276: Happier at Work Live – Leadership and Workplace Culture with Isabel Berwick

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:01]:

Hello and welcome to this very special episode of the Happier at Work Podcast. This is my first ever live recording in London. Last year I did a live recording in Dublin. This year was my first ever time to do a live recording in London with none other than Isabel Berwick from the Financial Times. So I have been a long time fan of Isabel’s podcast Working It, a new fan of her new book Future Proof youf Career. And it was so fantastic to meet her in person and have a crowd of around 30 people watching us record the podcast live. Isabel brings a wealth of insight into the changing world of work, from leadership and culture to how we navigate careers in uncertain times. In this conversation, we dive into what it really takes to thrive at work today and the role leaders play in shaping cultures and where people can perform their best.

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:53]:

Settle in. Enjoy this live edition of the Happier at Work podcast with Isabel Barrick.

Isabel Berwick [00:00:58]:

Isabel, you’re so welcome to the Happier at Work Podcast. I’m so thrilled to have you here this evening and I suppose for the purposes of people who don’t know who you are, maybe a whistle stop tour on your background, your career. I know you’ve worked as an editor, as a journalist for so many years. It’s only kind of recently that you forayed into the management leadership side of things. And I’d love to know about what prompted that transition and what you’ve learned since you’ve done that.

Isabel Berwick [00:01:26]:

Yeah, I didn’t want to go into that area. I was asked to go and work for a year on the desk called the Work and Careers Desk at the ft. I was a journalist on the Opinion desk at the time, so I was editing copy from lots of famous people around the world and our famous copy columnists at the ft. So I went to help out on this desk because someone was struggling, needed support. I went as the deputy. Eventually I became the editor. I discovered I really liked it. So sometimes those career decisions that are not of our own making can make our careers as it were.

Isabel Berwick [00:02:03]:

And I’m always really mindful of that, that I was very proud or prideful as we might say in olden times. And I was dismissive of the area and I am sorry for that now because it has been such a joy to meet so many interesting people, to edit lots of copy, to learn so much. So I edited Work and Careers for a few years through the pandemic. We then decided to go ahead with a podcast called Working it and building a brand called Working it that kind of differs from the rest of the FT in That it’s quite outward facing. So it’s what we might call a reach brand. I did a podcast that was free to hear for three years. I write a newsletter that is for FT subscribers every Wednesday. So I also make videos now.

Isabel Berwick [00:02:44]:

So I’m in the middle of making season two of working it mostly about AI which we can come onto, but not all. Some of it’s about the human stuff and what I love about what I do. And I have been at The FT For 25 years, I’ve done a lot of different jobs and I’ve been a journalist for 30 odd years. What I love about what I do, it’s about people. You know, everything is about people really. And even though I work for a business newspaper, all the big business stories are all about people and the ways in which we self sabotage. Actually sometimes even the most senior leaders. We saw the Nestle CEO the other week getting sacked.

Isabel Berwick [00:03:20]:

So you know, everybody, you know the kind of misjudgments that people make even at the top, they never cease to surprise us. But people don’t change, do they?

Isabel Berwick [00:03:28]:

I mean what I heard about the Nestle thing, it’s a reflection of the culture and it was tolerated for so long. I can relate to what you’re saying in relation to the kind of work side of stuff. People assume that my background is in HR and it’s not. I never worked in hr, I never worked in that area. I just had some experiences at work that I didn’t quite enjoy and decided to start researching that kind of thing. My background has always been in research and data and yeah, I just discovered how much I liked it. The intersection of the people side of things, the data, the research, and helping other people to understand this and translate all of the fantastic stuff that is available into what managers can implement on a day to day basis. Isabel, we had a conversation a few weeks ago and my kind of burning question was if we about all of this stuff already and maybe I’ve kind of answered that for myself.

Isabel Berwick [00:04:19]:

If we know all of this amazing things that we could and should be doing in the workplace, what do you see as the big barriers for us doing it?

