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Transcript:

Helen: I'm delighted to welcome my guest this week, Jonathan Bond, who is Global Director of HR and Learning at the law firm Pinsent Masons. Jonathan spearheads a team of over 150 HR and Learning colleagues and is responsible for devising and implementing Pinsent Masons' people strategy to help guide the business towards its goals in line with their values, purpose and vision.

Jonathan is a trusted advisor to the leadership team, Chair of the firm's Nominations Committee, and a member of the firm's Global Inclusion Strategy Group, and he collaborates with the Board on the HR and Learning pillars of their business strategy. Under Jonathan's tenure, their HR and Learning team has been widely acknowledged as market-leading, winning awards including Best HR Team, Best HR Director, Best Talent and Inclusion Initiative.

And Jonathan launched Pinsent Masons' Mental Health Strategy, which includes the award-winning Mindful Business Charter, a practical framework and toolkit for rehumanizing the workplace. Currently, Jonathan has been leading the firm's work to attract and retain talent, a hot post-pandemic issue in the legal sector, and he's been pivotal in devising plans for the post-pandemic normal.

Welcome to The Business of Being Brilliant Jonathan!

Jonathan: Thank you, Helen. Thanks very much,

Helen: It's great to have you on the show, and I was chuckling as I was just reading and talking through your very impressive bio. I felt slightly like I was announcing the Oscars for the very impressive list of awards you and your team have collected! Congratulations.

Jonathan: Thank you. Yes, it's it's been a team effort, obviously, over quite a long period of time as well, so it's definitely not all down to me. It's down to a group of talented people in, in my team.

Helen: And when you look back on those awards, but also all the things that you've led and implemented in the firm, what are the things that you feel proudest of?

Jonathan: Yeah, I, I think the thing I'm proudest of is really the work we've done on diversity and inclusion and that's been something that I started a long time ago, possibly over 15 years ago when I first realized that that was going to be key to establishing an employee brand, making us who we are as a, as a business.

And so we took the first steps on, on looking at diversity, working out some priorities, in the early days setting up an LGBT group using the Stonewall Workplace Quality Index to measure how well we were doing. And once we've got some recognition from that, we had a foothold and then moved into other areas, so improving gender balance, senior level of the organization, more recently working on ethnicity. And the reason I, I really care about that and why it's so important to me is when people say to me, I wouldn't have joined this firm, or I wouldn't have stayed with this firm had it not been for its commitment to diversity. And you can see it's become part of the DNA of the firm. It's really made Pinsent Masons' what it is. It's made people want to want to work with us. It's made careers flourish. It's made people feel welcome and at home and included in the organization. So for me that's had a really long shadow of the work that we've done on diversity.

Helen: Yeah, that's great to hear. And wonderful that it's really becoming part of the day-to-day experience of colleagues in the workplace. It's not just a slightly separate, centrally led initiative that doesn't have an impact on people's experience. And I'm interested by what you said that actually from the early days you got that recognition from around the LGBT support and that gave you a foothold.

And it's sounds to me from that as though a successful approach for you has been, putting some things in motion, getting traction, showing the evidence, and that giving you the business' support to expand. Is that how you've been going about it?

Jonathan: Yeah, I think when you join an organization and you think about something like diversity, you've got to find somewhere to start, you need some sort of foothold. And when I joined, there were a couple of quite senior partners who were openly gay and I thought, you're the sort of people I can work with to set an example to the rest of the organization.

And now, I mean, no one would think very much at all of having a group like that now. But actually those 15 years have shown quite a marked change in culture and attitude across the sector. And so we were the first law firm even to be on the Stonewall Workplace Quality Index. So that was headline-grabbing at the time.

And so, like you say, the fact we were able to make progress, to demonstrate our credentials, to have a group to be more inclusive of young people entering the workplace who say that they were comfortable being open about their sexual orientation in Pinsent Masons, whereas they wouldn't have been in previous organization, quite quickly you could show that you'd made a difference as a result of this strategy and then yes, it was the time to look at a different aspect of diversity, saying, okay, look, look, look at the commercial benefit of what we've done on this. Let's now try and work on another area and also achieve commercial benefit there as well.

