🎧 Subscribe on your favourite platform Apple | Spotify | TuneIn | YouTube

In today’s episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we welcome Alex Bailey, CEO and Cofounder of Bailey & French . Alex dives into the critical importance of human-centric leadership in the age of AI. 

She shares insights on keeping the “human switch” turned on, balancing technology with essential people skills, and fostering psychological safety to unlock innovation. Alex also discusses how purpose and authenticity are key drivers in creating meaningful, impactful workplace cultures.

🎓 In this episode, Alex discusses:

1. Why psychological safety drives innovation

2. The role of purpose in impactful leadership

3. How to balance technology with human skills

4. How social imagination sets humans apart from AI

Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM is a complete cloud solution that connects every human resource process—and every person—across your enterprise.

We help you create a community where people feel valued, heard, and like they belong.

With a single user experience and data model, seamless processes, and AI-embedded infrastructure, Oracle Cloud HCM can help you redefine what best looks like for your people.

Chris Rainey 0:00

Hey, Alex, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm good. Thank you, Chris. It's lovely to see you. Nice to finally connect. And so where are you today? Because I know you're in a mix of like traveling US Europe. Where are you tuning in from?

Alex Bailey 0:12

I'm at my home base in Sussex today, but I split most of my time between London and Texas. At the moment,

Chris Rainey 0:18

Texas, so it's like two extreme weather conditions. Yeah, really quickly, we'll get into your background and journey. But why Texas this? It's one of the

Alex Bailey 0:30

states that's got the highest level of economic development and growth at the moment, in the US and mid right, in the mid market, mid time zone. It's a really good place to base yourself if you're actually expanding your operations like we are. So yeah, really lovely place to be. Shouldn't

Chris Rainey 0:47

be giving away the secrets. How many joking? Quite

Alex Bailey 0:52

hard to set up there. So so I don't think it's I'm not too worried before

Chris Rainey 0:56

we jump in, tell everyone a little bit more about your background and your journey to where we are, and what do you do now?

Alex Bailey 1:03

Sure, yeah, so I'm a psychologist and occupational psychologist in professions, but I worked internally in a couple of large organizations, Aviva and American Express in the FS industry, as in an organizational effectiveness role, which gave me opportunity to work right the way across the employee life cycle within the HR department, but actually quite a lot of leeway, innovation around looking at what can make things better, which is really what I love. And then, having had some kids, I decided to expand my reach more broadly, setting up my own business, Bailey and French, and that was 10 years ago. So we're in our 10th anniversary year. Now we've expanded and grown organically from from nothing. So built from scratch. We have 30 people in our team in the UK, and then 130 psychologists delivering for us in all regions of the world. And we work right away across all markets and all industries around, humanizing the world of work. So that vision is what really drives us and drives our purpose through all of our work and has done for many years around leadership, performance, induction, recruitment, all different aspects of the employee life cycle, really just helping people be their best and their best as a species, for the planet as well. So really extending what that means for us in terms of World of Work. Love

Chris Rainey 2:21

that. Well, firstly, congratulations. I know how hard it is to start from nothing. I started this in my bedroom nine years ago, and kind of slowly scaled from there. So congratulations to you and the team.

Alex Bailey 2:34

Thank you. I've been watching your journey. I mean, I'm in aberration, so I'm really pleased to be here.

Chris Rainey 2:38

It's, I think a lot of people, as you were probably experts. They like the idea of doing something like this, and then they realize how hard it is. So anyone who I meet that made it, you know, even five years in, let alone 10, it speaks volumes to your resilience and your commitment and your drive and your purpose.

Alex Bailey 2:58

It does, and that drives me for sure. I don't think I'd have got through what I have done without that purpose driving me all the way. So that perseverance just got to keep

Chris Rainey 3:06

going. Yeah, and I can imagine it like me. It's always interesting, because there's always something new being thrown at HR leaders and the profession, right? Whether it's a pandemic, pandemic, whether it's social injustice, whether it's di backlash right now, whether it's aI which we can talk about, this is like a constant evolution of challenges and what it means to be a HR leader in this day and age. So I'm assuming that's something that you and the team have also had to keep up to date and ahead of. Yeah,

