Ep. 035 – Linnea Bywall - Creating a strong people foundation
Building a people function inside of a scale-up business is a tricky ask. Everything is being created in the moment. Very little stays consistent, and things change constantly.
In this episode you'll meet Linnea Bywall, Head of People at Alva Labs. We explore her journey from being employee number 14 to building out their people function, sharing the key foundations, mistakes along the way and moments of vulnerability.
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EP. 035 Transcription
So Linnea, welcome to the experienced designers.
[00:00:32] Linnea: Thank you.
[00:00:33] Steve: Absolute privilege to have you here. So happy to be here. I've heard lots of good things're not, I see lots of good things. I love your post on LinkedIn. I think you, thank you. You articulate yourself and your voice is it really comes through.
[00:00:45] Linnea: Thank you. That makes me super happy.
[00:00:47] Steve: So I just wanna ask. . The N C A A. Yeah. Ncaa. Ncaa. Yeah. I'm curious on this. Uhhuh . Tell me about it.
[00:00:57] Linnea: So it's the league where universities and the US compete in sports. And back in the days, it's now old news, but I used to run track, so I was a runner. I competed in the a hundred, 200 and 400 meters.
Wow. Yeah. It used to be pretty fast. Yeah. And when I had graduated from like high school, I went over to the us, spent two years in Texas competing for a double NCAA school and ran the the sprints for that school.
And that was as, as Linear. Exactly. Okay. That was your alter ego athletic. Exactly. Okay, amazing.
[00:01:34] Steve: If you look back on that time, What's the kind of inflection moments of that experience? Because I think sports is really interesting, like high performance sports athletes. There's, it's been written for decades on this stuff, particularly how it transcends into business and mindset and these kind of aspects.
What did you take from it now as you are sitting here today?
How is it playing out in your life even today?
[00:01:57] Linnea: No, I think that's a good question. I would say two things. One of the, like super concrete, no, actually not sports related, but when I was in in Texas, I had psychology as my major.
and I realized that it was the field of like industrial organizational psychology. That was where I wanted to grow up in. So I found my path in my career there. . But to answer your actual question I think it's this, cuz track is an individual sport. and it's all on you.
So your like ambition, your targets and your hard work is what will get you the results that you want. So I think that kind of lone wool of strategy, , I'm actually using a lot. Like I definitely prefer to work together with people. Yeah. But that like mindset. I can impact the outcome. And me alone can have an impact if in, in the performance is definitely something that I I take with me.
[00:02:56] Steve: Amazing. Because we see this I dunno if you've see it on Netflix. There's the obviously drive to survive with the Formula One teams and obviously super efficient, very much workers teams, but still the individual driver at the end of the day. But behind them is this incredible team and engineer capability. And then the tennis one recently, which I found really interesting how alone they are as an athlete on that tennis court and the level of psychology that goes on that, in those moments. And regardless of what coaches up in the stands, if they crumble, , you can actually see there's no way back.
It's like a real challenge to get them back on, on
track.
[00:03:34] Linnea: Yeah. Yeah. And in, in track you have one shot, right? . So in running especially, I did the sprints where it's super fast. Ideally it's super fast and you only have one chance and it's just a few seconds and you can't afford to make any mistakes because you can't bounce back.
, so it's really high stakes.
[00:03:51] Steve: Yeah. . Wow. No pressure. ,
[00:03:55] Linnea: no pressure at all. , that all comes together.
[00:03:57] Steve: Those micro Yeah. The micro input suddenly becomes, come to this one moment in time Yeah. That you then deliver on. Yeah. I'm gonna come back to moments in time, because moments in time to me is about intentionally designing moments of time as an experience.
Nice. So I'll come back on that one. Nice. Tell me about, or share just what does your day-to-day human experience look like?
[00:04:23] Linnea: In a professional context or life context?
[00:04:26] Steve: You a life human. Your I I like to look at it as a complete human experience just to give us some, right?
[00:04:33] Linnea: So a day in my life, human experience is I'm never alone.
