Swimming Upstream: Leadership, Grief, and the Courage to Be Human with Dr. Shirley Zinn

In this deeply moving inaugural guest episode of Beneath the Busy, Lauren Davis sits down with Dr. Shirley Zinn, a renowned leadership expert, non-executive director, and author of Swimming Upstream. This conversation transcends typical leadership advice, diving into the raw, human experiences that shape how we lead, heal, and thrive in high-pressure environments.

Dr. Zinn shares her powerful personal journey from growing up on the Cape Flats during Apartheid to becoming a Harvard-educated leader sitting on some of South Africa’s most influential boards. But it is her courageous openness about grief, loss, and the tragedy that took the life of her only son, Jamie, that forms the emotional core of this episode. She speaks candidly about the stigma surrounding mental health, the pressure to "just carry on," and the transformative power of allowing oneself to be vulnerable.

Key themes explored in this episode include:

The True Meaning of Resilience: Moving beyond the toxic narrative of "grit" and "pushing through" to embrace resilience as the ability to pause, reflect, and heal.

Leadership with Heart: Why caring for people is not "soft" but the hardest and most critical business imperative. Dr. Zinn shares how she brought the word "care" into boardrooms and why it matters for retention, performance, and culture.

The Cost of Busyness: How constant activity masks deeper issues and why leaders must create intentional pauses to check in with themselves and their teams.

HR’s Evolution: From transactional personnel management to strategic Chief People Officers who have a seat at the table and the courage to lead on human sustainability.

Permission to Be Human: Giving yourself and others the grace to acknowledge overwhelm, ask for help, and recognize that we are not machines.

Dr. Zinn’s message is clear: "We will not have a livelihood if we do not have a life." This episode is a call to action for leaders, HR professionals, and anyone navigating the complexities of work and life to prioritize sustainability, empathy, and authentic human connection.

About Dr. Shirley Zinn: Dr. Shirley Zinn is a highly respected leadership expert, non-executive director, and author. With a career spanning HR leadership at major corporations like Standard Bank, NED Bank, and Woolworths, and board roles at companies like Sanlam and MTN, she brings decades of experience in creating inclusive, humane, and high-performing organizations. She is the author of Swimming Upstream: A Story of Grit and Determination to Succeed.

Connect with Dr. Shirley Zinn:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shirley-zinn/

Connect with Lauren Davis:

• Website: www.ljdwellbeing.com
• Instagram: @laurendavissa @beneaththebusypodcast
• Podcast: https://www.ljdwellbeing.com/podcast/

Key Quote: "We are humans, we are not machines... Just give yourself the permission to stop and pause, reflect and breathe... We will not have a livelihood if we do not have a life."

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Transcript

Lauren Davis (01:41)
was thinking this morning, it's a little bit of a fan girl moment for me because I really have kind of looked up to you and respected you and been so inspired by you for years. So to have this one-on-one time just feels like a real gift. So thanks, Shirley. I really appreciate it.

Shirley Zinn (01:58)
Thank you so much Lauren also for having me. It's such an honor that we connected when we did and we kept the connection going and I'm always amazed that one manages to do that with people where there's just a resonance and a connection and a sharing of you know common purpose around some key values and I really love the work that you're doing and I'm very honored to be here.

and to be on your podcast with you today.

Lauren Davis (02:27)
And you are my first guest. So I've been kind of soloing it for a while, a couple of episodes, and then decided to get other people's voices and knowledge. And I thought to start with you as my first guest would be just amazing because of your exposure and your experience, both leadership, HR. I know we had a conversation a few years ago about mental health in the workplace. So it felt like you...

Shirley Zinn (02:30)
Okay.

haha

Lauren Davis (02:51)
really epitomize the intersection of that and also you're a human being and a woman in the workplace and all those categories that are just, you know, it kind of, thought you would be so, yeah, I've got so many questions and thoughts to share with you just across your experience. So I'm really looking forward to the conversation.

But maybe before I jump in with all my questions, if you can maybe just share with us a few minutes, just a little bit about your background, who you are, what you're currently busy with. Because I can read your bio, but I prefer to hear from everybody's own mouth, their background and story.

Shirley Zinn (03:32)
Thank you so much, Lauren. So just a little bit about my journey. I was born and bred in Cape Town. I grew up on the Cape Flats during apartheid. I was born in 1961, just to give you some context, not to give away my age. But it was pretty much a time of deep, you know, fragmentation of society, of deep racism, of...

Lauren Davis (03:46)
Yeah.

Shirley Zinn (03:59)
socioeconomic challenges of incredible nodes, where people are pushed to the periphery, not only of the spatial and geographical world that they live in, but also intentional displacement and dispersion into the periphery of society to struggle and not to flourish and live the lives that they were meant to live.

And so it is with that background and with parents who did not finish their high school but somehow understood that education would be our liberation. When I say our, I talk about my sister and I, have a sister that is three years younger than I am. And my big responsibility was always to be taking care of my sister because my mom and dad, they worked in very

low level jobs and we lived in what was then called a council house for people like my father and his family who had been displaced from District 6 and had to go on waiting lists for you know basic housing in far away places with very little infrastructure, with very little health, education and other

social support, large levels of poverty and unemployment, gender-based violence, and plenty of challenges. We still have them. I mean, the gangsterism story is all over the newspapers every day. But within all of that, somehow, with a little bit of support and assistance and guidance from an early age, we

We found a way to say, you know, that in the seemingly impossible situation, you know, there is possibility. And my father from a very, very early age would talk to us about, let's not get stuck here. Let's try and make something from nothing. Let's try to educate ourselves so that we can get out of the situation and we can be more financially capable of taking care of ourselves.

and being independent. so he started to talk about that when we were really before primary school, even when those seeds were planted. And ⁓ my mom on the flip side would talk about things like values, that she didn't use the fancy word values, but she used to talk about respect for other human beings. And she used to talk about

excellence and and hard work and just doing everything to the best of your ability no matter how difficult your circumstances are just give up your best every day. She talked about humility and not the kind of humility that is a sign of weakness but humility that is a sign of courage that if you fall over you can get back up again it's okay if you make a mistake you can fix it. If you have to apologize to somebody because you've said something offensive

you can apologize authentically and correct course. And she would say things like, just be kind, know, just be generous in spirit and be of service to humanity. And she lived a life by these values. So it's incredible, large messages from my parents at a very, very early age already.