Helen: Yes. Yeah, that makes sense. And I can see how the external recognition adds to the general awareness of the work you're doing, the kind of culture you're looking to create and the progress you're making must be an important bit of signaling, what you're really about as a firm and what it's really like to work there.

Jonathan: Yes, it is. And the other thing that's important, of course, is that clients have become increasingly interested in this. And 15 years ago, I might say to partners we all need to work harder on inclusion. And the typical partner response would be, "Yeah, that sounds like quite a nice way for the HR people to spend their time which "is mildly dismissive, I suppose.

It wasn't discouraging, but it wasn't recognizing the partner's responsibility and role in this. But of course when clients come back to partners and say, "I want to know what your firm's doing on diversity and I want to know what you personally have done on it", partners really wake up and, and get very interested in the subject. And then they become really pleased that we have such a strong story to tell.

Helen: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Really interesting to hear how that shifted over the 15 years and people really seeing this now as core to the whole commercial strategy and the business strategy, not just something that runs as a nice to have' alongside 'it.

So what's been hard, what's been challenging? Has there been anything that you've had a go at that actually has been really hard to make progress on or not worked out as you've planned?

Jonathan: There's lots of things that I have a go at and I think it's important not to be too reserved and not to be too cautious and, okay the legal sector is probably not known for it's wide innovation, but I think it's important to, to try new things. And so last year, I decided, I had this instinct that we could create what I called an attrition risk dashboard.

And my instinct was telling me if we get the data and we look at lawyers, for example, who've got a high sickness, very busy, high utilization, and very low usage of holidays. If you put those things together, my instinct was telling me that those people, we are at risk of losing them to a competitor.

Because that does sort of make sense logically, and quite rightly one of my great team members said to me, "well, yes, that sounds as though it makes sense, let's run a proof of concept, shall we?" I agreed, then ran a proof of concept and it proved there was absolutely no correlation whatsoever between those factors and high attrition rate in lawyers!

So on one level you could say my idea was wrong, and you could say, the time we spent on that was worthless. But I don't see it that way. The way I see it is it was right to explore that instinct. . And once I discovered that on that occasion my instinct wasn't correct, that then led to a further conversation about, well what can we do with this information? How can we present attrition information better to the Board? And what other trends can we see? And we're now on a second iteration of that. So a bit like Edison on the light bulb: all these previous attempts, they're not failures, they're just sort of early prototypes, which ultimately lead to something more valuable.

So I have this enthusiasm. I don't really give up, and if something doesn't work, I'm, I'm more than happy to say to my team, "yeah, okay, that didn't work. Let's find something that will" and stay positive and try and build from that.

Helen: Yeah, that's really interesting. And I think, you know, encouraging that experimentation, trialing stuff, looking at what the data says about when you've had a go at something, when you've designed or implemented something. Does it support your hypothesis at the beginning, that's very scientific thinking, isn't it? And it's very growth mindset oriented. It's like, let's have a hypothesis, let's try something, let's test it, let's look at the data and then let's decide what we do from there, and I think that scientific experimentation can really help move you forward as a business.

Jonathan: It really can. And we're, we're helped actually by the fact our senior partner, Andrew Masraf is very interested in growth mindset. So he's, he's actually done some work with Matthew Syed, the former table tennis champion who has written books about growth mindset, and we've tried to build this thinking into our whole organization through learning and development programmes in every team.

And it's now entered the common parlance in the organization. So if you're talking to someone, a great insult you could give really would be say, "oh, well, I think you're displaying a bit of a fixed mindset there!" And we're all claiming to have growth mindset. And many people are demonstrating it, but we're all claiming to have it.

Helen: Yeah, it is great that it has entered the language and it has given people a way of constructively challenging one another in conversation. Are we thinking about all the possibilities? Are we, perhaps sticking a bit too hard to comfort zone or things we've done before?