Isabel Berwick [00:04:28]:

I think we get in the way of ourselves and I think leaders, well, leaders particularly have to be very self aware and they have to be very self aware about what they’re bringing to work, mainly from our childhoods. And I think some of the most interesting conversations I have and I wrote about some of this in the book are with psychologists and behavioral, workplace behavioral specialists because really a lot of that stuff dates back to our very early childhood. Unless you’ve got a leader who’s done the work, as they say, those things are going to come up again and again and again. And even when people are self aware, when we are quick to anger, when we are aware of the things that trigger us, they’re not. They’re not going to stop. We’re not going to stop being angry. And that’s not to say anger is bad or these big emotions are bad, but I think there’s very little translation, you know, in our personal lives, in our romantic relationships and our friendships, we take great care with the people who surround us. And actually we can be quite careless at work.

Isabel Berwick [00:05:28]:

And why is that? Because we’re being paid. Because they’re not our family. Whatever Salesforce says about their own, you know. But I do think there’s. There’s something and really important to unpick there that is not done enough in workplaces. I don’t know if you’ve found that.

Isabel Berwick [00:05:45]:

Yeah, definitely. And that concept has come up on the podcast a couple of times, so I will, for anyone who’s listening, link back to those previous episodes. But it is this thing, the things that trigger us, and basically we’re all going around triggering each other without necessarily realizing it. And it is that stuff that comes from childhood. And if you haven’t done the work. And interestingly, Isabel, like when you’re saying we know what triggers us, it doesn’t stop it from triggering us just because we know about it. And I see some nods and head shakes in the audience, and I know from personal experience exactly that. And the dynamics, I think, that happen at work and in those relationships.

Isabel Berwick [00:06:20]:

I know you talk about the idea of the adult versus the adult and child kind of relationships, you know, in the workplace. And if you’re treating someone. Someone told me recently, a friend of mine who runs a business and has a huge number of staff, but she was saying her staff think of her like the mammy, you know, that they see her as this mother figure who needs to solve the problems and who needs to kind of step in. And I think it’s really important to be aware of those roles that we’re playing at work and of the things that are kind of coming up for us, even if it means that we need to cast our minds back to childhood.

Isabel Berwick [00:06:54]:

Yeah, I can’t pretend that I’m any better. I mean, I know what ticks me off and it’s needless sort of overbearing authority. So I find micromanagement absolutely unbearable. I’ve had a couple of micromanaging bosses and I behave like a bulgy teenager. Like, if I’m a. I had a couple of instances where I was deputy to a micromanaging boss and it was awful. And I didn’t really cover myself in glory either.

Isabel Berwick [00:07:15]:

So you reminded me of a situation where I was really angry because I did have this micromanaging boss. One of the reasons I set up happier work in the first place, it was that the spark that ignited when I was working in Sydney. And just now that you’re saying this, I’m like, ah, I’m twigging right this moment that I was that balchy teenager. I gave as good as I got. He was micromanaging me. He was checking my calendar to see what work I had on. But that’s not how I managed my work. And I was staying late and crying in one of the offices like, it was horrific.

Isabel Berwick [00:07:49]:

But I definitely gave as good as I got because I was like a petulant child, basically with him. So one of the big questions, and maybe this is related to what we’ve just talked about, is leadership and what shape, you know, what makes a really fantastic leader versus someone who’s just mediocre. And I know you talk about you’ve got the micromanagers, you’ve got the really, the leaders who are not great at leading and maybe they don’t want to be leaders. And then you have the mediocre ones, of which I’ve had a ton. I’ve had three terrible bosses. I’ve had a ton of mediocre bosses and I’ve had one that really sticks in my mind who was fantastic boss. What do you think makes the big difference?

Isabel Berwick [00:08:32]:

Oh, I want to hear about your fantastic boss. Oh, yeah. I think self awareness.

Isabel Berwick [00:08:35]:

Yes.

Isabel Berwick [00:08:36]:

But a willingness to listen in a way that is not just the. Oh, you know, I’m going to listen to. To my team properly listening and acting on it at this crazy moment. I think what makes a good leader is someone who can wade through the overwhelm in a quite basic way. Leaders have got this kind of extraordinary perfect storm of things coming at them. How do you survive? In fact, we’re making a film about this because the CEO turnover is higher than it’s ever been.

Isabel Berwick [00:09:06]:

Oh, wow.

