Emily Rose Dallara (00:00)
You know, they were engaging, they were exciting, and they were on a mission. And that came through when I was speaking to them. And I thought, you know what, even if this doesn't work out, even if I join and the business fails, at least I'll have tried. And I'm pretty sure I will learn something. I've seen leaders over the years and various companies struggle with that because it does eventually just drag you down if everything is resting on your shoulders and you need to hire the right people around you, you're going to share the load and help.

to build, going from an intern, a junior, who is just green behind the ears and here to just learn. I've got to this point now where one of the directors for business is in game. It's been a hell of a journey.

Welcome to Bubbling Out, where we're popping the norms of leadership and creating new, sustainable, powerful ways to lead. This podcast is your sanctuary for discovering how to lead with resilience, manage change adeptly and handle stress effectively. Join me for a series of breakthrough conversations, practical tools and mindset tips and a peek into my weird and wonderful life as a leader and entrepreneur. All aimed at helping you

lead without compromising your time, energy, values or lifestyle.

If you're in the UK, if you're in the US, big players there, they are a car sharing company. So basically Airbnb for cars. If you've got a car sitting there in the drive or in your shared courtyard like we did, and you're not using it, why not rent it out to someone else who actually needs it? Why not make use of it? So he's a guy who took a huge chance when he was younger.

He turned down big four, he turned down consulting at a young age as a graduate, and he dove straight into the startup life, setting up one of the first car sharing company headquarters in UK. He's really cool, but we didn't really talk about the tech. We didn't really talk about the cars as normal when I have these kind of people on. We talk about them. We talk about their experience. We talk about everything that they've been through up until this point.

And this episode guys does not disappoint. went into those moments when he didn't think that he'd made the right decision. We talked about how he's had amazing role models in this company and how he's created culture here. And we really just talked on the topic of remote work versus being in a office together, because at the moment, very topical. How are you more productive? How should you build a company?

Is remote first the best way? Will it create the results that you want? We went down that angle, that route. Nothing of that was on the plan. As usual, I'm going to stop prepping for these conversations, honestly, guys, because they always go in different directions, but I love it and it's all relevant. So Rory is coming on the show today. Welcome Rory. How are you doing? Hi, Emily. Great. Thanks. Do you have to get up really early to go to the office? I actually don't.

We're a US company. most of my working day, you know, pushes into the evening because I have to connect with colleagues in San Francisco and in Toronto. So I tend to be more flexible with the way I use my time. it's actually something that we share with the team is, we trust people to, you don't have to stick to a nine to five. You know, it's a very archaic way of thinking about doing work. It's much more effective and much more sustainable to manage your time, know, the way

suits you and for me, because I know like today, for example, I've got calls at like 7pm and 8pm. I actually aim to get into the office for like 10. And then I met in the morning, you know, I had a bit more time to sleep in or go to the gym or, you know, catch up on things. So, yeah, I don't get up particularly early. was gonna say that that was always my because I have friends who work in corporate and they I have clients who work in corporate banking, actually, they're a

on the call with me at their 6am. I don't know how they do that. And so my brain just doesn't click in. When does your brain click in? Honestly, my brain is at its peak at about 11pm for some reason. I have to say my partner refers to it as my power hour. at like 11pm I can actually just get up and I'll just it's probably not very healthy. But it's just when my brain seems to kick in to get here for some reason. The mornings.

I am just nowhere to be seen. just cannot, like, I'm just not firing. that's just, I've tried, I've desperately tried to fight against it, to become a morning person as, you the years have gone on, but it's eluded me this far.

Yeah, well, to be honest, there's like scientific reasons around this and it's to do with circadian rhythm, it's to do with your past experiences, it's to do with your body DNA, genetics, all that kind of stuff. There's so many reasons. And I can't remember the exact model, but there is a model and it relates to different kind of animals. And I'm like a lark, so I'm much more productive in the afternoon. So like 1pm, for example. And also like you, 10pm-ish. everything comes back online again, I can just work and like really focus.

