#46 The Career Path

What does a career in the environmental industry actually look like, and how do you know when it is time for a change? That change can range from minor adjustment in your life and your expectations and goals to a big one like changing jobs or even careers altogether.

Gunnar and Hammond are joined by career coach Kellie Guenther to discuss career pathways, professional development, leadership, mentoring and workplace culture. 

They also explore the pressures facing young professionals, why the first job can shape an entire career, and why working in the environmental industry may involve fewer dolphins and butterflies than expected. 

Links:

EPA Updates: Regulatory, licensing, policy and legislative updates | EPA 

PFAS Position Statement 

Asbestos in Recovered Fines

EPA Response to OCSE paper

Free Asbestos Waste Disposal for households

Listen to Below the Surface and collect CPD points. We have confirmation that you can claim 0.5 points for every hour you spend with us under the Self Education Category

Contact: bts@4pillars.com.au

https://www.linkedin.com/company/below-the-surface-podcast

The necessary disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this Podcast are the speakers’ own. They do not necessarily represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of 4Pillars Environmental Consulting Pty Ltd or any Client, Supplier or other party related to 4Pillars or the speakers. 

(c) Gunnar Haid and James Hammond

Transcript

Transcripts are AI generated and may not accurately reflect the spoken content.

Gunnar Haid (02:54)

Hammond, I'll let you take the lead here. I'm a passenger. I will I've been told I have to behave more in our podcast, so I'll try

 Ha ha ha.

James Hammond (03:05)

Yeah, Gunnar's got a bit loose on some of our recent podcasts, haven't you, Gunnar? 

Gunnar Haid (03:10)

Well it depends who you ask, right?

Kelly Guenther (03:18)

Doesn't it need to be like slightly entertaining? Don't you want people to listen?

It's meant to be.

Gunnar Haid (03:19)

I love you, Kelly. This is exactly what I'm saying.

Yeah, a little bit of spice is okay for sure. Kelly, I'll let you introduce yourself because I always think that our guests do the best introductions for themselves. Our working title for this episode was The Career Path, and I guess what we wanted to talk about with you is some of the different career pathways that are available to people in the environmental profession and then professional development and how one goes from being a graduate, to developing their skills up to a certain level and then you know, beyond that, what do they do?

Warm up question, hello. I can't let you to handle anything, Hammond.

I thought we could get to that next Gunnar.

James Hammond (04:03)

So now Gunnar's now pulling me up on process and order, are you, Gunnar? Mr. Tangent himself.

Gunnar Haid (04:04) Who would you like to have dinner with, Kelly, other than Hammond and me, if you could pick anyone?

I thought about this and I had a few, but I'm gonna pick Neil deGrasse Tyson. He's an astrophysicist for people that don't know, but he's just got this ability to make really complex topics really easy to understand. And I reckon we probably have a decent conversation with some of the things I'm interested in. So

Mm.

Gunnar Haid (04:43)

Yeah, he's a superb science communicator. He's the American Doctor Carl. Doctor Carl has a similar way of making complicated things sound very easy and Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of those. Yeah, he's

Yeah.

Kelly Guenther (04:54)

Yeah. Yeah. I'm hoping that maybe I can take a leaf out of his book and be clear and make things sound simple.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's so good and very entertaining as well and very like charming and personable.

Yes. Yeah.

He's the twenty first century Carl Sagan. Yeah, nice. He's fantastic. All right. Yes. All right, now you can get into your whatever you want.

James Hammond (05:15)

Yeah. What a pick.

With that nice setup there. Take us through I guess your career journey, Kelly, and you know, where you got started and then I can see you know you're a certified site contamination specialist. maybe take us through that certification and then I guess what made you step out of the industry and do what you're doing now?

So I started in ADI Limited, which is an organisation a lot of people may not have heard of, but they actually owned a lot of defence land around Australia and it needed to be cleaned up before it was being sold off. I was employed right at the back end of that though. However, it was within the two years of the C L Act in New South Wales coming out. I was applying for a lot of jobs when I left uni.

Yeah, right.

Kelly Guenther (06:06)

And I suspect this still might hold true for a lot of people coming out of uni these days. We kind of take the job that we can get. And I had to do that. I actually studied principally ecology at university, but couldn't get a job in that. so kind of fell into contaminated land. And for the first five years I was really doing a lot of EPL compliance work, particularly on landfills around Sydney, and that was excellent.

Yeah.

