Dr. Steven Farmer, CEO, Alconex- Soft Skills, Delivering Hard Results

In this episode of Leadership Bites, Guy Bloom sits down with Dr Steven Farmer DBA MPhil MBA, Chief Executive Officer of Alconex Infrastructure and Solutions Ltd, author of Soft Skills, Hard Numbers. Steve leads a multi utilities business delivering gas, water and electric connections to homes, while expanding into energy transition work across data centres, battery energy storage and solar. 

Steve shares a straight talking leadership philosophy that blends soft skills with hard numbers. He talks about rising from an apprenticeship and life on the tools, to senior leadership and board level accountability, then pushing himself through an MBA and a doctorate while working full time. The conversation moves into what servant leadership really means when performance dips, why poor behaviour is a fast route to the exit, and how leaders can build psychological safety without lowering standards. 

They explore the human reality leaders are dealing with right now, a workforce arriving already anxious, the importance of being excellent at receiving bad news, and the practical power of one simple principle: do not make life worse for people at work. Steve also unpacks his doctorate research into values based recruitment in construction, and why the industry needs a new story if it wants young talent to choose trade and craft over debt and drift. 

Expect clear thinking, grounded experience, and leadership that respects people while still hitting the numbers. 

Key moments and ideas
 • The route to CEO, and why effort beats talent when talent coasts
 • Doctorate level work while leading a business, what it really takes
 • Values based recruitment and making construction a cause people want to join
 • Servant leadership without softness, command without control
 • Psychological safety and performance, do not shoot the messenger
 • Bad news is like fresh bread, better when it is new
 • High performance, low tolerance, high nurture, the leadership balance
 • Creating workplaces where people do not get the Sunday scaries
 • One leadership book Steve would still recommend: Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People 

Guest
Dr Steven Farmer DBA MPhil MBA
Chief Executive Officer, Alconex Infrastructure and Solutions Ltd
Author, Soft Skills Delivering Hard Numbers 

Host
Guy Bloom
Leadership Development, Executive Coaching and Team Effectiveness
Living Brave Leadership
Leadership Bites podcast 

To find out more about Guy Bloom and his award winning work in Team Coaching, Leadership Development and Executive Coaching click below.

The link to everything CLICK HERE
UK: 07827 953814
Email: guybloom@livingbrave.com
Web: www.livingbrave.com

Transcript

Guy Bloom (00:20)
So boom, here we go. Steve, it is absolutely fabulous to have you on this episode of Leadership Bites. Welcome.

Steve Farmer (00:29)
Thank you. Yeah, great to be here.

Guy Bloom (00:31)
We've known each other for a little while, kind of on the margins vicariously through your wife Claire, Claire Farmer, how are you? She'll already be wigging out going, right, what are they gonna say?

Steve Farmer (00:34)
Indeed.

Hahaha.

Yeah, she's good. I'll get her to watch this. I'll get her to watch this.

Guy Bloom (00:48)
Actually,

what we'll do is we'll just stage this entire episode as an intervention and we'll just talk for an hour about Claire. Just completely drive her bogus. So anyway, so that having been said, if somebody met you at a social gathering and somebody said, you two should talk and left you two it and somebody said, ⁓ Steve, what do you do for a living? What would you say?

Steve Farmer (00:52)
That's right, yes.

Yeah, so I'm the CEO of a multi-utilities company, which is, in lay terms, we put gas, water, and electric to residential homes and properties. So that's about 75 % of our business, but also more latterly on industrial and commercial things, supporting the energy transition. So data centers, battery energy storage, solar. So it sounds pretty glamorous, but it's all about trenches and wires and pipes.

Guy Bloom (01:42)
the name of that company?

Steve Farmer (01:43)
It's Alconex, yeah Alconex infrastructure services.

Guy Bloom (01:45)
alternates.

Is this anything like group?

Steve Farmer (01:51)
⁓ I don't know M-Group, no.

Guy Bloom (01:53)
group

do the sort of cable, they do more sort of for drains and water and maybe they do some combs as well. Anyway, it doesn't matter, complete irrelevance because it's not you. So on that note, so I'm, you know, I think I'm very ⁓ attracted to having spoken to you before the way that you see the world. I know you have a very people centric kind of approach and style, but also

clearly with a commercial bent and an imperative and balancing those two things is maybe the the leaders constant anxiety. You know people for profit, you know and that's a universal truth. I want to get to your book as well, Soft Skills, Delivering Hard Numbers, but maybe just to kind of get us to a sense of understanding a little bit about

Steve Farmer (02:30)
Exactly, yes.

Yeah.

Guy Bloom (02:47)
your history, your depth, why you might be somebody that's worth listening to, i.e. I'm not 18 and it's my first rodeo, is give us that sort of sense of, do you know guy, this in essence has been

Steve Farmer (03:00)
Yeah, so it actually started off with a reasonably bad education. I was educated in a comprehensive school in the 1980s in Yorkshire, right in the middle of the miners' strike, so that didn't give me the greatest start in life. Left school with no qualifications, managed to get myself an apprenticeship, so started off on the tools, effectively. I really enjoyed studying for electrical engineering. That's when I actually fell in love with studying after I'd left school.

