In this episode of the Game Changers podcast, Sophie Brazell-Ng sits down with Wayne Clarke, co-founder of the Global Growth Institute, to explore what it really takes to be a world-class manager. Surprisingly, it’s not about complex strategies but about mastering the basics, investing in your people, and understanding their dreams and ambitions. Wayne shares insightful stories from his experience working with leaders at top organizations and challenges common corporate training strategies.
Listen here or read on for an edited transcript:
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of Game Changers. Today, I've got a brand new guest with me, Wayne Clarke, who I'm really excited for you guys all to meet. I must confess, I'm a bit nervous here. Wayne is a very, very experienced podcaster and he's been telling me about his YouTube techniques. So I'm a little bit nervous that he's going to be a lot better at this than I am. But welcome to the podcast, Wayne. Do you want to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you?
Wayne Clarke: Sure. My name is Wayne Clarke. I run an organization called the Global Growth Institute and began life as an economist.
Originally went to work then for Arthur Anderson and then Deloitte as it became, and then BDO. So I spent about 12 years in professional service firms. I then left to get involved with looking at employee engagement data. So I ran the consulting arm of the business for about five years, and we were analyzing quite intensely, actually, a lot of data. So probably around the time I was involved, around 4, 000 organizations worth of data, and my day job for about five years was feeding that data back to CEOs of some quite large companies. So as you can imagine, that went really well sometimes, and sometimes it didn't go so well.
So I was there to see you as a CEO and say, Hey, Sophie, we surveyed 10, 000 of your staff, they love you, Sophie.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: That's what I want to hear. Yeah.
Wayne Clarke: That's right. Or we've surveyed 10,000 of your staff think you suck, Sophie, and you're like, I don't like this guy. Fan of him. So I spent about five years doing that. And then we launched the Global Growth Institute in 2012, mainly as a way to both deepen our work that we were doing in companies, but also my ambition was always to try and work with governments because our focus is, and we'll talk a bit more about this, is to try and make, in a way, as large scale impact as possible with our work. And we'd recognized that there was a, an element of the engagement survey that we were drilling into year after year about the, what we were learning about managers. And we spent a lot of time looking at that. So that's been our, essentially our focus.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Amazing. And anyone that just heard that. I mean, the confidence that comes off when you speak about the topics that you're interested in is amazing.
So today, it's going to be more of an interview format, learning a little bit more about you and talking about management and leadership. So what I always start our podcast off with is a bit of a definition. So this time it's more of a question, though. So my question to you is, what is the difference between management and leadership?
What is the difference between management and leadership?
Wayne Clarke: Well, this is hotly contested. It sort of makes up the basis of many LinkedIn debates and arguments all the time, as I certainly see on the platform and in other areas of our work as well. Personally, my view is that there's not much difference, to be honest, and I know it will horrify some people when it comes to this. And the reason why is because I'm a big fan of the sort of Jack Walsh Focus of looking at management and leadership is one of the, I guess, the period of my life growing up in a consulting firm where GE was, you know, highly regarded and Jack Walsh in terms of his leadership. And I think as far as us CEOs goes, he had one of the longest, I think, unbroken runs of growth.
And one of the things Jack Walsh always talked about was the managers. So he didn't make any differentiation between a frontline manager with no experience or a, you know, 25 veteran year CEO, ultimately they all manage people. So, you know, when it comes to looking at the business of getting the very best from other human beings, I don't think there is much of a difference because it comes to how well I can understand you, how well I can motivate you, how you feel valued, all those things. And that's the essence, as I would say, of being a great manager.
I think there are some elements of leadership, which are probably more to do with things like vision, but ultimately, you know, if you're really going to be scientific about it, it's all made up, right. And this is one of the sort of early revelations I had working in a company, because I sort of realized, you know, unless you are Mystic Meg, or unless you're some sort of shaman and you've got an ability to see the future, everyone else is making stuff up about what tomorrow looks like. So you can be the biggest visionary, but remember the vision that you create and that everyone buys into is always made up. They're all made up. And it was one of the first things that I realized. And the reason why I realized it is because I worked with a guy who, I wouldn't say what organization, but he's got about 300 managers and we were due to go and speak to those 300 managers. And I was literally standing with him behind this sort of curtain about to go onto stage. And he's debating with me about the vision of the company. And then as we're talking it through, he's like, right, got it, nailed it. And then I watched him walk out in front of 300 people and share the vision and they all went nuts. And I thought, wow, he just made that up, guys.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: That is absolutely smashed it out of the park.
Wayne Clarke: I love it. I absolutely love it. And of course you have to get people to buy into it, but the visions are always made up. So I think the, the essence of, you know, the differentiation between great leadership and great management, I can't really say that there's much difference.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah. It's interesting because as you were talking about that, some thoughts that have sprung to mind to me as a manager, they're both caring about people. Leadership more at scale, I think, and about more perception. Whereas manager, it's sort of that reverse. You have a responsibility for the other person. Yes, you have that in a leadership context, but I think a manager for me is a little bit more like one to one and how you come across although you can actually look after multiple people.
Wayne Clarke: Yeah. And we have a client in the U S who has about 50, 000 people and all of their focus is on people leadership is the terminology. They never talk about management. It's people leadership because in our sort of insanely fast and sort of data fueled world. Really what you want, if you were the CEO of that company, I'd want the same thing too, is you want as many as your managers as possible to think in a similar way that you do. And the reason why, I'm not saying it's biased because the CEO is the best person in the world, but often the CEO will have more depth and breadth of information about that organization than anyone else because they see and understand all the information.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah, they've got the broad view.
Wayne Clarke: Yeah. And you want as many managers as possible to think like that.
So actually thinking about the frontline manager really as a frontline leader makes more sense to me in 2024, when most of us are involved in the business of knowledge and getting, you know, running knowledge businesses and service businesses, you really want your frontline people to think like leaders.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: And I think that's also something that's so important to us at Clarasys and why I was so excited for this conversation is that we've talked a few times on this podcast that we don't really have managers. We have coaches and to say we don't really have managers isn't true necessarily, but we have that slightly different hat on where we are coaching the people that we are supporting to be the best at what they do and ensuring that not just for our clients but for our own team members and other people that work at Clarasys. For us, that management, and I'm going to use that now because we're going to stick with it for the rest of the discussion, it's so important.
