Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:01:17: The Stack World

00:04:06: Network vs community

00:10:05: The third space

00:14:29: Networking for introverts, and building relationships

00:21:13: Why we are the way we are

00:31:24: The importance of friendship at work

00:36:15: Private spaces to communicate with colleagues

00:38:19: Loneliness in the hybrid era

00:44:59: Sharmadean's career advice

00:00:00: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah Ellis, and this is the Squiggly Careers podcast.  This week, no Helen; instead, you're going to hear me in conversation with Sharmadean Reid, Founder of an organisation called The Stack World.  She's also very impressively got an MBE to her name.  The focus of our conversation together is on networking, but you'll also hear her talk about the importance of self-awareness and friendship, as well as offering some really practical tips on how to build successful relationships to support your Squiggly Career.

What I really like about Sharmadean, and the reason she's been on our list to get on the podcast for a while, is that she doesn't shy away from a tough topic, she thinks really deeply, and she's incredibly open about her own experiences, the good and the really hard stuff too, in a way that I just found incredibly useful.  So, I hope you have that experience too and I'll be back at the end to let you know about some resources, but also to ask for your help for our Ask The Experts for 2023.

Sarah Ellis: So, Sharmadean, thank you so much for joining us for a conversation today on the Squiggly Careers podcast.  I can't wait to spend a bit more time with you.

Sharmadean Reid: Thank you so much for having me.

Sarah Ellis: So, let's start by introducing The Stack World, your company, to our listeners, who might be coming across it for the first time, or maybe they've heard of it, or perhaps they've got a friend who's involved.  So, share with us a bit about what The Stack World is and why it exists.

Sharmadean Reid: Thank you so much.  So, The Stack World is a platform that powers women's communities.  It means that any one of our members can sign up and can start or join a community, they can host events, but most importantly they can build their power network by connecting with other women. 

We've been doing a consumer version for about a year now and it's been really exciting, and we're just about to launch a B2B version, so companies in the new world of work can effectively connect all of their employees together, and especially their women, who tend to feel more marginalised, less included, etc. The reason why it exists and why I think it's important is because I know that in my hardest moments at work, the most difficult thing was feeling I had no one to talk to, and it doesn't matter whether that is about leadership skills, pay-rise negotiation, or juggling being a working mum; it doesn't matter what the topic is, it's just, "Do I have a community of women that I can refer to for support?" The topics we have actually are very, very varied from Web3 to working mums, and what I know is you get together about the topic, you learn, you have the self-development part; but then you end up talking about everything.  So, I've always been a natural collector and connector of women and I'm really excited to do that at scale through technology.

Sarah Ellis: And actually, I would add, just to make it very relevant, certainly in our experience, so we have a learning budget in Amazing If.  So, everybody who works for Amazing If has a learning budget that they can spend on anything they like; it doesn't even have to be related to their day job.  We just say, "Spend it in a way so you can learn and grow".  And Vivi, in our team, decided to spend hers on becoming part of The Stack World community.  So actually, almost in parallel, we've got to know you a bit; but also through Vivi and her getting involved, and then she shares on our -- we have a Borrowed Brilliance and Curiosity Crowd-sourcing channels in our company, and then she shares what she's learning in The Stack World with the rest of us. So, I feel like I'm sort of by osmosis becoming part of it, which is so lovely, and she's had such a brilliant experience.  Certainly from what we've seen, it's absolutely delivering on that commitment to not only connect people together, but create that sense of community as well.

Sharmadean Reid: Thank you.

Sarah Ellis: I saw you on stage, we were at a similar event together, and you talked about the difference between a network and a community in a way that I'd not heard before and I felt was really useful.  So, I wondered if you could talk about that a little bit more with us today?

Sharmadean Reid: Yeah, of course.  So, in my early journey as a founder, I read Peter Thiel's book, Zero to One, and I always thought, "This is a really incredible, enlightening book, if you are actually at zero".  So, if you have a quality, then yes, everyone is at zero.  But I was thinking, actually, where's the book or where's the content that kind of acknowledges that because of our gender or racial inequities in the world of work, there are people who are actually on minus-three, minus-four, minus-ten. So, I started to think, actually the purpose of community is to get you from minus-ten to zero. 

