Episode 6

If having to work with someone you don’t like resonates, or ‘don’t take it personally’ is something you hear or say often, tune in.

In this episode, Damien DeBarra, a leader of talent and development design teams, reflects on some of the mistakes he has made as a manager and how he grew from these. He shares his thoughts on the link between anxiety and workplace behavioural issues, and how he has navigated these when dealing with difficult clients. 

His key takeaway is that managers cannot assume that the people they hire or engage with have developed core life skills, like how to get on with people. Damien also distinguishes between over-management and micro-management, shedding light on their impacts.

About Damien

With a portfolio spanning over two decades, Damien has collaborated with 300+ clients across diverse sectors, from retail giants to pharmaceutical powerhouses, and everything in between—from call centers to nuclear plant manufacturing. He talks about his forte being in crafting bespoke talent and development solutions that transcend industry boundaries, tackling a spectrum of subjects ranging from intricate financial products to the nuances of culinary craftsmanship.

Belinda Brummer (host): Talkies shattered the silent film era, transforming cinema forever. Stars of silence faced a tough call. Speak up or fade out now. Remote work echoes this disruption. Virtual chats redefine our workday. Drawing on nonverbal skills that silent movies thrived on, this episode is about building bridges from silver screen to digital stream. It's a tale of communication, harrying wisdom and a moment of bonding across generational divides wide enough to include a live performance of Laurel and Hardy.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): So my name is Damian DeBarra. I'm originally from Dublin, Ireland, from north side of Dublin. Ah. I currently live in London in the United Kingdom. I have been living here since 2005. I got really lucky, Belinda, and I was about 19 to or 20. I was at university. I got a part time job in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. I started out working in the shop. I then got a job in the education department and at LRN I was the senior advisory learning solutions manager and most recently the leader of communication strategies and curriculum design. Now, I finished up that position, uh, last December and I'm currently on career break and having the time of my life. Well, I hadn't had a break in 25 years and I thought, you know what, I'm just taking a few months out and I'm so glad I've done it. It's wonderful.

Belinda Brummer (host): Managers are people too, but it's convenient to make them the baddie in our own life. And so we don't tend to be open to hearing from them about their unique spot in this world. This closes us off from learning and growing. From their experiences in this podcast, we pause to give managers and their peers the opportunity to reflect on a moment they encountered and over time, the legacy they hope to leave. This is The Manager’s Moment and I am your host, Belinda Brummer.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): We met at, uh, what was then known as electric paper. I think I was called a script writer at the time, but I was an instructional designer and I was one of a team of about, I'm going to say like twelve instructional designers and writers there. And if memory serves, you were the head of HR at that time. How's my memory serving me? Is that right?

Belinda (host): It's very good. Like, I love my life through your eyes. I was head of HR. I was struggling to own the title of HR manager at that stage. So head of HR, I'll take it.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Well, I'll tell you what actually sticks in my memory, Belinda, is that, you know, I was, I was super young at the time. I was like 24, 25 and really wet behind the ears and I remember at one point, you put on a training for all of the ill, call us the younger members of staff in the company, and it was really interpersonal skills. You trained us on how to communicate properly, how to speak nicely to people. And I distinctly remember you saying, these aren't just skills that will serve you well in the workplace, but they'll actually serve you well in life. And I remember that vividly. And they did. And I received subsequent trainings and learning in those areas over the years. But you were the first person who actually took time to sit a bunch of young people down and say, look, here's how to get along with people. Here's how to build relationships. And that, that's really my abiding memory of my time working with you there. Do you remember? Do you remember that?

Belinda (host): I do. So, first of all, who was I to be training you guys on that? Because I was so young? What did I know about building relationships? So, wow, how was I kind of plaguing my way through life? Do you know, when I think about people's complaints about Gen Z and how they don't know how to build relationships, and they don't say good morning when they walk in the room, etcetera. You're taking us back 20 odd years. And even then, these skills from your recollection needed to be not taught, but that we needed to draw attention. And so it's really unfair for us to be complaining about the younger generation now and saying, oh, but they don't have, uh, basic manners, where you're saying, well, actually, 20 ago, that was what I remember you showing us.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Well, the footnote on that. Not to drag us down a rabbit hole, but all those complaints we hear about Gen Z, or let's just call them 20 to 25 year olds, you know, we hear these complaints that they're oversensitive, poor communicators, snowflake, all that stuff. Um, all of those things were said about teenagers and people in their twenties in the 1920s. Yes, the same generation of people that went out and saved the world about 1520 years later. There's nothing new here. Young people are young people are young people. And, you know, when you're young, you struggle with communications. It's not a product of social media. It's not a product of the modern age. Teenagers and 20 year olds have been the same since the dawn of time. There's nothing new there. You can't assume that if you're managing or facilitating or supporting young people in your team or your organization, you cannot assume that they have developed those skills already. Because to me, when I've been reflecting a little bit before this conversation about management, and really, what the hell do I know? The one thing I would say is over and over, over again is that relationship skills and communication skills are everything. Everything. No matter what your industry, no matter what size your company, if you have good communication skills and good relationship building skills, you'll probably do okay. But a lot of us assume when we get our hands on a group of enthusiastic 20 year olds that we need to fashion into a team, we assume they have those skills built in. It's a bad assumption. We have to take time sometimes to train people to develop those skills and develop that muscle because it's not necessarily always there.

