How Employee Ownership Can Reset Leadership And Culture

What if engagement wasn’t the finish line — but the starting point?

In this episode of Leading People, Gerry Murray is joined by Alli Gibbons, author of The Power of Ownership Culture, to explore how employee ownership can fundamentally reset leadership and culture — when it’s treated as more than just a new structure.

Rather than focusing on legal models or financial mechanisms, the conversation centres on what really shifts when people are invited to take genuine responsibility — and why leadership matters even more, not less, in ownership environments.

Alli shares insights from her journey across engineering, large-scale projects, and organisational culture, and explains why ownership doesn’t automatically change behaviour. Structure alone isn’t enough. 

What makes the difference is how leaders 

• build ownership literacy 
• tell a clear strategic story 
• create decision rights that invite voice without losing momentum 
• and shape environments where accountability feels meaningful rather than imposed

Together, we explore the practical leadership tensions this creates — psychological safety versus pace, participation versus clarity, and the pivotal role middle managers play as translators between strategy and day-to-day work.

At its heart, this is a conversation about shifting from company-as-machine to company-as-community — where performance still matters, profit remains essential, but purpose becomes the anchor that sustains commitment over time.

This episode is for leaders who are curious about ownership — or who simply want people to think and act like owners — and are willing to reflect on what that requires of leadership itself.

Curious? 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Episode Framing
• 1:49 Introducing Ali And Her Journey
• 7:17 From Culture You Can “Smell” To Codifying It
• 11:09 The UK Employee Ownership Surge
• 12:31 Leadership Reset Explained
• 13:36 Ownership Vs Share Options
• 15:44 Who Owns What And Decision Rights
• 18:19 Engagement Expectations Meet Reality
• 21:15 Ownership Literacy And Strategic Narrative
• 22:54 Defining And Measuring Behaviours
• 25:45 Decision Making And Employee Voice
• 28:45 Psychological Safety And Feedback Loops
• 31:11 Middle Managers As Key Translators
• 33:32 Neuroscience, Analytics, And Change
• 36:15 Potential Vs Performance Dual Lens
• 39:23 Early Reception Of The Book
• 41:37 Practical First Steps For Leaders
• 44:09 Offers, Next Guest, And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Welcome to Leading People with me, Jerry Murray. This is the podcast for leaders and HR decision makers who want to bring out the best in themselves and others. Every other week, I sit down with leading authors, researchers, and practitioners for deep dive conversations about the strategies, insights, and tools that drive personal and organizational success. And in between, I bring you one simple thing: short episodes that deliver practical insights and tips for immediate use. Whether you're here for useful tools or thought-provoking ideas, leading people is your guide to better leadership. Why do some organizations unlock extraordinary commitment while others struggle to move beyond mere compliance, even with talented people? In this episode, we explore what really changes when people don't just feel engaged at work, but genuinely own it. My guest is Ali Gibbons, author of The Power of Ownership Culture. Ali's work challenges leaders to rethink what responsibility, performance, and accountability look like when ownership is taken seriously. Not just structurally, but culturally. This is a conversation about leadership, trust, and what becomes possible when organizations treat themselves as long-term communities, not just financial performance machines. Let's hear what Ali has to say. Ali Gibbons, welcome to Leading People.

SPEAKER_01: 1:46

Hi Jerry, thanks very much for having me on.

SPEAKER_02: 1:49

So to get us started, Ali, we know each other quite some time through our other professional activities. But to get us started, and before we talk about your new book, uh please perhaps for my listeners, share the journey that has led you to where you are today, and even in recent times, to be so interested and involved in ownership, engagement, and just how organizations really work on a day-to-day basis.

