HR & Redefining Leadership: Andrea Gageik, Chief People Officer, Fagerhult Group

Welcome to the How HR Leaders Change the World Podcast. I'm your host Cecilia Crossley and each week we explore how the work of HR leaders is also creating positive social change, contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Goals which the world's companies are increasingly understanding the urgency of achieving and investing in the action required. If you'd like clear, actionable ideas for how you can use the power of your role to affect change in your company, you're in the right place. Following a corporate upbringing, I've founded the Social Enterprise from babies with love. We provide services to HR leaders and through this work I realised that HR professionals and social entrepreneurs are working in the same areas or be it in different ways. So we created this podcast to share knowledge on steps we can take through the work of HR. In my opinion, if you're an HR professional, you are also a changemaker and this podcast will provide you with examples of how. By sharing the successes of some of the world's most inspiring HR leaders, you can frame your work in the context of positive change, implement brilliant ideas and feel absolutely wonderful about doing so. Hello HR Changemaker, welcome to the new episode of How HR Leaders Change the World. And I guess today, well, she is lighting up the world. It is Andrea Gagaiic, who is chief people officer at Farghold, a lighting company for professional locations. So you may not have the lights in your home, but you've probably been somewhere. It's that lighting up the world that is one of the reasons I'm very, very happy that Andrea is joining us today. So welcome to you, Andrea. Please may I invite you to introduce yourself. Hello, this is you. I'm very happy to be here with you today to describe a little bit the context of the Farghold Group and see change and transformation journey. We are going through from a product company into one that offers services and solutions for smart buildings and smart cities. And how I support the organization to grow into this challenge of the lighting industry. Fantastic. Well, let's dive in. The first question that we would love to hear your thoughts on is as an HR leader whose influence creates social change, what do you feel has been your most impactful action to date? To me, leaders need to transform first. So actually, they set the tone for the organization. And what has been very impactful is our process to come to a new leadership guidelines. So actually, what does best leadership look like? And that was a bottom-up process, which we did with 14 talents from our different brand companies. You need to know that we are very decentralized organization with 12 light, different lighting brands and different sectors, as well as two technology companies who build the solutions for smart cities and smart buildings. They helped us to look at leadership from different angles. And then we continued to work amongst that with the global leadership team as well. And we have come up with six leadership guidelines. And the first one is people first, which means with best leadership and let's say a kind and diverse environment, we will achieve our goals and our mission. The second one is confidence to grow where you have a lot of influence from the psychological safety aspect that people can speak up. And from the same currency is actually your own confidence to speak up. The third one is lead myself and others, which is very much about self-awareness and self-management before you lead others. And then we have a strong dreaming part in it. So it's dreaming as a curious creator, which means you dream beyond the possible and don't put immediate judgment on ideas. It is about the hoods, which is a Swedish word and means you can read in between the lines. So it needs a lot of being present in this moment and using the your empathy to connect to others. And with this you can have much more meaningful discussions. And the last one is actually the courage to challenge the status quo because we come from an industry which is a very traditional manufacturing driven as a product company. And when we do things differently, we need to ask ourselves, of course, is it still good what we are doing or do we need to do that differently? And how can we combine our tradition with new ideas? So that in an nutshell, I would say has been the most impactful action during the last year. Thank you so much, Andrea. There is so much in those six guidelines that I love. Like, each one I was thinking, oh, no, that's my favourite. No, that's my favourite. And at the end, I loved the one about challenging the status quo because like, that's a leadership guideline in such a positive way because I remember I think in the past that could be seen as a criticism if you challenge the status quo, you're a troublemaker. You know, but now it's like, I know this is a place of innovation and that's what we need to do in order to thrive in business. But just may I ask you to repeat the word in Swedish? I think it was Pillen number four. It's LiHood. And that we don't really so we were very busy to find a similar word in English but we couldn't. And since we are in a Swedish organisation, we decided that we stay with this word actually to create interest and curiosity because people will ask question, what does it mean? And it's actually reading in between the lines and you know, said you have your antenna up for the scenes which actually haven't been said. Yeah, that is so powerful. And how funny that I, it picked my curiosity in asking about the way that gets me to learn the new words and I'm sure for all our listeners it's like, oh, what was that? You know, not perhaps not speaking Swedish to learn what it is but that in between