#167 Ultimate Goal-Setting Secrets to Elevate Your Executive Presence as a Corporate Leader with Expert Kate Waterfall Hill

Lucy Gernon (00:00.883)
Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of the 360 Leadership Podcast. Today I am joined by somebody who has made me smile from the moment I discovered her on social media. Her name is Kate and she is an amazing leadership coach, author, podcaster and TikTok and Instagram sensation for her creation of Linda the Bad Manager. Kate, you are very welcome to the show. Do you want to say hi and let everyone know who you are and a little bit more about what you do?

Kate Waterfall Hill (00:27.574)
Absolutely. Thanks so much, Lucy, for inviting me on the show. I’m excited to be here, see what we end up talking about today. Two coaches in a room, who knows what might happen. But my background is that, yes, my grey hair tells the story that I’ve been in business and leadership development for over 30 years. Started out in a marketing agency that I joined straight from university and joined the board really quite quickly and was the MD by the time I was 29. We had some big global brands and traveled the world and had exciting, glamorous times.

But after having children, decided I wanted to be a bit more in control of my working life and so set up on my own as a one man band, as a small business management consultant, you could say, working alongside CEOs and founders in agencies and consultancies. And I loved it, you know, helping them devise the business strategy, business improvement, restructuring, succession planning, exit strategies, all sorts of things, and more and more on the HR side of things.

until one day it dawned on me that really what I love doing is nurturing talent and coaching other people to an excellent performance so they can help others elevate their performance too, which I’m sure is what you enjoy about coaching as well. It’s such a lovely experience and a lovely thing to do that really feels like you’re doing meaningful work and helping people in a good way. So that’s what I do now.

Lucy Gernon (01:43.475)
Amazing. Okay, so let’s just back up. So at 29, you were a managing director of a company. how, like, how did you do that so quickly and so young?

Kate Waterfall Hill (01:55.054)
As I said to you before, I do have a bit of a naughty sense of humour sometimes. So I have been known to say to people, I slept my way to the top, but I actually didn’t. I worked my way to the top because me, I was very lucky actually that, you the guy who started the agency in the eighties, he has just got a passion for spotting talent. And he literally within the first, I think three months of me joining said, you’re going to be managing director one day. And I was…

straight out of university. And I wonder whether somehow he decided that was going to happen and then he sort of had to make it happen to make himself feel good. So he, he, no, no, I think I did deserve it, but I thought it was funny that he predicted it so early on in my career, but I think he just, you know, recognized that when you’re a CEO founder, it can be quite hard, it? And you’re looking for, and being aware of the fact that you are going to need to move on one day, you’re going to want to be chairman and be, you know, maybe a bit more strategic and less hands on.

Lucy Gernon (02:31.219)
Imposter syndrome not.

Kate Waterfall Hill (02:53.102)
looking for your successor is probably quite a good idea, but lots of CEO founders don’t do it and end up burning out. So that’s another way we can help them as coaches.

Lucy Gernon (03:03.387)
Amazing. my God. So talk me through then your career. like you’re a marketer, like by profession originally, and then obviously you, you, you slept your way slash worked your way to the top into like the top leadership position. So when did you make, I suppose, like, cause like you’re a marketer and like, I’m a marketer in my business now as well. So how did you make the shift from like marketer to leadership coach extraordinaire?

Kate Waterfall Hill (03:13.838)
you

Kate Waterfall Hill (03:28.334)
Yes, so the bit in between when I was a small business management consultant was working alongside other CEO founders and helping them find their way. And then it really just was a gradual movement over towards this sort of recognising that without good leadership, you know, you can fiddle around with your pricing strategy and your marketing plan and your supply chain as much as you like. without good leadership, it’s still going to struggle.

And so that was the bit that I just found most appealing really, just the intellectual challenge of influencing positive change, of getting people to understand your messaging and to understand the vision and to feel like they’ve got a common purpose and a shared goal. To me, it’s just magic. I remember when I first got promoted to the board at the marketing agency and we would sit around talking about the strategy of the business and what was going on with the clients and the obstacles and the bottlenecks and then the people.

And it was always the people bit that was like, oh, and to me it was just like watching a really great Netflix series, finding out what was going on with the people and developing the good ones and spotting the stars and the talented people, turning around the people who were maybe underperforming and looking at ourselves and saying, actually, have we set them up for success? Have they got the right skills? Have they been trained well? Did they have a good induction when they first arrived? And now do they understand the expectations? Do they get the purpose?

So acknowledging that so much, yes, it’s on the shoulders of leaders to transform businesses or to certainly take them in the right direction. But to me, it’s really exciting and I enjoy it. And I think it’s a really interesting and varied way of working. And what really saddens me is that recently I’ve had some coverage on particularly on TikTok and a little bit on LinkedIn about the change, the generational shift and not

people not wanting to be managers. And it really breaks my heart because with some support, with some training and some coaching, people could, you know, could easily be good managers, but they have, I dare say they’ve seen managers burn out and not be terribly good leaders. And they’re thinking, well, why would I want to do that? I’m going to have somebody on my TikTok just today saying, my supervisor gets paid 75 pence an hour more than me. Why would I want to do that?