Jonathan: It's even entered actually our partner promotions process recently, this phrase, and I think it's now a standard question to a partner, how have you demonstrated a growth mindset? And of course, some of the candidates aren't very keen on demonstrating weakness or failure. And I say to them when I'm coaching them, a really good answer is to show something that happened some time ago where something didn't work out. You learned a lesson and you discovered something you didn't know, and to show that you've taken that experience and it has made you a stronger person and you've built your resilience and you've learned from it and you've managed to be adaptable, that's demonstrating a growth mindset. And that makes you a much stronger candidate than never having any failure or or mishaps and most people get that.

Helen: Yeah, and I think that's great career advice for anyone listening whether they're thinking of, their own performance evaluation that might be coming up, or a promotion they want to go for, or another job offer they're considering it. It's really tempting to think we have to put our best shiniest self forward, the self that never fails, which we all know doesn't really exist, and much I guess humble and genuine and relatable to say, "well, actually, that I found really difficult, but this is what I took from it."

Jonathan: Agreed.

Helen: Yeah it really helps others have that kind of conversation. So what's on your agenda this year as HR Director? What are the top things, if we were talking in December, you'd most like to have achieved or made happen?

Jonathan: I think there's three things that are on my, on my top list. The first is that we have a new managing partner who starts on the 1st of May, Laura Cameron. And Laura is interested in talent, and so I, I want to build with her a talent strategy that's distinctive for the organization, that helps achieve her vision and a couple of members of my team who specialize in that area are really fired up with that, we've got a brainstorming meeting with Laura next week around that. So that's, that's one thing.

Another thing is to continue the work to attract and retain talent because attrition has been higher after the pandemic than previously. And so we have to work really hard to stay attractive as a brand to top talent, and to think about ways of, of keeping that talent.

And the third thing is still finding our way on the post pandemic the new normal in terms of ways of working. And I don't think any organization's completely got this nailed yet. I think we're still learning about where is the best place for people to work, what's the balance between home and office working? What's the best way of using the office? So I think we're continuing to experiment with those things and finding out the best combination of those.

Helen: Yeah, that sounds really interesting. And I know that the law sector as a whole, tell me if I'm wrong, but has in recent years experienced or witnessed quite high levels of lawyer burnout. So I'm sure that's been very front of mind in around your mental health and wellbeing strategies and obviously, quite intense periods of work, particularly if you work on transactions, for example, and, and long working hours.

So can you say a little bit more about how you are shaping the new normal for people? And also in the context of being a professional services firm, where effectively you are selling people's time and their expertise. So how are you striking the balance between trying to help the business achieve its goals and helping people work hard and at their best, but not overdo it, not get to overload and breaking point?

Jonathan: Yes.

Helen: And in the context of shifting, organizational habits!

Jonathan: Yeah, I think there's probably two things to mention in response to that question. One is that in terms of location, we are not being prescriptive across the whole organization, and I know some organizations have gone for this, "oh yes, you need to be in three days a week". We haven't said that. We've invited people to work out themselves what works best because I've seen a lot of organizations where people have been ordered to be in the office a certain number of days, and they actually haven't done that. And what do you do if they don't? So we're being a little bit more flexible about that right now.

The more deep-rooted answer to your question lies in the introduction of the Mindful Business Charter. So the Mindful Business Charter came about really about five years ago when Barclays said to us, we want to work with you on a mental health initiative. And rather than having it superficial, we thought about the way the clients work with lawyers.

We constructed this Charter and it's really what you could call it a common sense charter. So in the bad old days, someone in a big client would send an email on a Friday afternoon to a bunch of lawyers saying they needed a derivative agreement or whatever it was, effectively a hundred pages of drafting.

And they didn't say who should do it, when it was needed, who needed it. It was just a rather general instruction. And lawyers being very diligent, many of them would drop everything and spend their Friday evenings or their Saturdays drafting this thing only to find that it wasn't as urgent as it seemed.

So the Mindful Business Charter is all about being really clear about when is a piece of work needed? Who needs to do it? What are the key drivers? Not copying the world and his wife on the email chain. And picking up the phone when more nuanced conversation is required. And thanks to the Mindful Business Charter we've avoided the wasted time we used to have on these sort of interactions.

