Work Culture Starts in the Basement with Giulia Scalaberni

[0:00] learning leadership by observing

Giulia Scalaberni: I get very involved with and I enjoy a lot to talk. I talk a lot and you know what? This is very strange. I am usually more nervous to these kind of things speaking my native language in Italian rather than in English. I don't know how. I don't know. Because maybe I kind of put a mask that I talk in English so it goes better. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Why? Why is that?

Dan Korus: Okay. Wow. Yeah, there's like in the mental translation there's some sort of masking or some sort of editing, like self editing that happens. Maybe it's easier to edit because you're already putting what you're saying.

Giulia Scalaberni: Yeah, could be. I don't know. I already experienced that so I can tell you for sure that this happens all the time. So when it's in English, I'm pretty good and calm.

Dan Korus: Yeah, that's great. So, okay, back to what you were talking about earlier. You said that you had some mentors who inspired you towards working with people. That's a really interesting journey and I want to know more about that. Tell me about these mentors. What did they do specifically? Who were they to you that inspired, and what did they do that inspired you to want to work more with people and to want to lead?

Giulia Scalaberni: Well, I can for sure tell you that it was not through a course or through, you know, lessons that they gave to me, frontal ones, like let's sit here, let's talk about leadership. No. I can recall in my mind a lot of situations when I was just observing. So this is a suggestion that I give a lot of people when they talk about okay how can I become a better leader? It's to observe in the room you are in. You will find someone pretty close to you and your style, because I also believe that all the leaders out there, not just in tech, they have their own style. So you can find key touch points among all the leaders.

Giulia Scalaberni: But then the beliefs, the goals, and also the experiences shape it differently on how you then deal with people and teams. So I can recall examples where we were together in meetings where the tone starts raising during the conversation. And of course, when you see that they do not react, but they understand it, they process it and they respond with calm, and you see then the fruit that comes after this kind of reaction, you then start thinking one more minute before reacting because you have seen that it leads you to a better outcome. So yeah, try to be involved in meetings even if the topics you cannot give great contribution about. Take any chance that you have to be in the same rooms to absolutely absorb what they have to tell you. Because even if someone comes and says, Okay Julia, how can I become a better leader? I can give you book titles that have inspired me, I can give you podcasts I listen to, but then there's no one single formula or checklist that you have to fulfill to say, Okay, I'm leading in the good way.

Giulia Scalaberni: And I think it's also difficult to just find one way to do it because the people that mix the team are different from team to team. So the attitude of individuals, the way they work, the way they react, how they control or not control their emotion, shape how differently you have to lead these people. So you have some general ones, you have some common sense of course, but I think that the best you can get from mentors is to observe and then to critically get what you think is the right one. Of course, I've been in rooms with people much more experienced than me, that I totally disagree with the approach they had during situations and problems. And this also teaches you about how you don't want to be a leader in that way. So through observation, through passing events and situations together, and then, as everything in life, you have people. I can remind a leader that I did together with him travel for work, and I remember this strange journey of three hours from Florence to Turin, where this leader, I think he gave me kind of a masterclass on how to do customer negotiations without me asking. It was just him very keen to give me this kind of suggestions. So of course, you will find people that are more keen to pass you something and people that are more silent. But I think that right now the internet is full of people that want to say something, a lot of good leaders that are exposing themselves that you can find absolutely, even if you are not lucky enough to have someone at your workplace.

Dan Korus: So much. You said a really a lot of awesome things there. I think the first that really struck me was talking about how there's no checklist for good leadership, right? And when someone comes to you, of course you can share information and you can tell them hey, this is what I use. But it's a totally different thing to take that knowledge and go apply it. And for someone to really engage in that information and turn it into their own leadership practice, it's such a valuable point that you bring up about finding these good mentors who are willing to just selflessly give us these master classes right on the side. Where we learn so much and finding the ideal mentors is so valuable. And sometimes you can learn more from five hours next to one mentor than you can from an entire year with someone else, right, who's not a good fit. And so what a valuable thing. If someone's out there right now and they don't have a mentor, and they really wanted one, aside from reaching out to you or me and saying, Hey, Dan, what information, 'cause we're great. What information would you have for me, right? I think reading and listening is always an awesome place to start, but what would you tell on how to find a good mentor?

