5 Minutes Keynote - Vol 5
Explore the environmental impact of construction, leadership challenges, and the power of empathy in the workplace. Gain insights from real-life leadership lessons, motivation strategies, and support systems that drive success in the industry.
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5 Minutes Keynote - Vol 5: Leadership, Impact, and Empathy in Construction
Leadership in construction is more than just managing projects—it’s about navigating environmental challenges, fostering strong leadership, and building a workplace culture of support and empathy. In 5 Minutes Keynote - Vol 5, we explore key lessons that apply not only to construction but to leadership in any industry.
Here are the top takeaways from this session:
1. The Environmental Impact of Construction
Construction plays a crucial role in shaping our cities, but it comes with significant environmental consequences. From carbon emissions to material waste, the industry faces pressure to adopt more sustainable practices.
Key Insight:
• Innovations in eco-friendly materials and energy-efficient construction can minimize environmental harm while still meeting industry demands.
2. Challenges in Construction Leadership
Leadership in construction is unique due to the high-risk, high-pressure nature of the industry. Managing diverse teams, meeting deadlines, and ensuring safety regulations are followed can be overwhelming.
Key Insight:
• Effective construction leaders balance strategic thinking with hands-on problem-solving, ensuring projects run smoothly while fostering team collaboration.
3. Personal Stories and Lessons in Leadership
Great leaders often emerge from challenges. Personal experiences of setbacks, resilience, and mentorship highlight the importance of continuous learning and adaptability in leadership.
Key Insight:
• Strong leaders learn from failures, seek guidance from mentors, and remain open to new approaches in team management and project execution.
4. Motivation and Support Systems
Success isn’t achieved alone. Having the right motivation and a strong support system can determine how leaders navigate obstacles and inspire their teams.
Key Insight:
• Surrounding yourself with mentors, peers, and supporters fosters personal growth and professional success. A strong network provides the motivation needed to push forward during tough times.
5. Empathy and Support Chains in the Workplace
A workplace that prioritizes empathy creates stronger teams and higher productivity. In construction and beyond, understanding the challenges your team faces leads to better collaboration and problem-solving.
Key Insight:
• Leadership is not just about giving orders; it’s about listening, understanding, and supporting your team through challenges.
As the session wraps up, the focus shifts toward future plans and the ongoing evolution of leadership in construction. The conversation reinforces that success in leadership comes from a mix of technical expertise, emotional intelligence, and a commitment to sustainability.
Take Action
• Reflect on your leadership style—are you balancing strategy with empathy?
• Consider how your industry can adopt more sustainable and innovative solutions.
• Build a strong support system—success is rarely a solo effort.
Highlights:
00:00 Introduction and Speaker Background
00:06 The Environmental Impact of Construction
01:36 Challenges in Construction Leadership
06:04 Personal Stories and Lessons in Leadership
11:04 Motivation and Support Systems
24:28 Empathy and Support Chains in the Workplace
30:16 Closing Remarks and Future Plans
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hello everyone. My name is Oscar Smed. I'm a construction engineer and blah, blah, blah. You are not interested about that. Today I want to talk to you about the big need that we have on construction industry. I mean, we have the knowledge.
The engineers have been doing, uh, construction stuff since the ancient Rome. We know all the about the physical needs and everything like that, but same time we suck at production and why it matters. It matters because 37% of a CO2 emissions in the whole world is related to the buildings. 28% comes from the actual running buildings, 11%.
So one 10th comes from, uh, construction and materials. So while. And 4.5 percentage of the U-S-G-T-P is coming from construction as well. So it employs not maybe [00:01:00] billions, but hundred, millions people. And same times we sock it. So at it we soc with the leadership, we sock by taking people in account. It's far away from, uh, good, uh, good business for people in many places because we think people as, uh.
Tool to get the profit. Same time, if we forget that there's people 11 months per year doing the stuff with, uh, people who don't have the. Uh, talent yet to lead them. So the biggest problem in construction industry is not the knowledge, but the lack of, uh, educating the leadership. I personally, I went to engineering school.