Cuz I have two kids. So there's also then like a constant sound of, or wall of sound, around me, a lot of people or two people screaming mama. But other than that lovely, fantastic husband A house that we're renovating a fantastic job that I love. I still spend a lot of time like working out and that's my like calm place.
. So I think the human experience is a lot of interactions both at home with family, with friends, and then at work. When people. accidentally stumble on my calendar. They freak out because my job is technically to well interact with people to, to meet the people that are in our company or external stakeholders.
So I talk and listen a lot. . that's a good quality listening. I don't know if I'm great at it, so I just, I do it. I don't know. They succeed.
[00:05:31] Steve: Tell me how is. How has your work experience shifted over, say the last five years? What's the experience that you've gone through personally? In terms of both what's happened in the world, but also your own journey as well.
[00:05:43] Linnea: So five years ago I was a leadership consultant. And then for the last four years I've been head of people at Alva Labs. . And that journey alone has been enough change to last a lifetime. When I joined, we were 14 our was number 14. Now we're 75 people and I've. Built up the, people function from non-existing to what it is today.
So that like startup scale up journey has been like a massive change. . And then of course like add that to Covid with, we went remote with, we're in the recruitment industry. , or we are a candidate assessment platform. So we help our customers buy the solution to, to have using the recruitment processes.
And, COVID recruitment died. Everyone had a hiring freeze that was. , very dramatic couple of weeks. , before we realized that it's not all doom and gloom. And then that shifted into this like massive hiring boom where everyone wants to hire everything with a pulse. And then now it's this, I guess going back to some sort of like more normal states where.
Companies will grow, but not hypergrowth everywhere. , and more like intensive or intention in. and their hiring. Yeah. Which is I guess, a good place. Long rant here maybe. But a lot of changed and I think for me personally, I went from having no clue what HR is, to now pretending that I know still so much to learn, but I'm having a lot of fun to doing that.
Good.
[00:07:17] Steve: Good. I think interesting. I, yeah. Mirror back just also what I just heard there. Cause I definitely saw it myself and I've been in, I mean I've, I started in recruitment back then in the late nineties, so I've been through that various kind of, banking, financial meltdowns to, housing crisis, all sorts of stuff.
And I've never seen. Ever and actually even this current cycle we're in now, I've never seen it before, where we went from I think 2020 where it was this abundance of candidates into the market where employer brand and hiring processes were stress tested to the max. It really showed up some organizations, quite shoddy candidate experience and the way in which they engage people through to a very quick shift into a scarcity the following year. And then now we've got these kind of interesting narratives of increasing redundancies, but still people are hiring at probably at the same level, but in different area. And it's just this, it's. Fascinating to watch, to see this kind of, these different shifts that we've been got in such a short space of time as well.
[00:08:20] Linnea: Yeah. So yeah, it's never a dull moment in recruitment.
[00:08:23] Steve: Oh, no. I used to call, it's still call it the Rocky Rollercoaster Rider Recruitment. So it's it's a, it's one of those, it's there's a reason why I also have a lots of gray hair. So it's, I'm getting more and more, it's coming. Embrace it.
So look, just in terms of like your journey head of People, it's quite a responsibility. In an organization, it's an important role as some organizations value it more than others, should we say. How have you looked to what's been your journey around building up that function? And also, just to add a little twist into that as well, and this is just off, some of the challenges that I see in other organizations that are less in scale, at more established and maybe more legacy based is people functions.
The internal perception of HR or that they get a bad rap sometimes. But ultimately, how have you. , develop that internal perception as part of your work and part of that growth and approach of how you then have developed the area. , I'm really curious on that.
Ooh, me too. I'm curious to hear my own answer.
[00:09:24] Linnea: no. I think the basic answer is obviously, like I have built it up based on the needs of the organization. , we. , like the first thing that we needed to have in place was obviously like hiring and onboarding because we were growing. And then as that kind of, we had a decent version of that, then it's time to flesh out the next kind of part of the employee journey.
So more engagement development growth, all of that. And then now we have. Like decent version of most aspects. . So now it's more about like fine tuning. And I think I really like early on wanted to have a version rather than the version. Yes. And then like really iterate on it because I knew that things would change so much over time and there was like no way that I could spend enough time to get something.
