Why self-limiting beliefs about leadership are the hidden barrier for most design leaders | Julia Whitney, Executive Coach

Speaker A: Hi, I'm, um, Ekaterina from Future London Academy. And welcome to another conversation with design executive here on Creative Capes podcast. Our guest today is wonderful, Julia Whitney. Julia has many talents. Uh, obviously she is an executive coach right now, helping design leaders thrive and perform at their best levels. Uh, but before that, Julia has been design leader herself, leading teams across UK and US for more than 20 years. And she was also, um, heading BBC department as a general manager and executive Creative Director for 150 person UX and design team, which is a big responsibility and I think a, uh, huge organization like BBC probably had a lot of interesting, complex scenarios that Julia now brings together her coaching practice and her board level experience, uh, to help, uh, design leaders realize their full potential. And her current clients are, uh, anything from Conde Nast in AWS to Financial Times and ideo. So many companies we love and many leaders, uh, from the companies we love, uh, talk to Julia and get, uh, insights on how they can perform better. And we are very lucky today to have Julia help us to learn how we can be better leaders. How anyone who is thinking about promotion, getting, getting to C level or maybe why they didn't get this promotion can actually be more successful in what they do. But also we'll discuss, uh, how to work with multicultural teams, whether we should go to the office or stay remote, and all things in between. Welcome Julia. How are you doing?

Speaker B: Oh, uh, I'm doing really well. I'm a little bit hot though. But thank you so much for inviting me to be on this podcast with you, Ekaterina.

Speaker A: Well, it's a, uh, pleasure to have you. You have so many insights from both worlds of the world of psychology and coaching and executive leadership, but also from being a design leader and manager yourself. So I'm looking forward to diving into all of your stories. But my first question is to you. As a coach who met many design leaders throughout your career, what kind of challenges do people usually come to you with? What do you see design leaders struggle with that they bring to the table when they talk to you?

Speaker B: Oh, uh, that's such a good question. And there really is a great variety. They don't all. Every coaching engagement is a little bit different. Everybody comes with their own unique set of things. But if I had to pick some themes, the top theme of all is career transition. Whether it's aiming for promotion, um, whether it's having just gotten a promotion or a new role at a different company and needing to know how to navigate this new position and all the new responsibilities, abilities, whether it's having just suffered a career disappointment and needing to process that and figure out how to pick up the pieces and move forward with a new vision for what thriving could mean in that case. So I would say that, yeah, transitions is a key, is a key theme that comes up a lot. But often whether transitions is the theme that people walk in the door on or not, what ends up being a big topic that we deal with in coaching is self limiting beliefs. Often, uh, the person who has these self limiting beliefs isn't even aware that they have them. But through the process of talking through, um, with a trustee, you know, that's the role that I try to play. I'm the trusted thinking partner. It becomes clear to me that there's something in there that's a belief that that may not be serving the person. So, and I try to hold a mirror up and say that I'm noticing this. You know, what do you think about what I'm noticing? And often it's a revelation to people. Oh my goodness, I didn't realize I was thinking that. Or they believe it so thoroughly that they don't even question it. They don't even think that they should challenge it. So, so I can give you an example of this. There was a client that I was working with who, um, I'm going to call her Sarah. Names have been changed to protect people's confidentiality. And Sarah was, had been an excellent individual contributor for like a really, really long time. And she came to me, she wanted coaching on a question that she'd been holding for several years, which was, you know, do I have what it takes to be a leader? In our exploration together, we discovered pretty quickly that she had in her mind a particular vision of what a leader is. And in her vision of what a leader is, her strengths didn't match that. So she had a pre, she has to this day a preference for introversion. She has a real strength in attention to detail. And she was used to thinking of leaders as being only big picture, uh, only extroverted, etc. It was really great to be able to work with Sarah and challenge that assumption and say, okay, do you mean you can't think of any leaders that you know and admire who maybe have great attention to detail and a preference for, for introversion? And then she was able to identify some who fit that description. And suddenly, uh, you know, the light bulb came on. Um, and she was able to. Together we, we created.

Speaker C: We.

Speaker B: I helped her create a vision for what her authentic leadership could be and an action plan to Step toward that.

Speaker A: I love that you brought up the idea of what the leadership and leadership could or should look like. I hear it as well a lot from people that we work with or just in general creatives. I think in general, creative leader or design leader is quite a new thing. Um, that's one of the things why we care about what we do at futurelan Academy, because we do believe there should be creatives and designers at C level, at very high level of leadership. But yes, traditionally creatives have not been seen in those roles. Apart from Steve Jobs and maybe people in fashion. We rarely see creatives at the top of the organization. So I agree there is one kind of limitation of knowing what that leader could look like, but also what you brought up about introversion or a certain way you present yourself or show up in places. That's exactly another theme that I hear a lot, that if you haven't seen that you can be a leader. If you are not extroverted, charismatic, chatty, always happy to help, or having this big vision or articulate, uh, your vision in a such way that it just mesmerizes thousands of people, then you kind of don't feel like you can be a leader. Now, how would you go about helping someone to be a leader, using their strength? Because there are lots of reasons why we see these charismatic leaders. It's much easier to go up the ladder if you are good with people, if you're chatting to everyone, if you are very tall, if you present yourself in a certain way. But, uh, what if you're not? What if you are a quiet person and actually would prefer not to talk to anyone, but still want to influence the strategy of the organization? You want to be in important conversations rather than be seen as just a person who can execute.

Speaker B: Well, I would like to be able to say that there's a magic bullet for that. I think it's important for me to acknowledge that as you move up in leadership, eventually you are going to get to a place where you do need to present in front of people. But if you can remove the expectation that you have to be the most inspiring, visionary, dynamic, et cetera, et cetera, presenter in the world, usually that helps. I guess the, the general approach I would like people to keep in mind is to lean into those things that really are their strengths. So lean into, let's say that, you know, you have a preference for introversion, but, and this can happen, you do have a great sense of vision and strategy. Then lean into that. You know, lean into that. Make sure that you are known for being good at that. If you, on the other hand, aren't so good at vision and strategy, but are, uh, incredibly good with your team, then lean into that. You know, make sure that you're getting the best possible work from your team. And even if you hate presenting, you know, make it your role to elevate your team members and take credit for their individual work. Although I will say that I often advise clients that they should also get comfortable claiming their role in creating the conditions that allow those people to do great work. So I would say that I'm not sure you're ever going to entirely get away from presenting.