I. They told me, yeah, 200 years ago. They're bit like this, 50 years ago. They're bit like this asbestos, uh, suit. Doesn't have a pocket. Very valuable [00:02:00] information when you go to the site. So once you get ready from the school, you have a degree, almost no experience, and suddenly you go there, you have 20 to 30.
Uh, your father read fellows who you should start leading without no management education. The only thing we learned in school about management was that how, how many extra hours someone needs to be paid based on their weekly hours. So I think that's maybe not global problem, but at least in Finland we have a big problem with it because what it makes that the good.
People with good knowledge might burn down on their work because they don't really know how to lead people, how to influence people, how to make them do their best, and how to. Thrive in their work. I mean, it's always the same. There's people who have been 20 years of doing and knowing what they do. And once again, there comes [00:03:00] a new 23 years old, uh, uh, hard hat, a white, white helmet guy telling them that this is how we should do.
Then they think, okay, we've seen this before. So after a couple of years, 90% of those guys have gone to the office or somewhere else, uh, run away from the site because they couldn't do it. And it's no one's fault, not, not one person, single person is uh, dependent on that. The problem is that somehow we think that if you have enough knowledge, you will become a good leader.
And I guess normal people know that's not the truth. On construction industry, I think people think it's so different from the laws of the universe that different laws affect there. So that's something that would be funny unless same time, 10%, 10 percentage of doing things better would probably help more [00:04:00] than taking all the costs away from the world.
That's something we should think of. Do we really want to just laugh for construction industry or should we inside the co industry and outside the industry, help each others to make things better? Because nowadays people don't be happy there. Their globe will not be happy there, the economy will not be happy there because we are doing kind of like, uh, almost like furnitures by hand.
Same times we are building 10 million projects. So we are wasting the money, we are wasting the energy, we are wasting the materials. We, we can maybe not save the globe. Maybe we humans are not smart enough for that. But I call you all to actions to make construction industry even five percentage better.
It'll pay much more than talking in the social media. This was not pointed to anyone. Thank you very much and call me if you want to talk more. Bye. [00:05:00] Okay. I, it wasn't planned. As you know today. I had five different things I could talk of, but I, I couldn't choose one. Well done. Thank you. I can do it next if you want.
Of course. Volunteers are always up. Normally it's always Jim who volunteering himself. Alright, it's Jim here now. No. Okay. Hello. Hi, Sabine. Hi. Let's see. Go for it again. Look, this, I don't wanna keep this in my hand. The Sabina has been to a keynote speaking training last weekend. What a bummer. So no expectations.
Yeah. Okay. Do we have a timer? We have, [00:06:00] okay.
I believe that if every person in the world would be who they are, the world would be a better place.
I tell you a little story about me when I was. Uh, at a first grade in school, I had a nice pair of shoes I thought, and a nice jacket. I thought, well, the other, other kids didn't thought, think that they, they were nice ones because they were not like the fashion at that time. So what they did, they tried to bully me.
Because of my funny shoes and jacket. Well, I was born that way, that I don't really give a fuck what other people think about me. [00:07:00] So I just looked at the other kids and were like, and then you don't like my shoes and my jacket, not my business. So what happened? They tried to bully me. Didn't go anywhere, so it stopped there.
So I went through school without bullying me. The other story about my childhood was that I got a wallboard, which said that Think before you talk so you don't talk what you think. Well. What an advice to give a young child like, don't be who you are, what the f? So I didn't listen to that advice. I just went on being who I am, talking out loud what I [00:08:00] thought, which actually caught me into very, um, very various, uh, interesting situation in my life.
So during their years in professional life, I, I sort of learned the hard way that maybe I shouldn't always talk out loud what I think. So I, I learned of a couple of things about how to treat people and maybe not treat them the way I want to be treated, but the way they want to be treated. But in the end, it doesn't mean that you are not yourself if you just think about how you talk to the people.
But any who? Um, I kept on living the way I did, learned a couple of, uh, useful things in my professional life, but still being me all the time because that was the only thing that I knew. [00:09:00] And, uh, that comes to the point where I believe that everybody in this world, if they were who they are. The world would be a better place because nobody shouldn't be acting or being feeling bad about anything that somebody says.
