Work For Grown-Ups: Escaping Parent-Child Leadership Dynamics at Work | Sammy Burt

Summary

Work For Grown-Ups: Escaping Parent-Child Leadership Dynamics at Work

Podcast: Work For Humans
Host: Dart Lindsley
Guest: Sammy Burt
Date: January 7, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode explores how modern workplaces often unintentionally mirror parent-child dynamics, limiting autonomy and stifling innovation. Host Dart Lindsley is joined by Sammy Burt—facilitator, systems coach, leadership consultant, and author of the upcoming book What Is a Grown Up Anyway?—to discuss what it truly means to design workplaces for grown-ups. Their conversation moves from early experiences with “grown upness” to organizational cultures, the impacts of agency and trust, and practical frameworks for shifting from paternalistic to adult-adult relationships at work.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Parent-Child Paradigm in Organizations

• Sammy sets the stage ([00:03]):

  • Many organizations operate from a parent-child model: leaders dictate behavior, hours, attire, and even breaks, assuming they “know best.”
  • Quote:

    “We are demanding accountability from people, having given them no agency or autonomy to feel like they own the thing that you’re now holding them accountable for.”
    (Sammy Burt, 00:38)

• Dart underlines the problem ([00:45]):

  • Parenting employees leads to undermined trust and blocked innovation.
  • Reference to Spotify’s statement: “Our employees are not children. Spotify will continue working remotely.” ([02:32])

2. Distinction Between Adult and Grown-Up

• Sammy’s quest for grown-upness ([03:21]):

  • Started from feeling like she never truly “felt like a grown-up,” even as she tried to perform grown-upness.
  • Early behaviors seeking validation from adults, not peers ([04:19]).

• Adult vs. Grown-Up ([07:55], [08:38]):

  • Adult: Defined externally—by law, culture, or biological milestones (driving, drinking age, etc.).
  • Grown-Up: Defined internally—by mindset, qualities, and how one shows up in the world.
  • Quote:

    “What started to come through for me was that when I spoke to people about being grown up, they talked much more about qualities, how they experienced themselves or other people, as opposed to what they were allowed to do.”
    (Sammy Burt, 11:07)

3. Kids’ Perspective on Grown-Ups

• Children see being grown-up as not just privileges but burdens—responsibilities, paying taxes, fixing cars ([11:52]).

• Memorable anecdote:

  “I asked, when was a time when you didn’t think a grownup was acting like a grownup? And one kid wrote, when my dad shouted at the woman in the post office and it wasn’t her fault.”
  (Sammy Burt, 12:24)

• Grown-up as “a kid who got older—but hopefully like wine, not bananas!” ([13:13])

4. The Performance of Grown-Upness and Imposter Syndrome

• Grown-Up as Performance ([07:41]):

  • It’s often about being perceived as such.
  • Quote:

    “To be a grown up was based on others’ perception of me. And I would be able to measure that by how much trust was given to me or responsibilities…it was very performative.”
    (Sammy Burt, 07:41)

• Imposter Syndrome Reframed ([16:58]):

  • The phrase may miss the environmental dynamics that create self-doubt.
  • Quote:

    “If we call that imposter syndrome, we put the onus on the individual to feel differently as opposed to on the environment to say, how do we help anyone belong here?”
    (Sammy Burt, 18:39)

5. Culture, Stereotypes, and Belonging

• Societal norms (e.g., girls dropping team sports) shape how grown-upness is performed ([16:58]).
• Real grown-upness is about conscious authenticity and comfort with one’s whole self, not rigid roles ([19:26]).
• Dart’s reference:
  “Design for Belonging” by Susie Wise—belonging is an environmental attribute, not a personal flaw ([19:10]).

6. Transactional Analysis & Leadership Archetypes

• Overview of Transactional Analysis ([21:59]):
  • Three states: Parent, Child, and Adult (Eric Berne’s model).
  • Many organizations are “parent-child” or have shifted to “parent-adolescent”—giving some autonomy but still setting controlling boundaries.
  • Quote:

    “We are demanding accountability from people, having given them no agency or autonomy…”
    (Sammy Burt, 23:44)

7. Scandinavian Work Culture & Motivation

• Comparison of Swedish (adult-to-adult) vs. UK (parental) management—trust, autonomy, and incentive structures ([24:10]).
• Financial rewards may motivate simple tasks but fail to inspire or sustain complex, creative work ([25:40]).
• Quote:

  “Monetary incentives change behavior. They work. They just don’t work the way you want them to.”
  (Dart Lindsley, 25:54)

8. Toward Grown-Up Relationships at Work

• Striving for “grown-up” (adult to adult) relationships—mutual trust, candid communication, recognizing humanity regardless of hierarchy ([26:07], [26:23]).
• Quote:

  “The reality is we just sit down as two human beings trying to get a thing done well and we have a conversation that makes that happen. That’s a little utopian, but it’s my hope.”
  (Sammy Burt, 26:23)

9. Joy at Work and Trust

• Joy isn’t just happiness but a deep sense of trust, agency, and belonging ([27:06]).
• Unlocking joy at work: being trusted, mistakes are seen as human, and feedback is constructive and safe ([28:21]).
• Quote:

  “It was about walking through the door. And the guys that ran the company…made a choice not to wait to trust me, but to trust the person they’d hired and to wait for me to let them down. That was an attitude that was then part of the culture.”
  (Sammy Burt, 28:21)

10. Development and The Role of Grief, Discomfort, and Challenge

• Growth happens in the stretch outside comfort; heat and challenge (even grief) are necessary for development ([33:14]).
• Quote:

  “There are rites of passage that people go through…in order for us to take that next leap of maturity…there’s likely been some discomfort, there’s likely been some heat.”
  (Sammy Burt, 34:10)

11. Innovation, Playfulness, and Psychological Safety

• Playfulness and childlike behavior (not childishness) are important for innovation ([35:29]).
• Psychological safety, where it’s safe to fail, is the real foundation for creativity—playfulness signals this safety ([36:51]).