Speaker A: So how would you do it in a practical level? Let's say you are an introverted person in general. You just enjoy doing the work. And I think a lot of creatives, including myself, went into the creative world because we love doing the work, not because we love doing PowerPoint presentations about the work that we've done. So how does someone move in the organization if maybe they're not naturally the one to raise their hand or be in front of audiences? How. Who should they speak to? How can they start building this influence on a practical level to even be noticed that they are bringing a lot of value and they can be seen as a potential leader? Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, so I think you mentioned something that's really key, and that is what they really love doing. So usually what people really love doing is where their key strength lies. And so if you can channel that love into, for example, really great relationships with your peers, or a tiny bit more, like pushing yourself for just a little bit more exposure with, you know, your multidisciplinary peers, boss or something like that, then usually you're going to be a more compelling, uh, proposition as somebody who does great work. But, Katarina, may I ask you a question back? Do you have an idea in mind that you're, um, that you're thinking about?

Speaker A: I feel like there are two parts, I suppose. One is at every level. I personally have seen and experienced almost different approaches that you need to take to build the influence. So, for example, moving from designer to senior designer, design manager versus to head of design, or whatever the next job title is, versus the C level and how you build that influence, whether it is kind of on one on one relationship, or whether it is by influencing other people who influence people. So I suppose my question comes from that. Have you seen difference in how you approach influence and being seen as a leader, depending on which job title you're going for, at which level?

Speaker B: Uh, okay, yes, I see what you mean. Yes, I would definitely say so. So I like to think of it in terms of levels of zoom. So when you're moving from individual contributor to, let's say, managing, you know, a couple of designers, let's say. And if you're thinking if at the level of individual contributor, you're very focused on the work right in front of you, you're trying to do the very best on, um, the piece of work that is you've been tasked with, if you are leading, even two designers, even one designer, you need to start to shift to, okay, um, how can I get the best out of that person? And that how can I get the best out of that person? Applies to your peers as well. So let's say then that you're in my world in design and digital technology. Let's say you're part of multidisciplinary leadership team for a product, and there's an engineering lead, a product lead, and you're the design lead. At that point, you're trying to figure out how to get the best out of the three of you and obviously the teams attached. So that's a level of zoom up even further. And then at some point, you're trying to get the best out of a team of teams across multiple different aspects of the product, let's say. So I think if you continually think about levels of zoom, you start to see how you might need to think of your influenceable set slightly differently.

Speaker A: And I would say, Julia, but I have a work to do. I don't have time to build this relationship. Uh, I have deadlines. I already have so many things and people asking me for things. When will I go and build these influences?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, so that's where delegation comes in. So if you have somebody to, to delegate to, that's why it gets really important not to just keep doing all the work yourself and to carve out a little bit of time to be strategic at that level. Next level of zoom and being strateg mean building the right relationships. It may mean carving out time in your schedule to look at the broader industry to make sure you're bringing back some of those insights into the work, et cetera. But, yeah, I would say that it's interesting. Um, I've heard a rule of thumb, and recently I was reminded of it. So it's top of my mind right now. I'm not sure that I believe it 100%, but it definitely, in broad strokes, can help you think about leadership, especially as you. You get much more senior, and that is to think of thirds. So one third is operational, then another third is strategic and another third is communicating the vision. So if you think about operational, that could be operational. At the level of, I have the one designer who's reporting me and I need to make sure that our work gets done to a high standard of quality on time. Then if you're going up a level, you're leading a small team of designers and you're one of a, uh, multidisciplinary leadership team, let's say, then it's about, you know, the operational bit is about how does this team work well together, what are the ways of working, whether roles and responsibilities, is it clear, do people know what they're doing and etc. So then you can keep going up the chain in operational. If you, uh, look at one of the other thirds, so that is strategic. So for the level of kind of one step above individual contributor, you're kind of thinking, okay, so what about the, let's say I'm going to use digital technology again, the other functionality, do we need to keep in mind to make sure that this is the best thing? So you're thinking slightly, you're expanding your circle, you're expanding your level of zoom to say, what can I see from here that I need to take into account as me and my designer are doing this work? Then at the level of, you know, team lead, working with multidisciplinary peers, it's like, okay, for this product, what's the ecosystem that we're a part of? How does this fit into that greater system and what do we need to do to make sure that we are, you know, being more in touch with, let's say, the strategy of the whole company, um, and how our product impacts that. So I hope that gives the idea and then communicating the vision, that's that, you know, at the level of you're just, as you're managing your one designer and you're trying to tell them what the goal is here for the work. You know, communicating vision could be like, this is what I mean when I say quality. This is what I want us to aspire to in the work that we do. The level of vision could be at the next level. This is, these are our design principles. This is how I want us to be known in the world of design, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker A: I love the multi layered approach. I think it kind of helps to understand which level you are right now and therefore maybe what you're spending too much time on, whether it is like still doing the work or focusing just on one designer versus the strategic side. So it's a nice balance. I would love to flip the conversation to the opposite. We had a lot of people actually asking before this interview the same question. I tried to go for a promotion or I applied for these roles that are kind of level up from what I'm doing and I've been rejected. What am I not doing in the interview or what am I not presenting that stops me from getting these more senior roles? What have you seen in your perspective? And let's. To kind of give the context, let's pick kind of more head of design, uh, level. So we are going for head of design ECD jobs. What are the mistakes that you see candidates do at that point, whether it's at interview stage or if they. It's an internal promotion while they pitch themselves for this new role?

Speaker B: Let me try to frame it less as mistakes, if that's all right, and more as, uh, what I think it's useful to aspire to. So I. One thing that's really useful to aspire to, and this can really, you know, you can see the flip side in each of them in terms of what the mistake would be. But, uh, one thing that I think it's really useful to aspire to is broad sponsorship at the next level up. So I worked. Actually, there's a really good example of somebody that I worked with relatively recently who was rejected for promotion. And he came to me because he wanted to make sure that he was going to be successful the next time around. And when we explored this, the level of sponsorship at the next level up, he realized that he only had one strong sponsor at the C. At the C suite, you know, C level. So we worked on identifying who else he could recruit, uh, into being a sponsor for him, or at least who else he could get exposure to and demonstrate real value to so that they would, the next time he came up for promotion, really be singing his praises. So that's one example is, you know, how broad is your sponsor? Sorry, Katerina, you were going to, uh.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I love this example because I think sponsorship is something that is talked a lot about in the industry. And you hear this kind of idea that, yeah, you need internal sponsors if you're going for internal promotion, but how do you physically build that? Like, there are these senior people who are very busy and let's say you don't overlap with them much on the projects. How do you make sure that they know that you exist? So exactly when the conversation comes up, for promotion, they be like, oh, yes, this is the person who actually is super helpful and definitely has a lot of potential.

