Brad Eather (00:01.196)
Hello and welcome to the Selling is Creative podcast, a podcast exploring creativity's role in sales, leadership and business. I'm your host, Brad Eather a digital communications consultant, helping businesses and sales professionals take the leap into digital. In sales, we're no strangers to problem solving. We know how to navigate different stakeholders, tailor a value proposition to their needs and guide a conversation towards the right solution.
But there's a part of the equation that we often overlook. The human beyond the title. The lived experiences, cultural backgrounds, and personal identities that shape how someone thinks, engages, and makes decisions. Today, we're going to explore what happens when we bring a people-centered problem-solving lens to that equation. How understanding not just the business problems, but the people behind it
can transform the way that we connect, collaborate and create impact. And that's where my next guest comes in. She's an organizational psychologist, collaboration designer, and she's built a career connecting people, ideas and communities. And over the past couple of years, she's been focused on creating environments where people can work together more effectively as cultural connections lead at PWC. Which is why I think she's the perfect person to explore this topic with.
what happens when you bring a people-centered problem solving lens into the solving problems equation. Please welcome to the show, Zoe Teh.
Zoe Teh (01:38.562)
Thanks Brad, thanks for having me.
Brad Eather (01:40.802)
Great. So I think maybe the best place to start is a little bit about your background. So I wanted to ask you, you've obviously worked with so many different people and projects. When you think about your career so far, what are some of the trickiest challenges that you've helped solve for?
Zoe Teh (02:01.742)
That's a good question because there's been a number and now I have to think about which ones I could talk about. I think, well, what I tend to work in is mainly systems related challenges. So for example, I started my career in youth suicide prevention work and we had to figure out a way that we could, instead of,
you know, following on the trend that, people saying social media is bad, like young people should be banned from social media. We were saying, hang on, like young people are using social media to get help, to seek support, to receive support. And so working in that space kind of showed me that we can use and work with people and young people to help solve for really big
challenging, sticky questions like suicide. And then from then on, I also worked in, a project with Guide Dogs Victoria, where we looked at accessibility and how inaccessible the digital world is for people with low vision and blindness. But again, like it's asking the people, like, how do you navigate the world currently? How do you actually, like what tools do you use already to kind of
manage all of these challenges and then working with people to solve these sticky problems. And yeah, most recently at PwC, like I, as you mentioned, I lead the cultural connections employee resource group, which is basically a community that supports migrants or people from diverse backgrounds to have that shared safe space at work so that they can feel included.
But together we also try and tackle challenges like biases when it comes to performance reviews or any kind of, again, sticky questions and challenges that prevent people from diverse backgrounds from going up the ladder or getting that promotion and that pay rise. So I think those are some of the highlights for me. It's mainly like mental health, accessibility, and also inclusion, like diversity and inclusion.
Brad Eather (04:22.903)
So there's some pretty big problems like people with disabilities, people with diverse backgrounds and suicide. No wonder they're challenging problems to deal with. How do you go, where do you start solving a problem for people?
that are in a vulnerable situation and you're trying to help them towards an outcome, right? So in the cases that you're talking about, you're talking about a lot about digital media and how you actually leverage online tools in a world that someone who's blind is oblivious to, I suppose, or someone who has suicidal thoughts has access to help and hindrance in these environments.
They're complex topics. Where do you start?
Zoe Teh (05:21.27)
That's a good question and often people scratch their heads around this. just start with a simple idea. Start small. Like for example, you want to work with, or like think, okay, let's say you want to solve for mental health challenges in your workplace. So you start with one idea, like, or what the key problem is, which is, let's say like,
burnout is increasing in the workplace. Then you find the right people. Basically just gather your team, your crew, your pioneers together, like a small group of five-ish people. And hopefully those people are as equally passionate as yourself. And they have some influence, they have some power over decision-making.
And you just, again, like start with a conversation, just like maybe a coffee catch up or like a little meeting to go, hey, I've got this idea. What do you guys think? Do you think it's something that we could actually turn into a project or a program? So starting small. So again, like every big idea always starts with a conversation. And then from there, like...