That might be, okay, maybe it's not about your identity, but maybe you're having a really bad day; maybe you're in a bad month, a bad year, and you're just somehow on a negative.  Well, your community are the people you can call up for emotional support, mental support, and people are going to help you sort out your problem and get back to zero. A good example is, let's say you feel that you are being harassed at work.  Your community are the people who are going to give you that emotional support to let you know, yes, it happened to you, this is a real thing, you are not making it up, "Let me come round with a cup of tea so you can chat", etc, and that gets you the strength to feel that you can basically then go from zero to ten, which is when you call upon your network which is, "Here's the best lawyer. 

These are the steps you need to do.  This is what you should do", etc. So, I feel like a community is what takes you from minus-ten to zero; but a network is what takes you from zero to a hundred, and actually that is through the things that you might have heard, such as sponsorship, more advocacy, more tangible -- I don't like to use the word "transactional", because I don't feel like any of it is intentional transactional, but I would say there is a clear gain from your network, whether that's introductions, investment, whatever it is. So, that's how I look at the two things, because these words were being used very interchangeably and I was like, "What is the difference?"  Community might be seen as something a bit more of soft power, and networking as hard power, and that's how we view it.  But the thing is, because of the way that the world of work has never been designed for women, I feel like in that vein, women have always had to start off on a minus somehow, because of the inherent biases we have.  So, I see women's communities as really important in getting this generation of working women to zero and beyond because over time, that community will become a network. The people who I get most of my client introductions, sales, etc from right now are people who were in my creative community 10, 15 years ago.  Now, we're all grown up and now that's turned into my network.  So, that's how I look at it.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think that's probably why they sometimes do get described interchangeably is because I think, what I love about your description is, I think often I probably see your community as wider; it's broader, there's probably more people in your community.  But then a proportion of that community often then becomes your network, because you can't go from not knowing someone to suddenly then advocating for you or being in your network overnight; that doesn't happen really quickly.  Often you get on particularly well with certain people, you have things in common, you can see how someone can support you.  And so, I think it's almost that.  I was listening to you then and thinking, "Well, does that mean a network is more important than a community?" But my conclusion that I was getting to is I feel like they're equally important; they probably just deliver different things for you for your development.  Does that feel right for you?

Sharmadean Reid: That's exactly it and exactly what you said about the community is really about bonding.  That's the most important thing because spending time with someone might also determine how you label it.  So, if I have you over to my house for dinner for two, three hours with a bunch of other people, and we're all getting deep and meaningful, and our shoes are off and you're in someone's home, that is a very different experience to if I invite you to a dinner in a private dining room in a fancy hotel; there's a bit more of a formality to it, there's a bit more, again like I said, that transactional element to it.  Yes, you're definitely going to learn and you're going to converse, but there's something about being in a home which makes it feel more of a community. So, I would say that bonding happens better in that homely community environment, but you could have the exact same group of people and the outcome would be completely different, just by virtue of changing the location.  I think that all these things are very context-driven and, like you said earlier, the same people could be both your community and network changing over time.

Sarah Ellis: What's so interesting about that is almost as you've described, the setting where we connect can have a really big impact on almost how we connect.  And you use this description of the "third space", which I think I'm still getting to grips with and trying to understand.  So, perhaps you could talk to us a bit more about this idea.  It's one of those words, isn't it, you sometime read in articles about this third space.  What does a third space mean; and why is it so helpful for us?

Sharmadean Reid: The third space is effectively, if home is the first space and work is the second space, the third space, 50, 100 years ago, would have been church or social clubs, working men's clubs, youth clubs, these types of things. Sarah Ellis: Pubs?!

Sharmadean Reid: Pubs.  Now our third spaces might be your gym, your wellness centre.  It's funny because we do all of these incredible things to create youth clubs and activity-driven spaces for when you're young, but the minute you hit adulthood, it automatically revolves around alcohol, food, those more consumptive elements, rather than creative elements.  I think the setting is incredibly important, because it completely subconsciously signals what you're here to achieve, so I think about this all the time. One of the biggest things we do at The Stack is constantly looking for incredible venues.  So, do you want to host a dinner party in an amazing cave grotto; do you want the dinner party to be a discussion dinner, a free-for-all dinner, a networking dinner?  Who's doing the food; are you hiring a female chef?  If the theme of the dinner is about sustainability, do we express that in every element, including what is on the plate? 