James Hammond (06:21)

Me too.

James Hammond (06:33)

Yeah.

Training ground because we all know landfills have multiple issues. It was primarily groundwater, plus it was really nice doing groundwater in the bush, like lots of these landfills, some of them were closed, so it was really nice four-wheel driving around those sites. After that, I worked a lot on

Hm.

Gunnar Haid (06:52)

Mm.

Yeah.

Kelly Guenther (06:57)

The service station sites program because the fossil fuel companies decided they were going to sell a lot of their properties. So there was a big program to investigate and remediate service station sites. So again, excellent training ground. You've got underground storage tanks, you've got solvents, you've got all sorts of different contaminants. So I learnt a lot. I learned lots of different drilling techniques and sampling techniques, early stages of soil vapour.

sampling where you're just drilling a hole in the concrete and sticking a PID down the hole.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Gunnar Haid (06:57)

Underestimated, that is an underestimated method, I tell you.

Kelly Guenther (07:35)

It worked for service station sites for sure. So then from there I moved to a larger organisation and that was CH To Hum Hill, which is now the current Jacobs, and got exposed to some much larger projects. But still sort of all in the compliance monitoring. They had been declared a contaminated site and they were doing risk assessments to get them off being declared contaminated.

Yep.

Kelly Guenther (08:02)

worked on a very large remediation project with Orica, which really taught me a lot of grit, had to defend everything that we were doing in front of one of probably the industry's most respected auditors, standing up as a twenty something every single week, telling him what we were doing and justifying our approach. again taught me a lot.

Wonder where that was.

Gunnar Haid (08:32)

So you would have been if at C H Toom Hill you would have been working with Ross McFarland and Andy Colush and

Yes, yeah. I supported him a little bit with his site auditor activities. And after that, after CHM Hill I went to JBS and they were JBS environmental back then and it was at the beginning where asbestos assessment was starting to move towards becoming quantitative prior to it coming out in the Nepham and it was very similar what we were doing. And then from there I had babies.

So had to take a couple of career breaks in there, but came back and continued working on some redevelopment sites and then went back into consulting at EP RISC where was a principal and I was providing environmental advice. And over the last probably five years, I'd noticed that there's lots of people coming into the environmental industry. They really want to help.

the environment. And there is Yeah, you're laughing, Gunnar.

Hm.

James Hammond (09:39)

Gunnar's a bit cynical about that. Don't you remember what it was like, Gunnar surely when you first got started you weren't so cynical?

Yeah.

Gunnar Haid (09:47)

What are you talking about? I'm a petroleum engineer. I'm supposed to create a mess. You're welcome.

I was very idealistic. I did ecology. I wanted to save the environment. I'd done geography at high school. I was hearing all about what was happening with the greenhouse. I loved nature. I loved the bush and I thought this is the job for me. Like I could have done other things, but I wanted to do this. And I've gotten to sort of the twenty seven year mark and I'm just like I'm a little bit heartbroken because maybe I didn't help as much as I wanted to.

Me too.

James Hammond (10:01)

Mm-hmm.

James Hammond (10:16)

Hm.

Gunnar Haid (10:20)

Really? Who would have thought?

The shift is now I'm seeing consultants come into the industry. They're on the front lines. There is emotion connected with that. And also seeing that within a lot of organizations, I couldn't see what I wanted to be. I wasn't really mentored. I didn't really get the support or the development that I wanted. I sort of it was just really following what was available and what skills and competencies I had. So I want to support.

Yeah.

Kelly Guenther (10:51)

those people that are coming in the industry to have a meaningful career.

I guess I'm in two minds about people trying to fulfill everything that they want through their work and through their job. And like what's your view on obviously you think that people can get a level of satisfaction and fulfillment from their work, but do you think that work can ever really fully do that? Or do you as part of what you do with your clients is to look at what they can get through work and what they might need to get through other means?

Yeah, you've kind of hit the nail on the head there. So when I first start working with a client, we look at their whole ecosystem. We look at all aspects of their life. And this is coming out of the forest because oftentimes when we're confused or maybe we're stuck or we don't know what change we want to make, we kind of can't see the forest for the trees. So it's an excellent exercise to sort of come up out of the forest and take stock. Really, it is

an imagination exercise, you're using that part of our brain that allows us to imagine what's potentially possible and what do I want? Then you start going and you start filtering that down into specific goals, specific actions and tasks, behaviours, beliefs, and then the job that they're in, does that fit their values? Does it fit who they want to be?