And if everybody could be who they are without anyone touching or thinking bad about you, everybody would be happier.
So yeah, that's why I think that work would be a better place if everybody get to be their selves, be you. You can't be anyone else because everyone else is already take. Thank you. Thank.
[00:10:00] Nice. A bit of a different version today. Nice.
Good one. So who is next?
Well, the volunteers rushing in. Exactly. And Andre, are you doing one today? Are you still not sure yet? Okay. You don't mind? You, you, you will do better. No worries. Just do it, man. I don't mind trying one. Yeah. I don't mind trying one. Yeah. Whoever. Too many things in my head, that's why. Okay. And Chuck Wa.
Chuck was reacting first. Then Chuck. Oh, I jump to the front line. Normally Jim, always the first, so Jim, Jim will be, I. Well, you know what? He's gonna finish with a bang. Yeah. [00:11:00] All right, you ready? Here we go. Um, I, I did a post today, uh, on social media and stuff on LinkedIn and both on Instagram about what motivates you.
I mean, what's, what's the, the element that keeps you on a positive, uh, track? What is it? Some people just think positive thoughts. Some people, uh, are. Driven, you know, on, on a certain goal. In my case, it's, it's, I'm motivated by the people around me. Um, their positivity and their support is what's important to me.
Um, and especially family, you know, close family and stuff like that. You need to have that support. And I remember when I was first starting in the movie business and stuff like that, my stepfather was probably my biggest asset. You know, he played professional football or semi-pro football. I. Um, back in Wisconsin and was actually supposed to play, he was a lineman and played with most of the guys from the Green Bay Packers.
He quit two years before that, went on to be a Super Bowl team, [00:12:00] and he should have two Super Bowl rings and missed out because his wife didn't want him to play. I. He gave up. So when I started talking about the movie business, he was the one that said, do not let anybody talk you out of it if that's what you want.
Do it. And his support really was the driving force. And my mom was supportive and, and a lot of my friends and stuff were supportive and some of the people I hung out with that helped me to succeed in what my goal was. And in, in that case, my goal was to be a successful stunt man, which became a successful stunt coordinator and so on.
And I think that's. To, to me that's the most important thing that's out there at the moment. Um, I've went through a slump here the last handful of years, mostly, sorry, starting with, uh, when Covid shut everything down, of course it shut the movie business down and everything else. Um, on top of everything else.
I was one of those guys that wasn't gonna get the vax. I refused it. I wasn't sure about it, and I just stood my ground. I got blackballed because of it, and all that support was [00:13:00] pulled out from underneath me and. I haven't had the same success in the last five years that I had. Prior to that, I was making six figures a year as a stunt coordinator up till 2019, and then it's been 60 grand or so since I'm just starting to recover, and now I'm finding that my family around me now, I don't have that same support.
I, I don't have that drive where everybody's like, you're doing great. Keep it up, blah, blah, blah. It's just not there. And so I'm having to deal with friends and people around me. And again, if, if you don't know the movie industry, it's, it's really finicky where if you're not working, you don't have a lot of friends, you know, everybody hears that you're working, oh, you're a possible employer.
So. I'll, I'll be friends with you. That started to turn around because of my activity on, uh, social media with my production company now, which is starting to gain some traction and people are thinking, Hey, Chuck's gonna be directing these movies and stuff like that. Here's some [00:14:00] more thing. And the last week I've had three people reach out to me.
It's like, Hey, who's coordinating the stunts for you? Who's doing this? These are people I haven't heard from in 30 years, and they all of a sudden wanna be friends. It, it's hard, hard to know where your support system is. You know those people that, that say they got you back, that, that, you know, wanna help you over the hurdles and stuff like that.
You lost him? Yep. Uh oh. Yep. Somebody, okay, now you're back. Correct. Okay, now you're back. Yeah. We lost you for a bit. Yep. He's back. Anyway, to, to end things up a little bit. I, I really think that having the right people around you, the right people to support you, the right key people to keep pushing you forward, to keep you motivated, to keep you as positive, to me, that's the most important thing you got.