Building a community is no easy task, it takes a lot of thought and effort and consideration, but we've done it so much for so long that we've kind of created these shortcuts, tactics you can use to instantly shortcut meaningful connection, develop trust. I'm really into behavioural economics and I'm really into reading about early humans and human behaviour, so I'm always looking for these different strategies for how you shortcut a community.  But even if you get a community off the ground, the next level is maintaining it and then if you want, growing it.  I'm not always a believer in growing a community.  I think sometimes micro-communities are just as important, so then you have to focus on maintaining.  So, there's so many things to think about when it comes to building communities. I would say just because of the work that I've been in, I'm much better at doing it for women than for men, or other genders, but there's things that I know that are guaranteed to kick off a community for women that we do with our 500 communities that we've got in the app.

Sarah Ellis: And I think over the past couple of years, I find it really interesting to reflect on, what have we unlearnt, or stopped learning, and what do we need to relearn; and there's quite a lot of research that our relationships are becoming more transactional.  By transactional, what I mean is very related to doing our day job.  So, "I've got ten tasks I've got to do today [or] this week, and these are the relationships I need to build so that I can tick those tasks off and do my job really well". One of the things that Margaret Heffernan says, and I'm a big fan of her work, and she talks about the human skills we need right now in her TED Talk is, "We need to get better at building relationships beyond the ones that we need right now".  So, almost go beyond the day job and make sure you're ticking off those tasks and think about, "Well, am I having curious career conversations?  Am I exploring and being really ambitious about where my career could take me?  Am I investing in myself?"  I think Michelle Obama has a brilliant quote where she was like, "We have got to stop putting ourselves at the bottom of our own to-do lists", and I always really love that phrase, because I feel so many people just nod along when you say that.

So, if somebody is listening now and maybe they're quite afraid of networking, networking does still have lots of these quite negative connotations, some people maybe a bit more introverted like me can't help but think of it as being intimidating, something you think you should do but you don't really want to do, if you're honest; and maybe they're listening to you and going, "The Stack World sounds amazing, but also quite intimidating".  I can imagine for lots of people, as somebody who is more introverted, whatever your gender, you always have this sense of, "Building relationships, I get worried about it feeling hard" or, "How do I do that authentically?" What advice would you start with for someone who's feeling nervous, or perhaps they've lost that skill a bit over the last few years of creating those connections beyond their day job?

Sharmadean Reid: The first thing I would say is that there can often be this feeling that if you can't do something for me or if we can't collaborate right now, then this has been wasted, which I just don't believe in.  Like I said, I collect people.  There are so many people who I will have given work to this year that I met years ago and I just save them in my memory bank.  So, that's the first thing, is just because you can't do something right now doesn't mean you can't do something in the future, which then leads to my second thing which is, I always want to just get to the core of what drives a person.  And actually, some people who are naturally emission-driven offer that information in the first ten seconds of meeting them, "This is what I stand for, this is who I am". But for other people, it requires detective work and I actually treat it like a game.  I'm like, "How can I learn something so intimate about this person that they never thought that they were going to tell me?"  I met one of our members, because every now and again I like to meet a member for lunch, just to learn more about them and about their work and about what they think of the platform and stuff, and within a few minutes, she told me quite a serious incident that had happened to her and she was like, "Whoa, I wasn't planning on talking about that", and I was like, "That's what I do".

Sarah Ellis: "That's my thing!"

Sharmadean Reid: That's my thing.  And I've always done that since I was a young person, because going back to that minus-ten, I always had to overcome biases and judgement before I even opened my mouth.  When I walk into a room and I look differently, it's like, "How can I build a connection with someone so they understand that we're both humans?"  So, I would have to work really, really hard in my conversational skills, and that's what I think is one of the lost skill, the skill of making conversation; I had to work really hard at it, and there's so many basic openers that people can use, like people often say, "What do you do for work?" and that's a non-starter, isn't it?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah!

Sharmadean Reid: Sometimes I'll switch up and I'll be like, "What's most exciting you right now about what you're working on?" and then it throws them, because I'm indirectly learning about their job, which is what you want to know; you want to know, what does this person do?  But I just try and think of different ways to ask it, so that person isn't affronted, "Oh, you're just measuring me on my role". 