Got to my mid-twenties, I wanted to get a degree and become a chartered engineer. And my boss at the time said, all engineers want to do is spend money. I'd much rather sponsor you on an MBA and take that kind of management course of action. yeah, probably since my mid to late twenties, I've been effectively jumped tracks away from being on the tools and into leadership positions. So.

Very lucky to be a maid managing director at 35. So now at the age of 55 I've been the official person to blame in companies for the last 20 years

Guy Bloom (04:06)
Give us a little bit of a sense of educationally, I know you've just had a success in the last year or so, or success is the wrong word, but an achievement, an end game. You're being very, I don't want to use the word coy, but let me be the one to pull it out of you.

Steve Farmer (04:14)
Yeah.

Yeah and I suppose I kind of started off with the fact that I had a bad education and it was one of these you know you remember remember these pinnacle moments and that particular math teacher that said that I would never amount to anything you know so all of this is just about getting you know proving to myself that you know I had it in me so I kind of like went through the management training route got myself an MBA at 30. ⁓

20 years later, we arrive at 2020 global pandemic ⁓ and I started the doctorate and I did a doctorate for four years and yeah, I'm very proud of the fact that I get to check into hotels now and say it's Dr. Farmer. ⁓

Guy Bloom (05:06)
But if somebody says on a plane is a reductor on the plane, keep your mouth shut. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't matter. It'll do. No, it clearly won't. I promise you.

Steve Farmer (05:08)
No. Yeah, I'm not that kind I'm not a real doctor. Not one of those doctors. I haven't

killed anyone yet. Yeah.

Guy Bloom (05:22)
Bingo. Okay, so I think that's interesting, isn't it? I've kind of... How big a deal work-wise? How much of a commitment is doing that? Is it one of those things of it doesn't matter how much people tell you you've actually got no idea how much hard work it is until you start? Or is it actually surprisingly easy actually once you get into it? What was your experience?

Steve Farmer (05:45)
Yeah,

incredibly hard work, incredibly hard work in all of the studying, around working full time as well and having lots of responsibility in the job. It's early mornings, it's Saturday mornings, it's Sunday mornings, and you can't wing it as well when you're doing kind of research-based thesis and things like that where you're trying to come up with relatively new concepts and ideas because it's all at the doctorate level, it's about creating new insights.

Yeah, hard work, really, really challenging mentally, but it's something I'm immensely proud of that I ultimately did it. I took four months off work to actually get the thing over the line effectively. it's one of those, it's a little bit like a driving licence. Once you've got it, you can spend the rest of your life then dining out on it.

Guy Bloom (06:37)
Well, I've seen one I can get for $200 on the internet, but I don't think it's the same one that you've done.

Steve Farmer (06:39)
You

Guy Bloom (06:42)
terms I actually just it's not exactly what we're to talk about but in terms of the focus of that doctorate and adding you just said they're adding and bringing insight that doesn't exist so it's not just showing that you already know stuff it's actually going hey listen this is a new ⁓ line of inquiry or insight what was what was your focus and where did it take you or were there any surprises did you kind of prove your own point or did you actually go do you know what I set off to achieve a but actually I achieved B that's been interesting to know

Steve Farmer (06:49)
Yeah. Yeah.

It was,

yeah, was more like the latter. I kind of went into it in terms of trying to prove out the Steve Farmer armchair philosophy and actually took me down a completely different rabbit hole, but that was, you know, all part of the experience. So it was, because I've spent my life in construction, it was all around ⁓ how to effectively recruit into the construction industry following the pandemic.

because obviously we had pandemic and we had Brexit where we lost an awful lot of labour that effectively gave up on the UK about three to five hundred thousand, Reconon conservative estimate that actually took a lot of skills out of construction. ⁓ And it was all around how can we make the construction industry an attractive place for effectively young people to want to come and do what we do.

It's a tough gig, there are two and a half million people in construction in the UK and if you ask anybody at school or university what they want to do, they want to be an influencer on Instagram or have a YouTube channel. Never in the history of ever has anyone said I want to stand outside in the pouring rain pulling cables in on a building site. So that was the challenge and part of, it kind of...

fits into kind of like my philosophy around, know, what is it that's going to get people interested in the kind of work that we're doing? looking at some work that Edgar Schein did on ⁓ career anchors and people's values based and I think the NHS does quite a lot on values based recruitment. So the whole thing was, could we bring values based recruitment into the construction industry? So all of the people that historically

might have been at a kind of vocation and a service and dedication to a cause where they might have gone into the care industries, turning that service and dedication to a cause into come and help save the planet and build solar farms and battery energy storage and get involved in the energy transition to reduce the carbon footprint so that we're not all living underwater in 100 years time. It was about creating an environment for that as a cause, you know.

call to action. So yeah, could go on and on and on and on, but that's essentially what it was. And I think it was the real revelation for me was nobody in schools is being encouraged to go into construction. People in schools are encouraged to go into academia and get a hundred thousand pound student loan. And I'm a real passionate advocate for saying.

We need people to want to come into the construction industry, to get paid learning, to earn a skill and a trade and actually leave an amazing legacy. You know, I'm very proud of the fact I've worked on the 2012 Olympics and things like that. There are some things out there that I bore passengers on trains or people in cars to say, I built that, I was part of that. I think it's a tremendous vocation. yeah, very, very passionate about getting skills into construction.