So seek those people out. Seek, seek that [00:15:00] support out. Um, rising Stars has been my, my, my hope now because I'm around a bunch of people. That, that are positive, that wanna see us, each of us succeed, that wanna help. And that's been my, that's been my help. That's been my guiding light, so to say. And I, I'm, I'm happy to be here because it's in a time where I need probably the most.
So to all of you out there, thank you very much and, uh, you know, let's keep pushing forward. You know, I need your help and you're gonna need my help and, and let's do it.
Amen. Thanks. Awesome. Agree, Chuck. That's perfect. Perfect, sir. I, I hugely agree. I, I have, I mean, and was a pity that you guys are not all in Switzerland, but it is, it's just fascinating to see. I mean, Chuck, you have been here in the Netherlands as well, like online is great. But in real life is greater in person.
Yeah, it's in person. [00:16:00] Well, and I was telling Jim while you were away, I'm meeting with Frank, Sonos tomorrow we're gonna go to latest at nine, it's the nature park. And just hang out for a couple hours just to chat and, and catch up and stuff like that. So this has been, this has been such a, a, a, you know, groundbreaking situation for me that, that I'm around people that, that have the same interest and that wanna succeed, that wanna be more than just an ordinary guy.
So it is kind of cool. Yeah, in May, we are going to do rising Stars on stage in the Netherlands. Oh, wow. I'm, I'm still trying to figure out where and so on, but coming, I think the only thing I am booked for in May is the Sunday, the 25th. I'm at the place called the to Zone down in Harlem. It's, I'm, I'm just there for signing autographs and stuff like that as part of the Star Trek thing.
Yeah. Okay. So not, not the 25th. Yeah. Well that's a Sunday and you usually have it on Saturday, so it won't really affect it most likely. Yeah. But I would love to [00:17:00] be a part of it. I would, I would love to be there. You are definitely on, on the stage. I, I tell you. Love to do it.
Andre, Jim. Um, I'm good to go whenever. Jim's gonna tear it down.
There's no expectations. Yeah. Okay. Then Jim. Jim is starting. All right. Cool. All right.
Nobody is ever able to dictate your ceiling, your peak, your potential. When I was 18 years old. I had just graduated high school and I was feeling a little lost in my life. All of my friends had moved [00:18:00] to different cities, different parts of the country to attend college, and I stayed back at home. I was living with my parents going to a junior college.
It was a time in my life that was just mired in uncertainty. But the one on the one certainty I did have, the one thing I did know is how much I loved music, how much I loved to play the guitar man, but I didn't know how to, how to make that into a career. So during this time, I was working at the Milton Township Highway Department doing odd jobs around unincorporated parts of town.
Uh, patching potholes with asphalt, removing, cleaning out sewer drains to prevent flooding, that kind of thing. And during this time also, I started to get a lot of suggestions. People trying to push me in a, in a direction that involved [00:19:00] earning a music education degree. Music education degree involves you.
Learn a bit of a bunch of instruments so that you can later go on to teach the high school band. And I respect that. I appreciate that. That is not, I knew that wasn't me. I would be trying to stuff myself into a box that I did not fit into, but at the same time, I still didn't know how the hell I was gonna make a living as a guitar player.
So one day while I'm at work. I was staying behind at the work site and just washing all the fleet of trucks and the work site mechanic. A man named Kenny, good old Kenny, he came up to me. He said, oh man, Jim. Look at this. This truck, you got every bit of dirt and [00:20:00] grime and shit off this truck. Jim, I think you finally found your calling in life, my friend.
I laughed a little bit, but inside that comment ignited a significant fire inside of me. This guy is telling me that my peak is washing his truck. Look, I have nothing against washing trucks. I love manual labor, but this guy telling me that that was the highest potential in my life, fuck that man. That was the day.
That my conviction was born, it really was.
I ended up [00:21:00] figuring out how to make a living as a guitar player in a way that was fulfilling for me. And that's the key fulfilling for me because in business, in life, we can go about trying to. Uh, strike while the iron is hot. Chase the latest trend. And you know what that works for some people. Kudos to them.