Clients are being clearer. And what's interesting is clients are respectful of lawyers' time. And they didn't realize quite how their instructions were leading to wasted time in the past. So it's really good for the clients as well as the lawyers. And it is necessary for lawyers to work extremely hard on occasions, and it is sometimes necessary for them to work at very unsociable hours and we accept that.

But what we don't accept is lawyers doing that as a matter of course when it's not necessary. So for me, launching the Mindful Business Charter has been part of a journey of being a lot more thoughtful about people's wellbeing; a lot more thoughtful about the need for rest periods; and the recognition that people can't just work flat out the whole time.

People's rest periods, the holidays, their weekends are actually very important to them personally, and they're very important in terms of their performance because they rest and recharge and get ready to do great work again, having had that rest.

Helen: Yes. That's fantastic that the Charter that you co-founded a few years ago, and I know has grown with many more companies signing up to the principles and the practice of the Charter is, is having such a positive impact.

Was it difficult to get clients involved in that conversation? Did you get a lot of pushback? Because when I talk to organizations about what I call their 'time culture' and how to minimize wasted time or overwork and, and help people work productively within reasonable parameters, that's often the first thing I hear is, "well, but the problem is that the client wants X and if we don't say yes, they'll go somewhere else". So how did you get clients on board?

Jonathan: Yeah. I mean, yes, clients can be very demanding and rightly so given the fee levels, they have every right to have high expectations. But I think we need to distinguish between high quality work and just mindless chasing and over-responsiveness. So I think it started in a really good place. The fact that it was Barclays, such a big written, respected name and big organization, and a big buyer of legal services. The fact that the top legal people in Barclays put the name to this along with Pinsent Masons and, and Addleshaw Goddards, that's a good start.

And then other banks were thinking, okay, well this is in line with our, our own commitment to wellbeing. And it's a natural extension of us trying to manage the wellbeing of our own people by managing the wellbeing of our supplier organizations. And so a number of banks picked this up and I think they realized this wasn't a reduction in the quality of the service. It was actually having bright, fresh people avoiding wasting their time. It was having their law firms working more efficiently for them. So a number of banks pick that up and then it expanded more widely. Yeah, you do get roadblocks and you do get some people say it saying, oh, it sounds like a slackers charter to us and so you need to demonstrate it's not at all. And actually I think Barclays said the quality of was as good if not better after implementing because it's just a more efficient way of working and a better understanding on both sides. And then naturally other law firms wanted to pick it up.

And I talked to people who are not involved at all. I talked to my brother-in-law who works in the nuclear industry and actually he asked me for a copy of it because he wanted to talk to his customers and his suppliers about a better way of working together based on these principles. So I think it has a potentially very wide adoption in many different sectors.

Helen: Yeah, it's something that I was aware of in my previous role, I think that was probably around the time it was in its first or second year or so. So it's been great to see it grow and I definitely, I mentioned it in my book as well behind me, The Future of Time as a great example of how across an industry, actually firms can collaborate on identifying and implementing better ways of working that help people deliver perhaps quite stretching business targets, but in a way as you say, that doesn't leave them completely depleted, but actually leaves them with some energy for the days and the weeks ahead.

And I think what's really great about the Mindful Business Charter that it sounds like the conversations that it engenders are all about the nuts and bolts of how work gets done. The day-to-day commissioning, resourcing, timing, scoping of work ,response times, it's, it's, it's those kinds of - maybe small but very impactful in the long run - conversations that can really help change people's experience of delivering in a high pressure environment.

Jonathan: Yes. I agree.

Helen: Yeah. And so you lead a big team globally, for a big organization, and obviously a very broad agenda, all the HR and all the Learning, including all the talent stuff. So how do you manage your own time as a senior leader? What works well for you and what's been perhaps work in progress or, stuff that you maybe have seen the need to adapt?

Jonathan: Yeah, you find your way of working, don't you? And so I, I think I probably, it's fair to say I'm pretty efficient in the way I work. I try and avoid time-wasting activity and endless admin. I have a really good PA who helps me a lot with that.

I'm quite good at forgetting about work when I'm not there, which I think is quite a healthy habit. So for example, when I go on holiday, I'm really clear that I am on holiday and so I don't read work emails when I'm on holiday. My PA checks them and she redirects them; in an absolute crisis she might give me a call, but that doesn't happen very often. And I think that makes me more effective.

