How managers lead teams when facing personal challenges

One of the things that I did do very quickly was implement some strategies around um safety in the workplace because I had experienced a domestic violence situation and we were in an office where anyone could come in and out very quickly. So we made sure that there was lock down and procedures based around that so that I was safe and the other staff were safe. Hello and welcome back to this week's episode of The Ways of Working podcast, your weekly dose of practical tips for leaders who are trying to gain the high-performance edge without burning themselves or their teams out. Now, before you put down your phone or click away from this window, make sure you hit follow or subscribe on your preferred platform of choice to make sure you don't miss any future episodes of The Ways of Working podcast with our incredible experts and guests. Now, this week, we are joined by the incredible Kerry Grace, the CEO of The Evolve Group Network. Kerry, welcome to the show, how are you? Ah hi Jimmy, I'm great, thank you. It's amazing to have you on and we're going to dig into some of your incredible experiences, but first of all before we get into the details of some of your career, I'm interested. Tell us a little bit about the Evolve Group Network and some of the work that you are doing in Australia. So Evolve Group will be 20 years old next year. I own this business, I established it in the early 2000s as a way to juggle family life and my I guess growing career at the time. We work with communities to make them stronger. Incredible, and for the past 6 years or so, you've been involved with Regional Development Australia Mid North Coast. Did I get that right? You did, that's it, that's right. It's a commonwealth government-funded programme so my title in that role is the director of regional development and CEO. I work with seven local government areas and two islands. Excellent. That's so interesting. I um, I had the luxury opportunity to get it to the Torres Strait. I drove up from Townsville to the very top of Cape York and then over to the Torres Strait in a previous life, and what an incredible part of the country. Yeah. Tell us, when you're working in these roles with regional development teams, with organisations in rural Australia, what are some of the common leadership challenges that you tend to see and are supporting to overcome? It's a really good question. One of the primary leadership challenges I see um, I guess there's two primary ones. One is lacking collaboration. So I'm a very collaborative leader, but I don't take kindly to people who are not collaborative. And um, having just led this organisation through we've had uh bush fires in 2019 followed by floods, followed by pandemic, and having done that a collegial response was really what was required and that was not always what was received. So a big leadership challenge has also been um, me learning how to hold myself when um, I guess in those disasters, a different type of leadership approach can come in, so learning how to handle that and make sure the best for my community is still served has been difficult. But another big leadership challenge that I've always fought against is um the stereotypical role of a leader and perhaps that's gender-based, but definitely to do with how we relate to our families and our own well-being during that. Amazing. And and that's where we're going to go for this episode. We're going to talk about non-traditional family constructs and how first of all, how you have managed to carve a path as a senior leader in organisations as a single parent. Tell us a little bit more about your, how you, not obviously how you ended up here, but how how that circumstance has has eventuated and how you've managed to create a niche for yourself uh as a single parent and senior leader at the same time. Yeah, that's a It's a big conversation, isn't it? Um. So, I guess when I when I went into this role, I actually went into the role as a married woman with a dad that was also really sick and I have three kids, so my life construct was very different at that point in time. 6 weeks after I started the job, my now ex-husband left the family, and was quite dramatic, and I really had to make a conscious choice as to whether I could continue. My kids were quite young then, they were all in high school, uh, or primary school, and I have three of them. So, I there was a lot of Luckily, my office was 100 km from the home my home, because I spent a lot of that 100 km crying every day before I got out of the car and composed myself, and, and worked out, well, what am I going to do? But 6 years down the track now, I've really been able to forge a path where I'm a very confident um single parent. I mean, it's not even something that I'd necessarily consider as a label that I put on myself, but uh I guess I've been very conscious about family first, my work is second and anything else in life comes after that for now, and that was the choice I made for the period of my tenure in this role. Yeah, so, I mean, there's lots more we can talk about under that, but that's a I guess a good entrée to the conversation. Sure, and you know, the thing that And, first of all, that must have been a really challenging period of your life. Those first couple of months where, as you say, you're commuting a hundred kilometres in each direction and dealing with what must have been all sorts of feelings. You