374: Creating Boundaries in the World’s Most Extreme Workplace

Rachael Robertson 00:01
So the place itself blew me away. I didn't realize. I heard a lot of people say, when you go to Antarctica, it changes your life. And I sort of thought, "yeah, whatever." You know, I can't imagine that I've traveled a lot around the world. I've never met a single place that changed my life and then maybe an experience but not geography. But it really does change your life.

Introduction 0:22
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you to find the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:46
Most people find it difficult to draw personal boundaries at work. But what happens when you're in one of the world's most extreme environments and most extreme workplaces known to humans?

Rachael Robertson 00:58
My role as the leader, in summer, is operational. It's sending out resources, and it's working out priorities and looking at the safety as well. It's a very different job in winter. Because in winter, it's a lot more around morale and what mental well being and how do I keep this team motivated? When we're in lockdown, we're effectively in a nine month lockdown, complete isolation. We cannot come home even if we want to.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:24
That's Rachael Robertson, and she led the Australian operations while she lived in Antarctica for one entire year. In today's episode, you're going to learn some pretty, what I would call, "life altering lessons" about avoiding regret, drawing boundaries, changing the culture around you, and how to be successful in one of the most challenging of environments.

Rachael Robertson 01:48
I desperately wanted to be a journalist growing up.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:51
Really?

Rachael Robertson 01:51
I love... Yeah, I love writing, love journalism. And it was only when I was starting to look at university courses that I found out, well, particularly in Australia, back then, most journalism, journalists came through a cadetship. It wasn't a tertiary education, you did a three or four year cadetship. And so the closest thing I could find to it was some public relations degree, which was in a university 500 kilometers from a home, but I had to move out of home and not know anyone and go down there. And then, so spent always this time studying for this degree, a bachelor's degree in public relations in journalism. And then I've got my first job, and I hated it. And I'm like, oh, my goodness, this is not what I thought I was signing up for. And it was really interesting. I was working in an organization that managed national parks. And so I was doing all the PR for national parks and all the events and the park rangers would come into the office and now we're really happy people, we are just delightfully happy. And here I am thinking when was the last day I called in sick, because I hate this job. And I looked at the Rangers and I thought, "I want that. I want to be like that. I want to be happy like them. I want to come to work, doing a job that makes me feel good. And I feel like I'm making a difference. So I'm going to do that." So I went back then and studied to become a park ranger. So it's a complete different career change. But it was really just that reflection of, I'm not happy and this is a big part of my life for many, many years. I better make some decisions here. So yeah, it was a bit of a winding road.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:21
I'm curious, first of all, before we move on, what were, you know, you went into that role with one type of perception of what it was going to be. And I heard you say that it was not whatever that was, but what were some of the biggest differences between, "Hey, I thought it was gonna be this. And most definitely was not?"

Rachael Robertson 03:38
Yeah, I knew there would be a lot of organizing events and events was fine, but I didn't realize how restrictive journalism or writing professional business writing is when you're representing a company. So I wanted the freedom to write because that was the part I liked about journalism was the writing side of it and the investigating. I didn't recognize that when you're the face of a company, when you're writing public relations literature for a company, you're very restricted and there's no opinion, you can have any opinion, you can even offer an alternative way of thinking like this, sit words and even, like it's almost a script that you need to stick to. And it's like, wow, this is not what I thought it was. I don't know. Yeah, it was a bit of my naivety, but also I think, not having worked in the industry before, not understanding that public relations is not what I thought it was. I thought it was some, you know, yeah, lots of writing and doing events and talking to the public, but it's actually representing the company or the organization in its best, you know, putting on its best face and sometimes that might mean hiding the truth from the shareholders or stakeholders, or messaging the truth, so the message is managed, and that part of it, I had no idea because I don't teach that in PR school.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:54
They don't. Oh my goodness. So then after that, you saw those Rangers, you know, I heard you say that, you... they were, you know, happy, they're jovial. But was there other things that you wanted sort of in that as you were having those interactions? They're like, I want more of that, I want to do that thing. What was that for you that you're looking?

Rachael Robertson 05:17
Yeah, I wanted to do something different every day. That's the beauty of being a park ranger. You just you don't know what will happen each day. Depends who visits your park or depends on the weather. And so they had this some really diversity of experience every day, whereas I was coming into a little office desk, same desk with the same view with the same people eating the same lunch, day after day. And I thought, I want that variety that they've got. I want to wake up wondering what's going to happen today. And they just seem happy. And the other thing that was really attractive was they had no women, there were no women park rangers back then. So this would have been, gosh, the early 90s. So in Melbourne, we had... I think there was only one other female park ranger in Melbourne, where I'm based. And so that idea of pioneering as well as being one of the first was something I found really attractive as well. And I didn't recognize that at the time. I only recognize that much later on. But yeah, there must have been something back then because I knew it wouldn't be an easy thing to do to be the first woman or the second woman. But there was something in that as well. And I thought, I just wanted to have a legacy. I just wanted to look back at my life and go, "Well, I did something. And my something was to be one of the first female park rangers in the city." And yeah, so there's a few things, I guess a bit of internal motivation. So not just that external fun job, but also there was an internal drive there about wanting to be one of the first.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:40
That is fantastic. So what happened from there to transition? What are the events that were set up that allowed you to then much later travel to Antarctica for a year? And then, yeah, help fill in some of the gaps here.