And it also means people know where they stand because I think there's a number of people who go on holiday but they're still dipping in and out, and their colleagues get confused about, well, is he working? Is he not working? And so I think it's best to be clear.

Things like having an active life outside work help me as well, they take my mind off work.In terms of my habits that aren't so good, well, because I'm, because I'm quite keen on having a sort of neat and tidy inbox, I think I respond too quickly to emails. And I know I do that because quite often people send me a further response saying, thank you for coming back to me so quickly. So what that's really telling me is I didn't need to do that! I could have perhaps bundle the emails in one and, and answer them in one go once a day or non-urgent things. But of course if you've got a cluttered inbox and you've got hundreds of things there, sometimes it's quite hard to work out what are the urgent ones, what are not.. So I have this habit of just clearing them when I come back to the desk after meetings, but I think it does result in me sometimes clearing things that didn't need to be cleared quite so quickly and perhaps dealing with some problems that might have gone away had I ignored them. It just goes against the grain for me just to ignore stuff! So I'm still finding my way on that. Even after many years of work, I still wouldn't say I perfected the art of dealing with those type of things.

Helen: Yes. That's really interesting to hear. And because we've all sped up so much over the last 10, 20 years, when I think back over my own 25 year plus career, I remember somebody showing me for the first time in my first role what an email looked like and how it worked and how you sent it.

And it's entertaining to think of that now when we think of the volume that lands in our inbox daily. But it, it also sounds from what you're saying, and this is something I know but it's interesting to hear you talk about it, how your own choices, like whether you respond something on holiday, how quickly you respond to an email, are very much noticed and send little signals intentionally or unintentionally to other people. And as you said, switching off on holiday gives people permission themselves to do the same and also make some of those boundaries very clear. Has that been something you've been consciously attentive to? Do you see the evidence of that?

Jonathan: Yeah, so a couple of pieces of learning I've had over the way. My first employer was Nat West and I went on the Nat West time management course probably in about 1989. And the key principle of that course - of course this is all pre-email, pre-technology era, we're all working with paper and phones - and the message of that course was 'touch and go''.

That's what they said, touch and go'. I said, well, what, what, what do you mean? They said, when a piece of paper lands in your inbox don't half read it and put it away for later. Make a decision. So you've got to make a decision. You're either going to read it then or you're going to put it in the bin or you're going to give it to someone else to do or, or you're going to dictate a reply. But make your decision and do it. Don't just have about 30 bits of paper that you've half read and half thought about what you're going to do. And so that's slightly stuck with me and that principle, it works, say 80 to 90% of the time in the email era, but there's probably 10% of the time where it doesn't quite work so you need to think again.

Something I read most weeks is the business section of the Sunday Times, and Julian Richer, founder of Richer Sounds, has an article, very thoughtful, very successful person in business. And he says if you get an email from a colleague that's just to you, answer it, don't ignore it and answer those emails.

Everyone, every internal colleague deserves an answer to their email. And so if any person in Pinsent Masons emails me, I, I do reply. Now, sometimes it's just to say I'm going to ask someone else to look at it. But I try and give them the, the respect and and dignity of, of replying because I think that sends a tone.

Going onto the holiday thing, I am keen that people in my team feel that this is a sort of organization, this is sort of team where you are allowed to take a holiday. You are allowed to have a weekend, you are allowed to turn off in the evening. It very rarely makes people more effective in their performance by being available. Maybe if you're leading on a massive corporate deal but in most roles it doesn't make someone better at their jobs to be constantly available on holiday. It possibly makes them worse rather than better. So I do think it's true to say that someone who's leading a big department, yes people will notice what you say but they will notice with more attention what you do. And I'm very open about some of my working styles, so people know when I'm on holiday, I am on holiday, and they respect that. And I think most of them, they, they welcome that.

And actually it also gives some my team of able deputies a chance to step up, do things they might not ordinarily do. And the, the fact is whether I like it or not, most of the time, they do it just as well as I would've done that job!