the lines is so how interesting in the context of us all using AI more. And yet there's the human bit that's in between the lines that AI won't be able to catch and value in the magic in there. I think that's a really, really interesting, yeah, LiHood. I see I'm struggling to find the words. It's the magic power of human empathy, I would say. And so it's more than, I mean, what you can put into an exo-sheet or into logical, interlogical ideas actually. And coming back to your point of such challenges, such as quo, and that is also a thing we keep ourselves very busy with because what we want is more intellectually bads but what we don't want is social friction. So it puts conflict into a totally new concept far as well. I must ask you more about that because it feels very pertinent to the time we're in with the number of elections around the world this year and feeling like many of them are quite fractious processes that communities are going through. How do you manage that balance of, yes, introducing different opinion and perhaps conflicting opinion into conversation but without fallouts across colleagues or teams? I mean, it's not easy and I would say it's a process. So I think whenever you come with good intentions, I don't want to win necessarily but you want to come up with a win-win in stats and it's a little bit more easy and it comes to the point. I mean, you can have an opinion and I respectfully listen to it. I like it, I don't like it but at least I give you the proper time to express yourself and listen and then you listen to my opinion and very often maybe we need to take a step back and lift ourselves one step higher and sink for the greater good of the company and what is the best solution then. So that very often helps and then finally, tying it back to myself, I mean, it's knowing about your own stress triggers, what brings you into stress, recognizing this and actually be conscious in managing yourself and maybe you don't want to something by listening to others, but the aspect you haven't saw about. Yeah, and I was thinking also in listening to you there about bringing the Lee Hoop guideline in action as well as relevant, I would imagine in many such conversations. Fantastic and I'm feeling like perhaps in a few years, like there's more questions that I have for example to see if you have, can think of like some favourite stories around where those guidelines are really supported, progression of a project or innovation of a new product or something, but I feel like there's more of that to come ahead. Would I be right in thinking that that's relatively recently, you implemented the guidelines? Just now, I mean, they are fresh off the press, so we are implementing them now in the different brand companies and I mean, if I see the transformation or journey, the organisation is in, so we are more at the beginning than at the end of it. Yeah, no such end, I'm sure, but I'll park those for next time in a few years time, but let's stay with the future because we always like to talk about what's exciting, what's exciting for the HR profession right now and what excites you for the profession in thinking about the future. To me, as you said, you know, the world is so swiftly changing. I mean, we see the political environments, the elections, we see artificial intelligence, I mean, everything around us is turning quickly and to me, our learning becomes the new outperforming of organisations. So what excites me is actually to build a learning organisation that starts to think more outside in, so you know, observe the environment, the macro environment and, you know, decide what is relevant for us as an organisation. It's diversity of thoughts, so I mean, when we only have people around us who think the same way as us, I mean, we will never come up with business innovation. And you know, as I said, you know, less friction, less social friction. And then it's also, I mean, the lighting industry is one where you have a lot of lighting experts and what do they dislike is not having answers. So, you know, they have always been the expert. So to come to an environment where allow myself to do mistakes and fail and learn from it, that excites me a lot to bring this into the organisation gives this permission actually to people and teams. Could I ask how you're doing that? Because I believe that will relate to many listeners working in different markets where the historical norm is that there is a technical expertise and if you don't know the answer, it means you're not good at your job. I'm speaking quite clearly there, but you know what I mean, that I recognise that from places decades ago that I've worked. And how does somebody go about shifting that culture? What steps are you taking? I mean, you know, we come from many different angles and it starts with our core values where we have the coolest creator is one of our core values where we do workshops with people. It's about bringing workshops of the leadership guidelines into the organisation as well. And then it's our D&I, our diversity and inclusion agenda where in the awareness, education, and learning how to learn and those elements, especially around the girls, mindset and be based ourselves a lot on the concepts of Karl Drack, that is something what we actively train in organisations. And then, I mean, in the end, it's a question of consequences. So if I see, you know, people where we don't get along with in the organisation, it's mainly due to behaviours that we have problems and not due to performance. Usually, you know, if people are willing, you can do something around it. And if you're not punished for doing a mistake, but it's taken as a leave or discussion, actually to speak about what is your learning, how can we do that differently? This is by, you know, it's really a drop by drop approach