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, one, one thing that I often work with my clients on is, uh, a pretty simple empathy exercise as a first step in, in building that relationship with a new, uh, to you sponsor, let's say, to try to recruit that, that person as a sponsor. So the empathy piece is to try to really imagine that you are in their shoes and what is important to you, what is driving you, what is going to make others think that you are successful. So once you've done that exercise really thoroughly and you've really, really, really tried to understand that, and sometimes you can get hard evidence for it, you can find that person's piece of the objectives for the annual goals or, or what have you, or you can interview people. You know, when I say interview, I make it sound more formal than it actually is, but you can actually talk to people who work with that person, say, okay, what's, what's really driving them? What pressures are they under from the CEO or, you know, their boss or whoever it might be? So once you've really done that empathy piece, then I often work with clients to look at all of those drivers and think to themselves, okay, what am I uniquely positioned with my strengths, my experience, my team's strengths and experience to help that person with? And you might get to a point where, like, actually nothing, and then that's probably not the right person for you to be recruiting. But if you get to a point where you're like, actually, you know what? Like in the same example, the gentleman I was talking about who was rejected for promotion, he discovered, he realized in the process of doing this exercise that he had been too focused on wanting to be seen as valuable for the work itself, intrinsically, like the work that he and his team were doing. He so wanted that to be seen as valuable in and of itself, that he was blind to the real drivers of one of the sponsors that he realized that he had the potential to recruit. And as soon as he flipped the frame to, okay, that person is really worried about revenue for their, that their area. So this was in an agency, and I can do a piece of strategic work that's going to bring a lot more value to that particular sponsorship, and I can offer that up to them as something they could sell on, and that's going to bring in a lot more revenue. And that was the way. So the work was great and it was playing to his strengths. It was something that he, he felt really confident with he had never thought about being proactive in this way.

Speaker A: This is a great example, and I would echo this with my own experience. And I've, uh, heard from many friends that sometimes their biggest mistake was to reject the kind of the areas where they can help that felt too basic. So, example would be, uh, a CEO wants you to design their slide deck for the pitch tomorrow. And it's like, well, I am so much more than designing PowerPoint presentations. I'll give it to my junior designer to do it overnight. It's not really, um, my area of responsibility. And actually, a lot of the times this is the biggest opportunity to show your value. Because unfortunately, not all senior leadership understands the nuances of design and design leadership. So any chance you can be seen as valuable person, even if it's for a small thing, you're slowly building up this confidence and trust in you. Because at the end of the day, we're all humans, we want to trust each other. So next time the CEO has maybe something more interesting than PowerPoint presentation, uh, they will trust you more than anyone else because you delivered on time. You did a great job. You did actually think it through, not just from the design perspective, but actually from the flow perspective, how to make sure the right information is actually, like, emphasized. And on top of that, you looked at potentially the numbers that CEO is presenting to investors or to the board. So now you have a bit more context of what they have to deal with. So essentially, this may be very mundane task is your biggest opportunity to, to be in front of, uh, the stakeholders. And sometimes, um, I actually, this was a story of a friend of mine. She started. She became this person who was always designing these exact presentations. And eventually she started kind of getting, not from the first one, but eventually started even more feedback of like, have you thought of changing the flow to this and kind of emphasizing that. And obviously, very busy people love when someone can help them to show their best side in front of very important stakeholders. So it worked out well for her. She got promoted and, uh, again, from a very, I would say, mundane tasks that a lot of creatives and designers might reject based on this kind of level of experience that doesn't match the seniority of the task.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that story. And it so resonates with me because when I was at the BBC, um, one of my heads of design in particular was really great at that. He always rejected, like when some, you know, more junior, and it was a relatively hierarchical organization. When a more junior leader asked him to do, you know, him and his team to do PowerPoints. He, he was really good about rejecting it, you know, making sure that we weren't um, that we weren't just being a service bureau. But as soon as the level of seniority was right, he would take it on himself. He built amazing relationships that way. He learned a ton about what was going on strategically. And he was also able to influence strategy, uh, because he was in these intimate conversations building a trusting relationship. And he could like put his two cents in. Not even just about like the flow of this, you know, which is a great example of how you build trust is being genuinely helpful but also in terms of actually, you know, challenging. And you know, he wasn't broadcasting. I'm now challenging. Yeah, but he was, he basically was able to put an idea in here or there, you know, so he was brilliant at it. I learned a lot from him. Even though he reported to me, you know how that goes. It's reverse mentoring.

Speaker A: I think we all learn from each other. And speaking of learning from each other, another theme that creative uh, community, but also I would say any professional community is discussing a lot right now is generation Alpha. Generation Z is coming into workforce. And uh, there are too many stereotypes about any generation. And we're not going to go into stereotypes. But in general it's always a challenge to work in multi generational environment. Every generation always complains about generation before them and generation after them. We all think we are the best who figured it all out and the next one definitely is clueless. Obviously that's not true, otherwise the earth wouldn't be here. But would love to hear your reflection on specifically what have you seen working into multi generational workforce. What we as design leaders and leaders in general can do better to make sure we create the culture where everyone can perform at their best level. Even though our expectations, our habits and mindsets potentially do differ depending on even maybe generation. But age in general, I think our motivations we're 20. Are very different from motivations when we are hitting 40 or 50 years old. So how would you think about multi generational workforce?

