Business Leader and Bestselling Author Aliza Knox joins Wendy Appel and Mary Beth Sawicki of Trilogy Effect in this episode of the Being Human Is Good for Business podcast to discuss her new book Don’t Quit Your Day Job: The 6 Mindshifts You Need to Rise And Thrive At Work.
Aliza built and led Asia-Pacific (APAC) businesses for three of the world's top technology firms—Google, Twitter and Cloudflare. Named 2020 APAC IT Woman of The Year, she spent decades as a global finance and consulting executive and is now a non-executive board director, a senior advisor for BCG, and a regular columnist for Forbes.
Aliza Knox
In her new book, Aliza shares her experience in leading global businesses and stories about many of the people she’s mentored around the world, from recent college graduates to mid-career and senior business leaders.
“Often, people think there’s a tradeoff between their work and their life, and to be happy, they’re going to have to leave their job,” explains Aliza. “But that’s not always the case. There's a lot you can do to make your whole self happy and keep your career on track. Often it just takes a mindshift to gain a new perspective on your work and where it fits into your life.”
Listen here:
In this podcast you’ll learn:
How to find synergies between your life and your work.
How perseverance plus enthusiasm can equal stamina, a career superpower.
The importance of social capital and connection in a thriving career.
How to develop a positive relationship with your career.
Why you should embrace change by being flexible and persistent as you build your career.
Steps for keeping visible and connected at work, even when working from home.
Links to information and resources discussed in this show:
Don’t Quit Your Day Job: The 6 Mindshifts You Need to Rise and Thrive At Work
Trilogy Effect, surfacing the untapped potential in people and organizations
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Machine Generated Transcript
What follows is a machine generated transcript. It may contain errors and is not a substitue for listening to the podcast.
BEING HUMAN IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS EPISODE 36
[00:00:00] Sherrilynne: Hello. I'm Sherrilynne Starkie. Welcome to Being Human is Good For Business the podcast for business leaders who want to build high performance teams today, I'm joined by Mary Beth Sawicki and Wendy Appel from Trilogy Effect the leadership development experts. And together we are welcoming Aliza Knox who is held executive roles at the tech giant companies, Twitter, Google, and cloud fair.
These days, she's more focused on helping the next generation of leaders navigate business in our changing world. Her new book Don't Quit Your Day job is full of practical advice for people who want to thrive in their careers and at the same time, love their lives. Welcome to the show,
[00:00:38] Aliza: everyone. Thanks.
[00:00:42] Sherrilynne: So, let's, let's start right at the top about that book because, we loved the title of your book, especially since so many people are actually quitting their jobs these days for one reason or another. What ma motivated you to write
this book?
[00:00:56] Aliza: I spent a lot of time going out for coffee with people I'm not a certified coach or a counselor of any kind.
But I think because I'm older have worked for a long time, I'm a woman in tech woman in sales. People come to me for advice. And usually when they're at some sort of turning point in their careers or when they have to make a big decision or when they want to make a change. And there are two problems with this.
They always want to take me out for coffee, and I don't really like coffee. I drink very weak decaf lattes where I tell them to just wave the coffee over the milk. So, that's hard. And then the other thing, if you've been in tech is you learn that everything needs to scale. So going out for coffee, even if I use all 24 hours a day for that, which I'd rather not, is not scalable.
I can't get to that many people. And as I thought about the kinds of conversations I'm having, I thought there were a number of common themes. And that I might try at writing it down to give back a little, making the book available for other people to learn what I've learned. And basically, I have these six mind shifts, but there are maybe three dozen or more examples in it of people that I've known, or no, continue to know from all over the world ages 22 to 65 different backgrounds, different ethnicities.
So hopefully what it does is present some relatable examples for almost anybody who reads it about things that they can take away for their life and their career. And so
these coffee chats that you you've been asked out on a, does it start with, I'm thinking I'm, I'm thinking of quitting my job. Can I talk to you
off often?