coming from different angles. That is my belief anyway in all the changes we do, it will not be a big bang solution, but it's, you know, I call it the fruit fly approach. So you put little fruit flies everywhere and whoever had a fruit fly in their kitchens, I know that, you know, the population gets bigger all the time and that is the whole behind it. This episode is sponsored by Physiac. Physiac gives organisations a workforce AI edge, helping leaders drive productivity, performance and agility in the face of change. As a global leader in AI-powered people analytics, workforce planning and compensation allocation, Physiac leverages its real-time people data platform to harness the transformative potential of people and work data, combining both to enable smarter workforce decisions and elevate performance across teens. Physiac proudly serves over 60,000 customers across 75 countries, including enterprises like BASF, Amazonic, Experian, Sonoffie, eBay and Ford Motor Company. To discover more about how Physiac can transform your organisation, visit physiac.com. That's visiir.com. I'll put the link in the show notes for you and huge thanks to Visier for supporting how HR leaders change the world. Yeah, what a fun analogy of how it happened to me. I don't want it. I wanted rid of them, but yes, the little drop analogy as well. I certainly resonate. That comes up a lot on this podcast, the seemingly small things that add up to a significant whole. Thank you, Andrea. It's exciting future ahead in all that change for sure. We'd love to ask a little bit more about you, if that's all right, as much as you're happy to share with us. We'd love to learn about you personally as well as professionally. In particular, ask if there's any area of social or environmental injustice that you care about and see that your role as a chief people officer is creating some space through your profession, through your day to day to do list, to connect the two and affect change for what you care about. Of course, I'd be female in a leadership position and I mean, and a mother at the same time. Of course, this is something which plays a crucial role for me. How can we create more gender balanced leadership teams, which if I look in the follow-up group and wherever you have technical environments, it is a little bit more tricky to get this achieved. But this is something really what I'm driving for, especially as females might have different perspectives also to certain situations. How can you balance your family duties with your career and what kind of inclusive environment with flexible work arrangements where necessary do we need to create here? And then there is a second one and that is that in management teams, we have the tendency to give those loud voices a lot of attention and those people or personality styles were not that extra-broad and have made it more difficult to speak up. See, very easily you can run over them. So I really try consciously to involve those people and their observations and their ideas as well. So for those who don't easily speak up. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing those passions and that element of your life outside of work as well. And from babies with loves, cutting edge guide to family-friendly workplaces, the 2020-25 guide is coming out on the 5th of March, and I will be sure to share that with you because it touches on the areas of ways of working that you mentioned there, of course, including flexible working in recognising return to work in particular after, apparently, and lots of other support mechanisms and things to think about too. It's full of practical examples of companies, what they've done, examples from the last year. We do that guide annually to share the latest news. But also, how did they do it? What was hard? What did that company learn and therefore might they recommend to others? To make it easier, I think, for everyone else that is building that balance as you spoke about, or the integration, the word balance sometimes gets, yeah, I see some people say it's not about work-life balance, it's about life integration, like it's a change in language that I hear people talking about now. And very honestly, I'm a mother of twins, and if I hadn't had a boss who supported me actually to lift this kind of integration, and we had always a strong belief in me that I would be able to manage all of this, I would not have been succeeded, so it's really also about having a strong mentor and supporter in your back. Yeah, that's lovely to hear about your twins, by the way. I'm busy times, I'm sure. Certainly in the early days, or probably throughout, I wouldn't know, but yeah, lovely to hear. Well, you've mentioned inclusion a few times, even from those leadership guidelines at the very outset, and we do like to include any particular programs or approaches that you feel have been most successful or you're most proud of in the area of diversity, equity and inclusion as part of each of these conversations, because of course they have significant impacts beyond the four walls of any organisation. Are there any particular standout to you from across your career that you feel have created a more inclusive environment at work? Yeah, we are for the time being with a strong diversity and inclusion rollout and agenda for the next two to three years. If I look at culture, leadership and diversity and inclusion, it comes to my mind at Las Copcó, I mean, so things they are doing in a very professional and good way, and I'm sure there are many other companies out there as well. But in the way we are doing it, because I really have struggles actually to find our purpose for DNI, because gender balance leadership teams is important, but I thought it's not enough. And for us, we came up with the diversity and inclusion as innovation