Lucy Gernon (05:21.436)
and

Lucy Gernon (05:36.602)
Exactly.

Lucy Gernon (05:45.659)
Yeah, I think that’s such a point, like, and I think, you know, just as you’re saying that that’s exactly why I do the specific work I do, because a lot of it is it’s like leaders are never taught how to lead themselves. They’re taught how to manage people. They’re taught how to do the operations. But actually, if you can manage your own emotions and you can.

you know, portray this personal brand and like actually really take care of yourself. Well, then people are going to want to be that because you’re going to make it look easy. So my question to you on that is like, because obviously that’s the work I do with women on work life balance, women in particular. You work with men and women, though, right? Yeah. Yeah. So what for all of my listeners today who are listening to this and they’re going, oh, my God, yeah, I’m a bad manager. We’ll talk about that in a second. Or I’m not really leading because I’m stressed.

Kate Waterfall Hill (06:23.981)
I do, yeah.

Lucy Gernon (06:35.537)
What’s one small, small shift, because I’m all about action, small tips on the show. What’s one small shift that a listener could implement today to really be that role model, I guess, that’s going to inspire the next generation to want to be a leader.

Kate Waterfall Hill (06:51.438)
For me, it’s about having an intention. And what I mean by that sort of sounds a bit sort of grand and theoretical, but what I mean by that is literally first thing in the morning, get to your desk and stop. Don’t go and look at your emails. Don’t go and jump into the first meeting of the day, get there a bit earlier and spend maybe 10 minutes every morning just saying, what is my intention? How do I want to show up? What’s on my agenda for today? What are the big meetings or what are the big tasks that need to be done?

And how do I want to influence positive change, as I mentioned before? What’s my role in the meeting? What am I there for? What do I want to get out of it? What do want to the other people to know, think, say, feel or do? And just show up with that intention. if you know you’ve got a one-to-one with your team member, don’t just rock up and make it up as you go along.

Literally, you know, preferably plan it even before that. But if all you do is spend 10 minutes before you go into that sort of meeting thinking, what do I want to celebrate with this person? What successes and achievements do I want to acknowledge? What do I want to thank them for? What do I want to understand from them with their challenges? What did they learn? What were the obstacles? What got in the way? How can I help? How can they help somebody else? And just have those sorts of ideas of the sorts of questions you might.

you can tell, I’m a coach and I encourage my clients to coach their people rather than come up with the solutions all the time. But I think the key thing, you want a little, one small thing that everybody could do is spend 10 minutes every day just thinking about how they’re going to show up that day.

Lucy Gernon (08:29.843)
Love that. Absolutely love that. The power is in the reflection. And I’m wondering, right, because this is I have this on my questions list to ask you. Excuse me. Like there’s a huge difference between being a people manager and being a leader. Right. So do you want to explain? Because a lot of the women that I would work with, they want to be a leader, but actually they’re so stuck in the detail, as I’m sure you know, in the weeds and the operations that they can’t get out. So what’s difference between managing people and being an actual leader?

Kate Waterfall Hill (09:00.472)
It’s really about, I’m really sorry, my dog’s just walked in. Can you get her out? I’m on a total forecast, sorry. Thank you. I can hear it scratching at the door. Right, okay, let’s go back. What did you say? What’s the difference between people manager and a leader? Right. So I talk a lot about the sort of three hats that I think people need to wear. And I don’t mean to take one off and put the other one on. I mean, you sort of wear them all at once.

Lucy Gernon (09:03.347)
That’s okay.

We allow organic blips in this show.

Kate Waterfall Hill (09:29.942)
and that is leader, manager, coach. So leader being the person that sets out the vision, the purpose, the common goal, the why, in Simon Sinek’s terms. What is the why? What’s the reason for either the organization if you’re the top of the tree, or what’s the purpose of that team? Or actually if you’re just managing one person, what’s their purpose? What’s their role in life? So that’s the role of the leader. And then the role of the manager. Manager is about setting out the what. So you’re leader with the why, manager with the what.