Alex Bailey 3:36

we have, and I've got to say we actually, we really love that, because we're out there very much talking to our clients every day. We're hearing those trends. And because our clients across lots of different markets and industries, we can kind of feel a new topic or trend emerging as it starts to come out with new questions. People are asking us, how to apply this, how to embed this into a new kind of area of the business. And so I feel like we're very good at then very quickly sharing that with other people and saying, who else is having this issue, who else is talking about this topic, and actually building that market intelligence and that conversation, that ongoing conversation in a learning community, because that's really important to me is that we stay, you know, where our clients are at, because the world is changing so rapidly. And, you know, I think certainly the the last five years have really accelerated and amplified, you know, the amounts of change that are going on in lots of different areas of the world, but it's really drawn me back to almost like, that's why it's so important to write, know who we are, and hold on to and harness who we really are, because there's so much change going on around us, it's easy to just get swept along with The next big thing, and not focus on the outcomes you really need

Chris Rainey 4:43

to achieve. I think that's a good segue to the first question I was gonna ask you, because you mentioned before about we need to help our people organizations keep their humans switched on. Could you elaborate on what you mean by that?

Alex Bailey 4:54

Yeah, and I think, you know, I talk about this a lot events when I've been talking with audience. In front of me, and can get the real feedback when you say to people, do you know what I mean? When you say, if you're in a shop or you're buying something from someone, you can tell whether someone's got their human switched on or not. And everybody nods. They all know what I mean, but there's no switch on anyone's head. You know? It's just that sense that we have as human beings, that ability to know whether someone is actually listening to you, whether they're actually valuing what you say, whether they're really trying to understand and support and help a good outcome from whatever interaction you're having. And that's what we mean by kind of keeping our human switched on. Because in this day and age, I think we're seeing more and more, and I'm certainly seeing more from my teenage children, is an ability for them to be in the room, but not really switched on at all, because they are, you know, attending to lots of different messages on devices, trying to be part of group conversations in things. And we really need to understand what we're paying attention to and also what we're being distracted by, and move that distraction away so that we can be our best human selves, because I think otherwise, become a bit flimsy and a bit flimsy and a bit flaky across too

Chris Rainey 6:04

many areas. Yeah, is that something with the age of technology that you're seeing is becoming more of a challenge for people, 100% 100%

Alex Bailey 6:11

I think it is and an opportunity too. But, you know, I do think it's a challenge, because what, I guess, the My biggest worry with it is that actually we're becoming less social. So even though, in the last six months, I've seen a huge explosion of in person events happening all over the world, people are wanting to be back together in in person conferences. And there's just a conference every day, isn't there at the moment? Um, in every profession. But you know, I think what I'm seeing, though, is is a lack of, certainly in New Generations wanting to have dialog. And that's really worrying, because, you know, conversation, and good conversation that allows us to have, you know, good feedback conversations, good challenging conversations, good innovative conversations. That comes from having skills in having conversations. And so if we're not actually skilled at talking to people, because we're not doing it as much, and we think that texting is talking, and it's not. It's not using the same muscles in our brain, in a in the way we use our body, our non verbal communication. We're actually, over time, we're steadily decreasing in our ability to use skills. And I think we all saw that a lot in the pandemic, when certain countries across the world had lockdowns and they weren't able to be in the presence of others, to have conversations. So conversations happen differently, and we're communicating differently online. And actually we lost a lot of those skills, and when we went back into an environment where we were present with people, I don't know if you found it, but certainly I did, and people were talking about how tired they were because they were back in that in present communication mode, which we'd actually relaxed out of Yeah, and stopped using all those skills, and they're really critical human skills. So yeah, that's what worries me at the moment, is that that's kind of eroding with this new tech coming in to kind of replace aspects of our lives.

Chris Rainey 7:55

Yeah, it's really interesting, right? Because with the evolution of technology and AI and analytics, etc, those power skills are becoming even more important because we can basically automate a lot of the work and tasks and admin that we did before to actually have more meaningful conversations. But then now, do you have the right skills to be able to even have those don't like the word soft skills? Normally use the word like power skills as it were to be able to do that. So it's kind of like people thinking that that's going to be replaced. I'm like, no, no, that's this is going to become even more important when you think about creativity and communication and the human centric side, like that's going to be where companies are really going to separate themselves and have success. It is. And