driver, and it's not a tip in the restaurant, it's not an HR hobby, it's really a business integrated subject, and what we are doing there is actually to make it scalable. We have built an HDNI awareness videos, and I'm super happy that I could get our group management, our senior leadership. They are all actors in those videos, so we didn't take any external actors, but you all see us in those videos, which is about why does DNI ometta and how do we learn and psychological safety and biases and, you know, infancy. So that is something that we spread out in the organization. And then as a next step, we put leaders into an emotional mastery, because they have to do an infancy checkup. So they learn about, you know, how good are they at switching perspectives? Can they maintain focus in conversations, how self-aware are they, and are they adapting to needs of others? And that is very interesting, very interesting questionnaire is the result. So sometimes leaders are disappointed about the results they are getting, and then they say, well, the machine only can give you back what you put into the machine. And then we have workshops around that, and we do a lot on inclusive leadership education. So it's combined with the infancy checkup. And once we have done this, we will go by brand by brand company into inclusion service, actually, to ask specific questions about the inclusive environment and how safe they feel, and will then start to really work with the brand companies on their specific items. So that is the journey for the next, let's say, two to three years. Yeah, I've never heard of an empathy checkup before. I love that. May I ask how frequently your colleagues do that exercise? Well, for the time being, they do it when they do the inclusive leadership training. So it's combined with the training. But I personally have done the training now two to three times because I run it with the brand companies, and then I repeat this empathy checkup and you can see your figures moving as a percentage on each floor moving. And it's a little bit, where do you put your focus area as well on? So it's a little bit like muscle training, I would say. So you know, you focus on something and pay more attention and practice as more and things get more conscious. Yeah. Thank you so much. I mention it because empathy comes up a lot on this podcast as a foundation for so much change. I don't want to drive it in multiple directions and I'm always interested in what are the practical steps that anyone in a large complex organization can take to create an empathetic workforce in organization. However, whatever language they might use around that theme. And yeah, I hadn't, maybe it's already happening in many places in the detail that I don't get to see. But it sounds so practical and doable. It's very practical and you get a booklet and so you wherever your scores are, you get recommendations of what you could do more of. So it's a very practical handout and I find so it's discussion with leaders very from on that. Yeah, brilliant. Well, perhaps that's a new idea for somebody listening who's working in this space also. My final question, Andrea, you've been, you've liked the world and you've lit up my day and we've already come to the final question that we'd like to ask you. It's our short question at the end, which people tell me as the hardest because it's short. But we would like to ask if you could just have one wish, one action you would like to see everybody in HR take to create positive change. What would your one wish be? Oh, is that is called a carriage, I would say? And why is that when it comes to leadership, when it comes to people in culture and diversity inclusion, it's not so easy for numbers on it. And you know, numbers usually have business credibility. And so, you know, be courageous and bold to speak out your mind, wise or subject, matter to business success. And then there is another one which is repetition is king. So we have to repeat it seven times before it lets. So, comforting to hear you say a call to action for everybody to remember that because like I hadn't experienced recently when someone asked me a question and I felt like, I've answered that question four times. And, you know, to not take it personally, but it's not necessarily that I or anyone is answering a question badly or I don't know it, or the information is not relevant. It's just the nature somehow and the busyness of us all that repetition is king. And it's seven times in your reference for you, you know. So, I shan't feel disheartened until I get asked the eighth time. The same question again. But yeah, I think that speaks to the tenacity and patience and courage to your point and determination that we need as HR changemakers. It needs resilience and it needs patience, yet persistence absolutely. Thank you so much, Anger. It's been wonderful to hear from you today and yeah, I keep smiling because I just think that the promise of Fagga Hulk Group to light up the world is just wonderful and yeah, we're super proud that you're part of how HR leaders change the world. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this episode of how HR leaders change the world. Thank you for tuning in. If you have a moment to leave a review, a five-star one please, that will be a huge help to achieving our goal to reach more of your peers so we can all contribute to further and faster positive change. For your copy of the show notes, head to frombabieswithlove.org where you can also join the how HR leaders change the world mailing list and make sure you don't miss out on future episodes and bonus materials. And for harnessing the power of your role to create positive social change, I'm sending you a jumping up in the air virtual high five. See you next time on how HR leaders change the world. [Music]