Are they going to get part of what they want from their life, from their career, and then they can get the other part of the meaning from other parts of their life? We will have happier employees when people are viewing their life more holistically and they can access some level of contentment and happiness from what they're doing in their job, and then they're getting it elsewhere in their life as well.

James Hammond (12:26)

Yeah.

James Hammond (12:31)

Yeah.

James Hammond (12:39)

Yeah.

James Hammond (12:49)

before we jumped online here we had some back and forth over email and you were very clear about I guess the difference between an advisor versus a coach. Can you just explain the difference between those things? Like what's your understanding of those different terms and what do they do differently?

So an advisor would tell you what to do. If you have questions, they might give you a whole list of options of different careers that you could go into. Yeah. Whereas coaching is much more a process of self discovery and inner awareness. And the client really facilitates what's emergent to them. So they might be coming to coaching because they might feel stuck, they might feel challenged, there might be things happening in the organization that they feel like.

So like a career advisor?

James Hammond (13:20)

Right.

Kelly Guenther (13:33)

They can't talk with anyone in the organisation about, so they need someone external to talk to about. Then from that place they set goals to be held accountable to move forward from where they are. So I'm not telling them what to do, I'm asking them what they want to do.

Right at the beginning, I loved what you said about young professionals when they come out of uni, they so often take the first job that they get. That's a mistake. That is a real it's a true not sorry, not what you're saying, Kaylee. No. Taking the first job, the first job that you can get.

Ha ha

James Hammond (14:16)

Mm.

Is a mistake. And I, when people ask me, hey, how do I get into contaminated sites and how do I become an environmental professional? My first question is, Are you sure you want to be in the contaminated sites industry? That's my first question. Do you understand that you are not gonna be swimming with dolphins and flying with butterflies? That's not what you will be doing. I don't know, it's so hard to get that across. Of course, it's easy because

I have options when you are straight out of uni, you don't think you do.

So Gunnar, when you say that taking the first job that's kind of available to you out of uni is a mistake. What do you mean by that? As in like what should people be doing instead?

But what I would suggest you sit down and you think what would I really like to be doing and what am I good at? And this is tough because you have so far been at university and basically everybody tells you that you don't know enough. And our industry falls short in telling people what it's actually gonna be like. So when I give a guest lecture at whatever university I'm invited to.

Gunnar Haid (15:27)

One of the first things I always tell people is, guys, the environmental industry I have a feeling is not what you think it is. Because Kelly, as you said, a lot of people really wanna make a difference. They are worried about the environment. They are worried about sustainability. They are worried about the future, climate change, and they wanna do something about it. The way how I see at least the small section of the environmental industry that I know of doesn't do anything about that. Your

goals of changing the planet and of saving god knows what are gonna be dashed very quickly once you understand the current legislation and the time and monetary pressures that are on consultants.

Mm.

Kelly, maybe do you want to give your take on that point about that decision that has to be made when somebody's

Leaving union perhaps doesn't have many options. Because my take on it was similar to yours, Kelly. So I studied ecology as well. And I think a lot of people who study ecology want to work in that space, but then when they go to get a job out of uni, they realise the jobs that are available to them are more the brown environmental jobs, if you want to call it that, contaminated sites, environmental management, post approval stuff. And that's where we can typically fall into and that's where I that's why I found myself as well. So what so how would you deal with somebody who's sort of fresh out of uniform

James Hammond (16:49)

And has jobs on the table which are maybe not exactly what they had intended to do. Like how what how would you coach somebody in that situation?

I'd probably use a similar approach to how I coach anyone and it would be again taking that look at what they really want from their life and then developing down what their goals are. Of course our goals are going to change across our career and at the moment a lot of young people are facing the pressure of cost of living. So, you know, there's a huge pressure for people to get jobs, stay in jobs, even if said job is

Hm.

James Hammond (17:17)

Yeah.

Kelly Guenther (17:28)

Soul destroying or causing burnout, because they have this financial pressure, and that's a huge stress on young people. But often when we set goals in neuroscience, there's a part of our brain called the reticular activating network. It sits at the back of our brain. And once you have a set of goals, a set of actions, and where you want to head, similar to when you go, I'm gonna buy a new car and it's gonna be this car, you start seeing that car everywhere, right? So if you know

Mm-hmm.