12. Frameworks for Adult Development

• Bob Kegan’s “vertical development” and “self-authoring mind” ([37:21])—adults can collect new ways of being, advancing but not discarding past stages.
• True grown-upness is having awareness of one’s choices and pausing to consciously select how to act ([40:31], [43:21]).
• Quote:

  “I can choose to pause and say Dart, I don’t know the answer to that question. That’s a conscious choice available to me.”
  (Sammy Burt, 41:35)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

On Company Culture

“If your culture is such that people are already well remunerated, then why do you need to offer them a bonus to perform better?”
(Sammy Burt, 24:23)

On Autonomy and Accountability

“We are demanding accountability from people, having given them no agency or autonomy to feel like they own the thing…”
(Sammy Burt, 23:44)

On Belonging

“It is not an attribute of the people, it is an attribute of the environment.”
(Dart Lindsley, 19:17)

On Joy at Work

“Having that trust in place and that belief that other people see who I am and that’s good enough, allows me to perpetuate that.”
(Sammy Burt, 29:53)

On Innovation and Safety

“What we’re really talking about is an environment that is safe to fail in. That’s what we’re talking about.”
(Sammy Burt, 36:38)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Organizational Parent-Child Model: 00:03–00:38
• Spotify’s Statement and the Adult/Grown-Up distinction: 02:32–08:38
• Transactional Analysis and Organizational Implications: 21:59–23:56
• Scandinavian Culture and Motivation: 24:10–25:54
• Joy at Work—Trust and Agency: 27:06–29:53
• Heat and Growth/Role of Grief: 33:14–34:10
• Innovation, Playfulness, and Psychological Safety: 35:29–36:51
• Vertical Development Models: 37:21–43:21

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Conclusion

Sammy Burt and Dart Lindsley advocate for a new vision of the workplace: one designed for grown-ups, where rules and roles are not reminders of inferiority but invitations to agency, trust, and collaborative adult-to-adult relationships. Unpacking legal, cultural, psychological, and practical theories, they illuminate a path beyond performance and compliance—toward real autonomy, growth, and joy at work.

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Learn More

• Sammy Burt on LinkedIn
• farleyperformance.com for updates on her book, What Is a Grown Up Anyway?

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For anyone seeking to build or join an organization where people are treated—and treat each other—as capable, creative adults, this episode is essential listening.

Transcript

[A]

The majority of organisations have been built on a parent child relationship model where we at the top are the parents, you underneath us are the children. We will tell you where to be, what to wear, what to do when you get there, when to go home, when you should rest. That will make you efficient and productive employees. And I as your boss, as the leader, as the parent, know best and I have high expectations of what you accomplish. We are demanding accountability from people, having given them no agency or autonomy to feel like they own the thing that you're now holding them accountable for.

[B]

Welcome to the Work for Humans podcast. This is Dart Lindsley. Companies sometimes fall into the habit of treating employees as less than adult, from micromanaging tasks to forcing people back into the office, all in the hopes of boosting productivity. The problem is that this approach sometimes undermines trust and stifles innovation, parenting employees instead of supporting them. Sammy Burt, author of what Is a Grown Up Anyway? Is working to shift this mindset. She helps organizations embrace a grown up approach that fosters autonomy, confidence and more empowered, innovative workplaces by treating employees as the adults they are. Sami is a professional facilitator, systems coach and leadership consultant at Farley Performance. Her upcoming book, what Is a Grown Up Anyway? Explores the complexities of adulthood and personal growth through insightful storytelling and practical guidance. In this episode, Sami and I talk about how companies sometimes parent employees, the importance of treating employees as independent adults, and the link between childlike behavior and innovation. We also discuss distinctions between adults and grownups, transactional analysis in the workplace, joy, grieving and empathy at work, as well as other topics. All right, to never miss an episode. Be sure to hit that subscribe button. And now I hope you enjoy my conversation with Sammy Burt. Sammy Burt, welcome to Work for Humans.

[A]

Hi. Thanks for having me.

[B]

We're going to be talking a lot today about your work around what is a grown up. Spotify recently released an ad and it was quote, our employees are not children. Spotify will continue working remotely.

[A]

Yes, I saw it. I loved it.

[B]

And the relationship between how we design work in the workplace. I know that you have a distinction between adulthood and grown upness, which we'll get into. And whether or not we treat people as adults is really important. And so I love that you've gone after this incredibly fundamental atomic idea of grown upness and have studied it. So how did you start down that path?

[A]

Probably from realizing that I didn't really feel like one. I think I've spent most of my life, most of my childhood, most of my adult life, Trying to be a grown up. Desperately trying to be a grown up. And I'm probably even doing it now. Right. Just before I put this on, I changed a jumper into a blazer. Oh, I must look a little bit more grown up on this corner. I don't know why it kicked in. Old habits die hard. Right. But I think from a very young age I've aspired to be a grown up.

[B]

You come from a pretty big family.

[A]

I'm one of four and then my parents are foster carers. So there's a few of us in the mix.

[B]

Where are you in the order?

[A]

I'm third.

[B]

Huh. Okay. I had a hypothesis and my hypothesis just failed.

[A]

Yeah. Was I the oldest?

[B]

Yeah. Which is. Oftentimes the oldest is rewarded for being more grown up and the youngest gets a pass. Youngest here by a lot. So that hypothesis went out the window. What did you imagine that a grown up was that you wanted to be.