Helen: Yeah, that's a great point and I remember hearing another HR leader say the same, that actually, and I think it was in their context, they had to take a period of extended leave two, three months out, that actually it gave their direct reports just a great opportunity to take on some additional responsibilities and practice stepping up into a bigger role, et cetera. So, set up the right way it can be a fantastic, development opportunity for people as well as helping you to switch off.

And I love hearing about the pre email era NatWest time management course. I was just thinking as you said that that would be so much fun to go back and look through the contents and remind us of a world before things got so, so fast and digital.

Jonathan: They gave us a Franklin: that might not make any sense to, to many people, but a Franklin after the seven habits of effective business people, Benjamin Franklin, so the Franklin was a bit like a Filofax. So it had a diary that you put all your appointments in, but it had this kind of action page.

And every meeting we had after training, people say, :right, put it in your Franklin. This is the action point you all need to do". So it was a sort of pre-digital way of getting people to organize their time, but also to organize their task list in a consistent way. And it, it was actually quite effective.

My friends started making fun of me when I had had my Franklin as a home diary as well, and produced this thing on social occasions, which was perhaps taking it a little bit too seriously. But it was very, very effective way of organizing ourselves.

Helen: Yeah, that's brilliant. Sounds like the team equivalent of a Filofax for the world of work. I, I think you should dig your Franklin out and bring it along to your next team meeting and pretend to be using that and see people's reactions!

Jonathan: I am afraid in one of the many clear outs of the home I think the Franklin was consigned to the recycling bin, I'm afraid.

Helen: Oh, sounds like a great artifact. And, and so talking about you in your role, and obviously it's a role you've held at Pinsent Masons for many years. According to... I researched this according to Dr. Who, aka Peter Capaldi, three years is the longest time anyone should spend in a job, apparently. And some research I found that looks at average job tenure in the UK said on average people stay about five years.

Now I stayed 15 years in my consulting role so I know a little bit firsthand about the choices you make and, and what might encourage you to stay or consider moving on. How have you stayed 17 years? What are the challenges and opportunities that that length of service has presented you with?

Jonathan: It's a great question and because the truth is I expected to do the role probably about five years when I started it. But a number of things then happened, you see, so firstly, I discovered I love the job and I really liked the culture of the organization, so it's a hard organization to leave.

The nice thing is headhunters always ring HR directors of law firms, you have a sort of steady stream of, of opportunities that come your way and you, you look at these and evaluate them and think Is that any better than what I already have? And are the prospects any better? And I've almost always thought the answer was no.

It's interesting how we have a lot of boomerangs. We have so many people, including my own team, who went somewhere else, discovered the grass really wasn't greener and, and came back. So the key things that have kept me are, firstly the firm's grown massively. So when I started, it was less than a third of its current size, and it was just really a UK focus. So it's a much bigger firm; my team is four to five times the size it was. So that's a very different challenge to lead a team of that size.

I've been lucky, I've found and retained great people in my team who are wonderful to work with and we have very deep rooted business relationships and we've achieved a lot.

But then of course you have new leaders every few.. So I'm now on my third managing partner, and every time you have a managing partner, it's almost like joining a new organization because the agenda is totally different.

And then of course, you could have different phases of your tenure. So my first phase was about building an HR team and building some sort of HR strategy. The next ten year was about the global financial crisis and the stabilizing the organization. The next phase was about the merger we did with McGrigor's, a lot of work around that. And then there were other phases; obviously a big phase was the pandemic era, a totally different challenge than none of us ever had before. So that's like doing a new job being in this strange world where we're in totally uncharted waters. And for me, I really welcome those challenges.

The other great thing Pinsent Masons has done for me is it's given me a lot of things beyond the ken of an HR director. So asking me to chair the the permanent Board Nominations Committee which is a different type of challenge. So that's an honour to be asked to do that and it's a very interesting challenge. So I, I think really there are very few reasons to leave Pinsent Masons; it has given me growth, internationalization, a great team, different eras, different leaders, fresh challenges.

