The Psychology Behind Motivation And Performance

Episode 229 July 14, 2026 00:33:42
The Psychology Behind Motivation And Performance
Let's Be Diverse: Solutions for HR Leaders, Managers and the Workforce
The Psychology Behind Motivation And Performance

Jul 14 2026 | 00:33:42

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Hosted By

Andrew Stoute

Show Notes

In this episode we explore the fascinating psychology behind motivation and performance. We discuss what truly motivates individuals beyond rewards and recognition, how mindset influences success, and the role leaders play in creating environments where people can thrive. Our guest today is Rebecca Longman.

If you would like to reach out or connect with Rebecca Longman:

linkedin.com/in/rebecca-letslovetowork

https://letslovetowork.co.uk/

Thank you again to our Sponsors Nicole Donnelly, with Hello Moxie, and Alexandra Bowden, Will Kruer with PEOPLEfirst Talent & Retention Consulting and The Wellness Universe Corporate, Erika R. Taylor Beck with Authentic Foundations, Ashley Cox with AshleyCox.co, Lauren Bencekovich with Lauren Recruiting Group LLC, Ari Degrote with Upward and Inward, Kaitlyn Rios with Faced With Grace, Jennfer Gomez with The Joyful Strategist, Melissa Marie Maltais and Melanie with ConnectHers + Co. Thank you all very much for your support.

Hi, I’m Andrew Stoute, host of Let’s Be Diverse, an HR podcast where I share motivational posts, insights on HR and leadership topics, and personal anecdotes. As an empathetic and innovative HR professional, my goal is to inspire like-minded individuals who believe that the workplace should be a safe place to succeed and grow. Together, let’s explore different perspectives and create meaningful conversation.

