Episode 112: Empowerment After 50

Facing gender bias is tough. Add ageism to the mix, and the workplace becomes a whole different challenge. This episode examines the landscape for women over 50 in the workplace, spotlighted through Dr. Lucy Ryan's insights from her book, "Revolting Women." Addressing the dual hurdles of ageism and gender bias, Dr. Ryan explains how societal expectations shape professional experiences. She shares compelling stories about navigating menopause and caregiving, alongside strategies for midlife women. The discussion includes advice for employers, such as having midlife check-ins, to create a more inclusive and equitable environment.

If you enjoy the show, please rate it on iTunes or Spotify. Your ratings help more people like you discover the podcast!

Episode Highlights

• Understand the fusion of ageism and sexism affecting workplace dynamics for women.
• Strategies for managing age and gender perceptions in professional settings.
• Practical tips for addressing menopause impacts in the workplace.
• Advice for navigating the compound challenges of caregiving, menopause, and mental health.
• Innovative approaches to combat workplace discrimination and bias.
• Steps to create menopause-friendly and supportive environments for midlife women.
• Key strategies for organizational adaptation to support midlife women’s needs.

Lucy’s view on the greatest unmet wellbeing need at work today

“I'm a leadership coach, and one of the things that happens with almost every single client I coach is they don’t have enough space to reflect. And it’s not built into the workplace. It’s as if people are going to do it at home, or at the weekend. And so what happens, particularly virtually, is people bang from call to call to call to call to call...So where do we reflect? Where do we get space to breathe? So, I would really like that to happen.”

What "working with humans" means to Lucy

We forget often that we are working with humans…But I think the organization is so busy with processes. We have jargon for everything. We have all the process going on change processes, target operating models, we have more jargon than you can throw at a person every single day. And we forget that we've just got human beings with their own lives, difficulties, joys going on every day. And that means that we need to build compassionate conversations into our workplace.”

Resources

Follow:  Lucy on LinkedIn
Visit: Lucy’s website
Read: Revolting Women: Why midlife women are walking out, and what to do about it

Full Transcript

Note: This is an unedited AI-generated transcription. Please excuse any errors or inconsistencies.

Lucy Ryan
She was suddenly asked to coach to mentor to watch to advise. Yet there she was previously only a year before leading a financial deal. And in fact, a very big financial deal that she was leading. She was suddenly excluded from and told that she wouldn't understand it. And you know, three men came in and took her place and so she resigned. So it's it's quite nuanced. I think one of the problems why often described as a silent revolution is it's quite nuanced, Michel gendered ageism, it's quite hard to pinpoint and say, That's because of her age. Yet women say there's this subtle sense of, of being told you're not relevant and what if you could just leave? That would be good. And we won't raise a fuss if you go we'll just bring a man in in your place.

Michael Glazer 
Welcome to humans at work. I'm your host, Michael Glazer. And my life purpose is to make wellbeing at work. a globally accepted basic human right. This podcast helps by giving you fresh perspectives and actionable ideas for making working with other humans better for everyone. Today, we're diving into what the workplace looks like for women over 50 Dr. Lucy Ryan's here to shed light on it pulling from her book, revolting women, together will tackle ageism and gender bias heads on talking about how these dual pressures force women to conform to unrealistic standards of youth and energy. You're also going to hear Lucy share powerful stories, including how gendered ageism uniquely impacts midlife women, as well as the innovative ways they're navigating challenges like menopause and caregiving responsibilities. Plus, we'll also talk about simple changes, like midlife check ins that can have an outsized impact for making a more inclusive and equitable work environment. It's a conversation I think you'll find both enlightening and practical. Let's listen. So I want to start with a very basic question. What is gendered ageism?

Lucy Ryan
It's a good question to start with. Simply put, gendered ageism, is where ageism meets sexism. So our organizations are that let's start with this age discrimination is abundant in our organizations. So by and large, our organizations are set up for young people. And we seem to have this embedded thought that energy, creativity, motivation, ambition, fits with young people. So it can be pretty brutal to age in the workplace. And then in in being an older woman, and you've got something which is gendered ageism, and you've got something that's particularly corrosive. So there is a considerable discrimination that goes back centuries, I've got to say, against older women. Older men seem to much more effortlessly rise to the top of an organization. And we've got plenty of beautiful words to describe older men Michael, they are fine wines. They're silver foxes. They are George Clooney Eve, but I can't think of a single positive words describe an older woman, you know, they're hags, they're Crohn's, they're frumps. They're spinsters. They're witches. And so you've got this Historical Association of the older woman with something bad, irrelevant. Slightly ill. And so that's the sexism part.