Rachael Robertson 06:59
And that one I would love to say was a strategic career move that I had planned but it wasn't. I was just flicking through a newspaper one Saturday morning, as you do having a breakfast on a Saturday morning. And I was flicking through a newspaper and I saw a picture of a penguin in the careers section, the job...

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:16
All the penguins, they'll get you every time.

Rachael Robertson 07:18
How bizarre is it to see a penguin in the career section. And that's initially, I'm like, "what on earth is a penguin doing here?" And so that's what caught my eye. And then I looked at the job description and the advertisement. And in the job, they were recruiting for qualities. So the Australian Antarctic division, which is very similar to the United States Antarctic program, they recruit for qualities and attributes. So they recruit for resilience, empathy, integrity, you actually don't need to know anything about Antarctica. And I just thought that was a fantastic way to recruit and by this stage I'd been promoted up to, I was the Chief Ranger of the Great Ocean Road at Victoria said, the 12 apostles and all that beautiful coastline. And that was my patch, my office. And I was really struggling to recruit park rangers coming out of university with resilience and empathy. They had fantastic tertiary qualifications. They had high distinctions and great, great degrees. But when I put them in front of the park visitors, that would just hopeless and I'd say, "look, can you go and do a patrol?" So just go around and check the park and then drive past the visitors. And I'm like, "No, I want you to stop, get out of the vehicle, introduce yourself to our visitors say, "Hi, can I get you a map? Do you need anything? Would you like to know we're in a good walk easier and actually do that customer service stuff." So when I saw this job, advertised, fantastic. And my plan was, I thought, "I'm going to apply for this job just so I get to the job interview stage, so I can find out what the questions are they're using and I'm going to copy those questions and bring them back to my job, because I want to recruit for resilience and I want to recruit for empathy and integrity." It was only after I'd posted off the application, I find that they don't actually have a job interview, they have a week long boot camp. So I end up in this boot camp with 13 men competing for this job that I still didn't particularly want. And then lo and behold, they offered me the job. And I thought, "you know what? I'd rather regret what I did than regret what I didn't do." And so the only reason I ended up down there was because it was an opportunity that came away. And I thought, what's the lesser evil like to go down there and go, oh, I hate this, what have I done or not do it and then look back and spend the rest of my life looking back wondering "god, oh, I wonder what would have happened if I'd done that and out to get?" It really was just a matter of regret what I did rather than regret what I didn't do.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:37
Well. Now there's some really great research at this point, on regret, and pretty much all of the research that's available out there indicates that you're a lot higher likelihood to regret what you didn't do versus taking an action on something that you can do or want to do. So, Science says you made the right choice. So that's good.

Rachael Robertson 10:02
Well, that's what I thought of most decisions you can undo. And I've always done that professionally, my career that I mean, that's how I got promoted so fast was I, took opportunities that other people didn't. So I went and worked in parks in really remote areas that weren't really fun to live in because there was no sort of major city. They're very remote, and no one else wanted that job. And I thought, well, I was single at the time. So I had the ability to move. And I thought my competitive advantage is that I can work in all these places that people with families may not because they don't want to move their children and start new schools. And with this passes, whereas I had that ability, I could work anywhere. So through my 20s, and into my early 30s, I moved around a lot. And so I got a depth of experience, but also got a breadth of experience that my peers, in my sort of level in the organization didn't have, because they were sort of geographically in one area, whereas I could move around and get experience in all different kinds of areas. And that really fast tracked my career because I could do it. And so then when the Antarctic opportunity came up, I thought, well, it's worked for me in the past, you know, this idea of, and it all started actually, when I was 16. I traced it back when I wrote my first book, when I was 16, my English teacher Phipps, and an assignment to pick a song and deconstruct the song for lyrics and prose and everything else. And I picked a song by an Australian band called Midnight Oil. And the song was called Power And The Passion. And in that song, there's a lyric that says, "it's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees." And that's I get goosebumps even saying that now, as a 16 year old girl, that just floored me, that just... and I didn't realize the impact that that had on me for the rest of my career. And so obviously, I've carried that through my whole career, that notion of, "it's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees." So have a go, just don't leave any regrets on the table. And even if you make a decision in the wrong one, you can undo that and make another decision. So yeah, it all comes back to, it's funny how it all is intertwined and, yeah, I think the most of it, it's like that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:02
So now here's what I'm really curious about, you'd already had one experience, early on in your career, where you had thought something was going to be a certain way you perceived that it was going to be one way and it found out it was drastically different once you got into the situation. What were some of the perceptions that you had or beliefs that you had about how this type of experience going to Antarctica for a year, were versus how it actually was? And maybe we should probably, I want to come back to that question here, but can you share just a little bit about what that opportunity actually was overall for our listeners?