What are your expectations? What are the deliverables? Let’s talk about what’s a reasonable deadline. What’s the resources you need? What budgets are available? So on and so on. But importantly, not the how. So you’ve got the why, the what, and then the coach part of you enables the how. So the coach part of you is saying, what do you need? What do you see as the risks? What’s the first next step you’re going to take? What do you need from me? Who else could you rely on? What strengths are you going to call on? All those sorts of brilliant coaching questions. So the difficult bit is that people get stuck in the management

management bit about the what, as you said, stuck in the weeds. So the elevating yourself to the leader and then making time to coach is again about that intentionality. It’s about showing up and deciding that’s what you’re going to do. Stopping at the beginning of either every day or every week or every month and saying, what is the purpose? What is the big goal that we want to achieve? And what are we setting out to do as a team? And how can we galvanize ourselves to be excited about that? And I don’t mean the sorts of things that my character, Linda, the bad manager says.

with, you know, do more with less and all that sort of stuff, which totally annoys everybody. It’s actually thinking together about what would join us together, what brings us together as one team. And then if you can make time to coach, then eventually people will problem solve themselves. They will be innovative. They will come up with solutions. They will, you know, find ways of solving things because you’ve coached them to enable them to grow.

and then they grow up underneath you. But if you don’t coach, then you’re going to stay stuck in the management role of telling everyone what to do all the time. You’re in the office and saying, right, this is the problem as I see it, and this is the solution, go away and do it. And then the people are just doing your, know, following your instructions. But if you go in and say, hey, what happened there? What was your sense of how that project went? How would you like to do it again in the future? What did we learn about how it went last time?

Lucy Gernon (11:35.228)
Mmm.

Kate Waterfall Hill (11:57.026)
then they’re solving problems, then they’re learning, then they’re empowered and they’re engaged and they’re more autonomous. And then suddenly you find yourself, you’ve got some free time. I was actually coaching somebody the other day who said, so I’ve done all the stuff that we’ve been talking about, know, delegating and coaching and I’m actually feeling a bit guilty. I haven’t got enough to do. And I said, well, you’ve got exactly. And I said, well, if you’ve got time, then you know what you need to do. It’s the time for strategy. yeah, yeah, yeah. Not just thinking beyond the end of this week, actually thinking, you know, you’re

Lucy Gernon (12:14.675)
You’ve got space to think, imagine that.

Kate Waterfall Hill (12:26.324)
maybe even your three, five year plan.

Lucy Gernon (12:28.753)
Yeah. my God. I love that three hats. That’s really, really powerful. Like really, really powerful. And like, you said, Linda, or Kate, Kate, that’s my daughter’s name as well. As you said, like a lot of managers, like me included being totally vulnerable. Like I’m, you know, I coach women in leadership. I get stuck in the…

Kate Waterfall Hill (12:38.667)
You’re not the first person to call me Linda, don’t worry.

Lucy Gernon (12:53.543)
the manager role when I should be leading as well. We all do. And I don’t believe there’s any leader apart from like the Jeff Bezos, who’s like five years out and all of that. mean, you’re when you’re working, it’s you know, there’s a there’s a balance between all of those hats really and truly unless you’re really the CEO, right? Whatever. But my question to you on that was how like how much time

When do you wear, I know you wear all of the hats, but I know, think it’s Simon Sinek as well says, know, there’s a time for command and control and there’s a time for coaching. So can you tell my listeners when is a good time? When do leaders need to command and control and like be directive? And when is a good time to use coaching?

Kate Waterfall Hill (13:34.862)
It’s a great question, but there’s no easy answer because it depends. So when you’re in an industry where you have to have processes, health and safety legislation, you’re running a factory or a hospital ward, you’ve got to follow things in a certain order. So command and control, generally speaking, is right. You want your nurses and doctors to take some initiative to spot where the patient might be falling off the face of the earth and you’ve got to step in and do something different.

Generally speaking, there are situations that need command control. There are also people who need command control because they are new to the job. So when you get, you know, when you’ve got a new recruit, they’re not going to know what they’re doing. So they’re going to need some direction and support. So they need really, really clear expectations. Maybe somebody showing them the way. And, you know, and then gradually over time as they get more confident and you build confidence in their abilities as well, then you can start drawing back and start coaching.

So it’s, you know, you probably know the theory of situational leadership. That’s, you know, that’s a great one to think of in this situation. You know, where are people in their career? Where are they in the understanding of this particular task? So you might have somebody who’s brilliant at data analysis and you can leave them to it because they know what they’re doing. They’ve been doing that for ages. Then suddenly you give them an extra layer of work, which is to do with reporting.

And with that function, you need to give them a bit more direction. So it depends. It’s not a one size fits all.

Lucy Gernon (15:03.195)
Yeah, absolutely. And I always have a golden rule on that in my mind account. I’m just going to share how I kind of try because I’m obviously qualified coach as well. And coaching literally changed my life. That’s why I left my 20 year corporate career to start my business. My golden rule of coaching is I think it’s like you start small. So I find, if you if you’re, you know, if you’re like me and you’re a bit of control freak and a lot of my women are as well.

You know, we like to know everything that’s happening, but if you can just even start small with coaching. So, yeah, you start with the command and control and you’re you’re in control of everything and you know you shouldn’t be doing it. But even if there’s small windows of opportunity for you to coach, if it’s like non critical, when you get used to doing it with smaller things, it kind of becomes more ingrained then. And as you grow and your team grows and you work together, you’ll start to kind of do it more and more.

