Transactional Analysis and Organisation Development at Google with James Longwell - OrgDev Episode 24

Why is it so common to see relationships in organisations where there is a parent/child dynamic? Why does this occur, and what can we do about it? To answer these questions we invited James Longwell from Google onto our podcast.  James shared some fabulous insights about Transactional Analysis, his work with Google and his career with other big brand names.   Another fabulous OrgDev conversation which we are sure you will enjoy.

💼 About our Guest
James Longwell
  / james-longwell-0108207 

James Longwell is an accomplished Organization Development leader and coach, bringing extensive experience across a wide range of sectors, including automotive, logistics, consumer packaged goods, media, and digital/internet. Throughout his career, he has worked in various regions, including the UK/Europe, Asia, and Australasia, which has provided him with a rich and diverse professional background.

You can contact James about his Transactional Analysis courses or supervision here:
jamesalongwell@gmail.com

You can listen to the Transactional Analysis Podcast to understand more about TA here:
https://tapodcast.com/

During the conversation James references Functional Fluency. Here is the link to explore this further:
https://functionalfluency.com/about/f...

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About Us

We’re Dani and Garin – Organisation Development (OD) practitioners who help leaders and people professionals tackle the messiness of organisational life. We focus on building leadership capability, strengthening team effectiveness, and designing practical, systemic development programmes that help you deliver on your team and organisational goals. We also offer coaching to support individual growth and change.

Find out more at www.distinction.live 

We'd love to connect with you on Linked In:
linkedin.com/in/danibacon478
https://www.linkedin.com/in/garinrouch

Transcript

(00:00) hi and welcome to the org Dev podcast so why is it so common to see relationships in organizations where there's a parent child Dynamic what are the different games that people play in relationships in organizations and why does it occur and what can we do about it so to help us answer this question and many more about the fascinating world of transactional analysis and its 60-year history we've invited the very engaging James Longwell to join us James is an organization development consultant at Google and we'll be exploring his

(00:29) practice and his approach to organization development that is involved working for some of the world's most fascinating organizations now James has been at Google for 9 years often we have to introduce an organization but Google is an organization that requires no introduction but in addition to those nine years at Google James has a rich experience across different sectors working for organizations that play a key role in our everyday lives and these include things like NBC Universal Britvic drinks Cadbury Schweppes and Peugeot

(00:58) and he's got extensive International experience as well across three different geographies UK Europe Asia and austral Asia and to underpin his many sort of experiences he's got lots of professional qualifications and one of the main things we'll be talking about today is that he's a certified organizational transactional analyst and we're fascinated about this we have lots of questions um and finally James is a chartered FCIPD so he's a chartered fellow of our membership body the 

(01:23) cipd so James thank you so much for making time we know you're really busy and thank you for joining us today it's an absolute pleasure and thank you for inviting me on welcome James lovely to have you with us so just to kick us off just tell us a bit about bit more about your role what does that involve well I I mean I have two roles so let me start first of all with my Google role and um I want to say right from the offset obviously informed by Google PR that I am speaking for myself and not as a spokesPeugeot for

(01:51) Google here so I really want to emphasize that in this conversation so I have been in various guises working in organization development in Google um over the past nine years and I've worked with many different parts of Google so in the engineering function in the cloud business in the ad sales business supporting our enabling functions and I've also worked across geographies in the Europe Middle Eastern Africa region as well as working on some Global projects so I've seen Google from many many different angles and I'm sure we'll

(02:20) get into what exactly do we mean by OD at Google the other role that I have though is in the world of transactional analysis as Garen myself and there I have the title of provisional teaching and supervising transactional analyst I didn't go for this just because I wanted a bunch of alphabet soup letters um it does actually stand for something and um um as gar mentioned I'm a certified transaction analyst that's the first stage of our qualification process where you've done a certain amount of

(02:52) professional education a certain amount of supervision a certain amount of development and then once you reach that level you can then choose to go on and get a provisional teaching and supervising license which allows you to formally teach transactional analys analysis and also supervision which is what I'm doing now fabulous and what was it that inspired you to get into transactional analysis where did that spark of Interest come from so actually it was my very first graduate job so way back in the midst of time I joined Peugeot

(03:21) and um in the way that they did for graduate trainees I joined as a graduate training in HR that's where I started my professional career they had a professional development program and one of the very first modules was about communication and in that communication module I was introduced to something which are called ego states which is a way of thinking about Peugeotality um which I can say more about later yeah the idea and the concept really really resonated with me and then over the years I got informally

(03:50) exposed to it until eventually I decided actually I really want to formalize and go deeper on my education and understanding there so I began formal training in 2013 and then ever since then I've been following a kind of a pathway of continuing development um which I know is one of the questions you want to ask me later we'll get to that here definitely we want to know yeah so we might have some people listening who don't really understand transactional analysis can you just give us kind of a brief summary of what it is and what it

(04:17) involves and I and I really want to acknowledge I mean you've heard me stumble on the words twice it is a phenomenally difficult expression and actually that um in some ways can be attributed back to the humour of the founder um so the founder of transaction analysis was um someone called Eric burn um he had a wicked sense of humour and uh he sort of rejected the kind of the prevailing psychoanalytical establishment he wanted to create a psychology that was more accessible more about the kind of the humanity more that