And people, I think, previously looked at management as a way to get people to do the right things. Where actually, I think it's much more now about helping people understand what the right things to do are and how to go about it. And helping them make their own decisions in that instead of like, you must do this X, Y, and Z, which there's always going to be an element of that. There's always going to be timesheets, et cetera, that you have to, or expenses you have to put through. But being, I think for me that that management is all about supporting. And you have to work on that as a manager. You have to work on your style to make sure that actually it works.
Wayne Clarke: Because what works with some person will never work with another one. And this is the fundamental challenge, right? You can't approach every individual as the same because they're all unique. And I think that is the fundamental challenge when you've got an organization of 10, people, and you talk about things like, maybe we'll get into this, talk about things like culture change. It's a sort of a misnomer. It's like fool's gold in a way, because if you've got 50,000 people, you've got in a way, 50,000 versions of the culture and 50,000 versions of the truth. And each one of those is correct.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: It's really interesting.
Wayne Clarke: So the idea of that, even in a team of five people, you've got five very different versions of what the truth is. And I've tested this a number of times with exec teams, and one of the things we'll do is we'll ask them to share with us what their version of the strategy is. And you know, if you've got eight people on the leadership team, you've got eight different versions.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah, you really do.
Wayne Clarke: And that's in the leadership team, let alone the other a hundred, two hundred, five hundred thousand people that they're trying to articulate and communicate this to. So I think one of the greatest, I guess, elements or behavioral traits of a great manager really is, and I think as we're hearing more and more about it is empathy because it's the ability to try and see things from someone else's perspective, which is not easy for a lot of people.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: And not everybody has that skill either. Not every person that's put into a management position should be a manager in my opinion.
Wayne Clarke: I agree.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: So I hope that's given kind of listeners a little bit of an insight about the kind of exciting conversation that's to come. I know, Wayne, you shared a little bit about your career journey, but I'd love to just hear a little bit more about how you've got to where you are and why you're so passionate about management.
Where does your passion for management come from?
Wayne Clarke: I guess like the, the origin story for me, my, my father came over in the seventies, well, late sixties, early seventies from Barbados. And, uh, like many people who come to the country sort of start off in not the best positions. And then I was probably seven or eight years old. I got taken to, my dad took me to the factory where he works and showed me the factory. And then, uh, he said to me, you know, you never want to work with your hands. And that was the whole sort of story from him, right? Because, and I remember going to the factory and the smell of it, I can still recall the smell of it, the sight of it, like the sounds of it.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: What type of factory was it?
Wayne Clarke: They make components for tubes, big industrial tubes. So it's heavy, hard work. You're talking 1980s. I was born in 76. So you're talking 1980s health and safety was bad. People lost limbs. People died in there. He nearly lost his thumb. I mean, it's like really brutal environment in a way. And I remember seeing the shop floor where the factory is. And then up above, I could see an office and I saw people, you know, in an office in suits and in white shirts, and it looked much better than being down there. And he said to me, you know, you never, ever want to be here. And one of the things I remember is that he used to come home and talk about the, what went on with What he called the foreman and the foreman was the shift supervisor, essentially the manager. And I always remember thinking about the relationship that he had with the manager and it seemed to make every difference between, you know, a great week or a bad week at work.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah. I know it does.
Wayne Clarke: Yeah. And it, and it sort of stuck with me. And then you sort of fast forward 20 years. I'm now in the professional world. And then I start to realize when we were analyzing all of this company data, that the number one thing that was the biggest driver between a company's performance longterm, whether or not it had engaged staff, whether or not the customers enjoyed interacting with the company. Everything pointed back to the role of the manager. All CEOs talked about the role of the manager. And it was one of those big things where we realized in a way there's kind of like this black hole, right? And the black hole for me was lots of the consultants and advisors who work with leadership teams are not really interested in developing frontline management stuff. Because it's not sexy. You know, people want to work on the strategy, they want to work with the CEO and the vision, like frontline manager development is like not cool, you know, in a way.
And then what we realized was the type of companies that are brought into organizations to train and develop those frontline managers also were never allowed anywhere near the leadership team. If it was a big corporate, they would be stuffed three or four levels deep in HR business partner relationship as the buyer within an HR team or an OD team or an L&D team. And in a way you've got this weird void. So we recognized that that was an obvious problem. We also saw from the data years and years of looking at this, that this was an issue, and which is why we attempted in our own version, and there's no universal truth to this, but we attempted to clarify what the role of a great manager was. And that was the basis of our, I say loosely ‘research’, because we work with a few of the most, you know, brilliant universities in the world. I'm careful when I talk about academic research because they're real academics.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah. I'm going to put all the citations in the show notes.
The process of defining what a great manager is
Wayne Clarke: We'll struggle to find some, but in terms of our, like how we did it is we went around the world and we found out what great managers did. I mean, that was the basis of our work. So we started in Wellington, New Zealand, essentially, and worked all the way through to Vancouver, interviewing CEOs, HR directors, frontline managers, frontline teams, and saying, you know, in your opinion, Sophie, what does a great manager do? And you'd say, well, they do this, this, this, but we took that insight from kind of everywhere. We took all of that, mashed it together. We ended up with a way of working, I don't like the word model, but we ended up with a working model of what it looks like. We went back to those people and said, does it broadly work? We tweaked it. And then we ended up with something which, thank god, touch wood, eight years later, since we launched it, still holds true. The model seems to work and it's been now adopted, you know, in 50 countries around the world. So our view of looking at this management thing was the focus. The reason why was because I could see from my own experience, the impacts that a great or a bad manager had on my parent, right? On my dad so, and I could see it with my mums relationship with her work too, so we know that was everyhthing.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah. And then also the impact that you get to have on other people, knowing that actually time spent with that one manager has really, really important ramifications for the time they spend with those that they are managing. Yeah. So you have such a important impact on everyone. I've got so many questions off the back of that. And I know something we were talking about earlier was cultural differences between managers. So we're going to dive into that in a moment, but you mentioned that you brought all of this data together. And I know you also started up the Global Growth Institute as well. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that and the kind of the work that you do in that space?