Kate Waterfall Hill (15:52.878)
Yeah, absolutely. And the really difficult bit for the leader often is that they’re a high achiever. They’ve got into their role because they’re a good individual contributor. They know their stuff. They may be a subject matter expert. So the temptation is always to, when a team member comes to you and says, what should I do about this? Is to say, oh, you should do that. That’s easy. know, they go and do it. But actually what it doesn’t do is enable them to start problem solving, decision make for themselves, know, find solutions. So actually, although it’s hard, I encourage

Lucy Gernon (15:58.343)
This is it.

Kate Waterfall Hill (16:21.902)
leaders and managers to say, hmm, don’t know what you want to do. What feels right to you? What’s your instinct say? And another really nice question that I, in fact, I was talking about this in a one-to-one yesterday that you can try is, is what did you want me to say? Or what were you hoping I was going to say? And nearly always somebody comes to you and says, what shall I do next? They know what you, they want you to say.

Lucy Gernon (16:27.069)
Yeah.

Kate Waterfall Hill (16:47.638)
might not be the right answer, but at least it gives you an idea of where they’re heading and then you can have a conversation about that.

Lucy Gernon (16:52.851)
So good, so good. Oh my God, I love that question. we’ve been talking obviously about, you know, the different hats with leadership. How do, and I suppose in terms of what’s coming to my mind now is how does a manager, okay, so most of the women I work with would be kind of, you know, associate director, senior manager all the way up, right? But when you’re transitioning between kind of like that director up to kind of executive,

board kind of level, there’s different layers of control you need to release in this area so you can move into this area. So talk to me about your experience about transitioning up the organization and like what people should be letting go of to make room for as they progress.

Kate Waterfall Hill (17:38.88)
Again, it’s a little bit of a tricky question because it depends on the industry and the sector and the business itself or the organisation itself. But I suppose, as you were saying, it’s about starting small and just thinking with that intention. So, you know, that 10 minutes every morning about your intention is a good place to start. How could I not be in the weeds so much today? And the other thing we were talking about, you mentioned about reflection, sort of that first 10 minutes to me is a bit more about forward looking, but actually a really lovely

sort of equal and opposite to that would be to do some reflection at the end of the day to say, did you do? So was I control? I know you said control freak, like to control enthusiast. But if you do have a tendency to control, then it’s reflecting on that, give yourself.

Lucy Gernon (18:16.627)
I’m a freak, so sorry.

Kate Waterfall Hill (18:29.966)
a score maybe at the end of every day, how did I do? Did I let go today? Did I ask the coaching questions or did I just come up with the solutions? Did I spoon feed my team or did I empower them? And sort of doing some reflection on a habitual basis can then lead you to remember to think about it in the moment rather than just at the end of the day. So if you do it for say three weeks, give yourself a score out of 10. How did you do on letting go that day?

then slowly, slowly it becomes more habitual, it gets ingrained in you. And then when you’re in the moment, just about to give somebody the answer, you think to yourself, no, I’m going to have to give myself a low score today if I give this person the answer, I’m going to give myself a better score by coaching them to the answer. So a little by little approach. And the other thing as well, if you’re trying to step up to a board level, often the people I coach are saying, you know, they don’t feel that they’ve got that executive presence, you know, that sort of, that…

being able to be commanding and be heard and listened to and have to say, I guess that’s what you’re hearing particularly from women in the boardroom, because I think sometimes it’s really, really hard for women, not all women, but. And to that, I would say maybe build in some more time on a weekly or monthly basis where you’re taking some time out to properly think strategically and think about how you’re going to affect really meaningful change, not just little twiddly bits around the edges.

But actually, how are you going to either simplify or to make what you do, you know, make sure that the teams working on the priorities, the important things that are going to shift, make a real difference to the team or the organization rather than just as I say, sort of just tweak little tweaks here and there. So spending some time on a monthly basis, half a day, maybe offsite on your own or with a teammate or with your team, actually debating that and discussing it as a group.

is another way to just feel like you’re not, you know, before you know where you are in your December again. gosh, here we are, here we are again. Yeah, so taking some time regularly, book it in your diary, block it out and it’s corny but it’s true, time blocking is really helpful.

Lucy Gernon (20:23.207)
This is it.

Lucy Gernon (20:32.243)
100%. So guys, if you’re multitasking, I know you are, come back to me because this is so important. Like Kate has literally told you exactly what you need to do to be more strategic. And I know most of you are not actually going to do it, but I invite you to really listen to this again, because I do really want to dig into this a little bit more, because obviously it’s so aligned with everything I teach as well in terms of reflection. OK, so we hear this. Everything you’re saying is like, you know, everyone says it. We need to reflect more. You need to be more strategic. We need to book in time.