Michael Glazer 
To what degree our power dynamics are part of this and organizations.

Lucy Ryan
Well, you know, an organization is a power dynamic, isn't it? I think. So. If we take the power dynamic of age first, you've got old versus young power dynamic. And it's a bit like saying to older people, prove yourself you're not relevant anymore. So come on, prove yourself. And, you know, we've had kind of almost apocalyptic language used for older women, you know, we've had this age tsunami, we've got perfect storms going on. And certainly in the UK, now, we've got a government going, Oh, do we actually need the over 50s in the workplace, so you know, please come back. I would say too little too late. And they're bringing old people back at the lower levels and whilst we've still got a problem at higher levels of bringing women back in, so we've, we've got a power dynamic of age. But then we've still got this power dynamic, this gendered power dynamic. And what worries me about it is that in my research, women had to work so hard to present themselves as youthful as energetic. You know, I remember one of my interviews Raya saying, I never say I'm tired. All the young people say they're tired all the time. I never say it. And I'm always first in last out. And if you take someone like Laurie she did, she said, they were hiring an HR director. And there was an internal candidates, a woman who was 49. And the discussion went, she'll be a blocker. This is her last gig. We're not really elevating the game by bringing her in. So they went externally and brought in a 50 year old man. So I think it's got quite a lot of impact cisgendered ageism, that we don't speak out, we don't articulate very well.

Michael Glazer
And why would you say middle aged women in particular, are affected by gendered ageism? differently than men? Is it the things that you mentioned before? Is there is there more to it?

Lucy Ryan
I think like I've never spent a long time researching this trying to trying to pinpoint How come men or get older men have less of a problem in the workplace and older women. And unfortunately, it seems to come down to the problem if you like, and I'm saying that in inverted commas for a podcast of the female aging body in the workplace. So the male aging body is equated with, okay. And positive, the female aging body is equated with not okay. And you know, difficult, incompetent, irrelevant. So I think that therein lies the problem, which is the female aging body, which is why we work so hard to present ourselves as cool and relevant and young and all of those things.

Michael Glazer
Can you give a few examples of where and how you would see that bias showing up? For example, you mentioned a minute ago about women reentering the workforce?

Lucy Ryan
Yeah. Yeah, I think, Well, I think firstly, it's hard for women to re enter the workforce. Post a kind of, often a midlife collision where they leave and we'll probably talk about midlife collision in a moment. But where I think it when women are in the workforce, where I think it particularly shows up is women after often talk as they age about being sidelined, or sidetracked. And I remember someone like Eve saying that, rather than being given her usual cut and thrust stuff, she was suddenly given what she described as great art responsibilities. She was suddenly asked to coach to mentor to watch to advise, yet there she was previously, only a year before the leading a financial deal. And in fact, a very big financial deal that she was leading, she was suddenly excluded from and told that she wouldn't understand it. And you know, three men came in and took her place and so she resigned. So it's, it's quite nuanced. I think one of the problems and why often described as a silent revolution is it's quite nuanced, Michel, gendered ageism, it's quite hard to pinpoint and say, That's because of her age. Yet women say there's this subtle fence of, of being told you're not relevant and what if you could just leave? That would be good. And we won't raise a fuss if you go we'll just bring a man in in your place.

Michael Glazer 
I mean, it's enough to just leave me wordless hearing that you mentioned, the term collision which when I read the book was a big aha for me that it's not any particular life event that happens for women in mid career midlife, but it's, it's this concept of collision of events or even the theme of loss. Can you expand on what does that mean and how is that relevant to gendered ageism?

Lucy Ryan
Sure. When we talk about midlife, clearly, the conversation about menopause has risen much more to the top hasn't it at the surface. And what I was interested in is understanding when I talked to all these women in the research that it wasn't just the menopause, that was the problem. It was a collision of events. And by that, I mean, menopause combined with very commonly a lot of parental care. A lot of parents with dementia or ill who they were caring for, coupled with also very much flying under the radar is our older children with mental health challenges, as well as different middle life events, like often divorce or financial stresses. So it was this combined effect that was causing women to step out, step down, or press pause on their careers. That's not to say that men don't face a midlife collision. You know, for sure plenty of people face parental care, or parental loss, or their children going through problems. It's just that when women are combining it with menopause, and with taking the the share the large share of the care workload, it becomes much more onerous. It's called role overload or roles stressors. And it's completely unique to midlife. And women seem to to experience that role overload much more than men. For people who don't know.