Actually, if you say to someone, "What's the most exciting thing you're working on right now?" they start talking with me about a fun project, etc, and I don't think I've ever experienced anyone saying to me, "I'm not working on anything exciting right now", because it might even be their garden project; they're building a shed and that's the most exciting thing right now. So, that's a key opener I use, and if things are really stalling I always say, "What was your childhood like?"  When you ask people that, "What was your childhood like?" again, everybody had one, and you start to learn a lot about the person.  And the thing is, when you have this information about people that is not what is posted on their LinkedIn, it kind of gives you some leverage in, again, how to quickly build a connection.  If I know that somebody is really into jazz and Japan and coffee, I'm starting to triangulate who this person is or what they aspire to be, what they want to emulate.  They probably don't want to be really doing their day job, they want to be sitting in coffee shops, listening to jazz, drinking in Japan with the rain! "Oh, this person's a romantic, this person's really romantic actually, this is what drives them, this is what motivates them!"  So, I think when you're introverted, seeing it as detective work to be done as a data-gathering exercise, and just being as curious as possible; and people when they're networking tend to gloss over the details all the time, "So then, I moved to New York and I started the job", and I'll be like, "Whoa!  How did you decide you wanted to move to New York?" and then you ask them to break it down.  And just by interjecting gently, you get this person talking and talking, which kind of takes it off you, which is good if you're an introvert.  And really, what you're doing is you're learning loads about them.

Sarah Ellis: What's so nice about that, I wrote down, "Curiosity creates connection".  To me, I think so often we put pressure on ourselves in those moments to think, "I feel like I should be selling myself in some way", and I'm like, we'll let go of that as an assumption.  Actually what you need to be doing is thinking, "This is a brilliant opportunity to learn". There's a great journalist, a lady called Celeste Headlee, who's TED Talk is 10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation, and the first thing she said is, "As a journalist, I approach every person that I'm talking to, even if I think I'm really disagreeing with maybe what they stand for or who they are, of thinking, 'I'll have something to learn from that person'", which I just think is brilliant.

Sharmadean Reid: I'm exactly the same.  I'm always like, "I've definitely got something to learn from this person, and it's just about peeling back the layers to uncover what that is.  One of my favourite books is Robert Greene, The Laws of Human Nature, and it's so fascinating, because we are all just these archetypes and playing these roles and the minute you realise what role someone in playing, it's so much easier to move through the world when you realise that everybody's walking around with these different hats, traumas, roles, and they're flexible, they're not necessarily fixed, but we all tend to be wearing them. It's almost like a private game, you can just treat it as a little private game for yourself like, "How many secrets can I collect?"

Sarah Ellis: I can almost see the glee on your face, Sharmadean, when you're describing that!  I'm now imaging, I feel like you must be everybody's simultaneously best psychologist, psychiatrist, therapist, even just looking at you and listening to the questions!

Sharmadean Reid: This comes from my own self-work as well.  It was only my late 20s that I started to do some seriously deep work.  I've done everything from drinking ceremonies to hypnotherapy, doing all personality tests, whatever.  I'm generally just curious as to why I am the way I am and why everybody is the way that they are.  If somebody's uptight or nervous or anxious or optimistic, or whatever it is, I'm always like, "I wonder why you're like that; what is it; what was the trigger?" I've got a very good friend and when we very first met, in fact this is a really good example again of what we've been talking about, which is I knew this girl through a mutual friend and I saw her at parties all the time, and it was only when we went on a holiday together that we spent deep and meaningful time together.  During that time, I learnt that her father had sadly passed away when she was very, very young. 

In my head I was like, "Oh, so that's why you're anxious; that's why you've got a people-pleasing-ness to you, I get it now.  There's a fatherlessness alongside the trauma, there are all of these different things that mean that this is the way you are".  Up until that point, I didn't actually understand why she was the way she was.  And then, if that personality type might be negative to you, you could be dismissive of that. I think everybody has a story, everyone has a story about why they are this way; it's interesting to learn, and I'm quite transparent about my story.  So I always say, "I grew up in a very big Jamaican household, but I don't know my father.  And not knowing my father has led to all sorts of issues around abandonment, and that might show up in the workplace, whereby I don't let -- well, this is different today, because obviously I've done all this work; but when I was younger, I wouldn't let employees get too close to me, because I was convinced they were all going to leave, and you're sabotaging these relationships which people always talk about this in a romantic sense, but they don't necessarily talk about in friendships or work sense. So, because I had all of these abandonment issues, it then really dictated the way that I behaved. 