Alex Bailey 8:41

you know, you look at where people are developing kind of digital skills taxonomies for the large sways of their organization, and actually, in many cases, some of the human skills development is only being reserved for leaders. I don't know if you've noticed programs. It's all about leadership and managers, but everybody needs those skills, and probably more so than ever before. Is it that we've got to scale to every single person? And so I love it. I'm actually getting to work with several clients at the moment who are all about that reach. Reach to everybody, everyone in their organization, no matter where they are, and almost more importantly, if they aren't in front of a PC or a computer, the people that are working in in complex environments where, actually they need their human skills, and they can't rely on any kind of tech to back them up at all. So, you know, people who are out driving, or people who are working in retail or hospitality, you know, there's, there's a real challenge there to develop that, that that customer centric human skill base, and make sure that it's not just reserved for leaders to deal with challenges when they arise is, oh, deal with them, you know, in the most human way possible. But actually, we've got to extend that to everybody, yeah,

Chris Rainey 9:46

and then that, and that part is where square technology can help, because it allows us to create customized learning at scale and reach people that we just couldn't do before, without things like AI to be able to do that, that that wasn't possible. To reach those front line workers, to reach those people on the road, in the trucks, in the warehouses, like before, it was so expensive because we was doing it just for that top team, as you just said earlier, and and we couldn't do it. So we can leverage it, but we just got to be very careful about what the line is between an AI interaction versus a human interaction, and where should, how far do we go? Because, you know, you know, if someone's having a challenge around mental health and well being, we want them to be talking to, to be directed to someone, a human, to help them, right? Yes, there's some resources, but you've got to be super careful. And I'm seeing companies make that mistake now where people are asking questions that are, you know, in house AI self service agent, and they're not reaching the person they need, because it's trying to self serve too much, almost to those people. So we need to be careful about that. 100%

Alex Bailey 10:51

we do need to be careful, and we also need to be careful that we know what our human differentiators are, and that we don't make assumptions of what they are. Because I think certainly from the research that we've done over the last few years, is if you ask anyone what it means to be human, I'm typically get two responses, empathy and compassion. But if you've seen any of the bots that I've seen, they do empathy and compassion better than humans. So you know, there's, there's a real difference there in terms of really understanding what our human differentiators are, and we've been looking at some, some really interesting research around what what humans do that AI can't do so to help us feel more confident in our human selves. And there's this aspect around social imagination, where people actually are able to imagine things together in a dialog, and that can be online, or it can be together in person, but actually the intuitive leaps that people make where you build, literally just building on each other's ideas in the same way we're having this conversation, you know, you're sparking ideas in my head about a book I've read or someone I've spoken to, or my brother's friends, you know, party or something that's happened recently. We have, as humans, the ability to tap into this really unique layers, depth, layers of experience that we've had, living that AI will never be able to tap into. But if we can do that together in groups, and we can build on each other's ideas, intuitive leaps, having those aha moments together that leads to a consequence, an outcome, an opportunity, an innovative or creative idea. There's no way AI can do that, and that's what I've been talking about with with some groups recently. And it's just it feels so important that this, this ability that we have, is something that we do all the time, subconsciously, in every conversation, in every group and every conference. But we don't attune ourselves to actually what we're doing and track what those intuitive leaps are, where they've come from. What is it that's giving us those triggers, and what's the psychological safety that we have that allows everybody to feel they can have a voice and they can say that crazy idea or the thing that is in their head, and they're thinking, I really shouldn't say that, but actually, yeah, it's safe enough I can, you know, and that's that's something I think that that we're all grappling with is creating that environment where people can have a voice.

Chris Rainey 13:03

Yeah, I love the social imagination. I love that because I always struggle with the team to put to put words to it. Sometimes you need to give people the language to have a conversation. You just gave me that. And we, every Monday, we all come in person as a team, and it's more also a creative exercise to talk about content, ideas, challenges we're having. And to your point, we kind of bounce off each other and build on top of that and trying we have, obviously, we have done that before in zoom, but it just, it's just not the same. There's something about being together as a group and bouncing off each other, and it just sort of like is so hard to describe. But, and that, again, I love the fact that you're saying that's something that AI, you know, you can't really replace that with and that's one of the reasons, even though we're building Atlas copilot, our AI assistant for HR leaders, we're still not removing our face to face events. So people like you've got this SaaS company, even in the SaaS platform, you can see our face to face theater round table was like, why have you got physical events throughout the whole of next year? I'm like, because we're not going to. We're not going to replace that part, because that part is really important. And all of the CH rose that we just got back from Merck in New Jersey, we had 100 search rows there for two days, and everyone walked away being like, having those aha moments. And you have that because someone may say something to your point that sparks an idea, or you makes you reflect on something all of a sudden, as a group, you kind of CO create something, and