Speaker B: Okay, great, great question. So I need to start off right off the bat by telling a story. Uh, from my very first, the uh, very first time that I managed a uh, designer, another designer. So the, my very first moment of moving from individual contributor to actually managing someone else. And I didn't pick this person. This, this person was assigned to me. I'm going to call them Keith. Um, again names change to protect the innocent and Keith. So I was in my late twent and Keith was a good 15, 20 years older than me, and I was dreading managing him because I didn't know him. But I assumed that he was going to have real difficulties, you know, with me as a young person leading him and also as a woman. I, I admit that I assumed that he would have difficulties with both of those things. And I'm really, really, really happy to tell you that nothing could have been further from my actual experience with Keith. I mean, it turns out he. Well, for one thing, he'd trained in the military, so he had military experience. So he was really good at taking orders. In fact, of everyone I've worked with, uh, like I never got any lip, any challenge that, you know, anything at all. Um, and sometimes, and obviously I want, um, and wanted in my career as a leader, very collaborative relationships with my team. Sometimes you just need somebody to get something done for you. And Keith was brilliant at that. So I went into that with all these biases about Keith only to discover that they were completely unfounded. That, yes, he was kind of a traditional male in one sense, um, but he really wasn't in others. You know, he was able to. No, I shouldn't say traditional male. That's the wrong way of putting it. But I guess I had a set of assumptions. Assumptions that I was thinking traditional male in a particular way. And, um, even though that in and of itself is an unfair bias. But yeah, he just, he was great. He was fantastic to work with. So I say that because I think it's really, really important to weed out where there is bias in thinking about intergenerational, uh, multi generational teams, multi generational or intergenerational working relationships. As much as we read about it, as much as we hear about it in, you know, management content and that kind of thing, there's very little evidence from the, from academia that supports, that, supports the kind of generational differences that people think are there now. There are differences, of course, as you pointed out, in terms of, for example, caring responsibilities. Right. Or even in terms of. Oh, uh, I just had it on the tip of my head. Uh, there's an example right there. No, um, but, uh, like caring responsibilities or career expectations. So if you're earlier in your career, you have a different set of things that you're interested in than if you're later in your career. That doesn't necessarily go with age.

Speaker A: Age.

Speaker B: It often goes with age, but it doesn't always go with age. Somebody who is doing a complete career shift in the middle of their career, you know, in some ways early in their new career, they're going to be needing some of the things that a younger person early in their career would need. So I guess I would say that be really careful that you're not stereotyping based on broad generational. You know, this is my advice that I would give to anybody that it's. That the evidence isn't there to support it. The evidence may emerge, you know, when it's. It may be that academia, uh, you know, will get more rigorous in their, in the ways that they're talking, you know, that they're exploring it and researching it, but right now it's not there.

Speaker A: So heard the same actually, that there is more, um, evidence that it's probably to do with years of experience. As you said, certain career situation rather than necessarily our generations are very different. Obviously technology changes certain habits, but actually it's not as drastic as we think. Saying that there are some expectations from a younger generation that um, a lot of my peers, uh, and myself, I suppose we get surprised by and wonder, as with any generation, whether it is fair or unfair. An example would be when we got into workforce, the traditional wisdom, or maybe our grandparents would definitely say, you need to find the company you love, stay there for life, respect your boss, and then you'll be sorted for the rest of your career. Which we already knew is a, uh, bad advice. And obviously when we were judged that we change jobs every four years.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: That was like, oh my God, you don't know what you're doing. This is just you switching from one thing to another, jumping around. Now four years seems like a century. Staying in the job for four years again is seen as a, again. I don't know if it's like a good or a bad thing, but sometimes the new generation comes with essentially the new ways of working that work the same time. We as humans are not the most rational ones. We know we need to eat carrots and salads, but somehow we want sugar and donuts and we just need to balance what we want from what's actually good for us.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So have you reflected of what habits of maybe younger generation we should encourage and accept as the new norm versus the ones that maybe we should potentially help them to change and cultivate kind of a different ways of working.

Speaker B: So it's interesting. Ekaterina, Um, I may need to probe more on this question to make sure that I can answer it. But first I just want to say that what you described in that sort of expectation of what I'm going to call it a cultural and Economic expectation, uh, that was around in a previous time that isn't around anymore, which is that pick a good company, stay with it for life. Right. So I don't see that necessarily as ah, as something that a younger uh, generation is expecting like so that's what I want to tease out. What is it that you're seeing they expecting or what habits? But before you answer that question, I just want to say that there will be shifts in the, I'm going to call it psychological contract that people have with their organizations and those shifts. I mean certainly we have seen a big shift from let's say the 1950s to today in western culture for what people can expect in terms of longevity in a particular company and what companies can expect from people in terms of longevity in their company. So some of those are broader societal trends and not necessarily age related. So that brings me to the question that I want to probe, probe a bit more on what is the actual behavior or the actual habit or the actual skill or lack of skill or whatever that you're seeing that, that you are wondering and maybe this is two pointed of a question you can't answer. So please feel free to defer. But yeah, that you're wondering about that

Speaker A: is uh, such a great follow up question because I agree with you. I think that certain things that we see and attribute to maybe younger generation is just big societal shift. Like yes, the expectations from work changed and they change for every single generation, not just for younger crowd, but I suppose we usually see new behaviors from uh, the younger generation because they haven't seen how it's supposed to be done. So therefore they would follow their intuition in what makes sense right now in current economic situation, in current state of the world. And that kind of trickles down to all the other generations. I suppose the most common one is flexible working. Questionable. Again we'll dive into whether we should be fully remote, flexible, hybrid or fully in the office, never ending conversation. But in general the idea that we should be flexible, we should be open to being flexible, that wasn't an idea, let's say 10 years ago, yeah, due to technology and other factors. But in general the expectations wasn't there. Now with obviously Covid, but also younger generation in general expecting it, this expectation has opened up conversations for every single person and turns out yes, in certain situations, certain scenarios, it's so much better for people who have flexibility when you have family, when you have other things that it allows you actually to be more productive, do more work and be happier with the work you're doing and the life you're living if you have that extra flexibility. But maybe we don't need to swing all the way and say we're just fully remote and we don't see each other again. There are pros and cons in each, but in general the younger generation opened the conversation that wasn't on the table yet because we were too stuck in our own ways of working. And obviously Covid just made it much faster and much uh, more obvious. So I suppose the what I am observing as a conversation that is happening, which I wonder, will it trickle down to all of us or it will stay within kind of this newer crowd is one term that I think was introduced is multi hyphenate careers which is about. Or slashers. I think there are different terms for that. Basically not going for one not just job but in general one profession. Um, you might be a musician and artist. Uh, usually I would say within creative field. But I, I'm seeing that now even more within much more radical fields like lawyers and invest in bankers who actually on the side are uh, musicians and artists and creators. So not picking one career but picking multiple things that you're doing. And it's not, not necessarily the one is side to another. You equally passionate about both of them or three of them and you spread your time across them. And therefore the jobs and teams and leaders should allow for those people to come into the workforce because they will never be five days a week, there will be two days a week, there will be one day a week and they will be equally as committed and productive and um, actually potentially career driven within your company. It's not a side gig for them while they're waiting for something better. It is a very much committed place where they spend just 30% of their time compared to 100% of their time. So I wonder if you've seen anything around that and whether as I said it is a broader trend that we all ah, will follow or is just a glitch and uh, it will die down and we will go back to one career.

