#261 - Don't kick the hive with Jamie Corbett

[00:00:02] Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Get Out of Wrap. Today I'm joined by a lovely human being, he's a bit too good at chess, we'll get into that, and someone I've got to know really well through the team leader community but I'm very pleased to introduce Jamie Corbett who is Head of Operations at Advantis Credit. Hello mate. Hi mate, how are you?

[00:00:28] I'm very good thanks and great to see you. Let's get the chess out of the way. Jamie and I both like chess, Jamie's good at chess and I'm not so he's beaten me online quite a few times.

[00:00:44] But we are here to talk about, I feel like I've had a kind of ringside seat recently to see your rise in your career and just get to know how competent and thoughtful and engaging you are. But where did it all start this kind of journey in contact centres for you?

[00:01:06] Jamie Corbett, contact centres really. I fell into it by accident to be honest. I never intended on having any kind of career in a contact centre. And it was around about 14, 15 years ago. I'd come out of another career. I was actually a plumber by trade, gas engineer. And I'd done that since I'd left school. So I'd been on building sites and that was very much the industry that I was in.

[00:01:33] Jamie Corbett, but through one reason or another, the recession, et cetera, happened. Um, I found myself without a job and I was walking past the building that I'm in now and there was a banner outside and I needed some money since holiday spending money cause I was going on holiday in about four weeks. So how old can that be? Answering the phone and disclaimer, it's actually quite difficult.

[00:01:55] Jamie Corbett, but yeah, I applied the following day. I was in an interview. The day after that, I was, um, in a training group within a week. I was, I was let loose on the great rich public in our contact centre. And that was 14 years ago. And I've done pretty much every job in the building since, um, on the way up. So I'd spent three years, maybe four years on the phone. I think it was, which I actually really enjoyed. Wasn't very good at it.

[00:02:25] I started, um, by all accounts. Um, and then my manager at the time, um, harassed me into applying for a team leader role. So I, I did it, um, begrudgingly. And unbelievably, I'd never, you know, I'd never, I'd never done any of the point of contact stuff. I'd never done any coaching. I'd never done any of the floor walking bits and pieces.

[00:02:50] And I, I did the interview, found myself as a team leader and then progressed to a manager quite quickly after that. Um, I've managed to do several different departments. Um, I managed my way up to a, um, head of a department. It didn't go so well, actually, it was around COVID time. Um, and I learned some very, very valuable lessons there, which you don't necessarily see at the time. Then took a bit of a step back, reassessed.

[00:03:18] And then I got the performance manager job that I had around about two, three years ago. And then most recently moved into head of operations. So that's pretty much my journey across those 14 years. And all because I accidentally stumbled across a banner on a rail. Let's start at the beginning then. Did you, did you enjoy gas engineer plumbing work? I loved it. I, I still love it now. I, um, I think about it all the time.

[00:03:49] Um, I wasn't particularly, I was, I was academic enough in school, but school wasn't a good place for me. So I never bothered with college or university and just went straight into a building site role. And there's one thing to be said about working on a building site is you very, very quickly in a work ethic with those around you. And that's something I massively, massively carried through. And I still talk to a lot of people who are in the trade now, actually. Um, but the, the work ethic you get from a building site is unbelievable.

[00:04:18] And then that, um, you mentioned something about when you're on the phones, uh, a, it being more difficult than you thought. But did you say you weren't particularly good? What, what do you mean? I was, so the industry, the way in, um, you have the same type of customer and the, the, the auto is the nicest. And I'd gone into it, um, bit, bit cocky, bit, um, sure of myself thinking it's answering the phone. How hard can it be? Yeah.

[00:04:49] Um, and I just wasn't very good at it. I wasn't very good at collecting money. Um, I over assumed how easy it would have been. And I was very fortunate that, um, I was after about a week, no, maybe about three or four weeks, actually. My manager at the time pulled me to outside and basically said like, what are we going to do? Like, you've had the coaches, you know, you're not doing something. I'm like, oh my, I just don't know.

[00:05:17] I thought, well, well, I've been very good at in the past as an apprentice as watching somebody and emulating. So I thought right, sit me next to the highest performing person in the business. So sat me next to this guy, Vinny. Now in our industry back 13, 14, 15 years ago, it was very much, um, very different to what we're in now. Vinny, Vinny was very, very different to the type of people we were employing around them. Vinny was very calm, very cool.

[00:05:45] He was an old hippie actually. Um, went to Glastonbury every year, but not for the music. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. The guy knows what about growing kale. Um, and he, he, one day, so I sat next to him. I still wasn't getting it. And I just, I wasn't good at it. I wasn't good at, um, talking to customers. I was the kind of person that back in the day, um, when you've heard the takeaway, I'd re-hearstown in the takeaway.