I think these were the guardrails, Lauren, that has taken me throughout my entire life. Every day I to measure up to am I doing what she challenged us to do? Where could I have done a little bit better every day? I know I can't be perfect because I'm human, but I'm trying to work on all of those areas constantly. And with my father, when I finally asked him, what, you know, didn't use vision and goals, but he said just,

Lauren Davis (07:28)
Thank

Shirley Zinn (07:36)
get yourself out of this, learn your way out of this and educate your way out of it. And I said to him, what is it that you want us to do? And he said, just please will you get your matrik, just get your matrik. And we know what the statistics are, I don't have to tell you that. Even today, all these many years and decades later. So there's tons of work to do in the education departments, but there are also pockets of excellence because what happened was, I looked around me and I didn't see,

Lauren Davis (07:39)
you

Shirley Zinn (08:04)
any children my age finishing high school, never mind. Girls especially were not finishing at all and still a huge number of them never, never finish high school if they manage to get there. And these are all because of the race, gender, disability and other biases ⁓ and prejudices that were in our society.

And now there's a whole lot of, you know, the financial gap, the digital gap, all the divides that are there. So there's an enormous amount of work still for us to do. But anyway, long story short, I managed to get to Matrik. We had to live with my grandmother, my mother's mother, because it became too dangerous to walk with my sister up and down that road. I still wouldn't walk there today. And so we lived in the week with my grandmother and over the weekends we could go home.

And it was tough for the two of us because we were growing up and we wanted to play and do things and we, you know, and she was, you know, tough. But I have deep gratitude to her for teaching us about discipline because discipline was very important for me and still is in the chaos of life. Even in a day like today, it's like, you know, don't get anxious.

Don't fret, don't fuss, just be polite to people. You'll get through the queue. If you're late, you'll make another plan. But her thing was you never ought to be late for anything. So plan your time properly. And she will let you play till five o'clock. But if you come in there five minutes past five, then there's no play tomorrow. Then you think about how you can do better the next day. ⁓ And so it was about discipline and diligence and...

Lauren Davis (09:35)
Hmm.

Shirley Zinn (09:39)
dedication and determination. It's kind of the four D's I always think about. When I think about her and I want to show gratitude to her today, even as I talk to you now, as hard as it was for us. And I finally got to Matric in 1979. I had no idea what I was going to do after Matric. I just knew I was going to find a job and go to work and help with the financials at home, as we promised. And then two teachers sat me down. They probably sat everybody down, but for me, this was incredibly special.

Lauren Davis (09:48)
Hmm.

Shirley Zinn (10:05)
They sat me down in the middle of that year and they said to me, you know what, you are not shooting the lights out necessarily. You're not the brightest P in the part here. We know you're working hard, but you're not getting the A grades. But we do believe that you have the potential to do much, much more than you think you are capable of. You can do so much more. I was kind of, ⁓ you know, I can listen to the first piece and cringe.

Lauren Davis (10:15)
Show.

Shirley Zinn (10:29)
but I had to listen to the second piece. And I think this is where I also, you know, learned the lesson of listening and what it is that you choose to listen to, what it is you choose not to listen to. And I could have just fallen over and felt terrible after the first sentence. But after the second sentence, I said, so what is it, you know, what is it that you think I can actually do? So they said, we want you to go home tonight and talk to your family about university.

And I was kind of, wow, they actually think I can go to university. just never part in my worldview, never part of any conversation that I've had with anybody ever. And so I was so excited. I thought, wow, they really do believe in me. And it's an amazing feeling that one gets when people actually believe in you before you believe in yourself. And it's a very powerful and empowering feeling.

I mean, for me as a young girl then about 17 years old, not sure about where I was going to in this life, just knew I had to get him a trick. And here these two teachers sat down and had this conversation with me. I went home that night, I sat with my parents. It was a story about we don't have money and we don't have time. You're gonna have to pass and you're gonna have to do your chores and you're gonna have to get a Saturday job. And I said, I'll do all that stuff. I will do it. And then...

I got a bursary from government and in those days you got allocated a bursary obviously according to your race group or whatever and you know in my case it was you could choose to be a teacher, a nurse or a social worker and government would pay for that. So how they picked those three job categories I don't know but I picked the teacher one because I literally only had five minutes to do so and I thought teachers resonate with me.

I can maybe be a good teacher someday in my lifetime and maybe that's what I need to do. then they helped me with the government bursary forms and off it went. And then I got into the University of the Western Cape and I started my BA degree in 1980.

Lauren Davis (12:12)
Hmm.

Shirley Zinn (12:30)
It was a very tough year in 1980 because it was the educational uprising in South Africa, one of the huge ones that happened. There were multiple of these events that happened, but it was students saying no to government on a whole raft of policies and regulations that would completely cement a budget forever and relegate us to...

you know, ⁓ some zero zone of society and ⁓ keep us there. So I became a little bit of an activist at university and I realized I started to link the dots between my own poverty, my own socioeconomic circumstances, the regime of the day and what education could actually unlock for me. I really began to understand that in a much clearer way than I'd ever done before.