Michael Glazer
How does menopause figure into this concept of collision? And rollover? Yeah,

Lucy Ryan
Sure. Well, when you've got, I mean, firstly, it's really important that I say all women experience menopause differently. So there's no one experience for women going through menopause. So although we treat it as you will have these symptoms, this is what will happen to you. That is not the case. So approximately 10 to 20% of women will experience no symptoms whatsoever. And funnily enough, they feel really guilty about that. And so they stay very quiet. About 10 to 20% of women will have severe symptoms. So much so that they will often have to leave work for some time. Now, that leaves us with about 60% of women in this kind of muggy middle where they're experiencing some symptoms, hot, sweaty, damp nights, brain fog, you know, no longer sure quite where they're heading or what they're doing. Now, when you combine that with a lot of parental care, a lot of childcare, family issues, health issues. That's where the collision becomes serious.

Michael Glazer
So I want to circle back around to row overload. And you said it affects women in different ways and it affects midlife men, organizationally, what are the main reasons for the difference and how it affects these two genders.

Lucy Ryan
Role overload is exactly as I'm describing, which is I can take any one of my interviewees who described like, a lack of sleep combined with looking after a parent with dementia, combined with one, you know, daughter with anorexia. So that combined with a full time job becomes almost impossible. And the only thing they can control is their time. So they step out or they step down, they don't step up. Now, given that women take something like 91% of the care, it means that men are freer to step up. And that's where we see gendered ageism really playing out, which is they might want to step up, but they're not they're stepping out. Because how else do they cope with all these things going on in their lives? And then when they want to step back? They're they're told, unless you can do this five days a week. That's impossible. So they step out again, where

Michael Glazer 
My mind goes here and you talk about this is yes, women have more than their fair share more way more than their fair share, generally speaking for caregiving roles, and because the men don't, they're looking at themselves saying, hey, if women you need to work the way I work, and if you want to, if you want to continue to work in my level, at my level, or or with me or something like that. So there's an assumption that if it's working for me, as a man, it should be able to work for you as well. And if it doesn't, it's a problem. The problems over there not with me. So there's an organizational in flexibility that contributes to women leaving roles where they should be thriving instead. Yeah,

Lucy Ryan
I mean, I don't even know Michael, if it's men going, Hey, look at work for me. So bad luck. Yeah, I think it is a systemic inequality, that we still have something that I call full time foolishness, which is as you as you rise up in an organization, you know, let's say the top three levels in your organization. Unless you can work full time, you can't do the job. So to be a leader in our organization, you have to work five days. And I keep hearing everywhere, no, doesn't matter matter what industry we're talking about. Lower down the organization. Flexibility is okay, we can build it in as a leader, you have to work five days. Now. Take someone who is caring for their children still there cheering caring for their mum or dad. They're looking after their own health. They neither want nor are able to work full time. We have a problem again,

Michael Glazer 
There's a great story that you tell in the book, about somebody who serendipitously found a way to get beyond the you have to work full time and they found a job sharing solution. Right,

Lucy Ryan
Laurie? Yeah. I mean, incredible story. In that. Laurie was a global talent director. Working full time. I had menopause, a lot of menopause symptoms, in that she wasn't sleeping very well, but she was taking HRT that was kicking in. That was okay. But her mom had heart disease and and was clearly dying. And she wanted to spend the time with her wasn't a half, two, she wanted to spend her last few months with her. And sadly, her twin daughter had one of her twin daughters had anorexia. And she was the breadwinner. But couldn't you know, her priority was with her family. So she decides to resign. But she's goes downstairs, in that she goes in the lift, to just go and have a cup of coffee, craft her resignation. In the lift, she meets her colleague, who was the global HR director, who was in tears. Who had three kids, but her dad had dementia and was very ill. And she had decided she had to resign. And it had just been a bad day, and she just needed to go home. And they went down in the lift together, they had a coffee together and literally over coffee, they crafted a job share. They then went back in the lift presented it to their boss. And they became the first women in that global organization to Job share, and became role models for it. But they were absolutely clear, Laurie was so clear that if they didn't know the system, if they hadn't met in the lift, if they hadn't made it useful to the organization who would have just had to recruit in to more senior women, then the organization would have said goodbye and not help them.