[7:29] how to find a good mentor

Giulia Scalaberni: Well, I can tell you for sure, speaking about Italy, I know that there are a lot of organizations, for example, that are now channels like social, Instagram, LinkedIn that are trying to match mentors and mentee. I am part of one of these organizations which is focused on women, okay? So mentors for women because it's also true that sometimes we find a gap in the rooms we are in discussing about women and men. So my advice is to look for some organization. Another thing that I recently experienced and I think is very valuable is to attend events. So I think it's a lot underrated about the value to go to events just as an attendee. You don't need to have the aim to speak or do something much, but going there, if you are in tech, there are a lot of community events about tech people, maybe it's a speech about technology, but you can meet with people from different companies, from different organizations. Of course, it will be leaders, it will be people coding, so you can start having an exchange about what you are living at your life and at your workplace, and sometimes you can understand that the struggles you have are the same for a lot of people, so this can help you. And some of the times you can get back home with some new point of views on situations you never thought about. So I think it's more about contamination that of course can happen through socials more oriented for working, but going to events lately, I see it's very effective to also build your network. Because maybe you will not stay always in the same company, maybe your colleagues will change, but if you have some trusted people that you can just send a message and say, Hey, I'm facing this situation, do you have any advice? There are a lot of people that will not say no to give you an help. So making your network and try to go outside attending events, I think it's another good source of inspiration for the people that want to build a little bit their mentors, if they don't have any in the workplace. And always remember that you can find friends, you can find also people that you would never imagine they could give you a contribution, that in a way contribute to give you some tools for leading better and to do your work better.

Dan Korus: Yeah, that's great. And I think we sometimes undervalue the strength that having a good network can bring to us, right? So, you know what great advice, strengthening your network, finding friends, even if someone's not useful to you now, maybe they'll be able to answer a question or provide some advice in the future. So I think that's great. So I wanna change slightly to a new topic. And this is something that when I was reading your Substack really intrigued me, and so I want to talk about it together. So you have a signature leadership philosophy, and you call it like a balance between empathy and high standards. And what I like about it is that when a lot of us talk about empathy or we talk about bringing our emotions into the workplace, we make this assumption that by being there for other people, we somehow excuse accountability, right? And that you can't have both. That they're mutually exclusive in a way. And to be empathetic is to let go of concrete business objectives. So you have this concept that you've coined as humanship, and what I'm wondering is if you can break it down for us just what it means to you, why you felt the corporate world needed a new word for leadership in this way. What is humanship?

[12:11] what is humanship

Giulia Scalaberni: Yeah, I'm pretty proud to have found this name, which is the mixing of leadership and humanity basically. And it was not just the name of my Substack space. I was able to apply this to my style of leadership. I got the chance with some peer coaches that I have at work, so people that are managing people in other departments, that when I give advice is when I say how I deal with the day by day that everyone has leading a team. It was really kind of opening their eyes, it was giving a different way, more affordable, more sustainable in the long way to go. So I say, okay, I think that one of the aspects I embrace more is about to stay human. So we are in a world where we are requested to be high performance. Always on time, always connected, always with answers, with no way to make a mistake because it is the end of the world at the end. And this is totally the opposite that I live by. Okay, so again, maybe this is something related to the mentors and to the examples I got throughout my careers from people even outside the Italian culture, which is very keen to work. Okay, so we always try to do over what is required.

Giulia Scalaberni: And then I got this leader who is from Austria. In Austria, they have a different vibe at work, okay? So they put priorities in their life with no work at the top. And to me, the first time he joined a meeting and said to me, Julia, it's too long you don't take a Friday off. It was something shocking because you cannot expect by any of your Italian employer. So, and I was, you know, little by little, it's now more than five years we work together. Okay, so I get a little bit used to that but I kind of trigger an understanding, okay there's another way and it's cooler, okay, to go. So when I got the chance to take the responsibility of a team I said okay I want to shift to this way of working. So there's something outside work, it's not just about work. And then a lot followed. So for example, another thing I always say to my people is everything urgent, nothing urgent really. So we need a little bit to downsize problem, we need a little bit to pause more, and so I think all of these come back to our human rhythm. Okay, so the technology is crazy. Tomorrow it will be out another model, another version, another release of a tool that we are using. We are not that type of responsiveness at the moment. So this also then lends to emotions, because what make us different from technology, AI and everything is true emotions.