SPEAKER_01: 2:16

Sure. So I started my career as an engineer, a mechanical engineer, and I worked in uh precision engineering, manufacturing for defense and nuclear, and then moved into construction. And I worked on some big infrastructure projects, including the Channel Tunnel. So that uh that dates me a little bit. Um but even from the very beginning, I was interested in the systems aspect of how organizations work and in the leadership and management of businesses. And within my first year of um leaving university and having uh my my first full-time job, I went back to uni uh part-time evenings and did a diploma in management studies, got really interested in that, and very soon after that, a couple of years after that, I started my MBA, also distance learning part-time, and I had my MBA by the time I was 30, I think. And then that opened up the door for me to um, I got a fantastic job as a business advisor in a government-sponsored organization uh based in London, and that gave me the privilege of going into literally hundreds of businesses and exploring what worked for them, how things worked, how they were able to grow, what the barriers to growth were. Um, and that really um sort of was where my my leadership and management journey started to really blossom. And one of the things that was interesting about that was that you could almost sense a lot around the culture of the business, just as soon as you walk through the door, you know, you can see the way the way things are kept, the way things are maintained. Uh, even before you start talking to people, you get a sense of what's important to them. And then uh I set up uh as an independent consultant um well more than 20 years ago now, and uh one of the the hats that I wore for about 10 years was as an uh uh an assessor for investors in people, and again, that gave me the opportunity to really get a close look at a very wide range of organizations. My backgrounds mostly were small, medium-sized businesses, but the investors in people side opened up uh a wider range of businesses and other organizations, public sector, education, and so forth. And again, it was really interesting that you could just kind of smell the culture when you walked in. And it started to get me thinking about well, well, what is this thing called culture? And and how do we codify and measure it, and how do we proactively build a culture. Ten years ago, I joined Forces with uh our mutual friend David Clarson, and we established uh Talent for Performance, our consultancy business. And David introduced me to more of the uh behavioral science side of things and the analytics side of things. And again, that started to come together with this idea of how do you codify and measure culture. More recently, employee ownership has become a big thing in the UK, particularly, because of lots of things, but largely also because of big tax breaks introduced by the government. And several of our clients transitioned from privately owned to employee-owned, and that created a really interesting sort of reset moment. Uh, often we've got succession, we've got a new leadership team, and it really creates an opportunity for these businesses to really think about what's important, what they're accountable for, and what sort of culture they they want and they need in order to perform really well. And so that's where my attention has been focused the last few years, and and it led me to uh put my thinking together in the book. Okay, and the book is called The Book is called The Power of Ownership Culture from Potential to Performance, the Employee Owned Advantage.

SPEAKER_02: 6:36

So who is it for and why write the book now?

SPEAKER_01: 6:42

So the book is quite clearly rooted in this UK employee ownership context. So it's written primarily for uh mostly leaders, uh, but also managers and team members, employee owners within those um those specific employee-owned businesses. But what's been really interesting is that having started to write it, I started to see the parallels with other sorts of organization. And actually, I think um I think there's probably something in it for everyone.

SPEAKER_02: 7:22

Okay, now you you mentioned something called leadership reset, and you describe employee ownership as a kind of leadership reset. What actually gets reset and what often doesn't, even when the structure of an organization changes?

SPEAKER_01: 7:41

Yeah, so the the reset in employee ownership comes from the fact that at least 50% of the business is being sold, usually by the founder owners, to a new uh or back to the business through uh an employee ownership trust. An EOT is the vehicle that we have for these this tax situation in the UK. So it's very within this particular regime, there's a very specific shift of ownership from the owner to this employee ownership trust. And essentially what that does is it creates um a vehicle through which every employee of the business becomes an owner. They have a share, not directly through the trust, but the business now exists for the benefit of the employees, current and future, rather than solely for the founder, owner, managers. And often that means that the original founders of the business are exiting the business either immediately or over time, and a new leadership team is coming into place with a with perhaps a different agenda and different priorities. So that's why it really does create this fantastic opportunity to reset a lot of things.

SPEAKER_02: 9:24

Each guest shares their insights, wisdom, and practical advice so we can all get better at bringing out the best in ourselves and others. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and share a link with friends, family, and colleagues. And stay informed by joining our Leading People LinkedIn community of HR leaders and talent professionals. So I'm when I'm listening to you, I first thing probably comes to mind, and it may be something that many of our listeners, particularly from larger organizations, might be thinking: is this not just another form of uh options, you know, share options that are often given out to employees? Or how does this differ from these classic share option schemes where as part of your salary remuneration, you have your granted shares in the business?

SPEAKER_01: 10:17

Yeah, so there's no direct share ownership, generally speaking, in these arrangements. So as an employee owner, you don't own shares, but the they're held in trust on your behalf. So it creates this different um dynamic in the business where a bit like um, I suppose a not-for-profit or a social enterprise, there's a focus on the longer term, the the the wider, higher purpose of the business. And it's about sustainability. So uh the intention is largely that these uh it's about securing the future of these really this really valuable part of our economy. Um, these businesses employ lots of people in lots of communities around the country, and it's really important that they're able to pass from one generation to a new ownership in order to sustain that employment and and that community asset. So the the emphasis just completely shifts.