And my fundamental, core, negative truth would be, I could only rely on myself.  So that means I didn't delegate, I didn't hire a right-hand person quick enough, all of these different things that show up because I was a little baby without a father. Once you have that knowledge of yourself, then you have the power, then you can stop and pause and be like, "Hang on a minute, am I not giving this person the attention they deserve because I don't think they're a good employee; or just because I don't want my heart broken when they decide to leave?"  And then you start to become a better leader because of that.  So, that's kind of my thought process on it.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, it's so interesting, it really reflects one of the things that we talk about a lot when you're learning to coach yourself, which I think it's a skill that everyone can do, is a big thing, or a big contributor to be able to do that is noticing.  So, what you just described there is you're like, "I'm noticing" and also this ability to press pause, even if it's for 20 seconds, even if it's for one minute to just think, "Why am I feeling that way; and what does that mean in terms of my reaction?" So, I think just that self-awareness, which you are clearly incredibly self-aware, I think is really refreshing for people to hear also that you've clearly worked really hard on that.  I think sometimes people just hope that self-awareness is going to happen, whereas I think I can hear in what you're describing, that has been a very intentional effort that you also continue to commit to.

Sharmadean Reid: Yeah, but the thing is, you could be self-aware, but then you don't put it into practice.  And actually, the first step is just the acknowledgement, "This is the way I am"; the second step, as you say, is pausing in between; but the third step is creating a muscle memory so you don't react in the moment, because I was 24 years old when I first started my first business.  It was very difficult for me being 24, being in a difficult relationship, the pressure.  I also had just had a baby, at 26.  I didn't really know how to handle my emotions in the first wave of my business. Then, you can't really use it as an excuse after a while, "Oh, sorry I'm like this, this is due to my trauma", you can't keep going on with that.  I would know what to do but it would still emotionally affect me. 

So again, you're practising over and over in every situation to create muscle memory.  And then I did do hypnotherapy, because I really wanted to imprint it on my subconscious that these things that I think about myself are not true, and actually I don't need to physically react in a way like be anxious or upset or depressed or whatever about these things that I experienced when I was younger. So, yeah, awareness is just the first step, because it takes time and also it takes emotional maturity, and your brain only stops developing when you're 25, apparently, so I don't feel like anyone should beat themselves up if they are like, "Damn, I can't control that right now".  I'm like, "It just takes practice, it takes time and it comes, if you work at it".

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, you're right.  I think we always talk about the awareness and the action, because unfortunately the awareness usually doesn't get you to the change.  So, if you want to do anything differently, you've got to try taking action.  But to your point, don't beat yourself up if initially those actions are not the right ones, or I've definitely done things in the past where I'd got the awareness, I tried to take the action and it was just completely the wrong action for me.  It meant that I was trying to be someone I wasn't, or maybe I was comparing myself to some else and thinking, "That's what they would do, so that's what I'm going to do", and then it's a bit of a disaster.  But I think that's okay, you can then try something else. I think feeling like we can give ourselves permission to experiment, and you might be thinking about networking or community, which we're talking about today, and sometimes you might have a conversation that doesn't feel like it went very well; maybe you felt like your questions didn't really work or you didn't get that sense of connection.  But I think just noticing that and thinking, "Okay, so what would I try next time?" or, "Why not?  What was it that felt difficult about that?" rather than thinking, and I do see this quite a lot, particularly with women, is something doesn't work out and we go straight to, "I'm a failure, I beat myself up, I'm my own worst critic, I did a bad job".

Sharmadean Reid: It's true.  And you know, what you said at the beginning of that, which is I was trying to learn to be a leader through role models that don't look like me, I was reading all the big male business books, looking at CEOs who still, if you look at public companies, tend to skew white male, and being like, "If you want to be a successful CEO, you've got to do XYZ, get up at 5.00am, take no prisoners, rank and yank", and all of this jazz.  And I would say a big shift, what the pandemic did for me, if there's one upside, is it made me far more empathetic and nurturing and tapping into my feminine energy as a leader, rather than just being a whip-cracker type of boss. Even now, we have such a loving culture within the company that I've not experienced since I've been a leader and it's really, really nice and it makes me feel really proud, but I had to find my own style and my own voice, and that in itself is a journey.  I kept thinking, it's that fear you have that if you're soft, you're perceived as weak, and then they're going to walk all over you, and I was like, "If I let them do this, then they're just all going to take over", etc.  Actually, I realised if you hire good people and if they believe in the mission and the purpose of your company, and you give them the parameters, but flexibility, people do deliver.  It's been really nice to see this change.