Isabel Berwick [00:09:07]:

And it’s hard at the top and people are giving up in greater numbers. So I think a good leader needs really good support at the moment and they can’t do everything. So a recognition of the overwhelm of not being able to do Everything. And in fact, the best leadership advice I had was from a coach called Kate Lai, who does a lot of work with Goldman Sachs and she was in one of my previous films and she said leadership is nothing unless your strategy is implemented throughout your organization. So it’s all very well sitting at the top here saying let’s do X, Y and Z. If the managers in the middle are like not listening or it hasn’t been communicated or just a bit bloody minded and don’t fancy it, it’s not going to work. So leadership can be sort of up here and not actually affecting anything. So a good leadership is effective leadership.

Isabel Berwick [00:09:58]:

But that means you have to, it has to trickle down to the. As ever, it all comes back to the team leaders, doesn’t it?

Isabel Berwick [00:10:06]:

And they have to be able to interpret what that vision is translated for their team.

Isabel Berwick [00:10:10]:

Well, they shouldn’t have to translate it, they should actually, you know, it should be communicated in a clear way. But I mean, we can wish for many things, can’t we?

Isabel Berwick [00:10:19]:

So the good boss, to come back to that, her name was Caroline. It was when I was working in London. Her background was consulting and she came to this market research company that I worked in. And what made her different was she used a coaching approach which I had never had, ever. I didn’t know what coaching was, I didn’t have the language for it, but I was having an issue. We used to partner with another agency to work on a client together and she said, you know, I said, I’m having this problem with this lady in the other agency. There’s not much influence I could have over her because we’re not colleagues, direct colleagues. And actually what happened was Caroline started asking me some questions and I solved my own problem, which was twofold.

Isabel Berwick [00:11:05]:

It was like, I have solved my own problem, but also she has really helped me to solve it. And it wasn’t until years later that I realized she used coaching on me. And she had obviously been trained in some way in that it was a game changer. She was just so positive and so, so reassuring, like, I can do this, I have the capabilities.

Isabel Berwick [00:11:25]:

I think that’s a really interesting difference. It seems obvious, but I didn’t think about this till I came into this line of work. But the difference between management and leadership is quite profound and the leaders should be inspiring. We should want to follow them. Your manager, I’m hoping they don’t tell you what to do. They’re looking out for your career, they’re helping to develop you, but they don’t need to be inspiring. They can be just good at their job.

Isabel Berwick [00:11:47]:

Yeah. They’re just trying to get.

Isabel Berwick [00:11:49]:

I do think there’s a secret sauce with leadership and they do have to have an element.

Isabel Berwick [00:11:53]:

Do you think that anyone can be a leader?

Isabel Berwick [00:11:55]:

Oh, that’s a very good question. Probably. But I think they need a lot if with the right people. But I do think there are some people that have got something, whatever that is. You have to have a lot of drive to get to the top. What is ambition? The nature of ambition is a whole other. And it’s not a wholly positive thing, as we probably. You know.

Isabel Berwick [00:12:15]:

I know ambition’s not a wholly positive thing. It’s played this sort of weird role in my own career. But for a leader to have ambition, to get to the top, that’s their drive and that really helps them on their way. So if you’re not. If you actually just enjoy life, want to switch off, have boundaries, you don’t want to be a leader. It can be a terrible job in many ways.

Isabel Berwick [00:12:37]:

Yeah. There’s so much that’s coming up for me when you’re saying that and for me, ambition and, you know, rightly or wrongly. But I’m thinking someone who’s going to step on everyone else on the way up. Oh, okay.

Isabel Berwick [00:12:49]:

Negative.

Isabel Berwick [00:12:50]:

Yeah. The kind of. More the negative side of things. I’ve always been someone who’s been hugely ambitious and I’ve been quite annoyed, actually, when things haven’t really gone according to plan, when I haven’t got the promotion that I wanted to get and. Yeah. And not really understanding fully why it happened or why it didn’t happen. It is that idea of. I don’t see it as.

Isabel Berwick [00:13:10]:

Not necessarily something positive, but I can see that whole. Yeah. How can we make that. Can reframe it and say, like, they have that vision for where they see things are going to be and they’re bringing other people along the journey with them. I think that’s maybe the difference. Rather than trampling over people and thinking, I just want to get ahead, it’s like, no, I want to bring other people on this journey because I have this vision for where we want to go. Leadership and management. I think I never really understood.