(04:50) allowed everyone to be able to communicate and talk and whilst his initial work was very much focused on the field of um Psychotherapy or kind of what we would also call clinical work um very shortly afterwards people around him who were also learning and developing transactional analysis realized it could be applied in a whole bunch of contexts um so organizations Educational Systems counselling a whole variety of kind of any Walk of Life basically any profession it could be applied to so it is a an accessible

(05:25) social human psychology and a lot of it is based upon visual ideas or being able to communicate things visually and the use of simple metaphors which have a lot of depth in theory underneath that's something I would want to dispel right up front some in the 60s and 70s it did get a reputation as being a pop psychology but actually it's a really robust psych psychology with academic underpinning and all that sort of stuff but it spans the theoretical and the academic to the very pragmatic and I think honestly that's why I like it and

(05:56) and how might it show up in an organization like how how how might you know that um there's the potential need for for some an intervention using this well I I have to say transactional analysis um is applicable in any field of life in any um kind of situation and the reason for that is that the very sort of starting point of transaction analysis was to look at exchanges of information between two individuals hence the transaction it's a transaction back and forth between you or I and then the analysis of the transaction so in

(06:31) any conversation between two or more individuals you can analyze the transactions and you can watch for the patterns and you can see are the transactions adult adult which would be a way of characterizing these are done in full awareness with all of my thinking abilities we're able to withstand disagreements we're able to get to a productive Place versus perhaps being in parent or child which we might call archaic ego states where we might be more informed by either a significant authority figure from our past which

(07:02) would be parent ego state or child which would be um like a childhood experience or memory now I'm trying to do something Justice which we could take a whole two days to teach so um if people are curious there's lots of resources online where people can check out transactional analysis and and discover a bit more yeah and I guess it's a really useful lens to make sense of things isn't it so there's an interaction that's going on between two people and it's just doesn't seem to work right it's a lens that you

(07:32) can quickly apply and go I think I know what's I think I might have an appreciation of what might be going on here yeah and um one of the things that we talk about in transaction analysis is complimentary transactions and that's where there is a free flowing ongoing exchange of information just like we're doing now now to connect it to OD sometimes what we want to do is to disrupt the transaction and and it encourages people to reframe what they're thinking stop pause so when I think of being an OD practitioner one of

(08:03) the things that I'm sometimes doing is I'm interrupting predetermined patterns of thinking or behaving or relating in the world to allow different ideas to emerge and so and it and it's done in what we call an okay okay way in transaction analysis it's not me trying to catch someone out what it is it's inviting me to encourage the other Peugeot to think more broadly to think differently to have different ideas about what might be going on and and as humans we love p PS don't we even if

(08:30) it's a dysfunctional pattern we very happily slip into one don't we and we we stay in it as well with with the child as well as um is there's this different forms of child state is it like kind of good child bad child is or am I reading this wrong okay well so yeah without without getting too much into depth which would be difficult to do in a short podcast the idea of ego States has actually developed extensively in 60 years and in an organizational setting one of the ideas that I like to use is

(09:04) something called functional fluency and functional fluency has translated these ideas around what behaviors might we observe in the workplace so for example within the child we might we might connect we might connect what we call Cooperative Behavior which is about okay okay exchanges of information being assertive dealing with challenges Etc we talk about spontaneity which is about where ideas and creativity come from from but equally well we have an opposite for each of those so the opposite of Cooperative is compliant

(09:35) resistant um and the opposite of spontaneous is immature now all of these behaviors show up in the workplace but as a transactional analyst one of the things that I might be looking for when I engage with a new client is oh What proportion of these behaviors are showing up that might give me a clue as to ah what might be going on here and How might people being showing up there's one more really important thing I want to kind of emphasize though is that transaction analysis very much started by looking at the internal world

(10:06) of individuals the INTC psychic and what is less known and less well appreciated is there's a huge part of transaction analysis which looks at systems and so my transactional analysis is very much what I call systemic so I will start with the system first and Eric burn wrote a book which looked at systems and he looked at cultures and so the thing that I'm endlessly fascinated about is what is going on in the culture what is going on in the system and my standing frame of reference whenever I meet someone who's behaving in a particular

(10:37) way is how might the organization have informed how you've turned up today rather than me pathologizing the individual and going this is your pathology this is your Peugeotality dysfunction I go hm something is going on in this organization which means this individual might be playing a game or being overly dominant or being very Sullen and compliant or whatever might be all of those are Clues to me as to what might be going on in the system well you've really wet the appetite Dan should we just clear all the rest of the

(11:07) questions that and then just go deep on and and and just one horribly simplifying question as well obviously we're talking about individual to individual can you have it where groups where you may have it where they're sort of playing the role of yeah well this is this is the bit that I really love about transaction analysis is that it gives lenses or maps to look individual to individual it gives you lenses to look at groups or teams which we would in transaction analysis we would call that in Margo so it comes from the Latin word