Rachael Robertson 12:41
Absolutely. Because I had no idea myself and so when I talked to people and they sort of the eyebrows raised that, oh, we've got people in Antarctica, you know, today there's people living there right now working there. And so I can relate to that because I had no idea myself until I saw that job. So that my role was station leader, and so all of the stations, I think there's 17 countries that have stations in Antarctica, my role was a station leader. So I was responsible for the welfare and safety of, in summer we have 120 people, and they're mostly scientists. So that's the only reason we're in Antarctica is to do climate change research. So, in summer, I've got 120 people doing the OSI climate change global warming stuff. I've got planes, I've got helicopters. I've got big trades contingent because we can only do construction work in summer. So I've got always various people, 24 hours of daylight, it's really exciting, it's really fun, different things happening every day. And then...

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:37
For variety, for sure, insane.

Rachael Robertson 13:39
It was huge. We're working massive hours because we've only got such a short period of time to do the research, so we've only got about two months. So we work seven days a week work long hours, and it's fun this, there's a buzz about the joint. Then they all go home in February and a little group of 18 of us stayed behind and we are there just to maintain the station, the Asset Management, we just keep the place warm, keep it running until the next summer. So my role as the leader in summer is operational, it's sending out resources and it's working out priorities and it's looking at the safety as well. It's a very different job in winter, because in winter, it's a lot more around morale, and mental well being and how do I keep this team motivated? When we're in lockdown, we're effectively in a nine month lockdown, complete isolation, we cannot come home even if we want to. So my job then flipped to very much, this is had a lead, had managed conflict for example, how to stop people having an argument or a debate or whatever, of killing each other and keeping them safe for the next nine months of darkness, 24 hours of darkness. So a couple of lessons have held me in good stead in the last few months during a pandemic which I never expected. But yeah, having to lead through isolation is really difficult. But it's a different jobs, Summer or Winter.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:01
I want to come back to what you're talking about in terms of isolation and the correlation with the pandemic, definitely. However, back to that other question to, what did you think it was going to be? And what were the areas that were different or the same versus what actually was from your perception.

Rachael Robertson 15:19
The place itself blew me away because I thought Antarctica was white. Like every image in my brain or everything I've seen has been white. And it's not. It's actually really colorful because it's so cold, it's crystals, floating around in the sky, and the sun hits the crystals and reflects all this light. So there's pinks and greens and blues and purples and and they form these, they called, some of them are called "solar pillars", some are called "sundogs" they've all got those crazy names. And they're just these light shows and it's just so colorful and beautiful. And I never knew that I thought it was all white. So the place itself blew me away. I didn't realize, I heard a lot of people say, "when you go to Antarctica, it changes your life." And I sort of thought. "yeah, whatever." You know, I can't imagine that I've traveled a lot around the world, I've never met a single place that changed my life, and maybe an experience, but not geography. But it really does change your life. And I've thought about it a lot since and the reason is that you slow down and you reflect, you've got a lot of time to reflect on your life and here am I, where I thought I would be with my life personally and professionally, and because there's no distractions, so you're not rushing off to meetings, you're not rushing off to take kids to sport, there's no traffic, you know, so you spent a lot of time in your head reflecting on yourself and your life. And so, from, you know, the place itself blew me away. The job, I guess the overwhelming thing that I was totally unprepared for, and I should have been because I've been in leadership roles for 16 years, but the thing that blew me away was the scrutiny of the leadership role and the fact that you're being watched 24 hours a day every day, for an entire year like you do not knock off ever. There's not one hour we can say, "I'm not the boss today." And I had to learn how to manage that boundary. So I didn't have my staff knocking on my bedroom door at 10 o'clock at night or interrupting my breakfast and I had to get really strong on my boundaries, which I'd hadn't done before. And it blew me away that I had been told that like, I've been told by former station leaders that you're watched the whole time and, yeah, is if I'm not that interesting, no one's gonna watch me. Yeah, and they did watch me. And yet they did. So where I set for meals was notice, what time I started work was noticed, if I spent more time with one person than another that was noticed. And so I had constant had this dialogue in my brain about, "Okay, well, I need to go and spend time down that end of the table and sit with these guys because I sat with these people at lunch, so I better sit with them at dinner." And it's just extraordinary when you live with the same people you work with. So you never get away from your colleagues. Eyebrows.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:51
You said a couple things in there that I'm really interested in. One, is the idea of being, you didn't call it always on, but that's the words that I'm going to use. So first of all, you know, I'm curious, what did that teach you as it relates to, first of all your career and then second of all about how you behave and act. And I think most importantly, those boundaries, you mentioned those boundaries. And I think that most people that I've met over the years when I asked them, and I've had a lot of opportunities to ask people, because I get into all kinds of weird conversations for variety of reasons, partially because of what we do as an organization, partially because I am the type person will ask you, "hey, how do you feel about your boundaries?" But most people feel like that's an area that they can do much better in, or I consistently hear, yeah, I could improve. Like, that's the thing that gets added verbatim over and over again. So what did you learn that might help other people as especially as it relates to being always on and boundaries?