[A]

One Initially, I don't know if I imagined a grown up to be something and wanted to be it or whether I just thought that children were a bit silly. I think I was a very judgmental child and I thought there was a silliness I saw in my peers sometimes. The pettiness that I saw in my peers that I didn't get. I didn't understand it. I didn't understand when my friends would have fallouts, you know, you do in the playground, right. And they would fall out and they wouldn't talk it through. And I remember being seven or eight years old and being able to see both sides and thinking, why aren't they just talking about this? So I don't know if initially it was trying to disassociate myself with the pettiness that I saw in some of my peers. And probably we're going to go deep quite quickly here, Dart. But probably, you know, a sense of validation and approval that I wanted from the adults around me. And so I would probably look to get some of that by aligning myself with them, you know, trying to join them in conversation or jokes or whatever it might be. From a super young age, you know, I remember seeking out the dinner ladies. We have dinner ladies in the uk, you know, that are monitoring the playgrounds during playtime. And I would often be sort of wandering around with the dinner ladies and chatting to them rather than joining in with games that might be going on.

[B]

I love the idea of you as a first grader saying to your friends, oh, grow up.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, totally, totally. What was the phrase? I don't Know if it's a very British thing where you say at your age, not your shoe size at your age. And that was like a real, you know, that was a big insult.

[B]

I'm trying to line that up where they sized sixes, I can't remember. And yet this for you, as you got older got woven in with imposter syndrome. What's the relationship? Because you must not have felt that when you were six, I'm such an imposter as an adult.

[A]

No, I think I probably felt it. I certainly wouldn't have articulated it in that way, but I would hang around at the dinner table when we had friends or family over and try and stay in the adult conversations when my siblings and peers had got down, knowing that I didn't really belong there, but really hoping no one noticed that I was still sat there and I was still a part of it. So I think I probably did have a sense of imposter syndrome without knowing that I could name it as such. And then I think as I got older it really became something to aspire to. I got jobs from very young ages. You know, I was working in washing up in pubs at 13 and when I went to college and I was 17, I dropped out without any qualifications because I was just so desperate to get out and work. You know, I was done with this learning thing and I'd always had Saturday jobs and part time jobs and I was just desperate to get out and work. So I dropped out of college and defined myself as an adult then and had a boyfriend in a very adult way and kind of flapped in a very adult way or an apartment and found myself probably eight, ten years later going, ah, I missed out on a lot of fun because I didn't see that fun as particularly valuable. I'd been sort of faking it to be this very sensible grown up for a long time.

[B]

It's interesting the idea of grown up as performance as opposed to grown up as state. It's not an internal state, it's a state of performance.

[A]

Absolutely. And that's how I saw it, I think, was that to be a grown up was based on others perception of me. And I would be able to measure that by how much trust was given to me or responsibilities. You know, it was very performative.

[B]

You make a distinction between adult and grownup that I don't completely grasp. I have a tendency to use adult and grown up in the same sentence and meaning the same thing. What's the difference?

[A]

I think most of us do, right? We interchange adult and grown up. And when I started out on this search to answer this question, what's a grown up Anyway? The first thing I thought is, well, I better check it's not really obvious. And so I googled it and thankfully it came up as like a top searched question. So other people are holding the same question, but I started looking into some obvious places first in case this was just a bit of a wild goose chase. And I looked at the law around the world.

[B]

What did you find?

[A]

Well, I found that there are lots of different definitions of when you are adult enough to do something or be responsible for something both by what that thing is and where you are in the world. So in the UK you are adult enough to buy alcohol and drink alcohol at 18. Some states. In the states it's 21, right? And there's other places in the world where it's 14. There are countries in the world where you can't get married until you're 25 and other places you can get married at 14. Driving a car your Criminal Responsibility One of the ones that I loved from the absurdity of it is that I am adult enough at 10 years old in the UK to at times be held criminally responsible, but I'm not adult enough to know if I put my seatbelt on or not until I'm 14. So the driver of the vehicle is still responsible for the passengers wearing a seat belt until they're 14. So the absurdity of it started to bubble up for me a little.

[B]

So even in that story, just there adult is what the world allows you to do. Maybe grown up is whether or not you live up to those responsibilities. Foreign hey everyone, I want to let you know about some upcoming speaking events if you happen to be in the Great lakes area on September 30th. I'm keynoting the HR track at the UWEBC 27th Annual Emerging Best Practices in Technology Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. The conference pulls in some fabulous speakers to discuss topics across all of business, not just HR. Also in Oakland, California, September 17th and 18th, two of our past guests at Work for Humans will be speaking at the Responsive Conference. Bree Grof will be talking about her sparkling new book Today Was Fun. And Simone Stolzoff will be talking about his next book. So check it all [e-mail] use promo code elevenfold. That's eleven fold to get a substantial discount. All right, hope to see you there.

[A]

Possibly that was the law angle. And there were similar ones when I started to look into culture and religion and biology and what bubbled up for me is that there are definitions of being an adult. We could create a massive matrix and you could point to in the UK two drive 17 in this place to take part in X21 or whatever. It would be complicated, but you would be able to go in and find when is someone adult enough to do something. What started to come through for me was that when I spoke to people about being grown up, they talked much more about qualities, how they experienced themselves or other people, as opposed to what they were allowed to do. Exactly your point. What third parties allowed them to do or what rites of passage they had gone through. So I looked a lot at rites of passage in different cultures and again, it would find a marker of adulthood. It was a fair cut off, but the grown up thing was much more emergent.

[B]

What did kids say when you asked them?