Speaker B: Yeah, I certainly can't read the future on this one. I will just say my only evidence is anecdotal and I have zero clients currently who are experiencing this. So you know, either in, in terms of themselves or, or the people who, who they lead. So I mean that isn't to say that flexible working isn't a real thing, you know, a real present and I think important because it's for me it feels, I mean now I'm getting into my own personal Beliefs. But it feels like a really, uh, a prerequisite for making sure that there is gender equality in the workforce. So flexible working. Yes. I've not come across the, you know, this. What, you're flashers yet? Not yet.

Speaker A: No flashers yet.

Speaker B: I mean, probably next week I will, now that you brought it up. But, but, you know.

Speaker A: Well, it is, it is constantly developing trend. But speaking of remote versus in person, that's another hot topic of the conversation that I think we go in circles throughout the past seven years whether we should all come to the office. There is a new wave of five days in office, at least in the uk, many companies again going for five days. And I see beauty in both. I think flexibility is great. I personally love being in the office and I love when other people in the office. Actually I just had a conversation with again, uh, a friend of mine who is currently looking for new roles. And for him it is a red flag when he sees a job post that says all sorts of flexibility, all sorts of remote. Because he says, and he's a Senior professional with 20 plus years of experience. So he says for him that means when he wants to come to the office, there will be no one there. And he wants to build relationships and have a culture and learn from others. So for him, he actually doesn't want to join a company that is too flexible and too encouraging people to be flexible. Have you had any conversations with leaders that come to you about what they are trying to do? Are they trying to bring everyone in? Either trying to bring, give everyone flexibility? What are you hearing?

Speaker B: Um, well, I'm hearing a bunch of different things, um, as are you. But, uh, there is one example that's very close to my heart because it's my husband. So he is an individual contributor. He's a staff designer and he used to rail in the current company he's working in. He used to, he, he went in railing against the, the remote working because he felt that there wasn't enough of a sense of we're a team, we're working together, we overhear each other's conversations, we can look over each other's shoulders. There's a sense of camaraderie and best work, you know, so those were the reasons why. But because everybody else was taking advantage of remote, he started working from home three days a week and he found that he really liked that flexibility. And so lo and behold, last week there was a management announcement that they are now at his level, going to require them to come in. I think it's, it's um, one extra day per two week period. It's not even that big of a deal, but like it was an adjustment for him. So I can't help but think about that example because he was sort of dyed in the wool against it and then realized some of the benefits of it, but still believes that there is a real place for teamwork. So there is so much variety and nuance in this conversation depending on, um, all sorts of things including personnel, personality, you know. So I find that I love being in a space where there are other, other people. I thrive off of the energy that other people bring. But I know that some people actually can do the work very well and be very productive without that. So there's the individual piece of it. There's also the pieces of, you know, whether you as a leader of a team, m need your team to be having that kind of, of collaborative relationship on an ongoing in person basis or whether you actually need a bunch of individual contributors who are just getting their tasks done and they don't actually need to, you know, that face to face collaboration. I think there's a whole other actually. Sorry. So I guess your original question was I was going to move into, um, multiple cultures, but I think your other question was about whether I'm, I'm seeing this, whether people are talking about this and yes, people are, are talking about this and they're, you know, know there. It's. It definitely also depends on whether you're thinking about managing teams for their outcomes rather than their output or whether you can, you know, whether people are doing what they need to do to do a good job. You know, all of those things. Whether the economic model can, you know, it's just so nuanced, this conversation. I think it's hard to think of it in terms of one size fits.

Speaker A: All right, 100% agree with you, Julia. And actually to add to this, uh, thought, obviously you teach in our executive program for design leaders where we help, uh, design leaders to get to C level. But another colleague of yours, the faculty member of the executive program, he runs the consultancy called Spacey Syntax and essentially they design spaces and offices. And the session he was actually doing during the program was about designing offices for different outcomes. And his point was exactly what you're saying. It's so nuanced. We say about work or remote, but we don't talk about what office actually we go into. Is the office set up, um, for the work that we need to do? It's one thing to make people come to the office, but as you Said, first of all, personalities, whether people, extroverted, introverted, but most importantly, the culture. So are you, I don't know, an innovation consultancy or a place where you need to kind of collaborate, experiment, prototype? And does your space allow that? Are you more of a focus, safety kind of concern type of place where you do need quiet time, you do need separators, you need your corners, you need to have private conversations like is or your work requires different types of spaces for different parts of your process and product. At the beginning stage, you need that type of space. At the middle, uh, time, you need to like a different type of space. And does your office work for that? Because as we know, open plan was not a very good plan. So definitely there is more to experiment with. How we design offices for this new environment that we want people to come in, including neurodiversity and how, again, neurodivergent leaders, neurodivergent team thrive. Um, like from the noise cancellation to, again, just visual noise that can distract a lot of people from working. So I love that you brought the nuance. There is definitely more nuance to whether it is remote or in person. And we should hear why, uh, people want one or another. But also remember that I think people don't like change in general.

Speaker B: Yes, I think that's true. Do you know. Do you know the, um, the scarf model? Have you ever heard of the scarf model before?

Speaker A: Please tell us.

Speaker B: Okay, so, uh, this was developed by a, A doctor of neurology called Dr. David Rock. And it's S, C, A, R, F, scarf, like the thing that you wrap around your neck. And it basically is a model that talks about, uh, social drivers for humans that when they are threatened, we feel the threat as keenly as if we were being physically threatened. Okay, so those five things are status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. And so when you said people don't like change, you can often find in people's reaction to change that at least one of those five things is being threatened. And when it is, we're responding to it as if we're under a physical threat, you know, uh, with the same degree of intensity. Not as we know that we're not going to be physically hurt by it, but nonetheless, the feelings are very strong. So, anyway, for what it's worth, it's a real tangent, Ekaterina. I just thought I'd bring it up because when it comes to change and, uh, being a leader of change, it's really handy to keep it in mind.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that you brought this, Kaufman. I Think it's, yeah, kind of understanding what's underneath the, the rejection and the initial reaction that people might have. It's always a good way to actually try to solve the situation.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Let's talk about multicultural teams. Another topic that, uh, we all face because we all work in global teams, whether we are physically in one location, I think we now have the best time for creativity, for that matter, because we can definitely access to, uh, talent across the world. And, uh, that's where the best ideas come from when all of us come together. But unfortunately, as we know to actually get the most out of multicultural people, we actually need to understand other cultures and figure out how we can all work together. Just bringing lots of different people together does not equal good work. We all need to figure out how we communicate, how do we align, what do we do? So I suppose what is your reflection or what have you seen around multicultural teams that. That design leaders might find helpful?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah. So you will know because it's one of the things that I do with you in the executive design leader program. That's one of the, One of the pieces that I, um, I do with your, with your lovely design leaders is about leading multicultural teams. I'm a massive fan, actually. I'm going to hold it up. I have it here. Is that I'll write a Katarina of the. The Culture Map by Erin Myers or Meyer. Oh, do you have it up there? It's yellow. It's on brand.