It could be something else, but I think a lot of times people think that what they're unhappy about is their job. I listen to them and say, I, I'm not sure that this is your job, or it might not be the company it's your actual role.
And so, you start thinking about, why they want to move, so that don't quit. Your day job is of course, a title that the publishers loved in the middle of the great resignation, but it's probably not a great title for me because I quit my day job in the middle of COVID and wrote the book. So, if you say you need to, walk the walk that I'm not doing a, a good job of it, but I just often think the job itself or the parts of the job that people think they're unhappy about are not the issue.
So, I have some ideas for people to think about, what they're doing and how they're doing it. And also, because I think there's a lot you can do to in get things into your life that you care about that make your like whole person or whole self happy. And often people are well, I have to trade off between my job and this, and that's why I want to leave my job.
And I, and I don't think that's always the case. So, I try to work through why, but really the better title is six mind shifts to rise and thrive at work, but that just wasn't as punchy. So that's the subtitle. Okay. Well,
[00:03:51] Wendy: what you're saying, remind, makes me think of one of your points in the, in your book, which is around, maybe people have unrealistic expectations about what a job is there to provide for them
[00:04:04] Aliza: Think that sometimes people expect too much from their work, so there're two points there.
Passion may be being too high of a bar for our jobs. I think even I'm not old enough to have been around for the industrial revolution. And that was, I guess when people said, okay, well I'm going off the farms.
I'm going somewhere because I can do something in a factory and make money and feed my family. And then it progressed until I came into the workforce where I think we wanted jobs to be rewarding and fulfilling and to be able to learn from them, but maybe not be everything. Then there's been a lot of expectation that we work for a company that's doing good or has a purpose, or is mission driven.
And I think that's great if that's something you want and can find it. And then at some point it sort of became work, should fulfill all your passions and, and that's tough.
When you read literature about that, it always seem whether that's in, Cosmo or a deep, deep book, it always seems to say, don't put all your expectations on your spouse. You are never going to get everything you need from one other person and that's dangerous. And yet we sort of do that to our careers.
And I think we're in a relationship with our career. We have to monitor it. We have to give to it. It gives back. We talk about the career ladder, which is totally inanimate. I think our career's a little more than that. We are taught not to expect everything from one other human who's far more like flexible mobile interactive than a career.
And then somehow, we go, well, my career should be everything. I need to get everything from it. And I think it's too high. A bar. I think that you
[00:05:33] Wendy: know, I, I think probably what happens for people is we spend so much of our life energy on our career, working with colleagues in, and we go, is this where I want to spend my life energy?
. Is it meeting my needs? Is it meeting enough of my needs? I, I give so much to it. Am I getting back what I need to do I ever want to, look back someday and regret that I put so much time and energy into X. And so, my guess is that's probably where
[00:06:05] Aliza: the rub is. What is the right balance for that?
I agree with you, I think, and I think it would be disheartening to spend as much time as we spend at work and not be engaged. I write a monthly column for Forbes and I'm hoping, it's due in two days, so hopefully it'd be out my next one about the quiet quit. And everybody's talking about the quiet quit, and I think that's soul destroying.
Hey, I have a job. I want to do meets expectations. I'm happy with that. I want to do other things outside. I'm going to set some boundaries, which I think is really a good idea. And probably something we learned more in the pandemic than we had before.
And I'm going to get some stuff out of my job and have more time or more energy to do some other things. But I think the idea of saying I'm going to completely disengage and just almost have quit but put in the hours so that I get paid and can sustain the rest of my lifestyle. It sounds interesting.
And I know it's popular right now, but to me that sounds so depressing because it is still sort of seven or eight hours a day. And to spend that amount of time. Being pretty much checked out. I don't know. I at least want to have some interest in what I'm doing, even if it's not, my biggest passion.
So, I think the trick is to find some things you like with work and some you like outside and have some examples, in a way that helps each other. Because if you're doing stuff outside you, like, I think that gives you more energy and enthusiasm for work.