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Before we dive in today's episode, I want to take a moment to share something that's been on my heart, something I've been working on behind the scenes for a while now. I'm officially writing a book. This book is called let's Be A Practical Guide to Leading Through Change. And it's deeply personal to me. It's built from real experiences. The uncertainty, the challenges, the moments where I didn't have the answers but had to lead. This isn't just a leadership book filled with theory. It's about navigating uncertainty when there's no clear direction, building internal clarity when everything around us feels unclear, having courageous conversations even when they're uncomfortable, and leading with value, especially when it's the hardest to do so. I'm also going into topics that don't get talked about enough, like what it feels like to be challenged, overlooked and even bullied as an adult in a workplace. And how those moments shape the kind of leader you become. This book is for anyone who's ever thought, how do I lead when I don't feel ready? How do I show up when I don't have all the answers? And how do I stay true to myself in environments that challenge me? If this is you, this book is for you. I'll be sharing more about the journey behind the scenes moments and opportunities for you to be part of it as we go. So stay tuned because this is more than just a book. It's a movement around how we lead through change together. Alright, let's get to today's episode. [00:01:25] Speaker B: Opinions expressed in this episode are personal. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this streaming platform. [00:01:34] Speaker C: Good day, wonderful people and welcome to another edition of let's Be Diverse. I am your host, Andrew Stout. This episode is dedicated to all my loved ones who've supported me through this journey. Those who have left us will always be in our hearts and will never be forgotten. Today our topic is the psychology behind motivation and performance. Our guest today is one awesome human. Her name is Rebecca Longman. Rebecca, welcome to the show. So nice to have you joining us here today. [00:02:02] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Andrew. It's so great to be here. [00:02:04] Speaker C: How were things with you? What's been energizing you these days? Give us the tea, give us the deets, give us it all. What's going on? [00:02:10] Speaker B: Absolutely. What's been energizing me? Oh my goodness. Well, I was just sharing with you earlier I got a new puppy so she is definitely keeping me busy. On top of that, as has British, it's like to do we love to talk about the weather and it's sunny and beautiful here at the moment, so that's really energizing me and also really building my business. I'm so excited about the work that I'm doing at the moment around let's love to work and building my new book that's upcoming in September and continuing to get the message out about how we can create really great workplaces. So yeah, I'm excited. [00:02:44] Speaker C: Amazing. And congratulations to you you on the book. I too have a book coming out as well. [00:02:50] Speaker B: Exciting. [00:02:51] Speaker C: And that book is coming out in September as well. So we're like twinsies that we both have books coming out in September. That's pretty cool. [00:02:59] Speaker B: We are. I'm so excited to read yours, Andrew. I can't wait. [00:03:01] Speaker C: I appreciate that and I'm excited to check out yours as well. So that is cool. We will team up on that and, and, and compare notes for sure. So thanks for sharing everything with us. Congratulations on the book. Congratulations on the new puppy. I was able to see the puppy live. So I'm super, super excited and I'm honored that I got the chance to see the puppy. So thank you so much for, for that. Before we begin, I always have a fun, thought provoking question that I ask all my guests to get things going. Are you ready for yours today, Rebecca? [00:03:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. [00:03:33] Speaker C: Okay, so my question, I've asked this to a few guests here. I thought I would ask you as well. So your question is, do you believe faith exists or are we entirely in control of what happens to us? [00:03:45] Speaker B: That's such a good question. Can I say both? Because I think I do believe that there is a series of paths available to us. But I think the potential within those paths is shaped by us. So we take an avenue that is open to us and there are so many at any one point in time. But what happens along that avenue and the choices we make along the way and the people we meet and the effort we put in and the time. Time we spend, the relationships we build. I think all of those things are shaped by the choices we make along that journey and, and the, the effort that we decide to expend to make the most of. Of what we are given. [00:04:25] Speaker C: I love when you said both. I had a feeling that you're going to give a good explanation on both sides. You're absolutely right on everything that you just said there. Well, thanks for having fun with me to get us started. Who are you and what really drives you to do the work that you do? [00:04:38] Speaker B: So so, Rebecca Longman. I am a business psychologist. I have spent about 20 years in the people development, people engagement, how we can create better workplaces industry. My work has evolved over the years, so I started out, you know, in consultancy. I've worked with businesses all over the world designing programs to create these better workplaces. But the was something that I learned right at the beginning of my career from one of my tutors at the time. And he said to me, the client that you have in any consulting relationship will never be your direct customer. And what he meant by that was, the