of the team, the organisation, our customers, our patients. For a lot of people watching this, the NHS scale is not their reality. They might be running a team of 20 or 100 or 200. So, Polly, I'm intrigued. What does CQ How can it help a small organisation? What does that approach actually look like at that size?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)So yeah, I mean, with a small organisation, we probably wouldn't necessarily go down the route of certifying individual trainers within that organisation. That's how we worked with Barts, and it's how we usually work with NHS trusts, because essentially it's the cheapest way, the most sustainable way, and in a large organisation, but with a smaller one, I mean, it would depend on budget. It always depends on budget, of course. But if they had the money for it, I would love to do some perhaps individual session with the leader or the small leadership team, and maybe do some coaching and just sort of get them on board with it. Because whether it's a small organization or a large one, I still think you need to focus on the leaders. But then you could also, depending on psychological safety levels, do some training perhaps altogether as a group if it's literally only 20 people, you could definitely do that. If better to keep the leaders out of it for a bit, you could do that too. But I think, I think that it's all about every time we deal with any client, however large or small the organization is, it's about really trying to get those challenges out of them and trying to tailor the training to be specific to whatever those problems are. So maybe we would deal with only a few of the behavioral preferences, the ones that seem to be causing them the most problems. And we would make it a really practical session focused on strategy building, an awareness piece about what those behavioral preferences are, and then a strategy session around what problems have they got, how could they use the, you know, the strategy, how can they come up with strategies to bridge the differences in the preferences that they've got going on. But then, if at all possible, for me, what's key, the same as in a large organization, is the follow-up piece, because that whole thing of just a one workshop, it just, it's just, it sets you up for I worry it sets you up for not failure, but just limited impact, because all you're really going to get with one workshop is awareness, probably. But you really want to make sure that you can kind of hold people accountable, which always sounds like a sort of strict teacher, but more just that they are actually using it, you know, that they actually understand how to apply these strategies and get something out of them. And even if it's leaving them with one or two things— people always want the quick takeaways, but literally everyone's so time poor that you have to just give them— some idea of what they might do different in their day the following day, you know, to sort of keep this alive. So some sort of follow-up session doesn't need to be as long as the initial sessions, but a kind of a check-in. Peer coaching can be really successful as well, just having them talk, sort of having one person talk about some of the challenges they've had trying to implement some of the strategies and having people listen, and then having a structured session where they take it in turns. That can be incredibly useful for people. And that can happen a month after the training or 3 months after the training, but the point is they all know it's coming, and it sort of helps them focus their minds a little bit. Otherwise, I worry that you go in and it's nice, and people come away with an understanding that, oh, right, okay, I understand a bit more how culture influences me and therefore other people, but then it all kind of fades away and the day job gets in the way. So it's about how do you, whether it's a smaller organization or a larger one, it's like, how do you—
Polly CollingridgeYeah.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Keep it going, keep it alive.
Leanne ElliottAnd Bernie, you were saying about how in, you know, in a large organisation like the NHS, change is slow. In a small organisation, you can see those benefits almost immediately. If a leader were to invest, as Polly just described, in CQ, what are they likely to see in their organisation with their people, with their performance over, say, 3 to 6 months?
Polly CollingridgeI think what they would, certainly what they would see is the drive, people's drive, certainly go up because people would understand what their role is in getting better outcomes. It's easier to just point the finger at someone else. So I think they'll begin to see that energy from people around really trying to be intentional and making sure that their interactions with people from different, whether different demographics, whether it's different age, but whatever, the difference is. You'll see a bit more intention in that. And I think you'll begin to see the experience change, whether that's for the customer, whether that's for the patient, whether that's for the team themselves. You'll see happier teams. And I think I would probably say 12 months. I think 3 to 6 months is quite short. I would say 12 months from a reality point of view, because that way you can Really kind of capture before and after and really looking at this. So the survey, a survey was, as I said, you need the two. What are people's lived experiences? As a result of doing the training, what are you doing differently? So really working with, we worked with an organization when I was at Barts to develop a questionnaire that asked the right questions to get the right answers, if that makes sense. But certainly you would see conflict. Diminish because everyone is trying to think about, I'm going into a conversation with Laura. What do I need to know about Laura? What do I need to know about what she's working on? What do I need to know about the pressures of Laura that Laura is encountering before I go into— how do I need to open my meeting with Laura so that as soon as I open my mouth, I've already set the tone and she's already in a good mood? I always talk about this story about the guy that was going to do a deal with someone from another country. And there was someone who was from that country they wanted to do a deal with, and they were listening to, gosh, I don't think they know what they're doing. So this guy just said, look, I hear you want to do business. I'm from that part of the world. If you do this, that, and the other, you've almost— you don't need to say anything. The deal is done. And what this leader said, you know what? You actually go down and receive the people from this country since you know And the deal was almost done at the welcome. Everything else, you know, and so it's what kind of intel do you need to know to get that outcome? And so from my perspective, I would say about 12 months in a small organization, but you would see that level of conflict diminish. You know, if we're talking about, if it's depending on the company, you should start seeing more deals going through, you should start seeing Better outcomes, feedback from customers to say, I had an interaction with someone in your team that was brilliant, and that's what you would expect to see. Yeah, over 6 to 12 months, to be fair.
Al ElliottFabulous. Georgia, anything we've not covered already in the comments or No, I had a question though, if that's okay.