Rachael Robertson 19:03
I always thought like, all through my career, I thought my time management was bad. I blamed my time management because I'd be the first in the office, I'd be the last one out. I was checking emails at night, I'd miss my lunch break. And I think oh, my time management is so bad. And I did every time management course known to man, I did everything they tell you to do, like turn off my email, notifications, I prioritize my to do list. I did all of that. And yet, I'm still working longer hours. And it wasn't because I was incompetent, because I knew my job. And I'm like, well, my time management's bad. It was only living in Antartica that taught me it was never my time management, it was actually my boundaries. And so what I had been doing professionally, my whole career, was every single time someone came up to me in the office and said, "Oh, Rachael, have you got a minute?" And it's never a minute. That just, "have you got a minute, have you got a minute?" My default position was always, "Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. I do." And so when I went to Antarctica, I thought my job as the leader is to be there. These people need me on there. That's my job as their leader. And they would. They'd knock on my bedroom door at 10 o'clock at night and I'd yell out, "Yeah!" And because they'd see the light on, you know, shining under the door, so they knew I was awake. And then they'd open the door and I'd be reading a book and they'd say, "ah, you reading a book" and I go, "it's okay. I'll put a jacket on, I'll come out." Because I thought that's what leadership is, you know, if you need me, I'm there. After about six weeks, I thought I can't do this. I can't be available to you guys around the clock the whole time, because it will absolutely burn me out. So the next time it happened, they interrupted my breakfast to sign a permission slip to go photograph penguins. And I said, "this penguins again" and I said...

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:41
It's always there. It's just waiting.

Rachael Robertson 20:42
Right. Penguins. And I said, "Guys, I need to have my breakfast. And this isn't urgent. So can I meet you in my office? Or let's say in 15 minutes? How does that sound?" And once I put that boundary there, they respected it, but prior to that I had no boundaries. And so I realized that what I've been doing the whole time through my career was not saying "not now." And it's okay to say "not now" if you don't have the time. So what I've should have said was, all through my career, if I didn't have the time, I should have said, "look, I've got to get this report to the CEOs office by three o'clock, can you come back at 3:15?" And manage that boundary and why it's so important, I now know for two reasons. One, it's a great coaching time, it's a great opportunity to coach people around what your job is and what your priorities are. So when your staff interrupt, it's a great time to say, "look, we've got a board meeting in a week, and I've got to get the board report done, or I've got to get the sales report up to the CEO" whatever it is, and let them know your priorities, you're coaching them. The second one and more importantly, you know, when you're talking to someone, if they've mentally checked out, you can see it in their eyes. If you're talking to someone and they're vague out. And I think of how many times over the years, my staff came to me and said, "you've got a minute?" and I went, "yeah, sure I do." And they're talking to me and my brain's going, "oh my goodness, I've got that meeting coming up at 4, hadn't prepared for. I've got to write that, got to do this." And they saw that. They saw it in my eyes that I wasn't listening. I wasn't present. So I actually damaged the relationship. It was worse than if I had said, "Not now. Can you come back?" I thought I was doing the right thing, but I wasn't. I actually damaged the relationship because I wasn't listening and I would have picked that up. So I think, I said to people now when they complain, "you know, the boss rings me at eight o'clock at night, or customers ring me at six o'clock in the morning" and I say, "will you answer the call?" And they say, "yeah" and I'll go, "well, there you go. They don't think there's anything wrong with it because you answer the phone or you answer the email. If you stop doing that and just..."

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:40
You train them too.

Rachael Robertson 22:40
You train them, you say, "look, unless it's urgent, then after seven o'clock on with my family, that's family time. So unless it's urgent, I'll get to it in the morning." And it's up to you to manage that boundary because other people won't do that intuitively. If you've been had a pattern of responding all the time, they won't pick that up until you actually say "yep, right." Here's the line in the sand, here's my boundary. So it's up to you, yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:02
Bound... I've thought a lot about boundaries over the years partially for selfish reasons. And partially for... partially because it shows up in a lot of the work that we do. And, and I think a lot of the HTYCers that are listening to this right now would identify with that it is, even if it's something that you've done many times over, it can still be difficult. Even if you're practiced at it, it can still be difficult in new situations or new people or different relationship dynamics, or I don't know, name a another situation that is a variable that gets thrown in there, but can still be difficult. So I'm curious, from your perspective, what have you found makes it easier to draw boundaries? Because I think that, most people understand the need for it. And in practice, we find that it's difficult to do. So what have you found makes it easier for you or others?