Guy Bloom (10:22)
was just looking very, very quickly for, here we go, Ken Rusk, the blue collar advocacy. He wrote, yeah, he called it, what did he call? Blue collar cash. He's an interesting podcast, which he's toiling around that saying actually part of his remit, his focus is exactly on that. Same thing in the US. He said,

or the people that are doing well are the people that are using their hands. I mean, of you're still using your brains, but the point being, this push into... So if you're going into STEM or something, yeah, fine, that might be something that's going to take you into a certain path. But having some degree that is, as in, what are you going to actually do with that? But you've now got an $80,000 debt, if you're lucky. Where's that really taken you?

Steve Farmer (10:53)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. Exactly.

Guy Bloom (11:16)
If you've walked away with a degree in chemistry, yeah, okay, that's probably going to be something else. But even then, unless you're going to be a chemist, unless you're going to be, what's its purpose and point? And put all of that energy into doing your apprentice, doing your trade. And eight, nine years on, you'll be on this much money, working for yourself or whatever it is. Yeah, and he really is an advocate. He's really kind of trying to wake people up to that.

Steve Farmer (11:28)
Exactly.

Exactly.

Guy Bloom (11:45)
But of course, guess what? Going to uni and having a latte and going out with your mates versus where are you? Six o'clock, I'm on site. It's been going. really what people are doing is they're creating a debt to have time that may not really be paying you back at all. So that's a fascinating perspective.

Steve Farmer (11:54)
Can I read toolbox in the pouring rain? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and

as part of the research there is a lot of ⁓ lawyers and doctors that suffer from career regret. know, since the age of four their parents have told them it's all about being a lawyer and a doctor and all of the rest of it and they effectively lean their career ladder against a particular wall and nine years and a hundred thousand pounds later they've made a massive mistake.

Guy Bloom (12:32)
Yeah.

I know two doctors who both aren't in love with being doctors. What they liked was, they liked learning to become a doctor. They loved the environment and the process, probably the kudos, but in truth, you know, I think one of those, when I go into a GP, you know, and I sort of see that little green room and I go, so you're going to spend your entire career with, even though there's a window, nobody can look through it because obviously, so it's kind of, with people going, could you have a look at this please?

Steve Farmer (12:41)
Yeah.

Yes.

Guy Bloom (13:06)
Hmm. Do know what? It's not quite as exciting unless you're a specialist in a particular area. Yeah, it's a it's a it's Yeah, maybe it's a hard gig. But anyway, listen bow. That's that's exciting And it's good to know that you've I think there's something fascinating about somebody that has started in a particular position and Has found their way to their own frequency their own balance as in if you'd have been born in that part of the country

Steve Farmer (13:07)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Guy Bloom (13:35)
into that family who had that kind of background as in they were all barristers or something like that then the chances are guess what?

Steve Farmer (13:39)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little

bit like, it's a little bit like the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. And he basically says that, you know, when you, when you really dig into the secrets of some success, you know, there's a lot of Jewish lawyers in New York and it was really, they're now the best litigation lawyers because it was born out of adversity. They had to fight for everything. And yeah, it's interesting just in terms of, when you

when you can just wind back and look at where things start and then ultimately where they end up. I never planned it this way, there was never a master plan but I always wanted to do something that was challenging and moving me forward and here I am.

Guy Bloom (14:24)
Are you

an itchy feet kind of guy? You're that kind of, I don't mean that you can't relax, but are you that, I don't know about you, but I'm very, I can't, I can relax, but I can't take it easy, if that makes sense. You know, can sit on the sofa and watch some TV, no problem at all. I can chill out, but I can't not have an eye on a prize.

Steve Farmer (14:47)
Yeah, I kind of think that I would probably fall into a kind of dictionary definition of what people would call an overachiever. And it's all about, I'm always thinking the next big thing, whether it's a physical challenge, whether obviously through the studies that I've done, whether it's, there's always, always something that, and of course we're going to get into a therapy session now. And I think it's, you know, it's kind of like more of, and I've, you know, I've like reflected on this before.

It's more about fear of failure, moving away from failure rather than towards success. you know, there's a couple of childhood incidents where you think, you know what, I've got the utmost respect and love for my father, but he just didn't have the right opportunities put in front of him. So I don't know whether it's, I'm secretly trying to please my dad by doing well and stuff like that, you know, I'm trying to unpick it, but yeah, there's always got to be something.

There's always, you know, it's what am I going to do next year? I can't have a year without doing something.

Guy Bloom (15:50)
funny where this stuff comes from doesn't it you know I think I've got one which is I've just got the second book coming out I've got la la la whatever and I think my thing is I don't think I'm that smart academically I know when I'm in the room with people are academically intelligent I either looking at it and it's going straight in and I'm like going hmm but I know I'm not stupid does that make sense so I think what I do is to prove to myself

Steve Farmer (16:14)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Guy Bloom (16:18)
You're not that, but you're not daft. You're off that level, but you're not that. But that's okay, because you're this. It's funny, isn't it? I think that's my driver.

Steve Farmer (16:28)
Exactly. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's me. It's about putting the effort in. When I say overachiever, has ever come easy. For me, it's the struggle. It's that inward battle and that struggle that I think that I kind of always want to prove something.

Guy Bloom (16:40)
Yeah.

We'll get two t-shirts dubbed. Yeah.