[A]

I thought the kids were gonna be hilarious and I thought they would be this lightening of the subjects that I could smatter throughout my book. And then. And some of it was actually really depressing. I thought kids would be saying, hey, you know, grownups can eat all the sweets and they can do what they want. Actually, most responses that I got from 10 year olds was, being a grown up is really hard because you have to pay taxes and you have to pay the bills and you have to get the car fixed. And it was very grounded in all of the very obvious responsibilities that grownups have. And I remember asking, although this is one that pulled it apart for me and speaks into the qualities piece, I asked, when was a time when you didn't think a grownup was acting like a grownup? And one kid wrote, when my dad shouted at the woman in the post office and it wasn't her fault. And I was like, oh, that's just so lovely and flavorful and deep. And we're all guilty of it, right? When do we behave in a way that perhaps isn't true to who we are or doesn't fit the situation, the context we're in? And as a 10 year old saying, and when you're doing that, you're not really being a grown up, it felt really insightful in a really simple way, which I'm a big fan of. Beautifully simple.

[B]

One of the things I heard you say is that one of the kids you asked responded, well, a grown up is just a kid who got older.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And I thought about that. I've thought a lot about that since I heard that. And I thought, yes, but hopefully like wine, not like pears.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Or bananas, you know, like wine, like Richer, Yes.

[A]

More mature and flavorful and deep, full bodies rather than squishy.

[B]

But on the idea of that a grownup is someone who doesn't yell at the post person. I do notice in the world a lot of very accomplished people who are very small. And we often don't make a distinction between those two. Very accomplished and yet still very small.

[A]

And what do you mean by small?

[B]

I've had to ask myself that question. Yelling at the postman is small. I'm gonna name a name Musk, I think. Very accomplished. Clearly. Very small man. And what does small mean?

[A]

Perhaps it's in this mix of what I'm trying to discover as well. I think the one thing to add in at this point is that I don't believe in everything that I've researched and the conversations I've had that someone is a grownup. I think there are times when we can be one, but I don't think anyone probably is one all of the time because heaven forbid we still be human.

[B]

Right, Right. That's right. That's right. Right. Doing our best.

[A]

Yeah, we're doing our best. And so yelling at the woman in the post office may be a moment when someone who is often a grown up. And we'll come to what I mean by that. Lost it for a moment.

[B]

I also noticed that I said man. Does this get tangled up with the definition of man and woman? Grown up is a set that covers both. An example is that rites of passage are different for boys and girls. And so there is a sense of difference there, at least in the rituals.

[A]

Yes. And they happen at different ages, if they happen at all for women or for girls. I think in terms of a gender difference, what I've experienced is that the behaviors that we see demonstrated may differ, but I think they differ by person. And we may have tendencies. Right. It may be that men have a greater tendency to get angry when they are sad and women have a greater tendency to get sad when they are angry. That's a big sweeping statement. But broadly speaking. And I think there's probably some of that mixed up into this. But. Because what I'm not talking about is behaviors necessarily, but instead I'm talking about mindsets here. And so that's where I think the gender piece both has a place and we could get overly tangled up in it. Yeah.

[B]

And I think more what I was thinking is that there's a way in which what you're describing is a yardstick, a ruler. It's a way to judge. And I suspect that how we judge it of each other might be different, but how we judge it for ourselves might be different too. I don't know. So, and I'll just say parentheses, probably not for recording. I wasn't actually after sort of an essentialist idea of men are different from women, but more of an idea of do we have a tendency to think about it differently? An example of that is, did you think that you being a grownup was different from your brother being a grownup?

[A]

Yeah, I think there are societal norms. I don't know if this is true around the world, but in the uk, I think there is a high occurrence of girls giving up team sports around 11, 12 years old. Right. It coincides with them starting secondary school with puberty with all this sort of stuff. And so although this is starting to shift, there's still a big trend of women not playing team sports. You know, you get women cyclists and runners, but there's far less of them that go out and play on a Saturday morning. Guys continue to play football or cricket or whatever their team sport may be. So I think the stereotype of what it is to be a grownup and the thing that I was aspiring to be when I was younger, the trap that we sometimes find ourselves in can be fed into by some of those things. So if I am a grown up woman, my house is in order, I dress a certain way, I probably wear makeup every day. I can walk in heels, I can't walk in heels, by the way. But the makeup of my life may be different to if I'm a guy and I'm trying to be perceived as a grownup, having a sport may be one of the things that's high on my list, whereas I don't think that would fit always for the stereotype of a woman being a grownup. You know, I run, but do I play football on a Sunday morning with my team? Less likely. So I think the stereotypes are different. How that then translates into how we see ourselves. I mean, of course, then we're into a big psychological, fun, beautiful mess that I probably am not equipped to talk about. But I think that will play into it too. How I understand myself. Even the phrase imposter syndrome that we've used earlier, and I use it, I have a colleague of mine who hates it because she thinks framing it as a syndrome is a bit of a cop out for just saying we need to have greater confidence in some rooms. In some rooms, well, I'm using rooms broadly. But in some situations, in some environments, some people don't feel like they belong now if we call that imposter syndrome, we put the onus on the individual to feel differently as opposed to on the environment to say, how do we help anyone belong here?

[B]

One of the people that I had on the show maybe a year ago is Susie Wise, who wrote a book called Design for Belonging. It's a beautiful book. It's all about how to welcome people in. And it is not an attribute of the people, it is an attribute of the environment in that book.