Belinda (host): No. And why would we even assume that it's there? And yet we do every single time. At the age of 30, you relocated to London to take up a management job of eight instructional designers. Where did you learn to manage, Damien? What gave you the confidence that you could do that at that point?

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Right. So, uh, where do I start? So where did I learn? I didn't. I learned on the job. And, uh, my God, I made some mistakes. I certainly made some mistakes. I had this notion when I went into the job, right. I was told, coming in, you're inheriting a team of eight. Some of them are brilliant, some of them are good, some of them are not so good. And, um, we may have to make changes within the team structure over the first few months. So I was hell bent on trying to make as powerful an impression as I could within the organization and looking like I was really on top of everything. And in fact, I tried so hard. This is not a humble brag, Belinda, right. This is me really saying, here's where I screwed up. Um, I tried so hard. I tried too hard and I kind of gave people whiplash. So where did I learn? I learned on the job and I made plenty of mistakes in that first year.

Belinda (host): And what would you do differently now?

Damian DeBarra (Guest): I'd listen more. I'd listen more. I talked too much. The error that a lot of young people I think going into management make is to talk too much and, um, not to listen enough. And I think I was so intent on looking like I knew what I was doing that I tried to push through instructional design models. I was insecure. I thought people were, thought I was a spoofer and a sham and a fraud. Classic warp, uh, factor nine imposter syndrome, Belinda. And I was convinced everybody thought I was a fraud. So I was trying so hard. I think I ended up just annoying a lot of people, not everybody. I like to think I got on really well with most people, but I was definitely talking too much and not listening enough.

Belinda (host): And how long did it take you to ease into that then?

Damian DeBarra (Guest): About 15 years. No, uh, I'm exaggerating, but no, I would say. I would say definitely three or four years. So what happened then was having spent five years with that organization and then that position came to an end. I left, really, and then went somewhere else when I moved. And then the next time I came into a position of, I'll call it team leadership rather than management, I felt much better armed to do that. And, uh, I had learned a lot of lessons about leading people through listening rather than telling them what to do. I ultimately came to learn this. Belinda. People do things for their own reasons. And if I walked into a room and said, right, here's how we're going to do this, boom, boom, boom. A, b, c, d, people would just go, okay, that kind of makes sense, but they've no sense of agency or ownership in the process. Whereas if I came into the room and said, right, we need to rover haul the way we're making these training products. I have some ideas, but I want to go on a journey with you guys over the next few weeks to get to a model that works for all of our clients and works for us and makes us profitable. What would that look like? It's a totally different conversation. So learning. Learning to. I, uh, had to come to understand how to influence people to go in the direction that I wanted them to go without feeling like I was railroading them and then also be willing to change direction entirely if it turned out I'd gotten it completely wrong, which I frequently did. So, yeah, it took a long time. It wasn't an overnight thing. I will not lie and say I did it inside of a year. I would say it was actually when moving from one management role to another management role at a second company, I had the time to step back and say, right. What mistakes did I make right not doing that again? And how do I think I can do this differently? And again, full disclosure, I got a lot of things wrong the second time.

Belinda (host): M. But that chance to start afresh with new relationships, lessons learned and going in. So you weren't making the same mistakes, but you were making different ones, or were they the same mistake?

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Um, yeah, you do. You make different. Different challenges come with different positions. So when I moved to my second or my third management role, what I did not anticipate was how much time I would spend on recruitment. And what was happening was I was in an organization that was growing really dramatically. It was brilliant. We were going full bore and it was brilliant. But I suddenly needed to scale up a team of ten to a team of about 30, including part time contractors who we could call on when we needed to scale up. That was really challenging, really challenging, because the industry we work in, Belinda, let's call it training and development, um, expert learning. It's a rarefied business. The very best people are unlikely to be living within a commuting distance of your postcode or zip code. So I spent about 50% of my time on recruitment, going through CV's, doing interview after interview after interview, doing second and third interviews, negotiating salaries, negotiating packages, getting things through HR, writing tests were really time consuming. So that was, that was an area. I won't call that a mistake, but I just did not anticipate the amount of time I would spend on that. And as a result, the core of what I was doing, which was making sure that all the training products were, you know, good, that slightly suffered for a while and quality dropped a little bit. So I was pivoting between two different things and one of which I just did not anticipate taking up so much of my time. So again, that was a whole new set of muscles I had to learn.

Belinda (host): You've, uh, managed large teams of instructional designers and learning managers and moved countries to manage people. So you've managed in a different cultural context, etcetera. You've managed processes, you've managed people, you've managed clients. Manage, manage what, at this stage of your career, does management mean to you?