Alex Bailey 14:24

it's because it comes from that fabric, that really rich fabric that you have as a human that you can't, you can't replicate it, because it's everything around us. It's our human experience of everything, ideas, challenges, smells, you know, plants. It's absolutely everything that makes up our human life, and so that can't be replicated. And it, you know, there's, you can't program it into anything that will be able to access the amount that we contain in our brains and the files and folders of our memories that that come out of nowhere, you know. And there's. Stores of memories that, you know, we can access many, many years after things have happened that we have never thought about, but because something triggers it with, you know, a smell or a sight or even some shade of light outside, you know, such, such richness, but we just take it for granted, and that subconscious constantly kind of overriding us to think that that's just, you know, it's just part of who we are, but bringing that to our conscious attention, recognizing what we do actually in organizations, we can create and in conferences, whether they're online or in person, we can create situations where we actually invite people to be socially imaginative together and track it. Because when we bring it to the forefront of our attention. We can do it even better.

Chris Rainey 15:41

Yeah, socially, imagine you, you got some really good liners on here. Socially magic. If together. I love exceeding all of these. I really, I would love to understand, we obviously have to do a whole another episode on it to understand the science behind that. You know what's really happening in the brain during those moments, because you see so many companies going really far in the opposite direction, my worry is, and I suppose that's a good question for you, what do you think the consequences for companies are going to be if they don't address this now, as they go too far into the digital rabbit hole and lose that human connectiveness along the way.

Alex Bailey 16:24

Well, I think there's two things. I think they will lose people, but I think they will lose people in two ways. They will lose their people in the organization who want to work in an organization where they can have a contribution that's recognized and they feel valued as a human in that organization. And I think they'll also lose customers, because customers also want the human experience. And so I think those two is what really is going to be driving this kind of future of work where the AI and the tech actually advances, and it needs to advance at the same level as those human skills. And really, if you think about, you know, CHROs and HR leaders, they are the ones that actually lead so much change in organizations. They are the ones that really have to champion that mirroring of digital and human skills into the future, whatever that future is, to avoid it from becoming too one sided in any one

Chris Rainey 17:12

direction. Yeah, it feels like we're going to go full 360 we started out with the full human experience connectiveness. We've gone through this digital where we tried to kind of being used technology to scale some of these things, and now we're basically one of the unique differentiators of companies now, actually, is going to be the human interaction. So sound like we're going for 360 back around again?

Alex Bailey 17:35

So I think people often talk about it, and I'm this, that's the thing, though, isn't it? On the maturity curve, you hear people say, Well, you know, we need to move to being a skills based organization, but until they really understand what that means. You know, it takes a while to unpack it. And I think at the moment, I'm still hearing people say, you know, we need to match our digital with our human skills. But I don't know if everyone really understands what that means, because when I when I dig a little deeper, the common response is, oh, we need to have more compassion and empathy. And I'm like, Well, you know, that really isn't enough. That's not our only differentiator. We have a real interconnectedness and an interdependence on each other. And you know, the reason, when we're in person that we get so much more rich experience is because we have mirror neurons in our brain. We actually mirror the experience of the emotion of the people we're talking to. Our body. Wants to do that. That's how we're that's how we're built and structured and designed. So when we have that experience, we get a real rush. We feel great when someone's feeling great, we want to feel great with them. And so we're missing all of that lovely mirror neuron experience when we're online. So that's why we kind of get that big rush of it when we're in person. We need to create those opportunities for that, remembering that it's really important

Chris Rainey 18:45

what it's so interesting to say, because Shane and I, we did, like, during the pandemic, we had decent row online workshops. We would have like, 30 to 56 rows. And we do, like, Breakout Rooms in zoom and stuff like that. And we kept saying, Shane and I, people just aren't be having the same type of conversations, they're not opening up, they're not being vulnerable, they're not challenging each other. It felt so transactional, and we didn't understand why we're like, well, there's no difference between the format the people in the room. It's purely just the the ones digital and one's physical. So to your point, that's super interesting that you just shared that because that I see it face to face, people were really vulnerable. They challenge each other to open up, and they share things they probably didn't said they didn't intend when they went in a room to do so they felt safe to do so. And they come out of it being like, Oh, wow. Like, you know, that was a lot, but it was, it was a moment for me to really be vulnerable, but also challenge and rethink and be playful and be playful.