Sarah Ellis: You mentioned one of your friends before, and also the spirit of friendship that it feels like you've created in your organisation; one of the things that I really liked that you talked about was this almost transition from mentorship to sponsorship to allyship and maybe into friendship as almost the next dimension.  There is some really good evidence, and I actually think of you now every time I see it; there's really good evidence around the importance of friendship at work. I remember back when I used to work for Sainsbury's, one of the colleague engagement questions was always, "Do you feel like you have a best friend at work?" and I remember thinking, "Why are they asking me whether I've got a best friend at work?"  I now know exactly why they were asking me, because there is a lot of correlation between feeling like you've got a best friend at work, someone that you can trust, someone that can support you, someone you can talk to. 

I think with friendship, it's almost starting to be recognised now that actually it is okay to have friends at work. I remember thinking it is not okay to have friends at work, and I had quite a bad experience quite early in my career of almost a friendship being broken up.  So, I worked somewhere and I got a really good friend in the same team, and this leader decided that almost this person was a bad influence on me.  And almost a bit like school, they decided that she was not the right thing, and they almost isolated us from being friends, all because every day we would go and get a coffee together and go for a little walk at lunchtime.  You could see that actually that was almost quite threatening and they were like, "What are they talking about; or what's happening in that moment?" Do you know what we were talking about?  We were just, "What coffee should be choose from Starbucks?" so we'd get really excited! 

Having a Starbucks onsite was very exciting for me and this person as friends.  And we weren't talking about work; she was getting really excited, she was going to buy her first flat; or we were just like, "What's going on in the rest of your --" so it wasn't like we were then talking even more about work in the one break that we had.  But I think that very early experience made me think it is not okay to have friends at work, that almost isn't acceptable if I am ambitious and I want to progress in my career. I personally then really changed my perspective on that because I don't agree with that.  And one of my best friends pretty much, and my closest peers and the people that have been advocates for me and made so much difference to me in all of my life, not just my work life, have come from work.  So, I know this is something you're really passionate about in terms of how this has changed, so I just wondered if you could talk a little bit about this idea of, "Why is friendship at work so important for us?"

Sharmadean Reid: Yeah.  I think with the pandemic, everyone got involved in everyone else's private life and I feel that work and home and friendship and work colleagues all became blended into one.  Fundamentally, you're spending a great deal of your life with these people.  You see them more than you see your family, so why wouldn't you want to like them, is the thing that I always question. 

The example you gave is really interesting, because I've had an experience whereby younger members have been friends at work and that actually has been a bad influence on people, and I feel grateful that I was close enough to my employees to be able to figure that out and understand it and effectively let employees go that were effectively corrupting the other ones.  So, I understand that fear and it does happen.  But I also agree with you that nine times out of ten, you're just chatting! What I've discovered, again, you know what I feel like sometimes when I'm talking about work, I feel like someone's who talking -- I feel like, when you've got siblings and the eldest is complaining about how the younger ones have got it good, right?

Sarah Ellis: Oh, my God, I'm the eldest; you do not need to persuade me.  They have got it good, Sharmadean, that is true!

Sharmadean Reid: Well, it's just my experience, they're more chill, they're more supportive; I am that parent.  My babies, my employees when I was in my first business and early on in Beautystack and The Stack World, they didn't have it good.  I was figuring out what to do, I was like, "Oh my goodness, this has never happened to me before, how do I deal with it?"  I'd never experienced someone corrupt someone else, so what do you do?  Now, as I'm in my second wind of children, so to speak, I'm so much more chill about it.  And in fact, I genuinely believe that a safe space for employees to moan should be allowed. I remember once, one of my team members sent me a screenshot from a WhatsApp group with some of the employees in, which was they were screenshotting something positive that people were saying about me. 

They were saying, "Thank you so much for taking on my feedback last week", because she was saying how I was stressed and it was bleeding into the meetings.  I was coming into the meetings low energy, so then I was being peppy and stuff in the meetings.  But she sent me a screenshot from the WhatsApp group and I said, "Look, I know your intentions were fine, but please never, ever, ever share the WhatsApp group screenshots, because your team need to feel that they can speak freely", and I think the ability to speak freely, and genuinely I don't care if it's positive or negative about me because I'm old enough to be beyond that, they need a safe space to talk, because yeah, sometimes things are crap and you need to talk about them. I think the challenge for a leader or an employer is, how do you allow that communication to flow up to you in a structured way so that you can act on things that are not just niggly, moany things, but are actually genuinely important?  It is really important as the CEO of a small company to have high energy and high morale.  My job is to motivate people.  It is bad if I come on Zoom every day and I'm all gloomy and glum.  That's the sacrifices I have to make to fake it and be peppy all the time!  But I'm really grateful because she was able to say that to me, given that there must have been feedback in these private channels. But I do think private spaces are important.  You need a space to vent, so I don't mind if they're hating on me one week; fingers crossed, they're going to love me the next one!