Rachael Robertson 23:58
It's a good question. And I think it is incredibly difficult. And that's why it's a challenge. That's why it's an issue. If it was easy, I guess we would just be black and white about it. What helped for me, it's easier when you're starting a new job, so you can go in with them and you create your own expectation. But when it's an existing team, it's very difficult. What worked for me, particularly in Antarctica, was to make it part of the culture. So when it's a cultural thing, it's everyone adopts that behavior, everyone. It's an expectation now, so when, as a team, you say, look, the expectation is that for us in Antarctica, it was I actually had to say those words I said, so when people go to their bedroom, that's the only private space, you know, the rest of the time, they're living with their colleagues. We're living in such close proximity, there's no privacy. Everybody knows where you are, what you're doing at every minute of the day. So it's intense interpersonal pressure, it's dark, you know, we're effectively in lockdown for nine months. So if someone goes off to their bedroom, that's their sanctuary, that's their only space, so please respect that. And part of the tool there or the technique there was to make it part of the culture. And so one of the other tools we use down there to help their resilience was the thing called no triangles. And I know MacKenzie's listening in here, so I'll use MacKenzie as an example. But no triangles is simply, I don't speak to Mackenzie about Scott, if I have something to say to Scott, I go directly to him. No triangles, that simple tool built resilience in the team because it meant we would approach each other directly. Now, it took me two months to embed that in the culture because again, it's one of these challenging behaviors that we're talking about. If it was easy to confront people, we'd all do it. But it's difficult. But by making it the culture, I got everyone together, and I said, "put your hand up, if you agree, let's do it." Everyone's hand went up in the air. It meant that next time someone came to me and said, "oh, Scott did this to me." And I could say, "hang on, hang on. I saw you put your hand up and commit to no triangles. So why are you talking to me about it? Why are you not talking to him about it?" And then it became our culture. So it was expected and that's the way we do things around here which took away the confronting. It's not confronting now, that's how we operate around here. We have no triangles. So I guess.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:04
We've agreed to it. And...

Rachael Robertson 26:05
We've agreed to it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:06
We're just honoring what we talked about

Rachael Robertson 26:08
Thought on. And because I've got the hands in the air, there was a very visual commitment to it. So if you don't do the hands in the air but the no triangles, it's easy for people to say, "well, I didn't commit to no triangles, I didn't commit to direct conversations." So you get the hand in air. And then you can hold people to that behavior, you say, you've committed to that behavior. And so now I'm just holding you accountable to what you've already committed to. So my advice around that is if you can make it part of the culture so that it's an expectation for everybody, it takes away that confronting nature of these difficult conversations because they are hard. They're really hard.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:42
Love that. I've heard that concept talked about in a few different areas, the concept of no triangles, I actually like that. I know you use that in your book too. But I like the visual that goes along with the triangle. It's easy and simple to understand just as a concept alone, without even having to 'No' a whole lot else about it. So, appreciate that. When you were spending that time in Antarctica, one of the things that struck me that you address in the book, but I was very curious about, you mentioned this idea of going towards differences and focusing on differences, as opposed to focusing on commonality. And, you know, part of the reason I think that you were doing that was because it was building a case that respect Trump's harmony, which I think is a very compelling case in the first place. And we can talk more about that here in a little bit. But you had mentioned and alluded to that a variety of different times, and I'm curious, how you latched on to that in the first place? What was behind the scenes that really came and said, "hey, look, this is a big deal"?

Rachael Robertson 27:53
Yeah, I can tell you the second, I can tell you the absolute minute when it came, when I latched on to that one. It was, they'll get to know you barbecue. So I don't recruit my expedition team, which a lot of people are surprised about that, but the way it is, so I just get given 17 random people and I'm told turn them into a team. By the way, your life depends on your teamwork, off you go. And so I've met them all over a period of weeks one on one, but we decided to have a barbecue and have a get to know you barbecue. So this is the first time the entire 18 of us would get together and meet each other. These are the people we're going to be living with around the clock for the next 12 months. And we're at this barbecue and my plumber was telling a story about being in Alaska, I think it was Alaska or Canada. And he said, "it was so cold, the water freezes under your feet at minus 21 degrees Celsius, and it's gonna that's how cold it was. The water freezes into ice." My electrical engineer was standing there, he's from Germany, and he said, "Well, water freezes at zero degrees Celsius, not minus 21 degrees. So it must have been at least zero degrees, not at least minus 21 degrees. Are my idea, okay?" These two are going to come to blows. They're just going to end up in a fight. And I'm like, "What do I do here? What do I do?" And so, I intervened. And I took them aside privately. And I said to the trades minister, "look, he's an electrical engineer, and he's from Germany. So culturally and professionally, he's from a very exact, precise place. So his brain needs accurate data. So when he heard you say that he corrected because he was correct, like, that's a fact." And I said that, "he's not trying to take the Mickey out of you. He's not trying to humiliate you. It's just the way his brain operates." But then had to go to the engineer and say, "Look, when you do that, when someone's just telling a story or a joke, and they get a little bit of the information wrong, and you correct them, it's actually a bit humiliating. So just let it go. It doesn't matter. It's a story, let it go." And they ended up being really good, good friends, these two, but at the time, I'm thinking well, I had not given second thought to the cognitive diversity in my team. So I looked at them, and we were different across generations and gender and age, culture. But what I'd hadn't recognized was the other diversity that not as visible. So even sexuality, religion, but also introverts and extroverts and the big picture storytellers and the people right in the detail. And it just blew me away once I got to know these people how different we were, and I'm like, "Wow, I can't expect that we're all going to love each other, because we're just so different." And we had polar opposite views on some things. And I'm like, "wow, what am I going to do here?" And so to expect that love each other or even like each other, I thought it was a bit unrealistic. So I took that off the table, and I said, "I don't expect you to love each other or even like each other, I do expect you to treat each other with respect. And so respect became the bedrock of everything we did. It was like I don't have to agree with you, I don't have to love you. But I will always treat you with respect." And that was the moment, I remember vividly, that was the moment where I realized I have to do something here as the leader to set up a culture where we can respect each other, but equally talk about issues as grown ups in a professional way and deal with things because I was really worried that someone would spar with depression or someone would explode with anger, because I had no ability to deal with either scenario. So I thought, "How do I create this environment where we do speak up and we do stand up for ourselves and how we're feeling? And we deal with it? We solve it and we move on." But yeah, it was very... it was before we even left for Antarctica, that I recognized that I needed to do something to create the culture for this team, because otherwise, Holy Dooley, we're gonna be in for some fun times.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:44
You have a chapter in your second book, and I think, I forget I'd actually didn't write this down but it just occurred to me right now that, that I think it's called something like "harmony is the road to mediocrity" or something along those lines, you remember that?