Isabel Berwick [00:13:36]:

I always use those terms interchangeably. But now I’m starting to see more and more. The manager is kind of like this. It’s getting the tasks done and getting the stuff done and overseeing the people, whereas the leader is a little bit further removed and setting that clear vision and hopefully not having to translate it, but setting that vision and saying, this is where we’re going to end up and this is how we’re going to get there.

Isabel Berwick [00:14:02]:

In the current moment, we’re in this strange, bifurcated world. And I think there are two models of leadership emerging. We’ve got the Elon Musk type of model over here and we’ve got the, I mean, servant leadership at its most extreme, but the kind of collaborative, thoughtful, about the workforce, inclusive leader over here. And I wonder how that’s going to go. And everything seems to be up in the air at the moment. In a lot of ways, business is still quite progressive. And I can put that in inverted commas in that. A lot of the people who are leaders do truly believe that a workforce where everyone feels they belong, to use the current parlance, is a better workforce because it’s more representative of the client base.

Isabel Berwick [00:14:45]:

It’s going to get better work. You know, people do, you know, when you’re happier at work, you do better work. That is not controversial. How do I make those people happier? Whereas, you know, it’s X and Y leadership, isn’t it, in the old parlance? And if you’re not making those people happier, you’re essentially using the stick approach. And in a tight job market, the stick approach is probably going to get more prevalent because people haven’t got anywhere to go. Job huggers was an acronym I came across this week. They’re really miserable at work, but they’re not leaving. So they’re not going to be your most productive employees, are they?

Isabel Berwick [00:15:20]:

That’s the thing. Like, people leaving is not the worst thing. People stay and there’s completely disengaged and they’re not actually doing the work, but you’re still paying them every day. Then I think that’s worse than if someone actually actively leaves and then you can replace them with someone who’s productive, engaged, has a positive influence on people around, I think you’re not going to be too hard to guess the kind of leadership that I would prefer in terms of Elon Musk or someone who’s a little bit more on that servant side.

Isabel Berwick [00:15:47]:

Uncontroversial view. But yeah, I mean, it’s like. Yeah, but there are plenty of it. There are plenty of those kind of lead us around still.

Isabel Berwick [00:15:53]:

But I do wonder, is it just a personal preference? So are there other people who would really succeed under that type of leadership because it suits their personality or something like that?

Isabel Berwick [00:16:04]:

There are, yeah, for sure. If you think about how business was 50 years ago, I mean, actually, that kind of leadership relies Quite a lot on a homogenous workforce. So 50 years ago here in the city of London we can imagine what the world workforce look like and they probably all knew each other at school and actually you can have that kind of leadership there because everyone there’s where corporate culture is implicit. People all know the same rules and they follow them. It’s when you start to have more diverse workforces, different people coming in. Then we’ve had this extraordinary, you know, the upswing in the number of women in the workplace, people from non traditional backgrounds in professional jobs. But the backlash to that as we’re seeing now is intense and that was probably always going to happen and that kind of old fashioned leadership that’s coming back doesn’t surprise me. It’s depressing but it doesn’t surprise me.

Isabel Berwick [00:17:02]:

Yeah, yeah, that it’s kind of sweet, like the pendulum swinging the other way or something like that. It was bound to happen at some point.

Isabel Berwick [00:17:09]:

I think so, yeah.

Isabel Berwick [00:17:10]:

And it’s funny like again we can see the statistics that show that it’s really positive to have diverse workplaces to create an environment of belonging. What are these leaders not seeing?

Isabel Berwick [00:17:22]:

I think they think they know best and actually there’s. If you’re not particularly self aware and remember lots of leaders don’t think about. I’ve probably got 100 leadership and management books on my desk. I keep trying to give them away to readers but they keep on coming. But, but yet most leaders haven’t got time to read books and actually lots of them, they’re either really interested. So I sometimes talk to CEOs who are so ahead of the game on this stuff and they’re making an AI podcast to listen to on the way to work but you know, they download the PDF of something and listen to. But then way ahead of me on all of this trend stuff but many of them don’t have time. They do things the way they’ve always done.