[00:06:12] I don't know why I even applied to a close-cent job, but, um, Vinny changed my entire outlook, actually. It's something I've carried through right in the position I'm in now. And for years, I thought there was, there was a quote that Vinny gave to me that I thought his, and I thought he was like a philosophical genius. But I've, I've actually found it's, um, Adele Carnegie quote since reading the book. And he was about trying to hoard.

[00:06:39] And if you're trying to collect honey, we don't kick the hives. And it instantly changed my outlook on that, that role. And I became really good at it eventually. I became real, real high performing, um, and went way up through the ranks. And I was possibly the, the, the best performer in the department for a good six, seven months back at this.

[00:07:02] Um, but anyone going into a contact center is an incredibly rewarding job, which is not going to be as easy as you think it is. I think he has a bit of a bad rep contact center. Why is it rewarding? For me, it was the, the most rewarding aspect of it was, it was on a personal level. It was the, like I said, um, I gave you the example, just I used to phone, I used to use that phone in the taxi.

[00:07:32] Um, and now I'm sat on a podcast talking to him within that first six months to 12 months, the, the amount of confidence that I developed from working the phones was, was probably faster in my development. And then any other points in my entire career up until now. And that, like, I was still, I was still living, um, with my mom and stuff at that point.

[00:07:59] And like people would notice the confidence and improved. And that was like a massive thing for me. So I was being incredibly insecure. Um, I couldn't imagine another, another industry that would have done that for me. And speaking to people and developing your ability to communicate with people, your ability to empathize with people. Um, and you probably don't realize it when you first go into a contact center, but you instantly start developing your emotional intelligence, which was a really big thing to me at the time.

[00:08:30] Cause I wasn't particularly in tune with emotional intelligence. Um, but I'd say it's probably one of my strongest suits now. Probably one of the things that's projected my career the way it is. But the minute you start speaking to people and you enter negotiations with people, or you are having a conversation whether it's sales, collections, insurance, wherever it is. The minute you get into that idea of a backwards and forwards where there's an outcome for both people. And you want to get to the best possible outcome for both parties.

[00:09:00] Your emotional intelligence will just grow and grow and grow. Okay. It's a muscle entity. We need to exercise it. And it's an excellent industry for doing that. I completely agree. And we've spoken before about, um, I think it was my third job in the industry was debt management. So by that time I was used to talking on the phone and like you say, I think whether you're introvert or extrovert, the fact there's no real hiding place.

[00:09:30] You have to kind of, you're showing up every day. You're engaged in conversations with strangers, um, and you're negotiating, but excuse me, I've always said it. I think if you can, if you can become competent and do relatively well or well in collections, you can do anything. You can sell anything.

[00:09:55] Um, I always, I, I got coached quite early on about being too trusting, too naive because there was a, there was an element of, I really bought into the concept that was shared when we, when I joined was, we're not chasing people. Um, we are there to help. And actually you've got a series of tools that can help people, but the hardest part is to get them to engage because they just want to, they don't want to talk to you.

[00:10:25] They're either embarrassed or they don't care or all of these different trying to figure out whether it is can't pay, won't pay. And I just wanted to get to this point where I could get people to use the tools that I had at my disposal to actually help them, not just with the bank's debt that I was working for, but their debts across the board. Yeah. You could pro rata payments, all that kind of stuff. Yeah.

[00:10:50] And, um, some of the tools were dependent on there being like a part payment. And I would always, you know, my team, I'd finish with quite a long conversation. My team leader would say, oh, that sounded good. Did you get the part payment? And I said, no, they, but they are going to pay it on Tuesday. And didn't say anything to be fair. Not initially this kept happening. Okay. Martin, they are just fobbing you off. They are not.

[00:11:19] And I was like, no, no, we could build a good relationship and they wouldn't do that. And, and it was that kind of, oh, wait a minute. I've got to get a little bit tougher here around your understanding of what people are like and like trying to think of their position. They, they might have agreed to everything, but they just want you off the phone and whether they are going to just blow the money or they literally don't have it.

[00:11:43] But you've got to be a bit more savvy about people's situations. And it was such a learning, a learning curve for me. Massive. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's obviously different to a sales environment because it's not an iPhone 18 or whatever they're on now. At the end of it, there's not something shiny or a holiday.

[00:12:06] And he's, I always find it really interesting that one of the things I did quite well with is I moved away from the idea of talking about money because people are incredibly precious about money. And instead I would talk about time. So within X amount of time, you won't need to deal with this anymore because we'll have it cleared, et cetera. I always found it incredibly fascinating that people are far more precious of money than they are time.

[00:12:29] And they're happy to sit paying something for 20, 30, 40, 50 years and have that level of stress and anxiety hang over you because it's the smallest amount of money possible. But as an actual fact, you could, a really good example, you know, you could look at paying 20 pounds every month, which is super comfortable. And it's not an issue. It can take you two years.