And the university shut down during the year because of all the trouble there. And I had to cancel my bursary and my studies and I had to go and find a job because we just didn't know when this was going to start up again and what impact was going to be. And so I went and I tried to find some jobs. went from bullet to post and had some interviews for little things there and there.

But by September of that year, I still hadn't found a job and I can only resonate and my heart really goes out to the youth of our country today. So many such high unemployment for our youth. I think it's a huge challenge that we face as South Africans and as leadership and we're going to need to fix that very quickly because I don't think we can grow our country when we have so many young people who are unemployed and that feeling of

Lauren Davis (14:09)
Hmm.

Shirley Zinn (14:13)
you know, not being seen, not being heard, not being wanted and not being valued and not being worthy when you go and people just say, go away, you know. And so I went back to the university and I begged and pleaded to cancel my cancellations and they finally let me back in and then I thought, okay, yeah, I'm going to finish this. then I...

I graduated, I went to teach for four years, which is what you had to do when you got the bursaries. I taught English for four years at a school in Lansdowne in Cape Town. And while I was teaching, decided, well, I may as well carry on studying. I could do one degree and a postgraduate diploma in education. may as well keep going. And then I quite literally went the whole way to the doctorate, as you know, while I was working and studying.

I landed a scholarship to Harvard, something I never ever dreamed was possible in my life. If it wasn't for my mother-in-law that clipped a piece of newspaper out for me that said Harvard South Africa Fellowship now open for application, I was kind of, wow, when she showed it to me, I said, do you really understand what this means? She said, well, if you don't apply, you'll never know. So she was also kind of like, it, like really urging me along. I would never have thought to do that.

Lauren Davis (15:22)
Hmm.

Shirley Zinn (15:25)
So this is again where the listening comes in and sometimes you have to listen to voices that you might never listen to, like your mother-in-law and other voices that will be giving you really good, good direction and you might miss a trick because you didn't listen and you didn't act on it. So they send, at this moment still, they send five people every year to Harvard and all the academics hopefully paid for, but you need to get through the academic hoops. So off I went and... ⁓

I did a second master's there in education and then I had an amazing supervisor who said do the doctorate and I said I've got no money and he said first get in it's a global competition. So I applied and I did all the stuff I needed to do and I got in with no money and I came back to Cape Town and I said to Kevin please will you go with me to Harvard. I got into the doctoral program.

and just an amazing partner. So I've learned the importance of partnerships. I've learned the importance of real unconditional love. I've learned what it's like to be in a relationship where there is such a willingness for another person to give so much of themselves to me so that I could thrive and I could flourish and they would support me.

So we got married in 1992 and off we went together to Harvard in 1993 I started the degree, in 1997 I graduated with a doctorate, in 1995 we gave birth to our son Jamie, right in the middle of all of that we came on with the doctorate and the baby and I wanted to. It was a wonderful day coming to Cape Town International Airport and the family and how proud they were and it was

Lauren Davis (16:51)
Wow.

Shirley Zinn (17:03)
My heart still just warms when I think about that moment. And I just wanted to do them all proud because it all just got behind me. And yes, I had a lot of fear and anxiety. I worried about what if I failed and I didn't make it and to come home and tell everybody that I didn't manage it. And I thought to myself, I can never put myself and them in that situation. So I'm going to work really hard and I'm to get through this thing.

Lauren Davis (17:12)
Yeah.

Shirley Zinn (17:26)
Anyway, I came back and I wanted to work in the education department of the Western Cape and didn't get a job there. I had a couple of interviews, no job. And that was in 1997, just at the turn of, you know, the tide of our democracy in the country. And I was so disappointed. was, I have no idea what I'm going to do now. And then Southern Life was looking for a training manager. And I don't know if you recall Southern Life, but it's a

Lauren Davis (17:41)
Hmm.

Shirley Zinn (17:53)
You know, it was my first foray into corporates and I figured if I can teach in a classroom, I can teach in a lecture hall, I can teach in the workplace. So off I went and I applied and they were not happy with too many qualifications, no corporate experience. Put you on a six month probation, how you do. You know, learn as much as you can. Let's see. Let's see how we go. And that was a massive door that opened for me. I was terrified.

you know taking that daunting step into a space that I absolutely no clue what I was getting myself into here and I learned so much in the time that I was there. So I'm truly, truly grateful for taking that leap of faith which is another message I like to teach when I'm talking to students, when I'm talking at some of these you know events to say to people sometimes opportunity comes in ways that you don't even begin to imagine.

But you have to give yourself that opportunity. You have to take that leap of faith. And so I did that. And the rest is really history because then I started to get into HR roles. We moved to Pretoria from Cape Town. We then moved to Sandton. I held roles head of HR at the records, head of HR at South African Revenue Services, at NED Bank, at Standard Bank, and then came home and...

and was a head of HR at Woolworths as well. But the thing to conclude the story is used to come up and down from Pretoria to Cape Town for Christmas and holidays, all sorts of things. And on the 3rd of January, 2003, we were driving back from a wonderful holiday in Cape Town and ⁓ Jamie was seven years old at the time.

And we had a terrible accident just past the airport, the Cape Town International Airport, just on the N 2 And we lost Jamie, our only child, in that car accident that day. I was 24 hours touch and go. Kevin was seriously injured. And it was the most devastating time of our lives. And re-ealing ⁓ took me some time ⁓ to recover. I could never get over it.

but I have to put one foot in front of the other every single day and move myself, consciously move myself forward. And as I always say, you know, a lot of us suffer huge devastation. We suffer loss, we suffer trauma and tragedy and incredible pain and injustice. And the world expects us just to carry on, you know, as if nothing had happened.