person who pays your bills will not necessarily be the person that you affect in the interventions that you put in place. Now, over the course of my career, have recognized that this is entirely true. So. So depending on who you work with and what their belief is about how workplaces should be and how they should play out will directly impact whether they create solutions or processes or programs or structures that serve the people on the ground rather than just serve leadership. Now, you often find that there are people who want to do both, and that's great when you do find those people. But sometimes you find people who are really just trying to effectively make the business money, which I know is exactly what needs to happen. But there are ways to do that while bringing the people with you along on a journey. And they're the people that I try to work with and to reach. They're the people who speak the language that I speak. I understand that both need to happen, but you can't forget the people who take you on that journey while you're trying to make the business profitable. [00:06:27] Speaker C: You can correct me if I'm wrong, but what it's going to affect is the people that are working for that company and the people that are designing and people that are actually doing the grunt works. We call those the individual contributors. [00:06:39] Speaker B: Right, exactly that. Yeah. And most people are that most people at work aren't in senior leadership positions and getting to make real decisions about their work. And that is something that more recently in my career. Well, I say more recently over the last six, seven years, I've really started to want to shift. And that's what a lot of my work is about. Because what I've recognized is that through my research, people do their best work. They're more engaged, they're more motivated when they feel that they have a sense of ownership over what they do. And that I call agency. And that agency only flourishes when the organization creates the conditions to allow that to be. So. We want that to happen because when people are more engaged, they're more motivated, they're more mentally and physically well, they do better work. So not only is it good for the people and good for society and just the right thing to do, it's good for business. So it makes logical sense. However, it's hard to make those changes when you're a business. When you think about back to sort of the industrial revolution sort of times, the way businesses have been built is not designed to do that. It's designed to get people to carrot and stick, do what you want them to do. And so to shift all that in a quick way, it's not going to work. It's going to take time, it's going to take effort, it's going to take small incremental changes over time to make this effect. And one of the things that I started to really relate this to is if you think about in politics, we often get people into power and they're only there for four years, that's not that long to really affect real change. And you see the same thing in workplaces. You often get leaders who come in and they want to make impact, they want to make a difference and they want to do it quickly. And then they move on to the next role because that's going to give them an opportunity to grow their career. So it becomes quite a self fulfilling prophecy really. And I really want to shift this mindset. I think we can do this differently and I think it can be better for everyone if we do. [00:08:46] Speaker C: On that note, when we talk about motivation in the workplace, there are often assumptions that people are either motivated or they're not. From your perspective as a business psychologist, what does motivation really mean and what factors influence it? [00:09:01] Speaker B: So I don't think people are either motivated or they're not. I think the conditions need to be in place to allow people to make their motivation flourish so effectively. When we talk about motivation, we're talking about two different types, extrinsic and intrinsic. So extrinsic being kind of external rewards that make us do work. So things like pay bonuses, that sort of stuff. Absolutely, that is necessary. There is no doubt in my mind that we absolutely need that in a nutshell, generally go to work to make an income. And that's how society works. That's never going to go away. And it needs to be a fair income too. There has to be that fair baseline. But after that, work is more than that and it can be more than that. And the people that I interviewed throughout my research and throughout my career, people I've worked with and coached and spent time with in businesses. They think about it differently. They think about what else is my career giving me outside of the salary that I'm getting, and what is it giving me intrinsically? And that's the other part of motivation. What internal factors am I meeting within myself, within my own needs through this work? What is it giving me? And that's the piece that we need to really focus on when we think about how we're motivating people in businesses. And that requires us as managers and leaders to really get to know our people, to really understand them as individuals and to support them, to help them uncover, okay, what am I good at? Where do my strengths lie? What do I do really well? And if it's not what I'm doing right now, how can I do more of that? And how as leaders can we open the doors to allow people to do that? Because so many things are shut down because of the way hierarchical structures work. We don't have access to stuff. So we have to create the conditions to allow people to act on the things that, that drive them. [00:10:49] Speaker C: What you're saying to me is so interesting because I've had many conversations in the last six months, and what people are seeing is that there are people in leadership