know, when you got to the other end of your commute, and you would get out the car, and you'd have to go into the office and be the CEO, be a senior executive whilst you were dealing with that personal turmoil. What were some of the strategies or tactics that you used to help you? So, the first one was just being very pragmatic about it. So, there's a lot to be done when a relationship breaks down. So, making sure that all of those to-do lists were were done. So, that that in many times kept me going, just the the things I have to do, let's just keep moving through them. Also, I mean, I guess, having a friend or a family member that I could phone to talk to if it did get too much. And it took me some years after that happened to actually um, work out that I suffered en- anxiety, or I I don't want to use the word suffered around it. I just I experienced anxiety. And I didn't even know what that was. I literally thought I had the a flu the first time I experienced it. So, the whole Through the whole process, becoming more consciously aware of my health and my mental health was something that was very important. And um, I'm a very fast-paced person, so knowing how to slow down isn't something I'm great at, but knowing that I'm not great at that has been really important, so I I know that sometimes I just have to slow myself down, so I know, how am I feeling? How am I in the world now? Do I make this decision quickly? So, um, yeah, I guess that's probably not a great dot point list, but they're they're some of the ways. Um, and another way is, I I just I have this amazing mom. I'm so blessed to have my mother, and she's very pragmatic, as well. So, when I might be getting a little bit dramatic about things, she can just bring me down, and just say, "Hey, you know, you Is this the biggest problem that you have right now?" Yeah, and just talk me down into that. And my mom was a manager, as well. So, being able to learn through her management experiences, too, have really helped. Yeah. I think there's a couple of pieces that are really worth highlighting there. First of all the the pragmatism. Yes, you know, you need to deal with these things, absolutely, as you go through them, but having a focused approach to essentially solving another problem, just a highly emotionally-charged, another problem, is a good leadership tactic. The other one that I thought you beautifully articulated there was slowing down. And as senior leaders in organisations, it can be very tempting to, when the pressure is on, is to speed up and just try and operationally deliver more stuff. But actually, as a senior leader, it's about doing the right things, not doing everything, so slowing down and thinking about, where am I going to spend my energy and my time? And what can we not do? Could actually be really helpful in a multitude of scenarios. Is that a fair comment? Oh, it's a very fair comment. And look, don't get me wrong, I've tried the speeding up methodology, as well. And, I It It It just doesn't How did that work for you? It doesn't ever end well. It never ends well. It's I I I would like to say it's not going to be a life challenge to learn how to slow down at more regular periods of time, but um, one of the reasons I've quite recently resigned from this role is because I know that my life needs to take a much slower pace for a period of time, so I'll finish up this role at the end of June, which will nearly make it 7 years by that stage. And um, that is very very much about slowing down. Wow. Mm, thank you for for sharing um those insights and and I want to go back to also something you mentioned was that I don't necessarily label myself as a single-parent executive. It's just part of what I am and what I do. And, you know, to me from a diversity and inclusion perspective, we if we come at it from the other angle now, if I'm a senior leader in an organisation and I'm thinking about diversity and inclusion, and I'm thinking about how I include single parents in my organisation, putting a label on it might not necessarily be the right thing to do. But there are things that would be helpful for me to do to be more inclusive of single-parent and non-traditional family unit families, right? So let's let's go there. Let's talk about what are the some of the things that maybe the CEO and the senior leadership team could take into account if they're considering or they suddenly end up with a single-parent or non-traditional family unit in their organisation? Yeah, and I think that's that last part of your sentence is really interesting as well, in that, if they suddenly end up with a single parent. There There are different ways that this needs to be addressed. In the Cuz it happens, right? Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah, and just on that note as well, one of the things that I did do very quickly was implement some strategies around um safety in the workplace because I had experienced a domestic violence situation and we were in an office where anyone could come in and out very quickly. So we made sure that there was lock down and procedures based around that so that I was safe and the other staff were safe, as well. So when somebody suddenly becomes a single parent or a single person, I think it's also really important to ascertain, well, what are the risks around this and how can we care for this person really well. So in those er- early days, I mean, I I was lucky in that I was the boss, so I got to set the tone, anyway. But when I look back, I was um, a 42-year-old person then, that had been used to being self-employed for most of my life. I didn't really know what it was like to manage a body of staff, and I had five staff at the time. Um, and they were all older than me, as well. So, working out, "Ooh, oh, I really," you know, have to get my mindset right so I I'm not seen to be a bit of a I think the loser, the word loser came into my mind a lot, and it doesn't anymore. And anyone that's listening, I encourage if you're a single person, all power to you. You've made a really good decision. And um, if it wasn't you making the decision, you're probably lucky that the decision was made for you. You're not a loser. Um, yeah, so making sure in those early days that safety is in order, that the person's well-being is looked after, um, and that can mean a a million different things. The If you're managing somebody in that situation, working out how you can have honest conversations with them. Like, you may not not even know, necessarily, that this has happened, but you might notice that they're leaving a bit earlier, or coming into work a bit later. Just having one of those open conversations is important. Um, but then, on an ongoing basis, um, I have a personal rule that I don't attend breakfast meetings, and I don't do that because I had kids to get ready for school. Now, my kids are older now, so it's more feasible, but um, I don't really like getting up early in the morning, and driving an hour to a breakfast meeting, which is probably what I would have to do, so it's just kind of a policy that I've pretty much carried forward. I'll I'll go every now and then, but not not regularly. And the same with meetings at the other end of the day, so that was something that I just couldn't do. So, I think, for people managing single parents, or people in these situations, taking those kind of things into account is important. I can guarantee you, if the board I answer to had not have been flexible around these things, there is no way they would have had me as an employee for so long. They have agreed and supported that family comes first, and my work has been of a higher quality as a result. This is one of the great sort of untapped performance opportunities, right? If you listen to, if you take notice of, if you have those honest and open conversations with the people in your team, and you know what's going on in their lives, then actually, you can set a provision that's going to allow them to perform more effectively. Yeah. Yeah. And but and I think also if you're the person that's doing the listening or the managing, making sure that you set some boundaries around that as well because you don't want to become a dumping ground for the person that is going through this thing. Make sure you've got your counselling and anything else in um EAP, we call it here, in in Australia, Employment Assistance Program. I'm not sure what it's called abroad, but we have in most workplaces some kind of EAP program where the person can access a counselling or psychological support, and they're important, too. And let's stay with that part of the conversation. The the So, a senior leader has just found out that one of their maybe high performers has gone through a change of relationship status, change of domestic status, and is potentially reeling from that. Let's go a bit deeper on that honest conversation and what sort of parameters would that conversation have without overstepping boundaries, but in order to be supportive to that employee's performance? Yeah, look, it's really tough. And I remember having conversations with the chair of my board around the time to make sure he was he was aware of what was happening. And because these situations, when a a break-up happens, can be quite volatile, the facts of the situation may take some time to emerge, and because you're speaking with somebody that's been through uh emotional turmoil, or a very confusing, dramatic time, they may describe things in different ways as it goes, because they're getting new information, or they're seeing new perspectives, et cetera. So, I think really helping them to talk through what the facts are is very important. Um, making sure, again, that they're safe, and not only physically safe, but emotionally safe, as well. Making sure that they have the right support. And that triage is really a great place to start as a manager. So, making sure that, essentially, okay, this situation is um You're not going to lock it down, because break-ups have all kinds of threads attached to them. But at least you can make sure that your person knows that you care about them, and you're willing in uh willing to be flexible. Um, the next thing that you might you might want to do as a manager, in having this conversation, is actually ask the person, what do they need? What do you need right now? Now, for me, I I didn't stop working at all through it, and work for me was my catharsis. I really needed it to keep going through the through the process. Um, in hindsight, we did have a change of chairperson through the period, and um it it probably would have been good for me if I had, uh, I guess, a period where I s- stopped after all of the dr- drama had happened. And, um, yeah, anyway, I didn't think I needed that, so nobody around me thought I needed that. So, encouraging just checking in as the manager on on your person, on the conversation, checking in, what do