Again, start pulling in the right people, build that team, build that network, and do a few little brainstorming sessions just to really nut it out a bit more. Yeah, and then once you have that core group of people, you can then start designing what this thing actually looks like.
Brad Eather (07:09.759)
Yeah. Cause I suppose one of the challenges that I imagine you have is when you're talking about bringing different stakeholders and gathering your crew, especially when you're dealing with vulnerable people, there's going to be barriers to entry for them, like to participate.
Talk to me about that process of getting them on board with something so that they can see the outcome that you're trying to create for them so that they feel safe to contribute in that setting that you're making for them. Yeah.
Zoe Teh (07:53.743)
I think oftentimes in these spaces, there's always going to be certain people out there who are already champions or who are already doing the work, like lived experience speakers, for example, or in the example of the workplace, you might have leaders who are already in a way, in their own way, advocating or talking about these challenges and issues. So you can just seek them out.
and reach out to them, test your idea with them. And then from there, they might know someone who knows someone else who might also be involved. And so they're the ones who then pull other people in to be included and involved in the whole process. Other times, if you're starting from like complete scratch, I've seen examples where people would do a call out.
to either, let's say, if it's your workplace, then you can put out some comms out in your firm newsletter or whatever. If you're working in a university, you could reach out to student unions, student groups, and do a call out for anyone who's interested in being a part of these programs. And again, if you are working with vulnerable people, also making sure that
you are clear again on like why you want them to be involved, what is their role, how are you going to reimburse them for their time, because lived experience participants are basically your subject matter experts and so you should be treating them as such. They're not volunteers, they're not people who are going to share their own experiences to you for
free, like I think that would be taking advantage of them and it also be tokenistic. So I suppose, yeah, two avenues, like one, finding those champions, those existing leaders and getting them to pull other people in or number two, like do a general call out with your existing mailing list or community or organization and trying to figure out who would be interested in. And most of the time, 100 % of the time, actually, people always want to say yes.
Brad Eather (10:15.97)
Good.
Zoe Teh (10:16.622)
especially because it's something that they are passionate about, like if it's mental health or if it's accessibility and if they have a lived experience of that challenge, like 100 % of the time, they want to chip in and support that because it's also empowering to them to have the opportunity to give back to their community and to help other people who are like themselves.
Brad Eather (10:34.072)
Mm.
Brad Eather (10:41.644)
I think the things that stuck out there and where you're dealing with some really sensitive topics. So.
for people out there listening who are, you know, we're going to be talking about business. We've, I, I highly doubt that you're going to be going so sensitive on some of these things, but what I picked out of that, that is absolutely applicable is community and collaboration, identifying those people that have, that have influence within the community. The first person to come into my mind was Dylan Alcott, you know, someone that's, you know, someone who's the champion of, um,
championing disability advocate in Australia. and, then leveraging the, the, influence that they have within their community. That I think is an applicable lesson that can be, you know, applied across the board with any complex problem solving ability. So I've, I've attended one of your workshops and it really sort of opened my eyes into your process.
And one of the reasons that I felt so compelled to bring you on is you really lent on the idea of the creative process and how you go about approaching some of these complex problems. Talk to me about the creative process in terms of how you might be developing a workshop to help someone. Yeah.
Zoe Teh (12:17.562)
Yeah, so, and again, like thanks for coming to my workshop. That was really fun. So what I spoke about with the creative process is basically it's a model by MG Taylor, which is a methodology that I learned to use at my time at PWC where we basically focus on learning, play, creativity and collaboration to solve for.
Brad Eather (12:22.168)
you
Zoe Teh (12:45.41)
wicked or sticky problems and one of the models they use is the creative process and there's seven steps. Steps one to four is quite subjective because it's all about identifying what the challenge is, figuring out what the vision is, like where you wanna go, like what are the gaps, and then making a commitment to actually do the thing that you wanna do. Did you want me to go through all the steps now or we just, we could do like a
brief overview.
Brad Eather (13:16.482)
Well, what I would like to do is go through the, the initial half of the slide, because the way that you expressed it, essentially you've got a circle with a bunch of steps on one side is the planning phase and the other side is the execution phase and the circle goes around in a constant loop. So it's always iterative.