Like what Gunnar was saying, sitting down and thinking about which direction you want to go, that part of your brain starts lighting up and looking for those sorts of opportunities. So that would be where I would start with someone fresh out of uni.

I find it very helpful to categorize things. When somebody was if somebody's talking to me in a kind of a mentoring situation and they're asking me kind of what are my options, these are the categories I typically use to describe what's available for environmental professionals. And my first one I describe as being in-house. So this is kind of a an environmental manager.

within private organizations. So this might be yeah, within say like a manufacturing organization or something like that, where you're the environmental manager or environmental advisor. So you're part of that company, but you have a defined role in environmental management. The second one I talk about is government. So this would be, you know, working for the EPA or the par department of planning or something like that. The third is consulting, which a lot of people would be aware of, which is about taking stuff you learn and then applying it across different projects and to different clients.

James Hammond (19:06)

They're the kind of the three areas certainly that I've had experience in that we that I can talk to. And then there's a couple of others that I haven't had direct experience with which is academia, study, research, and then the NGO non government organization or not for profit sector. Kelly, do you think that I've missed any there or do you broadly agree with those categories?

I'd broadly agree with those categories.

Yeah. Gunnar

Yeah. way more comprehensive than I could have come up with, for sure. I really don't envy young professionals who come out of uni anymore. I just because it used to be when I came out of uni last century. It was, you know, the world is your oyster. It was a it was just an exciting time and there was a thrill about you're gonna go out there and you're gonna conquer the world and you can do whatever you want to do. And the

Mm.

Gunnar Haid (20:02)

pressures that Kelly was just mentioning were not as immense as they are these days. These days the pressures that young people are under, I mean there is there's obvious ones like the f the housing crisis and the you know financial pressures. Of course everybody always has them. And if I may add, so financial pressures are not only on young people. I happen to know.

No.

Mm-hmm.

No, but yeah, even when you say Kayleigh, what do you want to do? To find out what is it that you want to do? A young person who has come from high school, HSC, university, they don't know what's out there. They don't know they would like to make a change to the environment because that sounds kind of cool and it's important. And yeah, but ultimately they don't even

Yeah.

Gunnar Haid (20:59)

know that there is different ways like you just listed them, Hammond, of I can be at the EPA, I can be at a regulator, I could be at an NGO, I can become a consultant. And I don't even know if there is someone else out there like you are, Kelly, helping them. I but they're they are under a lot of pressures financially. They're under peer pressure that is now way bigger than it has

Yeah. Yeah.

James Hammond (21:19)

Yeah.

Gunnar Haid (21:28)

ever been before with social media and with the connectedness that they are in the on top of it, can I throw in AI where people think like, I come out of uni, took me three years to get my degree and now there is this for twenty dollars a month. Someone knows almost as much if not more than me. That is that's a pressure that we shouldn't underestimate. So I'm rambling on here. I don't want to be a young person with at the beginning of a career.

Yeah.

James Hammond (21:48)

Yeah.

James Hammond (21:56)

Part of what you know, picking up on what you were saying there, Gunnar, about like, yeah, those categories or those areas that you could go into work, the thing is that they've all got good and bad things about them. And they move depending on where you go, right? Like for example, yes, you can go and work in government, your working conditions are probably going to be better. the impact that you have from your work arguably may be better than say consulting, but your pay will be less.

And the bureaucracy and this and the pace of change in your career will be slower. So, you know, versus consulting where you almost get the flip side of that stuff. So this is what is hard for people to understand, which is that, you know, no matter what job you're going to take, there will be trade offs. And because I sure as hell didn't know what I wanted to do when I was twenty one and coming out of uni. So how do you advise or not advise, but how do you coach your clients in terms of that change that's going to happen? How do you deal with that?

evolution of what somebody wants over time.

So it would be coming back to their plan and looking at the job, like okay, what's going on at this organization? What's the culture like? What are the relationships like with the colleagues? What is the leadership like? Let me tell you, the leadership determines everything in organizations. You had a question in there for me. It's like, is now the right time to change? And that would be again looking at your plans and maybe

Mm.

James Hammond (23:14)

Mm.

Kelly Guenther (23:25)

Maybe you do, maybe you have to take a job because you have financial concerns. Maybe you still have that plan. And you go into that job and you do that job to the ability that you can do it. You receive the training that you need to on the job, because obviously we know there's a lot of on the job training for graduates that come out of university. And then maybe it's not fully aligning with what you want to do, but you're willing to get the experience and the skills.

