Leadership Lessons & Team Tidbits

Smart Cookies take aways ??

On Wednesday, we ran our 7th Smart Cookies event - People & Culture: Strategies for leading thriving teams. It was a brilliant and thoughtful evening of discussion from a really excellent panel of experts. Massive thanks to Jaye Cowle ?? , Alan Furley and Alicia Grimes .

Here are some of our favourite takeaways from the discussion:

?? The stay interview: waiting until someone has left your organisation to ask why they're leaving is too late! Conduct 'stay interviews' every 6 months to actively gather feedback and improve retention. Use an independent third party if you can!

??Transparency is key - you’re setting yourself up for failure if you say your culture is one thing, but the reality is very different. If long hours are part of the job, be honest about it. Then people know what they’re signing up for. Don’t say ‘work life balance is really important to us’ because you think it sounds good and then expect people to work crazy hours!

? You aren't going to get it right all the time - building a great culture isn't about perfection, but more so about being able to acknowledge when you get things wrong. Everyone should call out 'bad day' behaviours, especially those in leadership.

?? Psychological safety vs. Accountability - you need to find the balance between both. The best teams find the sweet spot where people feel safe to speak up, but also take ownership of outcomes.?

?? In times of economic difficulty, culture can fall down the agenda. We have to consistently choose to support the smaller companies who champion building inclusive, thriving cultures.

?? Culture is everyone's responsibility and it must be constantly lived by everyone in the team to ensure it doesn't just become a slogan on the wall.

You can read the full insights from the event here.?

Updates from our own thriving team!

• We’re delighted to welcome Adam to our small and mighty team! He’s joining as our Business Development Manager and brings more than a decade of sales experience with him. Outside of work, he can be found training for his next Marathon, trail running, playing tennis, or at the physio for his numerous sports injuries!??
• We’re also thrilled to welcome back a familiar face, as Alice will soon be back from maternity leave. It’ll be great to have her back on the team!
• This does mean though that it’s time to say goodbye to the wonderful Dotty, who’s been our Marketing Manager for the last year. She’ll be much missed by us, but maybe even more so by Burra coffee shop - they’ll be losing their best customer!?

What’s new?

• We’ve just released our reflections on a year’s worth of strategic collaboration with our charity partner, City to Sea. You can read more about it here.
• We’re excited to announce our next Smart Cookies event which will be taking place on April 30th, and will be all about closing the gap between Sales and Marketing. Get your ticket here!