Isabel Berwick [00:18:00]:

And it’s the same with the back to office debate. As one of my colleagues said recently, there’s an element of nostalgia there. You want things to be like they were when you were young, that you want to see the people in the office, you want people to behave how they used to behave. And that’s part of the Gen Z situation that a lot of older managers and leaders are quite uncomfortable with. The 10, I wouldn’t even describe it as tension. The difference that Gen Z are bringing into the workplace and the openness with which they for example talk about mental health. You know, it’s a Massive culture shift in our society and then overlay geopolitical instability. What’s coming in from America, the stuff that’s happening here with Nigel Farage and the rise of the right.

Isabel Berwick [00:18:47]:

We’re in a very weird time. And for some people, for some leaders and for some workers, the idea of a strong leader, a very appealing one. Yeah, I wouldn’t dismiss it. It’s not what I would want, but I wouldn’t dismiss it at this moment.

Isabel Berwick [00:19:02]:

Yeah. That it is necessary in certain circumstances or something like that. And it’s interesting what you were saying about leaders and not reading books. I don’t. I’m trying to think. Did I. I’m pretty sure I was big into reading anything I could get my hands on when I was still at corporate. But a friend of mine recently change jobs and she was like, I never knew about your podcast.

Isabel Berwick [00:19:23]:

I never listened to all of this stuff. I didn’t know there’s this whole other world out there where I can get access to information that I need to do my job better, essentially. So, yeah, I think there’s so many people who just are not aware that this stuff actually exists. And maybe it’s about getting more of that into their.

Isabel Berwick [00:19:41]:

I mean, in big. In big corporates, you’ve got amazing L and D departments doing great stuff, but ultimately you have to opt into that. It’s possible not to in many cases. So I think taking the opportunities that are given to us is on us, actually. It’s important.

Isabel Berwick [00:19:57]:

That’s another thing I talk a lot about is, you know, companies have this amazing software that they use to help people to progress their careers. But then actually it’s up to us as individuals to take responsibility for that and to actively manage our own careers. Coming on to AI, I think the big topic from a lot of people, a lot of people have questions about this. I mean, where do we even start?

Isabel Berwick [00:20:20]:

We as individuals start with experimenting and I often say this being curious. It’s what I’m doing. So I’ve been right down a rabbit hole in the last couple of weeks trying to work out the difference between generative, AI, AGI and quantum. And I was getting ChatGPT to make me little cheat sheets. And it’s really interesting, but I mean, on a day to day level, I’m using it more and more. I mean, I’d be interesting to see how many people are using ChatGPT or your LLM of choice more now than six months ago. Yeah, yeah. See, okay.

Isabel Berwick [00:20:54]:

For the benefit of the audio audience, that’s a general Nod. So it’s coming in, isn’t it? But I think the issue. And there was some data the other day showing that rates of adoption have slowed, although somebody’s people are questioning the validity of that data. I think it’s coming in fairly piecemeal in a lot of organizations. Why is that? Because a lot of leaders are not quite sure what they’re doing. The rollout is not even. I mean, this is a transformational technology. Think about how the Internet came in.

Isabel Berwick [00:21:31]:

It came. Well, I’m old enough to remember it came in piecemeal and then all at once. And I sort of feel that’s what’s gonna happen. But we’re still in that. You know, when the roller coaster’s going up to the top. I think we’re hovering. I feel like we’re in that hovering moment before it just goes.

Isabel Berwick [00:21:49]:

It’s interesting. Yeah, I definitely use it way more than I did six months ago. And I’ve talked on the podcast before about the different kinds of things that I use AI for. Again, I can link to those episodes in the show notes and share with you afterwards specifically what those episodes are. But I’d love to know how do you use AI on a day to day in your work?

Isabel Berwick [00:22:08]:

So I use Google LM Notebook. So I will often take a huge. Somebody’s taken great care to do a massive research report. I’ll just chuck it in there and say, what are the five top takeaways of that? So that’s quite a good time saving the. I use it to transcribe all my interviews, which saves me hours a week. I mean, that’s my biggest win in terms of time. I use it all the time. I ask ChatGPT loads of questions.

Isabel Berwick [00:22:37]:

And I’ve already fallen into that trap of becoming too intimate with it. Or maybe not. You know, there’s that thing. Maybe we should be nice to it because one day we’ll need it to be nice to us. Yeah. So. And we have a walled LLM at the FT that’s OpenAI. And I found myself asking it lots of sort of.