SPEAKER_02: 11:27

Yeah, because you mentioned this notion of an organization maybe shifting the emphasis from being money-making machines to community assets, and I suppose something that comes into mind from my point of view is does everybody who works in the business as this transition takes place have the option to be part of the ownership, or do people have the option not to be? And then for any leaders that are listening, what does this whole shift do or in terms of changing how decisions get made in an organization?

SPEAKER_01: 12:03

Yeah. So there are some details around that, that there are some choices to be made. But broadly speaking, the idea is that every employee of the business, perhaps after a qualifying period of a few months, a bit like your probation period, that sort of thing, that there are options around that. But generally speaking, the idea is that every employee is part of this scheme, and that the trust then um has to look out for and make sure that decisions that are being taken by the leadership are in the interests of everyone in the business, not just um the you know, what would normally have been the shareholders who would be seeking to take dividend and uh have their capital grow over time? This is about securing the prosperity of the business for the benefit of that whole community within the business and the community within which it sits.

SPEAKER_02: 13:06

And what what happens to how people are remunerated as a result of this? Is there any tangible or visible change in that? Or is it sort of business as usual? It's just that the founders have just handed over their own ownership and their own shares to this trust.

SPEAKER_01: 13:23

No, so the only change is that again the government is supporting this through tax breaks. Um, so every employee owner currently is permitted to receive up to 3,500 pounds, I think it is, tax-free. So they're allowed to take a share of profit uh tax-free. But it's not, it's not um, they don't receive dividends in the way that they would if they were a direct shareholder.

SPEAKER_02: 13:57

And if they were to leave the business, do they can they sh sell on something, or is it just they leave and that's it?

SPEAKER_01: 14:05

No, they leave and that's it, because the shares are held in trust, not directly.

SPEAKER_02: 14:10

Okay. So one of the themes that emerges around uh how this works is this notion of I suppose what has been highlighted repeatedly every year, this notion of engagement in organizations and the employee engagement aspect. And I guess there's there's there's also this side to this where now, if everybody feels part of the ownership of the business, not everybody might feel that they want to have own part of a business. And you make a point in the book that engagement brings responsibility, not just perhaps some energy behind what's going on in the business. And where where did the leaders tend to underestimate what this higher levels of engagement demands of them personally? And even the workforce itself, now they're part of this ownership, uh, this ownership trust. And you know, how does that affect how they show up in their day-to-day?

SPEAKER_01: 15:11

Yeah, well, this is really interesting because you know, we all know that um, you know, and those of us who've worked in this area are painfully aware that it's really hard to get high levels of engagement in a business. Um, and then low engagement levels are reported worldwide, and particularly, I know the UK is is very low down the ranking lists on engagement um persistently and and currently. So getting people to kind of really engage with the success of the business, to bring their best game every day, to to bring their 100% every day is really, really challenging. So, on paper, if you give people a sense of ownership of the business and a vested interest in the success of the business, you would have thought that that might increase engagement and that people might be more willing to go the extra mile. The reality is that I think, particularly in this setup that we have with the trust, is that although the ownership changes on paper from a day, so as of Monday, we will, you know, our ownership will be different, and all of the communication can go around that. Actually, a lot of businesses find that employees don't really see a difference on the ground, nothing feels different, and so they don't behave in any different way, and I think that can come as a bit of a surprise to the leaders and a and a bit of a disappointment and frustration. And then they start to say, Well, what is it that we have to do to actually change the behavior? And even despite this quite big signal of a change, it's still quite hard to to um secure that engagement and encourage that engagement, um, and I think part of that is I think it's about a shift, as I say, from from seeing a business as a money-making uh machine to seeing it as a community asset. I think that's where the shift in behavior really comes. Because if we're just seeing the change of ownership as being about the value of the business grows, so my share of it grows. And if we make a profit, I get a share of that profit through dividend. That's all very transactional. And with this indirect share ownership model, it doesn't really work because they don't really get a dividend. They're gonna get a um a share of the profit to a point. Um, but actually, over quite an extended period of time, the the profits of the business are gonna be under pressure through still having to pay off the owners. Often that happens over a period of years. So it can take a long time before they see any financial benefit from this change of ownership. So I think what's key then is to help people to understand the bigger picture, the wider implications of what this change of ownership means. And the fact that actually it's about building a really um valuable business in a different sense, in a sense of us doing some good. So we tie into the purpose of the business, having um a sense of being part of the journey towards the whatever that vision of success is for the business, and of being part of building something that has intrinsic value to everyone in the business, and that sense of pride in achieving that. So it's about having a share and a sense of ownership of the success of the business in terms over and above the financials.