It's whatever works for you. However you manage your energy is really good. that's really neat. And that's something that, you know, I don't think you can force onto people either. Like I'm very keen to make sure that anyone within the team is able to walk around their circadian rhythm, right? It just makes sense. want to get the most out of someone, like give them the freedom to work when they work best.

to get the most out Yeah, definitely. We're going to have a tangent, but I just want to ask you on this because it's a topic at the moment, right? People are trying to get people back into the office, especially in the UK and the US. And how would you know how you would interact with the team who are all on different timelines? Time like the whole day is completely different, productive at different times. Like how do you actually manage that? Yeah, that is that actually is a challenge that we have to do. We have a very remote working policy so people can work.

entirely from home if they want to, they come into the office, we try and encourage as many days to come in as possible but you're right there are days where we're all know asynchronous and working at different points. A huge part of it's trust, you I do, you have my trust until you lose it is the philosophy and I have a huge amount of faith in everyone that we bring on and everyone who's working in this team that they are working towards.

objectives or goals or know the spread work that we've like agreed on and prioritized the beginning of the week. It obviously helps to have regular touch points so you know a particular meeting in the day where we can all sit down align on what needs to be done and then you know it's just using tools like Slack etc to just keep on top of things but it has changed a lot in pre-COVID to post-COVID you know pre-COVID we didn't rely so much on

the tools and the CRMs, etc. to help us track how a project's performing, is everyone like, delivering on the smaller goals and the smaller objectives that ladder up into the bigger ones. Because we were all there in person, so we were all just very comfortable as a smaller team, working in the same room every day. So that has been like a shift, but it works. I don't find there's a productivity loss from it.

It's just had to require us to shift strategy and shift the way that we collaborate to make sure that we're avoiding any pitfalls where something might, I don't know, something might get blocked or something might be slowed down if someone isn't aware that something else has happened because it happens not in their direct world. yeah, changing the way that we communicate, collaborate, but I think there's some great tools out there and like we've managed to figure it out. It wasn't an immediate.

There wasn't an immediate solution, over time, we figured out better ways to work together to collaborate. Yeah, from what you're telling me is just you've adapted and you're all working together with your own personalities, your own time management, and you're able to come to a solution that works for everyone, which is a pain point for so many companies and processes really save it and they save you so much time as well. Yeah, for sure. But they also don't replace it, right?

Yeah, a very strong believer that you I I'm a strong believer that to do your absolute best work, you need to have at least three days a week where you're together and you're working together. I like I know that's somewhat of a controversial opinion these days. There are a lot of companies that have moved to these fully remote models where they've offloaded their offices entirely. And I think for some people that can work really well for

me and from what I've experienced, you get the most out of people when you can band together and sit in a room and create a buzz and a momentum that you don't get when you're sat at home, you know, on your sofa or on your kitchen table and you're trying to work through things. So it is a, those tools can help you to find a balance, but I, in my opinion, I do not believe that they could fully replace.

the power that can come from being together in a room, driving things, picking up on things that you hear that you wouldn't necessarily have heard if you weren't on the Zoom. And those moments, especially more junior people, some of the best moments of my early career were when I just happened to be walking past the meeting room when one of our execs was in there and I got a chance and they just were like, do you want to come in and be a wallflower and experience?

what this is, be like, absolutely, yes, I would love to do that. And I, you know, I feel a sense of loss for the junior people coming into the workforce today, who folk who really prioritize working from home, and they don't get those opportunities to just learn through osmosis and build those soft relationships with, of course, senior people that can help them find opportunities that you wouldn't otherwise find behind a slack screen or a Zoom room. Yeah.

Definitely. And you pick up on so many physical cues as well when you're with actual people and you're able to hear the tone of voice and you don't have slack walls and you can like actually manage everything in a more humanistic way. You can just deal with people better. Yeah, completely. I agree. That is actually a really great point on the tone of voice that caused, especially over COVID, definitely there was clashes all over the place.

The solution to that is just pick up the phone. Multiple times I would have members of the team come to me and be like, I'm in a... This person's not being collaborative, they're really frustrating me. And then the other person would come to me be like, they're not listening to what I'm saying, blah, blah. And it's just because it's very hard to get... You cannot get the tone across by writing it in text on a screen. so I would immediately just call them back.

and just get on a conference and talk about it and they solved it 100 % of the time. So like, again, it's a case of you need that interaction. Yeah, you can do it over the phone. It's obviously better in person when you've got body language and you've got someone sat in front of you and you're sharing a space together. But yeah, it's difficult to just exclusively exist on a text-based conversational relationship. Yeah, it doesn't work. Like I really struggled.

I've been remote my whole entire career apart from when I was like 19 or 20 when I first started out in tech. And you have to learn how to do it. You have to, it's like a skillset that you require and you have to learn how to create interactions that actually work and flourish and communicate really well, mindfully. And I know that when I first stepped into roles where people couldn't reciprocate that, that I really struggled. Like I really struggled when people were using short messaging in Slack. And I was just like, can we just have a call? No, I don't have time for a call. it's like, it's.