[00:12:54] By the time you increase that to say 40, actually half the amount of time is going to take to get your peace of mind, which I curiously think is an incredible trade-off to, you know, mental health, et cetera. So that was a big, big part of it for me. And, you know, you're right. The tools at your disposal, and I think the industry as a whole, that particular industry around death, people approach it with rightly or wrong. And, you know, it's a preconceived idea of what it is.

[00:13:25] And that's through, you know, consumption of various types of media, social media, and what the bloke down the pub's telling you about, you know, don't pay them, don't pay that up. And because of that, you know, we, when we employ people, this is still the general public we employ. They've also got a preconceived idea of what the industry is, and it's, it's educating them so we can educate them. I'm a big believer in this. You know, if we can get that message out of us and we can be consistent enough.

[00:13:53] Or, you know, you can change one person's mind about the situation. Every single day you've changed the world for that one person. I can't see why you can't do that en masse. Start making a big, big difference of it. So, and that will change from the idea is we don't kick the hive to collect the honey. There's no point to being brash and over the top and being, you know, bully boy tactics, et cetera. You don't kick the hive if you're on the honey. I love it. But you can get stung. Yeah.

[00:14:22] And you mentioned that you were kind of cajoled into taking that first leadership position. What was it, do you think, that they saw in you that you didn't necessarily see yourself? I'd got to a position at that point. I joined a team where I was dealing with a very, very specific type of accounts. It was account management.

[00:14:51] And we've had them quite a quarter of the times just yet. So what I did was I applied a bit of Excel to it. It was particularly very good at Excel in the business or in the contact center at that point. It's like, you know, I've only got bare basic skills. But what a VLOOKUP can do for your career, I'm living proof of it, right? So what I'd done is I'd just started managing the accounts rather than the people.

[00:15:16] And I started putting a report together off my own back that I was sending to my manager. It was going to the head of the department and eventually it was going up to the managing director. And he started getting me noticed. And then at the management meetings, they'd obviously say, Jane, you've done this piece all year. It's really, really good. And there's a team leader opportunity coming up. And I'd never particularly thought of it. I'd never thought of myself as a leader.

[00:15:43] I genuinely at that point, I loved being on the phone. I really did enjoy the contact center. I enjoyed the environment, the people around me, the job itself. Loved all of it. And so my manager sat me down. He's coming up to PDR season. What do you want for the future sort of thing? And we had that conversation and they talked about all the things I'd achieved. And I got to a point where you always fit a ceiling within a role.

[00:16:12] And I think I was probably getting there. But you almost, if I said there was a point where it's less of you were being promoted, you're just naturally transitioning to the next stage. I think I was probably at that point. So it made sense to do an application. Plus the application was really, really long. And if I'm honest, I was a bit, I couldn't really be bothered with doing it. But they got me doing it in my one-to-one session. We submitted it.

[00:16:39] And yeah, I got down to the final two with a particularly strong candidate. It's like the other side of me. Didn't think I'd get it. And then, yeah, I was giving the role and the magic weekend. In fact, on top of the magic weekend, I had the magic evening. I was seeing where you look at the next days. And yeah, and then I was putting to the contact center. Fortunately, a different part of the building.

[00:17:09] So the team I was given wasn't a group of peers that I had previously. So I was quite blessed in that sense. I was given a new team. Can you remember that first day then? So, I mean, that is a quick one, isn't it? It's kind of the next day. Yeah. Were you, was it straight in? Was there any kind of lead in? Or what were you thinking? So what happened was I didn't know it was actually going to be the next day.

[00:17:38] So in all honesty, I didn't see it in that big evening. But I came in and I sat down. And they were like, what are you doing here? Yeah, basically we found ourselves in the position where a team leader recently left. And they got too many FTE in that particular department. So you've got the job, you can go over and sort of support. I was like, okay, I can go over and do some coaching and bits whilst I ease myself into it.

[00:18:04] But when I go over there, the managers had already very kindly donated me a couple of agents from each of their teams. Needless to say, they were not the highest performers in the world. I believe we called them the work hard. And yeah, they just sat me down. And I honestly didn't know where to even begin. I think I spent two days just introducing myself to them individually.

[00:18:35] But because I'd come from a different area in the business, I think we all just assumed I was previously a manager. And I was getting all these questions. And the questions about the workers, but then asking about holidays and sick pay. And I was like, I've got a steep learning curve here. Needless to say, I obviously did it. But that first three months of anyone going into being a team leader or a manager,

[00:19:03] it's a lot to learn, depending on the organisation you work for. But it's probably the most exciting three months. Did you feel at any point that you had to amend your behaviour? Like kind of who Jamie is, was? You know, did you feel that kind of, right, now I've got these people looking to me as the leader,

[00:19:35] I've got to kind of calm down on this, be more of that. Was that kind of thing going through your head? Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I was very conscious that, that I was now a leader. Um, and like I say, it wasn't necessarily a promotional thing. It was more of a natural transition for me. And I think I'd matured through the contact centre role towards the last 12 months anyway. And probably just life, you know, outside of work, matured as you get older and stuff.