positions that are taking the roles on, but they're not understanding what that role of a leader entails. So with you telling me that you're talking to people and they're asking, what else is my career giving me? That just tells me that there is is a light at the end of the tunnel. If they're asking you this, then I think there's some positive things coming down the pipeline here. [00:11:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. And I think as leaders and managers, particularly managers, I have a real challenge with this idea around manager and leader as a starting point here, because I remember many years ago I used to write blogs about this sort of stuff and I did some work for a company. This was probably about 15 years ago now. And I created this, which it's not very catchy, which is why it hasn't caught on. But I said the idea that you can have two doesn't make sense. Basically what you have is a leader, someone who is a manager inherently needs to also be a leader, because otherwise you're just pointing at people and telling them what to do. And that doesn't make logical sense because people don't respond well to that. But that's the legacy wave, that people have been managed. Even that word, it just, it doesn't hold good things for me. So what we want to do is teach people to have more leadership skills. And one of the things I've really seen sort of explode in the industry recently over the last sort of probably less than 10 years. Really where it's really taken hold is coaching and this idea of manager as coach. Absolutely, that's great. However, that only works if the conditions allow people to. People to use those new behaviors, those new ways of thinking, breaking down those sort of barriers within themselves, if they're allowed to act on that. And so therefore, you need the systems and structures in place. Which is why when I talk about building agentic workplaces in my upcoming book, it's a model that covers three aspects, which is build, ask and cultivate. Build is getting people as individuals to build their self skills. So things like self efficacy, self belief, self motivation. That's kind of the internal bit. And then there's like this external bit, which is this ability as an individual to kind of understand the landscape a bit better and see when, okay, I'm making decisions that serve me, but is it also serving the business? So you've kind of got this build concept, which is sort of what coaching is about. That's, that's that bit. But obviously, if you've got managers doing the coaching bit within the ask piece, which is the management part of the model, we're saying, okay, we want managers to be coaches, but we also need managers to be people who are sharing the strategic goals of the organization in a way that they can work together collectively as managers and individuals to shape that future, not tell people what to do. This is what we need to achieve and this is how we're going to do it. But actually, this is kind of where we're going. Let's work together and create that future and use our creative talents. But those things only work if you have cultivate, which is the conditions within the organization that stop people from being shut down from doing that. If you've then got four layers where everything has to be signed off, that's not going to work because then people get disgruntled and demotivated because they're just getting pushed back and pushed back and pushed back. So then they stop trying. So you have to have all of these three conditions in place for it to work. So that's what I'm trying to drive forward. [00:14:23] Speaker C: So. Well said, Rebecca. Many organizations focus on external motivators like rewards, recognition, promotions, or even incentives. How important are those factors and what are some of the deeper psychological drivers that truly impact an employee's Performance, those things are vital. [00:14:43] Speaker B: Yes, you can't take those things away. But if we're rewarding the right behaviors, so we're starting to reward those agentic behaviors. So when people are taking ownership, being creative and being innovative, driving things forward, shaping the future, they're the things we need to reward, not compliance. Now, don't get me wrong. I also recognize that in certain industries, things like financial services, pharmaceuticals, law, for example, there are very strict rigid boundaries that people need to work within. But I think what we've started to do in companies even outside of these industries, is create the structures so rigidly that it stops people from thinking. Yes, there need to be boundaries that keep people safe, that keep things moral, ethical. But I think there can be more space, often within systems and processes that doesn't exist right now. You only have to look at things like the tech industry. There is so much more creative space in a lot of organizations within tech that allow people to just have a go, fail a bit, try something new, spend some time thinking, playing, being a creative person. What can we come up with? What new things are possible for the work that we do today? [00:15:59] Speaker C: You're absolutely right. Being creative is super important. And I love that you said that we have to know what the structure is. And I believe that that comes down to when you first have this employee or you're someone in your team, or even leaders starting a leader position, knowing what their objectives are or what is needed from them in order to be successful for the job. And what are the expectations that we have on those individuals? Because if we don't know what our expectations are, then how are we going to know if we are being successful? [00:16:33] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And I think often those expectations are a little unfair, really. First of all, companies are often