You can, it comes from both ways. You can have one person who's really collaborative and really wants to be on a call, but then you do have other people, more technical people usually, who are like, it doesn't need a call. Like we can just text and you just, you just get nowhere. Has that ever come up in your company? Yeah. I think it has, but it's interesting that that is the path that you've taken, Emily. And like for someone who's been remote for so long, that you've got to a point where actually you're using your like,

you've created a business and a platform where you actually do have engaging long form conversations and experiences with people. It's almost like you found the extreme end of being able to connect with someone without having to be there in person. know, unfortunately, like every meeting can't be a podcast conversation where we really like dive into each other's experiences. But yeah, it's I think that's quite interesting the way that you've you have almost like

supplemented that absence of the like face to face social interaction by actually diving in a headfirst into a more extreme version of face to face interaction like this. yeah, that's an interesting point. I hadn't considered it in that way. But I think what I did a lot of was relationship building at the start. So like this is one of the foundations that I've always talked to clients about, which is if you're going to go into a role, you need to build a relationship first, especially when I worked in Southeast Asia.

everything is relationships. You expect it. I worked for a big crypto exchange in China and the expectation is that you spend like the first three months making friends, basically. You don't have conversations about work. You don't make changes. You literally just build a relationship. And I think that's what really helped me having that exposure and being able to put that first. And I think that's why I was successful in my roles and why I built really solid teams because I built trust.

on a really fundamental level. And then they got to know me and we were able to work on that remote basis. Some of the time I had an office, I had an office in one of the roles, but actually no one got any work done, to be honest. Everyone was way more productive remote because everybody could, like, especially me, I had my own little department section. Everybody wanted to talk to me. And I was like, I'm not getting anything done today. I'm just going to surrender and let everybody ask me questions. But I was like, thank God I can work from home tomorrow. So it's...

I think it's typical of when you're working mostly remote people do want to have a chit chat. But I also think it depends on the industry and the role as well. Yeah, it depends on the industry and the role, but it's also it's somewhat self-fulfilling. So for example, if you're if you're in the office every day, then you don't need to do as many like, Oh, hi, how are you doing? Those chit chats, because like, you're just on top of those things. Whereas you're in once a week.

there's also obligation that, you're here now, so we should do a whole patch up on the last six and a half days of your life. That's true. That's a really good point though. It's an interesting argument. Yeah. Have you got anything else to share on that? It is just that I'm conscious. It's somewhat of a controversial opinion and we've experimented with requiring different days to bring people into the office because, you know, I want...

get as many people in as possible because to build the momentum, to build the culture. I mean, we could even take a moment for culture. know, there's, there is something about being a part of a fast growing new company or new brand where the culture matters and the culture matters because especially in the early days when I joined tomorrow, which, you know, was about eight years ago now.

This was a start up. was the first hire in the UK. We had a director flying from SF who brought me on and we can get more into that in a moment. But where those where these brands compete versus for talent versus your Google, your Facebook, your Apple's and the other consultancies, know, the companies that are willing to offer you great pay packages, you know.

compensation, includes incredible benefits, free lunches, paid commute, all that stuff. The culture is one of the pillars that we have that makes us exciting and makes us attractive to new talent. Culture helps you to build relationships that you go on and you continue to, as you leave your startups.

You and you work with people there and you build those close relationships driven by the culture there. And they go on to make work in other startups and do other startups. And, you hear a lot about the delivery diaspora or whenever a tech company, IPOs, for example, and those people go on and that releases a huge amount of capital that goes on and creates new startups. An amazing network to the relationship with these people. And I really think that the culture that can be built and found in a

early stage fast growing StarTech bonds people together in a way that you probably find it harder to create in a massive organization that you know is slow moving, everyone has a specific role in a specific team. So yeah that's my last point on the whole work from home, work from office arrangement is culture is so important and it's so difficult to build that when no one's in it.

the office together. I do have friends who work at companies that will remain nameless where their offices are just ghost towns. it kills momentum. It kills the sense that you're building something exciting and that you want to put 110 % into whatever you're doing. that is, I think, where some of these companies that have gone fully remote but with big workforce is.

are going to struggle. And I think it's actually where like startups coming through have got an opportunity to find amazing talent because you know, appeals to people who want to like be in a room and do things together. We're a generally a sociable species, right? And I think that is, you know, I think that's paramount to building an exciting brand where people want to love you and all that. Definitely. I think on the topic of culture as well, you need to really have

one core magnet, one thing that's holding everybody there, like why are they here? The why, for example, what is keeping us together? And I I worked in the Web3 space, right? So crypto exchanges and my favorite company that I ever worked for was Bitcoin.com. And this was like at the very start, like 2016 when crypto was like not as big as it is now. the one thing that held everybody together was the founder. And the founder was so passionate about changing the world.