And the interpersonal skills, like understanding what different organisations are like and how they function, that's still developing. Like so everything you're doing in a job that may not be your most ideal job is still going to teach you things.

Yeah.

James Hammond (24:10)

I totally agree with what you said about how sometimes the jobs that you really don't like in the moment can sometimes be the ones that teach you the most in hindsight. Yeah. So whenever you know, whenever I talk to somebody who said, you know, I've done this thing or I just done this thing and I really hated it or whatever, I just always ask them, I'm like, you may have hated it, but like, what did you learn from it? Because there's always something there. But you've just got to look at it in the right way.

Ha ha

Gunnar Haid (24:38)

Fine line though, isn't it? When you are in a job and you just dislike a certain aspect of it, you and you are not a seasoned 20 year engineer. Hammond, you and I or and Kelly, the three of us, when if we work for someone and something isn't not right, we all know now whether this is unreasonably not right, and we should we can definitely ask for a change, or if it doesn't happen.

Mm.

James Hammond (25:02)

Yeah.

Gunnar Haid (25:07)

make the change happen. Okay. But it is extremely hard to determine whether this is something that needs to be changed or is it something that I just need to deal with.

Yeah, when you're earlier in your career. Yeah.

Yes, there's always stuff you don't necessarily like. But which ones are gonna cause you to change your job or which ones are gonna even cause you to change your career? And which ones you hey, you just gotta deal with it. That is a fine line and it is so hard. It is so hard to determine that. A lot of the things you mentioned, Kayleigh, are for you know when you say you come back to your what do you want to do and you cycle back to your plan?

Yeah.

Gunnar Haid (25:48)

That's great when you are sort of established in an industry. I really don't envy twenty year olds who come out of uni and are trying to somehow get started. It is hard. Someone at age twenty two finished I don't know environmental science degree and now they're of course looking for a job. Of course they're gonna take the first one that comes along, and whether that's in compliance or whether that's in contaminated sites, of course they're gonna take that.

Mm.

Gunnar Haid (26:18)

Whether that's the right thing or not is a different question. But you have to understand the first job you take very often takes you down a path that you will be in ten years later.

I wanna ask you about graduate programs and I guess like the structure of learning for people as they come out of uni and into their first or you know, first or second job. I was lucky enough

I went through a grad program in the private sector at Brickworks and I went through a grad program when I joined the Commonwealth Department of Environment. And both of those grad programs were actually very well structured, dedicated a lot of resources to me and in hindsight were really excellent. And I'll be honest with you, as a small business owner, it's something that I that almost keeps me up at night thinking about how

much better I could be doing for young staff that come through and giving them a better structure in learning. My question to you is what are you seeing out there in the industry in terms of like the quality of graduate programs and the quality of structured learning and structured kind of curriculums for people when they join an organization at that early stage?

So what I'm hearing from young people, and I'm gonna say that's probably graduate up to the two year mark, young people do want their employer to care about their development. And I think there's flexibility as how that care is shown based on the size of the organization. And then I'm hearing also from young people that there's a lot of organizations who once they get in and they're working,

James Hammond (27:30)

Yeah.

Kelly Guenther (27:52)

they don't feel like there is that care. So based on my experience and what I went through, there was no graduate program. It was sink or swim. It was I was chucked in the deep end multiple times. Sink or swim, go and learn the skills that you need. Yes, there was some technical training along the way and the USCPA resources on technical training back in the 2000s were just gold for me when I needed to learn something. And I still think that's kind of happening today.

Yeah. Right. Mm-hmm.

Kelly Guenther (28:21)

And I appreciate that organisations are having to balance resources, balance time. And the drive for most organisations when they're for profit is that you have to be making money so that you can keep your staff employed. But what I also understand is that if organizations can cultivate some of their employees' development through just regular annual goals, a discussion with

your staff member. So what do you think your goals are this year? You know, you know, what are you thinking about? Are you enjoying it? What parts to enjoy? Quite an open and honest and authentic conversation. And then yes, of course, there's organizational objectives that need to fit in with those employee objectives. But if there is any crossover and you can fill that for them, then you're going to have a happier employee.

And they're gonna wanna work for you because you've actually just been a human and listened to them. And that's sort of repeated quite consistently throughout that sort of graduate up to the two to five year mark that I'm hearing in the industry.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that there can be some people at our level who are now the people who are running businesses and bringing graduates up through.