Absolutely. I'm so glad you
[00:07:32] Mary Beth: spoke to the quiet quitting, because it was going to be one of my questions for you. It just, I loved your book and the points that you were making and it just, it did feel like, quiet, quitting is just giving up a little bit and instead of engaging in ways that you can, as your, tagline is, six mind shifts to rise and thrive at work versus just checking out.
So, I'm glad you spoke to that. Thank
[00:07:57] Aliza: you. I think phoning it in whatever that, that expression is for that long. Maybe for a few months while you're immersed in something else, but to me, it seems too much of my personal time to be doing something that I really don't like that much.
If it's that bad, maybe you do go to quit your job. I think there are lots of things you can do in between. I'm sure you guys have had other people on the show. Talk about job crafting, where you feel stuck. There's nowhere to go. You're waiting for a promotion or you're waiting for move, or you haven't thought about those things, and you think, well, I'd really like to learn this.
And if you have good manager, you, you might be able to say, Hey, I'm I love the company I've looked outside. I, I there's nothing better. I really want to stay here, but I need something to keep me interested, engaged. That's one thing you could think about, lateral moves within the company from sales to marketing or engineering to sales, you could think about, geographic moves in many.
Companies. I think there are lots of ways you can keep your role exciting, even if you don't want to quit that you might think about before you just check out.
Yeah.
[00:09:00] Wendy: Well, as I understand it, it all started with something on TikTok. So, you have to be a little careful about all the assumptions we're making about what this is, or this isn't, it just sort of took off and has taken on a life of its own. It's been in the wall street journal in USA today and on and on and on and on, and it keeps morphing and evolving
[00:09:20] Sherrilynne: could we talk a little bit about vital voices? You you're donating all your profits from your book to this organization. Vital voices.
[00:09:28] Aliza: I really do want to see women in positions of leadership and power and vital voices is not an organization I've known for that long.
But what I like about it is it's really broad. they invest in women leaders who are taking on the world's greatest challenges from like gender-based violence to climate economic inequities.
And so, it's, instead of having women in business, it's women in policy making, and political leadership power. And I think that's quite important. One of the things that put me onto them recently, and that I like about them is that they have been reminding people not to forget about Afghanistan.
So, through a series of circumstances, I have mentored women at something called the Asian university for women for years, which is in Chita in Bangladesh. And it takes impoverished women from Asia and gives them a four-year college degree. And one of the women I mentored is Afghan. And she went back to Afghanistan after graduation, just after her father passed away of COVID, which was very sad and then Kaul fell.
And so, I've spent a lot of time. In the last year and a half, really, going deeply, particularly with her family and with a lot of the other students now in her case university, and a bunch of us, but primarily university helped get them out. And she spent several months on a us national guard base.
And she's now at brown university in Rhode Island, which is amazing. And she's going to, start a master's in public health, I think this week or next week. But there are so many crises, and a lot of the past ones get forgotten Rohingya, everything that's going on in Burma. It's almost been swept under the carpet at this point, we've lost the news cycle, then Afghanistan, then Ukraine.
And one of the things that I really liked about vital voices is because they try to take care of women everywhere. They relentlessly bring to the fore, the causes of women who are not being treated as they should be, even when those people have been lost to the news cycle.
And I think that's really important and that's why I wanted to support it. Love you. Yeah.
[00:11:44] Wendy: can I say that on camera? Yeah. Fantastic. I, and I've not heard of vital voices until you, so as soon as I get off this call, I'm going to be looking them up. I, it sounds amazing. I love that you're working with, with these, that you've support this kind of effort
You're about the same vintage as me and from what I could tell. And, so we, when we joined the workforce because I wasn't always a consultant. I was an industry in tech early, early days.
And it was really hard to make it and find women mentors who were taking advantage of what women bring to the table. So, it was really gotten ahead, be like a man and it, it was, women have come a long way and now there's a big regression going on at the same time
[00:12:30] Mary Beth: I just wanted to get back to your book for a second Alisa, I think it was the second chapter about not focusing too much on disappointments in your career and really focusing more on making sure that you celebrate your successes and don’t.