in so much of a hurry to get things done because that makes the company money. That actually. Well, in theory it does that actually. Everything's kind of rushed through and there's always deadlines and targets we must hit by this particular point. And it's not really looked at. How are we getting there? Is this the way that is most beneficial for us as humans and for us as a business, or is it just that that's the fastest route? So I think we have to be clearer about these expectations and ensure that we're then kind of measuring people on their outputs when those outputs and their inputs are more creative and allowing them that space to be themselves, to show what we. What they can do without being stuck in a structure that doesn't necessarily allow them to think for Themselves. There's a guy called Sir Ken Robinson. Unfortunately, he died back in 2020, and he was a real prolific speaker around the concept of creativity. And he said that creativity gets squashed right from when we're children, when we go into the school systems and we follow these real rigid structures around curriculums and what we learn and how we learn. And the same thing applies in workplaces. We're told how to do things, we're told how to think. Even when you look at things like defined career paths, yes, they're useful. And in certain industries, they're useful because you go down a certain path to get a particular title, because that title proves that you can, for example, be a doctor or a lawyer. You've kind of ticked all the boxes. But we've then put that into organizations and created things like competency frameworks and real rigid structures that I guess in some ways they give people space to see what's possible. But they also mean that people think that's the only thing that's possible. And actually there's so many possibilities, there's so many ways to go, there's so many avenues and possibility of what we can create. But we're not often given the space to do that. We're kind of put into positions where we said, you need to learn this to move on to that next stage, to move up the ladder to the next thing, where actually we don't say to people, what interests you? What would you like to learn? These are the things we have to achieve generally as an organization. How do you think you would like to get there? How do you think you can add value? How can you help us achieve these goals as an individual? Tell us what you bring. And outside of an interview, I don't think I ever get asked anything. In any role I've ever been at, I don't think I've ever been asked, what else have you got? What do you bring? What do you know? What's your background? What's your history? What experiences if you had, you know, what do you think, basically? And I just think that's such a waste. We're such valuable as humans. And now when you think about AI coming into the mix, there's so much opportunity to just ask IT questions and get results without us having to think. And I think that's really sad. And. And I think there's a place for it because it creates more efficiencies in. In some ways, you know, it gives us information we didn't have access to before at any level. But it also Then makes it quite obvious that if we can get that information from anywhere, then actually we don't need the hierarchical structures. In the same way, we don't need to just follow one person's experience and say, well, that must be the way that we go. Actually, there's so much possibility, and unless we're taught how to use that well, think for ourselves, effectively, evaluate what we're seeing, we're not going to be able to use it. We're just gonna blindly follow stuff that doesn't make any sense. So I just think there's so much more potential, us as humans, and now we have that space to differentiate ourselves as humans. When AI is in the mix. [00:20:36] Speaker C: What you're describing is basically a puzzle piece. We're putting puzzle pieces together for a career, trying to figure out what direction that we want to go in. And everyone has a different direction. Everyone's got a different mindset of what they want to do. Some people are the nine to five person. I just want to go in, do my job, and leave at 5 o' clock and go spend time with my family, have supper, do whatever. There's the other people who want to move up and they're okay to do a little bit of extra when they go home. So everyone has a different mindset, a different outlook. But yes, you're putting your puzzle pieces together to figure out what is going to work best for you. [00:21:11] Speaker B: Yeah, that's exactly it. And I think you've touched on something really important there. Everyone is different. And you will have people who want to follow the paths that are laid out for them. But we now assume that everybody wants to do that and we don't ask the questions. And I can, I can guarantee you in any, if you're a manager today in your team, there will be someone who's thinking, I don't really want to follow these defined paths. But then there will be others who are like, it's terrifying, the idea of not following the defined path. That doesn't mean either of those people can shift and change with the right or different leadership and questions and opportunities and thinking. But it also doesn't mean that either is right or wrong. There is no right or wrong. It's just recognizing that everybody has an opinion, they have a viewpoint, a perspective on how they grow, and that is when you're going to get the best from them. [00:22:04] Speaker C: Rebecca, you often talk about the importance of agency and people having ownership over their work. Can you explain why autonomy and the ability to make meaningful choices are so connected to motivation and engagement? [00:22:18] Speaker B: So what sits beneath engagement, through the research that I've done is I've recognized that if you look at the