The Global Growth Institute
Wayne Clarke: Yeah. So there's, there's two things in a way, what we call the advisory arm, and then what we call world class managers. So the advisory is based on us advising often CEOs and leadership teams on how to drive cultural change. So our focus has been in many different organizations from professional services to manufacturing has been looking at how do you do that? And lots of leadership teams struggle to figure out the right way to do it. Not because they've got a lack of talent, but because often we've got a deep specialism in it. And sort of track record of working with companies in that. So that's more of the advisory side of our work.
And then what we did a few years ago, well, probably nine, 10 years ago now, was to try and take as much of that as possible and try and build it into a process, a system, something that could be easily replicated, duplicated, and then adopted by lots of different organizations. And that was really the genesis of how we built world class manager, but in essence, what we were trying to do is find a way to do it at scale across lots of different organizations without having to be a huge company. So we have quite a small team, but we make quite a big impact.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah. And then not have to keep all the information to yourself, like, you know, really help people. What does being a world class manager mean to you?
Management tips: 12 things a world class manager does
Wayne Clarke: Well, we've got 12 things that we think a world class manager does.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Wayne has not got any pieces of paper in front of him. So if he manages to write real off all 12…
Wayne Clarke: That'a a brilliant challenge. So let's run through it. So yeah, there are 12 things that we think a world class manager does. So I'll quickly run through as many as I can remember.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: I'm excited.
1. Be a 21st century manager
Wayne Clarke: Right. So number one is we talk about what we call being a 21st century manager. And the whole idea is, I think it's a fundamental question, many organizations do not reinvestigate the role of the manager. So it's an interesting question and maybe you can try it talking to CEO clients of yours and with the business with Clarasys. Is we ask managers and CEOs: “Sorry, so look, if you could redesign the role of the manager today from scratch, let's imagine you could restart this whole company, would the role of the manager going forward be what it's evolved to become?” And most CEOs say, “Oh my God, no, probably wouldn't because the role of the manager in most organizations has evolved in the wild in a way. It's evolved because it's enabled the organization to survive and in some cases thrive”.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah. I really like that because I personally really resonate with that. You do see that it's in the wild, like you're out and about. There's so much you can learn from reading a book to actually put it into practical application.
Wayne Clarke: That's right. Yeah. So it's evolved in a way. And if an organization had an opportunity to create it from scratch, it would probably be quite different, and it would be different every year. So if you reinvestigate it, in '25, we'd look at new things, cause new things evolve and we probably should be adapting to that. So, the first thing we talk about is what we call being the role of a 21st century manager.
2. Set great goals
Wayne Clarke: The second thing we look at is what we call great goal setting.
3. Have inspiring appraisal conversations
Wayne Clarke: And the third point, and they're kind of linked, is we call it great appraisal conversations.
The reason why we split those two things up is because they are fundamentally different. So we think there's a big difference in the discipline of being able to sit with someone and set really good goals, which are ultimately, hopefully, linked to some organizational vision, mission, purpose, whatever it might be.
Then there's a different discipline in the second part, which is how to have a great regular appraisal based conversation with someone and ultimately we call them inspiring appraisal conversations because we believe that you should leave feeling somewhat inspired. The reason why we talk about that is because you could be a charity or you could be a voluntary organization, literally with no budget, no money, nothing. But inspiring someone is probably within your control. So, you know, when we think about what emotion would you, in an ideal world, want people to leave those conversations with, inspiration is a big one for us.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah, which you're going to get so much better results from somebody. Even if you have to share something that might be quite hard for someone to hear, that actually, if they walk away from that feeling that, Okay, that was true, but I have something I can work on, and I'm excited to work on it, and I'm inspired to work on it, and I've got someone I can talk to about it. You're going to have a much better down the line set of outcomes, rather than someone who works away from an appraisal and just feels really downbeat. What are they going to do? They're probably not going to go and do something inspiring after that, are they?
Wayne Clarke: 100%.
4. Optimize time
Wayne Clarke: Number four is what we call optimizing time. So time is our most precious resource, depending on your view of reincarnation, of course. But if we believe we've got one go at this, then maybe if we've got one shot, then time is a real precious resource.
We looked at life expectancy in England and Wales for men and women is 81 years, 81.9 I think for women, 79.9 for men. So worse for us, better for you. And it puts it in context, right? So, you know, I'm 48, I can subtract 48 from 79. 9. Concerning, isn't it?
We've got to get this done quick today. I'm running out of time.
In a way, how do we utilize the time most effectively? And we found of all the things that we focus on, of these 12 things, this fourth one around what we call optimizing time is by far seen as, I guess, the most valuable, because what we're attempting to do here with managers is help you to get some of your life back and get some of your time back. And often the organization steals time from you.
So there's a great article to signpost which is called Who's Got the Monkey?
It was written in 1974. Harvard Business Review. It's the, I don't know if the numbers change, but the last time I looked, it was the second most downloaded article ever from HBR.Sophie Brazell-Ng: We will link out to that as well.
Wayne Clarke: It's written in 1974 and it's about the lack of time problem. So often we think that the lack of time problem is a 2024 problem, right? That no one's got time, everyone's busy, it's manic. It was always the same. And that's the crazy thing. Time has always been a problem. And it's always been in short supply.
So I'm a bit of a geek with stuff like this, but we were looking back at adverts. So the Whirlpool washing machine, when it was marketed in 1960 something, was marketed to housewives as something that's going to get them more leisure time. It was always a time saving sale. Uber is a time saving sale. It's still exactly the same now because we all appreciate its pressures. So four is what we call optimizing time.
05. Have better meetings for better results
Wayne Clarke: Number five is what we call better meetings, better results. And it's linked to time because much of our work week is locked up in useless meetings, irrelevant meetings.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Meetings without an agenda.