Alex Bailey 19:43

The one thing that's really missing is that that kind of playfulness, the happy joy, the silliness, that actually we can be as humans, and that's really important too. And it almost feels like it's become a luxury, doesn't it? And when I talk to groups as well, they say, you know, having time to imagine a new future, to do some being. Positioning to do some strategy work. It feels like such a luxury, like time is so pressurized, and everyone has less and less and less less time. But if everyone actually looked at the time they spent on their device, they'd realize that they do actually have tons of time. So I keep checking myself, like, if I've got no time, then how did I have that many hours on Instagram last week? Like, there's no way that I have not got time I can it's about where I choose to focus my time and attention. And I think choice is going to become the number one thing that matters going forwards is where do I choose to spend my time? Where do I choose to focus my attention? Where do I choose to spend my money? You know, choice is going to become really central to our meaning and purpose of how we want to live as humans. I

Chris Rainey 20:41

think I had to get a bit more serious about that last year because I felt feeling overwhelmed. I'm sure, like most people, where I just felt like I could never turn off, because I know I got my WhatsApp messages, my slack messages, my my monday.com notifications, my zoom, my email, my phone, and I was just like, never ending, just barrage of things. And I've got a six year old daughter, and I, to your point, I think you mentioned earlier in the conversation, I felt like even when I was in the room, I wasn't present with her, so I just started to just box things off, like, these times, just block it out in my calendar and turn off my phone as soon as I get in the house. Just just like, just have to be, like, super intentional. Or, as you can sort of just drown in, in everything. And I've just, you know, for me, it led to anxiety, feeling really overwhelmed, burning out. I was like, what's going on? Like, and I was just always on all the time. So now I kind of sat down with my PA and was like, okay, and my co founder, Shane, and I was like, we need to figure out I can't sustain this. Because I literally, I'm not working out. I'm eating unhealthy. My sleep is a mess, basically. So like, now I have a really structured day, like, 630 in the morning, I got gym. Don't talk to me. I'm there, don't block anything, right? Have a personal trainer, even, even now for accountability lunch times. And that sounds silly, I block lunch times out because I used to just, Oh, there's another spare gap. And then all of a sudden, I found it halfway through the day I haven't even eaten. That may sound silly, but I literally block that out as well. And then when I get home, there's a block in my calendar that for these three hours I'm spending with my daughter. I'm picking up from school. When I come home, have fun, eat family as a, dinner as a eat dinner as a family, and then after that, 8pm if I got some US client dinner, I can, I can jump back online, but I need to have that structure. It's

Alex Bailey 22:34

really hard. And it's, I think it's really hard for people, particularly if they're business owners or business leaders, when they've got opportunities, because you love

Chris Rainey 22:41

always an opportunity. There's always so addictive, right? But also, if

Alex Bailey 22:45

you're a good person and you care about other people, and actually what you're doing is really supporting other people, that can also kind of drive that overdrive, and that stuck on, on because you want to, you want to make other people happy, you want to help them. And I think sometimes that can drive us to, yeah, not, not put ourselves at the center, and our health obviously has to come first. So I have to remind myself about all the time. I think it's really, really difficult. But yeah, in this world, I don't know, there's a book called indestructible, that's, that's fantastic book about, you know how you know the people who are distracted just almost constantly bombarding and following whatever's in front of them and being led by that? You know you're not really living your own life. Living your own life. You're not actually determining what you want to do and what you care about, and it's that choice being consciously aware of it so important. Yeah,

Chris Rainey 23:29

one of the things I've also found that led to, and I've seen that from interviewing some of the world's most successful leaders, is they plan time also, which I also do to to be in the moment, to take a step back and just reflect, right? Because, how? Because if I think that I'm going to do that during the day, that's just not going to happen. So actually, having time, which is for me, not typically, is Wednesdays, I have the day mainly blocked out, and it's just a day for me to just assess where we are, where we're going, how like and just without any distractions, no meetings, nothing and just be able to do that. And I get I make such some of the most important decisions I've ever made is because I'm blocking out the time to actually be thoughtful about the business, where we are, where we're going, and also incorporate family in that time, in terms of where, we're at, and if you don't make that time, it's very different. If you think you're just going to make good decisions throughout the day without actually being thoughtful about it, it's not going to happen as well. So, and