you need now? Have you thought about some time off? And I have a chair now that's really really in tune with um well-being and health, and has been really great at making sure I got quite sick when I had COVID last year, making sure that I'm okay, and I do take time off, because he knows that, otherwise, I won't. So, sometimes, there's a really fine line between making a decision for somebody and helping them come to a decision that's good for their well-being. Because if I think Yeah, I love that. and I'm sure some people will will nod about this. If you're in a situation where you're using work as catharsis or a way to heal, that can become a habit, and you don't want to go there, either. Hey, Jimmy here. Just wanted to drop into this episode and let you know that we're so grateful for all of those reviews that you as listeners leave on our podcast. We put our hearts and souls into the podcast and the guests we invite are absolutely fantastic. I wanted to share one review with you from a recent episode from Kelly. "Jimmy's experience and thoughtful dialogue provide a phenomenal canvas of learning opportunities from thought leaders in the industry. It was a pleasure both listening and participating. What a great resource to learn valuable tips and tricks to navigating impactful leadership capabilities." So, not only are we thrilled to have incredible guests on the show, but we're also absolutely overjoyed that it's having a positive impact on our listeners, like you, on the Ways of Working podcast. Speak soon. Yes, I hear you. And one of the concerns that maybe comes to mind with somebody who is going through a volatile break-up and is having some personal challenges is that, potentially, their eye's going to be off the ball. They might miss stuff. They might not perform to the level that you've normally been accustomed to. How does one navigate that as a senior leader when you're dealing with somebody who's maybe been your previous star who's going through a tough a tough period? How do you deal with that? Look, I think the first way to deal with it is the way you should deal with any performance, is make sure that there's there are clear goals and um clear deliverables. If you've got those in place in the first place, you know what to reach for. Um the role that I've just been in um, or I'm finishing up now, is so broad, I could honestly be doing anything. We work with every industry. We work with um, well and truly over 25,000 businesses that we support, so it's very broad and it it can be also easy to hide underneath outcomes if you need to. Now, I don't do that, but you you might as the manager, if you haven't already set clear KPIs, clear reporting mechanisms, clear outputs, you might find um, that the person isn't really quite performing or doing what you hope they would, but you don't know why, you can't quite put your finger on it. So, if you don't have those clear outputs for the people that you're working that are working for you, go and set them today, and make sure that they're in place. Um, outside of that, though, if you can see that the person isn't performing um, and before you move into performance management, just, I guess, working out what their communication style, or, if you like, their love language is, so that you can support them in a way that's meaningful for them. So, I I know that I've I've had some staff before myself that really, they don't go for the touchy-feely stuff, they don't want to know they don't want me to know whether they're well or happy or not, they couldn't really care less, they just need work. So, that's one approach, whereas others have really thrived from having a, you know, a meaningful conversation about where they're up to. So, I guess knowing the personality type of your staff is important, as well. And I like that idea of recentering on the measures, the the goals, the objectives, the KPIs, whatever you want to call it, for for that employee, because also they may be may be feeling like they are in a very unstructured world right now, where everything else is chaotic. Yeah. So to have that leader who is providing a bit of clarity on, "Well, here's my expectations. Here's what we've agreed you're going to do." Then having a conversation, "Is there anything you don't think you're going to be able to do right now, and how do we support you with those pieces, or offload them, or make sure that you've got a additional um time or or parameters to be able to achieve? And also, what are we going to switch off because we know that you need some head space? We know that you need some some time to deal with this, so how do we support you through that?" I think there's a really nice sort of three-tiered conversation, and that is actually very caring and empathetic versus the, "Oh, we'll just kind of just let them be, and then we become resentful because they're not performing whilst they're going through a really tough time in life." Yeah, yeah, you've got to nip it in the bud quickly. Yeah. I I I I like your Yeah, I haven't always gotten it right, either. I've had before um staff that don't like that communication, or I've had something very personal happen in to their health or something like that that they just haven't wanted to speak about. And I've been too busy and not noticed, which leads to a resentment anyway because I haven't noticed and I haven't paid attention. So, a lot of our roles, and certainly this role that I've had, I have to do delivery