I'll get a t-shirt for the two of you. It's about the struggle. Define who you are. It's about the struggle. So listen, you've got the book, Soft Skills Delivering Hard Numbers, and I'll put the link to it and the image of it ⁓ will be involved with the podcast. And I guess what I'd like to get initially is...

Steve Farmer (16:51)
It is the struggle. It is the struggle. Yeah.

Yeah.

Guy Bloom (17:15)
If somebody said, why did you write it or who's it for? Let's just look at those two first and maybe they're entwined and maybe they're separate. But I felt I had to write it because, and the people I'd like to read it are, think the value I think it could bring to people is, whatever that might be, just start talking about.

Steve Farmer (17:34)
Yeah.

Yeah. So yeah, who did I write it for? Probably my younger self, my 20 year old ambitious self that wanted to get on and wanted to get into leadership. And you know, so there's kind of like, there's my leadership wisdom that's actually in there. But also from a readership perspective, it's about, you know, people seeing the book and effectively subscribing to...

the doctrine that essentially treating people right, inspiring people, creating an environment for leadership where they can thrive, which makes, it's got such a positive impact on people's lives, not just necessarily in terms of the business aspect. One of the biggest compliments that I was given, and it was just within the last 12 months or so, and I wasn't wholly responsible for it, but we're having a workshop, and Amelia, if you're listening, it was you, she said, you know what I like about working here?

don't get the Sunday scareys. And for me, that, if I can create an environment where people do not have these dark clouds descending across a Sunday afternoon where they're thinking, my god, I've got to kind of put my big pants on and go in tomorrow again and it's another dreadful week and all the rest of it.

think if I could sum up what I'm trying to achieve is an environment where nobody gets the Sunday scare is ⁓ and effectively you you don't have to abuse your position as a leader and boss people around and micromanage them and undermine them and create a sense of fear and expect too much and all the rest of it. that's essentially the essence of the book. is a much better way. think you know anyone that

effectively leads as a, you know, what we would call a servant leader in terms of supporting and encouragement, you get to feel so much better about yourself, surely, if you've got people that are not coming in on a Monday morning absolutely dreading what's coming next.

Guy Bloom (19:44)
a few things in there for me this idea of servant leader I see that interpreted in interesting ways on one end you look you know what when servant leader Steve what if somebody said certainly to just bring that to life for me what does it mean to you and then I'll layer on top

Steve Farmer (20:08)
Yeah, so I often tell people that I'm a support function, you know. Some people actually draw the org chart upside down and all the rest of it. But, you know, for me, I say I'm in command but not in control. So I kind of set the scene in terms of the commander's intent for the business. But my job is to make sure that people have got, you know, the right tools to do the job. They've got that right level of autonomy within their work. And I'm a, you know, I say that I'm a support function.

And I do not like telling people no. Obviously after colouring inside, there's got to be some guardrails in terms of commercial governance and things like that. But that is it for me. It's about actually identifying the right people, giving them ⁓ objectives, giving them a line of sight in terms of what we're trying to do within the business, and just making sure that they've got the tools and the equipment and the resource and everything that they need ⁓ to effectively perform. And I try not to get in their way.

Guy Bloom (21:03)
Now I get that. And I have this conversation quite a lot in the, particularly with HR, people to start just to sort of get a balance of understanding with things. Psychological safety, which is what we're almost talking about there in many respects, which is very interesting for me, which is when we're balancing culture and commercials, by definition, it's easy when it's easy. So as everything's working, beautiful, money's coming in, even...

Poor performance can actually be let go because it's just easy when it's easy. It shouldn't be, but it often is. But in truth, regardless of whether or not it's hard or difficult out there, you may or may not be performing. So you could be a high performer in a very difficult space. So even though we're not, you clearly are and all the variables exist. So where does or how the challenge might be. So servant leadership to an underperformer.

I think this is where some people start to get a little bit misaligned. So I would just like to hear your thoughts on what that would mean under performance, either behaviorally or even if they're up for it 100%, but just competence wise, the craft isn't there, even if they're trying their socks off, but what does servant leadership mean to somebody that is not where they need to be for whatever reason?

Steve Farmer (22:19)
Yeah.

Yeah, so for me it is not about being soft. When I think about underperforming, particularly in respect to behaviour, because if the behaviours are right and their attitude is right, we can train for skill and we can get the performance right. Poor behaviours, I'm pretty much intolerant of poor behaviours and people that do not fit. So I ⁓ remove ⁓ poor behaviour ⁓ before poor performance. For me,

It's all around culture, it's around harmony. If we've got bad apples in good barrels and all of that, I think it's for the greater good of the team that we remove people from the organisation. yeah, me kind of, well, identify good people, let them crack on and get in the way. ⁓

anybody that knows me as well I do like a good graph and a good scorecard and it's all about the metrics and it's push push push so it's about it's about actual performance but yeah I've kind of ⁓ the my take on people with bad behaviors it's kind of like a rot that can set in and you know you don't want people to be thinking how bad do you have to be around here to get fired kind of thing

because there's no greater destroyer of morale and team harmony than putting up with poor performance or poor behaviour. And that's my take on

Guy Bloom (23:56)
So for you, there's a real clarity around servant leadership is actually to be of service may very well mean that we're going to have the hard conversation.

Steve Farmer (24:07)
Yes.

Agreed. Yeah. Yeah.

Guy Bloom (24:14)
Yeah.

