Ep 7. The Art of Leadership: Creating a Winning Culture in Service Teams

Tristan Kelly: 00:00:10

5, 4, 3, 2, 1. This is high five.

Mike Galea: 00:00:15

I'm Mike Galea, and alongside Tristan Kelly, we share stories, ideas, and insights that spark connection in the workplace.

Tristan Kelly: 00:00:22

It's insightful, it's energizing, and it starts right now. Culture is your team's default setting.

When something breaks or plans change or it's chaos at the front desk, culture decides whether people blame, freeze, or step in and sort it out. The best cultures are simple, clear expectations, real trust, and a way of working people can genuinely buy into.

Today, we're talking about what actually makes service teams high performing without burning people out. It comes down to three things.

Giving people what they need to do the job, making it safe to speak up, and building simple daily habits that keep standards high.

Mike Galea: 00:01:07

Tristan, today we are going to be diving into something that I am incredibly passionate about and that is leading service teams, which includes culture, motivation, and high performance. But let me ask you this, why is this conversation important now?

Tristan Kelly: 00:01:21

Because service is where reputation is won or lost in real time. When the pressure hits, teams don't rise to the occasion. They fall back on the culture that they've practiced every day.

Mike Galea: 00:01:31

So when you say culture, what do you actually mean beyond, like, values on a slide?

Tristan Kelly: 00:01:35

I mean the lived stuff. You know, what's acceptable, what gets praised, what's allowed to be ignored, and how people treat each other when something goes wrong.

The best cultures, they're really simple, they're consistent, and they're really easy for people to belong to.

Mike Galea: 00:01:49

So what are we going to give listeners in this episode? You know, what they're going to walk away with?

Tristan Kelly: 00:01:53

Well, hopefully a practical view of what leaders can control. So the conditions people work in, the trust to speak up early, and the everyday coaching habits that make good service repeatable.

Mike Galea: 00:02:03

Exactly. We'll unpack what great looks like, where leaders slip up and what high performance will look like as technology and expectations keep moving.

Tristan Kelly: 00:02:12

Brilliant. And we've got Jonny Young from OCS joining us later to bring the real world view from the front line.

Okay, Mike, let's get into leading service teams. When service teams are under pressure, what behaviors slip first and what does that tell you about culture?

Mike Galea: 00:02:32

Well, under immense pressure, I think the. The element that slips first is behaviors.

Because under pressure, your personality and character does change, where you become solely focused on the outputs, on completing the deadline, on finishing the job. And you often hear it with, I will apolog after, but we need to get this done now.

I always see actually under great pressure, that behavioral transition, that change into more of a, you know, if we use an insights language into more of a red kind of directive style. Leadership. It's just get the job done, get it done, get it over the line, hit the deadline. Because there's a lot riding on this one.

So I would say, in my experience, behaviors are the first to go and under great pressure. That's where you see the truth of people, because you're seeing how they really are reacting to that pressure.

Whether you're a leader, whether you're a doer, it doesn't matter what you are.

In that sense, it brings out what could be an underlying characteristic that you keep hidden because, you know, in a corporate sense, we all want to be polite and nice to each other.

Tristan Kelly: 00:03:35

They're the human bits, aren't they? The warmth, patience, proactive communication, ownership. You're often firefighting in that situation, and you're.

You're putting the customer slightly. Well, you might be. You might be avoiding them to a certain extent just because you want to get the issue done. And as you just said, yeah, it's.

We've just got to get through this mindset. But that's not always a. That's not always a great positive for the customer.

You might fix the solution, but there's that adage, isn't there, that it's not necessarily about the destination, it's about the journey.

And yeah, you might fix it, but you might have really annoyed your customer through that process because actually you shut down being human just to firefight and get through it.

Mike Galea: 00:04:14

We're talking about in a business sense, and pressure means different things to different people.

But let's take it into a very real sense of life potentially lost because military leadership and that sense of there is a, you know, a section of people who are facing life or death wherever they are, and they're waiting on a decision from a leader on how they would conduct that objective, that task.