SPEAKER_02: 19:08

Perhaps like what you were saying there sounds like there might be an expectation from the leadership that some extra levels of engagement could kick in, and yet maybe they don't. And so, is there a question you wish more leaders would ask themselves when they talk about engagement related to this ownership model, but they rarely seem to address it. And they go, they jump into this and then they they go, what's going on? You know, we didn't expect this. So is there sort of a question or a certain process that you wish leaders would go through before they set up the these ownership companies?

SPEAKER_01: 19:47

Oh, I think certainly the more that they do to pave the way ahead of time, the more likelihood there is that everyone in the business will understand what the change means and what the implications are for them. But I think also, I mean, it it starts to speak to in the book we talk about five competencies, and the first one of them is ownership literacy. And the this is really the the foundation stone where people, everyone in the business really needs to understand how what that ownership model means. What whatever the ownership model, people need to understand the dynamics of what's going on and what success looks like. And if you go back to some of the models of engagement that have been around for for decades, um, like engaged for success, for instance, strategic narrative is the key. People, if you want to get people really engaged and bringing their best for the business, they need to understand that strategic narrative. They need to understand what success looks like. What is it that we're trying to achieve? How do we create value for our customers? And what's my part in that? Well, how do I need to contribute? Why is my effort important and contributing to the success of the business? Why is what I do uh really, really important and why should I care about that? So that whole story and investing the time and the effort in communicating that in our in the case of these transitioning business before, during, and after transition. But I think this is this is universally true if you want to increase engagement in your business.

SPEAKER_02: 21:34

So so you talk about uh these five behavioral competencies, and you've just mentioned one of them. Maybe we we'll we'll segue to a few more later. Uh, what are some of the other main themes that that you helped you structure this book? What are some of the other emerging themes that came out of this where you said, you know, we really need to talk about this, this, and this in the book?

SPEAKER_01: 21:54

I suppose one of the key themes is really that um Just so that firstly, this idea that by changing structure doesn't necessarily change behavior. And that leaders need to take a very deliberate and structured approach to thinking about what is it that I need people to do and role modeling the values and the behaviors that they want others to see. And you know, none of this is new, but I think it's about um really getting down into the detail of the behaviors that we want to see on the ground. And you know, that takes us into the realms of measuring, you know, and actually making this really tangible rather than sort of culture being something very um ethereal and and uh and intangible and difficult to get hold of. I think actually we can, you know, the engineer in me likes to think, well, actually, we can define this, we can codify it, and we can be very deliberate in building the culture and the values and the behaviors that we know we need in order for the business to succeed. Um, so I think that was really one of the one of the key things. Um and you know, culture is is really shaped by the day-to-day experience. It's not about the writing on the on the posters on the wall or the mouse mats or the you know, it it's actually about enabling people to behave in the way that is important for us to achieve what we want.

SPEAKER_02: 23:40

Yeah, and I heard you mention this notion of role modeling the behaviors for this new employee ownership structure. And the first thing that was coming into my head is what sort of preparation do leaders need to go through in terms of developing maybe perhaps new models or maps or mental models mindsets around how the business is going to be run once they they you know once this ownership uh transition takes place. And you know, because a lot of people kind of do what they've always done, and and it you know, you you now change the ownership to an employee ownership structure, and the leaders show up the same way as they showed up in the past. And I'm I'm sure this is actually something that people listening can identify within in any change scenario, you know, where you know you you ex you want to encourage new behaviors, but if leaders don't embrace them and role model them, the employees go, well, what's the point? You know, it's all changing, but nothing's changing. So so what's your experience? Because I know you and David have done a lot of work with these smaller businesses. What's your experience of uh getting leaders to want to you know explore what's needed in terms of mindset and new behaviors? And what's your your experience of then taking them through some initi you know, some interventions or programs to do that? You're listening to leading people with me, Jerry Murray. My guest this week is Allie Gibbons, author of The Power of Ownership Culture. Coming up. Ali explores what changes when engagement turns into responsibility, and why leadership matters even more, not less, in ownership cultures. Back to the conversation.