Sarah Ellis: I'm pretty sure they will be.  And if somebody is listening to this and feeling lonely, so feeling lonely at work, that is actually not a new topic.  It's actually a topic I think we covered about three or four years ago, but it's not going anywhere; and maybe with how we're working, that might even be increasing, certainly with some of the stats that I've seen.  So, maybe you're feeling like you're friendless, it feels like I don't feel like I've got friends. Maybe you've even joined a company -- I always think, and I'm very aware of it for our team in Amazing If, joining a company now is so different. 

You're not going into a place, and I'm a big fan of flexibility and hybrid and I think it makes it a much better place for everybody; but equally, starting at a company where you go to somewhere and you see everyone and they're all sitting around the same place is a very different experience to loads of people who've started new jobs in the past couple of years and maybe never met their colleagues face to face; maybe everything's been over a screen. So I do hear people feeling like, "I've got quite lonely and I don't feel that sense of connection with my colleagues".  Obviously, that's where also people get into things like quiet quitting and just that sense of, "How much do I care and how committed to I feel?"  So, if someone is listening now and that is how they are feeling, do you think then it's about trying to foster those friendships, which could feel a bit uncomfortable or a bit forced; or is it maybe about trying to find communities that you have things in common with, as almost that's a natural place for friendship?  I'm trying to think, what would I do now if I felt lonely?

Sharmadean Reid: My advice, strategy, whatever you want to call it, if you're 23, 24, 25 or even if you're 35 but you've started at a new company, the key thing I would be working on, especially as a woman is, "How can I get visibility to the senior leaders in the business and to my peer group?"  The easiest way to do that is to be the host.  So, we always use this phrase, "be the host", and being the host means you're the central node of information, you're the connector, you're the gathered, and we support those hosts in the workplace in the things that they're doing. So, it might be, okay, you've just joined a company, you don't know anybody, you know that there is a senior person, the CMO for example, and you're like, "How on earth am I going to get in front of the CMO?"  Well, I would organise an internal panel around future trends for Gen Z social media, "I'm a Gen Z person", not me but this imaginary 25-year-old, "I'm a Gen Z person which means I have unique insights into how Gen Zs use social media.  This is absolutely going to be valuable information for my CMO.  I'm going to invite my CMO to talk on a panel about these trends, and I'm going to prep the hell out of it so I'm the information central node", because a CMO will respond differently to, "Will you mentor me?"  There'll be so many requests for senior leaders for mentorship and it can feel sometimes that you're not impacting a lot of people with a quick hit. But if I'm a CMO, senior leader, and a young, amazing, upstart person says, "Hey, will you do this internal panel for junior marketing execs?" I'd be like, "Hell, yeah!"  I want the juniors in my company to develop and do well, but also I want to shortcut my ideas. 

What a better way to communicate what the company strategy is than doing it in a panel to, depending on how big the company is, to 10 or to 100 marketing execs? So, I always say, "Be the host" and I used to do this all the time, from when I was 13 years old.  I was always a popular loner at school, so I moved between different crews.  I never had a set crew of people, I would always sit on a different table.  I'd sit on the footballers' table, on the rude girls' table, on the geeks' table; but what I used to do regularly was host epic parties and I would have so much food and so much drink and the best music.  I had my first party when I was 13!  I was like the legendary party host!  And even today actually, someone told me, "Do you remember that party you had", this party was 14 years ago in Dalston, she was like, "where everyone got thrown out of the building, etc?" I would say do that in the workplace, be the person who's like, "I'm going to organise a panel.  There's so much empty office space right now, I'm going to organise a panel in the kitchen" or, "I'm going to organise a dinner party" or if you're on a graduate programme or are a summer intern at a big bank, why don't you get all of the interns together and say, "Do you want to come out for dinner?"  Be the host.  We support those people in the company with templates, endless templates of what to do. 