Damian DeBarra (Guest): I think it means, first of all, presuming that it's within your gift to do so, build the best team around you. So there's an adage I've heard over life that if you want to get ahead in life, try to make sure you're the dumbest person in the room. And I think the manager should try to hire a group of people who are smarter, hungrier and cleverer than you are, give them everything that they need to be successful in their job, in their role, and then get the hell out of their way. Now, I know that's probably not the right answer for a lot of people, but I'm saying this in reflection of the fact that, as I said earlier, when I was young, I think I tried to over manage people. So I slipped into the fallacy sometimes with certain staff of like the, uh, fallacy of what I would call screw it. I'll do it. So I got, I can remember one particular person I was working with, a really good writer, but their writing was, it was 90% right, but never 100% right. There was always something missing, and I would go in and fix that 10%, and I thought I was doing them a favor, and it wasn't. It was actually taking agency away from them. They must have found it quite dispiriting. Later, I learned that what you do is set the benchmark for people say, look, this is what good looks like, but I'm not going to fix this for you. You need to go fix this. And then, um, they would invariably either do it or not. Most of the time they did. And if they did, then, you know, you got the right person. But I think a large part of management is trusting people. Assuming if you've hired somebody, trust them, don't over manage them. If you've, if you, if you've hired them, trust them. Let them get on with their job. The great bosses I've had, Belinda over the years, are the ones who presumed I was doing a great job until they were told that I wasn't. And then they came in and said, hey, listen, I think there's an issue here. What can I do to help you? They left me alone to do my job. They would obviously check in on a weekly basis. You have one to ones. There's obviously quarterly reviews and there's an annual performance review. But largely speaking, great managers, I think, give all the tools to their team that they need and then let them get on with it.

Belinda (host): Let me say back to you what I heard you say, and that is hire the right people, uh, build the right team, get them feeling and operating like a team. Uh, set the standard model, the behavior model, the behaviour. Do what you need to do to get them the resources. So there's organizational dynamics there. Get them the resources they need, and then only show up as and when they need, they need you, which takes a different kind of an oversight, I'd say.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): I, uh, may be left at one part, which is smart people create smart things by talking to other smart people. Innovation happens when smart people talk to one another. Many of the world's great scientific discoveries don't actually happen in the laboratory at the university on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. They happen on Fridays when everybody goes to the canteen to have lunch. So the guy from astrophysics has a conversation with a girl from biology, and she might say, have you heard of this intellectual model? No, I haven't. Boo boom. Smart person talks to smart person, the innovation happens. So in the training spectrum, if I can get Belinda to talk to Brian and just get them talking, smart people will trigger other smart people into coming up with better ideas. I've often found as well, in our industry, in the training and creative industries, some people can go off and work quietly on their own and innovate. Some people need to think out loud. And uh, a, uh, scaling management is spotting the ones who need to talk to think. Part of management is, as I say, picking the right team, giving them everything they need to succeed, but then making sure that they talk to one another.

Belinda (host): M get people talking. Get people talking. What would you say is the difference between over management in how you've described it and micro management?

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Oh, that's a damn good question. Oh, I'm sitting here thinking, I can definitely remember when I was being micromanaged and it drove me crazy. I felt like I was being treated like a child. I remember thinking, why did you hire me? If you don't trust me this much, why don't you just do this yourself? Save yourself some money and get rid of me. That's how it felt. I felt like I had no agency, no ability to learn. And fundamentally I felt like I was being treated like a child. So micromanagement is when somebody is, I'm getting a bit specific here. When somebody is quite literally physically interrupting you every 30 minutes. And I've seen managers do this where they drove an entire team against them by continuously interrupting for the sake of interrupting. Because in their head, that's what management was. Uh, not understanding that actually there's times to sit people down and give them a briefing and help them. But there's also times to just get out of the way and let them get on with the job. Because if someone is coming in and micromanaging you after a certain period of time, you just stop trying because you think to yourself, well, what's the point in putting my best into this or my most creative idea because I know this person's going to come in and change it anyway. So it's, oh, it's an apps, it's an absolute killer. It's killer for, um, anybody's kind of sense of self esteem. And, uh, so your question was, what's the difference between that and over management?

Belinda (host): Over management? Yeah.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Oh, I'm not sure that I know. But I'll tell you what does pop into my head. An organization I was working at said, here are the 1717 Belinda. Count them. 1717 values or principles that you need to work to, to be successful here so when it came time for the annual performance review, people were in a flat panic going, how do I provide evidence against 17? It's hard to provide evidence against four. Right. You know what I mean? So most companies, if you look at the code of conduct, they have four values. They're usually about people. Company, workplace, community is the fourth one. Sometimes, uh, the five, some companies will have eleven or twelve capabilities. What I would say over management is actually over education is part of it. I've seen that. Right, everybody onto this phone call. We're going to train the 100 of you on the new system this week. And then seven days later there's more training. And then seven days later there's more training. That's over management, where you're giving people too much information. M but I would say over management is too much information and micromanagement is not allowing your staff to do their job and doing the job for them whilst making them feel completely useless.