But I think what a lot of people don't spend enough time on is actually understanding that creativity requires planning. So I would like to go through that first part. Yeah.
Zoe Teh (13:50.595)
Yeah.
Yeah, so I would say the first chunk, the first four steps, you've got number one, identify, number two, vision, number three, intent, and number four, insight. And those four steps are basically there to make sure you're thinking about what the key challenges are, making sure that you really think about what the vision is. And then also with the, with your core crew, making sure that everyone is aligned on the vision.
like everyone knows where they're going, what they want to do and what they want to achieve. Because if you don't even have the vision, like the shared vision, then the whole thing is just going to fall apart. And a lot of people like to skip from the vision to the doing or the execution, but then they kind of forget that you also need to think about your resources and capabilities. Like, can you actually do the thing that you want to do? Like, what's the intention? Like, do you have...
Brad Eather (14:38.648)
Mm.
Zoe Teh (14:51.086)
Do you intend to actually do this? Do you have that commitment to work together to solve for this problem? Because most of the time, like these challenges, they'll take years to kind of work on. And so it's a multi-year commitment that you have to make. And then also doing the research, getting the insights, asking the people the right questions or even having the right questions. So again, like I think, as you mentioned, people tend to skip a lot of the planning phase.
and they just want to get into the doing because as I think nowadays we're also really impatient and we just want to do the stuff but then we forget that we actually don't really know what we're doing yet. So identity, vision, intent, insight are your first four steps. It can be quite subjective. It can be uncomfortable because sometimes
You don't even know what the problem is. So you have to kind of create the problem and define it. Yeah. Like know what is the, what actually is the problem and define it and make it clear and make sure that everyone who's involved actually knows what the problem is. and yeah, that can take time.
Brad Eather (15:52.403)
Prove it the problem, yeah, yeah.
Brad Eather (16:04.716)
bit of a, would you describe that as like a bit of a jury process? Like, okay, this is what we think we've identified as the problem. Do we agree as someone with lived experience? Do we agree with that statement? Yeah, yeah.
Zoe Teh (16:20.278)
Yeah, exactly. Because that can, everyone can have a different interpretation of the problem. Like again, if you're in a workplace, someone from HR could say, burnout is causing people to quit. we need to have more mental health days or wellbeing programs. And then someone with lived experience could go, hang on, like that's not going to fix the issue. The issue is you're making us work long hours.
Brad Eather (16:48.887)
Mm-hmm
Zoe Teh (16:49.344)
and we don't even get time off in Loo, you know? So really nutting out the problem and making sure that everyone is very clear on that is super, super important. Because then once you've kind of overcome that hurdle, you can then go into the actual doing. So that's engineering, building, and using the thing. So engineering is basically about planning, pulling in the right resources, the budget.
how many days are going to spend? What's the approach you're going to use to do the thing? Like, are you going to be agile and working sprints or are you going to be, more workshop based? and then you, you know, build the thing, your prototype, you iterate, have a play with it. Then you use it, test it, get feedback. And then you go back into the loop again, where you go to the start where it's like, okay, we've done this first round. We've tested the thing.
is this actually still solving the problem? Or has the problem actually changed? Have we actually found another problem that we need to fix before we even get to the first problem? So it is a cycle. It never really ends, to be honest. And so that can also come with challenges in terms of scope creep. But I think with really hard, sticky challenges, you kind of have to...
Brad Eather (17:58.297)
Mmm.
Zoe Teh (18:18.936)
have the courage to be open to that and to see where the process takes you, because sometimes you might unexpectedly discover something else along the way.
Brad Eather (18:28.28)
Cause I've had a chat with one of my previous podcast guests, Erin Ferman. We'd had a discussion about play in the workplace. and she, what essentially she does Lego series play workshops and things like that. But what she described is essentially that first half where you're identifying the vision, the intent, the insights. But in that phase.
all ideas are on the table. There's no wrong answers. It's a collaborative space where it's a safe space where there's no wrong answers. It's at the execution, which I think a lot of businesses don't fully grasp because they always feel a need to execute, but they don't give enough time to
having those moments where you do collaborate and put ideas on the table and then go out and execute and then go back around the cycle as you've talked about. Is that, you think that's fair assessment? Yeah. Yeah.