There can sometimes be this mentality that like, well that's how I did it and therefore that's how you should do it. Like, you know, I managed to get through and therefore if you're worth your salt, so should you. When my first job at Brickworks, which is a brick manufacturer, if anyone doesn't know,

Kelly Guenther (29:51)

Mm.

Gunnar Haid (29:56)

Who would have thought?

I ran yeah, I know, it's in the name, isn't it? my first job was that I was a you know, qualified in environmental science and or ecology, and my first job was at this site in Eastwood, pumping water from one dam to the next and flocculating water and then checking the pH and getting rid of it, right? I did that for six months, carding pumps and hoses and stuff around this muddy site, and I'd come home covered in mud every single day.

Ha ha

James Hammond (30:24)

And I talked to my boss at the time, who's now actually left that company and is a client of ours, which is really nice. You talk about things coming back around, Kelly. And I said to him, I was like I was qualified to do other things, like why did you have me doing that? And his response was just was that, was that this is how I kind of proved my worth when I started my career and I thought at the time that's what you should have done as well. But from talking to him a bit more, I mean I think that, you know, our approach has to evolve and the

Why this is so bad.

James Hammond (30:52)

And the way that we brought grads through twenty or thirty years ago is not the way that we need to bring grads through now. It needs to be a more sophisticated way and a more thoughtful way to bring people through.

Well, you said a particular word there and it was evolution, you know, we can see technology evolving. Surely we can evolve some of the methods that leaders lead with and that we also, you know, transfer knowledge and information. We have to. That's part of our experience as a human, that we should be transferring knowledge and experience and skills to the younger generation. That's what we're meant to be doing. We're not meant to be keeping it all to ourselves.

If you're a principal or a senior in a company, just look at it this way. Everything you teach to a junior is something not only that they learn, but it's also something that you don't have to do. It's like have the best possible team that you have available and train them everything you can because then you have less work and your the work that your team pumps out is gonna be much better. But

Exactly.

James Hammond (31:59)

Yeah, it's more work in the short term and you get the longer term payoff. And I think that's sometimes the barrier, isn't it? It's like it's more work in the short term to train somebody up properly.

Yes. That's right. Yeah.

Yeah, and corporate elbowing also you shouldn't because Hammond, you and I we are in a small company, once you reach once you're mid and bigger size, right? It's like are you gonna keep the stuff that you know to yourself or are you gonna create some more competitors? Is of course a that's a concern. Everybody wants to keep their job. I can understand it if you're someone with ten years of experience and you're leading a team of others, and I like

You know, maybe because 'cause one of the rising stars could actually rise and rise above you. So I can understand that people are sometimes hesitant with the passing on of knowledge.

Do you see that kind of stuff, Kelly? That sort of the kind of corporate politics coming into things very often?

Kelly Guenther (32:56)

I think that comes from leadership. I think that comes from the top down. Like so what culture is the leadership creating within that organization? Is it siloed? You know, we're trying to keep everything to ourselves. Like you said, is it we're trying to compete against others? Now that is a strategy in a consultancy. I'm sure we've all seen it to try and get people to work harder and faster. You compete them against each other. It's horrible, right?

no.

James Hammond (33:16)

Mm.

James Hammond (33:22)

Yeah. Yeah.

When we evolve, like we're talking about, this evolution in organizations and this evolution in our careers and in development, we're evolving to cooperation and collaboration. They're the next levels of the organization coming out of that siloed sort of administrative era where it worked. It worked in the fifties and the sixties and seventies, where they had to start getting quality controls and procedures and things all set up. But now that we're evolving, humans actually work.

great together when they're collaborating. When you have that individualistic tendency and that competitive tendency, the leader's not going to get new ideas because people will just keep them to themselves. Whereas if you're a leader and you can cultivate that cooperative and collaborative environment, that's when people will feel safe and that's what it comes back to them feel we're safe. I can share that. I'm not going to be one shut down. I'm also not going to be looked at weirdly.

Yeah.

And that's where we start getting one, better organisations and also happier staff.

James Hammond (34:31)

And am I right in thinking that, you know, that maybe that kind of approach worked in the past because it people weren't as mobile in their careers and they weren't necessarily moving around as much? Like, do you think that's also a factor, Kelly, as to how easy it is for people number one, the labour shortages that the industry has and will have for the foreseeable future and just yeah, the ease in which people move from one job to the next. Is that you know, does that affect, I guess, like how you how leadership runs an organization and how you have to think about your staff's happiness?