Lauren Davis (19:54)
Thank

Shirley Zinn (20:15)
And then somehow we buy into that and we tell ourselves we just have to carry on, you know. We don't give ourselves time to heal. We don't know where to go and ask for help. We still stigmatize emotional wealth and psychological safety. So we don't want to sign up for those kinds of programs in the event anybody who finds out that you're getting help.

Lauren Davis (20:18)
Yeah.

Shirley Zinn (20:39)
With all my psychological studies, all my studies in psychology, I still thought, I'm not gonna do all that stuff. I will go back to work. I was off for six months on sick leave and Records was incredibly compassionate in terms of telling me that they will find somebody to fill in the space for me. I must go and do my healing, come back when it's all done. And the upshot of that was that

for me today doing the roles I do, I want to immerse organizations in this philosophy of caring for their people. And in this fast moving consumer goods company that is absolutely ruthless about targets and efficiencies and running on limited resources and maximizing it all as much as they can, they still found empathy for me. They still

sent me good wishes. My entire mother's house was filled with flowers and good wishes from all over the world because I was responsible for Africa Middle East. And so this has stayed with me as something that has driven my purpose. Because when I'd finally gone for the help, Kevin and I, when I had finally discovered that I needed to lift myself up and use my intellectual capability, use my emotional capability,

Use my social quotient if you like in terms of the relationships with people around me that uplift me, that care for me, that inspire me, that love me, that want to see me flourish and not go down that very, very desperate hole of grief and despair, which is so easy to go down and so many of us never can come out of that because we get so deep down into it and we don't see light at the end of the tunnel.

I deliberately try to talk to this often because I believe we need to create spaces for these kinds of conversations, these healing conversations to happen. And so I pulled on all of those anchors and whatever spirituality means, and I said to myself, you've got to pick yourself up now, you know, and try to put one foot in front of the other. And some days if you put two steps back and one step forward, that is also okay, you know.

Lauren Davis (22:30)
you

Shirley Zinn (22:50)
and kind of work with myself, work with others around me. And so, Lauren Jamie would be 31 on the 24th of May, if he was alive. He was seven years old when we lost him. And I promise you, it was like yesterday, still in my mind. And as I talk through my journey, I can never leave that piece out because I shared it.

Lauren Davis (23:07)
Hmm.

Thank

Shirley Zinn (23:13)
because I believe it is a part of who I am. It's a part of my journey. would, and if it cannot lift and inspire anyone, then I would have, it would have all been worth it. And I think I had to repurpose myself quite literally after that. I had to say, I'm still alive. Why am I here? Ask the deep existential questions. And what is my purpose every day when I get up? What is it that I want to do? I'm an HR professional.

Lauren Davis (23:34)
.

Shirley Zinn (23:39)
I can make decisions that can impact thousands of people's lives. I'm now on boards as a non-executive director and chair of some boards. And I know that every decision I make, I can shook the needle for all of those people. I can widen the lens. I can give opportunity and I can speak truth to power. And I can bring healing and I can bring all of that experience that I've had into.

into how we create organizations that really care about their people. So I know that was a long answer to your short question, Lauren. But I thought I needed to share that with you. I don't know if you've heard me talk about this before, but there are lots of stories within those stories, of course, and lots of learnings within the journey, which I documented quite a bit in my first book, Swimming Upstream. But it's...

Lauren Davis (24:26)
Hmm.

Shirley Zinn (24:29)
It's a reality for a lot of people that we walk around with a lot of angst and pain and sadness and despair. And there's never an outlet to be able to talk about this. And all we do is that we get compressed to do more and pressured to do more. And we never get to fill our own glass, our own soul, so that we can give to the world in a better way.

Lauren Davis (24:55)
Wow, that, mean, I kind of, you've answered all my questions in your story. And it's just so inspiring, know, just the lessons you've learned along the way. you know, often people would want to say, wow, you're so resilient. I have a...

Shirley Zinn (24:59)
Yeah.

Lauren Davis (25:14)
bad relationship with that word resilience, because it kind of speaks to that what you referred to about like just having grit and determination and pushing through and digging deep. And actually, what I'm hearing from you is kind of, it's the true essence of resilience, which was learning to stop and check in and do the deep work and the hard work and take the time out and then having the courage to share your story because I think

Shirley Zinn (25:21)
Mm. Mm. Mm.

Yeah.

Lauren Davis (25:39)
you know, especially in the senior rooms that you occupy, people are way too afraid to speak up about their weaknesses or vulnerabilities. And I love how you courageously and authentically share it. And it doesn't, it's a huge strength that you carry with you and being able to

to de-stigmatize it. And I think that's, you know, so much of the work I do with leaders in my coaching practice is trying to help them to understand, what sits beneath your busyness? What is causing you to just push through and keep going and then, you know, filter that down to the people below you? And how do you stop long enough so that you can actually confront that? But it's very painful. So I suppose based on your experience, like,

Shirley Zinn (26:22)
Yeah. Yes.

Lauren Davis (26:27)
And I know you said you had an amazing company that supported you, but if we want to kind of help other leaders that are struggling or HR professionals, what can we share with them to help them kind of feel safe enough to also say, I'm struggling, or this is what's happened to me in my past and I'm carrying this baggage and it's impacting the way I'm showing up? What are your thoughts?