And that for me is when somebody will say to me sometimes when I think they're misinterpreting psychological safety, for example, is when we get that, and I had it not so long ago and it just keep rearing its head, people should never feel under threat. Now I'm interested in that because actually my position on this and this be interesting for where we sit with this, I go, well, nobody should ever be threatened, but they might feel under threat.

Because if they are underperforming and we do have them on some sort of, know, be it just me looking at them going, really, all the way through to it's a performance improvement plan, whatever that is, actually, there has to be a timeline on that. And if you sense there is one, and I'm willing to coach you and train you and nurture you and all the fantastic things, but if it's all there and you're not getting there, you aren't being, inverted commas, threatened.

Steve Farmer (24:44)
Yeah.

Guy Bloom (25:13)
but you might feel under threat. And if you say to me, you're threatening me, no, absolutely not. But I understand how you feel like that. Does that resonate? Does that resonate or not with you?

Steve Farmer (25:15)
Yes.

Yeah.

Yes, exactly. It does indeed.

Yeah, it does indeed. And when you talk about psychological safety, I often tell people that one of my biggest strengths, my own personal recognized strength, and of course I have to work on it, is I always tell people I'm really, really, really good at getting bad news. Really, really good at getting bad news. I do not shoot the messenger.

I talk about bad news being like freshly baked bread. It is better when it's new. Bad news does not get better with age. It is not wine. So in terms of creating an environment for psychological safety, and I often tell the story, in the 1990s I worked in the rail industry. And the CEO at that time, we had a balanced scorecard where we'd have like red amber green lights against various different performance metrics. And he used to say, red blobs.

costs jobs. In other words, you get a red light on your scorecard, someone's going to get fired. So everyone was just fiddling the numbers, just actually fiddling the scorecard. And my take on that is, and I love a balanced scorecard, is that if we're looking at red lights on the scorecard, I'm very, very tolerant if we're poor, we're underwater, but it is trending upwards. Because at least then we can get some encouragement from

You know what, if we carry on improving at this rate in eight months time, we're gonna be, that's gonna be a green light. So, but yeah, so I create in that environment where, yeah, of all of my time in construction, there's always something going wrong. There's always bad news and I don't wanna be the last to hear about it. So I, you know, I go to great lengths to create an environment where people say, I need to pick up the phone to Steve, this has happened.

tell Steve immediately and then of course it's that you know the definition of responsibility your ability to choose your own response and it's that after they've just told you that something's collapsed or fallen down or something like that you've got to take a big deep breath and you've got to respond in the right way to make sure that next time there's some bad news you're gonna you're gonna get the bad news

Guy Bloom (27:38)
And that's a very, very, I think that's where the art of leadership really comes into me, which is just like the art of being in a personal relationship or with your kids or whatever it might be. It's the intellectualization of it is quite easy. There's a situation it needs to be spoken about. Let's speak about it. Right, well, how can it be? Well, as it turns out, because actually what I'm dealing with is your...

Steve Farmer (27:53)
Yeah.

Guy Bloom (28:03)
sense of anxiety, I'm dealing with your personal characteristics, I'm dealing with you being aware about how important it is and actually the fact, even if I'm doing a brilliant job, that in itself can mean, God, I know how important this is. So yeah, Steve, Bob was brilliant. The way Sandra came up was absolutely fabulous, but deep down I know. Right, so again, you're dealing with what I kind of...

Steve Farmer (28:07)
Yeah.

Guy Bloom (28:28)
class as you're dealing with the seen and the unseen aren't you? You're dealing with some people that can really just put it out there and do you know what I can see I've let you down I've let myself down, I've let my mum down, I've let the country down I'm gonna go and put that right I'll completely own that and I'm gonna learn from it and look I'm not gonna flip him I'll do it again so thank you for not tearing me a new one I really appreciate it. All the way through to some people that go oh well I didn't get a shout at that and they don't shift their behavior

Steve Farmer (28:30)
Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Guy Bloom (28:54)
It's a very, I'm fascinated by people's almost, depending on how they've been habitualized and how they've been brought to this point. For some, they have to learn, I think, to re-understand that because I'm not raising my voice at you doesn't mean that I'm not raising the tone with you. Does that make sense as well? That kind of just recognizing that servant leadership isn't just you being inverted commas pleasant.

Steve Farmer (29:05)
Yeah.

Exactly. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Guy Bloom (29:24)
It's about, yeah.

Steve Farmer (29:24)
no, it absolutely isn't. Yeah, it absolutely isn't. And I think that, you know, I kind of, in going about things the right way, I'm ⁓ pretty demanding in terms of, you know, the results within the organisation. But it's about creating that sense of excitement. And, you know, they do say leadership is about, you know, getting a team to do something that they otherwise, they didn't, at the beginning of the year, they didn't think they were capable of. That's the kind of thing that I get a real kick out of.

And I think that to create an environment in an organization where we celebrate success, you can see the level of confidence rising within people and confidence begets confidence. And you hear these stories about basketball teams and football teams that they're of like they're getting the zone and it gets to a point where they think that they're never gonna lose again kind of thing. I kind of like to, I'm a Yorkshireman, but I'm not into, I don't.

I don't follow, I'm one these unusual ones that doesn't follow either cricket or football. know, my sport, you like, the thing that I'm really passionate about is business and performance in business. And my team are the ones that work in accounts and in pre-construction and, you know, in the commercial department.