Zoe Teh (19:41.263)
Everyone does that. Literally everyone just skips the play and the creativity bit and just jump into execution and then they realize, oh whoops, we actually aren't solving the problem because we didn't spend proper time thinking about the problem and then therefore we're going to end up spending more money trying to fix the problem because everything is delayed and we have to start from scratch or like we've got it all wrong. So I think there's this misconception
or belief that people think play isn't productive. But I would disagree because if we look at, for example, if we look at how kids solve for problems, right, they always end up with the most creative, most amazing ways to solve a problem. And we as grownups forget that we were once kids ourselves. So when it comes to play and creativity and
problem solving. It's all part of the same bucket and I think we really need to stop thinking that play isn't productive because it can lead to solutions that would solve for lots of problems. If you look at past innovations like maybe like the iPhone for example like before the iPhone came out, people were so committed to using phones that have buttons on it.
Brad Eather (20:45.302)
Yeah.
Brad Eather (21:09.304)
Hmm.
Zoe Teh (21:09.848)
But then Steve Jobs went, hang on, what if we just had no buttons? What does that look like? And then, yeah, like it's just, now we all use iPhones. I think you need to really start valuing the power of play and creativity and just spending that time again, like in the subjective ambiguous zone of figuring out what the problem is.
And how can we fix it before we go into the fixing part? It's yeah.
Brad Eather (21:43.225)
I find it so funny because so many businesses want the tagline innovation next to their name, but you cannot innovate if you're not doing or participating in the creative process at some point. I, what I wanted to do is because I really wanted to nut into the planning part. And I thought that maybe we come up with, we just talk about problem solving and how you might prepare.
that first quarter, first half of the circle. So the process, the preparation, the scope and the design, everything before we jump into executing on that. And I thought, I thought maybe a nice way to do it. Maybe we come up with a scenario now, or we use the scenario that you presented to me in the, the workshop, just to talk about maybe how you would go about
prepping, scoping and designing a workshop to essentially test those ideas in that first half of the creative process.
Zoe Teh (22:52.334)
Yeah, I'm open to anything. We could use the workshop example, or could use the burnout example.
Brad Eather (22:58.006)
Yeah, let's use burnout because I think that will be more applicable to most people. Yeah.
Zoe Teh (23:02.914)
Yeah, okay. Right, so let's say you are in a small to medium company, burnout's increasing, people are quitting their jobs or are just coasting or quiet quitting, as they say. So yeah, to prep, I usually look at some of these, I think it was like 10 categories, I can't remember. But basically I start with the scope.
So what is it that we are trying to solve for? The scope is basically like the what and the when.
Brad Eather (23:40.356)
So in this case, you've got the problem. You think it might be burnout because the result is that you have staff turnover. yeah, is that kind of the idea? So you work back from the problem that you're having back to maybe what some research might be saying.
Zoe Teh (23:50.765)
Yeah.
Zoe Teh (24:02.03)
Yeah, so you could have like a rough idea of what the problem is, which is like, you can have a hypothesis, for example, like we can put our psychology hat on and have a hypothesis and go, okay, workplace burnout leads to staff attrition as you like rough hypothesis. And so your scope could be something like creating a mental health program to reduce burnout.
in the workplace. Something along those lines. And then you would then start thinking about your objectives of this project. What do you want to achieve by the end of this project? And then under objectives, you can think about your outcomes, which are intangible outcomes. So things like teaching people skills or learning something new. And then you can have tangible output.
When I say outputs and tangible, mean like it's something you can physically hold in your hand. So it could be a physical copy of a report or a guide on, you know, what to do if someone is experiencing these signs of burnout. So you can think about your objectives and outputs, sorry, your outputs and your outcomes. And so they make up your objectives.