Let’s go back to the why. Why is it so important that leaders actually take the time to reflect and to do that like strategic time blocking in advance?

Kate Waterfall Hill (21:13.528)
because if you don’t, you’ll end up just doing your emails and going to meetings.

Lucy Gernon (21:17.277)
There we go. Boom. Did we hear this? Did we all hear case? Correct.

Kate Waterfall Hill (21:22.19)
And that’s what it is, isn’t it? I had a report from Calendly yesterday or the day before telling me how many hours I’d spent in meetings this year. Last year it was just horrendous. But that’s partly it’s my job, isn’t it? But yeah, exactly. But when I talk and I do team coaching as well as individual coaching and so often they say to me, we spend loads and loads of time in meetings.

Lucy Gernon (21:33.96)
I know.

Lucy Gernon (21:39.219)
You kind of have to do your job too.

Kate Waterfall Hill (21:51.252)
And I say, so what are the meetings for? And they say, well, you know, we update each other on what we’re doing and, you know, how far we’ve got with the projects. It’s quite, you sometimes it’s quite interesting to know, you know, what each other are doing. And I said, well, you are you collaborating on that? Is there a sort of creative input, decision-making, unblocking of obstacles? No, no, not really. No, we’re just, yeah, we’re just updates. And I said, well, you know, could you not share the updates in another way? well, we do, because we have, you know, John’s email every week that gives us the update on what we’re doing.

Lucy Gernon (22:10.995)
state.

Kate Waterfall Hill (22:21.55)
And I say, so, and you’re talking about it as well. Yeah. Yeah. Now you say it like that. We could maybe not do that. And then I say, okay, well, let’s carve out some time as the leader to think about what you want to get out of each meeting. So before you go into a meeting, before you accept an invitation, work out what it’s for, you know, what’s your role, what’s the purpose, what do you want to get out of it, what does somebody want to get out of you? And then if you’re the manager of the meeting, if you’re calling the meeting,

Really, what’s the intention? What’s the point? Why do you need to, you because that’s a lot of man hours. If you’ve got every, you know, got eight people in a room for an hour or two, you know, that’s a whole day.

Lucy Gernon (22:59.187)
Yeah. And that’s cultural though, right? And I think I think personally, like because I worked in corporate, only left in 2020 big multinationals, all all the meetings and all the meetings. But I would have been pretty good at declining them. But a lot of people weren’t right. And what I used to do was exactly what you said. I would reach out to a meeting organizer. I was I’m so.

mean with my time because time is your most valuable asset on this planet. You can earn more money. You can never get time back. So I’m like super rude to my time. And I remember I used to remember I emailed one. I’ve told this story before, but it was a Friday evening. There was a meeting, the dreaded meeting at like four p.m. on a Friday. Who does that? And it was with somebody in the States. So was earlier for them. And there was this big, you know, who had about this project. Everyone had to be on the call. And I was like, no, I’m.

getting my nails done in my own head. I actually want to get my nails done. I’ve never left on a Friday to get my nails done. I’m not canceling my appointment. So my boss was like, you need to go. And I said, I can’t. It was the hardest thing I think I ever did that time. I was like, I can’t come to this meeting because I have something else on personal as if, you know, feeling guilty for doing something outside of work. And I said to her, look.

I’m going to contact the organizer. I’m going to give her the information. Now, I felt sick doing this. Being really honest, I felt sick because I was like, my God, she’s going to think I’m not, you know, I’m not. don’t care. But I really did care. Long story short, this big meeting that ended up going ahead was a waste of time. I had given my update in advance, which was literally two sentences, by the way. I actually remember writing it. And the moral of the story is I didn’t go to the meeting and nothing happened. And I think that’s the thing is that you’ve got to kind of remind yourself that

meeting culture is was when we didn’t have the likes of teams and Slack and all of that. Whereas now we’ve got so many more tools, right, to be able to do it. So how do you recommend like, cause I see it in my company now, I don’t really do meetings. have a team of about seven now and we communicate primarily on Slack, which was totally new for me, like not to be in all of these meetings and it works wonderfully well. How can companies who are stuck in that meeting culture.

Lucy Gernon (25:11.814)
move away from it.

Kate Waterfall Hill (25:14.03)
think it’s probably going to be something as simple as having a checklist. having a reason to have the meeting. So you could literally have 10 points on does this meeting satisfy more than three of these things? Is it, are you building relationships and building trust? Are you collaborating and being creative? Are you making decisions and blocking obstacles? Whatever it may be, making decisions. Have I said that already? And so on and so on. And if it’s none of those things, if it can be done

Lucy Gernon (25:17.115)
Okay.