Speaker A: Yeah, it is very on brand. It might be in a different show, but yes, one of my favorite books as well.

Speaker B: It's so great. It is so great. So I would say if you were leading a multi, uh, multicultural team with people from different, like. Read that book. Read that book. Go. There's great tools on Erin Meyer's website that support the work. You can run workshops with your own team to have a very open conversation about. And really one of the main things I was about. I didn't finish that sentence. An open conversation about cultural differences and how they might be impacting the work that you're trying to do together. And then I was going to say, and really starting with yourself, right. Because the real thing about understanding different cultures is understanding that you are bringing a set of expectations that come from the cultures that you grew up in. And you're carrying that around like a filter that you're looking at everything in the world through or every other interaction with your colleagues through. And you're judging them based on your own, um, set of expectations. And how is that fair? Right. So yes, some people really object to this idea about learning about cultural differences because it's like, well, surely individual differences, you know, are way more important than, than cultural differences. They're both important. I'm just here to say they are both important because otherwise you, you know, you really may mistakenly judge people negatively is what it boils down to. So I, so I would say read this book. Um, I was going to give an example back to my guy who got rejected for promotion the first time around. It turns out that cultural differences played a role in him being able to get promoted the second time around. So this is, this is how it played out. So he is from India originally. In fact, he started working with his current company when he was still living in India and then the company moved him over to the uk and the culture is very much a UK culture in the company and in India, or rather I should say the culture in India is relative to the uk more hierarchical and also decisions are more likely to be top down relative to the uk. So when he was at the point where he was like, well, how am I going to do? You remember we were talking about, you know, how am I going to, uh, recruit more sponsors? You know, and then we talked about empathizing with that person and then, uh, proactively driving, like initiating and proactively driving a project that that person was going to benefit from. Now with his own cultural, his, his own set of cultural assumptions. He would never have proactively done that because that was not what you're supposed to do. It's uh, you wait until somebody further up the chain invites you to do such a thing. You let the decision be made, you know, top down rather than in an egalitarian way. So once he realized that he was able to see that he actually could flex his own behaviors in a way that might benefit him in a culture that was very much deter, in a corporate culture that was very much determined, or a company culture that was very much determined by the UK culture. So, um, so that's an, that's a individual example. I wanted to say something also about remote working in multicultural. So I think if that's all right. Do we have time? I know we're over time, so. Okay, so just to say that I think it's particularly especially communication. So there's this concept and I'm going to put it up again because I think somebody in the chat asked for the name of it. You can take a screenshot. There's. She has something like seven or eight. I, of course I can't remember the number right off the top of my head of these, of these facets of that you can use of these, yeah. Aspects of, of culture, of a country, culture, um, that you can think about. And one of them is communication. So on one end of the spectrum for communication are high context cultures and on the other are low context cultures. So an example of a high context culture is one in which, well, is Japan. It's the most high context culture I believe in the world. And what that means is, you, uh, know, Japan, due to its history, was cut off from the entire rest of the world for hundreds of years. There is a lot of shared cultural assumptions, so much so that some things don't even need to be stated, they are implied. It works its way into the grammar of Japanese, you know, it works its way into Japanese grammar. Even you can change a syllable and the meaning that is implied changes. So that's a culture that has so much context that it's quite different to the culture that I'm from, America for example, which I believe is the lowest, the lowest context culture. And that is again from its history, all these different people from all these different cultures coming together to try to work out what America meant and you know, would become, tried to work together, etc. So zero context or not zero conscious, but very little context. And so people had to be super explicit in order to understand each other. So you can imagine, take that really high degree of assumption and inference and you know, you can just imply something and it's understood to a, uh, you have to write everything down, you have to be crystal clear, you have to repeat the messages several times. It's really on you to make sure that you're clear to others. It's not on them. And think about that in a remote environment, right, where you're communicating by, you know, by zoom, by video conference, where you don't have face to face time. So you know, where you're doing a lot in writing for example, and typing and that kind of thing. So those from a low context culture, like myself, you know, we, we run the risk of over explaining in our writing and sounding to others, receiving it as being patronizing or condescend it.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: And for those from a higher context culture, they run the risk of not being seen because they are, they're reading the implications in everything and maybe not responding. And so there, there are some real issues that the cultural differences that come, that are heightened. Another thing is some cultures, and on one of her other spectra, one of Erin Meyer's other spectra, some cultures are very much about building trust through relationships. Through building relationships. Some cultures are very much about building trust through the task so getting the task done together. So imagine, you know, a team made up of people from both, uh, from both of those orientations, you know, those who are really wanting relationships in order to build trust. If let's say the boss is from a culture that really builds trust through tasks, getting tasks done together, that boss may not see the need to spend time, informal time building relationships in video conferences or a Slack channel or what have you. So anyway, two examples, I've taken too much time on that. I'll stop there.

Speaker A: I think these are great examples and I remember, I think part of that story about Japan was also that a typical thing to do for an American. And I would say in the UK it also exists after a meeting is done to summarize what we discussed in the meeting. So the next steps as we discussed will be this, this, this and that. I do it all the time because I always feel like something can be misunderstood, someone will forget something, we discuss something. Let's repeat what we've discussed which in Japanese culture as you said will be seen as a rude thing because, because you kind of implying that we all very stupid, that we didn't hear it the first time. So you need to repeat to us as kind of um, little kids. So again all of us have good intentions but sometimes can come across in a different way than we intend as well as people who communicate to us can come across not with the intention that they had in mind. So it's a good thing to have in mind and just be more open minded and uh, and have the communication

Speaker B: with your team about it. You know that's at the end of the day and that is one where being more explicit in a multicultural environment is recommended. Erin Meyer would recommend it as well.