and actually putting things into place to make it happen, that everyone was just so excited. Everyone's like, we are at the start of something huge. Literally the work we're doing is changing people's lives. We can see it happening. And everybody was remote and distributed. There was no office. And we saw each other once a year. We all went to like, actually I did a cruise, a conference cruise, we had a retreat and then we all went off again. But seeing each other in person was as if you would, it was like a family member. I know that's quite toxic, but it was as if you'd like.

see each other yesterday because you had such deep strong connections around this one topic. So I've seen it done in that way as well. Like you can create the culture in terms of the physical office and the benefits and all that kind of stuff, but you can also create it around the why and the consistent message. And if he left or for whatever reason, know, boards can come in and shift people out. What do you think would have happened? Yeah, that actually happened. And actually I left.

just before that and it isn't the force that it is now. So that's a really good point. Yeah, the risk is if you place the responsibility of all of culture onto one person or one figurehead, that's actually a risk. It's fragile because if that person, even if they don't leave, but let's say they just lose the passion, that can filter through.

and there's nothing holding the rest of culture together. think that having a leader, a...

a brand ambassador that is going to give everyone the desire, like the passion to build the brand is so important, but I don't think it's the only thing you can rely on. think you need to bolster that with a social environment where people are interacting together, where people get to experience relationships with their colleagues outside of work as well, which is even harder, I think, on a...

on a remote workforce. Over COVID when we were fully remote, did do, we tried to do some like social, like, you know, the quizzes and the lunch and learns and social time over Zoom. Doesn't replace social time in person where you can go out for a dinner or a lunch or a drink or a coffee where you can actually connect with people on a personal level because that's how you really build trust and build committed relationships.

Yeah, I think there's two key things to the world building and the culture. is having that leader who's going to instill it and live and breathe those values. But then also it's having a working environment where those relationships can foster around that, irrespective of whether that person is there or not, or whoever replaces them in the future. Yeah, because you need to protect the business as well. It's true. It's like, how would a leader then in that situation?

The founder, for example, he's the one who's brought this business, built the business and he's lost the passion. He doesn't want to do it anymore. How does he transfer that? If it say they are a distributed team, how would he transfer that to the company? Like that's the problem. Our challenge. Yeah. I mean, that's the magic question. That's interesting. the best, I mean, the best way to do it is you hire the right people, right? You bring on, if you're the founder, the CEO, you bring on the generals, the leadership team.

that share those values, again, they continue to instill those values.

It comes from the top down, in my opinion. You can't rely on the junior people, the interns to come in and bring a culture. The tone has to be set by the leader. Turo's CEO does a really good job with this. He's based in San Francisco, I'm based in London. But he creates a culture from there across all of our offices.

Australia, France and Canada, where people know that this company puts people first. And he does that by being incredibly transparent about everything. Like it's the level of transparency that he shares on the all hands with the teams is more than I've seen at any other company. And that is a sentiment echoed by everyone I work with around here. That transparency.

builds a trust and a respect and it trickles down to the other leaders. So yeah, he's picked his leadership team. And so here in the UK, for example, we continue that sentiment. I'll be super transparent with how the business is performing. We'll go through the full P &L and like really dive into detail about what's going well, what's not going well, where are our opportunities, what's really happening here.

What are our plans for next year? Everyone has access to all of the data as well. it's being transparent, think is actually a really smart way. And I've seen this work a very smart way of building a culture of respect and a culture of appreciation that, you know, people don't feel like they've been left in the dark or they don't feel like they're excluded from conversations or they're an outsider and there's an inner circle. Yeah. Transparency, for example, there's barriers.

And that's something I will take with me, you know, with all my, wherever I go. It's just important to give people respect and let them know what's going on. Transparency is, I would say it's like if you don't have anything, at least have that. And it just creates such a culture of safety as well. Like you said, it's like you're not keeping people in the dark. You're able to, okay, this is my role. Say for example,

I don't know, head of marketing, right? You need to know the data so you know how to support the sales team, so you know how to support the product team. And it also takes away the, I used to have real anxiety around, do they have enough runway? Am I going to have a job? Right? I did a lot of money mindset work after that. But I realized that when you do have transparency, that isn't there. Like, you know that the work you're putting in can have a direct impact on the revenue and that your role is a really important role. I think, that transparency, what I'm trying to say is...