Giulia Scalaberni: When you land to emotions and when you land to top tier roles in companies where you imagine these very icy people taking strong decisions and not caring about their emotion, you then crash with vulnerability. I think the higher you go in your role in a company, the more you are scared about vulnerabilities. I don't know why this happened. Maybe it's because you want to stay reliable and grounded and trusted and you cannot make any excuse, but as I said many times, life just happens. So it can happen that you have a problem in your life, it can happen that in your family there's a situation, it can happen that something do not go as expected, you miss a milestone, you miss something. So it can happen, it's a possibility. So if we completely say no to these possibilities that we have in life, we are trying to fix something that is too little for the complexity that we are. So humanship is the style that I try to lead by. And it's something that absolutely put together the observation of others, not just the listening but the observation. So in my opinion, if you don't know how your people used to behave, you cannot spot when they have a problem. When there's something that they are not telling you for any reason, fear, fear of judgment, whatever reason. So this is all about people. So, okay, we need to close tasks, we need to code, we need to ship, we need to deliver, we need to do all the material things, but if we don't enable the people doing that, we cannot reach the outcomes that we want. So this is how I'm shaping the way I lead, and it's a lot about empathies, a lot about vulnerabilities, a lot about error culture. We're not so good at it in Italy. We see any error of your life, like getting the wrong school or divorcing or any error you can do in your life, is always the end of the world, you will be labeled with no way to act in front then. And then if you look at the other side of the world in America, you look at Silicon Valley, and you see there are a lot of companies that have been failed before they got, you know, the founder got to the final startup that is worth the effort and the money. And they see error as enabling, it's an enabler throughout the process of growing, of learning. There are other cultures, there are also personal behaves and believes, sorry, that this is just judgment and it's something you cannot get out from. So error culture is another thing. And I also think that when you do a full-time job, in Italy is forty hours a week, the most of the time you are awake, you stay at work. So why you should stay in not in a place where there's harmony, where you are, I don't say happy to wake up in the morning and go to work, but at least enjoy a little bit and do not hate with all your body. So this is what I think. And I think it really requires little, little, little. But there's on the other side, behind the scenes, there's a lot of work that leaders should do to enable all of this. Okay, so I'm trying to wrap it up to also not getting anymore anything for granted, because there's a lot that I do like on a regular base that to me it's normal, but you know what we were saying before, meeting people, different people, you then understand. Look, so this is not for everyone, it's something that I'm doing that is working, so it's worth to talk about. So this is what is humanship at the moment.

Dan Korus: I love it. And I think in a bit I want to talk more about, and especially at the end, how people can get more involved with humanship, right? And I think just a mid podcast plug here would be that you write about humanship on Substack. And so if anyone wants to know more about humanship or wants to get engaged with humanship and learn about this, I think they should go check you out on Substack. And I think the leadership literature is at a very interesting place right now because I think it's acknowledged wholeheartedly that leadership is something that other people experience of you. It's not something that we can just do and declare for ourselves, right? And say, Okay, if I think I'm being empathetic, then everyone else is gonna be experiencing me as empathetic and it's done. I'm an empathetic leader, period. And in fact, we really have to work on this and train it like a muscle and develop these emotional intelligence skills to the point where other people not only recognize our empathy but feel as though we are being empathetic. And we're not trying to trick them, we're genuinely trying to be empathetic in ways that other people experience it. And so I don't think that we can really have enough thought today about what it means to be empathetic and to put people in this spot of regard in companies and not just think of them as means to an end. But what you learned from your German colleagues was we have lives outside of this, and that becomes number one. So I think that's just so critically important. And I'm really glad that you're taking the time to really think about these ideas and construct thoughts and share them with us. So I'm very grateful for your work.

[21:50] leading across nine cultures

Dan Korus: One of the things I want to ask about now is you lead an intercultural team, and you've touched on it a lot. And it's something that's taught you many lessons of leadership. From your German colleague that we just listened to about teaching you, hey, take Fridays off, it's good for you. And then also looking at, and I'm proud to hear of Silicon Valley referred to in a positive light. Because, I think, anyways, we don't need to get into politics on this show. We're an interdisciplinary, cross, bipartisan, political, a political show. We're not political. But it's good to hear that there's something positive coming out of America on a global scale right now, and that it is that failure is a good thing. Right. And I think that's a great lesson and I'm proud of that, that that's something that you've learned from Silicon Valley. And I do think failure is a good thing. And so what I want to know, Julia, is you're a leader of nine different cultures remotely. What sort of lessons have you learned? What's that like? What's easy? What's hard? Tell us about that.

Giulia Scalaberni: Yeah, it's difficult to identify what have been the greatest lesson from then, because there are tons of lessons just across these years, less than ten years. But what I can tell you right now, one thing that you read a lot, you listen a lot, but you don't believe in, but now I truly think it's a true distinction and something that makes the difference, is to give yourself time. You need to give yourself time, not just while leading with people from different cultures but in general. Because we come back again to the thing that we are in a very fast-paced world, and some situation cannot be understood, cannot be debugged and observed in this same fast-paced modality. So give yourself time because first of all you need to identify what's the problem in the room, and then you need to look for a good long-term solution. So not just something that fix it for now, and then we will see because there's urgent, there's the big red alarm, something, and you need to fix it, but a long-term fixing. So absolutely give yourself time. It's something that I try also to give as an example to my people. We received this week an email that was telling us, we need to move the deadlines of this thing, so let us know if you can confirm. But we are talking about a deadline for the Q4. Now we are in Q3, okay? So if we wait two days to reply to that email, is still fine, okay, in this specific case. And there was a person from my team that was every day telling me, Julia, we have to reply to that email, and I say, Yes, I know I saw it, let's give ourselves time because I want to think about the solution, and maybe we can find something better if we wait, not impacting anything on the business if we just take two more days. So, giving yourself time every time there's a possibility, of course, and when you are facing situations that maybe you need to see together with a mentor, with a peer coach, with a friend, also, just by talking with people, sometimes gives you different points of view that on the first place you haven't seen.