Leanne ElliottDoes cultural intelligence become more important as organisations move to a more hybrid way of working or AI-enabled workplace?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)I would say so, definitely. I think it's really hard to read people when you're only working online, or if sometimes you've got some people who are all together in person and then a few people sort of beaming in remotely. I think that creates It's a strange dynamic. So we often work more in the corporate sector with people who are in sort of hybrid teams and are struggling, particularly ones who maybe have expanded rapidly overseas and they've got different time zones to contend with. And the fact that not everyone— they have this problem in the NHS too— is a native English speaker. They have a lot of problems there. So all of these things, I think, can be magnified in a remote setting. And AI is really interesting because there's some really new research that's come out that's around the benefits of what they call cognitive offloading to AI, and how that can be sort of moderated by how culturally intelligent an organization it is. So in other words, a culturally intelligent organization will benefit from— will know how to kind of reap the rewards of the so-called cognitive offloading, whereas a less culturally intelligent organization could end up suffering by just not knowing how to do that properly and not knowing how to embed it into their sort of processes And stuff. So I mean, I would say that there's so much— it feels to me like it's a really difficult time to be talking about CQ because we're so time poor and we're very distracted with, you know, we're forced to kind of make quick judgments. Everyone's terrified of being cancelled, you know, kind of immediately. And yet now more than ever, we need to slow down and think about the value of relationships and suspending our judgment. And, you know, as Bernie was talking about How the deal was done as soon as they sent this different person from the same culture. And I think we forget that all of the systems and processes that an organization is kind of made up of, but behind those processes are just people and their relationships with each other.
Leanne ElliottInteresting. Yeah, thank you.
Al ElliottFabulous, fabulous. Thank you, Danny, for your comment there. Leigh, any closing thoughts?
Leanne ElliottI mean, I have, I have so many, so many thoughts, and I think this is such an interesting area to, to dive into. And I think what I would encourage leaders, because I know that a 12-month wait to see some tangible commercial outcomes might sound like a really long time, but as Polly and Bernadette have said, you're going to start to notice those incremental changes almost immediately and investing in, particularly managers and team leaders, being able to have these conversations with people, that mindfulness, that awareness, you are going to see almost instantaneously in terms of how your team interacts and behaves in the organisation. So, I think anything around behavioural change modification and building awareness is well worth investing in. And I love what you said as well, Bernadette, that this is solution in a big canvas of many, many other solutions, big tapestry. So yeah, I think it's definitely worth looking into. Before we go, we always like to ask the question the same way. If you could leave every leader here watching today with just one single truth about what it actually takes to build a workplace where people feel that they belong and they perform at their best, what would it be? Polly, can I start with you?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)I think it would be to kind of honestly and sincerely believe in the power of authentic kind of connections and kind of walk the talk on that. You know, we always— there are so many companies that they've all got their sort of values proclaimed on the website or whatever, but I think it's to have the most senior people, the people at the top who have the power to influence others, to really believe that, yeah, connecting authentically with people will make a difference, and that creating a company that everyone feels they can belong and contribute to will eventually impact the bottom line, for sure.
Leanne ElliottI love that. And Bernie?
Polly CollingridgeI'm just going to go rogue and just randomly say what I've got in my mind. And so when we talk about leadership, I always default to some work, some research that Deloitte did about the 6 signature traits of inclusive leaders. And one of those signature traits is cultural intelligence, being a culturally intelligent leader. And so being a leader, you need, you know, go and look at that model, 6 signature traits. You might be ticking all the other ones, but from a cultural intelligence lens, have you built that trait? Have you built that particular trait that they've made reference to? So, yeah.
Leanne ElliottBrilliant. Self-awareness is always worth investing in, I think. Thank you so much. We could easily talk for another hour, and I think we're going to have to do a follow-up on this and cultural intelligence and dive into it again. I feel like we've just scraped the surface, but thank you both so much for joining us. If you are watching this on the recording, please feel free to still put in any comments or questions below. Us and the guests do tend to pop back to the event and have a look and see what the conversation is. where the conversation's been headed. So please do leave any questions, we'll do our best to get to them. Anything else from you, Al, Georgia? Any other business?
Al ElliottJust to say that— sorry, excuse me, not spoken for a while— just to say that this will be on the stream, on the podcast stream, I think on Friday as well. So everyone's going to get the chance to have a little listen to it. I think that's it really. We've got another LinkedIn Live coming up soon, so if you've liked this, go and make sure you follow Leanne on LinkedIn, Because she makes— she's the one who organizes all these because I don't know how to do it. I believe that is true, but I've learned. I am contrite and I have learned my ways. Leanne, anything else?
Leanne ElliottNo, that's it. Thank you all so much for listening. And yeah, join us again very, very soon.
Al ElliottThank you very much. And go follow Polly, go and follow Bernadette on LinkedIn. Fabulous guests.
Leanne ElliottAll the links in the show notes if you are listening on the RSS feed.
Al ElliottThank you.
Leanne ElliottThat's it for this one. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to connect with any of our panelists, you'll find all of their details in the show notes. If you'd like to be a future guest on one of our LinkedIn Lives, we would love to hear from you. Drop us an email at podcast@truthliesandwork.com. And if you enjoyed this, please do leave us a review. It genuinely helps more people find the show. See you soon.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Bye.