Now, that is real pressure because that leader will be working on, you know, whether it's an officer or someone quite senior, they'll be working on their tactics, working on their approach. They will. They're trying to envision the objective and what they need to do and how to drive success. But also they've got the people elements too.

Now, all that, that saying of calm under pressure, military is a really good example of that, because what you take is the whole chain of command being calm under pressure. But my question is this, is that leadership or is it just good training?

Tristan Kelly: 00:05:07

I think it's both. And I'm drawing on some insight here.

is stories around winning the: 2003

And training was a huge part of that, as you can imagine, with an elite sports team and the science that went into understanding everything. Sir Dave Brailsford does it equally as well through his 1% marginal gains. And the England team under Sir Clive Woodward were also looking into that.

But I think you have to create the culture where people are able to think clearly under pressure because you've provided the tools. You've almost taken them through those scenarios to think, okay, right, it's the, it's the 82nd minute we're in Sydney.

Jonny's left foot isn't working. What's he going to do? Well, for Jonny, it's meat and drink. He knocks it over with his wrong foot and they win the World Cup.

So you have to train people to be in those positions, but you've got to create a culture where, had he missed it, it would have been okay.

Mike Galea: 00:06:15

GROW, it was designed in the: 1980

It was put in place to help sports people, especially those on their way to elite status, moving it forward. But when you look at sports and then leadership in sports, you've got two factors that play a big part.

One is team sport, where it is a group mentality to win, or individual sports, where it's my own, My own mindset is to win. Now, they don't make good team players, individuals.

So those solo sportsmen don't make good team players because they're so competitive that winning is the goal.

Those in a sport kind of group environment, you know, teams, it's this shared collective that unifies them all together, which helps the leader deliver the inspiration for them to carry out that success. But a lot of that sports psychology thinking, and especially some of the examples you've just given, inevitably always drips into work and business.

But what is the competition when it comes to the general workforce? The objective is to deliver their outputs, whatever that may be. But is it. Should we have a winning mindset.

And does that change how the leader promotes and, and creates a culture?

Tristan Kelly: 00:07:44

I think you should always have a winning culture.

You should always be striving to be the best department within the business, the best business within your market, the best market within your industry. Because if you're not, your competitors are.

And we've seen so many companies go by the wayside over the years because they haven't had a winning culture. They've, they've sat on their laurels or they've had group think or they've had a middle management that suppressed creativ.

And so therefore, if you have a winning culture built into the organization, it will keep you ahead of the competition. And if you look from a sporting viewpoint, you could challenge them at the moment.

But New Zealand rugby team, the All Blacks, have an amazing culture. They're not doing so great at the moment.

They've recently let their, let their coach go and there's a bit of infighting, but that's a blip in the road that'll get ironed out. Because actually their culture as a winning team goes way deeper than a few, a few stars having a hissy fit within the changing rooms.

And so, yeah, I think you have to have a winning culture in whatever you're doing. If you're an individual, if you're a freelancer on your own, you want to be the best that you possibly can be.

If you're a creative duo, if you're an advertising pair, equally, you want to create the best work that you possibly can. Otherwise, what are you doing?

Mike Galea: 00:08:56

You're 100% right, I guess. Where does it start from? Because if we think of the company, you work for a particular company, I work for ocs.

OCS is a huge company with global reach. It's absolutely humongous and it's broken down into divisions and I happen to be in the UK and Ireland. Who sets the culture there? Is it the company?

Is it this non human entity that sets the culture in which we operate?

Or is it our leadership team that say, no, no, no, this is what we decide is great, this is how we want to operate and this is what we deem success to be?

Tristan Kelly: 00:09:28

Well, I think from an OCS point of view, it's an almost impossible situation to manage. Not least because OCS acquire businesses at the rate of me picking up new LEGO sets.