But sometimes you have to reach deep down and forge your own iron and the flame, the the flame that involved in forging your own iron. That flame is born of your experiences, your grit, your hustle, your mistakes. Y your, you we heard from Sabine just a little bit ago. Nobody can ever be you and hell yeah.
Hell yeah. So you have to lean into that 'cause no one can replicate you. And [00:22:00] the people who, the people or the outside elements in the world who do try to dictate your potential. They will fade into irrelevancy while you continue to grow into your provi, into your potential. So God damnit, let that be your rallying cry.
People who've used to think you are undesirable, prove to them that you are undeniable. Thank you.
You're here. Well done. I was thinking to do something. I cannot know. It's, it's impossible to follow up after that.
Sorry. There was no guitar playing. Yeah, I was about to say, only the guitar playing was missing, like ac DC in the background. It was, it's, it's always hard to follow up after Jim. [00:23:00] It's always hard. He sets the goal really high. I mean, you both guys, you had pathos, you have emotion, you had, you had ett, guin, uh, everyone.
I, I found an old speech, but that's it. I I mean, it's, it's the children's schemes. Children's stuff. That's okay. Know what we all, we all learn from each other. This is, this is what's so cool about this. We all learn from each other. 100%. 100%. Uh, Andre, I always love hearing from you, man. So agreed. Uh, by all means, man, we would love it.
Appreciate you See the encouragement here. It's like great community. Yes, great community. Sorry, I cannot join every Monday. Uh, yeah. Okay. Uh, okay. I'll, I'll try to, um.[00:24:00]
Yeah, I see the, I, I worked on a speech in July, 2023, but I don't know if it was for this community or not, but I can work on that guess. I can somehow, um, somehow, uh, improve it. Okay. I started. Okay, now I see it. Okay. So, uh, my story is about, uh, empathy and the need for, uh, the need for an aligned support chain.
Um, it's, it's about, uh, some three, three lessons. Uh, I've learned from one of my managers, uh, in, uh, in orange. And, uh, he, he started being like one of my peers and he became my manager. And they really appreciate to have project on my managers the kind of role of a big [00:25:00] brother that I never had, like, like an uncle or like a teacher that is inspiring and can, uh, lead, lead you to, to, to learn this new things.
So. Long story short, I was working for this telecom company with most subsid subsidiaries in, uh, French speaking Africa, uh, Sub-Saharan Africa. And not only we were delivering, uh, support operations or maintenance, keeping up their IT and sometimes telecom services applications through, uh, centralized shared center.
Most of the complaints, uh, we treated had the local root cause, but escalations, prioritization, even crisis could reach C-level officials in a matter of minutes. In one particular case, when this happened on a critical service with a totally random occurrence following several days of crisis, we suspended our, uh, service level agreement.
Our contractual commitment, basically because we simply could not identify any root cause for that issue. [00:26:00] We only saw that monitoring was out of the roof following several weeks. We took it out of our reporting and validated with top management that it should not count for our generic yearly service level agreement, SLA, which also counted as a KPI for us getting bonuses and not getting penalized at contractual level.
However, we were still wasting resources on it. I mean, it was already proceduralized. Tickets were open, people were acting upon them, and associated. Uh, it was the bigger problem one day, this colleague of mine, so Alex, this is the part when Alex was, uh, rather appear than, uh, than my manager. Uh, so 1.5 months, let's say into the timeline of this issue, got to talking to one of his service desk counterparts on the local side.
They were talking about personal stuff too, so they became a bit of. Friends, I would say. So that is how he got to understand what the setup was locally, [00:27:00] the subsidiary externalized some of part of the support. So this guy was hired through another firm so he could easily be fired in case of need, usually leasing type of setup.
Only a bit more hardcore 'cause it's, you know, Africa. Also the support was actually not in a data center, but in a shelter. Something like, uh, the shelter, you know, on a construction site. 'cause we have Oscar here and I can imagine that more like a worker's cabin, I would say with the room for servers. And keep in mind ac, so air conditioning.
And then another one for the engineer, the other room of the shelter did not have air conditioning. They were. The two rooms were linked through a door anyway, when the guy came in the office, as the shifts were somehow random, like the occurrences of the incident, you can imagine he sometimes opened the door to the server's room to get some cool air and breathe a bit.