Shirley Zinn (26:48)
Yeah, I think that, you know, lots of not only HR professionals are carrying the, you know, the burden of, you know, what the response is to a question like that. And I think it came through very much in COVID, you know, where none of us would have expected a black swan like that. HR had gone through quite a, you know, an evolution from being purely transactional and administrative.

in the form of was then called personnel management, you might recall those wonderful words that we used to use. And then it kind of morphed into human resource management or human capital management, some of the new flavors. And then we had the wisdom of Dave Ulrich that talked about business partners and the concept of partnership with your business. And now we talk about

CHRO and Chief HR Officer, talk about Chief People Officer now, because a lot of organizations have figured that people are now very, very key. if we talk about people in its broader sense in every organization, every organization has employees, every organization has customers, every organization has communities around it, every organization has

regulators and shareholders and stakeholders. And they're all looking at us to see how do we deal with humanity, you know, and what sorts of organizations are we creating that has sincere social impact and lasting social impact, not ticking boxes in a program of CSI, but who really are living the, ⁓ you know, the DNA of

leadership that cares about people end to end and ensuring that we are reviewing our leadership behaviors and creating cultures that are inclusive, where people feel they belong, where people feel they can flourish and thrive, where people feel they can be vulnerable as well, and that it's actually okay to be vulnerable because we are human beings and we've all been through

something or other, some of us suppress it because the pain is just too incredible to bear. And some of us have the courage to speak about it because we, know, speaking about it also is part of the healing for ourselves, but also maybe potentially part of the healing for someone else. And then, you know, what are our leadership practices every day? What are we, how do we speak to people when we speak to the investor community, when we speak to shareholders?

When we speak to angry activists in the environmental area, we always seem to be, we need to do more. what is that tone that we are setting as leaders from the top? And how do we cascade that down into our organizations? I remember, Lauren, trying to talk about caring in the boardroom.

Now just using the word care or even daring to use the word love in a boardroom context. mean, I got rolling eyes and people saying to me, you know what? We are running a business here. These things are soft and fluffy. You are HR professionals. You can go and do all that stuff. But here we are. We are in this boardroom here to run a business. said, well, let me tell you, if you don't care about your people, no one will want to work here.

Lauren Davis (29:59)
Mm. Mm.

Shirley Zinn (30:12)
If you don't care about your customers, no one wants to buy your services and your products. If you don't care about your community, well, you know, then you're just on your own to absolute nowhere. And if you don't care about your stakeholders and shareholders, and you don't know how to relate to them, and you don't know how to align with them and to listen to what they're saying, then you're not going to exist for very long, you know? And there was some point, I think, at which they heard me, and there was a little heart that somehow came.

Lauren Davis (30:12)
Mm.

Shirley Zinn (30:37)
into the page that the one page that corporates love with a vision and the mission and the key objectives and the values at the bottom and the nice drawing and that stuff that you stick on the walls. And finally, a little heart appeared to say, do it. We do our work with heart. And that was a unique differentiator at the time. But one has to be

Lauren Davis (30:43)
Hmm.

Shirley Zinn (31:01)
bold and courageous to be able to sit as a chief people officer or an HR professional to give leadership in that moment. So yes, you're a partner, but you also are around the table and on the seat and at the table because you have a voice and you have to be the voice that speaks to those kinds of things. And people will say that that's soft but...

Lauren Davis (31:12)
you

Shirley Zinn (31:26)
It's unfortunate that the nomenclature is the way it is, but it is the toughest thing to do when you are hard-nosed in every other way, when it comes to targets and pushing people and calling it performance, when you want people to be on all day, all night, and you don't realize that they are families, that there are other responsibilities that people have.

And I think when COVID came, as I started off saying, it was almost a reset because we were the triage then as HR. We were the ones who were, know, trying to say, we are the people that are ill. Maybe they must go to hospital. Here are some places that they can go. Here's help that you can get. Don't come to work. Here's a laptop that you can use to work at home. Here's Wi-Fi that you can use to work at home. And starting to put all of those things together,

Lauren Davis (31:58)
Thanks.

Shirley Zinn (32:16)
that had never been done before and getting people to still be productive without having to come to the office during an incredibly stressful time. A lot of us have never recovered from COVID actually because we lost loved ones during the time. We had to be working, we had to be carers, we had to be taking care of health was a big issue. so there's a huge hang up and people might think that COVID is now gone and we must all just move on.

It has changed us quite fundamentally, actually. And so HR jumped in and led. And so the appeal now is to HR professionals and to chief people officers, stop asking about whether you have a seat at the table. You are at the table. Please lead. Lead with confidence. Lead with credibility. Lead courageously. And

Lauren Davis (32:45)
Mm-hmm.

Shirley Zinn (33:03)
Take your CEO along the journey with you. Take your C-suite along with you. When you go to board meetings, and I'm on the other side of the table myself, I'm listening for the words that will give me comfort to this organization is understanding what I'm trying to tell them as a board member, that I'm hearing, I'm not just seeing the reports on headcount and retention and remuneration.

I'm hearing about the stories of human beings operating optimally and in a healthy functioning environment where they can progress and advance and learn and grow and be happy in some way. And we know what all the pressures, now we have geopolitical pressures, have AI, we have economic pressure, we have all sorts of challenges.

Lauren Davis (33:44)
Mm-hmm.

Shirley Zinn (33:55)
Now is the time for us to be proactive in saying what are the kinds of solutions we are bringing to the table because some of the things we did before are obsolete, they no longer actually work. They are not fit for purpose, they are not preparing us for the future effectively. We cannot even find people who are digitally savvy, never mind, with proper digital skills that can take us into the next five to 10 years. So what sort of future are we thinking about?

when we are thinking about preparing this organization to be sustainable over many generations.

Lauren Davis (34:29)
Sure. So much in there that I can jump on. I suppose the thing that I always kind of harp on about is you have to be well in order to lead well. And, you know, what I'm hearing from you so strongly is it's not just HR's job to keep the organization well, the leaders need to keep themselves well so that they can lead well. And HR needs to almost champion that.