(11:36) for image and um and then we would also have ways of looking at culture or or the whole system so those two bits are not are much less welln like when you say transactional analysis and if someone's heard of it they've generally heard of ego States and parent adult child they've very rarely heard of am Maro or the TA ideas on culture but I operate up and down all of these ideas in every engagement or interaction where I'm working with an internal client I I guess you've got different levels of

(12:07) intervention having you as well so you might intervene at individual level group level system level as well absolutely fascinating so we we'd love to understand a little bit about your journey into OD so you you you came onto our radar because you're connected with lots of people that we've got a lot of respect for actually and then we started to follow your work and that's and but we just looked at your history it was just so fascinating you work with some really iconic organiz ations in in in

(12:30) multiple roles so how do you get to be where you are today doing organization development for one of the the big five technology companies in the world well I I I always joke about this it's not like I was in my student Guild bar in the University of Birmingham where I started my kind of academic Journey going I know one day I want to be an OD professional said no one ever no said no one ever exactly however um what I would say is that so I do credit what what happened at University for prompting my interest

(13:03) in this field of work so I was elected as a student officer of my student Guild and um the way that the student unions are structured in the UK um they often have permanent staff and the permanent Secretary of bur University Guild of students who sadly has passed away now but was like my one of my Inspirations number one a gentleman called Ian King he happened to be doing a masters in strategic human resource man management at Sheffield University and I was like and I had done a chemistry degree and I did not like chemistry and I knew I was

(13:35) not going to be a chemist I thought this sounds really interesting so I then sought graduate um training schemes in HR I had a really interesting choice it was either the NHS in Scotland and I could have been assigned to a posting in ory or to join Peugeot the French car manufacturer and I figured well if I go private sector it's more flexible but if I go public I may never be able to get into private that was the attitude in the '90s I don't know how it is now and um after Peugeot I moved to Cadbury and at

(14:09) the time Cadbury was a a phenomenally run organization with an amazing HR function and um I happened in two in the early ughs as was the case to be put on a big change project an Enterprise software implementation um I mean it sounds so quaint these days when you have everything in the cloud this was on premise massive massive the days of big it yeah he's like and I was put on to the change team and honestly I had no experience I didn't know what I was doing um but Kevin per was his name so another another very influential Peugeot

(14:45) he's a an OD consultant I still stay in contact with these days um he was a mentor to me and he introduced me at the ground level to how to think in systems and how to kind of construct a change management effort and that was where I was hooked I was like this is the work I want to do so I came to it by accident but yeah from that point onwards then most of my career has been working either in od or L &d and I've had some General Estate child business partnering but I've always come back to the OD um

(15:16) in one form or another um over my career we want to explore a bit more about the OD roles and how they developed over time I guess just one question I just had there is although you said you didn't necessarily enjoy chemistry it still has a big influence on how you think and that so has that had any kind of influence in terms of how you approached your practice yeah I I suppose yeah I I sometimes discount the importance of that yes so a science degree teaches you the rigor of thinking the rigor of analysis how to present

(15:44) information how to integrate both tangible and unexplainable factors so yeah if I if I think back that it probably did have a big influence although I really want to emphasize I was not a very good chemist but yes the degree did give me um some influence on how I suppose my underpinning thinking works when did you start making the change because obviously there's a lot of people that work in change management but aren't doing OD and when you do sort of see people that are doing change management in an OD way it it it is different so

(16:17) when did you start to make that transition and how did you discover OD in your work yeah well I mean I once I started at pero um I did I'm really showing my age now the entry level cipd qualification then was called the pmfp a post management Foundation program so that was that's what I went into to do and then I carried on and I got a postgraduate diploma in HR um in industrial relations so I kind of went in the classic HR route didn't particularly learn OD then if you like so I think to answer your question my

(16:53) understanding about what OD was emerged over time I would say it was really the really pivotal time for me was when I moved to Singapore and at the time cabri was rolling out a big commercial strategy program and um that the way that program got rolled out um was very well thought through and it had a training component um an education component but it also had an embedding component so it's like once you've trained people how are you actually going to work with people to make sure this change sticks so I started

(17:26) developing maturity models which you know some people might say are a bit par now but back in the naughties that was a an acceptable way to do your work and different ways to actually see how do you get these big business CH challenges to actually like land um and the biggest compliment I was paid at the time was I cannot believe that you work in HR um you're like a business Peugeot and I'm like but that's my philosophy that's my ethos in Cadbury it like almost the first thing I was told you are a business

(17:58) Peugeot first and an HR Peugeot second and that philosophy I think is what's so important for OD work it's like your client is the business or the system and then you might and then you pull upon different functions to help you implement or make a difference um or a change and you worked at organizations like Britvic uh uh you then moved on to Google so how what was how sort of accepted was OD in its way of working into those organizations um I would say so back back in um My Consumer package Goods days so um Cadbury and Britvic I think um

(18:36) at those times I think consumer package goods were amongst the most advanced in their HR practices so it was encouraged in complete contrast to arriving at NBC Universal where if I had said to let's say an executive producer oh I work at OD they would have just it would have been met with a blank look and there I I don't think I would even explain my job title I think I would have said um what is it you're trying to achieve let's see how I can help you achieve what it is um and sometimes people say oh you're like