Guy Bloom (30:33)
Hmm.

So I'm also

interested in the, I guess the impact of what's going on in the world in people's lives. And I think that's a new, it's not so much a new phenomenon as in, you know, what's going on in the world, you know, has always affected people. But it seems to me to be ⁓ highlighted right at the moment from social media through to just inflation through to, know, whatever that is. And I just wonder, and I...

Steve Farmer (30:45)
Yeah.

Guy Bloom (31:05)
I'd just be intrigued just to hear your kind of sense of the balance of being a leader who is... It's not just about servant leadership in the sense of the manner of your approach to people, but realising that I work with human beings, and this can't be a kibbutz. It can't be me...

understanding every single thing about you all the time and I'm a shoulder to cry on and I can't become a support mechanism maybe in that way, not that if there isn't a crisis you need to talk to somebody or whatever and depending on the size of the organization. But I also have to factor in that tough times and I also have to factor in that actually, you know, there's a lot of people walking around with a lot of anxiety. I just wonder how that...

Steve Farmer (31:49)
Yes.

Guy Bloom (31:59)
manifests itself as in, and I don't know about you as well, sorry I'm going on there, but at 56 now, what I recognise is when I was in my twenties I never saw it, but I now know that everybody's dealing with something.

Steve Farmer (32:11)
exactly. Yeah.

Guy Bloom (32:12)
or will

be over, if I know you for five years, at some point you'll be going through something.

Steve Farmer (32:16)
Yeah,

yeah and I, you know, and again I say this a lot and you know this is where, this is kind of approach to the workplace as well, you know we spend an awful lot of our waking lives actually at work and you know I'm thinking well life is difficult enough, the work that we're doing is difficult enough and people have got all sorts of things going on, what we shouldn't be doing in the workplace is aggravating that.

to any kind of extent. So it's about understanding that we're always dealing with whole people. They don't put the game face on when they come to work. They're effectively carrying baggage from whatever's bled through from the weekend and things like that. So yeah, what we don't wanna be doing is compounding all of the things that are going on in their external environment and their personal lives by just being a... ⁓

displaying all the wrong kinds of behaviours and abusing the power and micromanaging and adding to that sense of anxiety. We are talking now about the anxious generation and effectively it's all full of angst. Coming into the workplace, 20, 30 years ago, that's where people picked up all of their anxiety, wasn't it, in the workplace?

But I think now they're coming fully loaded. They're oven ready, anxious in terms of everything that's going on in the world. All of this kind of, all of the large tech companies competing for attention and eyeballs. And the way to get attention and eyeballs is to put, you know, shocking things through and things that are going to be negative because those are the ones that keep people looking. So, you know, I think there is this greatest, you know, the kind of like the water level, if you like, on anxiety.

Guy Bloom (34:05)
Hmm.

Steve Farmer (34:06)
on any given

Guy Bloom (34:07)
Yeah.

Steve Farmer (34:07)
day is already at tipping point before they actually set foot in work.

Guy Bloom (34:13)
I'd like to know what you think about this. I've come to a bit of a point on when it comes to recognizing that there's so many variables, so many characteristics, so many people, that I can take a position that is, I know is quite good, but in truth, I like your position, which is, so if I really wanna help where somebody's at, don't make it worse.

Steve Farmer (34:36)
Exactly.

Guy Bloom (34:37)
That's, that's just, I it's most simplistic. I can't adjust to every human being and I may not be your direct line manager and I may not blah, blah, blah, but as an environment, it's almost do no harm, right? Or, you know, if we can't make it better, fine, because you might be in a particularly tough spot, you know, even commercially or whatever. Maybe I can't make things better, but I can definitely not make them worse. And that feels like a really powerful statement.

Steve Farmer (34:49)
Yes.

Yes.

Exactly, exactly. And I can't imagine a situation where if someone is kind of fearing for the job and anxious and feeling like they have to work that weekend and you know when somebody says well you're gonna have to work 24 hours if that's what it's gonna take and pull an all-nighter and this and that and the other. You're never gonna get the best out of people in terms of what that is. So I kind of...

You know, I take my responsibility in business very, very seriously and yeah, we've got, you know, we've got a duty to hit the numbers and things like that, but what you want to do is you want to do that in the absolute best way possible. You know, we've got 85 people in my business where you can kind of double or treble that in terms of the impact that the way that they're dealt with at work, you know, if they feel underappreciated and undervalued, they're going to go home, they're going to kick the dog.

And it's all of that kind of knock-on effect that...

Guy Bloom (36:06)
Yeah,

I love this. I talk about, you know, you've got corporate responsibility as an organizer, corporate social responsibility, we're going to go and help a school or paint a playground or something. Great, lovely. But actually, let's just talk about social responsibility. And I think that's where you are, or what I advocate for, which is corporate social responsibility is what we're going to do as an organization. But actually, as individual leaders, actually, you've got a point. If we're to help society, if everybody here knows four or five people at home,

Steve Farmer (36:21)
Yeah.

Guy Bloom (36:35)
and we times everybody by five, then actually that's helping our little microcosm of society where mum or dad or whatever go home. And it's not that they might be tired from a hard day's work, but they're not stressed out as you say and doing the following. And I've also come to a bit of a space where actually if we show you how to give feedback at work, that will help you go home and have a conversation with somebody because you can give them feedback. If you learn how to be vulnerable and not feel actually

Steve Farmer (36:42)
Exactly.