Giulia Scalaberni: So when it comes to international teams, there's a lot of misunderstanding, there's a lot of misalignment, there's a lot that is not working anymore as normal. So things that I was used to do in a certain way with my European team, so still mixed cultures, but just European, stop working while we onboard colleagues from India. Okay, so years of experience, years of proof that this was the good way to work. Stop working. I was expecting that, by the way, because I'm pretty curious and I was already studying about this cross-cultural interaction. And let me give you a real-life example that I like to give you. So we had to onboard these colleagues from India and they had to learn about the platform we were developing. And you know the eastern countries, the Japan, China, India, all this part of the world is not as direct as us with feedback, with negative feedback. So even if they have to tell you it's not clear to me, I don't understand, this is not something coming direct as you would do maybe as an Italian, as an American, you are in the workplace. So the first goal is to be clear, clarify, and get the work done. But these cultures are not so keen as us to do it. So I was expecting that. So we were doing this meeting to start explaining them about all the technicalities, and at the end of a very big meeting with a lot of arguments, the classic question follows. So it was like do you have any questions? Is everything clear? But the only answer we got there was silence. One week of this, okay? So in my head it started listing all the possibilities. It's everything really clear. Do we have skipped something and they're not telling us? Do we have any connection problems so we haven't heard they have some questions and we're not hearing that? So a lot of options, and even knowing a little bit all these dynamics, okay, I was expecting that.

[28:48] building trust across cultures

Giulia Scalaberni: So what I did as a following step to get out of this situation was to organize one hour workshop, okay, with all the people, not related at all about work, but it was just a workshop where I share on the screen one graphic with three things. One icon with below written, what's a name, where are you based, and what is your role? Another icon with below written, what do you like to do on your free time? Three things. What is your favorite food? And if you have any brother, sister, children, whatever. So this could have invited people that started working together to know a little bit each other. And to start sharing even outside their working life. And this, as I was expecting, luckily, started to bring into conversation different people from this different background, from these different countries, touching the points that they have in common. I also have children, or I also practice tennis. And this is the key enabler when you work with Eastern countries, because the trust that they have, even at work, is built not task-based but relationship-based. So this means that we first meet each other, we first know each other, we first share about our life. And then we can start relying at work, we can trust each other at work. So you cannot expect as the same you could experience in an Italian office, in a European office, where you get to work, you have your boss, your boss is giving you the task, you know you need to finish the task on time to gain little by little the trust. This is not working for some cultures. So this is coming from a culture expert called Erin Meyer. She wrote a book, it's translated in a lot of languages, of course, is called The Culture Map. So she has went through more than 100,000 interviews of people from different countries, and she has mapped across seven dimensions how this culture deals the same situation. In this way, what you can do when you have people coming from different countries is to map their culture relativity, how far they are doing the same thing, how far they are giving feedback. Are they just saying to you, no Julia, this is not good, this is not working? Or are they going to say to you, Julia, you are doing very great, but there's a little problem? So there are different ways to manage the same thing.

Giulia Scalaberni: So this is what was totally game-changing for my team. So we start having then periodical touch points. We call it fun time together. So it's a one-hour meeting every month where we just maybe play some virtual games together with a ranking to make a little bit of that challenge, and then we share about our travels, our pictures, we share about food. So you need to engage, and this is not just what I led by because I work with an international team, but this is the suggestion I give to anyone leading a remote team. I'm sorry, but if we are remote, we are not taking anymore a coffee together, we are not anymore meeting in the corridor. So we need a little bit to map what are the rituals at the office with something different. We need to trigger it and we need to take it very seriously, because otherwise you work with kind of a ghost team. You don't know your people, you don't see them anymore. I'm also a fan of the webcam on. I don't care if you have your makeup on, I don't care if you're just wearing a sweater, but we need to see each other because to me as a leader is giving me a lot of signals on how you are feeling. So we come back to observe the people, to empathy, to understand how my words are lending to you, the impact they have from an expression. Sometimes I can understand that you haven't understood, even if you're not telling me, so it's so important to stay visible with your people and to have this touch point, to have fun, to engage, to make a little words. When sometimes even this meeting that I just described, to meet each other, to talk about the things, etc., sometimes it's seen as a very big waste of time, because actually you went out of the meeting, there's no decision taken, there's no task closed, there's nothing tangible to go on with the process at work, but you need to really understand the value behind, and the long-term value that this is giving. So many times when you do a meeting, you take decisions, you make everything that is in the agenda of the meeting that no one ever sent with the meeting invitation, but that's another podcast episode. What happens is that sometimes you stay there with some small talks. So a colleague from my team was just back from holidays, so I just asked her after the meeting how it was and she starts talking. And if you look at the clock, these are 10 minutes, 15 minutes sometimes, they just go by for telling you about things that are not related to business, but it's important on a human level. So this is something that, I don't know, it crashes with your KPI dashboard productivity report, but to me, in the overall picture of a team is essential.