Don't ruminate on failures or disappointments too much. I thought that was a really good advice. Just speaking for myself and for the work that I've done with some clients where we can. Like even in a feedback session, we'll focus on that one thing. That's negative and ignore the nine things that were positive.
And I thought that your guidance there was very helpful and your equation around building stamina. So, I just wanted, sorry. I wanted to tie that back. Well, thanks. I just made me think of it.
[00:13:08] Aliza: That's interesting. There's a few things in there, I guess. I find people ruminate about a couple things.
One, a lot of younger people, I think spend far too much time worrying about their decisions, especially early in their career. A very common, word in tech right now, at least is one-way doors. There aren't that many one-way doors until maybe you're in your late thirties or forties where you get specialized.
And then it's hard to say, okay, I want to start over. I think if you're a specialist doctor or you're a special kind of engineer, then you've made that choice. But if you're in sales or marketing or, customer service or design, there's so many paths you can take and they worry a lot about, oh, I'm sure I take this job or this job, or what if I go here and just.
Take it and go, and you don't have to look back. And then, people often ask if you made bad decisions. So, I've had two jobs in my life that I really regretted taking in the sense that they weren't right for me. And the first one was after, I worked at a bank for five years. I got my MBA at night, so I could swim in this pool on New York.
And then somebody came and recruited me to Amex, and she was great and inspiring. And I was so excited to work for her. And she left pretty soon after I got there. And didn't, didn't take me with her. And I was left in a pretty untenable situation. And I was pretty miserable, and I don't know, I just didn't, I didn't have any advocates or supporters at work.
So, I decided that I needed to leave, but it made me sort of get off my tush and do what I'd been talking about doing, which was move over. I'd come to New York because when I graduated from college, everybody went to New York. So that's good. You should go to New York in your twenties and, experience the city.
That's a cool thing to do, but I had this deep desire to live overseas, and I'd spent six months in, college in England and sorry, Sherrilynne, it sounds like you lived there. It was really fun, but it was very cold and rainy and wet, so Australia also spoke English and had a lot of beaches. So, I got this job, and I went, and maybe if that maybe if I hadn't been so uncomfortable in that job, I wouldn't have, made the effort to, okay, now I'm really going to go.
And so, when you look at these things that you say, I often regret there's an upside of it. You did something or something happened that wouldn't have happened otherwise. So, most of the time. If nobody's gotten hurt, these regrets are just things that happen. And I try to tell people, I talk about stamina because it is a long haul.
I am not a runner, so I can't use the marathon example, but I just think we work for a long time. And a lot of these uncomfortable situations are blips and it's so much easier for somebody outside to see it as a blip then for you when you're in it, whether it's a day or a week or a year with a, a tough manager, you just think it's the end of the world.
And so, I, I think people need people outside to get, help them get that mindset. And then on the feedback, which again, Kim Scott has a lot of great stuff to say about Radical Candor and I recommend her book. It's how people often do the fixate on the, the person's told you nine great things, one that you can improve on.
And most of us go, oh it's those nine great things. That's good. I know. And then all we can think about is that one area, which is. Unhealthy, but you can make it work for you. If you just go, okay, what do I need to do improve and make it action steps. Instead of something you just ruminate about, make yourself miserable about, well, I love
[00:16:33] Wendy: two things about what you're saying.
One is the impact that our bosses have on us. You mean you're touching on it, but how critical who your manager is, how critical that is to your job success and your job. Happiness. And sometimes it gets underestimated. And the other thing I love is how you use that situation to make a big change and like a huge change in your life.
You took that dissatisfaction and happiness or whatever, however you want to frame it.
[00:17:03] Aliza: And it changed the course of
[00:17:05] Wendy: your career. So rather than feeling trapped and stuck, which I think was another point in your book you're not trapped. You always have choices where it can feel like you're trapped, but there's always a choice to be made. It'll have consequences,
[00:17:19] Aliza: of course., right. No, I, agree with you and I talked about, again, not my idea, but something I've read about a lot and, and really started using, creating a personal board of directors so that you get.