And how do you then integrate that completely different culture, an organization you've been competing with, who may be having a completely different set of values and they've been working well together. So That's a challenge. And I think.

I think large organizations who are in the sort of merger and acquisition environment do struggle a lot with creating winning cultures. Because you acquire a new team, suddenly you've got four HR directors. Well, no business needs four HR directors.

And so there's always that, that inherent awareness of how safe is my position. And so that in itself creates an environment, an instable environment, which doesn't necessarily create brilliant winning team.

But then you look at sports teams and you'll find Ireland have got it now in the. In their rugby. You know, they've got two really good fly halves and they're currently competing. So it's a similar situation that Johnny and Ronan O'Gara had. When Ronan O'Gara was coming to the end of his career and Johnny Sexton was coming into his. The two of them were vying, so one would start and one would finish. And, and actually having two or three people that could do your role equally as well is a good thing.

That will keep you honest, that will keep you pushing forward. But I certainly think smaller organisations. I work for an internal comms agency and I try and look into the data on this.

When I was working there, we had a team of around 35 and they said actually not controlling culture, because that sounds quite manipulative, but actually being able to affect the culture in a positive way becomes really difficult when you get over a certain size of organization.

So I think, going back to your question, you have to create a winning culture within your team, your department, because we're talking around service, you know, leadership within the service environment. You're not leading 20,000 people or 100,000 people that may work for OCS.

You're leading a team of seven or eight who then lead another team of seven or eight individuals themselves. Your effect is only on those individuals.

And, and if you can create a winning culture from those individuals, well, you'll, as a team, shine within the larger model and that then may get picked up and redistributed across the business. To think crikey, the, the learning and development team in UK and Ireland, they're doing brilliant. What are they doing? Oh, this is what they do.

Excellent. Well, let's, let's see if we can replicate that.

So you'll evolve as a business through sharing what works well and then looking deeply at what doesn't work well.

Mike Galea: 00:12:02

So here's the question then, on that one. Our leaders made or are leaders born?

Tristan Kelly: 00:12:08

Well, they're all born, aren't they?

Mike Galea: 00:12:11

Leaders? People are born.

Tristan Kelly: 00:12:12

People People are born.

Yes, I'm sure there's an element where there's an inherent leadership skill within certain individuals, but they need a certain environment to flourish.

You mentioned earlier around group sports teams, so rugby teams, football teams, cricket teams, you know, there's multiple people and everyone brings their own skill set to the table. And you need everybody to work well together to be successful. Leaders will naturally come to the fore in those environments.

And often it's not the most obvious people. It's not necessarily the person that shouts the most or, or is the, the loudest or most charismatic.

And so often it's very hard to work out who has great leadership material.

You've got to put people into a position where they have to lead teams to find out who's got those leadership skills and then you can enhance and develop those skills. But I think from a cultural point of view, you have to hire people that fit your idea of what that culture is. So do they have those behaviors?

Can you measure that from their past experience? Can you see that they are. I don't know whether your values are open, innovative and engaging, whatever.

Can you see that they actually extol those virtues, those values, and then you can develop those individuals.

Mike Galea: 00:13:23

I'm going to give you an example in a moment, but I want to make a point just before I do that. And that's because we always go back to sportsmanship and sportsmanship mentality.

Now it's very easy for a football manager to look at the squad, to test his players and to understand positionally where his weaknesses are, because you see it in action and you see the performance played out. Same with rugby.

You know, you need a stronger winger or whatever that looks like harder to do in business when you think about, we lead through our strengths and we lead through our transparency of our weaknesses to understand where our gaps are. And here's my example of this one. Have you ever heard of an experiment called the Super Chicken complex?

Tristan Kelly: 00:14:03

I don't think I have.

Mike Galea: 00:14:05

So the super. The Super Chicken, it was an experiment where they decided they wanted to create super chickens.

And, and it was a very interesting leadership experiment. It's, you know, been widely talked about in TED talks and stuff like that.

But the, the whole behind this was we're going to get the top chickens from every coupe we can find. The number one, the number twos.