[35:04] no agenda, no attendee

Dan Korus: I love it. We share a lot in common because I agree that if you had a meeting and nothing happened after the meeting, you didn't have a meeting, you just wasted time. Right? And I recently posted a blog called No Agenda, No Attendee. And I can't remember where I first heard that. It was many years ago. But it's my new catchphrase. I love it. Because no agenda, no attendee.

Giulia Scalaberni: Reuse it. I hope there's no copyright, but yeah.

Dan Korus: Yeah. No, please, please use it. No agenda, no attendee is for everyone. And I think we should be stringent with our time, right? We should be judicious about what meetings we go to. And if I don't see my name in the agenda, I have no reason to be there. And so, you know, you talked a lot about differences in cultures and how we build trust. And I love that because I think that it's totally true that depending on who we are and where we came from, we have different operating standards for how we get to know other people and build trust, build these relationships and begin to rely upon each other in the workplace. And I love the argument that you're making, that yes, we're all humans in the workplace. We build trust differently depending on our cultural backgrounds. And that depending on who you're working with, building human connection first is essential in order to have any sort of productive collaboration henceforth. So I love that. I love the imagery of y'all sitting down and doing like, okay, here's who we are, here's what we like, here's what we do. I think that's so great. And there's this leadership style called virtual leadership. And it's been coined for a really long time, but it gained a lot of traction around COVID times because everybody was working from home and there was a global pandemic. And so researchers who were studying leadership and communication started to spend more time looking at virtual leadership and its merits and how someone could go and be good at this. And I love these examples as a way of okay, this is something that you could do next week if you don't have a lot of great trust on your team. This is something that you could do easily, just hey, what are our hobbies? And also the note on, yeah, that's that isn't something tangible, right? How is it good to put on the agenda? Okay, step one, we're gonna build trust. And after this, we're gonna know each other a little bit better. Right? That doesn't, that's a hard thing to put on there. Yeah, but it's so important. So important. Yeah.

Giulia Scalaberni: Absolutely. It's a weird thing if you stop for the moment and you just think okay, I'm going to ask the people on the other side of the planet what is their hobby, and I'm trying to force a little bit, because you have this kind of distance. We are colleagues, so why we should care about what you do on a Saturday morning? But please, as you said, it's something you can do from tomorrow, just overcome this weirdo feeling that you can have and try to pretend that for you it's something that you enjoy and you really care to that about. Another quick suggestion we can give to make this easier is to start from something global, to some news, to some happenings. Of course it's very easy at Christmas time because you can talk a lot about gifts, about what you are going to spend the time with, etc. But right now, for example, there's the World Cup, so it can be something to say, Are you going to watch some games? Do you recommend to me? Also, this is very underrated. Go to people that you know that maybe are into music, are into movies, are into something, and ask for a recommendation. This is another way that you can start building a dialogue about. So people know that I love to travel. So many times I got colleagues, Julia, do you have any suggestion for this? And this is something that still feeds even the relationship at work. So it's again a good thing to make in practice from tomorrow. Yeah, I really love things that are not just theory, are not just things that are good to listen to, but are also tangible from tomorrow that you can put in practice.

Dan Korus: Yeah. I think those suggestions are all awesome. And I love that they're also things that people could do right off the bat. They could do this in their meetings on Monday. So I really love those suggestions. This is great.

[39:57] the youngest in the room

Dan Korus: So I want you to talk a little bit about a story that you shared with me. About the first time you were asked to participate in a big official meeting. You said you were the youngest in the room, everyone had already spoken, and you felt that everything worth saying had already been said. But you got a lesson out of that and I want you to kind of walk us through that situation, put us in your shoes and tell us what you learned.