Speaker A: I would love to finish with few questions that again have been submitted and I was personally curious about, about conflict. A topic that you cannot avoid in any good team and especially creative team. Part of, of innovation, part of ideation is always having different points of view and potentially stumbling upon conflict. But then there are other types of conflicts where it potentially is a very uh, difficult stakeholder or business leader you're dealing with and you feel like you're stuck, that you're banging your head against the wall and you really can't get through. What would you recommend someone? Are there any techniques, are there any frameworks to work with when potentially you feel like your boss is difficult or your stakeholder? You work with you don't get along, what do you do then?

Speaker B: Oh, that's such a good question. So I, um, could talk about this for hours. But, uh, let me actually start with an example from, uh, my own experience at the BBC. So I had a peer, uh, from a different department who I found exceptionally difficult to work with. He was very aggressive, I would say. And his boss had told him that he was my boss when actually he wasn't. So there was a lot of behavior that was very directive in a very unhelpful way. And I had a coach at the time. I benefited from coaching tremendously in dealing with this person. And at some point, my coach and I realized that if I just repeatedly stated what I needed from the situation and didn't let him cow me, didn't react to his aggression, that I can make some headway. So I've later discovered that this is called the broken record technique. So basically, yeah, just literally saying, what I need in this situation is X and then repeating it over and over again. I, I hear what you're saying, but what I need in this situation is X. Yes, yes, you've said that. You've said that. I've heard it. Yep, yep. What I need from the situation is X. You know, so that actually worked wonders. It helped me keep my cool. It helped me, you know, draw a line. I did have to do the prep work ahead of time to figure out where my line was and what I did need from a situation sometimes. But, um, it got me through some months of really, really hard going with this particular. This particular person. So. So that's an example from that standpoint. Back to your question.

Speaker C: Uh,

Speaker B: around team conflict, I think I can give you one tip. I have all sorts of tips, but it's going to take too long, so I'll just give you one so often you can try to identify there. There are typically four different types of conflict that come up in the workplace. So one is goal conflict, where you're not working on the same definition of what, what you're aiming toward. One is role conflict, where it's not clear who gets to decide or what role you're each playing. Process conflict is another one where they're, uh, another typical one. So that's where your ideas about how to get from where you are now to the goal differ. And then finally, personal conflict. And so these four are useful to think of as a frame because if you can identify whether it's its goal, role, or process, then you can address it as those before it becomes personal conflict, before it Festers and becomes personal conflict. So if you can say to the person that you're in conflict with, I feel like we've got a difference, a different understanding of what the goal is here. Let's try to clear it up. Or I feel like we both. We know what the goal is, but we have different ways of getting to the goal. I think this is. I think process is where we're. We're coming. You know, we're coming undone here. What can we do to sort it out together? So, yeah, that's one thing that I would say. And then I would also say, actually, there's another model I want to say. So this comes from Patrick Lencioni, and he talks about artificial harmony being on one end of a conflict spectrum for a team, and on the other end is obnoxious aggression. Right. But he says that artificial harmony is bad too. And what you want to do is you want to move across the spectrum to. So that you're right before flipping over to the other side that heads toward obnoxious aggression. So. Because that's where the goods are. So you do need conflict, especially in an innovation and creative space, and that it can be quite healthy as long as you stop short of personal insults. But, you know, if you're really passionate about the ideas, I call it, or he calls it productive ideological conflict.

Speaker A: All right, now I'll stop great models. And I am so happy that you mentioned the module about goal and process. And it's funny how we usually jump to personal as the first reason for conflict. I think it's very natural for humans to assume that everything that we disagree on must be coming from the personal perspective. It's just we as humans have very, very different ways of seeing the world. While most of the time it is the first three, actually it reminds me of, uh, it's not a model. It's actually a piece of advice that Michael Wolf, uh, the wonderful founder of Wolf Orleans, who is a design legend on his own, of his own, um, he taught me ages ago when we worked together that when clients does not like your design, you present it. Obviously, we work in low in. In a world of branding. So you present something to the client, and if the client doesn't like it, first you need to understand, do they not like a small detail? It's a color they just cannot articulate. They just really don't like red. And you present everything red, and it just turns them off and they can't see beyond the red. Like, that's it. Is it the small detail, is it, uh, the big idea, you misunderstood the brief. There was some communication at the beginning that somehow was misaligned. You presented something completely different than what they wanted in this situation. So you need to go back, I think, to your point of process and goal. It's like, what are we trying to do here? We've misunderstood each other. Each other. Let us go back to the drawing board and, and reconfigure it. And the third is, are they, and I'll rephrase, a bad person.

Speaker B: Did he use a more colorful phrase?

Speaker A: Definitely more colorful, but uh, whether it's even worth your time. So if you identify that this person is not worth arguing, going back and forth, and his advice was obviously usually identified that before you get into any projects, you don't get stuck in this situation. But if at that point you figure out, you know what, no matter what I change, no matter how much we go back and forth, this is not gonna work, then unfortunately that's time for both of you to go separate ways.

Speaker B: Yeah, right.

Speaker A: Very similar way. Like yes, there might be a personal conflict there, but potentially could be the first two and you need to separate which one it is as the. You said goal and process, whether it's a detail or the brief.

Speaker B: So. Yeah, yeah, brilliant. I love that. I love hearing that.

Speaker A: In your experience working at a broadcaster, what are your thoughts of centralizing, uh, design across an organization? For example, graphic design for broadcast in the same department as UX and UI for streaming products and apps. If you tried this, how did you approach changing mindsets to group design together as a whole? As may be more typical in a tech company new to organization and trying to raise designs profile within the broadcaster, basically decentralized or more design as a function of the company. What, what are your thoughts on that? How do you shift?

Speaker B: That's so interesting. So I mean my experience at the BBC, um, leading design teams, then ultimately leading the whole department. I had that experience while the organization was shifting models. So we started off with decentralized design teams because it's a broadcast organization. The decentralization was based on at the time they were called petals. There was a beautiful diagram where, you know, there was like a uh, in the shape of a flower and each of the petals was one of the content areas. So, so news would be a pedal and sport would be a pedal and uh, like uh, children's content would be a pedal, etc. And so there were design teams in each of those areas. And it was a nightmare to do anything that was sort of like across the whole. Which of course was the first job I had at the BBC to be leading the department. This, it uh, wasn't a department, it was more of a team at that point that was doing something stuff that was meant to go across the whole. At some point. In fact around the same time that I took over the leadership of the entire department, we centralized. So in a way it was more of a hybrid model though to be fair, because we still attach heads of design to the different. They were no longer called pedals but you know, same idea and, but we had teams that rotated through and in large part that was because we needed to do some things that were, that were really cross cutting. So we needed to do a better job of creating design patterns that were going to not reinvent the wheel for every iteration of the same video player, for example. So. And that structure helped us do it.