And this was a leadership mindset, is if I fill my people with the absolute best of the best within the job market, I will have an elite team of people. So the proven element was, let's Try this with chickens. So they got all these chickens and then they. They left them to it.

Now, yes, in the animal kingdom, there is always a hierarchy at play. And I suppose, you know, we are. We are creatures on this planet. We are also animals.

But what they found was the super chickens all started to compete with each other and left unaided, started to kill each other. And what was left was a couple of super chickens in a given hierarchy of top chicken right through to not top chicken.

Now, that mindset is something that. That we fall into sometimes when it comes to being the best. We want the best or we want to work with the best.

Applying the super chicken concept to that. Is there room to have so many alphas, so many people being the best, when everyone's vying for position in the eyes of their own leader?

Tristan Kelly: 00:15:26

Yes, there is room. Just to touch on your first point is that the reason people use sports as a great way to bring to life leadership is.

It's quite glamorous, it's quite exciting. Talk about a team that have won the Champions League or Formula One teams and the precision.

That's a lot more exciting than talking about the Scottish accounts department, who are Team of the Year for three years in a row for Big co. That doesn't excite anyone. It's not. It's not relevant. But you can talk around some big organizations that have done well. But I like what you're talking around Super chickens and actually, that feeds in quite a lot to Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, where he had A, B and C players, and knowing the roles of those individuals, like A players are the alphas, as you mentioned, you don't want too many of those on A team because you do need B players. So B players are those that are potentially or have the potential to become A players.

But equally, you need a lot of C players because, well, they're the ones that are very happy, more or less where they are. And they all. If we go back to a sporting analogy, everybody brings something to the table.

And you're right, you can't have too many of one in a team because it won't be a cohesive team, fully aligned, working together to give her the.

Mike Galea: 00:16:37

Credit she so rightly deserves. It was Margaret Heffernan that talked about the super chicken.

So if you ever want to see her TED Talk, she's far more eloquent talking about it than me.

Well, we've come to that part of the show where we really do like to hear from the experts, not us going on about our own Ideals and what we're doing. And there's no finer example of leadership than OCS's very own private sector managing director, all the way from Edinburgh, Mr. Johnny Young.

Hi, Johnny.

Jonny Young: 00:17:09

Thank you for having me. Mike and Tristan,

Mike Galea: 00:17:13

For me and the listeners, just tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, what you've done and how you found yourself in London.

Jonny Young: 00:17:18

Yeah, so, yeah, not sure if you can tell by the accent, but yeah, from Edinburgh originally. Been in London for about 10 years now. So, yeah, moved for work back then for an opportunity in London.

So, yeah, I started my career while working for a privately owned mechanical electrical company who moved into facilities management.

They were interestingly brought over by Service at the time, who have now become ocs, which I obviously didn't know back then, been there for eight years or so, and left them for an opportunity to work with a different organization in iss, working on a number of key accounts, UBS contract and the Barclays contract for six and a half years before eventually rejoining what is now the new OCS as a sector managing director, looking after the workplace sector and our venue sector, which is all things sports, leisure and entertainment.

Tristan Kelly: 00:18:11

Jonny Service teams often sit between the landlord, the occupier, the managing agent and the FM partner. Everyone wants something slightly different.

How do you create one clear North Star, which is quite a popular term these days for your team, so that service feels consistent?

Jonny Young: 00:18:29

Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah.

I don't think we'll ever get away from having four or five different voices or different stakeholders and that is something we have to manage, being in the world of facilities management. Yeah, I don't think it's about having a slogan or a catchy word, to be honest.

An old client of mine once said to me when I left a previous job as a word of advice, that if you could give me one word of advice, it's to always, always have a vision for my teams and it's something that's stuck with me going forward in my career and obviously how you're able to get there and I think how you get to that vision and who helps you get to that vision can vary depending on the environment that you work in. And I think I've adapted as I've evolved through my career in terms of coming to that vision for my teams.