engagement scores, if you think about Gallup, for example, which has been measuring engagement for about the last 20 years, and there's been some minor shifts in engagement, but it stayed static somewhere around 25, 30% ish. So basically, that doesn't mean that most people are disengaged. There's a small portion that's disengaged. I think it's around 10% or something. And then the rest are kind of somewhere in the middle. They're sort of like, neither engaged nor disengaged. They're not going to rock the boat, but they're not really excited or driven or motivated to move forward. So that's kind of what sparked it all for me in the first place. I was like, well, when I go into these workplaces, the majority of people don't really care. They're just kind of like, I'm here just because I need to be here, and it is what it is, but I get to go home at the end of a day and I have a laugh with my work colleagues, and it's all fine. And I'm like, well, fine is not great. Like, can we make it better than fine? How do we make it better than fine? So then there were other people I met that were just excited. They were passionate. They were like, they loved what they did. And I thought, well, okay, I need to understand what makes these people love it. And when I started to ask the questions, that's when I came up with the original model of my six factors around what made people love to work. And they were. I'm not going to list all six, but they were basically around this concept of recognition, recognizing that your work can give you more than just a salary. They'd made choices around how they wanted to grow and develop. They really understood and learned themselves and what mattered to them. They built connections and mentoring relationships and good work relationships that allowed them to go on the journey that they wanted to go on. So they were more conscious, not just blindly following. They made decisions about how they wanted to shape it. It was theirs, basically. And that's when I realized that for me, the reason engagement isn't shifting is because we're not allowing people the space to be who they are and show us what they've got. [00:24:28] Speaker C: You're absolutely right. We talked about it just before people were told, this is what you're going to do, or this is what we think that you should be doing, but we're not allowing anybody, and you mentioned it, shape the their path. We're not allowing anybody to shape their own path and decide what they want to do. And you mentioned the word passion, which is huge. And I talk about this a lot. You have to have passion for what you do. The passion brings out the energy. Two of the things that I look for when I'm looking to have them on as a guest is rapport and energy. Those are two things that I look for. Content is going to be important, but those two factors, rapport and energy, are going to bring out the content even more because whatever that person is talking about or what we are talking about is going to bring it out so much more because we love what we do. So if you are in an organization and you're loving what you do, then yes, you're going to want to shape your path because you're thinking of that company long term term, not in the short term. Not to get me to where I want to go in the future, somewhere else. This is my path and this is where I want to get to within this company. And I think leaders need to understand that a little bit more. [00:25:46] Speaker B: You're absolutely right. It comes down to someone recognizing this is where I can add value. And when you feel like you're adding value, you feel valued because you inherently are being appreciated for what you bring. To allow you to do that, you need to understand enough about yourself. You need to feel supported. You know, something we've talked about is psychological safety. You need to feel safe. You need to feel like you can, you can do, do you in a respectful way. Now, I think sometimes people take this too far and they say, well, I should be able to say whatever I want. No, not exactly. We're in a respectful working environment, so let's be respectful towards each other. However, let's also allow for a little bit of positive conflict that opens up the opportunity to be innovative. Without that, you're not going to make change happen. Everything's just going to stay in the status quo. If you don't have people who push those boundaries, you're never going to get changed for sure. [00:26:50] Speaker C: I agree with you 100%. So leaders often struggle with helping teams perform at their best, especially during times of uncertainty and change. What role does psychological safety, which is a word you used just before trust and leadership behavior, play in unlocking performance? [00:27:08] Speaker B: So in order to take people through change, people need to feel like they have a sense of a stake in the game. Basically, if you're going to go through change. The best way to do it is to have people feel they can help shape it. The worst thing that can happen in anything, if you think about any experience that you've had in your life where it's just been plonked on top of you and somebody's just said, this is what's going to happen, more often than not, people will say, this is terrible. I feel out of control, I feel vulnerable, I feel scared. I don't know what my role is in this. If you allow people to help you shape that, okay, this is generally where we think we need to get to. We need you to help us shape that. We need help to get there in the best way possible. And we trust and believe in you and what you can bring to the table. We value your opinion, your input, your experiences to help us shape that future. Something I come back to and I talk about in the book, is when you look at startups, they have a very vague idea of where they're trying to get to and they don't really