Absolutely. Look, I have moved quite a bit. I know other people have moved quite a bit, but I also know others from throughout my career who are still at the same organisation and they haven't moved. And I know some consultancies where there's people that have been there for like eighteen and twenty nine years.

Yeah, I guess what we wouldn't want people at any stage in their career thinking that, I can't stay with this organization for longer than five years or whatever it is, 'cause then it's gonna you know, it reflects badly on me. I don't think we want culture you know, out there that makes people feel that way. 'Cause like you said, I mean, it's a r it is a really good thing. If someone's happy in a job and they're productive and they're building up a massive corporate knowledge over ten, fifteen, twenty years, like that's awesome. Why should they move?

That's excellent. That's one, it's excellent for the organisation and it also means that your staff you would assume they're finding satisfaction there if they've been there for so long.

Yeah. we've talked a lot about I guess like people early in their careers who are entering the workforce and trying to figure things out. I wanted to talk about people who you work with who are further along in their careers, potentially they've got you know, a specialization certification already and they're maybe even in that kind of later mid to later stage. what are the kind of questions you're getting from those people and sort of how do they differ? What are the what are the issues they're dealing with and how do they differ from people who are early in their careers?

Gunnar Haid (36:01)

Mm-hmm.

Kelly Guenther (36:29)

So interestingly, I'm actually working with the mid career consultants predominantly, and some sort of towards the end of that are getting ready to seek accreditation. So the types of things they're coming to me with is one, they've found purpose and meaningfulness in the organization that they're in, but the organization is not perfect. And so they've identified that.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

James Hammond (36:53)

Hmm.

Kelly Guenther (36:56)

If they get some of their own personal support, they can get some technical skills and they're developing themselves towards becoming a leader. So that's something that across all my clients have identified. They want to start identifying themselves as leader and what it means to them. So in neuroscience, that's an identity shift. We're starting to go, well, what does it mean to me to one be a leader?

Mm.

Kelly Guenther (37:23)

What type of leadership style do I want to start to explore? What leadership qualities have I seen been very effective and maybe the ones that haven't been effective? And then how am I going to start to integrate the beliefs and behaviors associated with that type of leadership style into what I'm doing now so I can start showing up as the leader? And then the other one that

Lots of people have been coming to me with is I want change, but I don't know what. And interestingly enough, I'm going to talk about neuroscience again because that really is just a brain that knows stuff, has particular patterns of behavior which have probably repeated a number of times, but now it's like,

Yeah.

Kelly Guenther (38:17)

I want change, but I don't know what. And so the brain can sort of hit this inertia spot, this stuckness, because you don't know what you don't know until you start taking the small step. Similarly, you start to look, well, what do you want? Like start to look a bit bigger, start to take that holistic picture that I've already discussed. What would you want to do?

Yeah. I feel like some people can feel this pressure that I must always in my career I always need to be like moving up the ladder and increasing or moving into a leadership or moving into a management position. And for some people it's just not what they want or it's not it doesn't suit their skill set or you're like do you have people that come to you and sort of asking what's next and the answer might be just kind of keep doing what you're doing?

But it's interesting that you mention that because I've had conversation with colleagues where they're like, Well, I just want to stay doing this job. Like I don't want to keep progressing. But they feel the pressure from the organization they're in to be constantly up leveling. So I'm a firm believer that growth is not constant because we see that reflected in our environment. Growth should not be constant. You know, there will be ups.

and downs. But I absolutely agree with you. I think there are going to be some people that just go, I'm happy here. I want to stay here. But often the pressure is coming from outside to continually grow and up level and go to the next level.

Yeah.

James Hammond (39:52)

as organizational leaders, like you've got to set your workplace up in a way that doesn't penalise people for saying, you know, I've reached this level, I'm really good at what I'm doing and I'm happy to just kind of sit and maintain and, you know, be open to changes or advances in what it is that you do day to day. But beyond that, you're not seeking to continue to climb the ladder. You're quite happy where you are and that's a valuable thing within an organization to have that. one of my regrets, I think, is

Mm.

Kelly Guenther (40:16)

I agree. I agree with that. Yeah.

James Hammond (40:22)

in looking back as to when my boys were all born, is that I had put myself in a situation where I had really had no choice other than to be like foot to the floor, flat out, pushing hard, not just in the business, but also in me, learning and upskilling as a leader, right? That was just an unbelievably stressful and bad place to be in. And you really have to understand that if you're having kids and you wanna would like to focus on

home life, you really have to accept that you are going to have to take a step back during that time. If someone's listening to this and kinda has the same mentality as me, it's something who I just say just have a good think about it because you set yourself up for a lot of stress and pain, I think if you try and do everything at once.