At the moment, we work in a large organization, you know, we have a mission statement which is for people and places to be the best they can be and that's delivered through our best framework.

So for me personally, at the moment, you Know, I try to think strongly around what are the outcomes that we want to achieve for our client that are aligned to that best framework and our overall mission and our solution really, really maps into that. I think we can have a real tendency to overcomplicate things in fm.

I think, put it quite simply, at the front line is where the money is made for our organization and many organizations within facilities management, I don't think we have to overcomplicate at all. So I think if people just ask themselves what experience do they want to create for the people within the environment that they operate in?

I think if you can anchor everything around that sort of end user experience, then the rest of the noise sort of falls away. You can then build your vision around that.

Depending on the organization you work in, the client that you work for, you can make it as complicated or as simple as you like. But I think ultimately it's about the experiences that we create.

And I think if you can ask yourself that one question, then you're not going to go too far wrong.

Mike Galea: 00:20:32

So, Jonny, I've had the pleasure of working for you for a number of years and one concept you introduced to your division is this idea of an L10. And I'd never seen this before and I had to look into. And I'm just wondering, could you just fill us in on what an L10 does?

Because that, from what I've seen, has been culture defining.

Jonny Young: 00:20:54

Yeah, absolutely. Look, I'm not going to take the credit for the L10.

My, my boss, Bruce McDonnell, he loves to listen to a podcast and some additional learning outside of work. And it was something that he'd stumbled across. And essentially it's what they call, it's an entrepreneurial operating system.

So it's consistent way of operating, it's quite a prescriptive way of operating your meetings.

But essentially if everybody operates their meetings in the same way, then it creates a consistent standard across the business in terms of how everybody operates. Essentially, we start the meeting with a positive note, both personal, from a personal perspective and a business perspective.

We then have a scorecard. So what are the things that are really important to us as a business that we want to keep an eye on a very high level?

We've got a finger on the pulse in terms of how the business is performing. We then have our rocks, and our rocks are our key objectives for the next three months.

You know, what are the things that are really going to drive the business forward?

We then go into the usual, you know, most people run their meetings in terms of you know, client and staff headlines, you know, we keep that short and punchy at five minutes maximum. We go through that as a, you know, in terms of a normal monthly meeting and then we go into our seven day actions.

That all gets tracked and essentially as we're going through our objectives and actions, it's just on track, around, off track. You give no other fluff to it really to keep them, you know, the meeting really punchy and focused.

And if something's off track or it needs to be dropped down, then we have a bit of an IDS section where we really focus on, you know, solutions and helping each other as a team. So if, if something's off track, how can your peers help help you get it back on track?

Or if there's a topic you want to drop down, then we can discuss it in that section. But it just really keeps the, the meeting ultra focused.

Tristan Kelly: 00:22:33

What would you say your non negotiable behaviors are that you coach within your team?

Jonny Young: 00:22:39

For me personally, non negotiable behaviors would be keeping your promises. If you say you're going to do something, you've got, you know, you've got to deliver on it. Ownership.

I think people taking ownership of a problem and feeling responsible for the outcome is a non negotiable. And communication, I think to the point around the L10 and communication and how you choose to communicate with your teams.

But it's an absolute non negotiable that you're, you know, you're constantly sharing what you see, whether that's problems, opportunities, hazards, you know, quick wins, you know, super important that we get everybody talking to each other and sharing best practice.

Mike Galea: 00:23:17

Johnny, I'm going to, I'm just going to get personal for a moment with you and I think it's a relative question when it comes to your ideology of leadership as you are setting out your legacy going forward. Who inspired you?

Jonny Young: 00:23:34

I'd say it started from a young age. I would say probably my dad inspired me. You know, he was sportsman who moved into, into business and I was exposed to sort of that world of business.

I think that was probably the catalyst that inspired me to, you know, to essentially fall in his footsteps in some respect, albeit we're in different industries. And then I've taken inspiration from everybody I've worked for, you know, across, across the years.