Belinda (host): In my head, what I take away from that, the difference between over management and micromanagement. Over management, the intention is over commitment. The manager is too excited or too much about something. They're just Ott. Whereas micromanagement from the words you've used, it comes from a place of lack of trust or respect. And so what it feels like is different because the intention or where it comes from.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Well, uh, let's put it another way. I would say over management is strategic. It's a strategic problem within the company. Micromanagement is an individual problem from a person suffering from insecurity or a lack of status. Yeah. Now, I could be wrong. That definition could be more nuanced, perhaps, but.

Belinda (host): Well, it's interesting because I've never heard, in all the coaching and everything that I've ever experienced, I've never heard somebody complain of over management. I've heard millions of people complain about being micromanaged but not being overmanaged.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Yes. Yeah. It's not a common term. It's not something we would really think about. We do. Everybody's on the lookout for a micromanager because micromanagers are usually in your face, sitting beside your desk saying, why are you doing. Doing that? Right. It's very personal and it's really easy.

Belinda (host): To take it personally.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Belinda (host): And then because it comes from a person as opposed to an organization, to lay blame with somebody and to feel vindicated because you're blaming somebody else, that manager, as you rightly say, is probably grappling with all sorts of insecurities. Uh, and whatever else is going on for them that then results in them behaving in the way that they are.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Yeah, sounds about right.

Belinda (host): Have you noticed whether there are any themes that keep cropping up for you, that you pay attention to without even realizing it?

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Yeah. Communications and building relationships. It's everything. It's the ballgame. It's absolutely everything. Uh, I'm loath to give advice to anybody who's young because I still think in my head, I'm 18, I can't believe I'm the age I am. But I would say if you want to be successful in whatever industry you're in, being good at your craft is not enough. Being good at your craft. Let's say you're a writer. Let's say you write training products like I've done most of my career. Being good at your craft is the baseline. That's the given that'll get you hired, but that won't make you successful, and it won't make you a great manager or a great leader. Being the step up from writer to leader to leader of writers, if you want, is in your ability to listen, your ability to be influential without being a bully, uh, intentional or otherwise. It's about building relationships and about communications. Um, and then in terms of building relationships, um, really good leaders listen more than they talk. And when they do talk, they're listened to because they have an uncanny ability to summarize what's going on in the conversation and also understanding people's motivations. What's this person after? Is this person motivated by reward? Is this person motivated by their ideology? Is this person motivated by coercion? Is this person motivated by their ego? And, you know, if you can try and understand what somebody's ideology is, what kind of person they see themselves as, and if you can understand what rewards they're after, beyond the financial, those are the real ways to build relationships and help somebody get better in their job.

Belinda (host): That is all well and good.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Mhm.

Belinda (host): When you like the person, but there are people, there are people who it's difficult in the workplace to like, and you just, you still have to build relationship and you still have to come in. And this is something that I'd love us to kind of get into a little bit. Have you seen this play out in your work environment?

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Oh, yeah. Yeah. Look, we all have to work with people that you might not have around to your house for dinner, right? That, that's just part of the world. And I'm. Full disclosure, when I was young, I wasn't good at hiding my dislike for people. I really I wasn't good at it, you know, and it got me into a lot of trouble and I had a big mouth and I talked too much. Um, but then over the years, I tell you how I got over this was I had this. I didn't actually have as much of a problem with my colleagues as much as I had with clients. I would oftentimes end up working with clients who were difficult, they were hard work, and I would try to find a way to like them and I would just, you know, I would try to get to know them so, you know, find out what they're into and, uh, look for what their face lights up with. If they talk about their kids and their face lights up, talk about that. Build a relationship with somebody. So it's, yeah, it is, it can be, it is challenging to work with people who you might not necessarily naturally get along with, but if it is a muscle that you can develop, you can find a way to build a relationship with most people. Some people you can't. But sometimes I, uh, would meet a client and clash with them because they felt I was moving too quick or they felt like they weren't being heard. And then by the end of it, I was stunned. Oftentimes they'd end up being a friend. And I've got a lot. I'm looking at my LinkedIn screen at the moment and I'm in contact with and good friends with a number of people who initially might not have liked me too much. So it is a muscle you can develop. Over the years.