[00:20:03] But for the first part of my life in the office, I was probably quite close to Jim from the office, if anyone's seen. Yeah. Um, but when I found myself in that leadership position. Then you're more like Dwight. Yeah. You start, you start over correcting and you can very quickly start coming down on stuff quite quickly. Um, and I think, I think the nuance or the beauty in the role of being a team leader is understanding the gray areas between the black and the white.

[00:20:34] So when you first become a team leader and you've got everyone looking at you, you're very conscious that there's your new peer group. And now watching you and suddenly you feel like you've got to prove yourself then. And you've got nothing to prove because you're brand new. You know, you've got the people above you that put you into this position. So you feel the pressure of, I need to show them from day one, I can do this. And then you've got people below you and that you've just left all egging. You want to do really, really well. And Jane is really good and he'll do it. And again, it's from all these angles.

[00:21:04] They can be a very isolating situation. You find yourself in when you first start is, is what I found. Um, and I probably get started over correcting myself a little bit. You're seeing behaviors and, you know, rap time, where is rap time above 10%? Well, it's been above 10% for two and a half years for this team. And then somebody cracked the whip and it just doesn't sit right because you've got no relationship with them. So yeah, it's, it's a minefield to tread. But you did that even maybe inadvertently.

[00:21:34] You did what I would always suggest is the right thing to do, which that just spending time, getting, introducing yourself, getting to know who your team is. They can get a chance to find out who you are. Um, because without those relationships, you could become just some person that's shouting at me or you're some person that I go to, to ask things rather than, that's my leader. He's really cool.

[00:22:02] And yeah, you know, um, had you done, cause I'm interested in when you started doing those reports, was that, what was that born out of? You know, when you were an agent and those reports led to, was it, what was it born out of doing it? It was born out of. So the job that I was doing saw me dealing with more complex cases. So I'd gone from being a really, really, really high performer with super, super high KPIs,

[00:22:31] hitting all the numbers, top of all the metrics. Then because I was dealing with these more complex cases and actual factors, my numbers started dropping off or in the background, I'd increased the amount of work that I was doing. So I thought at some point, you know, I'm not necessarily saying that anyone in the business wouldn't understand and thought that he's just slacking off now. I thought creating these reports so I could demonstrate, you know, where my time was going, what extra activity I'd put into these particular things.

[00:23:01] And it was almost, um, it was a prerequisite to creating performance reports for agents and, you know, and efficiency reports and productivity reports. I was almost doing it again, naturally evolved into it. So that's what that started with. And then I, um, I used to case manage quite a large load. And again, through not wanting to manually update a spreadsheet like everybody else might be doing, I just thought myself I had to do dealer cups and a few other little formulas

[00:23:31] from, um, Excel. So I could then very, very quickly get this report out on a daily basis if I wanted to compare it to if anybody else started doing it and following my lead, um, it would take them a long time to see what they're updating these spreadsheets manually. Whereas now I'm, I'm this efficient machine and I can update the managing director every morning if I so want. Um, so yeah, he was, he was through that.

[00:23:56] It was just through, um, tracking and improving the processes that I was putting into place on myself, which is something you carry through into a team leader role, into a manager role. Um, and that, that actually stuck. And a lot of the BAU in that particular team is now based around creating that report so those processes that I put in place all the way back then as an agent. That's nice. That's nice. It's a little bit like my dad.

[00:24:24] Whenever we go to this, um, little tiny town in Devon, he'll go, I helped build that wall. And, um, that's that kind of, you, you've left, you've something. Yeah, we know, dad. We know. Um, I do a lot of that now. I'll drive past the house and see where I've been. I've been up to that chimney. I didn't have a bathroom in there. Don't let it happen. Um, do you know when you, you, so you started in, you're quite, you started in leadership. You've got your team.

[00:24:52] Were you, was there a leadership development program or were you just left to it? Um, back in the old regime, back when the, you know, the business we're in now is not the business it was then and no, I was very much less to it. I was left to it with this group of managers that I mentioned that give me this team of the have not, so the hard wigs, whatever they call them. And they've learned, with the exception of maybe one or two, you weren't particularly receptive that, you know, just focused on their own teams.

[00:25:21] Um, and I had to do it all myself. Now, one of the things that luckily I'm very passionate about is reading. I spent a lot of time reading, um, various books about leadership development. Um, it's a bit of a rabbit hole if you get into it. Um, and this is where I spoke to Dale Carnegie thing from, from Vinny. So for years, I thought Vinny was a genius and I found it in how to win friends and influence people. A lot of it though is trial and error. Yeah.