[A]

Yeah. And so that plays a part in what we're describing here in terms of the grown up trap that we can fall into, or certainly the one that I did when I speak to people, lots of other people seem to, is that the environment is perpetuated by the people in it. But the environment determines what a grown up in that environment needs to present itself as. And then we try and do that. And I think if we think about it more as helping people to be more consciously themselves in response to the context and the environment that they're in, well then great, I can go in and be really silly if I want to be. And that's not childish, it's childlike. And I'm still being a grown up because I am choosing to be myself in an environment and I'm feeling comfortable and confident enough to dial up the silly part of Sammy. And there is a silly part of Sammy. And I have a lot more confidence playing and being playful now than I did when I was younger.

[B]

I like that because before when you were being childlike, you thought it was coming off as not grown up.

[A]

Yeah, it was childish rather than childlike.

[B]

What did you find about companies? And this is where it gets to this question about Spotify. Our employees are not children. One of the conversations we're having on the show, and I think it will actually fall after this conversation drops, is a conversation about when governments are paternalistic toward workers. And paternalistic can go from they need help to something more like these people are not in control of themselves and they must be punished into virtue. And so that goes back for instance to workhouses in the UK and how people would be forced into workhouses because they had to be punished into the virtue of the work ethic. So what did you find in companies?

[A]

I mean, the first thing I'm going to say is I want there to be a book two of this, which is what's a grown up organization? Because I think there is so much in this and I'm finding in my work with organizations so many leaders in a few years post Covid looking for greater accountability and greater resilience from their people while parenting them. And so if we were to think about transactional analysis, which I'm sure has probably come up in your conversations before.

[B]

But this not enough. So please just explain.

[A]

Let's give it an overview. So I think it has a bit of a name that doesn't draw you in transactional analysis. But the realities of it is that it is a theory by Eric BYRNE from the 70s around how we see ourselves and then how we build relationships with those around us based on our understanding of the context. And the theory is that we have three states of being, parent, child and adult. And my view is that the majority of organizations have been built on a parent child relationship model where we at the top of the parents, you, underneath us are the children. We will tell you where to be, what to wear, what to do when you get there, when to go home, when you should rest, maybe even what you eat and drink and how and when you do that. And that will make you efficient and productive employees. And I as your boss, as the leader, as the parent, know best. And I think some organizations have started to shift on that. And I am encountering a lot where I've introduced another state, if you like. But rather than parent child, it feels quite parent adolescent. So I'm not treating you as a child anymore. I'm going to expect more from you. So I want you to pick up your clothes after yourself, right, and put your dishes in the dishwasher. But I'm still going to tell you what time you have to be in by. So there are still some boundaries in place that feel controlling and parenting, but within those I have high expectations of what you accomplish. So I still don't see you as an adult, but I don't see you as a tiny child anymore. And I think this is where some organizations are getting themselves in a bit of trouble or into some bad habits because we are demanding accountability from people, having given them no agency or autonomy to feel like they own the thing that you're now holding them accountable for.

[B]

So Spotify is Swedish, if I remember correctly. And I've always noticed that northern Europe is sort of like, well, we're not going to tell you not to take drugs, but I'm not going to take drugs. But if you want to do that.

[A]

Role modeling is beautiful. Absolutely.

[B]

You're an adult. We're not going to make it illegal and in fact we're going to look down our noses at it, but we're not going to tell you not to do it?

[A]

Absolutely. I'm working with an organization at the moment whose head office is in Stockholm and they have a percentage of their bonus is based on performance. This is a UK run company and when the UK went to Stockholm and said, this is what we want to bring in, Stockholm were like, what's a bonus? Almost. And that's not because they're not generous, it's because they don't understand why you would incentivise someone with money. Because if your culture is such that people are already well remunerated, then why do you need to offer them a bonus to perform better? So it's not someone being tight with the money. It's a completely different mindset. And then you look at how many organizations now do try and incentivise financially and still have frustration over performance. There's lots of research into motivation and there was a great piece that found that with tasks that are simple and repeatable, financial bonuses, et cetera is a motivator. But if you have a task that is complex and creative, that financial motivator only goes on so long before that person needs more incentives that are more cultural or relational. But we have so many organizations that say, actually, you know, at all levels, in all complexity of roles, you're going to get a bonus if you do this well. So we've really tried to shift what people find important in their world.

[B]

I can't remember which of Margaret Heffernan's books it was in which it starts off by saying, look, let's be clear, monetary incentives change behavior. They work. They just don't work the way you want them to.

[A]

No. And they don't work for very long often.

[B]

And in particular, they don't create collaboration, they hinder collaboration. Because it's almost always we're going to reward an individual and not a team or something like that.

[A]

Maybe we've taken an interesting turn here, but I think it comes back to, so how do we get into, in the language of transactional analysis, adult to adult relationships, but in the Sammy Burt language, grown up relationships.

[B]

Grown up relationships?

[A]

Yeah, grown up relationships. Right. Where you and I can come in and you may have 20 years experience on me, I may be your boss. You know, we've got all this stuff in the mix, but the reality is we just sit down as two human beings trying to get a thing done well and we have a conversation that makes that happen. And that's a little utopian, but it's my hope.

[B]

You've written a lot about joy at work. I sort of have A mixed feeling about the word joy. I love the word enjoy. To enjoy work, I think is great. Joy's a lot. I'm not sure I can maintain it somehow. I would love to create a work experience product that made you joyous, but you picked a high standard there to hope for joy.