Michael Glazer
So maybe this is a good place to pivot and talk about your insights and how organizations can create workplaces that are more menopause friendly or more midlife women friendly. What are the key elements in making that a reality? Sure,

Lucy Ryan
I think there's a certain number of elements. Let's talk menopause first. I think the big thing about menopause is to normalize the conversation and not to exclude women by making it trite is the best word I can think of. So for example, there were a couple of organizations I know of who put fans on every single woman's desk who was over 45 And I remember one woman saying she wanted to hurl the fan out the window, because she didn't understand why this fan had suddenly been put on her desk and another workplace who asked every woman over 40 Five to wear a badge saying I'm hot. Although it kind of made me laugh, it makes me go no, you do not understand it. This is about normalizing the conversation. And understanding menopause is different for everyone. But setting up some degree of community within your organization, better menopause cafe, better menopause group bit or some form of ESG and Employer Support group so that women know they're not alone. So that's the first thing I think the second thing is, again, a systemic issue is to build in some degree of flexibility. Often, all women are asking is to be able to come in at a slightly different time if they're having sleep issues, and the third thing is technical aspects. There are some really simple ways to build in technical aspects. And by that I mean things like uniforms. So I work with a railway company. And their uniforms were nylon, tight, heavy, that simply made the symptoms of menopause way worse. So and and they weren't allowed to wear the looser male waistcoats. So, eventually, rules were changed so that they were able to do that. So the technical aspects to but I think also, you know, you talked about becoming midlife friendly, I think for organized to recognize organizations to recognize that menopause is just a trigger as we were talking about earlier. I, I would love every organization to have, like midlife check ins. For men, male and male and female executives, all their midlife executives, which is a How are you what is going on in your life? And how can we support you so that we are talking prevention, rather than an exit interview? You know, because we're finding that midlife executives are suddenly going, and they're expensive to recruit for again, plus, you lose all this talent, energy, ambition, knowledge, wisdom. So I would love every organization to have midlife check ins, as well as building in flexibility. I think the other thing is to for organizations to gender proof their succession plans. Because very commonly, the succession, if someone has a succession plan, it's not gender proofed, which means that the woman goes, and they're often there's often only one soul woman. And so guess what, we just keep the problem going, because the only replacement is a man.

Michael Glazer 
And what what does it take to gender proof a succession plan.

Lucy Ryan
It takes some planning, it takes some, it takes a conversation, it takes some planning, it takes an a good, hard look at that pipeline, and making sure that you are building in gender and age into that pipeline. So what happens at the moment, the organizations who are doing it are building succession plans, but they're not building gender into the succession plans, then we get that pyramid going on, which is how come we only have one woman on the board? How come? We've lost all our women. So it's taking it seriously. It's tracking, it's building women in its building gender, into the succession plan.

Michael Glazer 
So those are five great ideas, normalization, flexibility. And I guess, maybe a facet of flexibility is the technical aspect uniform. Yes. As you say, yes. Yeah. For the check ins and then the succession plans. I have a question about normalization. Because earlier, you mentioned that the 20% of women who typically don't have menopause symptoms feel guilty. They don't want to talk about it, because they're not having symptoms. How reluctant are people to start either self identifying or speaking up about menopause in the workplace?

Lucy Ryan
It's a great question in that because I think I think time will tell based is my my main answer. At the moment the tide is going Let's actually bring the conversation out in the war in the open. Let's actually recognize that menopause can be really difficult For some women, and that one in 10, women are leaving the workplace because of their menopause symptoms. What that means is the women who are experiencing zero symptoms, of course are very silent. Because those who have spoken up, have had the retort of Well, lucky you. And so they're staying silent. But I think it's really important that certainly younger women know, not everyone's going to have this. Not everyone will go through it, everyone will go through it. But not everyone will have a really difficult time. And that whatever you do experience, it's temporary. And you will get through it. So I think time will destigmatize it. And I think we also have to bring women into the conversation with zero symptoms as part of a positive conversation. When

Michael Glazer
It comes to flexibility. What's your view on whether or not this whole direction of hybrid work that we're taking Do you think that's going to be it's going to help it's gonna hinder or something different when it comes to organizations building that flexibility?