(19:11) a coach or a consultant sometimes people might say are you like some sort of organizational therapist you know people would try to put their language on what it was that I did but yeah so I've had experience both in organizations where OD was wellknown well established accepted and organizations where they wouldn't even know what it is if it walked up and bumped them on the nose so you shifted gears and then you went to NBC Universal what what was the lure of that and what what was the task you were

(19:36) giving your your task with the completing there um so the that was a really it was an interesting time because um Comcast which is a huge US Cable TV company had bought out General Electric's stake of NBC Universal so the first thing it was it was we had to unhook all of G's people processes so Performance Management talent management Learning and Development and then recreate them for NBC Universal so you know a bit a bit like a sort of a I suppose a Dem merger situation and again back in the naughties gez people

(20:13) processes were fed you know kind of really really well-known really robust really welld designed honestly and you know they informed what we did so that was the first part of the task what came later in NBC Universal was about the development of a compelling employee propositions so employee value proposition work and then also um a huge kind of process efficiency piece of work in one of their divisions as well um which I mean I would call it OD they probably called it transformation or something like that I mean there's so

(20:47) many different words attached to this type of work so one of the things we love to do on the podcast did you just unpack what OD looks like in reality demystify a bit and give people a really sense of what it is tangibly so what does OD look like at Google what what does a typical day or a week look like for you I would say that um the first thing is that it's around the first question I ask is what is it you're trying to achieve um in the role that you sit in so that's like the business kind of outcome the the very first

(21:14) question where are you located in the organization what is it you're trying to achieve what external pressure or competitive pressure is placed upon you what resources do you have to do that what resource constraints are you under so there's a the very first step for me is what even is the landscape that we're talking about here um so that's a kind of a you know sniffing out sensing out what's going on um you might I might call that assessment assessment or you might call it diagnosis I prefer

(21:44) assessment because diagnosis sounds too clinical then then the next part of it is what is the challenge and it usually is a challenge but sometimes it's an opportunity and I am careful to balance those two yeah um it's not always negative although often the reason we're called is a negative but I always want to check out okay what's the opportunity what's the challenge that you're trying to deal with and then usually based upon the opportunity or the challenge there's some kind of further assessment um which

(22:15) might be talking to leaders talking to the team as a whole conducting a survey engaging with the the employees or the stakeholders because that's possible as well the stakeholders or the ecosystem that you're trying to assist and that those three steps are pretty standard only once I've understood the lay of the land and got a perspective on the problem by the way I think that's a really important part of OD I never take at face value what someone initially tells me about what the challenge is I

(22:47) make very clear to anyone I'm working with I need to investigate that's really really important that you let you've asked me to come and help I'm an independent Outsider in this kind of work so to speak so one of the benefits of that is that I can come in with a fresh pair of eyes and look um in a new way and then once once there's and then there will be some kind of report back on what I've discovered sometimes written sometimes variable sometimes only to the leader and the HR business

(23:17) partner sometimes to abroad to a leadership team depends on and and then we might get into design and implementation right right what needs to happen next what might a sequence of activities that would help you deal with whatever this this challenge is yeah so there's a fairly and I always say this about OD it's quite easy and Abstract to explain it in some ways it only really comes to life when you look at an actual case um and you follow a case through those kind of steps if you like yeah I know I've been doing it 18

(23:52) years my mom's still thinks I make people cry for a living but happy tears yeah a question for me so how do how do people invite you in to do the work so how do you know there's a need in the business how does that come about is there a one route or is it multiple ways um there's multiple routes actually so um the most common route would be from HR business partners um uh in in Google and that's because they're across a a huge range of topics and they might hear something that's usually the referrals I

(24:24) get are uh there's something really tricky here there's something intangible is something quite complex um I might be too close to it can you come and assist so usually that's how it comes in I do get some direct repeat business so to speak but like many many organizations the Contracting model is is with the people partner because we sit within um the people function um so yeah usually the people partner sometimes sometimes direct what might be some of the interventions that you do I know obviously there's no two the same but

(24:57) what in what way do you sort of intervene well it's interesting I think if I was I'll first describe it in general terms and then give you a specific example I think the thing that I do most commonly is slow people's thinking down enough to allow them to assess the situation more holistically so my one of my underpinning philosophies of doing OD is it is not for me to provide the solution the solution lies within you but for whatever reason you haven't got the capacity at the moment or the tools or

(25:30) the resources to be able to Define that solution yourself so I'm I'm always motivated by the first step being right let me help you have more resources to look at this situation different ways to think about it so sometimes I might offer a framework or a method or tool or something that would help people think differently sometimes it's simply about letting people have space to explore something because modern leaders are incredibly busy under huge amounts of pressure and they're generally leaping

(25:59) from one thing to another so I think sometimes they find it a relief to sit in a conversation for even half an hour and you say we're going to explore this topic and we don't need to nail it to the wall by the end of the 30 minutes we're just going to explore it that would be something that I would commonly do um I mean often the way that we intervene would be workshops team meetings onetoone leader interventions playing feedback back so there's a whole variety of like I would use every single one of those kind