Rachael Robertson 31:58
Yep, I do.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:59
So I'm really interested in having you here for just a moment. Define what harmony and what respect actually means, from your perspective, because I think that many of us, as human beings, have a misperception or mis desire to think that really what we want is harmony in many different areas. And that's not exclusively true. However, that's definitely something that I've seen and you make a compelling case that maybe that's not always a great thing in fact, in a lot of areas that's not. So first of all, what do you mean when you say harmony? What do you mean when you say respect?

Rachael Robertson 32:38
So for me, respect is understanding a person's rights and responsibilities and understanding that they're entitled to their opinions and they're entitled to their values. And I have no right to try and convince you to change your, you know, your if it's something you hold deeply, a belief you hold deeply, I don't have the right to try and convince you, I just respect that you're different. So rather than try get everyone around to my way of thinking or behaving or living, just saying, "okay, I respect that we're different." How many is that piece of or getting along and why I think respect Trump's harmony, and I chose the word Trump very carefully, particularly given the books is in the United States. And we did have a big discussion about whether there was another word I should use. And I just felt there was no other word that captured the notion that respect Trumps harmony. So the publisher said, "What about beats?" and I said, "but it doesn't beat harmony, they're both equally important. I'm just saying that when you have to choose, one or the other, it's like a deck of cards, when you have to choose, then this one has sovereignty over this one." So respect should always be more important. And why our worry about it is when I've worked in teams, where harmony was the focus, so we keep the peace and we all get along and everything's smooth, a few things happen, bullying and harassment still goes on. People still bully each other and there's still a lot of that bad behavior, but it goes underground. So people won't raise it as an issue because they don't want to be the person who shatters this mirage of harmony. The second one more importantly, is innovation. You can't have innovation if you have a culture of always having harmony, if that's your focus, because they're the meetings that people will sit in a meeting and they'll nod their heads, and they'll say, "yeah, yeah, yeah." And then they walk out of the meeting and go, "that's not gonna work." And you think, "why didn't you say that at the time?" and it's because they don't want to offer a difference of opinion or a conflicting view. And I think that the most important one, though, is around safety. And I think if you're focusing on harmony, and isn't it great here, we're all good friends, and we all get along and everything's sweet. No one puts a hand out and says, actually, I'm not so good right now. You know, I'm struggling right now. So I'll worry about mental safety but also physical. If someone's doing something unsafe, not following the correct procedure. If the culture of that team is harmony is to keep the peace, that's when people turn a blind eye and that's when they walk past to go, "oh, I don't want to get involved in that. I think that's dangerous." And so I really worry about teams were at the front, you know, the number one goal for the team is this almost complicit behavior of not being different and not being the outlier of we're all in this together, we're all the same, we'll love each other because I think it's okay to say we are different. In fact, it's great that we have difference, how we handle conflict, that's the bigger issue, but having respect for difference, I think it's fantastic. And understanding that we're different and that's wonderful. That's a fantastic thing, that we're all really different people.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:30
There was a to make a quick case for what you're talking about in terms of respect trumping harmony, if there is a culture of harmony that, well, here's a quick story. I used to be an HR leader in manufacturing and one of the things that would happen is within the company that I was working with, occasionally people would get injured and sometimes there was actually some pretty serious injuries, unfortunately. And every single time, one of my roles was to go in help figure out how we could eliminate this from happening again. And I would go in as an HR leader, so I'm very focused on the people and that's my predisposition and everything else. And where that culture had, what you're referring to is harmony present, it almost always showed up in those types of situations, somebody always knew about something in advance or somebody could have prevented it in almost every single situation. And because the harmony was one of the sometimes accidental priorities were the most valuable thing in that culture, they didn't necessarily want it to be, but sometimes it was, and then it would still be allowed to happen. And you know, some of these were fairly serious injuries, unfortunately, and it was sad to see that on one side, but I also think it really makes a case that, if that is the most important thing accidentally or intentionally, then it's going to lead to situations like that again and again and again. So I'm curious from your perspective, you mentioned cognitive diversity. And this is that some of the contexts that you put it in, are some of the first time that I've heard people place a lot of emphasis on this. And with cognitive diversity, what did you find the benefits to be to highlight that diversity or highlight those differences? Because you gave a lot of examples of how you did that.