Isabel Berwick [00:22:57]:

I’ve just got divorced, I’ve had lots of personal finance questions and then only afterwards do I go, oh, is that an appropriate thing to put into the FT LLM? It’s there now. So that’s how I use it. I use it every day now. And I think. And the other thing I use it for as a journalist, one of the big things that people always complain about actually is that why haven’t you mentioned this? Or why haven’t you mentioned that? And we could only mention the things that we knew about. So whether that was from our networks or from very good PR operatives or just from stuff that’s in the ether that had been in other papers. Now I can say to ChatGPT, find me this research about something, use these sources, but also find some more imaginative sources or different sources or foreign sources. And because I’m very good at spotting what rubbish sources are, for me that’s very helpful, but it’s not particularly discriminating about the sources.

Isabel Berwick [00:23:50]:

So I guess my worry for my kids, for example, is, you know, it’s throwing up lots of new stuff. But is it all?

Isabel Berwick [00:23:58]:

How reliable is it?

Isabel Berwick [00:23:59]:

How reliable is it? I feel like I’m my own reliability filter because I’ve been a journalist for over 30 years and I know, I.

Isabel Berwick [00:24:07]:

Think in terms of getting it right rolled out into organizations. Something I read recently, I was doing a podcast, it’s coming out, I think next week, all about people’s fears around AI, because I think a lot of people are a little bit afraid of it. But there was a couple of examples. There was one in Australia and one with Klarna bank where they got rid of a whole load of people in customer service roles because they were replacing them with AI and then had to backtrack because the customer scores went massively down. And it just shows the importance, I think, of the human element, or not to do things too quickly and not to try and get it rolled out when you don’t really know what it is that you’re doing. Any thoughts on how to kind of do it effectively from what you’re talking about, from what you’re learning?

Isabel Berwick [00:24:55]:

Well, I guess the thing I’m thinking about a lot at the moment is early career and graduate recruitment, which has really been the area where companies have taken a bet on AI, actually quite a lot of them, and they’re not. We’ve seen their graduate recruitment numbers are very down. What I would say is let’s try and think of it. And some people are reframing it as we need to sponsor people in their early careers. They may be a loss leader, but if we don’t have people in the first five years of their careers in those spots anymore, if the AI is doing all the work, we’re not building a workforce pipeline and so then we get to sort of middle management and you’ve got nobody coming up. I like to think there will be a reframe around job losses or AI rollout to allow for the human even when the AI can do it all to allow for the human to be part of it, even if that’s a loss leader for companies. And that’s going to be a hard thing for them to take, especially in a tough economic environment. So I’m not holding out that much hope, but I really hope that big business, you know, the traditional graduate recruiters, some of them are really thinking about that in that kind of apprenticeship, sponsorship way.

Isabel Berwick [00:26:06]:

You also need someone to tell the AI what to do, presumably as well. So who is it that’s telling it what to do? Unless it’s, you know, we’re not going to go down the rise of the machines where it’s going to come and take, take us all over. But you need someone to manage that process as well and understand and maybe have some checkpoints in place as well in relation to that.

Isabel Berwick [00:26:26]:

I mean, the way I like to think about it is we don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’ll probably mean that the org chart sort of goes up in the air and comes down in a different way with a mix of humans and probably agents. So you’ll probably be in a mixed team of humans and AI.

Isabel Berwick [00:26:41]:

Yeah.

Isabel Berwick [00:26:42]:

And the processes, the way that we describe our jobs is probably going to just be upended in ways that we can’t. It’s actually quite hard for us to process. And so the way someone explained it to me was perhaps we will be. We’ll be building sort of agile teams to do particular processes or tasks or jobs, but they could then dissolve and remake themselves. So essentially, almost like the humans are behaving in a very different way, in a much more flexible way than we have done in this kind of hierarchical org chart where we all know where we sit. It may be a lot more fluid in terms of hierarchy, which is interesting.

Isabel Berwick [00:27:19]:

It is. And I think to me that lends itself as well to what I’m seeing out there. And it’s the move towards specialization. I think over the years we’ve moved to general roles and we can do a little bit of everything. But actually, what if we could focus on our areas of strength and then we have other people who have their strengths and then we have AI to support us with the other stuff as well. Like that’s, I think, a potential, but equal to you, Isabelle. I cannot wrap my head around that. I really can’t get my head around what that might actually look like.