Shirley Zinn (34:31)
Ha ha ha!

Lauren Davis (34:53)
But I guess my question, my next question leading on from that, given that you've had to kind of hit your head against that brick wall so many times to get leaders to eventually realize that, what are the kind of, if you can distill it to like, are the things that eventually land for a leader that helps him realize like, they have to be taking care of themselves and their people. That is what performance and that's how they're gonna hit their targets.

And no matter how many times I think it's HR or, you know, in my profession, we try and send that message. There's always, yeah, but there's the bottom line or, you know, we can't, like you said, we running a business here. We can't just think about that soft stuff. So what were the things that you think eventually helped the penny drop for the leaders you worked with?

Shirley Zinn (35:28)
Yes.

Well, you know what I tried to do, Lauren, and it's probably the little bit of an academic in me. So the doctor did help a little bit is to go and do research, go and find out what are other organizations doing, get involved in professional bodies and listen to what other HR directors and other board members are doing, what are the conversations that they are having, and then come with a...

a philosophy and a ⁓ hypothesis and put it out there and say, well, this is what the research is telling us. This is empirical research. These are verbatims that I've picked up, ⁓ case studies that I've picked up. And why are organizations that are thriving through all these difficulties today, why are they thriving? And then everybody sits and they're not quite sure what the answer to that is.

So let's unpack that a little bit and let's understand what that means. And all of us extremely busy, know, every day, like how is it possible that we can be running around in the way that we are for so many hours of so many days and still not, you know, being able to find our sense of...

North Star and find our sense of we know where we're going, we have direction, we've got guardrails, have people who are amped up to do what they need to do. We're them sufficient time off to rest and recover. We as leaders, we take a good hard look at ourselves from time to time. How many times have we talked about leadership development? Leadership development is not a mini NBA.

It's not a problem with the NBA. I encourage people to do that. But it's to go off and reflect. Have a good look at each one of ourselves and how we're working together. You what are the individual strengths we bring? What are the individual challenges that we have? How do we work across the piece as a team that is collaborative, that is cohesive, that is listening to each other?

giving each other the time of day, you know, that we drop the busyness signal down to where we can actually listen and to where it's quiet enough to actually think and to stop the madness just a little bit. And when that happens, it creates an enormous amount of awkwardness for people. I've seen that happen because one tries to facilitate this kind of thing.

And ⁓ it's like where are we going to with this? know, I mean, it's going to be dumb. It's like not a comfortable place to be. But it's within that discomfort, I think that we realize that we're all human beings here and that we all have aspirations and we all want to achieve certain things. that there's, you know, it's a competitive environment that we are in and we

Lauren Davis (38:12)
Hmm.

Shirley Zinn (38:28)
You know, we want to be the ones, the bright gems that shine out there, but we can be more than that because we have the potential to do much more. We don't just want to be great at, you know, at the job for the short term. We want to be building something for the much longer term. You want it for your children and your children's children. So if you start to think about it like more personally, you start to reflect and do the inner work and be able to

articulate how it is you're actually feeling in a particular moment when you do a check-in around the table and you ask people what's going on for them and you ask them to give you know so you give me a little bit of feedback about how you think I'm doing you know we're all also dislocated you know we all think that everything's know hunky-dory I always find that

If you give a person just a little bit of an opportunity, will be things that you will discover about someone that you have never known and you've worked with them for so many years. You've got no idea what their real purpose is in the way they understand it. You don't know what healing processes they're going through. You don't know what terrible things have happened to them. Not that you can...

get that close to people in the workplace often you can't because people build all sorts of things around themselves and they have this impenetrable shield around them that deflects anything that might want to come through it because you have to be strong and you have to show up but you have to be busy and there's the fear of people getting too close to me and because there's still that command and control thing but we...

Lauren Davis (39:50)
you

Shirley Zinn (40:12)
We're seeing, I see ⁓ a lot of behavioral elements because I'm so cute up to see it all the time. I hear the voices, I look at the body language, I look at the social metrics across the table, who's talking to who, who's looking at who. And you can see that there's a, sometimes a quietness, you you have to really worry because most people.

Lauren Davis (40:19)
Thank you.

Shirley Zinn (40:38)
speak a lot in the meetings and then there's the dominating voices, the loud ones, they talk all the time and then there are the quiet ones. But when they do speak it's incredibly profound. But often the nugget is missed because of the rest of the noise that's going on. So for me, those people then begin to disengage, they become quieter and quieter. And if nobody watches they become detached and they

Lauren Davis (40:51)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Shirley Zinn (41:06)
have already kind of, you know, psychologically moved on. And then we say, but we don't have a problem with retention. They've already quit, you know, somewhere along the way. And that energy they take back to the teams and, you know, then it plays itself out there. And then there's that, you know, I'm too busy to reflect. I don't have time for all that, you know.

Lauren Davis (41:32)
Yeah.

Shirley Zinn (41:33)
Why did we just take a walk through the garden, you know, if there's one at the office or go somewhere off site and give everybody just a chance to breathe, you know, create moments where there are pauses, know, intentional pauses and ask people what's happening to them within those pauses and.

And we try to do a lot of this in different ways in different organizations. But I think that, you know, often we're just in the mode of managing the chaos. We never take the time to actually slow down enough. And what I try to bring into these scenarios is helping, you know,

Lauren Davis (41:57)
Mm.

Shirley Zinn (42:20)
board or helping the executives to calm down enough within themselves to think about how they are actually feeling in a particular moment and try to ask, this healthy? Is this good for me? Is this taking me forward or is this creating stagnation for me? And then there are the cynics and the skeptics.

Lauren Davis (42:30)
Mm.