Wayne Clarke: Meetings without an agenda. Luckily, you're in a culture where you've got a flat hierarchy. And from what I've picked up so far, the culture at Clarasys works really well. Whereas in other organizations, two thirds of a manager's week based on everything we found is locked up in meetings. And then according to what we found, a third of that time is seen as valuable time.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Wow.
Wayne Clarke: Which gives you an idea, but we've also found, so a few other of our meeting stats, 70 percent of people who attend meetings have said that they bring other work to the meeting. So even in the physical world before lockdown, that was tough.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Because I'm stuck in the meeting the whole time and I can't actually do the thing that I need to go and do.
Wayne Clarke: Yeah. And now in the virtual world, you know, people, especially if you've got your camera off, you know, if you think people are there for you in the meeting, they're probably not. Based on what we found. About half the people who attend meetings say it was a total waste of time. And depending on where you are in the hierarchy, you know, often in some organizations, it would be empowering to say, you know what, this meeting's got no value for me. I'm out. And people say, that is so cool. Whereas in other, other organizations, it's like, you're fired, you’re insane, you know, why would you say that?
And then the last one we found out that 39 percent of managers that we've looked at and we've surveyed 15 and a half thousand of the a hundred thousand who've been through our program, 39 percent have admitted that they fell asleep in a meeting.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: No.
Wayne Clarke: Yep. So get the duvet out, fluff up the pillows. It's going to get cozy.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: No way.
Wayne Clarke: Read me a lullaby. It's probably a better strategy.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Oh my gosh, the amount of anxiety that goes through me thinking about it, falling asleep in a meeting. I mean, oh gosh.
Wayne Clarke: I know. It's insane, isn't it? So, you know, better meetings, better results.
6. Improve communications
Wayne Clarke: Number six, we look at improving communications and we know that, so my liberation moment, especially if you're in the role of comms,
Sophie Brazell-Ng: I'm so passionate about that.
Wayne Clarke: Yes. Liberation moment. You can't solve organizational communication issues. Free yourself. Free yourself. If you're in the role of communications, listen to this. Free yourself.
And the reason why I found this out is because when we were looking at the data, we found a company in the UK that had the highest ever employee engagement survey that we'd ever measured, right? At 4,000 companies we'd ever looked at. The CEO asked me to come up to, they're based outside of Glasgow in a place called Irving. They asked me to come up and share with him what they can do to be better. Right. So, so I looked at the engagement survey results and it looks like a cult. I mean, like, it's like, it's exceptional, the scores. So I phoned him back and said, I genuinely don't know what I'm going to come up and say, because everything you're doing is what we would hope other organizations do. So, and he said to me, no, no, we've got some communication problems. I sort of put the phone down. I thought. Oh my God. It's fascinating.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah.
Wayne Clarke: So the best organization we can ever find for engagement scores, telling us they've got a comms problem.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: They've still got problems, yeah.
Wayne Clarke: Which means everyone always will do. And then we realized that, you know, comms is so subjective. So what you believe is improved communications, I believe isn't. And both of us are correct.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: And everybody reads things in slightly different ways.
Wayne Clarke: That's right. Yeah. So we figured out actually the communication challenge for the organization can't be solved on mass, what you can do though is why the manager becomes center stage in this challenge. So with the manager, it might be a smart idea to conduct the equivalent of a communications audit with the team. So it might be, if you're my line manager and say to me, Wayne, what do you want to know about how often, how can I get that stuff to you? It might be, you know, I want strategy information on a quarterly basis and we can maybe do it over a coffee. It would be great for me. That's enough. Some people might be, you know, what do you want to know about, Nothing. How often? Never. How? Whatever. Right. You know, I'll stay away from that person. Yeah. But it's the skill of the manager to figure out what would be in quotes, improved communications for someone.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah. And I obviously, you know, this is a topic that I'm extremely passionate about. And as someone that's in change and comms and people communication is I'm usually responsible for helping come up with that central message. But I always know that that central message has to be distributed to other ears and will always be interpreted in different ways. And when I try and share it out, we start centrally, but it's always that manager role that I go to that and we educate the manager role and say, this is what needs to be shared. Can you go and have the same conversation I've just had with people that you support in a way that makes sense to them? Because otherwise I'm just a central communications. My actual role is to try and make sure that that one really, really important bit gets to the right people, but in the way that they're going to hear and understand it. And I can't do that for everybody. That's just a scale issue.
Wayne Clarke: Yeah, totally. And then there were six more. I don't know if you want me to go into all of them.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: No, please, this is absolutely fantastic. Yeah, it's great. I mean, if I also said no and everyone else is sort of like waiting for the rest of the six, they're like, no, Sophie, come on.
7. Understand your customer
Wayne Clarke: Yeah. So number seven is what we call understanding the customer. And when we use the word customer, we appreciate in some organizations, it might be client or it might be customer, it might be the public. It depends on who you serve. But the ultimate we talk about is everyone serves someone. You know, even when you're the chairman, you serve a relationship with the board or investors. Investors serve other investors who serve. Pension funds, you serve wealth funds, everyone serves someone, right? So when we talk about the, the role of the customer and understanding the customer, what we figured out is in most organizations, I would say most organizations are pretty lousy at being able to disseminate and share the content that they're picking up from what customers actually want and help everyone to understand it. And the manager is usually ignored in that whole mix. So imagine a world where the managers had excellent insight in terms of what the customer says.
I'll give you a real story. So this is last summer in Middle East. I won't say who the company is, but financial services. I'm there, I'm talking to about 400 of their people and they'll probably know that after listening, but it's fine. Before we went to the session, I looked at some of their feedback on one of their Facebook pages, where they've got like a million followers on this Facebook page. And it's just angry feedback about the organization. So if they post a picture of they just saved a kitten from a tree. You know, you'd find a hundred people slam in and say you're evil. The customer generally dislikes this organization and they genuinely care about improving that. It's like, it's not lip service. But what I did before I went there is I looked for all this feedback and in the room where there were 400 people who were assembled from around the world, whose focus is ultimately to improve this situation. And I asked the 400 as a show of hands, how many of you have seen this feedback from what I was describing and hardly anyone put their hands up and it was fascinating to me because well, I think even if you were being like, like semi smart about it and thinking what's the smartest way to advance my personal career in this organization, becoming like the king of customer content would be a smart move. Because it means that, you know, you, you outpace everyone else.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yes, you understand what your people want.