(26:33) of combinations sometimes it's working one toone with the leader sometimes it's working with a leadership team sometimes it's working with a whole bunch of managers um sometimes it's taking someone off to one side and giving them some feedback or Intel that they did not know they needed in order to help them be more effective design is a big part of OD as well so whenever there's an intervention with the client there's always an element of design to it whether it's designing a workshop

(27:01) designing how you're going to feedback so this week literally um I've had two conversations after we surveyed a particular group in Google 150 um employees we're asking them about culture um feedback culture business process and interestingly we used Gemini Google's AI to help the first part of the results but then what we do is we finesse the results together and think in what way what's the most efficient and effective way to present this information back to produce the right sort of mindset that will allow people

(27:36) to respond to this feedback in a positive like in a way that's going to move things forward rather than dragging us back and so we really dug into not not in any way sugar coating the negative sentiment but thinking how do we produce the more ne how do we position the more negative aspects of the feedback so that it can be responded to and doesn't just send people back to our earlier conversation perhaps into childlike despair around oh nothing's ever going to change yeah that's really fascinating and so it sounds like some

(28:08) interventions might have a TA approach and others may not it all just depends well um I I am using ta whenever I work professionally um the there are different schools of thought on this um I the the school of thought that I have is that I will share a TA idea if I think it will help the client what I'm checking with myself though is do I just want to use that ta idea because I like it and then I check myself and go right well they don't need to know it then do they but if I genuinely think actually

(28:40) if we use this ta idea or model or map to frame the problem and it will help them then I will share it so yeah it's it's like my operating system professionally it's always ticking away but the the formal sharing of it varies and is judicious and in ta we would call this psychoeducation so it's like you you do a short a short teach of something always no more than 10 minutes so someone gets the idea and then generally the idea is accessible so then they run with it um yeah fascinating yeah and I think like operates is a

(29:14) really lovely metaphor for that as well and and what's really interesting that you say using sort of AI to sort of support the work and do a little bit of the heavy lifting as well which is a which is very Progressive isn't it and and it's something that you know is a potential opportunity for OD people to use more particularly when you're managing vast amounts of data and try because it's one thing to have data but you've got to interpret it translate it and make it accessible as well haven't

(29:35) you yeah and and I you know I've I've only really started using AI seriously this year and I mean one of the reasons was that our developer models and our trainee models were not confidential so I could not use confidential data around clients because it was accessible to the broader Google if they knew how to look in the codebase so I had to wait until we had like these private models that we can use now that I have them I find it it's like training an apprentice so I do I never take it face value what it spits

(30:09) out at me but it is very good at homing large amounts of data and then producing something and then I will look at the data and I'll say I think you've overemphasized that point and underemphasized that point please rerun it and then um so I'm I'm still experimenting I'm still learning but I think for professionals generative AI is going to be big productivity and thinking enhancer as long as you don't just blindly accept what it tells you that would be a disaster but you use it to supplement your thinking and supplement

(30:42) your processing then I think it's it's amazing I'm really excited by well I think it's the end isn't it it's how can we use it to complement the work that we do not fear being replaced by it because I don't think that that doesn't feel like a a threat to me at the moment yeah and that's like that's for me where ethics come in and within transactional analysis ethics is a really important underpinning part of what we do um so we have a very strong ethical code that is

(31:08) systemic and it looks at things like responsibility protection the client and it looks across all stakeholder groups so I would say in almost every engagement that I do I'm also thinking ethics and there's massive ethics with the use of AI as well so um yeah it's it's kind of I don't know that there's enough written in our profession about like the ethical stance in od and what what even is ethics because ethics is not a rule book ethics in my view is subjective it's a it's a series of ways

(31:40) of thinking about a situation and then making tradeoffs you you're working in a fascinating industry working for a fascinating organization doing a fascinating job what do you enjoy most about it or already already in general I I I think what I enjoy most about it is it's um it's when you can enable your client to do something that they otherwise would not have been able to do and so in that sense it's really interesting OD is not a it's not a profession for narcissists um if you if you want all the we write that down Hang

(32:16) on we're gonna write that's really good it's true though it's not about the ego is it it's yeah OD is a profession that's in service of it's in service of the client it's in service of the system some would say it's in service of society so my joy comes from when I can see something has shifted for my client and whatever they're trying to do has been shifted in their system as well and I want to say you know I don't I don't always succeed and nor to my clients and

(32:45) so failure is also a big part of tolerating failure and knowing that not all of your assignments will go as well as you might like as a big part of OD as well so I can't say I love the failure and failure I say in inverted commment you can't have an absolute failure but you can have an assignment that doesn't go as well as you'd have hoped where the change doesn't last as long as you might have thought where the change the the problem recurs all of those things can happen but I do I do enjoy that

