Bloom with Ruth Penfold-Brown

Jack Villiers is a student of the school of life, a truly deep thinker and an intuitive creator, I’ve been excited to watch his transition from People and Talent roles to Founder of his own businesses, notably Lead, a leadership development course that you should absolutely check out.  I’ve enjoyed knowing Jack in snippets over the years and I was so excited to noodle around his brain on topics like:  🥞 The fact that for some of us, our gift is not always obvious in the beginning, and that can lead us into thinking that we don’t have one  🦚 The switch between defining yourself through achievements, to a more intuitive way of being 🥞 The excitement around a world where more folks get to show as their fully integrated self 🦚 How everyone has a zone of genius, and if we feel like we are in the wrong place and always swimming against the tide, maybe we are I loved getting to speak with Jack on these topics and I hope you will too!

David Reay and I first connected when we were both music nerds, with him at Sony and me at Shazam. Right away I was pulled in with his genuine warmth and made it my mission to stay in touch with him.  He remains in the People space, and together we covered big topics around the path to self actualisation and how we might get there sooner. We also spoke of:  🥞 The craziness of the hierarchies we operate in and how we can navigate them better 🦚 Why it should be normal for us to find joy in work  🥞 The importance of understanding the stories we are telling ourselves  🦚 How self talk is our mortal enemy  I loved David’s total honesty in this conversation, and hearing where he is right now is something that I am sure you will find supportive too! 

Catalina Schveninger is the definition of sisterhood. We met at an event where she saw me speaking and she put me forward for a big job on the back of it. I am just one of the many people she has done that for and I love that about her.  She’s been a people leader for many years, and has a pragmatic approach to building companies and building our self awareness as humans also. Join us as we dance through topics like:  🥞 How some careers are a messy journey of explorations 🦚 How relationships with others can be a big career catalyst and how we start to build our network  🥞 How we arrive as a true leader when we are interestED rather than being interestING  🦚 How powerful it is to hire for potential vs hiring for qualifications I came away buzzing from our conversation, and I am sure that you will feel the same. 

Ellie Rich-Poole is The Recruitment Coach. She coaches people at a critical moment of transition, helping them to move forward with positivity. She is a true expert on careers.  She has 25 years’ experience in HR, Talent and Head-hunting HR Leaders. She founded her business in 2016 to inspire and support others with their career development.  I loved our conversation as we danced back and forth and looked at: 🥞 The deep introspection needed from all of us to get closer to what we really want 🦚 The power of unlocking our strengths and beginning to develop in a way that helps them to flourish 🥞 Some of the blockers to us making the little changes can get in the way of much bigger more impactful change 🦚 Brilliant insight into exercises we can do to help us figure this all out I think you will come away with SO much value from this episode and will march immediately to Ellie’s site to grab all those freebies!

Mark Edwards is a culture change and leadership expert working with companies to affect change, he’s also a travel writer (brilliant book found here) and Ted talker (link can be found here).  I have known and loved Mark for many years, and I love the way he’s challenged himself to lean into his strengths and move in the direction of what lights him up. I also love that he has done what he can to encourage others in a similar direction. Learning my own strengths was a huge step in me starting to thrive and realise the value that I brought.  Join us as we cover:  🥞 Learning to lean into our strengths and see them for the magical gifts that they are  🦚 What happens to us when we don’t get to work in alignment with our strengths  🥞 The importance of having someone who believes in us and who sees the strengths that we can’t see 🦚 Embracing the opportunity to be multi faceted in life and in work I love Mark and I know you will too, and I dearly hope that you decide to explore your strengths after listening to us talk about why we think it matters! 

Elvin Turner came across my path when I was stuck on some culture work and I needed some support. Since then I have become a huge fan, and love the practicality with which he approaches how we evolve the future of work.  Elvin is a best-selling innovation culture author, leadership coach, TEDx speaker and associate professor at several business schools. We spoke of things like:  🥞 Figuring out who we need to be in the future to meet and exceed the goals that we are setting today 🦚 How we can invite ourselves and others into making steps towards changing the things we need to change 🥞 The human experience of work, how we relate to ourselves and others 🦚 Creativity and how we tap into it, individually and collectively  I adored our conversation and I am pretty sure you will too. 

Perry Timms is a true thought leader when it comes to the Future of Work, but also hands on when it comes to making the changes needed happen. A self confessed idealist and optimist, he is driven by his belief that we can all do better. He is an Author, but in his role of Founder of PTHR, he gets to test his ideas around how we get there. Let him inspire you as we cover: 🥞 The importance of finding ourselves in the work that we do  🦚 Learning to read the signals within ourselves to establish what we really want to do and be in this world  🥞 That we are in an age of collective intelligence, but we are yet to channel it and exploit it enough  🦚 Applying testing when it comes to career changes, follow your passion and letting it guide you  I came away full of ideas about how I might want to shift things in my own world, and I hope you will too.