Belinda Brummer (host): The managers moment is brought to you by boost learning, where management development is done differently. Our eight week programs are designed to fit perfectly around your schedule, your experience and your development needs, all delivered online and virtually. It is not training, it is development. To find out more, go to www. Dot boostlearning dot online. This is the managers moment and I am your host, Belinda Brummer. I am speaking with Damian DeBarra, currently on a career break following his most recent role of leader of communication strategy and curriculum design. Before the break, Damien talked about the importance of building relationships in the workplace, even with people you dont like. I asked him to help me understand how he goes about doing this.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): I think I alluded to this earlier, which is try and find a way to like them now. Some people are just irredeemable and you're never going to get along with them, right? That's, I would say that's one in every 200 clients. I mean, what I used to, what I used to say to people in my team was. And I'm talking about instructional designers and learning managers in the training business. I would tell them when I hired them, across the course of twelve months, you're going to work on somewhere between 40 and 60 things. One of those things will take up two or three months. It'll be a huge, big curriculum, but 20 or 30 will be small, little updates to existing products, and ten or 15 will be somewhere in the space in the middle of that 40 that you work on. About 30 will go fine. Five, six or seven will be tricky. So maybe it's a tricky piece of technical training. Maybe it's around a piece of systems training which are always challenging. Three or four will be hard just because it's hard, or there's too many subject matter experts. And then one will be a stinker. And by a stinker, what you really mean is you're dealing with, uh, a challenging client on the other end of the phone. So again, what that looks like is somebody who's maybe wandered into the training space. They're new to this. They might think they have a body of knowledge around the area, then they quickly figure out they don't and their anxieties come to the fore and the stress shows through and they manifest itself as maybe a little bit of aggression or impatience with you. Um, so how do you get around that? Well, when you're on a project with a client that you're. Maybe you're not looking forward to the phone call once a week, it is quite natural to come onto that phone call and unconsciously think, how can I get through this as fast as I can? When you have that instinct, you actually need to kind of lean the other way and spend five minutes at the start of a phone call just chatting to them. Now, some clients will just be all business and can we just get to it when you got to respect that? But taking the time to try and build a personal relationship with somebody is really important. So, uh, I always drop in lines about what I've been doing over the last week. I've been out cycling, which is my thing. I'm a middle aged man in Lycra. I talk about movies, I've watched books. Have you seen Dune two? Whatever's going on, and try and find some common ground. But also beyond the chatty news, I'm just trying to get them to warm to you. What you've really got to do is try and understand why their anxiety is showing through. What's the pressure they're under? What's the challenge they're trying to solve. They might have a horrible boss. They might have a boss who has given them the authority to create the project with you, but doesn't want to actually get involved. And yet the boss comes in and then edits and changes everything when they bring it back to their, to their boss.

Belinda (host): How do you uncover that? Because that's more common than you would expect.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Ask them clever questions like, so, hey, Belinda, after we're done with this design document or this first draft of the training product, who do you, whose validation do you have to get and see what they say and see what their reaction is? And, um, so what I'll often ask is, like, as we go towards delivery date, what are the potential roadblocks for us getting this out the door on time? And that roadblock is usually not a process, it's a person. So if you can ask, ah, that question about the process and delivery dates, it will often reveal what the roadblock is, who the person is further up the food chain. And you try to understand what it is that makes that person happy. So what you, in a sense, what you're trying to do is you're trying to help your client look good to their bosses. You're trying to help them provide something which they're proud to have their name on, rather than something that they're not proud of and feel that they're going to chuck you under the bus. Now that can be tricky. That can be difficult to unpick. But trying to ask the questions about what further up the food chain or downstream, depending on which metaphor you want, is going to block your delivery or create a last minute substantive change, that can be a helpful way to uncover what the anxieties are.

Belinda (host): It sounds like what you've described is actually what this podcast is all about, and that is about trying to see the person in the moment. Yeah, looking beyond the title, looking beyond the perception, the difficulty, the challenge, whatever it is. But try to see the person, what is their world like and what's happening there, which helps you understand that actually this is a moment of anxiety for them, or it really challenges their idea.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Of who they are or they're out of their depth, maybe. Belinda, if I could share an example. I was working with a large multinational investment fund, and they needed a curriculum designed around ethics compliance for sales guys. The guy I was dealing with was a challenging character, I'll be honest. He was hard work and he was pushy, he was aggressive. He could be a bit of a kind of finance bro, if I can use that term, kind of very direct very matter of fact. And I was trying to build a relationship with this guy for a while, and it was hard work and the goalposts kept shifting. That was the bit that was frustrating, was I thought I would understood what this guy wanted. I would deliver a version of that said, that's not what I asked for, and that's a very frustrating one to deal with. The situation revealed itself about a month later when I went in for a face to face catch up and his boss was there. And then I saw what the problem was. His boss put him horribly on the spot and was challenging his knowledge in this arena of training and development. And it was really uncomfortable. And once I saw that happening and, um, that the other, the boss's boss was out of the room, I was then able to pivot around to see this much more sympathetically. It's not always that obvious, but that's often it. You must ask yourself, why is this person anxious in addition to trying to understand where they're coming from? Give them a sense of agency and ownership. So, a lot of times when you're in the training field and you're going into design a training product, people can feel like they're being designed at, rather than designed with. And, you know, instructional designers and learning managers and curriculum designers like myself, we do talk our own very jargon heavy language. So you have to try and humanize the language, but also, you know, lean on their knowledge. Look, you've been doing this for ten years. What works for you, what doesn't work, try to give them a sense of agency. And sometimes that's down to saying the right thing. So listening for the key piece of information that you didn't have before and honing in on that and saying, hey, that thing that you just said there is actually really important. And that makes me think of doing this. Do you think about that? So it's giving people a sense of agency, a sense of ownership, a sense of creativity in the process, so that when they go back to their difficult boss, their enthusiasm for what they're bringing will shine through. And if their enthusiasm is evident when they bring it to their line manager, it's much more likely to pass through the gates.