Wayne Clarke: But I think they're so distracted with so many things, you know, so this organization is like many organizations, they're awash with insight about what the customer wants, but largely most people are in the dark about what the customer wants. And it was apparent to me, I worked for a large company.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: That's fascinating. I'm actually honestly really surprised because that's always going to be my first train of thought. Maybe that's because I see it in the, again, in the people space. It's always like, I want to know what people want to hear, and then I can then play it back in the right way. I want to know that they're my customer. So I can't imagine actually working in more of a sales based or customer facing type of role and actually not truly understanding that. I guess there's different pressures, right? And different things people are interested in.
Wayne Clarke: Well, that's the thing. There's so much on people's plates. And I think especially the further you go down the organization to the sort of managerial hierarchy. You know, the more junior you get by manager often, the more there is on people's plates too. You know, we, we had another organization, professional service firm, and they spent over a million pounds to pay for a company to do some key account research of what the clients really wanted from that organization. They have about 250 partners in that business. And we estimate that about 30 partners maximum had read the thing that they collectively spent a million quid on as the partnership to find out about what their key clients felt about their organization.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Oh, okay.
Wayne Clarke: Right. So, and that’s sort of 10 percent of the partnership. So imagine what percentage of the rest of the 5,000 staff in the organization knew anything about what the customer wants. So when we talk about understanding the customer, we're saying from a manager point of view, here's a way that you can really win. If you want to advance your career, this is like, not many people are doing this. And if I was working in a company, I'd be all over it because I know that's the way that I can really like advance myself.
8. Create stand out teams
Wayne Clarke: Number eight is what we call standout teams. So how do you create a standout team? And when we talk about standout teams, there are some teams and organizations that you look at and you think, you know, they look like they're having the time of their lives, the brand of that team is great. I'd love to work with that team.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: The brand of a team, I love that as a concept.
Wayne Clarke: But it's true though, for you, because the brand of your team as a manager is your brand. And then there are other teams that you think, thank God I don't work in that team.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah, I can definitely think of a few.
Wayne Clarke: So you'd look at that and also you look at that and you think, you know, this is a, a part of the business that I do or don't wanna work in. And then when we say, how do you create a standout team, you know, we're ultimately talking about the same thing that the CEO does, a good CEO anyway, with clarifying some sort of exciting vision about tomorrow. Gives people a sense of hope. So when we talk about the team, the idea is that you would link the team purpose or team objective to something that we're trying to achieve. And a company that we work with, they're a hotelier, they do this really well. They get their teams to think about answering a very simple question, which is, what do you want to be famous for? So that could be within the department. That could be within the company. That could be within the industry. Depends how ambitious you want to be, but having some sense of clarity about it.
9. Develop you, develop your team
Wayne Clarke: Number nine, we focus on what we call developing me, developing my team, because the challenge for most modern managers. I'd say most managers, modern or not, is the sense that you're spending a disproportionate amount of time advocating for other people, in theory, looking at their development, focusing on what they need, championing their corner, getting their pay rises, where you probably don't focus enough advocating for yourself. So often most managers don't spend enough time on their own development and growth. So we focus on that. And the reason why we look at that specifically is because we know in our data that about 50 percent of people who leave organizations will cite career growth as the number one reason they left. So this is another organization. They've got 50, 000 people and we looked at the leaver data. They've got 11, 000 people who leave the organization every year and 50 percent of those 11, 000, so five and a half thousand people cited career growth as the number one reason they left, which blew me away. Right. Because you just think an organization of 50, 000 people, it's impossible that you could say there were limited opportunities to learn and grow there because it's so big, even in an organization of like, you know, 200 people, there are unlimited opportunities and it's not got anything to do with the opportunities, everything's to do with the manager. So we know, again, we focus on the role of the manager in that and how did they bring that to life?
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yep. And I can see how these are all then starting to link. It's like having the time to do it as well.
Wayne Clarke: That's right.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: It's all there.
Wayne Clarke: Yeah. Where are we at? Number 10 is what we call managing up.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: I feel like we're doing the 12 days of Christmas. It's great.
10. Be skilful at managing up
Wayne Clarke: Number 10 is looking at what we call managing up, and it's a very intricate, delicate, artistic look at how do you develop the relationships with key stakeholders? So, you know, anyone who's progressed to a decent level in an organization or has got up the ranks will tell you that stakeholder engagement, managing up is a really effective skill. You know, we see it in the world with, depending on your political views, but, you know, you look at the sort of Obama, Biden, when Biden was number two, you know, people will talk about that as one of the most effective sort of managing up relationships. You're in an important role, but not the important role. But how do you build that relationship with someone a bit more senior? And that's not necessarily just your immediate line manager or director or exec, those could be other senior stakeholders inside and outside the company. So, you know, a lot of managers don't figure out, and it really goes for a lot of what I'm talking about, which is why we built it. A lot of managers don't figure out how important this is until it's in a way a bit too late. But if, if you knew this, like my 16 year old now, now I'm sort of getting this stuff hopefully it's getting twittered.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Oh no, that's worrying, that's scary for you that .
Wayne Clarke: I'm trying to get this stuff into her head because she knows about the power of networking and building these relationships. It's really important.
11. Present with presence
Wayne Clarke: Number 11, we talk about presenting yourself with presence. And really, this is not necessarily about presentation skills, although that is an important part of it because you've got to get your message across. But if you look at the, we'll get philosophical for a moment, if you look at the nature of the organization is in a way naturally combative. Because we fight for an always limited pool of resources, time, energy, money, attention, always limited. Even in the wealthiest of companies, there's a limit, right? It's not infinite. So when we look at the organization as a manager, you've often tried to grab as much attention, share, knowledge share, time share as you can. Also, you're in competition with lots of other managers across the organization for that same resource, budget also, right. Every year we go for a budget round and we discuss this stuff.