This transparency creates more agency and more responsibility for the people as well. And it also creates opportunity because it gives people the understanding to see like, where else can I provide impact? You fully understand, like you did there, the impact that your work has on the business and performance. But you also understand how other roles impact performance or you see opportunities where

someone doing something else could actually like help to improve the business in a certain way. We've seen that and we encourage that, you know, in this team. So I'll give you an example. There was like an area of our, so we're a marketplace. Maybe I should just explain what Tiro is at this point. Tiro is a peer to peer car sharing marketplace. So the best way to think of that is with the Airbnb for cars. Private car owners could rent out their cars.

when they're not using them, or even go on and build a business of a fleet of cars that they share out on the marketplace. And then we call them hosts, a la Airbnb. And then we have our guests who are the people who are to access a car. They benefit from Turo. They come to Turo because it's a marketplace with thousands of unique models you can choose from and an unrivaled convenience where

You can use an app within a couple of taps of the button. can book a car on your street. can get a car delivered to a door, delivered to the airport. It's disrupting a very okay industry in traditional car rental. I'm sure many people have had experiences, negative experiences queuing at the rental counter, signing forms, being stung with fees, getting the car that they didn't, not getting the car that they thought they booked. They thought they had an A-Class and they got a Fiesta.

It's white and it says enterprise on the sides. You know, it's not very aspirational. We're trying to turn that on its head and create a marketplace that just uses the 1.5 billion cars that are already sat around. you know, across the world, we don't need to manufacture new vehicles. We don't need horrible companies to have thousands of cars. The airport parking lots when there's already 33 million cars in the UK, you know, sat around. I'm sure if you look out.

you're in Lyon, but it's the same in France. know, we're live in France. If you look out your window, you'll see vehicles parked there doing nothing. We are one of them. a world where technology can now allow us to connect people with assets, people who own those assets. that's Turo in a nutshell. It's brilliant. You joined Turo back in the day, eight years ago. Is there any point in time along that journey?

that you would like to go back to and give some advice to yourself? And if so, what would that advice be? And when would it be? Yeah. So it would be eight years and one month ago. Okay. So right before I decided to join, I would go back and I would just say to my younger self, take the chance. In that situation at the time, I was doing an internship.

I had an insurance broker in London. I was applying for grad roles at the Big Four Consultancy, I thought. This is just the path I'm supposed to take, right? I go to school, I do my A-levels, I go to uni, I get my degree, now I've become a consultant. That was how it felt like the world was just pushing me, society was pushing me to go. That's maybe on me for not seeking out amazing career advice at that point, but that felt like a very natural progression.

I was in a final interview at one of the big four companies, PWC. I was sat, I had spent weeks prior doing the assessment centers, doing the online tests, rounds of interviews, desperately doing everything I could to try and get this job. And I'm sat in the interview room, the final interview, across from two directors, and they asked me, what was I looking for from this role?

I would love responsibility. I would love to learn. I want to do create things, do things, have an impact. And I was like, will this role be for the next two years? And they didn't say it this directly, but they basically said the antithesis to everything I just said. It was going to be a huge amount of background work. know, it was going to be a slow burn for a long time before I got to that point where

This is my perception of what they're saying before I got to the point where I would actually have something that was going to engage me and inspire me in the way that I was pretty hoping to get. Yeah. I'm 22 at this time and I know a huge amount different, but something told me in that moment, this is not for you. And I just had this epiphany moment. So I said to them now and then, guys, like, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate this, but this role isn't for me. And then I got up and walked out.

And in that moment, I was like, wow, how empowering that was. Like, hell yeah, let's go. And then I sat on the tube on the way home and I just, it all came crashing down and I was like, why did I do that? That was so like, brach. I didn't need to do that. I could have just done the interview anyway and at least kept the option open. It was such a, it's like such strategic now to have just called them out like that and walked out. And then.

Yeah, I got home and thought, okay, I need to, I can't go back. I'm not going to, I can't email them and apologize and ask for a second chance. Uh, I clearly did it for a reason. So, uh, I did some soul searching. You know, I felt that, okay, to really hit those characteristics, those objectives from a role that I want, I think a startup would be the world in which I could find those things. Um, and then I Googled to find like which sector, you know,

I didn't have any experience in startups at this point within tech. I did a politics degree. I really was coming into this cold, but I knew what I wanted to do was be given a challenge where I would, you know, where I would make a difference. You know, I would like to be a cog in a very small machine, a big fish in a tiny pond. I knew it wasn't going to go in as a big fish, but have that chance. So I found a startup.