Rachael Robertson 37:34
Yeah, what we did, we spend a lot of time highlighting difference, because I wanted people to respect it. And even simple things like people's motivation for working in Antarctica was an issue and I've seen this in other workplaces where, some people work in Antarctica for the money. It's a very well paid job. It has to be. We wouldn't do it if it was low paid. So it's a very well paid position. And so there's a certain cohort of people who work there for the money, they would like to save a deposit for a house in 12 months. So they work there just for the money. And that really irritated some of the others who were there for the experience like myself, we were... I was there to experience Antarctica and to see the penguins and to see the southern lights, the beautiful light show, to see the wildlife in the icebergs. And it really drove these other people crazy. And they're saying, "Well, how come these people have given up everything they love and they haven't even left the station?" They've been on the station for six months, they haven't even bothered to experience Antarctica. And I had to say, well respect Trump's harmony. That's the reason for being here, just respect that. And I think by highlighting the differences, particularly in cognitive. So that the biggest, the most obvious one was the introverts and extroverts. Now if I'd had a full team of all extroverts, and I was an introvert that would have been really, really difficult, you know, if you're the only introvert but the opposite is the same as well, because we need the extroverts because they were the social element they pulled together the St. Patrick say a quiz or they pulled together that, you know, the Christmas events and they really gave a sense of community. So without them, it would have been terrible. But equally without the introverts, the introverts were the ones who, when you were struggling, you go and have a quiet chat with them, you know, you'd walk around the station and have a quiet chat. And so they had an important role as well. And I think I shudder to think what it would have been like to have spent 12 months with only one type of person, we needed that mix of people, we really did. And that's where it started to get me thinking about this cognitive difference. And I know certainly here in Australia, whenever we talk diversity, it's usually either gender. So we're saying we need more women in senior roles in companies or we talk about our indigenous community, and we talk about indigenous culture. And so it's one or the other. And so just to be able to say, you know, we could name 15 other metrics to measure diversity from generation sexuality, religion, culture, age, professional background, like there's so many. And once I started to recognize that in myself, I saw it in other people. And I thought, "wow, we really are really different to each other." And that's a good thing. That's okay. So it was, yeah. For me, it was a real eye opener because I'd only ever dealt with diversity on one or two measures and to see that there was all these others, and how completely different people can be. And that's a good thing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 40:21
I think that there's a lot of power in that. One of the things that I wanted to ask you is how can people leverage focusing on that cognitive diversity and respecting that comic cognitive diversity and just focusing on differences and using that to be able to impact their career and their life in a very positive way?

Rachael Robertson 40:42
I think this a stack of psychometric tests you can do and I think most of us have gone to, my freak sort of him and brain dominance or something. So there's a lot of professional tools but I think one of the best tools is to build your self awareness. Like I truly believe self awareness is the most important quality for any leader. I think if you've got self awareness, you will learn the risks. So it starts there, if you've got self awareness and you understand yourself, it's a lot easier than to try and understand other people. And I think you can get that through coaching, you know, through mentoring, through frank and fearless conversations with someone you trust. For me and Antarctica, I did a lot of reflecting I kept a journal. And the journal was really just to keep me sane, I had no one to talk to. So enabled me to get my thoughts out. And so I could sleep better, because I got my thoughts out. But it helped me as a leader too, because I could see what I got wrong. A lot of the times, I made a wrong decision. And I could have just said it was the station behaving that way. So I could have just written it off as cabin fever, the gone mad, it's cabin fever, when in fact it was my flawed decision making that caused it. So by standing on a balcony everyday looking down, watching myself that built my own self awareness and I think from that I could then understand other people better and from there, it was just a matter of talking about it. Actually using the words and saying, well, they're different because they're like this and showcasing difference. So I talked about in the book that just to break up the boredom, I decided to have what are called "Super Tuesday" which was just...

Scott Anthony Barlow 42:12
I love the sound of it, by the way.