And then you can think about your givens. So what are things that we know are to be true? Givens are basically they kind of set up the parameters in which you're going to play in. So let's say a given could be and it has to be factual as well. So a given could be something like there are X amount of people reporting burnout in the workplace. Psychological health and safety is now legislated and we have
you know, a duty of care to our people. And it could, it could be a long list of just basically a bunch of givens and it can be as long or short as you want. Once you've got those, then you've also got to think about who are you working with? So your stakeholders, like who are the people impacted, influenced? Who do we need to think about? And you can even do like a quick little stakeholder analysis if you wanted to, but you don't have to at this early stage. Then you think about your risks.
Zoe Teh (26:28.062)
So what are the risks of not doing anything? What are the risks of doing something? So you've got to think about both scenarios as well. What are the dependencies? What are the resources and any other deadlines that we need to think about as well? And then you also want to think about questions that you want to ask.
And you could have a long list of questions and you could even run like a quick little discovery workshop with some lived experience people or like, or even in your small group and just kind of brainstorm a bunch of questions that you want to use to kind of shape your little program or use, I guess, AI to help you with those questions too.
Brad Eather (27:17.143)
Yeah.
Zoe Teh (27:19.374)
But yeah, those are basically the key elements I would think about first when you are setting a project or initiative up. And then from there, once you've got those core elements kind of knotted down with your group, then you can like start thinking about how you can design the next phases.
Brad Eather (27:38.818)
Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. I think something that's coming through quite a lot is, is yes, there's planning, there's parameters that we put around, but throughout this whole conversation, something that you've reiterated time and time again is listening and taking feedback from the stakeholders. So I just wondered what.
How do you see the difference between, or how important is the difference between listening and telling when you're navigating some of these challenges?
Zoe Teh (28:22.86)
I think a lot of people think they're listening but they're actually not listening. So I'll start with an example. So I used to work at Apple and when we were trained at Apple they really like, I don't know if they still do this now but back in my day they would basically drill this into your head that your job is not to sell stuff, your job is to listen to...
the customer's problem and then match them with the right product or solution or service or whatever. And so I remember when I had a customer come in, was a mom and her daughter. She was in year seven and she was going to be in year seven and she needed a laptop for school. And the daughter, you know, she wants to fancy his most expensive luxury laptop and tells the mom, I need the MacBook.
Pro, quad core, like super expensive, $3,000 laptop for school. And then I, know, like mom doesn't know anything about tech. And so she's like, yeah, Zoe, like we need this MacBook. Do you know if there's any discounts? Cause I know it's expensive, blah, blah. So instead of just telling them like, yeah, you should just buy this and this is XYZ. I took a moment to just ask questions first. And I went, okay, like,
What are you using this laptop for? it's just for school. Okay, are you going to make videos? Are you going to make music? And she's like, I don't think so. It's just going to be for my textbook. I'm like, okay, if you're just going to use it for your textbook. Have you considered the MacBook Air? It's lighter, so your backpack isn't going to get heavy. The battery life is a bit longer. And it's got cool colors like pink.
Brad Eather (30:02.936)
Yeah.
Zoe Teh (30:18.894)
And she's like, oh, I actually didn't realize I have to carry this around with me. Yeah, like I think I want the laptop to be lighter. Okay, let's get the MacBook Air. So I managed to down sell the kid because again, like in a way I was listening but also putting myself in her shoes that if I was in year seven, if I was 12 years old, I've got a big backpack. I have to go to school every single day and carry it.
I'm going to have back problems if I have to carry a really heavy MacBook Pro because those things can be quite heavy. But if I had a MacBook Air, like if I'm just going to use it to look at my textbook and do homework, I want something portable and light and has longer batteries. you're asking the questions. You're also listening to what they're saying, but then you're also in a way you have to
practice EQ and think ahead and like listen between the lines as well. Cause I know the daughter wants the fanciest prettiest laptop. But I also know she's gonna have back problems for next five years, six years if she has a heavy laptop. So you kinda have to...
Also watch out for what you're not hearing and seeing and try and understand, paint a more holistic picture of what the problem is. and also it helped that they have pink MacBook Airs, which they don't in the MacBook Pro range. So that helps too, but basically, yeah, listening, asking the right questions, but then also using your intuition to also think about like, okay.