So when we think about the relationship here is how do you get your message across in the most powerful way? And those who are really good at communicating what they need and why it's important, why it's valuable, secure budget, that's how it works. And also the other thing is how do you get seen in the way that you want to be seen? So often there's quite disconnect for people between, I feel like I'm this sort of person. And it frustrates me that people don't see my value and don't see my commitment, don't see my energy and everything I bring to this. Often there can be a mismatch between how you see yourself and how others see you. And that can be quite an uncomfortable thing to do some research into, which is why the power of a really good 360 done properly, and there are a lot of bad ones, but I think a really good 360 will help people to start to understand how others see them. And it can be painful stuff, but it's the sort of feedback that you really need to help you grow.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah. And it's something that Clarasys, we're also really, really passionate about is our feedback culture and the importance of knowing and understanding how to listen and then respond in it. Because we get a lot of people that you hear feedback and you, I don't know whether it's we're taught this from, from school when it's sort of like, if you haven't got the right grades, you're not, you're not doing very well. And people always take feedback really negatively. And actually we coach our teams and our consultants to take feedback really openly and to understand what they can improve in there. It's not a negative. It's learning something new about yourself that you didn't know before or didn't have the ability to know that because you are not an outside person looking at yourself. It's something about you you just don't know.
Wayne Clarke: Yeah. And I've got a psychologist wife. So imagine my life, it's brutal..
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Oh my word.
Wayne Clarke: Yeah. Two. Two daughters and a psychologist wife..
Sophie Brazell-Ng: I can, I can only imagine the conversations.
Wayne Clarke: Yeah, they are one way let me tell you. . . I just agree. Yes. So I've survived 27 years, so yeah,
Sophie Brazell-Ng: It's the right way.
12. Become a strategic leader
Wayne Clarke: And then the final one is what we call being a strategic leader. So when we talk about the difference between sort of the how you see the organization and how the leadership team see it, are usually two very different things. And what we figured out, so very quick story: when we originally launched this work, this is before we had our platform, this is probably 2014 where we're using like Webex to do it, right? We had about 50 managers from an organization in Australia dial into this call, and then we had about 30 of their senior managers dial in. And I was surprised because I'm looking at the names thinking these weren't invited to the call, but what we realized is they were the senior managers who were dialing in to find out the same things we were teaching the frontline managers and realizing that the senior managers also wanted to learn this stuff.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah.
Wayne Clarke: But you look weak as a CEO or a management team leader to say.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Admitting to it.
Wayne Clarke: I want to learn about like effective meetings. But people figure out you should know this stuff. So what we realized was actually, when you think about every country we've been around the planet, they tend to have the same roles represented on the leadership team. It's by no mistake that we find in every country, you find CEOs and CFOs and CMOs and CIOs and CHROs. Usually you see, and there's usually a note, something in the middle, there's very common roles represented only because these represent the disciplines that you need to run a well run organization. It's kind of like the law of the universe has said that there actually are these important disciplines. You've got to understand about the strategy, the money, the marketing, the people, all that stuff. But often what most managers don't understand is how important thinking like that is. So we say to managers, you know, imagine you could put on the CFO hat for the day, how might that change the way that you see the budget process and see the way that you deal with your commercial agreements?
Imagine you put the chief marketing hat on for a day. Would that change the way that you utilize social media channels? It absolutely would, but you're not thinking like that. So what we challenge the managers to try and do is to think in 10 different perspectives as if they were a member of the leadership team.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: That was a really incredible 12.
Wayne Clarke: We nailed all 12.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: You absolutely did. And I think the way that you spoke about them was absolutely fantastic. And it's such a 360 full version of what a manager should be. But as you've said, we're not all taught to be or supported through an education journey of how we can be better at those 12 aspects of being a manager.
Wayne Clarke: Well, it's sink or swim, isn't it? In most organizations, really the predominant culture of how we develop managers, and there might be some support on offer, but it's largely sink or swim and, and you'll figure it out.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah. Or it's largely just promotion based, which is, I mean, we started at the beginning of the conversation that not all managers have the skillset to be a manager.
Wayne Clarke: Yeah. I went to, I'll be careful about what I say about them, right - they’re in the automotive sector, let's put it that way. So I'm there, one of the senior managers had asked me to listen to a few of the team members. So we go into this session and there's a lady who was sitting at the end of the table. She looks lifeless, like, you know, bored. Hopefully not because of what I was saying, but it was a discussion about management and stuff like that. So she's sitting there and I said to her, I was trying to find the words to ask the question I wanted to ask: “who the hell made you a manager?”. Right. But I couldn't ask that. So I was trying to figure out how to ask it. And I said at the end, I said, “So how did you become a manager here”?
And then she said, “Well, I was, uh, I was temping on Friday and then they asked me to be full time. So I said, yeah, might as well. And then on Monday I was full time”.
And I said, “Oh, wow, and between Friday and Monday did you get any sort of development? Did they help you in any way?”.
“No, no, no. I just started on Monday”.
I said, “Okay”.
And then at the end of the meeting, I spoke to the senior manager and then he said to me, “Yeah, we've got some real big challenges. We've got some really low energy managers, Wayne”.
And I say, “Oh my God, no?”.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah, really? I can't imagine who we're talking about right now.
Wayne Clarke: I mean, you wouldn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that this person should not be in a people management role. They might be exceptional at what they do, leave them there. But in terms of being able to inspire people, bring the best out of them, I mean, she was no way interested in any of that.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: And it's not also fair on them being asked to be in that position or feeling like you have to take that position. And it might not be your natural skill set or you are not supported to your development of that. And you've mentioned 12 crucial things there. And I can think of 12 things that people aren't taught.
Wayne Clarke: Yeah.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: What I want to know is what has surprised you the most, or what is your biggest success that you've had as you've gone around sharing kind of the wisdom of being a world class manager?