Giulia Scalaberni: Yeah. So, it was a meeting that the scope was to take a technical decision and I was the most junior developer at that time in the team, so I could not rely on any previous experience, okay? And I got the chance to participate in this meeting to see the conversation happening. There were around, I can remember precisely, six, seven people, okay. There was the CTO, there was the CEO, there was some other developers of the team, and there was also me. So they discussed the topic. I was able, of course, to follow everything, and I couldn't have any arguments to say this is a stupid choice, this is a better choice. So I felt like okay, I just participated, I followed the process, the decision process, and it's really good. But unexpectedly, end of the meeting, there was kind of a round table where the CEO wanted to know what each of us was thinking about these just discussed arguments. And here we can just open a little touch point with what we said at the beginning: that this was a time where I could learn something that is important, to involve all the people attending the meeting while a decision. So he was asking everyone, and the case was that I was the last one. Okay, so I got some time to struggle about what to say, and I was really really frustrated by the fact that I was having nothing to say to add to the conversation, and I was struggling because I wanted to find something to say and not just to say silent and to not say mm-mm, okay. So people were talking. I was trying to follow, I was struggling, and at the end I said, okay, I would say humble, I have nothing to say here more, I have nothing to contribute more about, and this is what I can say. I can say from my experience that doesn't exist, for what I have followed throughout the conversation, in my opinion, this makes sense. So thinking now with some years of experience, I would appreciate a behavior like this from a new joiner of my team because it gives you some feedbacks about they were following the conversation, they were not pretending to know something they couldn't, and they were also participating actively, and they were also finding in a way some psychological safety to admit they have nothing more to add. Because this is also a topic. Because when a person chooses to stay silent, you need to know first if that person is shy as a base, so maybe it's okay not to be so much a talker like I am. But it also means that you are creating space for people to keep their confidence even if they had nothing to say. So this is what, after some years, looking back at that 10 minutes struggling of my meeting there, could tell me about how I managed that situation and how I would like every time to create the conditions during meetings for people, even the new joiners, to feel part of the group in this way with no pressure. This was the most important part. I was struggling myself to find a way to contribute, but it was not a pressure from outside, and I think this is also another humanship aspect that leaders should pursue, not putting pressure on your people just because you don't need to do it, and just to demonstrate that you are better than them. Really, you really wouldn't need to demonstrate that at work. I don't think it's the great way to then let people feel good.

Dan Korus: I would like to work on your team. I love that. I love that you're trying to give people opportunities to at least engage in, if nothing else, just be able to say, Yeah, this is good. You know, I don't have anything further to add. What a great practice to include. I think that's a great way to find ways to get other people to speak up in the room. And you're right. I think if someone's not speaking up in a meeting, yeah, totally. You gotta figure out why. Is it because they don't understand? That's a problem that you gotta solve? Is it because, yeah, they disagree? Well, you need to know why? Because you might be missing something. Is something going on? So there's a lot there that you need to dig into. And so, using that as a springboard, I think that that's something that leaders can always be working on and developing. And we can always be finding different things to develop and value.

[46:06] meaning at work and ikigai

Dan Korus: And one of the things that you mentioned before we started this interview was how you work in medtech and the software helps patients along their journey, and this is a big source of fulfillment for you. And you also likened it to the Japanese concept of Ikigai of linking purpose to well being and of continuous improvement. And so I think it's really cool for people, and important for people, to find value and meaning in the work they do. I know that with today's day and age, sometimes you just have to have a job, right? And our fulfillment and our meaning and our purpose comes from outside of our job. And I think that's totally okay. You got to be able to put pizza in the fridge at the end of the day. Survival comes first. But when you can link those two, it can be very powerful and fun. So, tell us a little bit about the fulfillment that you get from working in med tech. Tell us a little bit about your philosophy with Ikigai.

Giulia Scalaberni: Yeah, thank you for this question because I like a lot to share about this. I just want to say to everyone that you can stay relaxed because in your 20s, in your 30s, but even later, you don't have to have it figured out, okay? Because this is something that I can tell you today, after eight years in this industry, after some time that I took to make some reflection on it, some self-awareness about what I'm doing, where I'm going. So I was not able to answer this question and to raise this side some years ago. So it all started with a travel to Japan. When I travel I like to dive into the culture, to read books about the culture, etc. And I came across the Ikigai. And then I started reading about it and I started questioning also at the same time why I was keeping this position, why I was keeping this job in a market, in an industry where you can also have more money, more opportunities, more things. So, why exactly here, why exactly this company? It's something that you should question yourself. But as you told, it's also good if your answer is I have to get the food in the fridge at the end of the day. So at the moment, this is fine. But the important thing is that you are not just living by the routine. So I'm doing that because it has to go like this, I have no other options. No, that's the option that you are pursuing. This is the option that you are choosing for a while. So the Ikigai is about finding your why.