That is when all the incidents happen. So. [00:28:00] The solution was enforcement of rules, procedures, support chain update to align support to the local vendors, not only between large entities, but the solution could only be found through empathy and in an end big picture type of thinking. The solution came from one-to-one.
That's why. You need to cascade your support chains and contracts, taking into account each link that depends to one another in the benefit of the end user, but also thinking about the local particularities, the culture, each bit of the chain. So that's the, that's, that's basically the speech. I've, uh, two more lessons.
I dunno how much time. No, that's it for me. But that's, that's enough. Thanks. Thanks for sharing. Told you it was a light one. That was great. I'll keep the other two on the, for the next time I use them in the, [00:29:00] uh, I think one of the posts on LinkedIn. Yeah, I think the one with, I think the one with the what?
The survey? Yeah, it was the, uh, I attacked the guy. So it was no expectation versus less expectation. And there was never assume as there was like an overachieving project manager delivering a lot of projects, a lot of applications into the, into the operations, into the team. And I was like never enough.
Hungry. Hungry and working with everyone on everything. And I was like blocked in this mindset that sat at my desk and saw my post-it and say, dude, come on. I gotta lighten up a bit. Don't say never assume, assume less and no expectations. Expect less out of out of people. But that's again, a projection because that's how you expect of yourself.
That's when you're too hard on yourself. So, yeah, you see this [00:30:00] type of more lessons is, is the way Alex uh, behaved. He's some director in C Jacob somewhere. I don't know. But yeah, he gave me a lot of them.
Right. Oh, sweet. We are through already. BAM. 36. You're getting more efficient. Yeah, true, true. We will, we state some feedback sessions or we just practice only. It's mainly practice. Well, we can build in more feedback. Of course. Always. Yeah. I like that idea actually. We, we, we can do this next time, so we will do the next one in in two weeks.
And in two weeks we do like keynote and then feedback from everyone if the person wants to have feedback because feedback is a gift. Yeah, true, true. [00:31:00] Good idea. And did, did you have in, in your, um, in the, your training sessions, somewhere on the site, uh, guidelines on keynote or, I dunno, on public speaking, do you have that there are inside of the community calls classroom?
Yeah. We, two or three around keynote speaking. I think a second. You second You joined Rising Stars on stage in the Netherlands, and then that's the easiest because then it's in real life with real people. Better than a video. But what's the date so I can ask my wife somewhere we need, we still, maybe it's also early June.
I don't know yet. Oh, okay. No worries. No worries. We'll find out. I'll ask it for my 40th birthday this year. So it's coming in May. Perfect, [00:32:00] perfect. Join. Good. That's it. Thank you. I think I have nothing planned for next week. I still need to plan the whole month, but we'll come the next days. I, I do have a question.
It's not necessarily about the keynote speaking. I know you were posting, uh, like the interviews you did with myself and Jim, um, did they ever get posted? No, no, no, no. That yours is still coming. It's coming. Okay. Because I know Jim was the week before me, but I haven't seen his either. Jim's was out, he was posted.
Was it in, in the uh, in the group? Uh uh No, I think not in the community or Jim, I even don't know, but we can post it there as well. Yeah, it'd be nice to see it. Yeah. But yours is still coming. Sorry I'm late on this because I'm somehow always on stage somewhere. Good. Being busy is good. Yeah, no, I agree.
But it is, yeah. This weekend I literally didn't manage to do anything. [00:33:00] Yeah, I bet. But that's, yeah, I'm, I'm trying to have things back, back up this week, but yours is, yours is definitely the next, it's just a question when I have time to get it, get it done. I keep my eyes open. Yeah, it's coming. I keep, I keep my eyes open for Jim's 'cause I'd love to see what his, his interview it was.
We can, we can, I can share that in the group. I ha that's already done and shared. Okay, good. Yeah. Thank you very much everyone. See you next week or in between. Thank you everybody. Have a good one. Cheers. You, you too. Take care guys.