Why simplicity is key to world-class management
Wayne Clarke: I think the biggest surprise is how basic the advice is and how much in need it is. So often what happened is at the beginning, when we were developing stuff, we sort of went down a much more, I guess it evolved route of looking at some more high level things that you would find in business journals and things that you would expect to see about management and latest thinking. And in a way, like it's so rudimentary and so simple what we talk about and what's in our program and our focus that in a way, you know, that surprised me of how much traction it got. Cause we thought that we would have to do that and then build other things, but it's unbelievably straightforward and simple, but it's really in demand because a lot of the basics aren't taught.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: And people don't take the time for it, and it's often quite difficult to get the funding of it.
The ROI debate: Where should companies invest in management?
Wayne Clarke: Yeah, that's, that's true. And another interesting, uncomfortable truth, I think, is in, certainly in the larger organizations, is they're prepared to spend in a way, there's like an open check for the top 100. So I've seen companies spend millions of pounds on the top 100, sending them to business schools, I won't say any, but you know, there's some amazing business schools and the experiences for these week, two-week, short courses, residentials are exceptional. There's definitely a place for that. And they will not discuss ROI, right? Because it's a spend that they kind of have to spend and they feel they should do on that, on that as a way to retain talent. It's a talent retention mechanism for many organizations.
Why training for top talent doesn’t always work
Wayne Clarke: The truth is from my experience, I lecture at a couple of different business schools from the MBA students who I meet. If you're investing, sounds bad, right? But if you're investing in someone's MBA as a talent retention tool, like bad strategy, because most of the MBA students I meet want to leave the companies who spent the 50 grand on the MBA program.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: They realize it's not the right way to do things.
Wayne Clarke: They feel contained. They feel constrained. They want out.
So, you know, what we found out from there is that actually the role of the manager again, becomes center stage. And probably that's where the investment should go further, but as soon as you get into that on a large scale organization, the conversation quickly turns to ROI debates.
And it's really hard to quantify an X spend versus a Y outcome on measuring an ROI debate on management training.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Well, I guess that leads into my next question then is how do you measure success then? Like, how do you know if you're a good manager? How can you see that?
How to measure success as a manager
Wayne Clarke: In a way, there's two judges of whether or not you're a good manager.
And I think the judge is your team because they will probably vote with their feet, but there's in a way like an untold side of that story because you can have what we would call tremendously people pleasing team managers who the team absolutely love, but the organization despises. And in a way the manager actively works against the organization's interests.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: That's a really painful place for a manager to be in as well.
Wayne Clarke: It's a really painful place and often they're that way because they've been left in the dark and they've been, you know, left unsupported and they've kind of figured out from a survival point of view, it's probably smarter to align yourself with a disgruntled team. Then fight against trying to change the system. It's just an easier way to do it.
The way that we see it play out in the real world, as an example, is the pay review process, right? So sort of spoken about this before in many things, but we interviewed the CEO and CFO of a big company in front of their managers. And one of the things that CFO had done is essentially said that the pay rises were going to be really low. And what we then did is like, we turned to the people in the audience and says to them, when you go back and explain the pay rise, which is about 1%, you've got to include the story and the story takes about 15 seconds to explain because it was based on investments that they'd made for the future growth of the company. And this is true. I mean, when I really looked and understood the numbers you felt that 1 percent was actually quite generous. They'd really eeked out an ability to pay 1 percent because they felt like they had to do something, even though it was a token gesture. But the organization's finances weren't great. And the fact that they even give them 1 percent was quite amazing. The challenge is though, is that if that story gets missed out and it would take about 10 to 15 seconds to explain, you go back to your team and you say, hey guys, it's, um, 1 percent and the team say, 'Oh, that's horrific because we made all this money.' and people do a rational math and they divide the number.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: And then all of a sudden they're blaming leadership for lining their own pockets.
Wayne Clarke: Yeah. And then what the manager does in that instance is say, I'll tell you what, if it was my money, we'd have much more than that. But, you know, we, and then we agree as a team, we do not like the leadership team. We do not trust the leadership team. So I think this has been one of the interesting areas for us to look at is how do we help managers in a way to understand some of the complexities of the company.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: That's really interesting. If you wanted to start improving your management skills today, where would you suggest to start?
How to improve your management skills today
Wayne Clarke: It's a great question. I would start by trying to get a full understanding as possible. And, as much as people are prepared to share with the members of your team.
So often what happens is we found that people can work together 10, 20 years, but don't really know each other. We interact on a sort of level because we get on with it and it's transactional and it's work. And even we've had great pub or after work drinks or dinner conversations where we've kind of got to know each other a little bit, but often people don't understand some of the hopes, dreams, and ambitions of the people in their team. So that's where I would start.
Understanding the ambitions of your team: The first step to success
Wayne Clarke: I’d start by reevaluating it. And plus things change, right? So what my hopes, dreams, and ambitions are in August 2024, they're going to probably be different in August 2025, but often we don't reinvestigate that. So I think as an initial place to start as a manager to really get a handle on what your people actually want, I think is a really useful exercise for two reasons. One, because you might figure out that some people are more ambitious than you believed. So that's important when you're thinking about talent retention, how do I hold onto this individual because they're exceptional and they're really ambitious. And if I don't meet that ambition with some sort of opportunity I can create, whether that's a training program, whether that's internal development or something they're probably going to leave because, you know, evidence suggests that's going to be the case. On the other side, it might be that I've got someone who's tremendously unambitious and what I'm doing is I'm punishing them every six months saying, you know: “Where do you see yourself in the next few years?”
“Here.”
“Doing what?”
“This.”
“All right.”
And often we're forced as a manager to have these important development conversations with people and they just don't want it. So it would make sense to me that if you've got a team of five or 10 people. You've probably got 10, 20 percent of any population, because it's the kind of distribution we see, that are willing to invest more of themselves to get what they say that they want. And then probably it would make sense to then spend a disproportionate amount of my effort and energy and time with those individuals. Others are completely happy to get on with doing a good job.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah, that's a very interesting way to look at it. And goes back to your time point again, like your time can be spent well in multiple different places and it's important to figure out what that is.