Like really. perfect or good, and like something that I was super proud of out the door before I needed to tackle the next assignment. So it was more important for me to have something and then we can try and iterate. And I think that has actually been really helpful because then we had something to build from.
It wasn't perfect, we can always enter it and then it's no, I don't know. There's no pride in keeping so. Because I haven't poured my soul into that first draft. So I think that has actually helped, like to move on to your, the next part of the question like the perception internally has probably been that it is a evolving process, and I don't have all the answers, but rather the like employees and the candidates will have a lot of the answers.
So by establishing something, believing, these are like my guidelines. , and this is what I believe in. And then like really listen to the feedback and built off those. Insights has been something that I'm trying to do at least.
[00:11:15] Steve: Yeah. Where'd you start?
[00:11:17] Linnea: I don't know. I think now when I look back at it, it's easier to find the plan than I think, actually, than it was to have that plan moving forward, because then I think it was.
based on the need of the organization. But when I look back at it, I think I would summarize that there are like a few building blocks that I have tried to use or subconsciously use because they're, they matter to me. One aspect is I want the stuff that we do at to be like, scientifically based or evidence based.
And that comes into like how we hire, how we onboard, how we develop people. don't want it to be just HR fluff. If one can say that. And I think that has really, that, that really impacts the internal view of it. , it's not just me making stuff up. It rather this is best practice, this is how things should be done, and that's what we're striving for.
, so like evidence-based is one aspect that's interesting. I think goal setting. re being really clear with like expectations and goals is like for me, like a super powerful tool and one, something that we have established or I try to at least incorporate pretty early on. , so having clear, like ramping targets for the onboarding, having clear targets for all the roles so that everyone knew.
What was expected of them? Yeah. That has now translated into like our career framework and stuff like that. So evidence-based clear expectations, big fan of like positive reinforcement. , so just. , making sure that there's that feedback loop that we practice feedback, that we make sure to appreciate what people are doing.
It's really not that hard. I hate when I quote, or hate this quote for myself but it is a decent quote still. . But you know how you would train a dog when they do the right behavior, you give them a treat. Yeah. That's how you can bring up your kids when they hang the jacket on the hangar., you can highfive them. That's how like human behaviors work a reward system. Yeah. It is. Is, yeah. And so that's how I think about like when I train my, like the leaders that we have, how I want. Build out our culture and how to like, make the values that we have stick. It's about rewarding the right behaviors.
. And then the fourth aspect is like psychological safety. Big fan. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Big fan of making sure that we have the strongest teams and if we don't have psychological safety, we're never gonna be successful in what we do. So yeah, I think like looking back at it, it is those four aspects that's been important and you can at least now when I look back, I can see that that has influenced me a lot and hopefully will influence how i, I do things.
[00:14:07] Steve: And how is that how has that might matured since that kind of di when you started to land on those directions, as you're creating these kind of pillars inside the business, how have they evolved and quick question to add onto, I tend to ask two questions to keep you thinking. Any mistakes on any of those along the way that you've. Be open to sharing with something like, so many car crash
[00:14:28] Linnea: so many crashes. No, but I think the again, try to really exemplify with, if we look at the setting targets aspect so I think the first iteration was just, okay, we need to hire we're gonna grow. Then I need to know what, how will this person be successful? What are they measured on? So start with the hiring. Oh, fuck. Now I, hi. Oh can you swear this podcast? Sorry. It's okay. . Now we've hired someone.
We need to bring them in. I need to be, , I need to set up the expectations for them. Oh, I need to make up what we've now referred to as ramping targets. . And build that out for one role, but then eventually all roles that's not gonna be enough. Once they're onboarded, they will need to have targets.
Okay. We need that for all the roles. And that has now evolved in. into our career framework because it's not only about the targets, it's also about the right behaviors. . So that we again, can reinforce those. So we have built out a career framework. The next step from that will be like, how do we design career paths so that we can help managers like set targets with their pls and yeah. So I think it's, Like embryo of I need this to solve this task. And then taking that into, I also need it in this, and that will ultimately create that red thread through things.