It's kept me fresh. Obviously the challenge is, do you become stale when you've done the same job in the same organization, but it doesn't feel like the same organization, it doesn't feel like the same job. And I hope this comes through in what I've said today, I feel a certain freshness, I feel an enthusiasm for what I do, I don't feel jaded at all. And so I'm not particularly tempted. It's nice to be asked, but I'm not particularly tempted by the other opportunities that are out there right now.

Helen: Yeah, that's great to hear. And I love how you look back over your time there and can see these different phases and that each phase has presented different opportunities. And that's a great way, I think for people listening, if they're pondering where they are now and whether they feel it's time for a move or not, or just if they're reflecting on their career generally to think about, well what phase are they in now? And can they see where that's leading and what might another phase look like and how might they, to your point, take on other responsibilities perhaps that will help that feel like a new phase and offering new growth?

But great to hear you talk about how much you've enjoyed doing it and all the different agendas, I guess, and strategies you've been leading there.

And a question I ask all my guests towards the end is, is there a particular resource that has helped you in your career that you would recommend to others? And that resource can be a book or a video or a talk, or even just a mentoring conversation of some kind, something that's been significantly helpful to you in your career?

Jonathan: Yes. Two things to mention. One very recent thing is someone introduced me to the Blinkist app and I find that very useful because every day I get sent today's Blink and in five minutes it gives you a really good summary of a recent book. And of course if the book's so fascinating, you then go and get the book and read the whole thing.

But the fact is, we're all time poor. So to have these really good summaries in a user-friendly way of some key thinking, both business and wider than that, that's a very useful facility.

In terms of books one thing I found very helpful both for my own mentality and also when dealing with other people was the Steve Peter's book, The Chimp Paradox. And the reason I like that so much is that it's based obviously in solid research, the fact that Steve Peters has worked with top sportsmen Stephen Gerrard, Victoria Pendleton and people like that. And I think when most people, when you discuss this concept, it really rings true. So this idea that we all have a chimp, we all have an inner critic that's sitting on our shoulders.

So for example, I went to the Pinsent Masons global partner conference in Barcelona last November, and it was my first big conference post pandemic. There were 450 people there, and I knew probably two thirds of them. But my chimp was saying to me on the way there, "oh, there'll be a lot of people there you don't know. There'll be a lot of people there who'll be wanting to moan at you for the HR service. Or will anyone really want to talk to you?" So this was what my chimp was saying. Knowing the theory of the book and, and knowing this helped me think, "ah, no, that's my chimp speaking; that's my chimp."

And so once you can name it and understand it, it helps you manage it. And so I reminded myself of that and I calmed my spirit. And of course the reality was very pleasant! Lots and lots of people wanted to greet me with a bear hug and a warm hello, talk to me about, and there were very few moans and there were plenty of people I knew, and it was a very happy experience.

So knowing the theory of of a book like that helped me personally and often when I'm in conversation with some quite senior people in the organization and , as lawyers can in particular, catastrophizing I introduce them to this thinking of the Chimp paradox and, and help them categorize the reason why they've got this negative, critical voice and the fact that it's not necessarily representative of reality, it's just a a natural fear that we probably all have. So for me, that was a very helpful book for a number of reasons.

Helen: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. It is a fantastic book and you've summarized some of its key thinking really well there. And it's helpful to know, we do all have chimps. They do fairly universally say negative things to us, so just being able to label it as a chimp and recognize it, as you say, gives us more options on how we respond to it as well. So that's a great recommendation, thank you.

And how can listeners connect with you or follow the work that you are leading after the podcast if they'd like to do that?

Jonathan: Yeah. Probably the easiest way is on LinkedIn. So if people either invite to connect with me or just find my ... I mean, I'm not that prolific but every week or so if I speak at a conference or attend something or I'd post something, I'm always interested in what other people have posted there too. So that's probably the easiest way.

Helen: Okay, brilliant, thank you. We'll pop a link in the show notes as well and also to the book you mentioned. Jonathan, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. It's been wonderful to hear about how you've led the HR and Learning agenda at Pinsent Masons and congratulations on all the fantastic support and services that you've put in place to help colleagues. Best wishes for the coming year!

Jonathan: Thanks Helen, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Thanks very much.