Alex Bailey 24:33

that's the thing, you know, and if you don't have control over if you don't have a lot of accountability over your your role, autonomy over your role, I should say, then, actually, it's really, really hard to do that, because you're just focusing on outcomes, activities. How much of this can I do in a time, in a day? And you know, as I said before, we've almost got this, this amazing, luxurious leadership level that has the chance to do those things. But even now, I would say leaders have less of that time. And. Struggle more, and actually they worry about it. I get most of my emails from my leader, leader contacts and clients in the evenings, but they shouldn't be working in the evenings. They should be enjoying their meals. But you know, the clock at night, there's people still sitting on their emails, and I'm thinking, how many breaks have they had? Have they actually taken any time out at all to walk around the block today, to look after their health, to ensure they've eaten properly, to see their family. And you know, it feels like there's just this constant, constant drive, and yet, actually, it feels like we're moving into probably the most normal, normal kind of state that we've had. Right Seriously, no, you're right. Yeah. Someone said this to me yesterday they were writing their strategy, and they said, right, we need this to be a normal strategy, rather than a crisis strategy. Because up until now, every year, there's been like, a crisis strategy that's affected organizations and leaders in them, and this is the first time people are going, right, okay, what's our normal Bau strategy? Then what's the one that's not a crisis crazy? Do everything with nothing strategy, yeah, and that's that's really challenging for people to kind of go to that pace, isn't it? Do we have to slow down? Is it helpful? Do we need to slow down? Yeah,

Chris Rainey 26:10

that's really interesting, right? You have to almost design those strategies that are flexible. Like, because you can't have the idea of having, like, a five year plan is almost insane any of like in the environment that we're in, because you never know what. So you have to have a, you know, freedom within the framework I have. Can you have a strategy, of course, but then make sure it's, it's flexible and it's agile. You know, not many people moving the Agile principles for that otherwise, you know, see, we're seeing what's happening in the US right now, after the election, they're back into crisis mode. If you're in dei right now, every day, you know, Walmart just announced we're getting rid of our di strategy, you know, you know, like Harley Davidson, like every you know, every day there's a new so there's always going to be another crisis. But that's just kind of almost part and parcel of the role at this point as well. So you kind of have to be comfortable in the chaos. Yeah, it's tough

Alex Bailey 27:12

buying that way through being flexible. But also, you know, having enough vision to engage your people that they want to be part of the future and what that future looks like. But exactly as you say, there's no point spending too much time on detailing that future, because it could change very so much by the time you get there. Yeah. And I think, yeah. You know, up until now, I've only seen one year strategies in organizations really detailed. But this is the first time I'm starting to hear people talk about two, three year strategies. That's been a while again, which is good, isn't it? No, it's a

Chris Rainey 27:41

good it's a positive sign. Of course, one of the things I want to talk about for wrap up is, and I really love this topic, is in terms of connecting human skills with our purpose and aligning that. Because I think that's becoming increasingly important. We've seen it, you know, you know, even people that I'm hiring into HR leaders that's so important to them. Now it wasn't something when I started my job 20 years ago that I came into a business thinking about the planet, thinking about my purpose. This company's values align with my purpose. But now it's really important to at all levels. But just like especially the new generation coming into the workplace,

Alex Bailey 28:18

it is, it is. And I think, you know, meaning and purpose, I think, has become, you know, it's not new now, but it's just becoming more and more important, exactly as you said. But I think tying that into something that's more of a global connector is something that I'm seeing is becoming really important. So the fact that there are communities that are connected right the way across the world that now, through tech and through platforms where people can talk about things they care about, means that they can more quickly see and feel the impact of change at a global level. And want to be part of that. Want to feel like they belong to something big and moving and just just see these global mega trends that hit, and it's 24 hours, you know, and they've reached millions and millions of people across the world in a way we never could do 10 years ago. And being part of those communities and connections across the world to see and to feel means that we're making decisions based on our emotions very quickly, because we are influenced by however many people think the same as us, and that is really driving this feeling around. I you know, I want to be part of that. I want to have that purpose, that meaning. I want to feel connected. I want to feel belong to that purpose. And people are looking for connection in their beliefs with others more than they ever have been. And I think, I think that's a really good thing, that's that, that's that interconnectedness, the interdependence that I was talking about, that makes us uniquely human. You know, we do want to, we want to be part of something. We want to feel that we're together on things that we don't want to be on our own. And loneliness causes so many different ill effects. We know. No so that that connection point is really critical. And what I love about meaning and purpose coming together now is that I feel like maybe five years ago, meaning and purpose itself was important, but it didn't matter what that was, yeah, because now I think meaning and purpose is so much more connected to the planet than ever it was that I feel like people are starting to feel more tied into that bigger meaning and purpose that all organizations are looking at in some shape or form, some care about it or have higher priorities around the planet than others. But a lot of organizations are moving in that direction now, a lot of society, a lot of community, and it's not just up to politicians to change the world, right? You know, it's actually our business leaders, with however many billions of people in this world, work is almost what 3.4 4 billion people on the planet out of 8 billion work,