(33:15) challenge yeah you've got to love the subjective in od and so back to one of your earlier questions around um I think the difficulty if you've come from a very new Eric structured or process driven discipline into OD it's a really big jump in terms of philosophy or ethos about how you operate and you have to let go of some things in order to then become an OD practitioner and so I always say to people who are entering OD whatever you do your job is not to take notes it is not your job to be the the

(33:52) kind of the administrator of your client your job is to be present and someone who's come from a very service orientated type of role that might be they might think that's a way I can be helpful I can take notes and I'm like no do not take notes you disempower yourself you make yourself less potent with the client so yeah so that's that's a piece of advice I would give to people looking to break into OD is you've got to trust trust yourself and trust your presence with the client great I think

(34:19) that goes into list of the top 10 great tips we've heard on these podcasts so far we really like that it doesn't mean you shouldn't produce written outputs by the way I want to really caveat that yes of course you need to do that but the kind of the anything that interrupts your presence when you're with the client I would advise against but it's yeah but it's not it's not as simple as not doing it though because there's there's a very strong invitation to pick up the pen isn't there there's a power

(34:43) Dynamic play isn't it and you know often it's like so you're having to sort of stand your ground and and and know like what is your space and how you actually add value as well and that's a different type of thing they may not had that relationship with sort of internal resource or external resource before it's very true and if I let's say I'm working with a leadership team and someone says around the leadership team should we take notes of this discussion and then there's silence the Mexican standoff yes yeah

(35:14) and so I'll say how how are you as a team in terms of tracking and keeping like status on your work and then if they go well that's actually one of the issues that we've got then right as as a consultant I must not step in and make up the deficiency for that client they need to sort that out they need to kind of to own it if you see what I mean so that would be a very practical illustration of it can actually be something that the client needs to address and the OD practitioner stepping in and rescuing is very problematic I

(35:48) think and so avoiding there's another aspect to that is again sometimes the other aspect of this is the OD practitioner savior the God complex and if you ever get someone going you're amazing you're going to do fantastic work whoa huge warning Bells they are looking for a savior you just happen to be the flavor of the month right now um again problematic so cross that transaction as we would say in transaction analysis and say what is it you think I'm going to save you from stop yeah but but it's so it's going

(36:23) back to the the ego thing or the narcissist thing isn't it it's very easy to when someone says that to go oh well well that's very kind thank you very much but you're sort of almost removing yourself from it and being of observing what's actually happening aren't you yeah yeah and this comes back to the idea and transaction analysis of your adult ego state where I've got all my resources I'm grounded I'm able to absorb what what's going on and and I and I get it who doesn't like to be

(36:48) flattered who doesn't like to be told you're going to do an amazing job it's like wonderful but it's not your adult ego state that you're hearing that in you're hearing it probably in your child ego State and that's then where you respond from and it's like ah let me get back to adult what's really going on here every every transaction as we would say is a piece of data every single transaction and even more importantly that first two or three minutes with the client they usually tell you most of

(37:16) what you need to know in the first three minutes that's an idea from transaction analysis so when I first meet a new client I am hyper Vigilant and Hyper aware what are they communicate ating to me both in the actual words that they share but also psychologically what are they communicating to me and then generally whatever they've shared and that first three minutes then tends to play out for the rest of the engagement in some way or another oh I've got I've got a question I'm dying to ask me you

(37:43) may or may not have an answer so how do you stay grounded like how do you stay grounded in your profession because when when the systems at play these are very powerful forces aren't they they they change Behavior they institutionalize people you know they can they can push you out even if you've got the strongest mandate in the world how do you how do you stay grounded in the moment do you like do you have a repertoire and how do you sort of say true to yourself and what your mission or task is I mean one

(38:08) thing I would say is that in the transaction analysis training that I've done um a huge amount of it was training us to recognize when we were in adult ego State and when we weren't so every single program would start with a check-in how much adult have you got available if you haven't got adult available what's going on so it was a big part of my training and that's like multiple years of training the second thing is um most people who follow a transaction Allis pathway will undertake some sort of um therapy or counseling to

(38:40) help them notice themselves when they are getting in the way of their um abilities as a practitioner and so I mean in in ta we call that um script um when script gets in the way that would be some of our early conditioning and patterns um that can Surface today and then interrupt my ability to be present so building that awareness through therapy and then the and these are all longer term Solutions supervision super super important really I would say I know the coaching profession is very focused on supervision the OD profession

(39:17) less so but I would say it's equally important the perspective of another and helping you see what you can't see because we cannot possibly see everything that we want to see in the moment so that's why supervision is so valuable um especially regular supervision because it's like okay I had this experience with a client I go to my supervisor I perhaps process it using um Peter Hawkin's seven I model which is a really good systemic model of supervision that looks at lots of different dimensions that's given me

(39:46) ideas about how I should intervene when I next go back to my client in the moment I would say it's things like breathing moving honestly change of scenery walking like you you'll often see me in Google I will walk around the block of the corridor before I have to go and do a difficult meeting or a difficult conversation something about the physical movement takes a matter of minutes but can invite you into your adult ego State and therefore in a more able position to help your client what do you find most challenging about the