Belinda (host): So one of the things that you said is something that is often thrown around in the workplace, and that is, don't take it personally.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Yeah.

Belinda (host): How have you schooled yourself in not taking it personally? Are you just that kind of person?

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Great question. So when I was younger, I definitely would have taken things much too personally. So you don't like my work? Means you don't like me. Because I identified myself so totally with my work as I got a little bit older, I've tried to adapt a slightly more stoic approach to which is to understand that there are certain things that are within my control and then most of the things are not in my control. I can try to be influential, I can try to open up myself a little bit to let this person get to know me, to hopefully like me a bit more and maybe relax a bit more. But sometimes people aren't, just aren't going to like you. They don't like your accent or they don't like your energy, or they don't like your hair color. I don't know what it is, you know, or they're just under terrible stress and they don't have time to try and they don't think there's any value in trying to get to know you. So I think it's about understanding what is within your control and what is not within your control. And that can be difficult to distinguish, particularly when you're younger and you're trying to, you know, you're making your way and you're trying to be successful. I would also say that having a life outside of what I do for work is really important, you know, so the perspective of, well, this phone call is horrible, but it's going to be over in 30 minutes and mhm, 3 hours from now I'm going to be riding my bike or playing video games with my mates or whatever it is you do. So I think having a balance in life is really important. I think one of the reasons maybe, uh, I'm not trying to speak for everyone, but one of the reasons maybe I took stuff to personally when I was young was because I identified what I did for work as being the totality of who I was. Whereas now I think it's very, very important, but it's not necessarily the most important thing in life.

Belinda (host): It's a part of who you are. It's not all of who you are.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Yeah, for sure.

Belinda (host): Yeah. Gosh, you've mentioned things there that are so fundamental and yet take us so long to learn. You know, that notion of what's in control, out of control. This perspective on work and its place in our identity or our sense of identity. What you're talking about here are actually fundamental life skills. We assume that people have certain life skills and then we encounter them doing in the course of work and they don't have those life skills.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): I've always said this to young people. Do you want to learn how to deal with difficult people? Do you want to learn great life skills? Go get a job in a call centre. I'm, um, 100% serious. Call centers have 110% churn rate in their training, right, in their, in their recruitment, because if they know, if they have to put a cohort of 30 on the shop floor, they know they have to hire 40 because they're going to lose ten. And what they're training you to do is deal with obnoxious, angry, pissed off people. Anyone who ever rings a call center, ever, ever is in a bad mood before you get them on the phone. So they train you how to deal with freaked out, hysterical people. I've done a lot of work with call centers in designing curriculums for them. If you want to learn life skills, you want to learn how to deal with difficult people. Get a job in a call center for two months. Forget that. You will get paid, not a great deal, but my god, the life skills will serve you for the rest of your life.

Belinda (host): Is there a life skill that you have kind of developed later in life that actually has changed things for you or changed you?

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Yeah, I would say it's a big, it's one word, but it is communication skills. I think my communication skills when I was in my twenties say they sucked. They really did. So I can break that down a bit, which is one, and I think I said something like this earlier on, which is, you know, listening more than you talk, particularly when you're on the vendor side. Um, clients don't like it when they feel they're not being heard. It's a fundamental human 101. And I think when I was younger, I was guilty of wanting to impress so much that I talked too much. So I learned over the years to listen more. Um, also, reading people better, that's a large part of this, and this is more difficult in the age of zoom calls and remote working. But reading people well is really, really important. So what I'm talking about is looking at their body language. I've said, hey, how about this idea? What's their physical reaction? Are, uh, they squirming in the chair? Are they leaning forward and interest? Are they sitting back? Is there a micro flicker on their face of irritation? Because people don't want to say, I think that sucks. They'll just say something very genteel like, well, I'm not so sure about that, and you might misconstrue that as I just need to convince him further. So reading people is really, really important. Body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, that can be tricky. And that's not something you learn in a weekend course. That's something you learn over time. Um, also, I'd go back to, another thing is in tailoring your communications, and that's tailoring that to understand this goes back to what we were just talking about a minute ago, about understanding the culture of the company, of the person that you're talking to. That is critical. So the question I often like to ask myself is, how does this client or company or organization make decisions? So I'll give you two examples at two ends of the spectrum, right. One large central european technology company have a culture of everybody in the room needs to be heard, felt, and loved before any decision can be brought forward. This is a company that brings too many people to their meetings. By their own admission. They told me this and all it a meeting where you would expect to have five people, will have 15, everybody has to speak. It's a very much a culture of saying how you feel about things, and all it takes is one person's not liking it to derail the whole solution. At the other end of the spectrum, I worked with another large European airline, and that was very much a power culture, where the most senior person in the room is the one who has to be pleased and what they say goes. Most clients are somewhere in the middle. When you're trying to get along with folks, you need to understand how that person fits into that culture and what authority they have to make decisions in the room with you. A lot of the time, problems stem, and anxiety stem from you thinking that when you're talking to the person opposite you, that because you and that person have agreed on a solution forward, that that's it. When in actual fact, they may have to go back and ring it up through three or four layers of further bureaucracy or gating. And, uh, they don't have the authority to make that decision. So it's about understanding. You need to understand how the culture of that company works and how they make decisions. Again, you're a little bit like I used to make the joke to some people in my team. You need to behave like you're an anthropologist. You're going in to study your tribe. How does this tribe arrive at what the truth is? How do they make decisions? Is it authoritative or is it collective? And where on that spectrum is it?