as well as manage staff, and a lot of people find themselves in this situation, so you're always looking outward as well as inward, and sometimes your staff can be the ones that you're not looking at because you're needing to make money for the company or deliver your tasks or whatever it is. So, again, um and this is more reflective I think than what I've been able to do, is just really making time to stop and look and listen and regroup and make sure everything's going okay. Fantastic. Thank you, Kerry. And I think we've we've really got into the the real meat of what it's like to be a person on the receiving end of a break-up, what it's also like to be a leader leading somebody through a break-up. That's not obviously what defines you. You are a very accomplished, very experienced leader who is also, I believe, writing a book. Is that right? Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, I am. So during the bush fires in 2019, my community was among the first that uh caught on fire in the New South Wales, Australia bush fires that year. And I noticed that community volunteers were the first responders, essentially, but they weren't necessarily equipped with the tools. And once um formal structures were able to come in and start providing support, things changed quite a lot in the community and people no longer felt like they had the right to know what happens. So I've become quite curious since about how um communities essentially remain resilient after the disas- disaster, so that they're prepared, better prepared next time. So the book is case studies about that, about communities that have been able to do that. Yeah, it'll be out next year. Incredible. Can you take us into one of the case studies, and what led to that case study? What was the uh situation, and how did it turn out? Yeah, well So the case study was the one I experienced. So a couple of day, or the day after the bush fires were really close to my own community, my daughter and I um jumped in the car and we went out, just looking for ways that we could help. And um point A, there was no structure around that. Nobody knew. So we we landed in a community hall where a volunteer had just happened to be in that hall, and somebody knocked on the door, so he let them in. They slept in the hall that night. The next day, donations started to to arrive, so if any listeners have been involved in a disaster, you'll know that um people I've interviewed since call the donations um and please don't I'll explain this whole this this needs to be a whole concept. They call donations the second the second disaster, and called so because communities quite often get donated a whole bunch of stuff that they do not need. Um granted, there's a lot of stuff that they do need during the donations, but in this case, the hall became so jam-packed with donations and just people throwing stuff out of their wardrobe. Well-intentioned, but it just got in the way, and it took days and days for um the authorities to get in. In the meantime, this amazing community group had established uh food, not a food truck, but a a kitchen where people cooking 24/7 for, whether it was the fire brigade, or um people who had lost their homes. They implemented counselling. Um they've They identified who had what skills, and put them to the best of ability in front of the people that needed support. They were dealing with really head-on with really really critical situation, and they did it really well. When the authorities came in, as needs to happen, they did it with quite a um I wouldn't say brute force, but it wasn't very tactful. So, the volunteers were essentially swept aside, and there wasn't a There wasn't a process to, at that point, acknowledge them. They just had to get out of the way, and, you know, move move along. So, things Because the authorities weren't from town, things started to happen that weren't congruent with the community. And then, of course, politicians started to come and have their photos snapped with, you know, various disaster-strewn places. So, even that part within itself, even though it seemed grotesque at the time, it's an important part of the awareness raising for the community and their plight, as well. So, there's a whole bunch of um disconnected factors of the community that were going on, and to try and find some way to connect it all so everyone could understand everybody else's role was really important. But, oh, I tell you what, during that time, there was even the local um Centrelink, is where people go for essentially unemployment support. They had to close because smoke was getting in, and the staff couldn't be there. So, I was walking around the community with sticking up posters that I'd made at home, telling people where they could go during that time. And it Yeah, it really just brought it home to me that, you know, with climate change, the world is changing, the environment is changing, and we are not ready. So, that is why I wanted to write this book, and explore global stories, yeah, about that kind of resilience. Absolutely incredible, and what would you say, you know, for somebody who's looking for a book on leadership through disasters or leadership through crisis, what what are they going to take out of this? What's your angle? Well, the primary angle is about collaboration, and I should also do a shout-out here to my my good friend um Deke Copenhaver, who wrote a book on being a change-maker. So, he was the mayor of