(40:18) work you do one thing would be when the client's got a great big hurry up this is another um ta idea we call them drivers they're patterns of behaviour that can get formed when we're relatively young that help us get well in ta we call them strokes but it's the way people get recognized and so and in organizations you can get a culture of hurry up most modern organizations have a culture of hurry up because there's limited resources so hurry up is always a challenge I need this delivered now can

(40:49) you do it in a shorter amount of time can you do it in two weeks can you do it in one week what can you do tomorrow so I don't like that but I recognize it's a feature of everyday life so that's a challenge is what if the client hasn't got doesn't have enough adult about them to be able to slow down to do the work that they're being asked to I think the other thing that would frustrate me is when there's an unrealistic expectation of how long it would take for a change to actually happen and um well Garen the

(41:23) event that the cipd event was talking about the very same thing you know the kind of the the real istic timeline for some changes can be 18 to 24 months and no modern organization tolerates that but it's the reality so there's something for me as well that's frustrating when an organization expects a really big significant change to happen in an incredibly short amount of time I think that'll resonate with lots of people lots and lots of people um how do you measure success in your role so how do you look at what success like oh

(41:53) there's the Holy Grail question for our profession that's why we keep asking it yeah oh yeah it's it's really it's such a tricky question because I think unpacking exactly what like my or my colleagues interventions have contributed versus anything else is really really challenging so I have to say actually I I come back to net promoter type of ideas did this intervention make the change to the client did this intervention produce the the sort of change that you were expecting and if they're at 9 or 10 then

(42:31) you know you've done an effective work if you haven't you know that's less so so I would I would derive most satisfaction if I got a good net promoter score um because I would think yeah whatever I did the leader's perspective on it was that it it made a change you can you know we have experimented in Google with sending out questionnaires and surveys to leaders but you know what leaders are like they're incredibly busy they probably answer it um and so your the reliability of that data is quite low so yeah I I

(43:05) have to say I probably am most on the kind of the the verbal sense making of the leader after the intervention and what's some of the biggest lessons you've learned along the way you've had a really rich and varied career of different sectors different Industries different roles what what some of some of the things that have really stayed with you or even recent lessons um one of the one of the biggest lessons I've learned is less is more so and I can illustrate this practically when you are preparing for your transaction

(43:34) analysis exams you record yourself um just like coaches do and I used to listen to recordings of me working in consults or with um coaching sessions and I I used to have to stop and hold my head in my hand and go shut up James you literally said what you needed to say in five or six words and you then added four sentences it's like so I think a real lesson for me is brevity is so impactful as is space and there's a real art to being able to inquire briefly and then a real courage in shutting up and giving the client space so that's a

(44:17) that's a major career lesson I think the other one that I would highlight would be around Intercultural work and which has been like informed in a kind of an intersectional way I think of Intercultural and Dei work are both really really import sorry diversity equity and inclusion I know there's all sorts of acronyms and different versions of letters with that that's become much more present in od work I would say um in recent years and for me it's about a constant curiosity around what Inta we

(44:52) call frame of reference what is the frame of reference of the client that I'm working with and what is it they can and cannot see what is it they do and don't appreciate interculturally and this is for me a sort of a this is a NeverEnding journey into cultural awareness this year I did my very first work with anyone from the um the middle east region totally totally new arena for me going with your W eyes wide open I don't I I don't I Eric Barn had this phrase think Martian and what he meant

(45:25) by it was when you land in your engagement do your level best to empty your mind and look at it upon eyes as though you have no idea what's going on in this situation because it will allow the freshest insights no that's easier said than done but this idea of thinking Martian is so helpful I land in a new situation that I'm unfamiliar empty my mind and then notice where my biases come in and go there's some data I love that brilliant that's going to stick with me obviously you do a lot of you've

(45:56) talked a lot about transaction analysis and the effort you've put into kind of developing yourself in that field what does Learning and Development look like at the moment for you what are you where are you focusing your efforts yeah so um it's in the it's primarily in transaction analysis um in that um once you've become a certified transaction analyst if you decide to become on go on to become what is called a ptsda the provisional teaching and supervising transaction analyst there are certain

(46:21) requires about the number of hours of teaching supervision examining evaluating WR in papers presenting sessions at conference conferences providing written articles so a lot of my CPD is focused on all those different elements and a lot of those get observed by a more experienced um ta practitioner so I have a NeverEnding stream of feedback honest um from people who are very wise and yeah and yes so I still feel like I'm being stretched incredibly outside of ta I'm really interested in the ideas of Dave Snowden and

(47:02) particularly a method that he's developing called esterine mapping which is a way of looking at complex systems and particularly the constraints and factors that are acting on systems and I think he's really on to something because in this world in which we operate where there's so much unpredictability the idea of constraints that we can influence and constraints that we can't and all those side of things really really good the only thing about Dave's work is it's quite academically dense so you need to sit

(47:32) with it to kind of you know translate it into pragmatic terms but I enjoy the challenge and I'm also looking to knit those ideas into ta as well so that's one of the areas I want to write about and you you followed the classic chemistry degree NS automobile manufacturing OD route classic yes the old we also ask the question is you know for people that are actually considering a career in organization development they either are considering it they've seen it they've frustrated with the way change happens in their organization or