Some outside perspective because I think not everybody ends up with a mentor. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we don't sometimes for a little while and you need a sponsor, an advocate at work. Who's going to go, okay, Aliza should be promoted for this, this and this reason. And hopefully that's your boss, but if not, maybe somebody else in the company, but I think a mentor is somebody who really knows you and can guide you.
And again, putting all that on one person can be a lot of mm-hmm and this idea of having a board of directors, a, a smaller group of people, maybe four or five, who do what a corporate board does, which is ask insightful questions, push you, prod you, maybe give you some outside perspective.
I think it's very valuable. So. I always think that helps. And I, and I did talk in the book about a number of examples, but I think one of the great ones is Susie, Nick Nicoletti.
Who's somebody who worked, for me at Google, then at Twitter and who eventually became head of Twitter in Australia and New Zealand, and now runs in Israeli Startup, in Asia. But very early on, she didn't get a promotion. She wanted at Google, and she was really disappointed, and she couldn't believe it.
And all her friends around her were like, that's so unfair. You're so good. You you've, sold all this work. How, how is that possible? And so, she got the moral support she wanted, but she didn't get any insights. And she didn't have a mentor at Google at that time. And somebody outside who she knew who a much older guy was, but happened to know her through some things, said, I just wonder.
Your boss might have been concerned about the fact that when I talk to you, even though I know you, Susie are very generous and very nice and actually care about teams. You mostly talk about your clients, your work and what you've done with them. So, you're really excited about it. You're excited about the company.
You're excited about your work with the clients and now all that's terrific, but you almost never mention anybody else at Google. And maybe, maybe your boss is a bit worried that you're not going to be a team player. If she turns you into a manager, that it's going to be all about you. Even though I, this older guy outside, I know that not to be true about you.
And as it turns out, I have since connected with the person who was Susie's boss at the time, and that was pretty much the issue. Wow. And because she was able to get that outside perspective, that gave the point of view that helps you not ruminate about the bad things, or that helps you get some insights.
She changed her behavior a little bit and she did get the promotion the next time.
[00:20:01] Mary Beth: Wow. That's awesome. I think you made another really great point in that same chapter that was around. So, she got some feedback, but also mastering the art of giving feedback. And as well as there was a really great example of someone who, owned their own achievements, but also acknowledged everyone around them and how they contributed to this happening.
So, it's making sure that you get seen and recognized for what you're contributing, but also acknowledging everyone else who was involved. It was a really graceful, like beautiful example. I thought of how to do that because some people are really great at making sure that they get recognized.
Others of are not so much. And I thought this was a helpful example for people on how to do this in a really graceful way.
[00:20:46] Aliza: Well, I think it's thank you for the, I think that example was for a whole Desai, but there are lots of people I think who've learned to do that. And this idea that by that being a good manager really includes having your team be seen exactly, as opposed to taking their work and saying it was yours.
You're actually probably doing more for yourself by showing that you're generous, if you will, with your praise and also really helping them grow. And especially for people like me, who often live not where headquarters is. And I suppose it's become sort of everybody during the pandemic, but how do you help your team who doesn't run into anybody in the hallways, be seen and recognized?
Yeah.
So, I think that's something
[00:21:30] Sherrilynne: that we should maybe drill down on, on a little bit about the, this whole like networking and mentoring and working from home and the isolation. What, what advice do you have to, team leaders to try to keep people in the loop and, and, and keep supporting them, even though you don't, see them in the cube next to you anymore?
[00:21:51] Aliza: It's interesting because when the pandemic hit. There was so much written about this has never happened before. No one's ever done this. And of course, in our lifetime, there hasn't been a pandemic like that. But I feel like a lot of the people who run, let's say the people who run Samsung in France or who run Atlassian in north America, or.