[00:25:51] And it's sitting, sitting with your guys and getting to know them. Um, you can very much, one of the, one of the things that I did get in terms of development was I was told a story, I can't remember it word for word, but about some monkeys that were in a cage and there was a bunch of bananas in the middle. It was an experiment, I think in the fifties. And we talked about, um, they put a monkey in each corner of the cage. Every time a monkey went to grab a banana, they hose the monkey down.

[00:26:20] And eventually they learned the behavior to not go and grab the bananas. So eventually they would swap one of the monkeys out for a fresh monkey. And he would go and grab the bananas, but other monkeys would warn him. We don't do that. And eventually then at the end of the experiments, all four monkeys are out of the cage. They'd put none of them ever try and get the banana and they don't know why they're not trying to grab the bananas. He just knows bad. And I was, I was given this story and it was a bit of a, a bit of a revelation. Cause I thought I'm just doing the way that well, they're doing it.

[00:26:49] You're stopping me doing it the way that I want to do it. And eventually I might think a little bit Maverick at the time, a bit rogue. Um, I developed my own leadership style. I spent time reading, learning, um, all that sort of stuff. There was no leadership program. And you get to a place where you do it the way you want to do it. And then other people will start to emulate the way that you do it. Um, so self-development has been the biggest, um, thing I've had through my career.

[00:27:19] I love, I love that. Cause I, I think it's a kind of, um, it will always be something I recommend to people. It's like go and find other sources of information, books, podcasts, just find out. And then with all of those different building blocks, you can think what best suits you take bits of it, amend it, use it.

[00:27:43] And what I think is interesting with your journey is cause I was thinking about, um, I called it like the bad apple team. I joined another contact center as a team leader and they said, Oh, we've, we've made up a team of like two or three, two people from the other eight, nine teams or whatever. And I was like, okay, you know, like by this point I was already, I'd been a team leader. So I knew exactly.

[00:28:14] They'd just gone, Oh great. An opportunity for me to get rid of my bad apples. And, but joining somewhere new by that point, I had experience of what I like to do, how I like to operate. Um, it's very simple example. They didn't do like morning huddles and I used to like doing them. So I just started doing them and they, what I, what the point I'm trying to make is that came, that was just natural for me.

[00:28:43] And I wasn't looked upon like, they were just going, Oh, he's new. So he's just bringing in the stuff that he's, he's not done before. Whereas you being sort of homegrown, if you like it, probably, it was probably more of a punt for you to, to try different things. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So fair, fair play to you. Did you, did you have in your mind?

[00:29:08] Like if you, if you were going to finish this sentence, like I want my team to be blank. Like, what did you want your team to be? I worked my team to be. So that particular team, the bad apple team, um, I wanted them for them, not for me. Like I never, I never liked the idea that they were given to me based on the reason they were given to me. Yes. So I made it my absolute mission, whether or not I communicated with some team or not.

[00:29:38] I don't think I ever did, but my mission is to make them the highest performing team. Yeah. And then I wanted to make sure that when I went into my weekly performance meeting or my weekly productivity meeting with the other manager, they're asking me how they were doing it and why is this happening? Or, oh, I'd love that them in my team, you know, you do the whole fantasy football thing where like, Oh, let's, let's trade. I thought, no, that's, that's what I wanted for them. And that's what we did. We did. Team leaders in the room. I love that. I love that.

[00:30:07] Cause what, what people don't realize is what a great motivator. And if your team can get it as well, of course they can. They're looking around going, Oh, okay. I know why I'm, I know why I'm in this team. I know why he is. I know why she is. Um, so, you know, started at the bottom and now I'm now look at me. We grew that team. We grew that team out. So I think 23 people at one point, I had reporting to me in that age and supporting

[00:30:35] to me, um, average headcount to me is probably between 10 to 11 peer manager. I grew up to 22. My Trishy fell through the floor. Empire building. Yeah. And it got to a point where, um, I'd, I'd almost got two teams. I'd split them into A&B and I'd compete them against each other and stuff. But, um, I was always a bit keen from a leadership point of view. The one thing I always wanted to do and the one thing I did understand was, um,

[00:31:03] about creating environments that's, that feel safe for them. So the reason we did well was the, when I first, when I first moved into the business, um, we had a operations manager. It was very, very cutthroves, very old fashioned contact center, you're not hitting your targets and we, you know, then you start managing out. And that was, that was rough because when I first joined this, um, company, we'd found out that my girlfriend, my wife and I was pregnant and that was an

[00:31:33] incredibly stressful time for me. I always swore to myself when I had become a leader, I will never create an environment where someone feels unsure, unsafe, or they can't do what I did, which would be a bit rogue, a bit maverick. So that team, for example, it was just a case of you'd be really transparent and really clear about expectations. These are the boundaries. I, as the manager's leader, I'll put these processes and controls and checks

[00:32:00] in place to make sure that nothing you do is keen, you know, bring the business down, not getting impacted. What I will do now, what I want from you now is to use the space that I've given you is to grow and come to me with the ideas. Like I'm a big believer in, well, you shouldn't leave yourself from the phone. And we, we do it a lot in contact centers that people hire up or we should have the best possible ideas about how to speak to customers, but they aren't doing it.