(48:06) they're just at the Foothills what what advice would you give for someone starting out well I know I know 7020 is much derided these days but as a metaphor I think it's still pretty SED and I would recommend to anyone thinking about getting into OD seek out a change project that is where you will cut your teeth and there are change projects running all the times in organizations so and particularly any change project that requires collaboration with different functions so as soon as you have to knit together different parts of

(48:39) the business it Finance legal HR commercial whatever it is get involved in a project of that nature and keep volunteering for those projects because that will give you really valuable experience about what does and doesn't work in change which is in essence what OD is OD is about promoting a change in the system for the good of the system so that would be the Practical experience that I would say if you're right at the beginning of starting out is is find a change project to volunteer on I think the cipd does a um a foundation

(49:09) certificate or similar in od you probably know better than I Daren but doing something like that to get your formal OD underpinning would be really helpful as well and then hopefully between those two things then you could start to find um different ways um to get in and Final top tip is if you are in HR um I think there are often change jobs that are in business functions that are given a different name so also consider going for one of those types of jobs to give you a different experience and to really experience the

(49:44) accountability of driving a change James I want to say a huge thank you this conversation has been a bit like when you go to a restaurant and you want to eat every single thing off the menu this like we're just scratching the surface there's just so many inter in things you've shared with us you know there there's so much you've shared with us in terms of transactional analysis and the and the you know the rigor that that follows give us some brilliant insights into you know how you create meaningful

(50:08) significant change in organizations like Google and and really sort of started to reveal you know a little bit of detail in terms of how you actually work on the ground and how you stay grounded as well I guess some of the takeaways I'm takway so we only allowed three each so I'm going to I'm going to really disciplin here so um I I just some really nice things the fact that OD is not profession for narcissists I think that's something that's it's really important isn't it like if if you're

(50:32) seeking the Limelight and Glory your your satisfaction comes from a different place doesn't it this I think that's a really important thing to kind of know up front um Dan might be steing you yours but I've got less is more that ability to feel comfortable and it resonate with me because obviously you know when you do the transcripts from your own sessions and you type them up and then it kind of is just typed into your own head how much so just letting the scientists do the heavy lifting as well um and then the final thing is

(50:58) think Martian which is the ability just to you know to come in and and though you may may know how do you sort of bring that kind of different kind of perspective as well Dani what's stood out for you yeah you definitely s think Martian I was gonna say that but I'll let you have that so I think I would say I think something you said RAR early on about kind the importance of kind of thinking how the when we're we're interacting with a leader or a team thinking about how the system is impacting them so really having that

(51:22) systemic lens when we go into a situation I think our ability is a ption practitioners to tolerate failure is so important because you know we're working with Messy complex humans and messy complex systems so we can't know and we can't get it right all the time so tolerating failure and I loved what you said about the you know the first two or three minutes with a new client are so important to tell us might tell us everything we need to know and give us so I'm going to pay particular attention

(51:47) to the next two or three minutes every time I meet a new client so you know if people want to follow your work if they want to reach out to they want to understand a little bit more about transactional analysis and I know obviously moving into supervision now so how how can people reach out to you yeah um so primarily through Linkedin I'm you know I'm I'm employed at the moment it's been a project that I want to set up my own website but I haven't done it yet so please contact me through Linkedin

(52:11) regularly run what's called a ta11 which is the official like officially endorsed introduction to transaction analysis and ta has a philosophy that that's a lowcost product so it's very accessible um and we also provide um discounts as well whenever people request them because of extenuating circumstances we do not want finances to be a reason for not being able to access ta so yeah contact me for ta101 I'll be running them both virtually and hopefully one in London as well um I also offer um

(52:44) supervision to organizational development consultants and I also offer um what's called a 202 which is a more advanced program for those that have done the 101 where it's a kind of a combination of learning ta ideas and supervis on those ideas so people should feel free to contact me vi LinkedIn for any of those aspects wonderful and whether you're listening to this on audio or you're watching the video AOS we'll put um all of the links that um that James has shared with us in the show notes as

(53:13) well so please follow up with with James we'd really appreciate if you did that too so um James want to just say huge thank you you we're putting you into the collection with these other amazing OD practitioners that are doing brilliant things in their field and I just we've really enjoyed en it it's it's absolutely delivered on the things that we wanted to do when we set the podcast up so thank you for being so generous with your your practice thank you for being so generous with your insights

(53:35) into transaction analysis as well if you'd be happy for doing a round two in the future we I think we'd love to have you back definitely yeah yeah well and and thank you so much for the invite um you know you reach a stage in your career where people think it's worth recording what you've got to say then that's that's an honour and quite humbling so thank you and a two-parter well yes even more so brilliant so for those of you that are watching it I hope we've earned your like and

(54:00) please keep subscribe to the channel wherever you're listening or watching this so then you're up to date with all the latest uh recordings that we've got coming out and we're literally releasing an interview um every single week on Mondays at 7:30 for video and Fridays at midday on audio as well so thank you so much and thanks for your time everyone [Music] he [Music]