Who run Google in Asia, they've been doing this their whole lives. Yes, there are people you see in the mini kitchen, but in terms of having communication with the mothership, if you want to call it that they don't have it. And they don't see anybody in the kitchen, and they have to, build those bridges all the time.
And so, they probably had more experience, I call it, taking the R out of remote so that remote becomes remote. And I think it's all this experience about how you keep employees feeling engaged when there's not that personal. Connection. So, my, my personal view and hope is that there's at least some back to the office, because I do think the human connection makes a difference.
I think it's possible to work without it, especially in some very specific jobs, but I I'm one of the believers. I know, there's lots of controversy about this, but there's, I'm one of the believers that sometime together helps get things done. And that one of the reasons we've been so efficient during the pandemic is that we all drew down on social capital to make it work.
But I've got two kids in their early twenties. Who've just entered the workforce and watching them try to cope with not having social capital in their firms and trying to make things work remotely. Really brings home to me the hardship of, of not knowing people and not having that chance to get to know an organization.
So, and I think it's particularly bad in. Careers that are, I would consider more apprenticeship careers. So, I think of partnership firms like accounting, legal, consulting, a friend of mine who runs a big law firm, says she feels like she's got two years lost for lawyers because a young attorney might see a partner in the hallway and say, Hey, can you just look at this document?
Did I, did I get this right? But they're probably not going to email or WhatsApp a senior partner in the firm and go, can I get on a zoom with you for 15 minutes to ask you this question that I'm afraid is really dumb. And so, they just don't get that, that learning. So, I think one of the things that senior people really need to do is think about the things they used to do on the spur of the moment.
See if they can recreate them, Hey Wendy, I've got this meeting. Do you want to come with me? Hey, Sherry Lynn, I know you're working on this doc, is there anything I can do to help? So that's one thing I. Overcommunicate, which we probably talk about in all firms anyway, remember, keep telling people, why are we doing this?
What are we doing? And then every manager, hopefully the KPIs roll down so that people understand how their job relates to the overall firm goal. If your job is customer service and you do X calls a day and you need to keep the NPS score up, we can see that that rolls up into how many customers we retain, which rolls up into our revenue, which rolls up into our stock price.
It's, it's not that hard, but just keeping, reminding people why their job is important. And I think Wendy, you already mentioned the role of manager, but when I look at the McKinsey and BCG studies on why people are leaving and the great resignation of course, more has come up now about firms that don't give you flexible, or flexibility to work from home and pay rises because of inflation.
But I still see among the top four reasons that. The other two are about managers or companies not recognizing or not investing in me.
And if you can do something to keep it fun or not be too serious, sometimes whether that's doing stuff back in the office, I'm going to an offsite next week for a company that, it's the first time in three years they've gotten together.
And I know people are looking forward to that before that. When I was working at CloudFlare, we actually, at one point during the pandemic did a, an online game, which was really fun to get to know people. I'm not sure we picked the right game, given that we're an internet security company. It was about how to Rob a bank, online, but you got to see people's quirky behaviors, the people who were detail oriented, the people who were competitive,
so just some things that also, so communicate, explain where the company's going, ex member people to explain where their, what their role is. And maybe if you can have some fun at it, that I think that's helps.
[00:26:29] Wendy: There are so many great points that you made Alisa.
The, I absolutely, I think flexibility doesn't mean never come to the office or never. Never meet. And I think it's like making meetings worthwhile too, Because. Meetings cost a lot of money and a lot of meetings are regurgitating or people talking at people, so it goes to the Mo the communicate, the interaction.
So, after the pandemic, we finally started facilitating team meetings in person again. And, and while we like to think that we were the great contributors to them being successful, it was actually, their number one thing was, it was so great to be together again, it was so great to see you in person again.
Oh, it was so great. I've never met you before what you were talking about with your sons and kids going into the workplace. So, like starting a new job and never, never meeting the people that you work with in person, is so critical and you don't know the culture then, So, you don't know like, what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviors or how do I navigate this company?