[00:15:40] Steve: Yeah. That's cool.
[00:15:42] Linnea: Oh yeah. And the mistakes.
[00:15:44] Steve: Give me one.
[00:15:44] Linnea: Oh my God.
[00:15:46] Steve: I'll just, maybe just one that's like your biggest learning. I mean it ultimately we take learning and. that is,
[00:15:52] Linnea: I think there's so many mistakes. And I think that's the beauty of not having a perfect process to begin with. Yes. Because you're gonna make mistakes and then you can change it.
But one thing that really has been a challenge was going from startup to to scale up. I think when we hired we, like me and my team we sold this idea or this pitch about this is a small company, we'll have like loads of impact on it and then all of a sudden we were 50 plus people.
And then while you're also gonna have to do your job, not just create and do everything and have your fingers in all the cookie jars, but actually focus on one thing. And I think. mismatch in expectations Yes. Was like a challenge. And we lost like some really good employees due to like them wanting to be on that smaller team, having that impact and then all of a sudden we couldn't offer it. Yes. So that's been like a tricky challenge. Tricky
[00:16:48] Steve: and inevitable though. I think because it's . Yeah. It's a maturing business and things start to foundationally start to cement a bit more. Yeah. And then it requires people to maybe let go of some of the things they were doing before.
Cause it really has to, it an evolutionary thing. It has to happen. Yeah. Unless you, it's a completely I don't know. I don't think it's, even if it was more of a, like a holocracy environment with, no management and self-organized, I still think you'd. Some elements where there are some very clear distinctions between roles.
Yeah, it's tricky. It is tricky. Yeah. Because people, particularly when you're moving quite quick, if you scale up on with the number of people quite quickly, that period of time for those that you set that expectation to, That's not long. A year later, things are changing already. So I can understand there was some conflict in that and some
reaction.
[00:17:38] Linnea: Yeah. Yeah. And then we did such a rookie mistake with some key or two actually key managers being on parental leave, not making sure that we. Filled their shoes in the, like that period. So leaving some employees like slightly lit or less, and when you have a lot of new managers that needs that support, I think, now that's, we created a great process based on that.
Like, when you're away, make sure that you cover that person so that you can help the team. Continue as ambitions as usual, but that was a very important learning . Oh yeah.
[00:18:17] Steve: Yeah. Can I just ask, I just wanna look back to something as well, cause it's obviously a, it's an intrinsic essence of Alva Labs.
And actually given, I think around about 50% of our listeners are in the us I dunno if you guys are in the us.
[00:18:30] Linnea: We are.
[00:18:30] Steve: You are? Yeah. Very cool. ,
what do Alva labs do?
[00:18:36] Linnea: So we are a candidate assessment platform. . We help hiring teams and recruiters make more like informed and confident decisions in hiring.
Yeah. And we do that with a platform that's offering like psychometric assessments. So personality tasks, logic, ability tasks format for structured interviews. And now the last edition is coding tests. Nice. Do that with like the candidate experience in , like to be the north star that we really want to Yeah.
Support the candidate and help create those like, fantastic matches between organization and candidate.
[00:19:09] Steve: So how does that in terms of that mindset around psychological and also you said it earlier, science, right? Sorry, being science backed which is obviously very intrinsic to your product, externally.
[00:19:21] Linnea: It is.
[00:19:21] Steve: Talk me, let's go deeper on this internally. Because I like when you said it, I was like, that sounds cool, science backed, but what does it mean in practicality? How have you applied it? Where have you taken some of those sources or inspirations and brought it down into the organization?
[00:19:36] Linnea: I think, if we kind. briefly go through the the employee experience, I think. When it comes to the attraction phase. Okay. What do we know? We know that a lot of companies aren't offering the. Like same opportunities for all candidates to, to apply for jobs and to be like even considered by that company.
So one way that we are trying to attract a more like diverse workforce is by using gender neutral language in our in our job ads. , we know based on research that like women. Tend to not apply if it's very like male coded language well, but at the same time, men will still apply if the language is like neutral or like feminine.