Rachael Robertson 42:14
Yeah. And that was just, I'll be really honest, that was to stop people sitting in the bar drinking beer, and drinking alcohol every night. I thought, well, I just need something to break that up without being their mom and telling them "No, you can't do that" because it's their home, you know, your boss wouldn't come to your home on a weeknight and say, "hang on a minute." So I put the sheet up on the wall, and I said, "anyone who's got got a passion on or is knowledgeable about a subject and you'd like to talk to the rest of the community about it, 7:30 to 8:30 every Tuesday, put your name down, let us know what the topic is." And I was hoping that maybe five or six people would do it. Within a couple of days, it was fully subscribed. Within a couple of days, all 17 people had put something out. And it ranged from living in Prague, someone to do Prague, we had a pagan woman who taught to us that pagan rituals, which was interesting. We had someone taught digital photography, astronomy, someone taught Italian lessons. And what it did was all of these skills and abilities that every one of us have, but you don't necessarily see at work, it meant "wow, I still might not be your best friend or you're still not my cup of tea, but gee, I respect the fact you speak three languages or, gee, I respect your knowledge around astronomy." And so again, that built respect in the team because it's not saying I have to like you, but I respect that you've got all of these skills and abilities that you don't come to work and talk about. And so we have no knowledge of all our colleagues, you know, that we work with have got these amazing abilities and skills that we've never heard of. And so I'd love to say that was a brilliant career move by me or brilliant leadership, but it wasn't. I did it initially, just to break up the boredom and then it turned into something really powerful, which, you know, I had to reflect on and it took me a few days to cut down on that, wow, that's what that was. How cool.

Scott Anthony Barlow 43:59
That's fantastic. I really appreciate you taking the time and making the time. And for people that are interested in either getting the books or learning more about you, where can they go? What can they do?

Rachael Robertson 44:15
Oh, thanks for having me. Now, I'd love to anyone who'd like, I can even come and talk to groups that with the pandemic, my job normally, I'm traveling around the world talking to groups around leadership and teamwork, but because our borders are closed, and no one's going anywhere fast, I've got my, I've had to set up my own studio at home. So I've got my own broadcast studio now. So I can... I was working in California. Yesterday, I was on TV, morning TV in California, so I get to travel the world without leaving home. So yeah, my website, which is just rachaelrobertson.com. And even if a3nyone's listening, has got a question and they would like to ask a question, just shoot me an email and I've got plenty of time at the moment. So more than happy to take questions and then and hear other people's experiences as well. That would be wonderful.

Scott Anthony Barlow 44:58
I really appreciate it on many different levels, and this just right here, I'm going to mark the end of the interview for per se. However, one of the things that I wanted to ask and didn't ask, because I think I was introducing MacKenzie at the beginning, but I wanted to just get a really quick clip of you saying your name and what you do, what you tell people you do these days so that we can embed that in there too.

Rachael Robertson 45:23
Yeah, sure. So hi, I'm Rachael Robertson. I'm an international keynote speaker and author and Antarctic expedition leader.

Scott Anthony Barlow 45:32
Perfect. Hey, thank you very much again. This was a super fun conversation and thank you for doing it in front of a live audience.

Rachael Robertson 45:41
Oh, it's good, isn't it? And good luck, Mackenzie. Good luck with school and work. Remember, regret what you did, don't regret what you didn't do.

Scott Anthony Barlow 45:49
There you go. You heard it here first.

Joshua Rivers 45:51
Hey, I hope you enjoyed that conversation that Scott had with Rachael. Definitely go to the show notes, you can check that out at happentoyourcareer.com/374. Now, today, we wanted to share about a special training that we're going to be doing this Thursday, September 10th, at four o'clock pacific time, or seven o'clock, Eastern time. And we're going to be doing it on the top three mistakes that high performers make when changing careers. So you want to be able to check this out. So, just to give you an idea of what's going to be covered, you're going to learn why most of us think that we have to choose between enjoyment or money, and also how we've proven with our clients that you can have both. That also you're gonna learn why it's been so hard to get clarity on what you want, and also what you can do about it starting today. Then you're also going to learn how to know whether a company or job is actually great for you. Then you'll also learn how to avoid getting stuck with soul sucking tasks and projects you're good at but you don't like it. In fact, you probably hate them. And then also you get to learn why you must focus on what you want to spend your days on, and not just pursuing a job title. So those are some of the things that are going to be covered in the training this Thursday, the top three mistakes a high performers make when changing careers. Again, that'll be this Thursday, September 10th, starting at four o'clock pacific time, four o'clock pm Pacific Time, and to be able to register for that you can go to happentoyourcareer.com/webinar-weekly, so happentoyourcareer.com/webinar-weekly, and you can be able to register for that webinar there. We would love to be able to see you there, loved to be able to get you some help. And so, another thing that is great is that we are opening up applications for signature coaching. And so this webinar will be a great way for you to be able to get some more information about that and be able to get the help that you need to be able to make your next career move. Alright, with that, we're gonna go ahead sign off for this week. We'll come back next week with another excellent interview that Scott has with our next guest. Thank you. We'll see you next week.