[00:32:29] And we created this environment. You know, these 22 people constantly would come to me and being with ideas and script changes and all sorts of stuff. And we, we used to, I used to, I used to, if any of them ever watch this back, I'll be, I'll be embarrassed, but I used to make up projects for them. And we did, there was a point. So I had the bad apple team as a good example where whatever reason back then,

[00:32:57] nobody seems to be able to get wrap time on the 10%. So I created a project, a project Artemis. Nice. And I took them off all, all 15 to 20 of them at that point into a meeting room. They've got no windows, purposely hush, hush. I created a slide deck. I created a project name. We went through Project Artemis and we talked about all these various things that we were going to do.

[00:33:23] So if anyone ever asks you about Project Artemis, we don't talk about it. I'd occasionally like put a slide on a wall board and be like, oh, that shouldn't be there for other people to see. And then within, within about a week of doing that, the entire team got under 10% wrap one day, showing me it off. When the following day it happened. And then we got to a point where the team stayed behind at night because the last productivity report used to be whole class four. So we were staying behind to make sure that everybody was under 10%.

[00:33:53] And they were doing it together as a team. And then we did an entire month under 10% wrap. But to this day, people still talk about Artemis and people still follow the same steps that we put in place. It was only because they feel safe enough to start like exploring what we should do and putting ideas in there. Management is great. Managing people's routines and stuff is fantastic. But giving people a bit of room to grow is next level.

[00:34:22] I love it. Similarly, I was like, oh, I've got some freedom. I've got some freedom here to do stuff. Like I can remember, and I did this with my youngest daughter. Have you ever heard of the Apple experiment? So it's a bit, it's way, this is way out there. Okay. But there is a sensible message behind it.

[00:34:49] So I always wanted to make my team do interesting stuff with them because the monotony of the job itself can be tough. So it's part of your role to engage with them, involve them. And like you, we had a thing with coming back late from breaks. And I got my team to understand what that meant for our welfare budget. So they started to self-manage and all this sort of stuff.

[00:35:15] Anyway, I wanted to talk to them about the impact of their words and energy, bearing in mind we're all sat next to each other, and the difference between positive and negative. And there's a Japanese scientist who has done various experiments. The simplest one is the Apple experiment, where you get an apple, cut it in half,

[00:35:40] and you put one in a Tupperware, half in a Tupperware box, and you write good on the top, half in a Tupperware box, and you write bad. And you keep them in the same position, same shelf in the fridge. And every day, you get the good apple, take the lid off, and say good stuff to it for like a minute. Put it back, get the bad one, say bad stuff to it. Like, you're a rubbish apple. I hate you.

[00:36:09] And I documented this, and my daughter, who's now at university, she was like, I don't know, six or seven. And I was getting her to do it. And honestly, my wife and other kids were like, this is absolutely cringe-worthy. In the end, I started doing it in the garage, because they were like, my dad's talking to half an apple every day. And I took photos.

[00:36:36] And anyway, so I was telling people this in the team meeting. And the apples rot at a different rate. Like, you can go and look it up. Like, the one that you're saying good stuff to is preserved for far, far longer. And I said, look, I do not know the science behind this, or even if it's real. But what I can tell you is this.

[00:37:05] And I had a picture of Mia holding up the apples in their Tupperware boxes. And I said, but I think there's one thing we can all agree on, which is, if I'm sat next to someone that's constantly negative about every change in the company, customers, their life, where they're at, their performance, the job. I said, how does that make you feel? I said, you, it does impact you.

[00:37:32] You might be terrible and positive and last through the whole day still being okay. But there is an impact. And this shows that it might just be more than what you think. It could be everything. And in fact, I used it with my elder daughter around the words that you say to yourself. Yeah. If you look in the mirror and you go, oh God, I'm this, I'm that, I'm the other. That's having an impact.

[00:37:55] And it was just that, that freedom as a leader to be able to do stuff like this, to try different things. You don't, you can do what you want. Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think that's a beautiful thing. You can do what you want within reason without, you know, bringing the business down. But I just love the idea that, you know, you can grow and you can grow your team with you.

[00:38:22] And it doesn't have to be the set prescribed idea of what leadership is. Because what is the prescribed idea of leadership? I don't know. But the Apple thing, I've seen you can bend it differently actually. It's the same principle, but it was around, I think it's trees or plants. It was about playing music to them and different types of music with different types of messages. But I think one got played out to Joy by Beethoven. The other one probably got some gangster hip hop or something. And they grow at different rates.