SPEAKER_01: 25:45

Yeah, so I think the the where this where the rubber really hits the road is around the way decisions are made. And I think that's one of the things that leaders find most difficult. And also that then once the employee owners start to get on board with this idea that they should be involved in decisions and to have a voice and to be able to influence what goes on, that sometimes they get that wrong too. Um, so sort of finding this the sweet point, the sweet spot around how that communication works can be quite challenging. So, you know, normally what we see is that um there's perhaps more emphasis on putting in place the channels of communication and consultation. So uh, for instance, they might set up a formal employee voice group and perhaps have uh a rhythm of um meetings or communication touch points that it try to encourage people to have more of a say in what goes on. Um it that can achieve a lot, but often doesn't achieve as much as perhaps leaders hope they do because they find that people don't engage with them. So we put a you know, we invite people to contribute and then we hear tumbleweed and nothing comes back. And that then leads to the question well, what is that? Why is that why is behavior not changing in the way that you anticipated it would? And that can be a couple of things. The obvious one is that, well, we tried speaking up before and it didn't work well, and leaders didn't respond well to what we had to say. Either they didn't take any notice of what we thought, or they just did what they wanted to do anyway, or worse, uh they punished me for speaking up and being bold. So we have to a create that psychological safety in order for people to feel comfortable in perhaps challenging in a way that they've not felt they had a platform to before. Um, but also obviously we need that feedback loop of, yeah, we've asked you, we've heard what you've said. Actually, we're gonna go in a different direction, but this is why. And it's not because we haven't heard you, but it's because perhaps there's a bigger picture and perhaps we need to share some more information with you so that you can understand why perhaps we've taken a decision in a different direction than you would have hoped. So that feedback loop is super important. The other side of it is that we're asking people to communicate and contribute in a way that perhaps they've never been used to, and maybe they don't have the fundamental um communication skills to enable to do that, enable them to do that in a constructive way. So some of the things that David and I spend quite a lot of our time on is helping people to learn how to challenge constructively without closing people down, without creating um defensiveness. So these fundamental communication skills can be really, really important to sort of oil the wheels and enable people to use those new channels of communication more effectively. So we work with with with sort of all of those levels, with leaders to try and make sure that they're creating that the context and the structures and the um the touch points and the mechanisms to to enable people to get involved and to contribute. The managers in the middle are often a primary focus here because they're sort of hearing it from both sides. It's that sort of typical squeeze middle, is quite an uncomfortable position to be a lot of the time. So also helping managers to to translate what they're hearing from senior leaders and communicate that through to their teams, and also to hear what their teams are saying and to be that that conduit for challenge and question and contribution upwards to leaders. So that's super important and a very, very big skill set all in its own. And then also enabling the individuals who are often the ones who really know the implications, you know, the people on the coal face often are the ones who know best, but enabling them to feed that in in a way that is well received and likely to be more influential. So all of those kind of personal, interpersonal skills uh up and down the chain are really important to oil the wheels of the process, if you like.

SPEAKER_02: 30:40

And you mentioned David, David Classans uh there, and I know if I understand correctly, David did make a small contribution to the book in terms of some of the neuroscience around psychological safety, and uh, I suppose he may have even mentioned models like the Scarf model and others that help people understand their frameworks that help people understand the dynamic of things like psychological safety. Um, what has been your experience of how the importance of explaining how brains respond to these situations?

SPEAKER_01: 31:14

Yeah, I mean, this has been one of the brilliant things about working with David over the last 10 years is that he's brought his knowledge of how the brain works and how it influences behavior. Um, and he's brought that in into and shared a lot of that with me, and we've woven that into pretty much all of the work that we do. So we try and we try and use um the analytics to measure where we are, and then we use the understanding of how brains are influencing behavior and how to learn how to to behave in ways that make the best of our brains and other people's brains, in order that we can then effect the behavior change that's the thing that that's most important. And then, of course, the analytics give us uh the the capacity to to measure the before and the after. So we weave all of that sort of brain-friendly behavior change um principles into everything that we do. And we we keep it simple. I need it to be kept simple, it's not my domain. Um, but I think people find it really interesting to understand, oh, that's why I feel like that. That's why when you do that, it makes me feel like that. And that's why, oh, this way that this habit that I have of behaving or communicating in this way doesn't tend to work with these people. So maybe actually what I need to do is understand why and then do something different. Um, it's simple, but it's uh effective.