That inspiration changes as you evolve as a person. But personally gave me my first opportunity to get into the workplace.

I still remember fondly and I remember the opportunities that they gave me and how they looked after me and how they Gave me a lot of exposure at a young age that a lot of people typically wouldn't get. And I think that's stood me in good stead. Followed that throughout all of my career really.

And you still take inspiration at the people that I work with today and that includes you, Mike and everyone else in the team. You take the good from others.

And I'm inspired by the amazing things that all of our teams do and my peers and those above me and how I can aspire to be better. But yeah, that's probably in a nutshell for me.

Mike Galea: 00:24:42

And we deal with very people centric services. How do we make these roles more attractive to a younger generation going forward?

Jonny Young: 00:24:50

I think it's about reframing the industry really. Not there's no industry more diverse but it's such an interesting industry.

And I think this has been a topic of discussion years around how do we make FM a career of choice and how can we professionalize it? And I think there's been some work gone into that through the likes of Ricks. I think that that will only help in terms of professionalizing it.

But I think it's about, you know, we've got a duty to, to pay back and pay forward and you know, be out there promoting to the like psychologies and universities and guiding people that it is a career choice and it's an interesting one.

It's the world of tech, it's the world of people, it's the world of you know, process, it's the world of engineering, it's you know, it's the world of science really. You know, in terms of cleaning, it's the world of security and threat and risk. It's so vague and so interesting.

I think, you know, we've all got a role to play in terms of promoting that. And you know, there's a lot of people in our industry that have done a lot towards that. You know, I've got a lot of respect to for them for doing so.

I think we have to continue to play that role in terms of telling young people about how interesting it really is in the world of fm.

Tristan Kelly: 00:26:01

So if you could encourage one healthy disagreement within the sector, you know, one assumption that you'd like leaders maybe within your own organization or within the industry as a whole to question. So what is it that you want them to question? One assumption that they're making, what would it be and why?

Jonny Young: 00:26:19

Yeah, certainly around workplace design I think we're probably working to practices that are maybe 10 years old in terms of hot desking and large Spaces for collaboration that perhaps don't get used.

And I don't think there's probably enough active listening that goes on from some of the decision makers around workplace design in terms of how that actually feeds into the end design. So I'm sure within the next five years, it will probably radically change because our ways of working have radically changed, haven't they?

Occupancy levels are obviously starting to recover to what they were post Covid. But we're, you know, we're going into workplaces that are exactly the same as what they were pre Covid.

So I think, yeah, we probably have to challenge ourselves on workplace design.

And, you know, what are those workplaces that are really fit for the future without going out there and wasting lots of money on sort of silly passion projects? I think there's probably a different way of, of shaping things up.

Tristan Kelly: 00:27:21

Johnny, we always ask our guests to share a high five moment. So could you tell us about a moment when a team member took ownership and turned a situation around? What did you do afterwards to reinforce that?

Jonny Young: 00:27:33

I'll take a collective high five, if that's okay. Tristan. The team recently came together to mobilize a large contract across a large partnership across the attraction sector.

And that wasn't without its bumps. And I'm pleased to say that that's gone really well so far. We're not over the hill. There's still a lot to do.

But I think that was a collective high five for everyone, whether that was some people working weekends, which we don't actively encourage, but sometimes is a necessity. Working long hours. Absolutely.

Taking, going back to that point earlier around behaviors around ownership, accountability, keeping your promises, you know, everybody followed through to make that successful mobilization.

So, you know, we've absolutely made a point of thanking the teams collectively and, you know, sharing that success in terms of the collective effort to mobilize the contract like that successfully.

You know, we'll make sure that that's recognized more informally as well, to get everybody together and a bit more of an informal environment to celebrate what's been a successful project?

Tristan Kelly: 00:28:44

It. That's a brilliant example. And I think actually that ties in quite well with our talk around sports teams.