Dannique Blake and I had an instant connection. She’s a fellow wild mind, and someone who is, like me, constantly looking for new ways to set herself free.  Vibe with us through our COVID fog (we both had it at the time haha) as she shares her wisdom on being a human at work, psychological safety in teams and the power of working with our values as well as: 🥞 Figuring out the steps we need to take with ourselves to tap into what we really want  🦚 How we can turn feedback into the gift it truly should be by guiding the way we get it from others  🥞 How we can build better relationships at work and move past taking things personally  🦚 Really embracing who we are and integrating that into our working lives  I came away energised with ideas about how I might step a little closer to the fullest expression of myself, and I hope you will too!

Gwen Cooper has become a thought partner of mine since our paths first crossed a couple of years back. I love the way she is breaking down how we keep walking the path to becoming the leaders for ourselves that we so often seek in others.  Former CIA agent and now Leadership Coach and team enabler, Gwen has over 25 years of global and cross-industry experience leadership development consulting.  Let your brain start to drink in her wisdom as we cover: 🥞 The value of looking at the more negative side of our values and where they have stopped serving us 🦚 Reimagining work to operate in a way where we get to be the fullest expression of ourselves 🥞 The steps of psychological safety that need to be in place before we can truly innovate, read more on that here 🦚 That’s it is okay to start from where we are, and become deliberate about our work environments moving forward I came away thinking about how I might start to look at the flip side of my values, and my hope is that you will come away buzzing with ideas also. Let me know what you think!

Leadership isn’t about what role you currently hold, leadership is an energy. By taking responsibility for our role in relationships,  we can lead them into becoming something that feels better for all of us.  Once I did that, I realised then how much power I truly held in my experience of others.  Stepping into our leadership energy happens when we step into ourselves a little more fully, when we shift from performing into being.  🦚 Being is when we are on the journey to love ourselves.  🦚 Being is when we start to appease less, and ask ourselves who we are seeking to serve in each moment.  🦚 Being is when we know how to connect with the stiller parts of ourselves and do so.  🦚 Being is when we start to celebrate our abilities.  🦚 Being is when we start to live in alignment with our values.  🦚 Being is when live our boundaries.  Being is when we take responsibility for our role in our lives and breath out all the things we are holding onto.  Dialling up our being-ness takes work, and a commitment to do so.  I talk about all of this and a little more in this bonus episode. Have you experienced your leadership energy yet? If you have managed to find different ways to move into being over performing, I'd love to hear from you. 

Katrina Collier is an effervescent human being who is a human in every sense, and that shines through in the work she does. She wrote  The Robot-Proof Recruiter, and runs workshops and gives talks on how we might humanise the hiring process.  Together we explore a little of that and a lot of how we construct environments that feel a little more human.  Let her warm the cockles of your soul as you hear us speak about:  🥞 Trust being at the heart of what it means to create work communities thrive 🦚 Relationships being at the heart of what I means to work together effectively, and how we use design thinking to get there 🥞 The magic of ideas when they come from the whole work community or team  🦚 Trying things, failing fast and move on I came away full of joy, thinking about how I might create more space to play and I hope you will too. Ps. For those who want a little explanation to design thinking, take a look here.

Claire Haidar is a human whose perspective on the future of work is truly thought leading. She leads WYNDR and Pattryn, both organisations focused on smartly crafting the future of work.  If we want to see whether we can reimagine the idea of work together, considering the smart approaches that Claire mentions will stand us in great stead. We had a few sound issues, but I hope that I have managed to bring it back enough for you to enjoy our conversation in full.  We spoke of things like:  🥞 The challenges of the changes in the world of work and the journey we need to go on to truly embrace them, starting with acceptance  🦚 That we can’t keep segregating life and work, we have to acknowledge that those things are connected  🥞 The importance of viewing time differently and doing real calculations of the things we really need to do with our time vs the time we waste  🦚 The responsibility we have as employers to support people to find a true balance with how they distribute their time  🥞 The importance of being intentional about the way we design remote first cultures, and the need to start the design of how we come together from scratch  I came away full of new thoughts emerging and ideas about some of the ways we build the way we work into something that feels better and I hope you will too.

Maylis Djikalou is a true thought leader in the human transformation space. We connected via our wild minds on a panel and have since become thought partners on life, love and the human condition.  In this episode Maylis shares a powerful perspective on how we might lead ourselves to show up better for others.  We spoke of things like:  🥞 The genuine challenge with authenticity and how we move towards it 🦚 How we become more intentional as humans as leaders in the way we show up for others 🥞 Learning how to sit in discomfort around others  🦚 Being present with each other and allowing people to truly bring themselves into each room they enter How might we lead ourselves to show up more fully for those around us this week? 

Kevin Goldsmith is a brilliant human who has led engineering teams with some phenomenal organisations. He’s someone who intentionally builds his teams to try to craft an environment where humans truly thrive and I love that about him.  He’s been reimagining how people show up together in teams for a while, and has a tonne of goodness to share with us all on some of the things he has been involved with.  We spoke of things like:  🥞 The magic of learning from what others are doing well, and calibrating that to your organisation, like Spotify did  🦚 The power of building teams with the mindset of collective autonomy 🥞 The importance of making other people a priority as a leader, having experienced how much harder it is for you to grow when you feel like you have a leader that doesn’t care 🦚 The investment you have to make to be truly straightforward with others  Let’s reimagine and reinvent the idea of work together, to create a space where we can all thrive and feel like we belong.