SPEAKER_02: 32:47

Yeah, and actually just staying a little bit in that theme around psychological safety and some of the examples you gave earlier about, particularly when you said, Well, I spoke up before and it wasn't appreciated. You you talk in the book about looking at culture through two lenses, the behavioral potential lens and the behavioral performance lens. And how does that dual lens methodology or approach help leaders move away from things like blame and more towards learning in terms of you know how they approach uh yeah, the especially with this new um organizational structure that has uh has come into place?

SPEAKER_01: 33:28

You know, the engineer in me really likes to be able to have robust measures. And so um once we develop this model with these behavioral competencies, it was okay, how are we going to measure these things? Because that's really important if we're gonna see the impact of what we're doing. So we've for a long time um we've used uh the Harrison Assessment Tool to help us measure people, individuals' um tendencies and preferences in terms of their behavior. And that's fascinating, and it really helps us to understand uh how well equipped people are to behave in certain ways. Um, but for me, that's always only given us the potential for this behavior, because it doesn't matter how, for instance, if we take voice and influence being one of our behavioral competencies that I've sort of alluded to, if we've got people who are really well skilled and confident and enjoy communicating and discussing and debating, and they've got all of those behavioral tendencies, but it's not happening on the ground, then what we're seeing is potential that's not being turned into behavioral performance. So, as well as being able to measure that potential, we wanted a way of being able to measure the actual performance on the ground. And unlike so lots of organizations use things like engagement surveys and satisfaction surveys. The problem with that is that they are, although they give you some really valuable data, it's it's about personal opinion. You know, I feel this, uh, I I my opinion on that is this. That's useful, but can be subject to lots of bias and and and uh it can be quite difficult to to be objective, completely objective. And this is where we've been very fortunate that we've been able to partner with uh another organization, Deep Fathom, who um who are a very, very um grown-up uh assessment platform that assesses for for all of the ISO standards and that sort of thing. So what their approach does is to take uh evidenced behaviors. So it's not about opinion, it's about asking people, do you see this? Not do you feel this, do you think this? Do you see this behavior in practice? And it's a very sophisticated platform that comes at this in a way that it's very simple to um complete the questionnaire, the surveys, which are done online, but then there's lots of joining of the dots behind the scenes, so we get a really good 360-degree view of the actual behaviors on the ground, and we call that the performance maturity. So when we can see, are we having these behaviors on the ground? If not, why not? Is it because people don't have the behavioral potential to exhibit those behaviors? Andor is it because, as leaders and managers, we've not created the context to encourage these behaviors, the psychological safety, the systems, the channels, all of those things. So we can see if it's if it's personal, individually and collectively, or whether it's structural. And that helps us to diagnose the situation and that helps us to design interventions that are more effective.

SPEAKER_02: 37:08

Yeah, you remind me of uh one of my most one of my recent guests, uh, who's an expert in learning training transfer, and uh he he paraphrased or he reworked that great saying, I was it Drucker said, Culture eats strategy for breakfast. And he said culture also will eat your training for breakfast, which I thought was quite absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 37:33

Yeah, yeah, no, I I listened to that podcast and I I was it was resonating with me a lot. Yeah, I think um we we share a perspective on a lot of these things.

SPEAKER_02: 37:46

How has the book being received within the community? Uh, you know, that uh employee ownership community, and what sorts of reactions are you getting, and you know, what sorts of inquiries are coming off the back of it? I mean, it's only out of a very short while, I know that. Still at this moment in time, uh, it's maybe I'm going to uh surmise or imagine that it's it's uh a space where there's maybe not that much written around the way you've approached it from this, really from the behavioural side and the culture side. So, what sort of reactions are you getting so far, or what sort of successes are you seeing with some of the work you've been doing?

SPEAKER_01: 38:24

Yeah, it's been really, really interesting and it's going really, really well. So we launched the book at the Employee Ownership Association annual conference at the end towards the end of November, and it got a lot of interest on our stand at the uh in the exhibition hall. Um, and you know, for instance, what we had one chap who who bought a copy on the stand, and a couple of hours later he sent his two colleagues back to buy 20 more because he wanted one for every uh one of his leadership team in back in the business. So that was that was a really nice endorsement, really sort of on day one, which was lovely. Um, we've had uh we've sold a lot of books already. I'm very pleased with how quickly they're they're going out there, and the word is getting out, even at this early stage. Um, and I think people are, and and feedback we've had is very positive. People are seeing it as um accessible and uh resonating with the sort of challenges that they're experiencing on the ground. Um I I think there's a genuine curiosity and appetite for uh ways of really understanding the dynamics of what's going on in what's a relatively new model of business. Um and we've already got um several inquiries about how to for doing the um this dual lens assessment that we have so that they can really understand what's going on in their business, um, and with then putting in place some development programs to address any opportunities or challenges that um that that brings to the surface. So it's it's really exciting. Um and uh I'm really hoping that as the weeks go by, as I say, it's very early days at the moment, that we're gonna get uh a real groundswell um of interest in this.