Giulia Scalaberni: For my current industry it's pretty straightforward, if you think, because we do software for hospitals. We do the software where doctors put the diagnosis, where the doctors put the values, the results of your examinations, where the doctors put the data of your intervention, of your surgery, documents, anything that you can think about in the process of taking care of patients, we cover with a solution. So if you try to stretch it, of course I'm not a clinician, of course I cannot treat patients, I cannot make a change in their life directly. But if you think, I'm doing that not directly because if a software is fast, if a software is able to give all the tools to a doctor to make the document part, to make the bureaucracy part, then the treatment will go better. So it's a process to drill down the what's behind just closing a task, what's behind the tons of meetings you do in a day, what's behind the day-by-day tasks that you do. For some industries, like mine, maybe it's more straightforward. But if you think to a bus driver, think about the bus driver, okay? His work is to drive safely from point A to point B, to do the stops in between, to make sure he opens the door, to make sure he respects all the regulations on the street, and that's all. He starts there, sitting on the bus, he finishes there, getting up from the bus and getting home. What is the purpose behind? Pause for a moment and think about all the people that get on the bus. They are doctors going to work. They are students going to university to become the next architect, the next biologist, the next chemistry. These are people going to meet friends, people going to visit someone, to take care of someone. So the bus driver, a very humble role, nothing to do with responsibility, technology, innovation, is actually a very important role. Because the time there's a strike, you will feel the bus driver is missing. But in the day by day, standing at the bus stop with the bus delayed, and you're late for the meeting, you're very angry with the bus driver, you don't stop thinking about that. So I think it's not something immediate to think about, it's not something that you can just solve this afternoon, but it's something that you can start questioning yourself to find an answer. If you come back to ikigai, ikigai is the meaning of your life, what the scope of your life, what gets you out of bed in the morning, apart from money, okay? And it's a wide thing, but for the Western country, we have tried a way to make a scheme out of ikigai that I don't like too much because life is not the simplest thing that just a schema to fill. But if we want to try to drill down in a simple way, it's what you like to do, it's what the world needs. Because if you do something that pays you a lot, that maybe you love to do, at some point in time, I'm pretty sure you will feel that you are not contributing to anything, you're not leaving nothing behind you, and this will have a weight at some point. So Ikigai is the central point of what you love, what you are contributing to the world, what you can get paid for. And so if you find what stays at the center, you can really feel the fulfillment, spending time at work, not just to getting money, to getting paid for, but also to say, okay, I'm contributing to something I believe in. Or start making a search for something better that better aligns with your belief and values.

Giulia Scalaberni: And let me tell you then that this also is related to the fact that it's very important to know not just our ikigai, but it would be nice to have a rough idea about the ikigai of the people of our team. Because if we know our people, not just for how they behave at work, what they are good at, but even if we know a little bit what they are doing, what they want to achieve in life, we can be the enabler there. Maybe there are people that want to do extra hours because they're buying a new house, and so they enjoy that. And so if you have some extra work to do, you can assign to them. Maybe you have just new parents in the team, so they want a little bit more of flexibility, they don't want to do extra hours because they want to enjoy their new family time. Maybe you have someone in the team that needs to be the caregiver for a parent, and so again, you can maybe be a little bit flexible and also here have an impact in the life of others. So I think that again we come back to the human level. I know I'm very keen to that, but I think really it's something that at the end of the day, if I'm able to make a person happy, just saying, Don't worry, if tomorrow you have to come to work at 11 because you have to be at your kids' kindergarten for the rehearsal, for whatever you want, it's fine, and this person can relieve a little bit, to me, this is a lot fulfilling. I cannot explain, but why should I put a weight on lives that are already weighing themselves? So, Ikigai, it's a way of looking at all these things, not just for you, but even for the people you can.

Dan Korus: Thank you so much. This is great. And I think that's really valuable for people, especially as we move into a world where the job market is changing. What we do at work is changing. Being able to find ways to find meaning and to find ourselves in an increasingly scattered and messy digital landscape is very important. So I really appreciate you bringing that to this.

[56:33] advice for every career stage

Dan Korus: I've got three more questions for you, and then we can wrap. If someone is just, if they're new to the workforce and they're completely new, it's their first day ever working at a job anywhere, what's your advice for them? What's your first day advice for them?

Giulia Scalaberni: First day advice is, okay, here we see that it's not prepared and these are real life live questions. So what I would suggest is keep it calm. So you don't have to demonstrate anything, okay? You will have other places, other times rather than the first day at work to demonstrate that you value something. You are there to learn, so absolutely don't overcomplicate this, okay? Then I will say to stay humble, okay? Because again, this goes together with we not need to demonstrate. So humble also means ask that question that you feel is stupid because you're new there. Myself first, when I have new people, I take a lot for granted because maybe it's years that you do a thing and you don't have to explain to the other people, but now there's someone new that needs an explanation. So don't think you are having stupid questions, so don't limit yourself. Because in my opinion, if get evaluated by the question you do, is not a good workplace, so you should change anyway. I usually don't evaluate people or performances on the question that are asked because I think it's better a question than a mess that could have been prevented by a good question asked at the right time. And the third suggestion is to give yourself time again. Yeah, because you will have a massive collection of information on your first day, starting with names, starting with tools, with procedures, with rules, with documents, with a lot of things on the first day, but maybe on the first week and the first month. So you need to get familiar to all of that, and you will feel overwhelmed. But this is totally normal. It's a symptom that will then be fixed throughout the days. And yeah, so don't be scared by the impact, okay? Because when you do something new, anything new, you are doing a new recipe, you're doing a new sport, you're doing whatever new, you have to learn a lot first to then become good practicing it. And if you put being at a new workplace this way, a very stupid thing, you need to learn where's the bathroom, so you will have to ask for the first time where's the bathroom. You will have to check how to make your timesheet properly set up. You will have to learn a lot of names, you will mistake names of people, you will forget the names of people, and I think you need yourself first to understand this is normal. So absolutely, you will feel overwhelmed because it's all new, but it's how it has to happen.