To kick off season two,  I was delighted to host Steve Cadigan. Steve is an Author (of the brilliant Workquake), Speaker and Advisor on People, Culture and the future of work as we know it. When I first connected with Steve just over a year ago, I was immediately struck by his passion around this topic.  If we want to see whether we can reimagine the idea of work together, he felt like a great person to start the conversation with.  We spoke of things like:  🥞 The rise of the desire for independence from human beings around the way we work 🦚 The false foundation of the relationship that we commit to as employees 🥞 The old models of work that we exist in that haven’t adopted to the higher velocity of the work we do today  🦚 How the way we view learning at school, the fallacy of the right and wrong answer, sets us up for broken thinking in later life Let’s see if it is possible to reimagine and reinvent the idea of work together, and create a space where we can all thrive and feel like we belong.

Welcome back to Pancakes and Peacocks 🥞🦚 2022 will see a little shift in focus for this podcast. The energy is still the same - to inspire people towards creating a life that feels truly joyful - but with the focus on reimagining the idea of work, to create the space for us all to thrive and belong. As a People and Talent person for over two decades, I realised this year that I have seen similar culture struggles, relationship issues and growing pains play out over and over again within otherwise incredible organisations. Kind hearted, well-meaning, brilliant people come together to build something with the best of intentions. Some of the team (often the leaders) feel like they are creating a great culture, whilst many of the team feel like they are overwhelmed and underwhelmed, all at once. I have been on both sides of that coin at one time also. Sure, there are magical pockets of people thriving here and there, but they are magical pockets. Across industries, across locations, I see soooooo many companies who aren’t able to create an environment where all their humans can really thrive. I think we can do better. I think we can build something different. Something where we all actually thrive and feel like we belong. Why does it matter so much? Creating the space to innovate is essential, for humans, for businesses and for our society as a whole. When people are thriving, that is when we do our best work. We become brilliant, bold and even more innovative and apply that energy to whatever we are doing. When we feel safe and like we belong, we are free to innovate without fear. When we feel the opposite, we spend all of our time in survival mode and working on the closest problem in our lives, rather than the ones that might be the most impactful.  With space we can learn how to thrive, and once we create space for ourselves, we can learn how to build it for others. I’ve decided to spend a little time unpacking the world of work on this pod, and reimagining how we might do this better .

Jeff Lester is a brilliant human living a life less ordinary. For the past six years he hasn’t spent time in one place for more than two months at a time. He also teaches yoga, and supports humans with courses that help them uncover the parts of themselves that have long since been forgotten.  We met over the airwaves, with him currently in Atlanta, Georgia and me in London:  🥞 The simplicity of creating an online community that can be sustained with something as a simple emoji  🦚 How physical movement can be a great foundation for really bringing us back into our bodies  🥞 How we overachieve to be admired by others, on the path to realising that we truly are enough just as we are 🦚 Grandiosity and judgement being the close cousin of low self esteem  And of course... joy ✨

Nelio Rodrigues is a teacher of many, and has become part of the fabric of the Notting Hill community through his teaching of Capoeira. At a time where I was seeking belonging, he and his students offered me a place in there community and embraced me. His ability to unlock and harness greatness in others is just one of the things that inspires me about him.  We met over the airwaves, though full disclosure, we are actually neighbours, and had an honest and empowering conversation about who we are and why we are. We spoke of things like: 🥞 Finding a balance between form and strength in movement  🦚 Creating the space in your life for self care and exploring what that really means for you 🥞 Using the changes of the past year to take the opportunity to hit the reset button  🦚 The power to be found in mentorship, inviting in a different perspective to unlock new ideas and inspiration  And of course... joy ✨

I count myself very fortunate to have met Cait O’Riordan on my career path (and life path). She has a big grown up job leading a lot of humans to do brilliant things as Chief Product and Information Officer at the FT, but does so with awe inspiring humanity and a GSOH.  We met over the airwaves, rather than our usual pre COVID breakfast catch up, and had a wonderful conversation that covered: 🥞 How important it is to curate groups of people who you can lean on as a leader, outside of your organisation  🦚 How to diagnose what we find most challenging, and make an action plan  🥞 The learning journey you go on as a leader to help inspire the right energy in others 🦚 How to rationalise with yourself when feeling imposter syndrome to help you believe you should be doing the thing you are doing And of course... joy ✨

David Kam is someone who I immediately became smitten with when I happened upon one of his yoga classes a few years ago. His commitment to his craft - currently one of inviting others to develop their holistic wellbeing via movement - is just one of the many things that inspires me about him. We formed a friendship and our conversations over the years have always been expansive and inspiring.  We met online, with both of us at other sides of London, and had a wonderful conversation that covered: 🥞 Movement, why we become fascinated it and the freedom we can experience in doing so 🦚 Understanding the privilege of having the space to create and follow your heart 🥞 Learning to saying goodbye to the things that you no longer have aliveness in 🦚 The importance of rituals, but the importance in having freedom in how you approach them And of course... joy ✨