[A]

Well, I think what I haven't separated is work and. And the rest of life. I think when it boils down to it, I want there to be more joy in the world, and that's a high standard. But when I talk about joy in the workplace, I'm talking about the whole person. Not having barriers to joy in the workplace is perhaps sometimes a nice entry level to that. So if we think about joy being deeper than happy, right? I can be happy. I can be happy having a cup of tea at the right time or having a donut. And it's great and we need it. But it's not this deep sense of. Actually, my base level here is that I have joy in my life. So I think when we think about how we might help people to have more joyful lives, we need to look at workplaces and think, and what's going to be the barrier to that here? What is the culture here that is going to challenge someone having a joy, deep sense of joy in their life? What are the processing systems? What are the behaviors? What is the way that we are around here that is going to stop this person having this beautiful undertone of joy in their life? We can't control what goes on outside, but we can equip them.

[B]

When has work been joyous for you?

[A]

I think when I moved into a role in a company in Bath called the House and I was trusted. They gave me a credit card on my first day because all the account managers, I was an account manager then, they all had credit cards for your expenses. We weren't a big team. Now it's not about the credit card, it's not about the money, it's not about the expenses. It was about walking through the door. And the guys that ran the company, Steve and Graham, who I love dearly, made a choice not to wait to trust me, but to trust the person they'd hired and to wait for me to let them down. And I hopefully didn't. But I think that was an attitude that was then part of the culture there was that we trusted that we were all well intended and we had good intention in what we did. And so if we made mistakes, it was probably based on a good intention, it was probably based on good rationale or we were just having a moment where we were human and we messed up, but we forgave each other quickly. We were open in conversation with each other. So I think that sense of being trusted, being valued, allowed me a sense of. Wasn't wholly unconditional, but it's almost unconditional regard from people around me that allowed me to have that sense of joy running underneath.

[B]

So that is the connection. I was going to ask, what's the connection between joy at work and being a grownup? And a part of it is being treated like a grownup.

[A]

Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Being treated like the decisions you're making are being made consciously and being encouraged to do so and being held accountable when you're not in a way that is well intended. So I've absolutely made the wrong decisions and had colleagues say to me, have you really thought that through? And it's that trusted challenge that allows me to go, no, I've rushed it. Actually, I haven't thought that through as much as I could have. Or, yeah, I have, and here's my thought process. But having that trust in place and that belief that other people see who I am and that's good enough, allows me to perpetuate that. And don't get me wrong, I spent a lot of time when I was working at the house wearing heels I couldn't walk in and shoulder pads that didn't quite work because I was still young and still being had by what I thought it was to be.

[B]

Yeah, right. Passing took me a long time. Took me years working in corporations before I realized I didn't have to pass as chief financial officer or something. Yeah, right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

By the way, you've worked for a lot of companies that have very nice basic names, like the house.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I can't remember what the others are, but it's sort of like rock scissors.

[A]

Yeah. Like I said earlier, I love the beautifully simple. So I worked for the house. Most of my work at the moment is through our company, Farley Performance, which is named by. We're based in a building called Farley, and we work in people and performance writers. And the other company that I have is called Backpack. Again, a nice simple one that just comes from a conversation I had with some peers when we were doing some peer coaching about my future. And I said, I'm going to learn this and I'm going to throw that in my backpack and I'm going to move on. And I'm going to throw that in my backpack and realize that I hold a belief that most of us are already carrying around the stuff we need. We just need to kind of hold our backpack upside down, empty it out, and then have someone help us pick out what's useful right now.

[B]

I had somebody on my team who basically we built his whole development plan on the idea of a backpack which was you can absolutely survive in this one vertical that you've always worked in, but we could equip you to have a backpack of stuff so that you could go into any part of the company and set up camp and be successful. And so I like that as an analogy. I noticed in my notes that I had something about the idea of getting older as being like wine. And I want to get to the idea of being small too, which is a part of what makes you a finer wine is grief. And I think through grief being able to have empathy for others who grieve. And a part of what I think small is, which may be not grown up, I don't know, is not having empathy and not being able to feel compassion. And we kind of talked about it. But where are you now in terms of grown up ness? It's both what you are, but also how you now recognize it.

[A]

Can I jump back a moment to the point you were making about grief? Because when we talk about human or adult development, there's a million models that we could draw upon. And I think they're all useful in different ways. But one that we use a lot at Farley is this idea that to develop we need to have some heat, we need to have some challenge, we need to have something uncomfortable. And we use that when we're working with leaders in organisations to say, actually, you know, we don't develop in our comfort zones, we need to be a little uncomfortable, a little in our stretch. And I think that feeds into and plays into this idea of grief and grownuppidness that there are rites of passage that people go through and they may not be culturally defined, but in order for us to take that next leap of maturity or grownuppedness or whatever we want to call it, there's likely been some discomfort, there's likely been some heat. And so I think when you often, you know, and I've certainly met people on the verge of retirement or in retirement who I wouldn't necessarily say very often embody a grown up. And oftentimes they've had a fairly easy life. And I don't want to judge them for that. Fantastic. But what they haven't had is the heatful moments or the grief or the challenge, the stretch that has made them vulnerable and have to look at themselves and consider who they are and who they want to be? And I think in lots of the conversations that I had and the interviews that are in the book, there are moments that are very uncomfortable that someone has gone through that has led to them then feeling more grown up. You know, if we bring this back to the workplace, you're speaking to an audience in organisation. Often, if people are looking to have more grownups in their organisation, I'd be saying, well, where's the heat here? Where's the challenge? Where's the stretch? Where's the tension? If we're making this all too easy without punishing people, I'm not getting into. That'd be horrible to everyone. But where do we encourage people to stretch and come out of their comfort zone and be vulnerable so that they can look at themselves and then try new things, try something different?

[B]

It's very interesting. Something I've noticed in companies, especially in Silicon Valley, is the idea that innovation and childlike behavior go together. And I'm not sure that's wrong. Playfulness, for instance, definitely is a part of innovation, but it sometimes gets confused with, we're all gonna pretend we're kids.