Kate Waterfall Hill (25:43.286)
in another way, then do it in another way, or do the update or whatever it is, the status update in a different way and meet anyway, but for shorter and have a three point agenda. And the three point agenda can look like this. you could, if you wanted to go around the room with this three point agenda and say, what are your three? And it stops the people who are too verbose talking too long and it stops the people who are quite not contributing. And you might want the really quiet people to…

Lucy Gernon (26:07.366)
love

Kate Waterfall Hill (26:10.388)
If you’ve got introverts or people who are neurodivergent, they might want to do it on a post-it note or submit it by email. That’s fine too. But the three points are what successes have you had or maybe one success? What’s your top highlight? Just one. What challenges have you had? Maybe what have you learned as well? That would be useful. And then the last one is help. And the reason I say help rather than what help do you need is because it could be a two-way street. So on the help one, it could be…

I’m short of resources this week, can I have some help? Or I don’t know how to do this thing, can I have some help? Or it might be, I’ve worked out how to do this fantastic thing that’ll save everybody loads of time, can I show you? So it might be offering help. But the idea of having help on the agenda, it destigmatises the fact that you need help.

Lucy Gernon (26:46.977)
Loves us.

Lucy Gernon (26:56.243)
my God, I love that. And it just gives it a lovely structure, really clear, simple, but powerful structure that’s not centered around voices talking with no clear direction.

Kate Waterfall Hill (27:07.926)
Yeah, and it gives people the chance to celebrate successes and showcase their achievements. And also if you can’t come, you if you’re not going to be there, you can still send your three and then you’ve got a record. And then, you know, at the end of the year or in your performance appraisal, can say, look at the, you know, if you meet weekly, look at the 50 things that I achieved this year.

Lucy Gernon (27:27.411)
Oh my God, such good advice. Oh, I absolutely love that. OK, so moving on, I wanted to ask you something you said earlier and my brain got so distracted because I feel like I could talk to you for at least two hours, but we won’t do that. We won’t kill everybody. One to ones. OK, so you know this anyway, but a lot of the leaders use their one to one time to either speak about themselves and how busy they are or operational stuff. What should a one to one look like in an ideal

Kate Waterfall Hill (27:40.384)
You

Lucy Gernon (27:57.191)
world.

Kate Waterfall Hill (27:59.308)
Well, actually, you could use that three point agenda that I just described. But if you’ve got a little bit more time, then you can stretch it to five or six points. So it might be, you yeah, what are you proud of? What are the challenges and what did you learn? I love those two. Also, what ideas do you have? What suggestions have you got? What questions have you got? And what do you need from me? Those are the five. Yeah.

Lucy Gernon (28:19.011)
Love it. Love it. And I love to always add in as well about your own development, their own development as well, because I think sometimes, you know, I remember I used to have team members, know, team members can come out of nowhere and go, leaving. And that should never be a surprise to you. You should always know that. So if you’re talking to your team and you’re one to one about what your career aspirations and they’re not afraid to tell you, you know what, don’t want to work with you forever because they actually want your job. I believe as a leader, it’s your job to

Kate Waterfall Hill (28:23.864)
Yeah. Yeah.

Lucy Gernon (28:46.109)
create that safe space. So then it allows you to move on to right. I always used to do that in my one-to-ones. I think it’s so important. Would you agree?

Kate Waterfall Hill (28:52.738)
Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes it’s about giving people the vocabulary to be able to ask because sometimes people think, I don’t see a career trajectory for me here, so I’m just going to look for another job, find one and resign. And as you say, it comes out of the blue to the manager. But if people generally know that the way to do that isn’t to go in and bang your fist on the table because that’s not going to go down well with the manager either, but to go in and say, hey, do know, I’m really

keen for progression. I’m keen for additional challenge. I’d like more money or a promotion, more responsibility. How do I go about doing that? What’s the path for me? Because not all managers and leaders will, you know, the ones who’ve been coached will offer that. But if you have a bad manager who doesn’t listen or doesn’t recognise that that should be part of the conversation, it can be a gentle nudge in the right direction. Hey, I’m here. I’m keen.

Lucy Gernon (29:38.939)
Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Kate Waterfall Hill (29:51.884)
What do need to do? And then when there’s a conversation at the higher level saying, know, does anybody deserve to be promoted or anybody in line for additional responsibility, you’re at the top of their mind. So it’s worth saying it. And it doesn’t need to be a confrontational conversation. can just be a what’s the process.

Lucy Gernon (30:09.041)
Yeah. I love that. And I think it’s really important as well, like to remember, I think as a leader, I think this is really important, actually, guys. So if you’re multitasking, please come back to me is that sometimes. And I know I definitely would have been guilty of this is your own money mindset and your own limiting beliefs can actually stop you from progressing your team members because of your own lens and belief system. And it’s so unfair because I remember one of my manager, one of my managers, well,

Yeah, she was my boss, but she was talking to me about someone else on the team because, you know, they were below us. And I remember she was saying, she’s looking for a 10 % pay increase, you know, as if like, and she was like, no, I’m not giving her that I’m going to give her eight. And I mean, that’s just like the difference in 2 % for somebody who was probably on 50k is is nothing to accompany, whereas she was just trying to exercise her own.

like money mindset blocks and way of being. And I just think you just need to be really careful of that as a leader in that. Yes, you have financial acumen responsibilities. Yes, all of that. But you also like, excuse my French, but like, don’t be a bitch. Don’t be Linda.