Mike and I were saying, why is it we always refer to sports team and sports teams when we're talking around leadership? And that's often because it's quite a. A much sexier proposition to, to put forward and something easier for people to get behind.

But what you've just explained there is it's the corporate version of winning the Champions League or winning the Ryder cup as a team. You've had a business development team that have worked long and hard on finding the right client where you, you know, you can make a difference to.

You've then gone through the process, you won it. You've then gone through the scary thing of okay, guys, right, we want it, we've now got to deliver it.

And having been in mobilization programs before, I know just how much, just how much is involved to get them over the line and to get yourself to, to day one in a position not just to maintain that service, but to put the added value in that you've, you've kind of promised through your development. So that energy that you can get from that as a team is amazing.

Those kind of wins within a business, you know, you're, you're a part of a much larger, larger organization, ocs. But actually that win that you've got is hugely powerful.

Jonny Young: 00:29:57

Agreed.

I think going back to, you know, sort of consistency and things like that, you know, it's getting into that cadence, you know, the daily meetings, the weekly meetings, the, you know, the reporting that you have to do from an internal perspective perspective and a client perspective. You get in your rhythm and you don't over complicate it and everybody just does what they have to do and you don't, you don't micromanage.

Everybody knows their, what role they've got to play in part of that team.

And you know, everybody, everybody took ownership and delivered and that's something that I'm really proud of and I think, you know, it shows you, you don't always have to over complicate it. It's about over communicating raising risks early and you know, just, just, just acting as a team really.

You know, any good, good football team has that culture, don't they, where they, where they are a coherent unit. And I think that's the key to, to any successful project.

Mike Galea: 00:30:46

Well, I've got to say, Johnny, one of your superpowers is your, is your eye for talent.

You, you've got a good instinct when it comes to working with other people, to build a team of subject matter experts and, and skilled individuals not only to lead in the way that you would expect them to do that, but also to deliver the service, to create, as you said, consistency, stability within the workforce, but also work really collaboratively with clients and partnerships. And some of those partnerships are also our competitors. On paper. That takes a very skilled bunch of people.

Be only as strong as a little data that you have. And I must admit, in my time working with you.

You've been exceptional as a leader, both when you've been under high degrees of pressure, which requires sacrifice in some ways, whether it's personally or professionally, to the wins that you get, and then celebrating those wins and making sure everybody knows about it. And that to me is incredibly transparent and a wonderful attribute to have. So that's my view of you.

Jonny Young: 00:31:50

Thank you. That's very, very, very kind of you.

Tristan Kelly: 00:31:54

Jonny. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on the High Five podcast and for sharing your insights. Service teams.

You clearly have a winning team from your high Five example. So, yeah, really appreciate it. Really pleased you joined us and shared your insights.

Jonny Young: 00:32:09

Yeah, thank you, Tristan. I've really enjoyed it and thank you for having me.

Tristan Kelly: 00:32:13

Our pleasure.

Mike Galea: 00:32:18

This has been a really useful one because it brings it back to reality. Culture isn't a slogan. It's the default behavior when pressure hits.

Tristan Kelly: 00:32:27

Exactly.

If people don't have what they need, if it doesn't feel safe to speak up, and if leaders aren't coaching day to day, you don't get consistency, you get firefighting.

Mike Galea: 00:32:38

And the good news is those things are actually within a leader's control. We can design better conditions, build trust, and really work on creating simple rhythms that keep standards high 100%.

Tristan Kelly: 00:32:50

So if you're listening and you lead a service team, here's a practical challenge for the week.

Remove one friction point for your team, give one piece of specific recognition within 24 hours, and have one honest conversation about what's getting in the way of great service.

Mike Galea: 00:33:06

And if you're on the client side, ask yourself the same question. Are we asking for five star service while creating three star conditions?

Tristan Kelly: 00:33:15

Because when culture is clear and real and easy for people to belong to, then teams don't just deliver service, they deliver confidence.

Mike Galea: 00:33:23

Brilliant. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on High Five.