[00:38:52] And I thought about this a long time ago. And it relates to the idea of when you're praising, you do that in public. You want to grow, you want to grow your little garden, which is all your little flowers sat there. We can water them. And I believe, I'm a big believer that praising an individual in public is good for everybody else around them. Until it takes a certain type of person to not be pleased for someone. You have to be a certain kind of person.

[00:39:18] When the town comes to have a, you would never chastise or you would never have a difficult conversation out on the floor. I'd always do that. Again, ideally in a room without windows because all the team are turning around trying to guess hand gestures and stuff. What's going on? Yeah, but it's a great challenge. You say, yeah, same as the Apple. You grow in a garden, you want green shoots. You don't take more compost on top of it. So you, how long were you team leader? And then you mentioned something.

[00:39:47] Did you go manager then head off? Yeah, so team leader, I was team leader for about, I want to say about six months and I became a team manager. Which essentially became the same sort of role anyway. But I did that for seven, eight years maybe. Six years maybe. And then an opportunity come up to take the next step up to performance manager head off.

[00:40:18] And polarizing or compared to my earlier analogy of I was ready, I just naturally osmosis into the team leader role. This was me getting a promotion. And this was me believing my own hype a little bit. And I took it. I took the role and I was in that role for about 12 months. And I learned some incredibly valuable lessons during that time. Least of all that I probably wasn't quite to where I thought I was.

[00:40:47] And it gives you a good opportunity to, again, I had an incredibly high performing team before that. And you do start believing your own hype a little bit. It's just part of human nature is what you do. But then when you're exposed and it's not just imposter syndrome, it's actually, this is probably a little bit more of a stretch for you. And you've only got a bit of ego to fall back on. It's time to reevaluate.

[00:41:12] So I stepped down from that and went back to team leader, back in the same department where I was. And it took me two, three months. And I'd gone through some personal stuff outside of work, which probably added to it. But I hadn't reacted as well as I could at two of it. So I spent some time reflecting.

[00:41:40] And now I can see that it was the best thing possible could have happened to me. Because I've gone beyond that role and gone up again. And when I'm far more prepared, again, this was a bit more of the natural. I was just sort of there anyway, doing it. Yeah, so it was a leap in the face. And the leadership doesn't always work out the way you want it to. It's interesting, isn't it? Because it can be very, not glib, because it's well-intentioned.

[00:42:08] But people will go, you know, setbacks are important. Get knocked down seven times. Get up eight. You win or you learn. I say all these things, right? But actually, when... And I think it's so important for people to look at you and think, you know, you're ahead of now. You're extremely successful. You are very thoughtful. You like growth mindset. But that is a knockback.

[00:42:39] And it's all very well having these, that kind of things going like, okay, I'm going to keep going. But when it's happening to you and when you're in that moment, I think you've got to recognize it's not pleasant, is it? You know, you're kind of... You've gone for it. It's not worked. You're back. It was probably the toughest two or three months I've ever experienced in work. But yeah, people always be like, oh, you know, the only person who leads is the person who doesn't get that copy.

[00:43:08] You know, it's all good and well. And I'd sort of, like I said before, I got really deep in the rabbit hole of leadership books and self-development. And it's all full of that. Like, well, they're just words on a page. And as good as it is to learn from reading and all that sort of stuff, the best teacher in life will always be falling on your arse and needing to get back up.

[00:43:36] And you just can't see it at the time. And you have to be in a certain place where... And it took me a while. You need to be prepared to look at what the actual issue was. Nine times out of ten, the actual issue is probably you weren't just there. The person who got the role after me is still in that role and done a phenomenal job with. I'm in a position now to say that they have done a better job than I ever would with that, based on the type of contract it was.

[00:44:06] I wasn't suited to it. I just got this idea in my head about progression. And I wanted it and COVID was happening. And I, you know, I thought, oh, it's a great opportunity for my development, my brand, if you like. And all that sort of stuff got in the way of my actual capability of doing it. So it was a long-haired, painful lesson at the time.

[00:44:33] And you just need to, as an individual, if you ever find yourself in that situation, you need to just be absolutely honest with yourself. There's no point making excuses about what has gone wrong or what you could have done better or what has happened. You just need to learn the lessons. I got really into it. I always thought I'd been into it. But I really, really got into journaling at that point. And I always find it fascinating.

[00:45:03] I think it was the, is it Tim Cook, the CEO? No, it was Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple. He made a very famous quote about you can't connect the dots going forward. You can only connect the dots looking back. And when you look back through something like that, you can see exactly what happened to get me to the point that I'm at now, head of operation. And had I not had that setback, I don't think I'd have got to the point that I'm at now.