So that's just smart. Move to check. Yeah, absolutely. Check that. So another thing is that we often reduce the level or the number of requirements that we demand from a job ad, cuz again, based on science, we know that men tend to apply when they match like 50 ish percent of the requirements in the job ad where female applicants will only apply if they match a, about like 90%.
. So you're losing out on talent if you're not adapting how you attract talent. Yeah. So I think that's one aspect. Interesting. When it comes to hiring obviously what methods are most predictive of job performance? So when we look at research, the, like structured interview a really good like work sample test together with a like more objective screening process where you u we use psychometric assessments and obviously instead of a CV screen we don't read cover letters. I would never read a cover letter. Yeah. So that's how we like you. Plan our hiring process. And then when it comes to more like onboarding what, what tools do we have to impact performance?
It's setting targets and giving feedback. Same thing when it comes to building up teams. Psychological safety is the most important aspect for like high performing teams. . When I design our. leadership programs. I think the worst thing that you can do if you wanna follow like science is send all your leaders to a three day course.
That's some fancy place. And then when they come back, like crossing your fingers and hoping that they will be better because they won't be yeah. If you want effect from like your leadership development initiatives, it needs to. based on the need of the organization. , that's why we measure, like what is working, not working when it comes to leadership.
It needs to be spread out over time with like super practical like exercises, assignments. That's why like the leadership program that we have is the basic, like basic one is six workshops for two hours with assignments at. Where I, it's poor managers. I force them to like videotape when they give feedback, when they coach their employees.
So they have to watch themselves do it. It's so important. Third eye. They hate it, but it's great. It's so powerful. Yeah. It is. It's so powerful. It's really good. So I think that's just a few example of. Taking like the theoretical, like research and turning that into a practical, usable way of of planning your people processes.
[00:22:56] Steve: Can we just delve a little bit into also psychological safety? For sure. We've got the, there's a great book, fearless Organization which is a great book on the topic. What's your how does it play out? And I think this is also such a big area as well for organizations that aren't practicing this or aren't using some of the methods in this area may, we're hearing it, from an industry point of view. There's a big thing I heard the other day about. Building trust. That trust has been eroded in organizations and it's becoming a bit of a trend now in terms of a focus area, like the light is now being shown on the level of trust, and I just, it can't help but connect that in as well, that we're in this time where we need to build more trust with our employees and also give them a voice and also in bring them to the table to co-create or to identify which problems are more meaningful to them, not just the organization, and then solve it together.
It sounds so simple, . It does. But of course in we've got some way to go. But I think I definitely support, psychological safety plays a huge component of that. Taking a group of people who is used to an environment. or is working or their experience of the current environment is, there isn't really anything there that supports that and taking them into a transition into one that is, has got the safety, what's been your experience in terms of how it's played out or your experience of it, and what have you taken from that?
, yeah. From that area.
[00:24:17] Linnea: That it's not a quick fix. That it's something that you need to incorporate in everything that you do and that you need to, or train people to practice those behaviors. . So I think that's the realistic answer. The practical answer of like, how have. Try to do it is that we run workshops on the topic twice a year. this is not something that I believe, honestly, like this is what will do the trick, but it's like, , practicing those behaviors, putting the emphasis on this is something that we value. And like the content of that has been trying to boost psychological safety, either like across STEM or within Tim.
And what it's always about is practicing taking interpersonal risk and showing each other that it's safe to do . So we've done that in various ways. sharing rough periods in our lives where often like I, I will facilitate, I will go first and share, but we've also had scenarios where like our CEO and our own founder, they went first.
And then, we went into breakout rooms cuz this was, during Covid everyone was remote and people came back with. You could tell how many people had been sobbing and had just the fantastic experience connecting with others. . So just sharing this last workshop we did on like feedback.
So we talked about like negative experiences around feedback, but then also practice giving and receiving feedback because that's like super uncomfortable for a lot of people. Yeah. We've done like setting up what type of behaviors are helpful in like our team based on our values. Where I actually joined all the different like department meetings to follow up on like how have you, like what behaviors are you committed to this week?
How did it go? What were the , implications of focusing on these behaviors. We've done a lot of like different things to try to just again, like practice these behaviors, but then it's like something that we need to constantly work with because, as you said with building trust isn't built in a workshop.