Shirley Zinn (42:46)
the people who are dismissive and, you know, there are people that go underground and then, you know, leaders will turn around and say, no one's leaving, so everything's fine, you know, when they've already left, but no one's noticed. So I think that we, you know, and we do exit interviews when people have left and people will tell you, the most wonderful

Lauren Davis (42:57)
Hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Shirley Zinn (43:08)
stories and then even if we pick up the recurring theme with a few exit interviews from different people who leave we'll still say we've already addressed the stuff and we're moving we move on we don't really want to dig into some of those those things because it will mean that you know we have to change some of what we were thinking and some of how we were behaving and this

Often there's no apology even. There's no course correction. People just get on with it. And they do that only because they think that they're exuding confidence when they do that. But they don't realize that it doesn't encourage people to perform. It doesn't invite people to give back of themselves in any way. They just...

Lauren Davis (43:37)
Mm.

Shirley Zinn (43:55)
do the absolute minimum and go home. So it's those kinds of things that worry me and those kinds of things that I'm very in tune with. it's the kind of thing that I want to encourage HR professionals and just general leaders to tune into more because this is where the breakdown starts to happen. And this is where the real risk lies.

you know, we'd like to do risk registers and yes, we must do that. And the other day I was asking in the preparation for the board meeting, was asking one of the HR heads that I work with, what are your key HR risks in the last six months? What would you say the key HR risks are? And she said, well, it's retention of people, it's stress and burnout, it's succession.

And as I said, how come those big topics are not in your HR report with the board?

And she's like, oh, OK. I'll include it. I said that needs to be a standing item on the agenda from now going forward. Because we need to understand that. we keep on pushing for this performance thing, which is another thing I want to say. We can just pause for a second and think about what it is that we are doing. So we create these scorecards.

Lauren Davis (44:49)
Thank

Shirley Zinn (45:08)
We put metrics in financial metrics, operational metrics, systems metrics, and people metrics, transformation. All of those things are there. And then we go through the year and we check off what we're doing, what we're not doing so well. But where is the ongoing conversation with people to check in and kind of how are we doing? Let's this aside. What else is happening here?

Lauren Davis (45:25)
Yeah.

Shirley Zinn (45:32)
that you think is going to prevent you from getting there. And we don't see, you know, the warning signs because we're just ticking boxes. We don't see what's happening in the meta of all of that because we don't connect with people, you know, heart to heart, human to human. It's a transactional thing. And

I think that's ⁓ sort of where organizations come adrift and lose the spirit of people, know, lose the soul of people and they will stay, but you're not going to get too much out of them. And so for me, I believe we have enormous potential really to do more, to reawaken and reconnect with people in a very different way. think, you know, we're in such a complex

Lauren Davis (45:58)
Hmm.

Shirley Zinn (46:18)
state of the world right now, there are wonderful opportunities to say what good leadership isn't, because we can see it being paraded every day. It's visible. It's never been clearer to us what we don't want in this life and what kind of leaders are, know, the leaders of the future, the people we want to follow, the people we want to aspire to be like, the role models, you

Lauren Davis (46:25)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Shirley Zinn (46:43)
So it's clear now than it's ever been. And people are less and less tolerant of that command control, that push hard, almost bullying behavior that starts to unfold in organization and this addiction to constant activity and getting stuff done.

to the point where you're so exhausted that you can't even get up in the morning. You've got no will to face it. But you have to your family and you've got to pay the school fees and you know, and to all of that. And then on top of that, many of us, even those who are earning decent salaries are in financial difficulty because of the way the world is developing. And we have all those anxieties and challenges that affect our close relationships.

our partnerships, our marriages, our family situations. And people have to come in with all of that. They can't leave it at the front door.

Lauren Davis (47:38)
you

Shirley Zinn (47:45)
if we were just a little more in tune with some of these elements as leaders more broadly and owned it and with stewards of human beings and their capability and what you can bring out of them in terms of the magic and the talent that lies within them that often goes unnoticed and undervalued.

I'm daunted by that, but I'm also excited that we are at a point, Lauren, that you build a platform like this and you do a podcast and you give people an opportunity to articulate some of these complexities and to reflect on it. And I just want to salute you for that.

Lauren Davis (48:26)
Well, thank you. I think, you for me, yes, it's a it's you've said it's there's a lot of complexity and it can be quite daunting because there's a lot of not great leadership out there and we can see the impact. But listening to you, even through the complexities, I think I'm so inspired by your passion because you've you sit in these senior places and see the challenges and yet you still after all these years feel hopeful and passionate and

you yourself feel inspired by some of the stuff you see or don't see, but the opportunity that's there. And I think that that passion of yours is so contagious. And I suppose for somebody like me, that's a bit kind of younger in the profession. It gives me hope that, you know, we can still make an impact and kind of shift the leadership thinking. really you use the word so many times, human, we are human beings, we are human beings. And I guess that

Shirley Zinn (49:01)
Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Lauren Davis (49:18)
for me, feels like such an essence of, you know, it's how do we treat ourselves as human beings and each other as human beings. And in that we have stuff, we have emotions and we have mental health stuff and we have physical stuff and we need to be able to bring all of that. Not that we become each other's therapists, but that we say we are human beings and we are inherently flawed. And as a leader, you're not expected to stand up there and be this.

all knowing, all seeing kind of perfect person, you're allowed to also be human. And I think that's the essence of what I'm hearing and kind of your sharing is let for leaders, how can you give yourself permission as a leader to be a human being and care for yourself as a human being. And from that place, if you have that self reflection, it also then will

create that space for others to be able to care for themselves. Yeah.

Shirley Zinn (50:13)
Yes,

absolutely. the caring goes beyond being just nice. You know, because some of us think if we're nice to people, they'll be nice to us and we'll all play together and it'll be, you know, it will be wonderful. But you can have this kind of fake.