then we've got

a real opportunity with people in workplaces and in large organizations to really shift the dial on what we're doing as a species for this planet. And actually we have more power. Leaders in organizations have more power and influence over that than anyone else, yeah, and the minute we realize that and kind of come together and collaborate together, I've got some clients that are, you know, collaborating on sustainability and learning from each other in a way that is fascinating, because they're collaborating with their competitors on things they would never talk to their competitors about, but they're saying, hang on a second. How are you focusing on net zero? Because I want to learn from you. And what are you doing differently with with diversifying your supply chain, for example? And how do we make sure that we're learning from each other in those opportunities? And that's where that global trends, the global community, the global conversation, like you're doing here, this global conversation learning from others is just so important. It's nothing like reading a book. Those conversations, sparking the ideas, the imagination. Yeah, that's that's our human uniqueness, and we've got to keep doing it, and we got to

Chris Rainey 31:51

do it more. Yeah. I think the pandemic was one of those moments where people sat at home, and many of my friends and family, even me personally, was like, do I really want to be doing this? Is this a line where purpose like you had, like a moment to reflect? And many people, I saw hundreds of CHROs retire. I saw many of them switch careers, and they were like, This is really, I'm using HR as an example. But this was everywhere across the world, friends, family go and pursue the passion that they'd always been thinking about, but never actually did as well. There was a lot of research that came around about that time. I think Edelman, the Edelman Trust Barometer research, to your point, said that people look to their company for that, for that guidance, more than their own governments. And I was at Whoa, what a responsibility. Yeah, that we have as an organization, that our employees are looking to us for that guidance, it kind of, I was like, whoa. When I read that, it kind of really took me back, yeah,

Alex Bailey 32:53

and no wonder leaders are petrified with

talking to large groups of people, because what a

responsibility, what a duty they've got on their shoulders to get it right, or to not offend anyone, or to not say the wrong thing, or to, you know, not make a mistake. It's, it's so super hard being a leader in an organization now with the responsibility that they that we have, you know, it's, it's, it's tough, it's, it's big, and it's bigger when we're holding that purpose, that that meaning in people's lives, that actually is what motivates them to to be their best, to be the best human selves. That is a that's a big thing. And, you know, I think leaders who've kind of answered that calling to work with and through others, that's, that's what they yearn for. But, you know, it's also, it's a challenge, and it's something that we need to support leaders with and, and, and I think, well, Meg Wheatley said it well. She said, create, create islands of sanity for our leaders. And I love that. It's kind of that connective point of who's my island of sanity, that I can rely on, that I can be vulnerable with, that I can grieve with that I can challenge with that I know will always be there for me. And that's much more concrete than kind of the almost flimsy online networks that do exist. This is people who you can rely on, and that really matters. We've become quite flaky. I think looking to, I think lots of people kind of pull out of things at the last minute now more than I ever did. I don't know if you've noticed, yeah. So things reschedule easily, whereas I think people are looking for more commitment and more reliability to be able to know that people will be there if they say they're going to be there. And I think we need to do that, create these conditions for leaders to be comfortable in their roles, because they have got a very, very big job on