Speaker A: So I suppose the question is um, overall is how to raise a profile of a design as a department and a function in an organization that potentially is quite separated at the moment.

Speaker B: Oh I see, I see. In a media organization where it's quite separate. That's so interesting. Yeah, I mean this is one of these where I would love to have a longer conversation with the individual who asked that question so that I could do a back and forth of answering, you know, of asking questions and hearing.

Speaker A: Claire, would you like to step in and tell us more about your particular challenge so we can understand where it's coming from?

Speaker B: Hello.

Speaker C: Um, sorry, I was trying to find a meeting room here. I'm, I'm in the broadcaster as we speak. Hard to find. So yeah, it was basically a question around. I come from tech and I'm a new uh, new to the company or new to the organization only about a year and so there is a separation between graphic design and all of the other production design, all those other teams and then the UX ui. So everyone who works on the streaming apps, the new audio. Sorry the new sort of mobile apps as well. And in my previous experience it would be quite ess centralized function, uh, design. But here I noticed like it's exactly as you kind of mentioned, Julia Petals in a way that. And so the graphic design would be built that way. And I'm m. I would. My vision I guess is to bring everyone together but that's not uh, that's not typical here. And so I'm kind of looking to do that.

Speaker B: Good for you.

Speaker C: I have to convince people about different ways of working and I just wondered if you might have brought those two functions together to inside. I'm dealing with those conversations of should they be together or are they actually very different? Ux, UI and graphic, which I know the different disciplines, but yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: And this is where, um, so, so first off I just want to say good for you for the aspiration. I think that's fantastic and I. So many questions I would love to ask you. I won't, um, because we don't have time, but they're questions about the. Your uh, your particular situation in terms of who might you recruit for allies in this, who else would it benefit, how you can make a case for it, who you need to make that case to, etc. Etc. All of those questions, I would say it just from my own personal experience. My designers were visual designers as well. I had visual design as well as ux, uh, UI design. All in the same team, sometimes in the same person, although certain people had certain strengths toward one or the other. And so that's the way we organized it at the time. Um, we had it all there. That didn't necessarily mean that we were doing brand design however. So that was where we were more influencing brand design rather than doing it ourselves. But anyway, if you wanted to contact me offline, I'd be happy to have a 15 minute conversation with you about this to see if I could help in any way.

Speaker A: I love what you mentioned actually Julie, about finding the sponsors and who benefit benefits from any change in transformation. I think this is advice actually applicable to any situation within the company, but also externally. When again if you are an agency and you are pitching to any client, they always say who is your kind of main sponsor? Who will benefit the most from what you're trying to do and what would be the measurable impact for them? Um, what it is. They literally will make their bonus this year if they buy from you, if you do what you want. Or is it, um, they will be seen as this leader of this AI transformation. It's very popular right now to be seen as the person who knows AI. And I like your example of thinking uh, about that within the context of one company. Again, who will benefit it, uh, from this the most and kind of putting people together, um, as your strategy for any transformation. I think this is a great way to go. I feel like we running out of time unfortunately. But I have a few last questions for you Julia, uh, which you probably know. We ask all of our lovely guests who come on our podcast and the question to you is a bit of a philosophical question. If you could, could change one thing in the world, what would it be?

Speaker B: One thing in the world. Oh, my goodness, if I could change one thing in the world. I didn't know that that was a question that you ask all your, all of your lovely podcast, uh, interviewees. The first thing that I want to say is human caused climate change. So I'm very passionate about climate change. I do a lot of work to try to do my part to, to toward mitigation. And so I guess I would, if I could change one thing in the world, I would probably remove a ton of carbon from the atmosphere and keep us from. Yeah, the devastating effects that are likely coming as. Oh, you didn't want me to be dark, did you?

Speaker A: It's a great one. Sitting in a very hot, um, room today. I definitely can appreciate that we should take care of our planet and make sure that we have, have many, many thousands of years to enjoy what, uh, this planet is. So I, I love your answer. And our last question is, Julia, who should we bring next to our podcast? Who do you think is interesting to hear from? For our lovely design leaders, creative leaders who listen to our podcast, maybe who you personally admire or wish to hear from yourself. Do you have a person in mind who maybe add some different perspective or just, uh, an interesting person to have a conversation with?

Speaker B: I think you've done some work with Nicola Ryan before. She's fantastic, so she would be great. I think you may. Well, I'm sure you've done. I know of Ben Terrett, maybe you know of Matt Jones. So those are three people who.

Speaker A: Great selection, brilliant design leaders, and definitely we would love. Actually, I haven't had them on the podcast, so maybe that's the sign, uh, for us to invite them. But thank you so much, Julia, for joining us for this conversation and thanks everyone for joining and listening to our chat and asking your wonderful questions. Any last words, Julia? Anything else you want to leave people with, anywhere people should find you, or any last thoughts you want to pass

Speaker B: on so people can most reliably find me on LinkedIn. Um, but also I do have a website. But anyway, just, yeah, just LinkedIn. Find me on LinkedIn, Julia Whitney, and, uh, let's see. Any last thoughts? Not so much. Just, Just, uh, thank you so much, Ekaterina. This has been a delightful conversation. Thank you for inviting me to, to be here and, and enjoy this, this lovely time together.

Speaker A: Thank you so much for, for sharing your wisdom and for everyone who joined. Thank you for listening until the end. If anything sparked any interesting thoughts in your mind, please share them. We love knowing what parts of the conversation were the most interesting. So please share share your thoughts and tag Future London Academy so we know what more we should bring or what conversations are interesting for our community. And uh, if you're interested to learn more about Design Leaders Program, you know where to find us. Uh, check our website and understand how you can become a Chief Creative officen Chief Design or Officer and learn from wonderful faculty which Julie is part of. Thanks everyone again. Enjoy the rest of this lovely uh, day and evening. Whatever time it is for you when you're listening this and until next time, bye.