Lucy Ryan
Like something different? You gave me a get out clause. I think that at the start, when, you know, obviously, we all went home, after a time, I thought it was really going to help. Because I thought organizations suddenly realized, Oh, my God, you can be at home and be really productive. So it seemed really positive. What I've seen now are two, slightly more tricky aspects of it, that in the UK organizations are the the direction now is to bring everyone back in, ideally full time, because they've got all these buildings that are empty. So that seems to be a a big direction. Secondly, now there's quite a lot of research going on that says that once women reentered the home, everyone went, Oh, nice to have you back. Now, here's the childcare. Here's the parental care, here's the home to look after. And it's been quite hard for him to get back out to the workplace. So my hope, and I am hopeful is that hybrid working will help drive the flexibility conversation, and the organization's remember that people can be really productive part time. I'm not quite seeing that play out in the way I had hoped.

Michael Glazer 
What do you think is happening right now?

Lucy Ryan
I think that organizations are wanting to drive the full time workplace again. And the and that hybrid working is is tricky. So they haven't got used to hybrid working. And having some at home, some in the workplace, some doing something else has become hard. So therefore they're going right all come in. I still think that there is there is time for us to work this one out there.

Michael Glazer 
A question about check ins? Like where does this fit into the regular cadence of employee manager conversations? There are weeklies there are performance reviews, there's, you know, career planning conversations on an annual basis. I think where does this fit in? Sure.

Lucy Ryan
It's a bit like, you know, you talked about what's the phrase working with humans? It it, it's a bit down that line for me, which is recognizing you're absolutely right. We often have weekly monthly performance reviews, appraisals. Very commonly they are task driven. What are your objectives? How are you doing? How are you doing against your objectives? Great, what are we setting for 2024? And the conversations can often be 90% task 10% Human oh, by the way, how are you? What happened in the pandemic that I thought was fascinating, is our conversations became very human. We saw you know, my 95 year old mum was living with me through the pandemic and commonly came on to my zooms and walked in the door and was going oh, hello to everyone who was there, and everyone thought it was quite cute and funny. And, you know, our kids were coming in our dogs were coming in. And people were having very compassionate conversations, weren't they? Which, seriously, how are you? And that's what I mean by a proper midlife check in, which is seriously, how are you? And holistically talk to me about what's going on in your life? How are your parents? How are you caring for them? How are your kids? What are you coping with? What's the extent of, of what you are coping with? And, and indeed, are you coping, but it's got to be done in a non prescriptive, human way that has genuine intention behind it rather than tick box midlife check in done.

So the relationship has to be ready for that conversation, without a doubt. The relationship has to be based on trust, and we're only going to allow someone in to go you know what, I'm actually struggling at the moment if they feel safe. And if they feel secure enough to have a conversation like that, if they think it's going to be held against them, as most women feel it will be or has been, they don't have it.

Michael Glazer
And so is the action point there, where the managers or the management to work on building trust,

Lucy Ryan
I think without a doubt, and I think that we need to go back to learn how to have proper compassionate conversations in the workplace that have a meaningful, how are you behind it? Because I think if we did that we would have so much less exiting, you know, obviously might my interest is in midlife women, but exiting of people in general from the workplace. So that's building improper trust between person and manager, which can often be quite shaky, very common, it's a manager who's the problem. So we've got to be able to have those. We know that most people leave their organizations because of their manager. So you know, we've got to be able to build in good midlife check ins with a trusted person within the organization.

Michael Glazer
Would you say strong trust between the two people having the conversation is enough? Or would you say that that's one of the elements, but also another element is for the manager to feel comfortable enough to have a conversation about midlife issues? Because I'm Oh, my goodness. Yeah, my guess is you can have trust in there's probably a portion of managers who just aren't comfortable having that conversation or don't know how to have that kind of conversation. Agree.

Lucy Ryan
It's asking a lot, isn't it? And also, you're asking to have a conversation about menopause that they might absolutely not want to have about midlife that they took if they're younger, they might have no experience of. But then it's also not just trust that you're absolutely right, that you can have trust but have difficulty with the conversation. But there's also got to be systemic flexibility behind that conversation. Because there's no point in me saying to you, you know what, Michael? I'm actually not coping. And I need some flexibility. And I need a bit of a break. I need to press pause for you to go sorry, loose eat? No, absolutely not possible. So it's a it's a big conversation to have. But it is needed. Yeah. So

Michael Glazer
I guess that's where it fits in is there's the relationship part. But as you said, there's the stomach part as well, which sounds like a real balancing act.