[00:45:28] So retrospective is always an important piece of anyone's career, I would say. Reflecting and being retrospective and looking at the bits that have not just gone right, but the bits that set you back. Well, in Jamie 2.0 then, that then went back up and is now head of operations, what's the difference between Jamie 2.0 and Jamie 1.0?

[00:45:58] The difference, again, it's even difficult to talk about now. You've got to be very honest about yourself. The difference was me. So the person that went into that is very different to the person now. And on that journey in between, we talked about emotional intelligence and all those bits and pieces. But what I needed to do really was sit down and understand what my actual wants were out of my career, not just titles.

[00:46:28] And I find it ironic now that before the titles, I got to a place where I didn't want to be a team leader. I sort of got put into by my manager. And then titles and progression became very, very important to me. Almost a driving factor. Once that had happened and I'd reassessed and I thought, what is it I actually want? And, you know, I want to come work and I want to be able to add value to the company. I don't want to take from the company. I don't want to take a title from them. I want to add something to it.

[00:46:58] So the role that I'm in now is a great example is at the time, maybe 12 months or so ago, it didn't actually exist. And in my head, instead of creating a promotion, I thought I need to create a role and I'm being spread myself amongst my stakeholders. It's not about me anymore. It's about if I can list everybody else up and bring them with me,

[00:47:26] I'm in a far better position to get essentially, you know, the promotion or whatever. But even now the job title is not particularly that important to me. It's seen everybody else do well. And before, I think the only way, I suppose the point I'm making is before it was about me. And that's the bit that stings when you say it out loud. So I actually think that I'm a person, but it was about me. And now it's about everyone.

[00:47:54] It's the only way I can articulate it. I love, mate, honestly, I love it. And I can see that it's kind of like evolving, right? And I can remember being the first time I ever went to the expo. I was let out as a team leader. And it really stuck with me that I didn't want to go to the expo again with just team leader on my badge. And that became a big thing for me.

[00:48:22] Like I want to, but each time that I got a new role, it still wasn't enough. Yeah. I was like, oh, now it says contact center manager. And those moments were like fleeting. You think I'd obsessed about it, wanted it, got it, looked at it. Yeah, that's nice. Gone. Now I want head off. Now I want this.

[00:48:45] And I'm not saying this is like right or wrong, but I think it's to your point, the moment you go from that to how can I leave like positive stuff happening to the people around me and see them develop and see them do what they want to do. That is far more important to the point that, you know, there was an event the other day. I got there.

[00:49:14] I was speaking and they said, oh, no, sorry. We haven't got you a badge. I said, that's all right. I don't care. I genuinely didn't mind. Yeah, yeah. I don't mind. You know, I very rarely now know what to put on there. And, um, it's funny how that for me, that was a big thing that I was, I was focused on, but like you say, it was for me. And it, the moment you start going thinking like that to, oh, okay.

[00:49:42] What, what impact can I have with this, with this role? Well, I think, I think the biggest epitivity for me during that time is how can join around with that three or four months. So I said, I got this other thing, you know, outside of work, but I'd lost something incredibly close to me. Um, as you know, in the contact center industry, we all know each other from other contact centers. I've got friends in other contact centers now who are managers and stuff.

[00:50:07] And when I moved to that position, when I, when I took that promotion, my team got disbanded and a couple of them left the company and joined other businesses and stuff. Like I said, I've probably done that job for about 12 months, maybe 18 months maximum. Stepped down and I was in, I was in the doldrums, you know, I was in that three month period. And someone sent me an email of a girl that I used to manage working for another contact center. It was a, it was a screenshot of an internal newsletter.

[00:50:36] They did an interview with the employee of the court or something or whatever it was. And we said, what is, what is the best leadership lesson you've ever had? And there was my name in another company's newsletter. And I remember thinking the impact it's not about me. None of this is about me. It's about them. None of this is about me. And if I can, you know, just one sentence that I've said to someone over a two year period

[00:51:02] sticks with them for more than five minutes, then my job is complete. And that was, that was a big turning point, which sounds a bit nappy. I was probably, probably out of a fear at that point. I love it. You know, the, I think we've, again, we've, this is stuff we've talked about in the, in the past is kind of realizing that your team are talking about you at home to their loved ones. Like, oh, what's your boss?

[00:51:31] Like whatever they say next is more important than any title or personal development review or anything. It's the thing that they say next really shows who you are as a leader. And, um, I, I just genuinely think I'm lucky to know you and we are very lucky to have you in the, in the team leader community. I love how you, I love how you operate and think.

[00:51:57] And, um, it would be good if you could come back on and we can talk more about like kind of leadership, leadership styles because, um, we have run out of, run out of time, my friend. I have things to do. I'm a busy man. Jamie, thanks so much for coming on. Cheers, Martin.