Dan Korus: Great. That's perfect. Big emphasis on taking the time, asking questions, sitting with discomfort for a while, and just letting the new information come on in and really taking your time and not feeling like you have to do anything right away, or perform or make your mark because you have an entire career to do that. So, for my second question is for mid level professionals, maybe middle managers, team leads, mid senior managers, what's your advice for them?

Giulia Scalaberni: So we got there, in my opinion, to people that should have overcome the phase of not knowing where the bathroom is and all the struggles of first-time employee. I think it's important to start questioning about your journey at the company. First of all, be aware of where you want to go, because you cannot just sit and wait for things to happen. Some companies you can be more lucky because they have structured processes where you can have role progress, but maybe this is something not happening in your company. So not pretending, not aggressively, but just, you know, in a way that you ask how it used to be there. So first of all you need to understand what you want. Okay, I would like to travel more. I would like to lead people. I would like to change department. Just be aware of how to do these things. So make questions again here together with know where you want to go, because that's important. And another thing that, coming from an Italian culture, we are not so good at, and it's kind of a taboo, okay? It's about the salary. So at some point in time, you don't have anymore your parents advocating for you at work. And when it comes to salary, you need a little bit to advocate for yourself. Again, I'm not a believer that just sitting there and waiting the time for making things happen, it's the best strategy. So advocating for yourself, even on topics that are not easy to handle, like the salary, it's something that you should take care of. Of course, with the right way of taking this topic in the right way of pretending, okay? So in my opinion, middle management should make themselves visible in a way.

Dan Korus: Great. Visibility and self advocacy. I like both of those answers. Okay, final question. For senior leadership, for the people at the top, for the rainmakers, for the high level organizers, what sort of advice do you have for them, Julia?

Giulia Scalaberni: Well, I can give them advice from the lower level, okay? Because I don't consider myself top level. So I can say from that standpoint, I know that at some point you rush after numbers, you rush after performances because you have decision makers, you have some financial stuff to follow, etc. But my thing would be to stay grounded with the people that makes all of it possible. So the numbers you see at the end of the year, the results you see at the end of the year, the impact you can have on your industry, is possible of course by your choices, okay, good. But it's also possible for the people that are part of your organization. So if they are not happy, if they are not engaged, you will have in a short term problem, because then I read about a research where they said that 15 hours per month in average on this survey is spent on complaining. About managers, about overall companies. And if you're keen to numbers and performance, 15 hours per month is a ton. But then if you pause and look at this number, understanding that behind that 15 hours complainment, there's a human being, there's maybe your CTO, there's maybe your best product specialist, there may be your best engineer, you should care about that person. You should be the one enabling the best place where they can express their value. Even if they, if it is technicalities, even if it is relation with others, any kind of role it's important. And I think it's important to ensure that the culture, the engagement, and everything, start from your basement. Because the people in your basement, the dishwasher of your restaurant, if is sick, if it's not able to make it for work, if it's not washing what is expected to do, you will have a trouble then in the tables at your people. It's not just the cook, it's not just about the matrix, it's about even the dishwasher. So always stay grounded at the human level, at the people that make your company exist.

Dan Korus: I think that's the episode title. Culture Starts in the Basement. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. I think it's funny, hilarious, and accurate, and a great way to recap. So that's pretty much it, Julia. I didn't have any further questions, and I just really want to thank you for your time. This has been an incredible conversation. I've personally learned from you.

Giulia Scalaberni: Fantastic. I wrote about that, you know. I wrote an article recently, so good.

Dan Korus: Where can they find you? Do you want to direct them to your Substack, your LinkedIn? Where can people learn more and stay connected?

Giulia Scalaberni: Yeah, just consider I don't have any other social than LinkedIn, so LinkedIn is a good way to go, and also Substack because it's my long form kind of content.

Dan Korus: Perfect. So we're gonna, is it okay if we link both of those in the show notes just so people know how to find you? Okay, great. So there you have it folks. Go find Julia, go subscribe to her Substack, go follow her on LinkedIn, reach out to us if you have any questions at all or if this episode inspired you. You've been listening to the Kestryl Edge podcast. Thank you for listening.

Giulia Scalaberni: Absolutely. Absolutely.