I think also, as we've been talking a lot about this, it's more and more, you know, when you first say manager to somebody, it sounds quite top down, I guess it's sort of somebody who organizes something or someone that's in control of it, but actually, what we've been talking about here is understanding people in order to achieve success and helping them in a way that best suits them and their ambitions, which is very, very different than I think a lot of people originally saw or see what a manager is.
Wayne Clarke: And also, you know, we're trying to achieve in a way, like a difficult balance of a win win here, because we're trying to make sure that the organization wins. Cause ultimately they've invested the time and the money to employ somebody. So they want to return on that investment, which is understandable. And then for the individual, they're trading their time, their precious time of the 81 or 79 years they've got on this planet. They're trading a portion of that for a return also, and obviously there's a monetary return that they're getting, but they want to get a win for themselves. And I also then think maybe we could add a third layer onto that, which is a lot of people, unfortunately, have never had the benefit of having a deep and meaningful conversation about what they want.
So my mom jokes about it. She's 69, she won't like me saying this, but she's 69 this year. And she says to me, she doesn't know what she wants to do when she grows up.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: I love that.
Wayne Clarke: Because she grew up in a time where the expectation was she'll get married and have kids. And that was it, you know, and she's really smart, but she kind of never really forged away in a career. Not because she didn't want to, she's not clever enough to do it, but it was never really an expectation. You know, no one really sat down with her ever at any point, had a conversation about her hope streams and ambitions. And the more and more I've met different leaders of companies. The more I found this to be true.
Career autopilot: When leaders realise they’ve been pushed into their roles
Wayne Clarke: So one quick fun story on this one is we met the CEO of a big company, right? So stock market listed company. And he's about a year before his retirement. He becomes this employee engagement culture evangelist. So I'm like, and I was asked to meet with him.
But he becomes fascinated with the world of employee engagement and the business that he runs, you wouldn't think it's synonymous with a highly engaged type of culture, given the nature of their business, right? So I get asked to meet with him. And then he said to me that he went into that line of business when he was 20 years old, and he's about to retire, he's nearly 60. And he said that he realized last year for the first time in 40 years, 38 years, that he didn't want to do what he does. I said, what are you talking about? He said, well, because I was pushed into this line of work by my dad and my whole career has been on autopilot and I'd never ever considered.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Gosh, what a moment.
Wayne Clarke: I know. And I just thought, you know, and obviously he's mega successful, made all the money in the world and all that stuff, but it's not about that. He was sad that he'd never reconsidered or considered a career of what he wanted rather than what was chosen for him. And you think of how many people are on autopilot. It was already destined that this kid was going to be a doctor or a dentist or an accountant or a lawyer. And actually we find in many of the professions, you know, there is a link in lots of studies between alcoholism and professions, but you know, you've got people that are in some cases forced into, where it was never a debate, you know, with parents about where they would go and they find themselves quite frustrated later, you know, sort of mid career is what we've seen now, the world we're in, people can quit out of it. Whereas before probably people would follow it through to retirement and just accept it.
The importance of having career conversations with your team
Wayne Clarke: So, you know, one of the things that we realize is whether you're talking to multi, multi millionaire CEO, or whether you're talking to a minimum wage shop floor supervisor, and as we found in many organizations, a lot of people have never had a conversation with anyone about their hopes, dreams, and ambitions, which is why I go back to my answer to your question, is where would a manager start? I think it's one of the most powerful places to start and start to get to know someone actually genuinely what they want.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Yeah. I think it just shows the power that that one conversation can have and making the space and the time if you're a manager, to ask those who you support, that question, but also ask yourself that question, because how are you going to expect someone else to answer it if you can't answer it yourself?
Resources for managers: Where to learn more
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Wayne, this has been an absolutely fantastic conversation. I've thoroughly enjoyed it and I know there's so many topics that we could have been speaking about, especially when we were having lunch before this. There's so many different ways this conversation could have gone. What I would love to know from you, are there any key resources, books, tools, et cetera, that you would recommend?
Wayne Clarke: This sounds ironic, I'm a pretty bad book reader. I've not read many because I don't have the concentration to get through them. But in terms of the stuff that we do, obviously we're posting loads of stuff all the time on social channels, predominantly LinkedIn. We also have a free resource on our website, which is worldclassmanager.com.
So we filmed a series of 12 short videos in New York last summer. I had this sort of videographer with me for a few days and we followed around the city in different locations, talking about some of these issues. So it's totally free and it gives you an idea of these 12 areas and poses some questions that you can think about as a manager.
And then I think there's another, obviously it's a plug for HBR, but it's one of my sort of go to, I think I've got the attention span to handle an article.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: I love it as well.
Wayne Clarke: So, you know, I think HBR is an awesome place to learn from and there's so much free resource available on that too.
Sophie Brazell-Ng: Well, awesome. What we'll do is we'll make sure that we post all of that and all the links on how to contact Wayne as well in our show notes. A big thank you to listening today. My name's been Sophie Brazell-Ng, I am one of the consultants at Clarasys. This is something that we are so passionate about here at Clarasys.
If you would like to get in touch, please follow all the links to find out more, a little bit about what we do. Please join in for the next Game Changers podcast. Thanks very much everyone.
Show notes
Guest bio:
Wayne Clarke is the founding partner of the Global Growth Institute, with operations in the UK, Mongolia, Netherlands, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the U.A.E. Wayne is an economics graduate with over 20 years’ experience of improving the performance of organisations through enhanced people engagement and has been recognised 5 times by HR Magazine as one of the ‘Most Influential Thinkers in HR’ globally. The GGI have now developed over 100,000 managers in over 30 countries using their unique World Class Manager™ programme and Wayne has personally advised over 1000 CEOs and leadership teams globally.
Wayne is on LinkedIn here.
Purchase Wayne's book: 'How to Become a World-Class Manager: Skills and Insights for Unleashing Your Leadership Potential'.
Resources mentioned
- World Class Manager
- Who's Got the Monkey? Harvard Business Review
- Wayne Clarke's free video series
- Harvard Business Review (HBR)