Belinda (host): You first have to appreciate, actually, that communication is important and that these aspects, these individual aspects, are all important and all play a role. You've then got to actually have learned the skills of doing that. However you learn the skill of it, you then have to actually have the behaviours that are helpful in that moment. You've then got to apply all those skills and those behaviours, and then you've got to be able to adapt because things are not going to, in any communication, uh, interaction, going to go the way that you think they are going to go. No wonder these things take us time to learn a career of time to learn some time.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Yeah, it took me, I mean, I think, I think we said earlier, I took my first management role at the age of 30, and I think, honestly, looking back at it, I think I sucked for the first three years.

Belinda (host): You said you had some challenges.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Yeah, yeah. Ah, I had to. I really had to learn how to communicate with folks and, uh, difficult colleagues and difficult clients. And at the time, I was, you know, I was so, I was working for an organization at one point that were, were super, super, super focused on the profitability of what we were doing. And that was the number one thing you would carry in your head into a meeting. So I was kind of going at people like an express train, and im thinking, this conversation has gone on ten minutes too long. That means I cant get to the second item on my agenda. So my anxiety was showing through my worry about, am I going to get out of this meeting with what I need? Am I going to get out of this workshop with what I need to move the project forward to the next phase? And I had to learn how to slow down. And that was a challenge because you have to sometimes communicate back to your, uh, colleagues. Now, look, this conversation or this meeting or this workshop needs a second pass because we didn't get to where we got. Why not? Well, because there were ten people in the room, not three, and I needed to let all ten speak. So I had to learn how to not just to communicate well with clients, but also to communicate to my peers why things were taking slightly longer than they used to. Now, uh, managing time with clients is a skill you pick up as you go along as well. But in the earlier days, I would have been poorer communicating both with the client and with my peers as to why things were going the way they were going.

Belinda (host): M as you look ahead m and however long that is, when you then look back on your professional career, what do you want to be known for?

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Oh. Oh, God. I can hear my father laughing as you ask that question. Um, I'd like to be remembered as somebody who was generally okay to get along with. That sounds, you know, like somebody who wasn't a complete a hole. Um, because when I do think back, I do think as is human nature, you tend to remember the things where you screwed up more than your successes. Or at least that's my nature. So I would like to be remembered as somebody who was decent to work with, fun to work with and also who made good stuff. So, like, I think back on various training products and um, deliveries and curricula I've designed. Some were good, some sucked because I didn't know what I was doing or there was constraints. And then some were really good. Some actually made a tangible difference, I think, in people's careers and I hope that's the case. So I'd like to be remembered as somebody who made good stuff. I think that's because if you. If you. If you don't have. I think if you don't have an aspiration towards doing good stuff, making good things then me personally, I would find that a bit disparaging. So I think that's what drives me is I want to be good at what I do. And I get very annoyed when I feel that I haven't been. I'm not sure that answers your question at all, Belinda.

Belinda (host): Well, no, it answers the question. But I have to ask would your father be laughing at the question or at your answer?

Damian DeBarra (Guest): I think he'd be. I think he'd be laughing at the anticipation of what my answer would be. He, um, would just start chuckling, going, here he goes. Watch how he evades the question.

Belinda (host): Because.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): No, I mentioned that because I know he told me. Well, my father was, uh. A good bit older than I was. I was the youngest of five children and my father was my father. I'll put it this way. My dad saw Laurel and Hardy on stage, right? We struggled to relate to one another because there was a big generation gap between us. Oddly, when I became a manager at the age of 30 suddenly we had something to talk about because, uh. He was a manager for years and he managed hundreds to of people. And suddenly he was this fount of wisdom. And he confided to me, to me, which astonished me that he had all these struggles when he was young. He was a bit hot tempered. He probably said too much. He was maybe a little entitled. And, um. That's a strong word now. But, you know, like he told me a story, you know, that he went back to school at night and got a degree in economics. Walked into his boss's office and I got my degree in economics and they went and, you know. And like, he told me that story how it made him angry and kind of drove him on. So I'm laughing because now, as I approach, beep, beep. Years later, um, I understand all the things that he went through, and he went through the same thing. He had to develop interpersonal skills, he had to understand people, and he had to understand how to motivate people within his teams based on an individual understanding of that person.

Belinda (host): And it took you 30 years in that relationship to find that common ground that he spoke of.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Because, you know, I was born in 1970. Beep. And he was born in 1929. So big, big culture gap between us. You know, he was, uh, he was a. He was. He was a guy who wore a shirt and tie every day, every day of his life. I did not, you know, we were from different generations, uh, by a two generation gap. But, yeah, as I grow older, I appreciate the wisdom of everything you told me when I was younger, in particular, about communicating with people and understanding people's individual differences. People are not the same. Every person is different.