So there's something else that I haven't spoken about when you're trying to make change or consolidate where you are, and that is, you know, subconscious patterns that have been laid down when we're younger. That can sometimes derail change that you're attempting to make. But there's processes that you can work with, and the first step is to become aware of those potentially liberting habits that throw up when you're in challenge and change.

and find ways of meeting them and moving past them so that you can also start to change the past and move towards the future that you want to move towards.

It sounds like part of going through this whole process over your career is also about getting a better understanding of who you are as an individual.

Kelly Guenther (41:52)

Yep, I think career development can be one of the biggest personal development exercises that you'll ever do.

Okay. Well I in terms of wrapping well sort of bringing it back, I guess, I mean we've covered a whole heap of ground. I guess

I would like to I know the perfect ending, Hammond. I know it. I start with you, Hammond. One minute advice that you would give someone who is brand new, who is trying to get their foot into the industry.

Please.

James Hammond (42:22)

okay yeah, on the spot. I know these were my notes, but you'd think I'd be prepared for this question. I think so there's yeah, there's a couple things that come to mind. I'll keep it brief. one of the main things is that it's not always what you know but who you know. And I think that I disregarded relationships with people a lot in my early career and I really focused on academic performance and just proving that I was

very technically proficient and I really neglected the personal side of things. And I really found that when I went to go and get my first job out of uni, a lot of my fellow students found it a lot easier to get jobs because they were out there and they were forming relationships and they were getting out and about. Relationship building is equally, if not more important than your technical proficiency.

foreword of how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. That's in the foreword. I will jump in Kelly, I'm sorry, because I want you to have the last word here. I would suggest take your time. And I think and I know Kelly you mentioned that as well where it's hey try things out and if you're 2022, who cares when you

There you go.

Gunnar Haid (43:38)

When you find out three years later that this wasn't entirely and you slightly change. Just take your time. You have so much ahead of yourself. Don't let anyone tell you that there is such an urgency to move on. Also in this size and I don't know those cliches, but it is so true. Do what you like doing. So even if you are a contaminated sites consultant, in and you there are areas in there that you can like and some that you

Don't. I am lucky enough I have found my spot to wi with you, Hammond, where you don't make me do things that I have a proven track record of being bad at.

That's for both of our benefit, couldn't I?

Thank you, yes. when you do things that you enjoy, you automatically become good at them. I leave it at that. Kelly, one minute ad advice to young, very young people.

To very young people, have a think about your intentions and explore the environmental industry. Like it's not that hard to find information these days. my god, when I was trying to find a job, it was in the back of the Sydney Morning Herald. Now we have a wealth of information. Do it was a newspaper. Wednesdays and Saturday the job adverts came out.

Gunnar Haid (45:00)

That's a newspaper.

That wasn't

Kelly Guenther (45:10)

So do a bit of exploration as to what jobs are out there, set some general intentions, understand some of the motivations why you might be coming in, and then be enthusiastic to learn. Every young person who I've hired, if they are enthusiastic to give things a go, it's often they find what they like and what they don't. And I'll also agree with Gunnar what

you said trying to find what it is that they're good at and doing that and also James what you said in relation to yeah it's your network and personal branding. It's funny, I'm using something from the marketing world, but there is a little bit of personal branding and I've actually been seeing a few younger, in particular women doing it quite well so that then they'll have network connections.

Yes.

James Hammond (46:05)

Yep. Yes.

James Hammond (46:10)

And Kelly, it's nice to have you in my network now and know who I can call when I'm trying to figure out what to do next.

Yeah, just book a discovery call and we can chat. That's thirty minutes free. You can

Kelly, this has been awesome. Hammond organized all this and I didn't really I read this the run sheet, which we didn't stick to. and I wasn't really quite sure what we're gonna talk about, but I think it flowed very nicely and I had a great time. I hope our listeners do too. But this I enjoyed this.

Yeah, well thank you very much for this opportunity. I really appreciate it. especially with a growing business.

No worries.

Gunnar Haid (46:47)

Kelly, thank you. Loved it. Absolutely loved it. Thank you for joining us.

Thanks, Kelly.

Thank you. Bye.

Yeah.