Yes.

Guy Bloom (37:05)
threatened by that, actually, maybe you can do that at home. So I think actually, when we offer people skills, a lot of the time, what we're really doing is, it's not, we talk about, I do this with my fingers, leadership training, fine, if that's the profit and loss, but in truth, it's you maturing as a human. And if I can help you grow and become more resilient, more robust, more crafted, more skilled, then I'm actually helping society.

because you are more resilient and more robust and you're more able to communicate and hold space and not feel threatened. And actually then you feel more in control of yourself even if you're not in control of the situation. And maybe that's what I'm, am I interpreting you correctly? Because I think I'm just aligning my speech to yours and just checking I'm on the same page.

Steve Farmer (37:32)
except.

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah,

absolutely. I've kind of, you know, no names, but I've had people say to me, and this is the kind of like the greatest compliment for me, and it's effectively outside business. I've had people say to me that Steve, my wife says that I'm a changed person, you know, for the better, which is good, you know, and so it's kind of.

Guy Bloom (38:14)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and she wants to have a word.

Steve Farmer (38:19)
You kind

of, you create an environment at work that obviously they're going home and they're much more tolerable, they're much more interested, they're not just shutting down and things like that, they're not waking up in the middle of the night sweating, they don't have the Sunday dreads and things like that. So for me that is ultimately what I'm trying to achieve.

Okay, yeah, we pay people a salary, but they're all volunteers, effectively. got to, you know, I try and make it so that people are volunteering to work for me because these are skilled people. They could go and work anywhere. You know, they are effectively volunteers. We've got to pay, yeah, we pay them, but they're volunteers. They're opting to work for Alconx more recently, but you know, the kind of metrics, because we talked about the balanced scorecard, we got a 0.1%.

Guy Bloom (38:56)
Yeah.

Steve Farmer (39:14)
turnover rate, voluntary turnover rate across the last 12 months. I'm very proud of that, I'm very proud of that. More people have left the business and that goes back to effectively my intolerance of poor behaviour and the impact on culture and things like that. But in terms of volunteers and voluntary leavers, we've had very low turnover and I'm proud of

Guy Bloom (39:34)
That is a fascinating thing. One of my kind of analogies is when I see, you know, the Formula One guy that changes the wheel nut, right? Or I recently saw a comedian going, you know, the one that puts when the car pulls up, he puts the jack underneath it he just pushes it down. And he says, I've calculated, he does that three times a race and it takes one second each time. And he's getting 150,000. Yeah, he's going, so he's getting 150,000 pounds. Yeah.

Steve Farmer (39:42)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I know, yeah. It's nice work if you can get it. Travels the world.

Guy Bloom (40:02)
For what I've

calculated is about 30 seconds of work annually. Right. But what's the humor there? The thing is you go, you know, I think, well, every single quick fit fitter in the country must look at that and go, I could do that. And the answer is, well, yes, but with high performance expectations comes a lack of tolerance. So the higher the performance expectation, the greater the lack of tolerance. The trick.

Steve Farmer (40:05)
Yeah.

Yes.

Guy Bloom (40:31)
is to then have a, if one column is high performance, the other one then is low tolerance, the aligned one then has to be high nurture. And that's where it gets very interesting for me, which is, and it's interesting, which is be careful what you ask for. Because if we're going to give you all the things that you need, a great environment, complete support, we're going to nurture and grow. Now, if there's low, you know, if there's low threat,

then it becomes the cozy club, right? So this interesting balance of, yeah, with that high nurture, with that great culture, with that high level of expectation, actually comes this counter balance of intolerance for your behavior if it's less than helpful, or even if you're a wonderful human but you can't do it, hey ho, this may not be the place for you. So it's a very...

And I think in conversation with C.O. recently, I said, you want to create a narrative that if somebody goes, the rest of the organization goes, no, fair enough.

Steve Farmer (41:37)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Guy Bloom (41:38)
Yeah, because by God

they've helped them, but not helped them off after five years they've had enough of them. No, it was on the timeline, but coached, trained, nurtured, counseled, mentored, whatever it is, bum, bum. No, gotta go.

Steve Farmer (41:51)
Under those circumstances people can say well they were given every opportunity given all of the right kind of chances. is a fine balance but ⁓ I try not to get involved. Having set the expectation, having made sure that they've got the right kind of resources, they've got clarity on the goals. Sometimes I wonder where they're at with that, I wonder where they're at with that and then I think no no.

just leave them to it, leave them to it because I've put the right incentive in place, I know that they're driven, they know what's expected of them, I don't wanna be kind of adding to that, we there yet, are we there yet, did you get the order yet, do you know what I'm It is hard. Because I'm, you know, and I'm thinking, but then I have a word with myself and think, well Steve, if they'd, you know, if they'd secured that particular order.

Guy Bloom (42:32)
How hard is that to do?

Steve Farmer (42:45)
know about it so me ringing up and saying have you got that order yet because on Monday you said we might get the order this week it's not doing anybody any good because it's like yeah he's asking me again you know just do it but divert my gaze in the corridor in case he asks me so I do you know I think well all I've done is set the scene and that and they're out there it's this kind of commander's intent they're incentivized they've got clarity they understand what the goals are and and I'll let her go on with it but it is a constant struggle

Guy Bloom (42:55)
Yeah.