guide or like a report from PwC ironically that said mobility is the next big place. Mobility is the next like it's going to grow 10x over the next whatever five years. Uber you know is a huge driver of this but there's all these other startups coming through that are going to be changing the way that people move, changing the way that people travel, the way that people access cars, access trains, planes you know and that sounded quite exciting so I googled.

startups ability London. Turo is the first one that popped up. Turns out they posted a job that day. So there's a bit of serendipity there. And yeah, within like a whirlwind two weeks, I'd had multiple interviews from my bedroom, and was meeting with the CEO, the president of the company, some, some big dogs that I looked them up in advance, they had been C-suite at eBay, and they had been

in tech in San Francisco for a very long time and have been very successful. So it felt there was a few right of imposter syndrome where I'm here talking to them. I can't believe I'm taking up their time talking to them about this role. But I'm so glad I did because I've not looked back since the day they decided to bring me on. And I have learned so much over the last eight years, going from, you know, a an intern.

a junior who is just green behind the ears and here to just learn. Yeah, I've scaled to this point now where one of the directors for the business in the UK, it's been a hell of a journey up to that point. It's such an incredible journey because going back to your answer of take the chance, what prepared you to take the chance? Like who, what experiences or maybe what voices, opinions, people helped you to?

say yes to this kind of rule.

I actually have asked myself that question quite a few times over the years. I haven't gotten out. I'm not sure what it was that made me go for it. It wasn't the money. I'll tell you that. sure. Joining us out of the early days when it's still raising cash and unfortunately tour is now profitable business. So we are in a very different financial position and that, you know, I've seen that develop over the years. I honestly think it was.

talking to the people I met in those interviews. Yeah, they were so far removed from those directors I spoke to at PwC. You know, they were engaging, they were exciting and they had like, they were on a mission. And that came through when I was speaking to them. And I thought, you know what, like, even if this doesn't work out, even if I join, the business fails or I join and...

I learn nothing or I join and we are unable to create something. At least I have tried and I'm pretty sure I will learn something. And who knows where this experience will lead. And if it doesn't work, those consultancies are always going to be there. You know, I can give it six months. And I think that was it. I thought I'll give this six months and I'll review how I'm feeling then. And all of my experiences I had in those interviews was only

emboldened by my experiences being there full time for six months, know, flown to San Francisco, getting pulled into all these meetings. Wow. Yeah, it was a steep landing curve and I just didn't want to, you know, I wanted to stick on the ride. I didn't want to get off the rocket ship. Yeah. But that's an incredible experience for a 22 year old. it's really like, as an observer of this, what do you think?

gave them the trust in you? Like, what do you think helped them develop the trust in you? Who were you then to help them do that? Sorry, it's a big question. it's, it's, it's such a good question. I remember one day, the CEO came to London, and the CFO, as well, they were meeting with investors. They were in London for a couple days. And we had a meeting. There was at the time me.

another director who isn't London temporarily to help set up the business he was a guy who hired me and i'm in a room with the four of them and i cannot believe that i'm there i'm so intimidated i'm like nervous but also excited i don't you know i'm like i've never been in this situation before i've got no idea how to handle myself or what i'm supposed to do and i just assumed you know i'll sit here nice and quiet i'll take in whatever they're saying and then

I'll follow up on the actions afterwards. And I can't remember what we talking about, but the CEO turned to me at point and just said, what do you think?

And I looked at him and just said, do you want to know what I think on this particular issue or this particular challenge? And he's like, yeah, what's your take on how we should do this or what we're talking about? And that has always stuck with me because he showed an interest in what I thought on a particular topic, which basically showed me like a trust and a respect. And it

gave me pause to thoughts and realized I be confident in these opinions. I should be confident in how I think about certain issues. It's not because I'm not experienced enough. actually they think that I've got something that can analyze or understand what's going on. And maybe I bring a perspective that they don't have. that was a moment where things changed for me from

feeling like I was just this junior person who was just here to help do a job and wear as many hats as possible to they respect my opinion on this and they're coming to me and looking at me for guidance and support and strategy and I'm obviously to develop over time but I like to think that this was something in me in those early days that they've championed since then you know I've been very fortunate to have been given all the opportunities I've had to get to this point.

I really think from that moment where the CEO who had by this point that this guy had been I think the president of eBay in Europe, this is wrong. He had created a company and sold it to eBay for however much. He'd been there, he'd done that. He knew what had to be done and whatever it was we were talking about, but he had the time and the grace to stop them.

check in and that has given me the confidence to go on and then apply that to my own tips. You when we bring in junior people in interns, I think it's really important to get everyone's perspective because everyone does have an opinion a lot of the time and some of those opinions can come from the most unlikely of places. So we do a meeting, we do a monthly meeting, this is kind of circle back to the culture point, in our entire UK team there's about 30, 35 of us in the UK.