Lauren Davis (50:18)
Mm.

Shirley Zinn (50:29)
happiness thing happening as well, you know, and we pretend that everything's okay when it's actually not. So I think that it goes beyond, you know, and then we don't know how to deal with conflict when it comes, because now we've been nice to people and we confuse nice and kind because they're completely different constructs. But it's really about the courage to rather be respected.

the courage to ⁓ deal with conflict, the courage to, in your kindness, give feedback that is rigorous to people, that is respectful to people, that is honest and real. And...

Also helping people to understand that taking time out is not a nice to have. It is not a perk. It is, if you're to be sustainable, you have to do that, you know? And I'm probably not the greatest example of, you know, of what I'm speaking about now. And there've been a few, you know,

about that recently about, you know, your board loads and how is it humanly possible for anybody to do this much stuff? I mean, to do it properly, you know. But it is so important to find the time with yourself, find the time with the very close people around you. And...

and not feel the guilt of I'm supposed to be doing something else with my time, you know, and being able to feel that you're in a safe enough place, that if you're not feeling that you are being treated like, you know, to squeeze every, know, bit of you out of now, you know, over the short period of time, you're not gonna be sustainable into the future, is to be able to speak up.

Lauren Davis (51:54)
Hmm.

Shirley Zinn (52:14)
when you are completely overwhelmed to say, you know, to make the choices, to seek guidance and to say that I actually can't do all this stuff and maybe I need to reshape my portfolio and rethink what it is that I want to do and I need to find time, you know, to do different things with different people and that's okay, you know, to do that. It's not a sign of weakness or it's not a sign of

Lauren Davis (52:17)
you

Thank

Hmm.

Shirley Zinn (52:41)
lack of responsibility or trying to aggravate your leaders to say you're not committed, you're not passionate about your stuff. Sometimes if you can just be honest enough to be able to, and then if a person is nice to you, you're kind of like, can I go and tell a person that I'm overwhelmed? How can I not show up for

Lauren Davis (52:59)
No, I think that is so important because people, and you mentioned it earlier, often people are like, oh, that's the soft stuff. But actually it's the hard stuff. And it's not just about kind of that velvet glove and being nice. It's sometimes what I say, it's the iron fist as well, is holding people accountable, having the tough conversations. But it's still seeing people as human beings, not just as a number. I mean, I think what

What excites me is having somebody like you sitting on all these boards where this message, at least in the boards that you're sitting in, can be shared because I think so much of that pressure comes from the boards. When I sit with C-suite kind of leaders in coaching, they say to me, I have to meet this target. And the shareholders are putting the pressure on me. And part of what I want to say is it's also up to you to protect your people to push back and say,

Shirley Zinn (53:51)
Yes.

Lauren Davis (53:52)
Like,

of course we want to work for excellence and of course we want to achieve, but if it's at the cost of our health, our people's health, then that's, I'm not prepared to do that. And, and I just, suppose wish more leaders had the courage to say like, if this is going to cost the health of my people, I'm willing to kind of put my foot down and say, we're not going to push any further. And, and I guess just listening to you speak like this, it, it, it gives me hope that

Shirley Zinn (54:01)
Yes.

Lauren Davis (54:20)
Maybe these conversations are happening in some boardrooms, not enough, but in some, where we can start shifting that message of just be productive at all costs. And I love just what you keep saying, which is obviously the title of the podcast, Beneath the Busy, is how do we just create the moments to pause and reflect and say, what are we actually being busy about? And is it actually effective? Is this actually necessary?

Shirley Zinn (54:43)
Mm-hmm.

Lauren Davis (54:47)
and kind of being more comfortable in the discomfort of that silence, which is really difficult for many people. So my last question that I always ask people is if, let's say somebody forgets everything we've spoken about in this last hour, if they can't remember anything, what's one thing that you just would love?

Shirley Zinn (54:51)
Yes. Yes.

Ha!

Lauren Davis (55:08)
and kind of people that are listening to this to take away that as kind of, you know, the thing that they sit with after listening to the episode.

Shirley Zinn (55:16)
I think it's important to recognize that we are humans, we are not machines. And that as humans, we also need to understand that...

If we were not there, it's okay. The place is not going to fall over. The team will continue to do the work if it's sustainable workplace. And we share and have a distributed sense of responsibility for getting things done. It's not just all up to me to do it all by myself. And so, you know,

Just give yourself the permission to stop and pause, reflect and breathe.

When you're feeling that vulnerability, when you feel like you're overwhelmed, know that there are tons of other people that are feeling the same way. prioritize your own sustainability. Take good care of yourself. We only get one chance at a life worth living, at a health that's worth looking after.

The livelihood that we are trying to grow for ourselves and our families are as important to us. So we must keep on doing that, but we will not have a livelihood if we do not have a life.

Lauren Davis (56:24)
Beautiful. Wow, thank you. Shirley, just thank you so much. The wisdom, the insights, it's just an absolute gift. And I'm just so inspired, as I said earlier, to know that there's somebody like you having these conversations in the hard places with the very senior uppers up there.

Yeah, I think you just are so inspiring in the way that you show up always completely authentically and just so willing and generous to share of yourself. So thank you for this time. And yeah, we'll definitely cross paths again, because I will be following you as I always do.

Shirley Zinn (57:02)
Thank you so

much Lauren. I love the work that you do and whatever I can do to engage with you on some of these things, I'm so happy to do it.

Lauren Davis (57:05)
Thank you.

Shirley Zinn (57:09)
Thank you very much. All the best. Have a good

Toto (producer) (57:11)
Exactly.

Lauren Davis (57:11)
All right,