Lucy Ryan
It is a balancing act. It's a good it's a good way of looking at it. But therefore, if an organization wants to take the retention, and promotion of their female midlife executive seriously, they're going to actually consider all of this.

Michael Glazer
So considering all all the advice and your expert insights that we've talked about so far today, what's your top recommendation for companies that want to take action to improve inclusivity and support for women at this stage of their lives and their careers?

Lucy Ryan
My top piece of advice would be to take it seriously. You know, actually look at your own data, look at your organization, you know, perhaps you have no problem within your organization. So literally decide to take it seriously track up the pipeline, where are you losing women? Where are you retaining women? Ask women, what it's like to be a leader in the organization, have good, you know, good conversations. So the first thing would be to take it seriously. Without that, we're nowhere we're just paying lip service to it. And we've had enough of that over the years,

Michael Glazer
That I really like what you mentioned in passing us to ask them what it's like to be a leader in the organization. Yeah, because that's one of the, that's where the story begins, as it's one thing to look at the numbers. But getting that that firsthand account of what's experienced as a leader here may paint a very different picture.

Lucy Ryan
I agree. And I think it's it was Gloria Steinem, who said, every revolution starts with a conversation. And, you know, I'm still going to bang the drum that without good conversations of what's it like to be a leader here. And what's it like to be a female leader here? to no end other than to understand, take it seriously and to understand, then the actions will will come out of that, but without the conversation, the organization is nowhere. Lucy,

Michael Glazer 
I want to wrap up with the two questions I always wrap up with, and I feel like we've kind of tread on on this ground a little bit already. I do want to ask you, what you see is the greatest unmet well being need in the workplace today.

Lucy Ryan
I gotta tell you, Michael, you sent me this question. And I have spent days thinking about it. And every single day, I changed my mind.

It's giving me a lot of unmet well being me. So I'm opting for one. And I'm not doing actually for space to reflect one of the things so we're, you know, I'm a leadership coach. And one of the things that happens with almost every single client I coach is they don't have enough space to reflect. And it's not built into the work place. It's as if people are going to do it at home, or at the weekend. And so what happens particularly virtually is people bang from call to call to call to call to call, you know, I've got some nice coaching. So do 14, call virtual meetings back to back. So where do we reflect? Where do we get space to breathe? So I would really like that to happen.

Michael Glazer 
And for people who are listening, who are saying, yeah, that resonates with me, I don't have time to reflect, what would you say to them?

Lucy Ryan
I would say build it in deliberately to your diaries. And if you need to call rather than just put a blank in your diary, it which will get filled, call it something and, you know, build it intentionally, into your diary, and then ask yourself some very specific reflective questions at the start. I wrote a leadership book earlier before last and had some kind of very specific questions in there. So that people who aren't used leaders who aren't used to reflecting can start that process of it. Otherwise, people build in half an hour or an hour or two hours, their diaries and sit there and do more work. So I think it's a corporate muscle that we need to develop.

Michael Glazer
And, how often do you recommend and for how long?

Lucy Ryan
If you can do if you can start with an hour a week, I'd be really happy because as I say, it's, it's a muscle or we're used to being as busy. So someone says how are you we go busy, and that that's the muscle that gets worked and overworked space to breathe space to reflect is under work. So I would start with an hour a week. And whatever you need to call it call it then I would actually go to half a day a month, where you just go somewhere and you walk and you get out into nature. And you pose yourself some questions and you breathe and you get used to kind of walking and talking with yourself or with your coach. I don't mind but you breathe.

Michael Glazer 
And Lucy, finally, what does the phrase working with humans mean to you?

Lucy Ryan
I think you know, I've kind of touched on what I feel about it. I think we forget often that we are working with humans, which sounds really daft, doesn't it? But I think the organization is so busy with processes. We have jargon for everything. We have all the process going on, change processes, target operating models, we have more jargon than you can throw at a person every single day. And we forget that we've just got human beings with their own lives, difficulties, joys going on every day. And that means that we need to build compassionate conversations into our workplace.

---