Once a month, we do what we call the great debate, which is a moment where we all get to come together and we run and we sort of simulate a debate-esque meeting on a particular controversial topic. So someone will come up with a controversial statement like, I don't know, should we turn off all marketing spend? And then some people have to support the answer, something about it, defend the answer of the question.

allows us to explore extreme opinions that could end up becoming really bold ideas. And some of the best ideas that we've had over the last 12 months, 18 months, since we started this great debate community have come from the members of the team that have got absolutely nothing to do with the topic that we're talking about. They've come from the intern or they've come from the ops.

one of the opposite associates or like they, they, it's really interesting to see how people think about these things. And like there's power in having more heads of the room, more voices in the room, the diversity of thought, the diversity of experiences, and the unique experiences everyone has in relation to our business. The customer support agents, their opinions are so relevant. And I'm so far removed from that stuff now that it's

really interesting to get that front line insight that supports and adds an opinion to a room that shouldn't just be driven by the top down voices. Everyone should have a platform to share what they think and how it works. I would encourage any news out there to implement some kind of opportunity or framework forum where people have the chance and they're encouraged.

to share those voices because something golden might be out there. I love this concept, the great debate, I'm writing this down. Because going right back to when you were an intern and you were being asked your opinion, it's number one, what great role models to have. That's incredible. And the fact that you've been able to, they've transferred that to you you're now able to support your team. the being able to bring confidence to your people. it's like, I work in the nervous system stuff, like I'm all into that stuff.

But it's co-regulation in a way, right? It's like, everything's okay. You're safe here. You're one of us. It's like helping you be accepted into the crew and feeling important and feeling like you are all neutral. But another point there is that you don't know what someone else has experienced, what they've seen and observed today, what voices they've got in the back of the head, what things have happened to them. And so having that diversity of thought is just, it's always going to just be a benefit for the company. It's not going to...

Because I've been in companies where it's literally just the marketing team knows what's best or the product team needs to build the right products and everybody else should listen to them or the sales team, for example. But bringing a forum like this brings people together and creates more camaraderie, I would say. It's like, this is so fun. Let's do it. Yeah, it's yeah. Because what you're also creating in that environment is healthy conflict. You're encouraging people who may not even agree with

the position they've been asked to defend, to defend it regardless. that does create like it, it must be a thing in relationships where when you go through conflict, you come out the other side, are stronger, you know, what does it go you make a drum? And this is a sort of safer way of creating conflicts that can be managed that by the end of it, you know, you have two people who've had or multiple people who've had quite an interesting heated debate.

and they respect each other as a result. Sometimes what we do is we ask someone to change their opinion mid-debate. We tell them, all right, do switch you on this side or that one. It creates a fun light atmosphere. Like you said, where people are... People feel safe and secure to be able to share their opinions and do matter and hope that they come away from this. It's just an hour a month and it take a huge amount of time, but it gives a moment for us all to take stock and be there together.

you know, driving, creativity. And as I said, that it genuinely has been some of the some of the best ideas that we've had from various initiatives, from the big come out of those meetings from the most unlikely places. Yeah, it's also like a really good environment to practice mindful communication. I would do it. Do you use any kind of communication framework? What should you do with this? We started off creating a very formal framework, but it went out the window in the first meeting.

people were very comfortable just like raising their hands. We felt we maybe would need a moderator like don't need a moderator like we're a very healthy team with good people and it's never gotten sour. that's a great point you know it gives people a chance to communicate fairly and mindfully and also it gives people a chance to speak publicly and you know

become a lot more confident in the room and speaking and being heard. It's a great platform for junior people to test their public speaking skills. I hope that people have got better and feel like they've improved and developed their skills over the years. it's such an important forum to have as an intern or to have someone as a junior person.

And the thing that I see quite often in the teams is communication is very broken. Or what individual doesn't know how to communicate with a different person who's in a different demographic. And it all comes, it all goes to shit basically. Going back to the fuck wars, going back to that I don't want to have a phone call because this person triggers me, right? But I think creating this kind of arena allows them to learn how other people communicate as well. They can sit and be the observer, right?