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Transcript:
Personal development masterclass. One of the topics that's dear to my heart, because of what I have seen over the last 15 years is that personal development is quite seldom in organizations. It's not really taken, uh, in a proper way, at least in my eyes. So that's why I'm really keen on sharing this today.
So we have two. main perspectives. One or two topics for today. One is personal development talk versus performance evaluation. And then we do a deep dive into how I'm doing personal development talks. And then we do questions in the end. Personal development. So we have one part, which is the personal development talk, and then we have the performance evaluation.
And a lot of organizations, focus on performance evaluation. And the difference between those two is that the performance evaluation, the main part they are focusing on, or the main source of that is the company. So the company is on the top. And from there, it goes into, the individuals and the different tasks that need to be done to accomplish what's happening in the company, what is required to do to be done in the company.
And the individual that is doing the task is the last point. And then inside of the performance evaluation, you're looking backward. So you look, how did this person perform in the past? The development talk is the opposite. So the most important part of the. Development talk is the future. Where does the person want to be in the future?
And it has nothing to do with the outcome of the company or where the company wants to be. The goal of this is, and why, why do this personal development talk? I believe that if we are developing people in organizations beyond what the organization needs, they will contribute more to the company. They will contribute better.
So the goal of what I'm doing with development talks is finding out what the people desire and going deeper into that. And we will have a look at that in the next couple of slides. And then look, what are the different tasks of the organizations that fit the person and what the person wants to be. And then you marry these two things.
And then it works as well from a performance evaluation perspective. So that's my perspective on development talk and performance evaluation. Let's go into personal development talk a couple of, I think it's almost two years ago or something. I've developed this in as, as a worksheet. So if anyone is interested in getting this worksheet as a PDF.
Happy to share that. So, the starting point of a development talk is really a setup of the atmosphere and the place. So you are going to do a development talk with another person. So you are the manager and the, the other person is like reporting to you and then you're meeting up. So what you need to make sure of is that you have, an appropriate place.
The best case is always doing this outside of the office environment in a. In a place where people feel well, the atmosphere is super important. The time of the day is important, not doing it on Friday afternoon, for example, when people want to go on the weekend, of course, you need to be aware of your relationship with the other person, depending on how deep your relationship is.
You of course have then a perspective on how deep you can go. And how much that is. And then what is important as well is that you put the note-taking responsibility to the person that is inside the room or is working with you. So me as a leader, I always give the note taking responsibility for the other person because then you see what they understand and what they get out of that.
And then I always do as well. A version in front of us so that people understand this. So printing out this worksheet as an example, if you do that in a physical space, then you print it out and then you go into the development talk. And the starting point of the development talk goes really wide.
Looking into what's the personal vision like. I always ask these as open questions without showing them the worksheet in the beginning. Who do you want to be? And that's very, very, very wide. Like, who do you want to be? What does it mean? Some people who have never had a conversation like this, struggle with this.
So they start with, yeah, I want to be a manager. I want to be something specific. So they go very, very, very specific and they don't really look into the future. So the first round of this, I just, Help them to find out who they want to be and they write down, they write down a manager. I want to be a good father.
I want to be whatever they come up with. And then I go to the next question and I show them the next question, not before. So why do you want to be that person? So then they're reflecting on the answers they have given and then they go back and refine who they want to go to be. And that's an interesting process because what.
You as the manager that is holding this development talk are doing, you're literally shutting up and just asking open questions to tell me more. How, how does that feel? What does that look like? What would that look like in the future? So you only ask open ended question when that gets the person talking and reflecting.
So if you're saying this, what does it mean? So, and then they're explaining, explaining, and they go in a loop between who am I going to be? And why do I want to be that person? So until they have clarity, and the first loop is always. The starting point where they don't know what's going to come, then who am I going to be?
They come up with high-level topics and then they go, Why do I want to be that person? Then they go back to Who am I going to be? And then they go deeper. And I always then give them a perspective. Okay, think about five years, 10 years from now, who do you want to be? And then they go more particular in all of these things.
And then we go, we don't close this, we keep it, we put it aside. And then we go to the next sheet, which is a personal development map. So I want them again to reflect on certain questions. And it doesn't matter in the order, I just take them clockwise right now. But it's really going and answering the specific questions.