No, we can boost it. We can help it, and we. Put the spotlight on it. But that happens in the relationship between people and we don't always succeed , but we try, we know that it's important and we try to create opportunities for building trust. Yeah. But at the end of the day, it's also, it happens between the individuals and, yeah.
I can't control all of it.
[00:26:48] Steve: It's such a, God, there's so many things coming to mind. I, there's this thing on one side I'm thinking. , there's this thing of like spirituality, of energy, of self-healing. There's all of this side I think is coming more into more and more. I was at something the other weekend and it was incredibly deep work and on the third day I was the only guy in there and there was 30 people in.
So it's quite an interesting observation Yeah. Of that self-awareness and self-work that we all need to do. And on some level, everyone's struggling on some level. So I think having that kind of space to do that and to work on yourself or to also have an environment like that. And I absolutely honor and respect your CEO to, to also stand there or sit there and be completely, or be open and share something that is meaningful.
. That really is, it's so powerful because it sets the tone, it sets the the culture in a way that it is. Okay.
[00:27:45] Linnea: Does it really does. And I think that's Would not have come this far without having the rest of the of the management team with me on it. . So I think it's also about this that's huge.
Showing the importance and repeating that message, showing it within our, like our little team and our little group so that they can also spread that message and stand by that, that's important.
[00:28:07] Steve: So it's a balance, isn't it? Like this authority authoritative. Hierarchical thing that we've been so ingrained with, but yet we're trying to push this narrative and this push, this boundary of trying to break some of those boundaries down.
It's a more human experience that we are all human at the end of the day. And even though we might look up, not physically, but up at a ceo they're just, they're just as in this very similar place to ourself. It just happens to be that they're a ceo, they run it, they have a business.
Yeah. They're still human at the end of the day.
[00:28:40] Linnea: Yeah. And daring to show that I think is it's a small but significant step to making it more, it's not weakness people, it's strength. . It is.
[00:28:48] Steve: How many times I need to phone Brene Brown right now and get her on the call. Come on, let's go. Okay.
Can I just ask if you and I can totally edit this out if you say no. The beauty of podcasting Would you be open just to share like in your journey as head of people where where you felt vulnerable, where you've had moments of doubt or my God, questioning or something? Anything that you think could be, you'd be open to sharing?
[00:29:09] Linnea: For sure. I am super afraid of conflict. , always been hopefully not always will be, but we'll see. So I think I. employees come to me and share their experience. I I often take that to heart and sometimes react too much to it in the sense of everything isn't broken.
So sometimes I think I, I try to fix things that aren't necessarily. Bad. It's just that we're different people and experience, things differently. Yeah. But that is a really a challenge where for me personally , could work 200% and still not be done. So finding that balance for myself has and still is like a challenge.
And I think that especially comes out when. I, like someone is criticizing what I'm doing or not satisfied or don't like us, or I take that like personal or personally. Which I maybe shouldn't, but I'm learning . Learning as I go. So I think that's something that I struggle
with.
[00:30:16] Steve: Is there sprinkle of the athletic piece in there as well? Potentially coming in?
[00:30:21] Linnea: I, yeah, probably. Yeah. I am a perfectionist. Yeah. Which is, a fantastic thing in some some scenarios and a terrible quality in others. Ah-huh . So I have really high ambitions and when I don't reach the level I want to I break down and get really mad and then I guess come back and try again. . That's good. But that's yeah, that's that's a challenge.
[00:30:45] Steve: Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, sure. Very cool. So what's next for you? Where's, what journey what's the future looking like for you? What's the kind of directions or areas that you're exploring right now?
[00:30:54] Linnea: I think. in my role right now, I will be doubling down on like more performance basically. I think what's so interesting now is that we have been on this growth journey. We're now like hiring less but rather min and linear. So hiring fewer, but really like intentful in what we hire which we've always been, but even more so now.
So now it's about, getting the fantastic team that we have in place to really or leverage them to make them run as fast as possible. , how can we make them? , love their job, be super pumped about our vision, our purpose, so that they can perform at their highest capacity. . And I think like how I will do that, I don't know yet.