Kate Waterfall Hill (31:20.014)
Yeah, this is true. I did a TikTok video recently where I talk about, yeah, so Linda’s saying, I just remember what it was, Linda’s, yeah, yeah.

Lucy Gernon (31:30.941)
So, sorry, just back up. Guys, Linda the Bad Manager, let’s just move to her and explain who she is for anyone who doesn’t actually know your character and then tell us.

Kate Waterfall Hill (31:35.872)
yeah. yeah, of course. Of course, of course. Yeah. So Linda, band manager is my alter ego on social media. She’s a sort of, she’s a hapless manager, I would say, rather than willfully. She can be sometimes willfully negligent, but I think most of the time it’s ignorance, it’s lack of training, lack of role model and no self-awareness or self-reflection. So I do little skits as Linda.

talking off camera to my imaginary team. And I’ve got a boss who’s the founder, and then I’ve got a team of people who I manipulate and steal their ideas and don’t turn up for their performance appraisals on time and that sort of thing. So I had one the other day where I’m talking to somebody off camera saying, no, I’m not going to give you the little pay rise that you’ve asked for. I’d rather risk you going and me having to re-recruit and train somebody else and lose all your experience. Why is that my strategy?

Well, just because I like to feel like I’m the powerful one and I’ve decided you’re not going to get a pay rise, so it’s a no. So no, no actual strategic reason. And, you know, she didn’t talk fairly and openly, which is what, you know, what obviously a manager should do. And the outcry on TikTok was twofold. One was that’s exactly what my manager did and that’s why I left and lots and lots and lots of those. And then a few from managers and business owners saying, well, I can’t give a pay rise to everybody who asked for one. So that’s just, you know, it’s just ridiculous.

Lucy Gernon (32:37.64)
That’s it.

Kate Waterfall Hill (33:01.538)
And I sort of, you and I get that. And I did a subsequent video saying, I get that you can’t always give a pay rise to everybody who asks because there are budget constraints or you’ve got a very transparent pay program. if you give the pay rise to one, you’ve got to give it to everybody and you might not be able to afford that. And then, you know, there might be other, you know, budgetary reasons or restrictions from on high. might be a head count freeze. And I get all those things. What the video was trying to do wasn’t to say,

she should have given her the pay rise or him the pay rise. It should have been, she should have had a proper conversation with them about not being able to give her the pay rise. if there were budgetary reasons, if there were performance reasons, if there were fairness reasons, whatever the reasons were, she should have discussed it. So to my mind, it’s not necessarily about whether you’re being tight with money or not. It’s actually just don’t be tight with the explanation. Be open and honest.

Lucy Gernon (33:56.348)
Yes.

Kate Waterfall Hill (33:58.634)
and tell people the decision making process and if there are gaps in their performance then talk about that and you know maybe the gaps are because they haven’t been trained properly, maybe the gaps are because they’re overloaded with work, maybe they’ve got you know processing issues which means they need reasonable adjustments being made but unless you’re aware and open and listening with curiosity and asking good questions you’re not going to know that you’re just going to make judgments about people and everyone that gets frustrated then.

Lucy Gernon (34:07.283)
Mmm.

Lucy Gernon (34:27.057)
Yeah, so the more you’re speaking, the more I’m really I hope my audience are really realizing, like, how can you do all of this? All of this fantastic advice that Kate is sharing as a leader and also do your day to day job. But you just can’t do it. So I think my invitation for you from this podcast, guys, is to really look at like what kind of leader do you want to be and like what you need to let go of to be that leader. So that’s what I would say. OK, so we’re coming up to the end of our time together. But let’s talk about your book. Let’s talk about your book.

here’s one prepared earlier. She’s just showing me on the screen. It’s called…

Kate Waterfall Hill (34:57.902)
you

Kate Waterfall Hill (35:01.774)
How to lead?

Lucy Gernon (35:04.593)
Yeah, and Carlos, you released a book, I believe, was it just before Christmas or January? And how’s it doing?

Kate Waterfall Hill (35:08.93)
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, just before Christmas. Yeah, really good. Thank you. Yeah, I’ve got an ebook version that’s on my website and then the paperbacks on Amazon. And the feedback that I’m getting and the reviews on Amazon have been great. And it’s been really… Who have you written a book? Not yet. You’ve got…

Lucy Gernon (35:26.363)
Not yet, but I am in the process. Like I’ve started, which is so scary. Yeah, I’ve started this year in the works. You heard it here first guys.