Isabel Berwick [00:27:50]:

I think as it evolves, we’ll start to understand more about it and it’s this huge turning point I think in the workplace at the moment.

Isabel Berwick [00:28:00]:

I think the one workplace. I mean, I’ve been doing the workplace for about six or seven years now and all that. You know, when the pandemic started, we were like, oh, my goodness, there’s never been a moment like this. And then now we’re in. Oh, my goodness, there’s never been a moment like this. But I think it has been. The workplace has changed more in the last seven years than in the previous 25, 30 years that I was in it. And probably some of you will remember, even the advent of the Internet did not change things as much as they’ve changed since the pandemic.

Isabel Berwick [00:28:28]:

HYBRID VOICE so what’s. It makes me think that there’s a lot more change to come.

Isabel Berwick [00:28:33]:

Yeah.

Isabel Berwick [00:28:33]:

And I. I really hope it can be positive. I don’t think it’s all going to be positive. I think a lot of jobs will be lost.

Isabel Berwick [00:28:40]:

Yeah.

Isabel Berwick [00:28:40]:

But how are we going to remake the workforce and also society?

Isabel Berwick [00:28:44]:

Yeah.

Isabel Berwick [00:28:45]:

It’s a massive opportunity for us to rethink. And I think the biggest problem, and this is probably what I should probably finish on because I’ve talked about too much, is that the education system is not fit for the. Yeah, we’re all nodding and how are we going to tackle that? And that’s a massive piece of work. That is a multi year, multi government approach and our kids are coming out with lots of GCSEs. But actually, what is it that we need? We need technical skills, but we don’t know quite what a lot of those are going to be. We need critical thinking and we need human skills. And I do worry that we’re not providing basis for an extraordinary world that we don’t understand yet. But how can we? The teachers don’t understand, parents don’t really understand.

Isabel Berwick [00:29:35]:

Probably the children are ahead of us.

Isabel Berwick [00:29:37]:

We know that and we certainly didn’t have that growing up, but I would see 100% the benefit of doing something, something like that for children who are coming through education at the moment. And it’s just going to be such a different world. And for me. So I left corporate life in 2018, so I’ve been gone for all of those changes that we’re talking about. But I would like to think that I’m having some sort of an influence from afar. Even though I’m not working in an office, I’m not working as part of a massive team anymore. Objective bystander, an objective bystander just watching what’s going on and trying to influence it. In a little bit way that I can.

Isabel Berwick [00:30:14]:

There is one question that I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, Isabelle, and that is, what does being happier at work mean to you?

Isabel Berwick [00:30:20]:

Being happier at work to me means always having someone to go for a coffee with. One of the great joys of corporate life, and I don’t think people talk about it enough, is friendship. Yeah, I have made some amazing friends over my career. I really despair of people who refuse to engage with their colleagues on that level. So being happier at work means someone to have a coffee with or a lunch with.

Isabel Berwick [00:30:46]:

I love that idea. And I’m trying to think. There’s probably only one or two places I’ve ever worked where I haven’t really wanted to engage with the people because I just didn’t feel like I belonged there. It wasn’t anything about them, probably, but I think that’s such a nice way to put it, like, who do I want to go for a coffee with? You know? And I. I’ve. I know Gallup has in their survey, their G12 survey, that I have a best friend at work. It’s so, so important. I see people nodding.

Isabel Berwick [00:31:13]:

Yeah, it’s so important, I think, to have friends where you work. So I think we’ll wrap it up there. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Aoife O’Brien [00:31:19]:

Itha, thank you so much for listening to this special live edition of the Happier at Work podcast. A huge thanks again to Isabel Barrick and to everyone who joined us in London live for making such a memorable evening. If you enjoy today’s episode, please take a moment to rate or review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really helps more people discover the show. And don’t forget, you can explore or be the first to hear about my new book, check out the link@happieratwork, ie book. It’s due to launch in March 2026.

Isabel Berwick [00:31:53]:

But you can be the first, first.

Aoife O’Brien [00:31:54]:

To hear about when it becomes available. Until next time, here’s to building workplaces where we can all thrive.