Belinda (host): And that's what I was going to ask you. Once you had found that common ground, like, did you find yourself learning from him, or was it still too distant? Was it.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Oh, no. I learned so much from him. So when I was younger, I was sitting with him talking about work, and I was struggling a bit with something at work. I can't remember with what. I wasn't happy with something. And he sat there patiently, his arms folded, you know, saying nothing. And eventually he looked at me and he said, right, if I was your boss and you brought that conversation into me, what do you think my reaction would be? And I kind of went silent because I didn't have an answer. He said, all you're doing is bringing me a problem. He said, bring me the problem. Bring me a suggested solution and stop taking it personally. And he said, that will get you a long way. And, um, I never forgot. I rocked back in my seat. Yeah, you're right. I am just whining, aren't I? I'm just being a whiner. So I remember going in again to my boss and saying, look, here's what I think is going wrong. Here's two ideas how we might fix this. What do you think? Rather than just coming in and complaining. Um, and that was one example of where he totally attitudinally shifted the way I was behaving.

Belinda (host): So I am very curious, Damien, in the notion of reverse mentoring, and what I mean by that is where people like you and I, who are longer in the tooth, um, both in experience and in years where we somehow learn from somebody or something that is younger than us because they know how to navigate a world that is emerging and they have different skills, etcetera. As you reflect on what you learned from your father, as you found common ground, and as you had these kind of conversations, did you ever have a moment or an inkling that he was being reverse mentored by you?

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Um, maybe if he did, he didn't tell me he wasn't that kind of guy. No, I think that the difference was, I suppose I had to maybe help him understand that the pace of business had increased dramatically from the time in which he would have left. He retired early. He retired young at 55. He played the game brilliantly. Yeah, he got himself a sweet deal and got out. And I was trying to explain to him the pace at which, uh, the pace at which you have to keep up with learning has dramatically changed. So if you did a degree in the 1950s or 1960s, you were intellectually or sort of in terms of content set for a ten year period. I mean, my God. I mean, uh, just this morning in my inbox, there's an email I get every day about new AI tools. What was current two months ago is obsolete. What was current a month ago is out of date. The pace of change in our world, in our industry, anything to do with tech or learning anything like that, is moving at a dramatically faster, uh, pace than it was 10, 20, 30 years ago. I mean, 40 years ago. Glacial pace compared to what the amount of learning and constant updating you have to do of your own knowledge. That was very different. And similarly, I found myself schooled by people 10, 15, 20 years younger than me who will. And that would. That was something I had to learn as well, was like, uh, hey, I don't actually know everything here. And in fact, the 25 year old kid who maybe isn't a great communicator doesn't matter. He or she probably does know more about me than what's going on in terms of popular culture. So, for example, if you're working in training products, thematics are a big part of what we do. What's the theme of this? So all of my movie and tv show references are 20 years out of date? Yeah, right. I'm still watching the west Wing and Mad Men. Do you know what I mean? So, I mean, that's just, you know, that stuff. So it's really important to allow people younger than you to teach you stuff, not just, um, tech, but also thematically and culturally, to let them reflect what thematics of products should be.

Belinda (host): And, you know, I feel like every person should have a mentor who is younger than them because. And here's the reason, right? We've spoken about these life skills that can take, uh, an entire career to develop. And just when you've got it and you are now really shining with that particular life skill, the workplace says, oh, you're a little bit outdated. You're a little bit too old for me to hire.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Oh, yeah.

Belinda (host): And yet it is having that younger person who, you know, you're in this reverse mentoring situation that keeps your knowledge and your information and your approach relevant.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Absolutely. I keep thinking of the line. I've been rewatching a bit of the Simpsons recently. The older I get, the more I am starting to hard relate to Grandpa Simpson. There's a line, there's a scene where Homer says to grandpa Simpson, you know, get with it, dad. And his Abe turns around and says, homer, I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was, and everything's just weird and scary. And I really hard relate to that understanding. And it is true. You think, you know, I don't want to say what's cool, because that's a nauseating term, but your cultural references date.

Belinda (host): Yeah.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): You know, they do real quick.

Belinda (host): They really do. And yet you now have these skills that take a lifetime to develop. And it is the challenge of management and organizations and people who are aging and people who are young. So it is a community responsibility to keep everybody relevant. And mentoring up, down, sideways doesn't matter how you look at hierarchy or age or whatever, to make sure that everybody can continue to contribute in the way that matters to them.

Damian DeBarra (Guest): Yeah, m 100% right.

Belinda Brummer (host): We've come to the end of another episode of the manager's moment. Thank you for listening. If you've enjoyed it, there are three things you could do. Let your friends and colleagues know about it. Follow the show and be a part of the conversation and make connections by joining The Manager’s Moment club, uh, on LinkedIn, the manager's moment, seeing the person in this and every moment. Oh, and a shout out to boost learning where management development is done differently. To find out more, go to www. Boostlearning.online.