Chris Rainey 34:33

Yeah, and I know you do this, and we do as well. That's kind of one of our services that we help HR executives with our events. They know if they're turning up to a HR innovation round table, they know what to expect. They know it's going to be high level. They know it's going to be peers that are having the same challenges. They know it's going to be curated based around the challenges. And it's a safe space for them, you know, because oftentimes in companies, they can't have these conversations, who does the churro go to whenever? Challenge, or on your or on the flip side, many of them aren't challenged in their own organization, whereas at our events, they actually have another 6070, situation. Actually, I think maybe you're looking at this the wrong way, and they're like, whoa, right? So it's creating that space. I wanna I know we're living on time, but I wanna say one last finger around linking purpose back to skills, because one of the most important journeys Shane and I went on early in the business is we, we connected with a guy called Tim London, who was the chief learning officer at Unilever at the time. And at the time, they had around 15,000 leaders every year Unilever going through their bleeding with purpose training. It's like a two day course that they did at their four acres leadership facility has led a lot of it was led by a guy called Nick Craig who wrote the book, leading with purpose. And we actually got invited to a separate meeting, which was kind of a combination of CEOs from the biggest brands in the world and billionaires, literally entrepreneurs. So it was a room of about 50 people, and Shane and I wasn't even going to attend. We were like, Oh, we haven't got time for this purpose, fluffy stuff. We're really busy trying to start a company. But out of that two days, we rediscovered our purpose individually, but also that the our current roles in the company weren't aligned with our purpose, and that was a massive game change of me and Shane to come back to the office and be like, Oh, you hate sales, Shane, and this, it drains your energy and, you know, and I'm like, Dude, I really don't enjoy doing the finance. And we kind of all of a sudden realized that all of our energy and really what align with our skills and our purpose, we kind of ripped up everything, started from scratch, and we like, 5x our revenue the next year, because we were both running into it, into into parts of the business that energized us, right? You know, Shane didn't really enjoy the recruitment side. I love recruiting, training and developing talent. That's aligns perfectly with my purpose. I was like, so that was a, one of the most important exercises you had ever been through. And people were literally at the end of the of two days, you kind of present your purpose statement to recruit my one mine was to be the unbreakable artist, the dancers use of life. And there's a lot of things around that about the fact that I grew up in a very tough environment, and art was my escape from water trauma. And I was around, I was a professional dancer, so dance due to life, is dance studios. Life talks about the passion for developing talent and unbreakable is, I'm always been the person in the companies that always challenging the status quo. I'm always challenging Shane and the team and saying, why do we do it this way? What if we look at something differently? I'm always challenged challenging that, and that's always been our foundation to operate during the chaos, if that makes sense. So when everything's going crazy, I'm like, Okay, let's operate from our foundation of our purpose. And we make decisions from here. We can't control we control the controllables, and we operate from there. So and that's linked, and we link that back with a team, directly to the skills. So it's not fluffy whatsoever. It's very actionable and tangible, and we can really measure the value of that as well. So I love that you brought that up.

Alex Bailey 38:04

No, it's really it's really powerful stuff, and you can hear it in your voice. You know, you're really passionate about it because it meant made a really big difference to you. And we do, we do similar stuff around our human Leadership Program, starting with that authenticity, getting people to write their purpose statements, and also really challenging them to look at what how that aligns to the organizational strategy. Because lots of, lots of C suite leaders, I'll ask them what their their their purpose is, and they'll give me the organizational strategy back. And I'm like, No, that's that's the organization's vision.

Chris Rainey 38:30

What's your purpose? That's what I did as well. Yeah. And it's

Alex Bailey 38:33

really, really hard sometimes, when you've grown in that organization and you've created that vision, you feel so attached to it that it becomes your identity. But it doesn't need to be your identity. Needs to be your own authentic identity. And what you're talking about there is just, you know exactly that the how your strengths really is those things that you do really well, that you that you really enjoy and and that's, that's, that's fundamental. So that helps us be our unique human selves, and that's how we keep our human switched on. So perfect. Round to the beginning again. Yeah.

Chris Rainey 39:01

No, listen, before, I would love to keep talking to you, but where can people learn more about the great work that you do and also connect with you personally, if they want to reach out to you directly, sure?

Alex Bailey 39:11

Well, obviously you can find me on LinkedIn. It's my platform of choice, so please do connect me there, but also our website, Bailey and french.com so there's loads of information there, including our latest human series, which is a series of events we've been running across the world all around based on what it means to be human and how we can be differentiating ourselves from Ai, as well as supporting our species on this human planet that we are gifted to be on. So yeah, please do connect with us. Find out more. We'd love to talk to you and understand more amazing

Chris Rainey 39:45

and for everyone listening, as always, those links are below wherever you're listening, watching, even if you're listening inside the Atlas right now the links below, make sure you go connect with Alex, check out the website. And yeah, I wish all the best. Until next week. Thank you. So much. Congratulations again, and I look forward to chat again soon. Been

Alex Bailey 40:06

fantastic to talk to you. Thank you, Chris. I really enjoyed it. It was fun.

More from the HR Leaders Podcast