And, especially if you're new, especially if you're young, A young person just entering the workforce. So, your points about making that emotional connection relationship, social capital, I guess, is what you're calling it. And, oh, communicating, which was like, you said, always a problem leaders.
Think they say it once I've said it, I've communicated over and out, and
[00:27:51] Aliza: so even with, with the
[00:27:53] Wendy: remote, you have to do it, you have to give effort more at communication and connection. So, So many
[00:28:02] Aliza: important points that you made. I have a, a friend who, is in coms and she says, I think it's very LA term take a meeting, but she says, I don't take a meeting.
I make a friend. So even in the pandemic, even on zoom, she made the effort to use a little bit of time at the beginning and the end. To get to know people. And I, I think again, part of the efficiency during the pandemic was okay, seven o'clock zoom starts. So, we don't have a lot of time. We'll just get right into it.
Seven 30, got to go next. And that doesn't happen in a physical meeting because someone's late, somebody has hot chocolate. That smells really good. Somebody brought a snack to share somebody's shirt is messy.
There's always some chit chat that creates that kind of bonding. And I think during the pandemic we lost it. A lot of people did.
[00:28:51] Mary Beth: Well even for us, when we were first, working on, via zoom with teams, we would try to get, An hour and a half, we would try to get a lot built into that hour and a half.
And we were finding out we could actually get more done if we built in time for people to connect. So, to have that time, to really talk to each other, in little breakouts within the session at the beginning, exercises throughout where they just got to be human with each other and connect the feedback that we got when we started doing that was fabulous.
People are hungry for that.
[00:29:23] Aliza: So that's interesting because I think for some people it's counterintuitive, like if we got an hour and a half, let's use it, use it for content. It's absolutely
[00:29:31] Wendy: counterintuitive. So, but isn't that how it always was like got, have agenda packed. We got to account for, five minutes for this 10 minutes for this, and it just, it just got replicated on zoom and people loved Mary Beth said loved the opportunity to just connect and have more personal conversations.
And again, it's social capital. Those relationships are what make business go around.
[00:29:56] Aliza: I agree. Those are the people when you've had some sort of bonding or some conversation, when you need help with something, they're the ones who are going to help you first or are going to understand what you need.
And, I think I know lots of people write about this and I know there's more scientific work, but it's not completely easy to prove, but I genuinely believe that, empirically what I've seen over the years, particularly in large matrixed organizations, is that if you have that social capital, those people that you've made the effort to get to know when you need some help to close the sale with the customer or fix a problem or get some data, that's where you cross the organizational boundaries most easily is where you've actually got a face to a name or something.
That enables you to know that person and not just their last name dot first Name email
[00:30:49] Wendy: And also, if you make a mistake or you've done something, and they might have your back. Yep. Yep. Because they know you, they like you, they trust you. People underestimate the importance of investing in relationship.
[00:31:05] Aliza: It. Where can people buy your book? I think the best place, for an audience that may be in different parts of the world is to, is to say Amazon, I and there's, Kindle there's paperback
[00:31:20] Sherrilynne: thank you so much for being so generous to your time and, and your thoughts and your ideas.
I learned a lot from this conversation, and I know our listeners will too.
[00:31:28] Wendy: Yes. It's been great. Thank you so much
[00:31:30] Aliza: for, including me.
[00:31:32] Sherrilynne: I want to thank Eliza Knox along with Wendy apple and Mary Beswick for what's been a fascinating discussion filled with lots of practical advice and tips for leaders. At any stage of their career. Please look for Eliza's new book. Don't quit your day job on Amazon. I've put a link in the show notes.
And if you want to explore some of the issues, the concepts that we discussed on today's show, I've added lots of useful links in the show notes, too. So please make sure you never miss an episode by subscribing to this podcast.
And if you have a second, please drop us a rating or a review over on apple podcasts or wherever you get your shows so that others can find us too. And if you like the show, please recommend us to your friends and colleagues who want to become better, more effective leaders. I'm your host, Sherry Lynn Starkey. And remember.
Being human is good for business.