. So exploring, I have on my to-do to-do list. It literally says create performance, master plan, . But have, I have a vague idea of what it is and I think. The aspects that we've talked about. Will obviously be a huge part of it, of like setting clear expectations, creating psychological safety.
Yeah. Making people love what they do. Yeah. So that's I think my biggest biggest focus. Yeah. Short term or medium term.
[00:32:04] Steve: Yeah. That's smart. I think, in current economic climate, which is still a bit conflicting for me Yeah. I think it's a smart thing to do is look inward and yeah.
Make it go deeper with the business. Go deeper with some of those aspects. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a smart choice.
But then
[00:32:19] Linnea: I guess like long term it's about getting ready for the next phase. Yeah. I think we have for good reasons now, gotten a breather from like recruiting at a high speed.
, which means that we can. prepare the organization for the next growth phase. So getting our house in order when it comes to, attracting, hiring, onboarding keeping the talent that we have, really making sure that we have an outstanding culture and all of those things so that we are ready to hit the gas pedal once again.
Yeah.
[00:32:53] Steve: You mentioned this earlier. I'm going to, if you, if it's okay, I'm just gonna delve into this topic because it's, it. , it's something I'm seeing so much in the industry right now. A lot of the, you can see the narratives coming and going, quite quitting comes and goes. And then there's other words that we use to create content and d and , I dunno, to sell something.
I don't know. But this one is a really interesting one cause I've been having lots of conversations around leadership and management specifically as a population and. , there's this kind of interesting thing happening at the moment where, We've got such a blend. I think I've read somewhere that we've got more managers than we've ever had, I think ever in history or something, either coming our way or it's currently there.
So we've got this kind of population growth that we've gone through and continues to go through. But then obviously a lot of them are now coming or have become managers and moving into more senior leadership. They have a different way of thinking, of course. And I can't help but think like we've got this kind of new breed of management.
Then we've got this middle group who are still, they're in there, they're in the mix and they're try trying to figure things out still. And then you've got like old school and these kind. That's how I'm seeing it. And then we've had this kind of covid situation where we've, everything's been forced into hybrid and that's called out all of the control freaks.
All of the hands-on managers, all it's required. I. never in history. We've. Forced into this kind of situation as leaders, it's really mixed it up a lot. And then now we've got this light this year, all I'm seeing is leadership development. Leadership development. I'm seeing photos of senior leaders posting, beautiful manner somewhere and, oh, we're here for the week with all of our leaders doing development.
And So you don't do that, people No, don't do it in chunks. Yeah. chunks. Always chunks. Cuz you won't come back transformed and Nope. No, it's not gonna happen. It's in the practice. So I'm just curious on this cuz it's a trend, it's happening, companies are investing a huge amount of money in leadership development and rightly I think it's the right for thing for sure. But what do we seeing this and also what's the future that of a manager look like actually? Is it actually anchored in the old kind of school is, are there elements that we're gonna take through or are we gonna go, yeah, maybe this looks a bit different in the future.
How could it look different? I'm just to riff with it on this and see what
[00:35:07] Linnea: I don't know if I have the perfect answer here, but No, there isn't. I would go back to science. Yeah. And what are the most. Effective leadership behaviors. Cause based on your question, there's one of those that stands out for me.
And then one thing that you have to do as a leader is be that like visionary person, like lead with a vision. Lead with a purpose. And that's something I think is what's been missing in the past. Yeah. That we're now seeing the need for, especially now in like hybrid, remote. You can't just be around and high five people.
I love high fives, but that it only will only take you so far. So you need to like, inspire people. So that's something that ha has been important. I don't think we pl put enough like emphasis on it, but I think that's what leaders of the future will really nail. . And then I think like the second aspect, I think it's about being a role.
That you have to lead by example. I think, based on some of the aspects that we've discussed around like psychological safety, it's about show daring to be, vulnerable, daring to build that trust, daring to be personal. That it's like leadership has been like mystified a bit and I think it's just a person that has a different job, but in that job it requires to.