I spend like half of my life with people, helping them to learn how to communicate better with each other. Because it's like with any relationship, if you can communicate, then there's no problem. Completely. And the skills that you learn, that they learn in these meetings, you'd hope that, okay, well, actually when we go on and we have real meetings where we discuss topics that do matter, people have the understanding that...

how to communicate with each other individually, but also more generally, how to get the right point across without getting frustrated, without getting, having the blinkers on and being a short sighted on things and being open and understanding to different opinions and views, ideas. I'm sure it brings more value than just the hour that we get to build relationships together. I'm going to take this idea because...

My husband, he runs product for a company and he would love this. I'm going to go tell him about it. To bring more people together, especially really technical teams. It's like getting them to talk to each other nicely. Amazing. Well, I think we've been on here quite a while and as much as I was going to ask you lots and lots of different questions, I think this has gone in a lovely direction. Amazing. Yeah, it's been a wonderful chat. It's good to get a of this off my chest as well.

Can we chat with me on the podcast? I'm sure there are other leaders out there who are also challenged with some of these issues with remote work and culture building and opportunity building. it's taken time, it's taken years for me and for our UK business to really develop.

How do we collaborate effectively with each other? How do we give people the right voice? How do we sustain a culture through a period of compute lockdowns and then a period of, you know, the post lockdown flexible working arrangements. But I think we've got to a really healthy point. Yeah. Yeah. And I think ultimately it becomes a way to attract talent. And that's how you continue to create and embolden the processes that you're creating as you hire people who are going to come in and continue to.

like get stuck into the culture that you build and are fully supported by it and that's actually something that you know in interviews we we make a point of really understanding how does a person like to work explaining typically like how our team likes to work and making sure that there is some level of connect step that's gonna ensure you know we're not we're not going to bring someone in who's not going to subscribe to the culture we're trying to build because that can make things

more difficult when you have more and people who aren't as engaged with the culture or aren't able to work in the ways that the rest of the team works. You don't want to create those divides and there's barriers to collaboration. Definitely. Yeah, because I see a lot of people come into roles, especially leaders, like people who've already had their career and they're like, I know what I'm doing. And they've got really strong boundaries with time. I'm one of them, actually.

But you have to learn how to collaborate with the team that's already existing. And so if that means 9am calls, then that's what it means. And you have to decide whether you want to opt in or not. for sure. It's just finding the right times, being flexible those times. But you make a good point there as well for the leaders. It's also about being able to block out your time when you need it to. It's very easy to just invest so much of yourself into the culture that you end up missing out on focusing on.

some of the more priority things, more prioritized things that he needs to focus on in that moment. I know some companies do like, they meet on Fridays, but like Fridays, at times, you just like sit down and just like crush through the inbox and the workload. think that can work. Protecting your time and protecting your energy as a leader is the thing that's going to make you successful. Nothing else. Like you need to be able to have those two things sorted. Yeah, exactly. You can't.

as that family you spoke about earlier who probably carried a lot on their shoulders, that's not necessarily sustainable. And I've seen leaders over the years in various companies struggle with that because it does eventually just drag you down if everything is resting on your shoulders and you need to hire the right people around you who going to share the load and help you to continue to build and continue to grow. Exactly.

Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing all of your insights today. Do you want to tell us how people can find you? Do you show up on LinkedIn or Twitter or anywhere? Yeah, I'm obviously on LinkedIn. Rory Brimmer, please do connect. Happy to chat and any opportunities. I'm always open to them. I'm not on Twitter yet, so LinkedIn is definitely the best place. Or, you know, more importantly, I would love to.

people to experience the tour up if you're ever in need of a car. If you have a car sat around doing nothing that's costing you money, tour is where people are off setting their ownership costs. So you can list your car on tour and rent it out when you don't need it. I do that with my car. I meet some really interesting people. I've actually met other leaders who book my car. I had a guy who was senior role in product to Amazon in Europe and he came to London on weekend with my car. had an interesting chat.

So probably somewhat of a networking opportunity that will bring people together. yeah, and I'm sure the audience here probably travelled quite a bit. if you need a car, the tour app is just the one for you. What a good idea. Yeah, I was thinking, oh wait, all of the people I know who are constantly on the conference tour, they would love this. Amazing. Thank you so much.

and I'm sure we'll have you on again at another point to talk on another topic of this. Lovely, thank you, bye.

That's all for today on Bubbling Out. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a five star review. Your reviews and subscriptions help more people, more leaders, more entrepreneurs like you access the Bubbling Out podcast. Also, if you're on Instagram or TikTok, go and follow me, Emily Rose Dallara Coach, for behind the scenes dog vids, somatic exercises, and me DJing sometimes. See you next time in the bubble.