What do I want to learn? So you're asking this, the person that is in front of you. So what do you want to learn to be that person? So linking it back to that person of the future. And then you're asking, what do you want to improve? And then they come up with things. So it's, it's like writing down the, all the different topics and then what do I want to leave behind?
And then they come back with topics that they want to leave behind. Another question is what excites you? Yeah. And then going deeper into this, who is important to them? And then what is important to them? And when you have done this circle, you go around it and they were deeper in this topic.
What quite often happens then if you ask them, so how, if we go back to the other one, is that still the same thing you want to be? Because they have now clarified what they want to be. and answer the question, they go back to this one and then clarify, no, no, no, I want to be this, I want to be this. What I always ask them, in this part is to paint a picture.
So when, when we have finished with this one, I go back to this one. And say, from a personal vision perspective, imagine a picture and describe the picture that you see on the wall. And then they describe to me who they want to be and who they are going to strive to be inside of a picture and explain everything that is around them.
I've had, for example, a person that told me where they are going to live, what, how it feels, um, in this picture, where the kids in this picture, where the wife or husband and, and going really into details and then linking this to. A job perspective as well, because in the end, we are at least this part is in a job environment.
So they are linking that to the job environment of who they're going to be working with as well. So these two are super powerful. And then you go into the next step, which is a goal perspective. So it starts with the staircase. So in the top right corner, we have what is the goal. And the starting point is really, um, defining that goal.
So if you want to be this person in five years, what is the goal for the next year for you to be very specific? And of course, you can do smart goal setting and all of that, but it's in the end, What does feel right for that person? What is the development goal they want to reach in one year from now?
And then they formulate that goal. And then you go to the bottom of this page where you look into where do you stand today on a scale from one to 10. So they're rating themselves on how close are they to that goal. If they're close, then they're at 10 or 9. If they're far away, then they're at 1. And what always happens is they're somewhere in between, obviously.
So when they have rated that, then you look into what are the things that get you closer to that goal, meaning moving your scale from 5 to 10. And that's what they are writing down above the stairs. So, above the stairs are the things that are getting them closer to their goal. And then they're defining this in bullet points and formulating that out.
And [you do that obviously all in a conversation. You ask the person who is doing the development talk, you are asking them questions to get them moving. You're asking them clarifying questions about the topics that are put, into the sheet. And then the next part is, what are the things that getting you further away from that goal?
So downstairs, if you think at it from a staircase perspective, and then they're writing these things down and then they have a clear picture of a goal staircase where they, they know they want, where they want to be linking that to the vision that's five years from now and the goal picture, and then they rate themselves.
And have then clear understanding of that are the things I need to do to get to my goal and that are the things I should not be doing. And then the last step of the development talk is getting specific. So now we zoom into one year and actionable goals that help them or tasks that get them towards the one-year perspective.
So what are the things they're going to do? When are they going to do this? What do they need to make happen to be able to do this? What are the things they need help with and how I'm, how they going to measure them? So it's a very, very simple setup where they write down literally the different steps that help them to get there.
And they're putting measurable goals towards the goal. And this is roughly. I would say one and a half hours, even if we go through this right now in a theoretical setting in, let's say 15 minutes in a real conversation, in a coaching style, where you ask the manager or coach the other person to find out what they are desiring and where they want to be.
It takes roughly one and a half hours if you do that well, sometimes it's faster depending on the relationship as well. The fascinating thing with this is it has zero to do with the company you work in and one hundred percent to do with who they want to be. And as well as zero to do with you as their manager, if you're their manager, like your perspective, your opinion on anything of that.
Um, just to give you a couple of examples, I've had people that told me that they want to be. building their own company in the next five years and they worked in the company and I was their manager they told me because they trusted me that they wanted to build their own company and we built a plan for how they were going to build their own company and I've had situations where people told me that they want to get married in the next five years and then we built a plan to get them towards marriage getting married and looked into how that does that work with the career perspective same with kids and all the other things so this is a development tool you That I use with everyone that is working with me over time because I believe that as further we as managers and organizations help people to develop as better it is.