know how they're going to get there because they've never done it before and no one else has ever done it before because they're trying to be new and innovative and create something new and different. So if that's what they're trying to do and they don't really know how they're going to get there, they're going to make mistakes along the way. They're going to need support and help from people around them. They're going to want to work together as teams to take them in that direction. It's not going to be easy, but people work together to co create it. And I think we lose that in organisations, especially when organizations get really big. And that's inevitable, that is going to happen. But you can have that in team environments too. Something that we do in terms of bringing people, people forward is have things like team charters. People sort of work together to co create. Okay, this is who we are, this is how we're gonna take ourselves forward. These are the things that matter to us. These are our values, these are the things we're passionate about, these are the things we're good at. This is how we're gonna take things forward. So I think there are ways that we can create these things to help us do that. So I think there's just so much more potential than we allow for currently. [00:29:25] Speaker C: When you said it's not going to be easy, my thoughts are it's never going to be sunshine and rainbows. Our world is so polarizing today that there's all kinds of uncertainty in everything and anything that we do. So, yes, I think we need to understand that. And I think as leaders, if we understand that there is going to be uncertainty and there's not going to be perfect times, it's not going to always be sunshine and rainbows, then I think we're going to be able to move a little bit further down the path, in my belief. [00:29:54] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely, I agree. And allow people to make a few mistakes along the way. There are far too many places that I've worked where still, even now, even though the research so clearly says and has done for a long time now, that if you allow people the space to just make a mistake, same with kids, then they'll learn through, through their mistakes. And yes, we don't want people to make a mistake that's going to cost the company billions. Granted, I get it. Again, boundaries, but not strict. Okay, you can't make any mistakes. I mean, again, years and years ago, I remember working with a call center team and the people who are answering the phones weren't allowed. They didn't have any agency whatsoever about dealing with someone who would call up and say, I have problem. And they couldn't necessarily fix the problem at the moment, at that point in time, but they weren't allowed to offer any kind of compensation of any sort. And just by saying, okay, you now have choice of being able to offer compensation to, say, six people a day. And they might answer 150 calls a day. Six people a day. And you can use a £25 voucher for this person or you can, can use a free month of subscription to our service or whatever it might be. But just that tiny bit of agency means that people start to use their own brains. They start to think, okay, what's the best place for me to use this? And then they'll find at some point, okay, maybe that wasn't the best place because then this happened and they start to make informed decisions and choices and then they learn things about how to be like that, how to make good decisions. And that's what we want people to do. The amount of conversations I've had with managers, well, I just want them to make good decisions. I just want them to think for themselves. Well, give them space to do that and let them learn how to do that. And then they might do that, you know, but if you just keep telling them what to do, they're never going to do that. It just sometimes it beggars belief to me the way people don't see what sits beneath because behavior. I mean, obviously I'm trained in psychology, so that helps. But it's really basic stuff. Really, really basic. If you tell someone to do something and then expect them to think for themselves, they're not going to do that. You've got to give them space to learn. [00:32:11] Speaker C: Oh, for sure. So before we wrap up here, Rebecca, what is one key takeaway that you'd like our listeners to remember from this episode? [00:32:20] Speaker B: So it's the power of agency, the power of a allowing people the space to think for themselves, to be creative, to be innovative, to have some space to make mistakes. Allow them and you might just see what they're capable of. [00:32:39] Speaker C: I love that. Absolutely. That's that is so well said. I don't think I could have said it any better there. My call to action here is to like, share and follow this episode. Rebecca, I wanted to take the time to thank you for joining us today. The things that I admire about you is your ability to build rapport, your adaptability, your thoughtfulness and consideration, the joy you bring to each conversation and your absolute incredible energy. Thank you so much for taking the time. [00:33:08] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Andrew. Honestly, you've asked such great questions that have really given me the space to share my ideas and my thoughts and I hope, hope that it has helped to inspire a few people to think a little bit differently. [00:33:20] Speaker C: I'm sure it will. On behalf of myself and my guest, Rebecca, I'd like to take the time to thank you all for joining us today. And until next time, be safe. And remember everyone, that if we all work together, we can accomplish anything. [00:33:33] Speaker B: You have been listening to let's Be Diverse with Andrew Stout to stay up to date with future content. Hit Subscribe.

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