Augusta, and Deke's book really inspired me. I actually read it through this disaster, and it just kept me going, because there's a lot of times, as a leader, where we question ourselves, um and it might be, "Who am I to make this decision? Who am I to do this?" And I noticed when I was going into that hall in in my community, even though my job title has nothing to do with disaster management, it is about economic development, but because I walked in, and I could say They'd say, "There's Kerry. She's the director of regional development." And I could say, "Yes, I am. I'm now going to advocate for you to do blah, blah, blah, or you do this, or somebody else do that, or I don't like the way you're treating the community." And I because I had a title of authority, and because I knew the community, I was able to, I guess, get away get away with those things. But I was able to help the community, because they were just looking for somebody to give them permission to do what they need knew needed to be done, anyway. So, collaboration, number one. The second thing is listening to the experts, and the experts may not be by title or qualification, they could just be people that have lived experience in this area. Um, and I think very much, if if you're somebody that's either living through or managing somebody in a situation where they've become a single parent, as well, or their family situations changed, they are the expert of that. And like any expert, their skills evolve over time. We need to give them some space to do that. But yeah, I think, look, those two things are really primary for me, collaborating and finding finding the expert, finding the person that knows. Very very important. What a great lesson for leaders in any scenario, but, yes, absolutely, in disaster scenarios. And as you mentioned, we seem to be experiencing them. These one-in-100-year events seem to be coming along altogether more frequently than than we expect now, so being prepared and being skilled enough to navigate through that is an essential leadership trait, whether it's happening to you, or whether it's happening to your organisation, or whether you're in support of organisations that it's happening to. Some great skills and lessons there. Where can people find the book, Kerry? So they'll find it via my personal website, which is kerrygrace.com.au. And um, there's not a lot of information up there about it at the moment, but that's where it will be. Excellent, and we'll pop in a link in the show notes so people can navigate through and click to it and find it on your behalf. Kerry, thank you so much for taking us on quite a deep and emotional journey through a variety of topics, but I think all really interesting and valuable to leaders who are just thinking, "Well, how do I get that performance edge from somebody who's maybe experienced a change of relationship status or a change of domestic status? And then, latterly in our conversation, how do I maximise performance when we're in the midst of a disaster or or a crisis that was not of our own planning and doing?" Is there anything that I should have asked you that I didn't? Oh, that's a lovely question, Jimmy. Look, I I would just really like to I know that there will be somebody, or somebodies listening to this who is going through a break-up right now, and I know that your heart is really really hurting. And please know that life will get better. Make sure that you give yourself the the wellness support that you need, and um you can move through it, and it doesn't need to impact on who you are as a leader, or who you are as a performer in your workplace, or even who you are as a parent. The key is just being um going back to what I mentioned before about stopping, and slowing slowing down, and really understanding what's going on uh in your body, in your mind, around you. Part of my decision to leave my role, a big part, is to help my youngest daughter to finish high school, as well. So she's um not really loving school at this point, and she she really needs a mom. So the other part of my advice to you is listen to your gut, because you will know when it's time to speed up, and when it's time to slow down, and when your family needs you. And in hindsight now, I'm so so pleased that I didn't give up back then when I could've. I'm so pleased that I've been able to build all of these tools and people around me to be able to support the next phase of my life, and I'm so pleased I put family first. Kerry, thanks so much for joining us, really appreciate it. That's it for this week's episode of The Ways of Working podcast. If you enjoyed the conversation here, why not head over to beatburnout.jimmyburroughes.com/book and grab chapter one of our amazing upcoming book, Beat Burnout Ignite Performance. It's the leader's playbook for building a high-performance culture. So, if you're looking for practical tips and to understand why people in your team or yourself are burning out and what to do about it so you can all keep working and perform better, this is the place for you. Go to beatburnout.jimmyburroughes.com/book and grab that first chapter. We'll also keep you posted when the full book is released very soon. Also, if you enjoyed this episode of The Ways of Working podcast, don't forget to follow or subscribe on your preferred podcast platform of choice and we'll make sure that you get all of the upcoming episodes as they come out every single week. Take care, speak soon.