I'm privy to, I sit in with execs, I watch conversations that are being had. I thought I saw somebody handle something really well, just literally the other week where he said, in a perfect world, I'd leave you to it. And which I thought was a great, which was a great starting point. said, in a perfect world, I'd leave you to it. But you're new in, you're incredibly senior guy. It's a big client. There's a lot here. He said, so we've got to strike the balance.

Steve Farmer (43:14)
you

Yeah. Which is, I'm not going leave you to it. Yeah.

Guy Bloom (43:43)
of my anxiety and you not feeling micromanaged. So, and he said, so what I'd like to do is contract how we do this. And I thought that was a lovely way. And the individual concerned very smartly said, well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to over communicate to you in the first instance. So you can then either dial it down or you'll have the confidence that I'm on it.

Steve Farmer (43:45)
Yeah.

Yes, exactly.

Right, yeah.

that to you all over.

Guy Bloom (44:10)
And it won't be, yeah, and he so it could

be, I've shot myself in the foot this morning all the way through to, it doesn't matter, but I'm going to over communicate to you. And I thought, it's that contracting, isn't it? It's not just, I'll sit here and deal with it and I'll have to sit with my angst as a manager. Because actually, hold on a minute, you shouldn't be, in fact, if you're anxious, that means you don't know, which means they're not communicating with you. So actually that contracting for...

Steve Farmer (44:15)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Guy Bloom (44:40)
I don't want to feel anxious and you don't want me feeling anxious so how are we going to make that happen? I think that's a, I don't know if that resonates but that sits well with me.

Steve Farmer (44:44)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, well

I've done that. The last couple of businesses I've gone into, I've kind of, I've, you know, whether they've asked for it or not, you know, because everyone's got a boss, and my boss at Group, I was kind of like, well, I've got a kind of set of objectives for the first 100 days, every Friday I'm going to send you an update, and that was me basically.

thinking that's what I would want for a new important hire and it was kind of me trying to equalise before the other side scores by saying every Friday I'm going to give you kind of a traffic light on where we're at on things during my discovery phase, what I'm finding out and giving them that level of comfort that I covered the bases and I kept that up for a hundred days and they didn't ask me to extend it so they must have either got to a level of comfort or please stop sending me all of these updates.

Guy Bloom (45:38)
Well,

I always say to people that they want to work remotely, but there isn't a commission culture for it. I said, just be in the office all the time, press the flesh, let people see your work ethic. And then when you start to adjust and make the calibrations, people will have no doubt as to who you are as a person. And that's what this is. And I'll make sure you know what I'm about. And as a line manager, I just want to know what you're about. And if guys quiet, it's because he's busy doing something or it because I know you now. So it's actually how quickly can we accelerate.

Steve Farmer (45:56)
Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah.

Guy Bloom (46:08)
me and you getting that line of sight. But I do think over communication will never do you any harm because somebody can always turn the dial down, right? So, okay, so listen, I'd like to leave with a couple of things in this instance and bringing us to a close. And one of them is, you, where you are on this is, but if somebody said to you, if I wanted to get better at leadership,

Steve Farmer (46:10)
exactly getting into.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Guy Bloom (46:38)
I'm on the journey. They could be new in, they could be a seasoned veteran. Is there a book, a podcast, a course or a frame of mind that you would say, read this and think like that or no, not a book, but just, reckon it just, if you look at life like this, you're going to just, what would you give to somebody that says, I would like to move the needle?

Steve Farmer (47:03)
I read a lot of books and there's a lot of stuff going on in there but if there was one and it's a classic 1937 Dale Carnegie how to win friends and influence people I would say that would be a real read for I think an awful lot of people out there and some of the things in there around you walk into a room full of people

And it's not about what you can do for me, it's what I can do for you. This kind of general approach. It makes me laugh every time I connect with someone on LinkedIn, within two minutes they're trying to sell me something. Before they've invested in that kind of networking relationship, I'm immediately getting bombarded. I kind of like to connect to people to network. So this kind of...

this whole philosophy of making friends and influencing people, I think that there's a lot of people could take a lot of leadership life skills from that one particular book.

Guy Bloom (48:08)
Okay, awesome. Awesome. So listen, I'm going to bring this to a close. Just I think it's a it's a naturally good place to do so you know with a bottle of wine and a pizza I always say, you know, I could spend the entire weekend chatting away about stuff. Yeah. What if somebody say put the alcohol in the drink in the cup and then blow on it as if it's hot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Farmer (48:19)
⁓ It's one o'clock in the afternoon but I've still got some work to do unfortunately.

Yeah.

Guy Bloom (48:36)
Blow on it as if it's hot, that's the way to do it. So listen, ⁓ Steve, I'll make sure all the connections are in the description just to look at you or connect with you if somebody wanted to. Where to go for the book as well, soft skills, delivering hard numbers. But just for me to you, it's been a joy listening to anybody that is actually at the pointy end of the spear doing the actual role rather than just from an academic context where you seem to stride both camps. You've been an absolute joy and I thank you.

Steve Farmer (48:45)
Excellent.

Thank you, yeah I've really enjoyed myself, thanks Guy, cheers.