SPEAKER_02: 40:24

Okay, so coming to the end of our conversation. So I'm just wondering if a leader was listening to this now and just took away maybe one one or two ideas from the power of ownership culture and wanted to experiment with it over the next few weeks, and that might be that somebody's thinking, well, maybe I should be hanging up my boots soon, and uh, you know, uh maybe this is something I should be looking into. What would you hope that that exploration or experiment that that leader might go through would be?

SPEAKER_01: 41:01

Okay, so if they're if if they're a leader of their own business in the UK, then definitely explore employee ownership as a route forward. But whether that's the case or not, I think any leader of any business, the starting point really is about being explicit about what the organization is really for beyond profit and who it's accountable to. Um, and once that's clearer and there's that shared understanding, leaders can then ask, well, what behaviors does this require from us? And are we actually enabling those behaviors or are we getting in the way? So, and looking at this, even this concept of potential and performance, you know, what are we putting in place? Are we making it easy for people to behave in the way that really we know we we want them to? And are we giving them a reason to want to show up and give of their best every day? You know, what why does what they do make a difference above lining my own pockets? Right? That's the the bottom line, effectively. And every business, actually, it my I'm a firm believer that every business has some sort of a higher purpose beyond the profit. And the more that we can be really explicit about that, the more people will be engaged and bring of their best every day. Um, so I think that's the the key question is well, what is this for and and why should anyone care?

SPEAKER_02: 42:39

Yeah, and um when this particular conversation and episode goes live, we will have also uh um people will have also had a chance to listen to my conversation with Zach Mercurio and his book on the power of mattering, and what you just said seems to dovetail very nicely into what he says, you know, people need to feel significant, um for that helps them turn up and they need to be seen and heard and feel that they matter in the workplace, and it's not just a question of saying, Well, you're here, it's a question of saying what you do makes a difference on a day-to-day basis. So uh a lot of themes coming together at the moment. Um so Ali, how can people contact you? And do you and I'll put links in the show notes. And do you have anything special to offer a few yeah, a few lucky listeners out there?

SPEAKER_01: 43:37

Absolutely, yeah. So look, they can contact me on LinkedIn, and obviously um you'll you'll put the website uh link in the in the show notes, I know. Um, if they contact me on LinkedIn and mention that they heard the Leading People podcast, and then we will give them access to a short online course on developing an ownership culture, whether you're an employee. Own business or not. So some sort of high-level tips and tools and thought provokers around how to really try and tap into the potential improved performance of taking this sort of employee-owned approach.

SPEAKER_02: 44:19

Okay, so those of you who are feeling lucky, reach out to Ali on LinkedIn, let her know that you listened to this episode of Leading People, and you can get access to this course. So, Ali Gibbons, thanks for sharing your insights, tips, and wisdom with me and my listeners here today.

SPEAKER_01: 44:39

Thanks very much for having me, Joey.

SPEAKER_02: 44:43

Coming up next time on Leading People.

SPEAKER_00: 44:46

The more we get connected with ourselves, we can perhaps start to accept ourselves more, and our ego becomes less uh present. And that just means we can connect with others at a level of humanity, and then we can start to manage through uncertainty and volatility. And that's where all leaders are these days. You know, that's what business is presenting. So for me, it's the route through to successful leadership in this very volatile, uncertain, fragile world that we're all working and living in.

SPEAKER_02: 45:17

My next guest is Julia Cardin, leadership researcher, executive coach, and author of the book You're Not as Self-Aware as You Think. In our conversation, we explore why self-awareness isn't a nice to have for leaders, but a critical capability, especially in times of uncertainty. And remember, before our next full episode, there's another one simple thing episode waiting for you. A quick and actionable tip to help you lead and live better. Keep an eye out for it wherever you listen to this podcast. Until next time.