So, if you are the ERG leader for the black group at your company, we're like, "Here are black exhibitions you can go to in London right now.  You should email the curator, ask them for a curator talk.  Then afterwards, you should go to this restaurant and these are the things you should ask to start the conversation", and we effectively template it for you. So that to me is the best way to build friendships, build connections, but also get in front of senior leaders, because those skills are completely transferable.  If you can gather people together and you can get them around a mission, that is literally what an entrepreneur does all day every day.

Sarah Ellis: That is such smart advice in so many ways, and as relevant for me now doing what I do as when I first started, and in the FTSE 100 companies that I spent most of my time working in.  So as you say, that's such a transferable and useful talent I think wherever you are in your career, whatever stage you are at; it's very good advice.  And just before we finish, we always ask every expert that we invite on to the podcast just for any final words of wisdom or piece of career advice that you would like to share with our listeners, either something that has really helped you, or something that you keep telling yourself; just a final bit of motivation and inspiration?

Sharmadean Reid: What I would say is in my darkest times, I would always be like, "Just put one foot in front of the other, just send one email, just go to one event", you know what I mean; just one.  And I'm a big believer of, if I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, it doesn't matter how slow, how fast, how deep, how light, things will start to move and things will start to happen.  So that for me is what I always revert back to when I'm just like, "Nothing's happening" or, "I'm not where I want to be" or, "What am I doing with my life?"  Just always put one foot in front of the other.

Sarah Ellis: That's very good advice, and I think I had a tiny meltdown at Paddington Station about two and a half weeks ago, which I always end up talking about these things on the podcast, so our listeners will hear about it in our end-of-year review, no doubt; I always have meltdowns at stations, so last year was at Clapham Junction, this year it was Paddington.  And I think your advice there really helped me, because it wasn't about trying to think, "What do I need to do differently?" or really trying to fix anything, that was all way, way too much for me because I wasn't there. But what I could do was put one foot in front of the other and just be like, "What's one thing I need to do today; one thing that's just going to make me feel like I've made a tiny bit of progress?"

Sharmadean Reid: Exactly.  It's like, "What's the next right thing to do?"

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.  And, Sharmadean, if people want to join The Stack World, and who wouldn't, though I'm guessing can men join or can men not join; is it women exclusively?

Sharmadean Reid: All genders.  We have 6% currently who are not women.  We just tend to create content and communities around the things that are directly related to women.

Sarah Ellis: I was going to say, because actually when I was looking at it and reminding myself, I was like, it feels like yes, it's a space for women; but like lots of content, I think that that would be useful for everyone.  How could people join; where should people go to find out more?

Sharmadean Reid: You can go to thestack.world and sign up; you can have free membership or a premium membership, but there are hundreds of free clubs and events and things to attend.  You can create your profile and introduce everyone to your work and your business and I look forward to seeing your profile on The Stack.

Sarah Ellis: And if you're listening to this, and lots of our listeners will be listening and they'll be in a company where they might think maybe they can experience this for themselves, but they think, "This would be really helpful in my company", and I have seen that and can really imagine how it would be helpful for organisations, what's the best way for them to find out more if they're listening and they're in the role where that might be useful?

Sharmadean Reid: That would be awesome, get your company to pay for your membership.  What you would do is go to our website, and there is button called Corporate Membership, and then we'll get in touch with you and figure out what your needs are.  Some companies want mentorship programmes, events, panels, ERG support; we tailor it to what that company needs.

Sarah Ellis: Brilliant, thank you so much, because I was thinking we're probably not really the organisations you want, but I was like, "I'm just going to do this for everyone in Amazing If for next year", so that's a conversation we'll have after we've finished the podcast!  Sharmadean, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us on the Squiggly Careers podcast.  The conversation has absolutely lived up to and even exceeded my expectations, so thank you. S

harmadean Reid: Thank you so much for having me, see you soon.

Sarah Ellis: So, thank you for listening to our episode about networking with Sharmadean Reid.  I hope that's been practically really useful as well as inspiring too, because I think she manages to do both of those things at the same time, which is incredibly impressive. One question I had for all of our lovely listeners today is, who would you like to hear on the Squiggly Careers podcast in 2023?  Is there an expert that you would love to find out more about; is there a topic that you would really like us to cover?  Please do always send any suggestions or ideas our way; it's helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com.  But that's all for this week and we'll be back with you again soon. 

Bye for now.