[A]

Yeah, I agree. So I love the 1980s film Big, you know, the Tom Hanks film. And what was fantastic when you watch that is that the success of Tom Hanks as a child and an adult is that he is a child and he has the mentality of one. So he makes suggestions that are gonna work for kids, and that's fantastic. And if we only pretend to be kids, we are missing out on all of the learning that we've done in the moments of grief and pain and stretch and all the rest of it, to hone our way of thinking, honing our approaches. So I think when Silicon Valley, or whoever it might be, that talk about. And you just described it as playful, and I completely agree, talk about bringing clay in for innovation. What we're really talking about is an environment that is safe to fail in. That's what we're talking about. How do we create environments where I feel like I belong and it doesn't matter if I mess up, if I'm trying to do something good? And comedy and playfulness and laughter are huge roles in that.

[B]

So you mentioned that there's a lot of different theories about adulthood and what that means. Have you looked into Bob Keegan's work on self development? And the reason I ask, and it's. I guess it's Adult Development Theory. ADT is what it's called. The reason I ask is that I have a lot of friends who are very influenced by Keegan's work, but I've never taken the time to really dig into it and I thought you might have in your work come across it and be able to describe it.

[A]

Yeah, I'll do my best. I think it's sometimes called, yeah, Adult development theory or constructive development theory. Sometimes it's referred to vertical is another way of talking about it. So I'll just very quickly touch on vertical versus horizontal because I think the two get conflated. So when we talk about horizontal development, we're often talking about training or skills. It's the putting upon us. So it's the downloading of an app. When we're talking about vertical development, we are talking about the increasing of our capacity to hold those apps is a way that I like to think about it. So what Keegan and many others talk about is that vertical length, how do we increase our capacity to perform in this world or to be ourselves in this world? Perform is probably a bad choice of words. So Keegan talks about the childlike state of the impulsive mind. I'm sure we can picture that. You know, I have a two year old and a six year old and they are impulsive and they want a thing and they go after that thing and then you get into this. I think it's referred to as the imperial mind, which is a state of adolescence where you have gone from looking out at the world and almost not really being aware of yourself very much to. To looking very inward and wondering who am I and where do I fit in? And again, we can probably start to paint the caricatures of teenagers. And you know, I went through a real gothy grunger stage myself where I wanted to be the individual within the crowd of individuals. And then you start to move into this socialized mind where we start to look for the tribes that you belong to, the places that you can find belonging and a sense of that, which is where organisations are both so important and can throw a spanner in the works. Right. If you work somewhere that you don't have a great sense of belonging when that is what we are striving for in life. You can feel like you're really lacking, you know, you're lacking some of these key needs that you need to meet as a human. Now lots of people spend most of their lives in that state, if we were to call it this. And I'm also mindful that this is theory, not fact.

[B]

Well, and that this state is one where I work within the social system. One social system that is the one I have adapted to and I can't interpret the world outside of that system is the way I understand that level.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. It's quite. This is how the world is, this is how I'm going to respond to the world. This is the relationship we therefore have with one another. And it's often we get into a state there of either high expertise, so we really value the thing that we are, that we do, the expertise that we carry around us, or we get really into productivity and achievement. If you were to look at Vertical Development by Bob Talbot, then the levels, for want of a better phrase, that sit in that socialized mind are this expertise and achiever or strategic, then people may shift. I don't want to say shift. It's putting things in backpacks again. Right. It's the next thing. Advance is a better word. Thank you.

[B]

I think it would be advance.

[A]

Yeah, I think advance is good because what it doesn't say is you're moving away from the thing that you were. You're collecting the next thing. And so you would advance into this self authoring mind which moves us from. That's how the world works. This is how I am and therefore this is how we work with one another. To a space where you're starting to redefine the world as you understand it around you, you're starting to question how you interact with it and to redefine that in all sorts of ways which can be quite a confusing time and we might go to a caricature of someone having a midlife crisis. I always thought the world worked this way and now I wonder if it does. And I wonder what my role in that is going to be. And I wonder how I'm going to continue to respond to that which then leads us into or advances into this self transforming mind where we start to then redefine and feel comfortable in our difference from the way that we thought the world had to work. There's lots of different models and I have mentioned a few models in this conversation and I'm fairly model agnostic. I think they all in one way or another with different audiences are really useful and I think they are all the right amount of fiction that we don't get hooked on them and say good, so that's how the world works. I think what is really useful about all of these models and the many models out there is to go, ah, is that a useful way for me to translate what I'm experiencing. And if it is great, if it's not, fine, there'll be another one. And they all layer on top of each other. So Bob Keegan is a great one to look at. Transactional analysis is fantastic. And the drama triangle that sits within that and lots and lots of others. And it's just finding the one that resonates with you and you can see yourself in and then go, great, so now I feel like I have a greater level of consciousness about this thing. So what shall I do with that? And you start to identify the choices available to you. And I think that brings us back to the question of what it is to be a grownup. I think that having a greater awareness of the choices available to you is a quality of a grown up. I can choose to be an asshole in this moment, but I choose that it's not happening to me. I'm not being had by it. I can choose to pause and say dart. I don't know the answer to that question. That's a conscious choice available to me. But I think that so many of us, and I'm guilty of this still because I can't be a grown up all the time, but less so these days where I feel I have to respond in the way that the autopilot, the monkey brain, again, whatever we want to use tells me is the right way to respond in this. And actually now I pause more often and I go, hold on, I've got choice and I'm going to make a choice.