Kate Waterfall Hill (35:30.646)
You’ve got one in you. It is scary thing and it’s unusual because nearly everything else I do is sort of live, right? So you get live feedback. Just before this, I did a workshop for a company online and at the end the manager stayed on. That was really good. Thank you so much. Can’t wait for you to do another one next month. Brilliant. You get the full amount of feedback. With this, you put your heart and soul into it for months and months and months.

And then you sort of press go and it’s got to go and that’s it. You can’t change it. can’t fiddle with it. And you have to wait and see what happens. So when the feedback starts coming in, it’s really like, is it all right? Is it all right? But the feedback has been easy to read, easy to apply. Going to have it on my desk every day so I can just dip in and out of it. And that was my intention. The intention was for it to be.

Lucy Gernon (36:01.255)
And you’ve no idea.

Lucy Gernon (36:17.043)
for the ends.

Kate Waterfall Hill (36:21.608)
Yeah, you know, read it all in a couple of sittings. It’s not a difficult book to read. It’s, know, it’s easily, it’s nicely laid out. It’s got some nice sections to it. Self-reflection pieces in there. It’s, you know, it’s really self-explanatory. But if you think, gosh, what did she say about how to give feedback without crushing the soul of the other person? no, I can find that quite easily. And you can have a little look and then go and give you the feedback. So yeah, I’m hoping it’s a live book that will make people’s lives easier.

Lucy Gernon (36:50.861)
amazing. And where can people find the book, I know, guys, we will link to Kate’s website and everything in the show notes, but where is your book available right now?

Kate Waterfall Hill (36:58.562)
Yeah, so my website’s waterfallhill.co.uk. So that’s where you can find everything, links to everything, including my free resources and the book. So that’s probably the best place to go. And then you can choose whether to go ebook or paperback on Amazon.

Lucy Gernon (37:12.849)
Amazing. And obviously go follow Kate on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, follow her all the places. If you’re not following Kate, her videos crack me up. Crack me up. You and what’s the girls name? HR manifesto and corporate Natalie. I’m just like, so funny. So good. OK, so we’ve spoken about the book now. have just two questions before I let you go, because I know you’re busy. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? And I ask my guests this all of the time. It’s usually from.

Kate Waterfall Hill (37:25.484)
Yeah, yeah, Kofranath was good.

Lucy Gernon (37:42.395)
be anything, doesn’t have to be work related.

Kate Waterfall Hill (37:46.258)
do you know, yeah, I haven’t thought about this until you’ve just asked this question. So let me have a little think. It’s the best bit of advice. I think is actually be kind. And it was years and years ago when I was working in the agency and it’s all really high pressure and high energy and you’ve got the clients and we were working in PR. So we had the journalists as well in the media who wanted their information by set deadline. It was all quite high energy and actually

Lucy Gernon (37:52.499)
Okay.

Kate Waterfall Hill (38:15.416)
The best thing you could do is be kind to your colleagues, be kind to your clients actually and look after them, but actually also be kind to yourself. So I think probably that in a nutshell.

Lucy Gernon (38:25.773)
love that. And what do success, balance and happiness mean to you?

Kate Waterfall Hill (38:33.806)
Do know that Maya Angelou quote, which I’m gonna butcher now, because I haven’t got it in front of me, but the gist of it is, success is liking what you do and liking how you do it, something like that. Probably got that wrong. Can I get it right?

Lucy Gernon (38:46.693)
Mm, love it. Yeah, you can. She’s going to get it right. He’s going to get it right. So while Kate is getting it right and just doing a really quick Google, I am just going to summarize kind of what we went through. So we’ve gone through so much today, guys. We will have the transcript available for this podcast. If you go to lucygarnon.com forward slash podcast, you’ll be able to find the episode there. Obviously, wherever you’re listening to the podcast right now, you’ll be able to get the link to Kate’s website, her book.

all of the things in the show notes and go and follow Kay on TikTok and Instagram. And she’s just launched a podcast as well called How to Lead. So you’ll get that as well wherever you listen to podcasts. OK, have we got the quote? What’s the quote?

Kate Waterfall Hill (39:26.296)
We have got the quote. It is, success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it. And I just think, I think that’s a really nice summary.

Lucy Gernon (39:33.829)
Okay, amazing. Well, listen.

On that note, Kate, we will leave it there. Thank you for being an incredible guest. really hope that we continue to cross paths on social media. And I look forward to, yeah, keeping in touch. And don’t be a stranger on the podcast, guys. I think we’ll definitely have to have Kate back on. I know they’re going to love your episode. So thank you so much for being a wonderful guest.

Kate Waterfall Hill (39:56.078)
You’re very welcome. Thank you very much for having me. It’s been great to chat to you today.

Lucy Gernon (40:02.387)
amazing.