Get people to trust you and follow you. Yeah. And you do that by leading by example. Yeah. So I don't know if that completely answered your question.
[00:36:28] Steve: No, we can riff. That's my, no, it's more of a riff than that, than a question, but I think it's, yeah I think there's just a, an interesting shift in this around how we yeah.
How do we view managers or leaders now? It's we go back to the trust aspect. We go back to the art of being a manager. Not everybody is, necessarily needs to be a manager. I think we've also gone through these growth phases where people get promoted too easily, too quickly up. I've made that mistake in previous company I owned and it's not great. And you go back about the qualities of, what's the qualities of a manager
[00:36:58] Linnea: Yeah. And it's also about that has been the traditional career path, right? So growth has been equal to a managerial position. Yes. And that very true, that sucks because not everyone sh a should be a manager and B, want to be a manager.
. So I think it's also about building out an alternative for career progression that just doesn't involve leadership. .
No, I agree.
[00:37:23] Steve: I always think it's more lateral than up. Yeah. And also, if you're gonna be a manager with the greatest respect, you're gonna be responsible for probably one of the most complex beings on this planet.
And not just one of them.
[00:37:36] Linnea: No. Several . Several .
[00:37:37] Steve: Yeah. It's quite a task.
[00:37:39] Linnea: Yeah. And you need to love putting time in those people. I think like going back to what I said before, like it's been, this is how I make a career. This is how I increase my salary. This is how I get status. But I don't wanna do the actual job.
I just wanna, if I was a, high performing salesperson, now I have a sales team, I just wanna continue talking to customers and do sales, or I'm a engineer, I just wanna code. I don't wanna lead these people even though I'm an engineering manager. If you have a managerial position, You need to like invest time and effort into being a manager.
. And I think that organizations need to a, like state that like, this is what the role requires and also then give time and opportunities to actually be successful in that. So that you actually plan the role based on spending time with the people that lead
[00:38:36] Steve: then also encourage those managers to look after themselves Yes. And work on themselves just as much as Yeah. Their team as well. Yeah, it's all part of the package. Self-leadership, self-discovery, self-awareness all plays huge. A huge part. Very cool.
Okay. Any any parting gifts or closing thoughts that you'd like to just share out if somebody was listening, perhaps in a similar size organization or scale up or, yeah, anything that you think would resonate based on your journey.
Are there any kind of top, top tips you'd share out or thoughts?
[00:39:10] Linnea: I think I would not have been successful. And I will let others judge if it's success, successful or not. I wouldn't have gotten to where I am if I didn't collaborate with other people in similar roles. , I think my lifeline is, I have a tiny little group of people.
We're, we've created a like Slack channel and we write to each other about everything because there's especially. The, I think HR roles in general are, you're quite alone. You are with your, especially in small organization, with your know-how and your profession. So talk to others share what you are doing and if you share what you're doing, others will share.
What they're doing. And that's how you learn and how you iterate and how you come up with a better version of the one that you currently have. So I think, , that would be my advice of talk, talk, talk to others.
[00:40:01] Steve: I love that.
We definitely see that it's one of the most. Shani. We'll definitely back that up cuz it was one of the things last year and we were going out to market, just talking to so many people it was such a thread. You could just see this loneliness in the field right now with also an increasing burden and questions coming from the business. And of course, as only too. Being in a people function, you get full visibility of the whole company and no matter where the question's coming from, left and center, you don't always have the answer.
No. Rarely . Very rarely. That's exactly , that's where the resourcefulness comes in. It's huge. It's absolutely huge. That is really super advice. Cool. Thank you for sharing that. Linnea, thank you so much for coming.
[00:40:40] Linnea: Thank you.
[00:40:40] Steve: It was I really enjoyed the conversation. I'm really curious on Alva.
I have done I have I have been through the tests and I did learn think about myself, which was very cool. Nice. So it's a good product. And look, thank you for sharing your journey and your story and any, everything from linear to linear and everything in between.
So thank you so much
[00:40:58] Linnea: thank you so much for having me.
[00:40:59] Steve: Good luck with your journey.
[00:41:00] Linnea: Thank you.