[B]

There is that thing that happens when you get on stage, which I do, and somebody asks you a question and you think because I'm the person on the stage, I have to have the answer. There's a social pressure. The room came here to hear an answer recently on stage. I said, wow, I don't know, I don't know, but I can make something up. But I want you all to be aware that I'm making this up on the fly, which I probably shouldn't do on stage, but here we go.

[A]

Yeah. So I think one of the ways that I've become more comfortable with saying I don't know is that actually I very often remind an audience of their responsibility to me. We're in relationship. If I'm giving a talk and how the quality of my talk and the quality of what I share is going to be a direct response to your quality of feedback in listening to me. So we are in relationship now, right? If you all just get your phones out and start scrolling through Facebook, all that's going to tell me is that I'm boring and I'm dull and I've got nothing interesting to say. And guess what? I'm then going to be boring and dull and have nothing interesting to say. So I like to share the responsibility a little bit to say, you know, we're in this together. Now come with me.

[B]

I have a couple closing questions I always ask. Okay, because on this show, we believe work is a product. We believe that we can use design research tools to understand better what people want from it. And one of those is, what do you, Sammy, hire your job to to do for you?

[A]

I love this question. My work has to meet a few needs in me. We'll get the obvious one out of the way. It has to meet a financial need. Bills need to get paid. But that's fairly base level in my head. This is a Venn diagram, right? There's three circles here. One of them has financial need in it. Another one has interesting work. It has to be interesting work or there has to be a good amount of interesting work in it. And when I say that, I mean work that challenges me, that stretches me, that is complex, is gritty, is messy, or perhaps there might be times when there's less of that, but the people are fascinating. And so the what of what I'm doing is less challenging, but the people are really great that I'm doing it alongside. So interesting work is a really key component. So we've got this Venn diagram. We've got financial need needs to be met. It needs to be interesting and stretching work for me. There needs to be some heat in it. I need to feel like I'm developing. And the third one is purposeful. So I don't want to. And I will not work with an organization who want me to come in and do something to their people to increase profit. I will work with profitable organizations who want to be more profitable. But their intention has to be the joyfulness, the happiness, the safety, whatever that word is. There has to be some intention there around the quality of life of their people. And let's be really honest here, there'll be times when one piece of work is meeting more of a financial need for me and less of the other two. As long as it's not in conflict with the other two, then I'm okay. And there'll be other times when I'm working with a group of people on something purposeful and fascinating that doesn't pay the bills. But I can't hold back. I need to work with those people on that thing. And so I think how I make that work, this ever moving then, is trying to find a good balance across the three, which is why I love working in consultancy, because it gives me that permission and freedom of variety.

[B]

It's a good example of needing to hire the right clients.

[A]

Yes, absolutely. And saying no to the wrong ones.

[B]

Right. So a lot of this is winning the kind of work that is going to meet those requirements and figuring out how to do that. What does your job cost you?

[A]

I'm ever a positive person, so that's a tricky one because I can always outweigh the cost with the benefit. But I'll try and be strict. Sometimes it costs me time with my kids. You know, I work away, I work with clients abroad. Sometimes I'm in London a lot, so it costs me bedtimes and bedtime stories sometimes. I wouldn't call this a cost because I think it's developmental. But sometimes it asks a lot of me to speak truth to power, which I fear sounds so cheesy, dark, but when you're in conversations about people, it's complex and it's messy and sometimes you have to tell people things they don't want to hear. And sometimes it would be easier not to. So I have to suck it up and do what I think is right. And I mitigate any risk of me not doing that again by being in consultancy and having a variety of clients. So I'm never too reliant on one, that I can't be authentic and say what I really think in case they fire me and then I'm screwed. Well, actually, no, there's enough mitigation here that I can always be what I think I need to be. So I don't know that that's a cost because I see it as a really great thing. But sometimes it can be exhausting. So maybe sometimes this cost me some energy.

[B]

I think it's a cost. And I think truth to power is a funny one, because I used to think that the problem with truth to power is that power will crush you. The problem with truth to power is that power doesn't care about truth.

[A]

That's the biggest barrier.

[B]

And there's a cost to giving somebody something that you care about and them not caring about it.

[A]

There's a big relational risk there. Huge. And I think the other, you know, just to completely go against myself is that the idea that there is only ever one truth is a myth as well. So while I use the phrase truth to power, I suppose I'm talking about my truth and someone Else may have a very different one. And so I think staying open to that is really important.

[B]

It's interesting. Truth has come up a couple of different times. In the last of this conversation. One of the people that I had on the show was Derek Sivers. He's writing a book right now that is called Useful Not True. And it's all about how almost everything we know is Useful Not True.

[A]

I love it.

[B]

Yeah, it isn't done yet. He's still working on it. But it's readable, it's out there. First of all, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really, really wanted to have this particular conversation about grown upness, so it's very helpful. Where can people learn more about you and your upcoming book?

[A]

Thank you. Well, I'm a LinkedIn addict so you can find me on there. And then a way to find out about the work that we do would be farleyperformance.com I can send you this for the show notes and there's a page on there that talks about the book and that you can sign up for updates for when it comes through because it's not out there yet, but.

[B]

It will be my favorite kind of book. There's. It's so much easier to prepare for a podcast when somebody doesn't have 19 books or something. So the idea of a book, the prep time is way lower. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. Great talking.

[A]

Thank you so much for having me.

[B]

Thanks for joining me for another episode of Work for Humans. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a five star rating. Wherever you listen to podcasts and share the show with one person you think would get value from it, believe it or not, this really helps us grow the show and reach more people who want to build the kind of work that people really want. As always, thank you to my producer Jason Ames at 9th Path Audio for his insights into content and his high standard for quality. Final note, the opinions shared here are my own and not the views of Google or Cisco Systems. Thanks again for listening. See you next time.