Brad Eather (31:46.925)
Yeah.
Hahaha
Zoe Teh (32:02.55)
What else could happen if this person gets this laptop? You know, like thinking ahead and solving for problems that you know they will have even though they don't know they'll have it yet.
Brad Eather (32:17.166)
I didn't know that we had a salesperson amongst us.
That was great. mean, that is an experience that everybody's been through. And I think one of the things that maybe is transferable here is you brought up the EQ piece, having empathy for the buyer. You brought up the intuition. That's something innate within you that you that's, that's the moment of finding opportunity in the sales context. And you are probing to an outcome that you don't is,
you're almost using that creative process to probe for an outcome that you don't know what their situation is. And I think that in this, from everything that we've talked about before, because I wasn't expecting to talk about the shop floor of an Apple store today, but the idea that you don't necessarily know what the outcome is going to be. You just need to continue asking questions so that you can find the solution.
Zoe Teh (33:08.622)
You
Brad Eather (33:24.472)
And I think that's, that's a really nice path between that empathy and intuition piece that you've just brought up and using that to find the solution rather than provide a solution.
Zoe Teh (33:42.093)
Yeah, because most of the time you might not even have the solution. And until you and the other person have figured out what the problem is, then you can work together to figure out what that solution is. That's why I think, yeah, probing questions is really good. It's something that Apple does drill into you when you first start. I don't know how they still do that nowadays. I feel like it's different. asking really good probing questions
Brad Eather (33:55.482)
Mmm.
Zoe Teh (34:10.304)
And not coming from a place of judgment, but coming from a place of curiosity and of learning. It's almost like when you're interviewing someone or when you're meeting someone for the first time and you just ask like interesting questions just to get to know them as a person. Even when you do that, come with the intention of curiosity so that you can then identify the problem together. Or sometimes maybe there is no problem.
and maybe you're just getting to know the person better, but then down the line, they might have a problem and you might have a solution for them or something like that. So I always end up in the most random conversations with people. And then I ended up thinking, I remember like, Sassmini wanted to, you know, try the best croissant in Melbourne. Like, let's just connect her with this other person who also wanted to go croissant hunting.
Brad Eather (35:05.474)
and
Zoe Teh (35:07.862)
You know, like you just kind of meet people, ask really nice, interesting, open questions, and then the problems eventually emerge and eventually the solution will also come up at the same time. So yeah, when it comes to work, again, like asking people like what they're up to, what they're doing, what they're working on, listening to how they respond and observing as well, like body language tells you a lot.
Brad Eather (35:30.073)
Mmm.
Zoe Teh (35:36.911)
And you can sometimes use your intuition to also gauge, you know, what else is going on that they're not telling you about. And then sometimes it even helps not to offer a solution straight away. You can just listen and be there. And then later on, do a follow-up call and be like, okay, like I recall you mentioned you were looking for.
Brad Eather (35:57.273)
Mm.
Zoe Teh (36:00.879)
Psychologists to help with your burnout problem at work. I know this person. They might be a great person like you should I'll connect you to So it's yeah the people element
Brad Eather (36:10.17)
Cause I think, I think absolutely. I think this is where some of these ideas are going to be really helpful in a complex selling environment where you have multiple stakeholders and you're selling something that takes an entire solution, not just the products. It's this product connecting to that product, connecting to that product in order to make a system, for example, and
bringing people together in a way to actually work towards a problem, a solution. I think that's really powerful. And throughout the whole conversation, you brought like, I'm just looking at my paper and some of the things that I've dropped down. Collaboration, community, empathy, intuition, planning, execution, fundamentals in fundamentals.
in that kind of complex selling environment and obviously fundamentals in a world where you're dealing with sticky problems as you put it. So I just wanted to ask you the final question of the podcast to bring all this up and maybe just like with some of those key words that we've talked about, but what is your definition of creativity?
Zoe Teh (37:34.305)
I think for me, so we talked about play and kids. So creativity for me is like giving the car keys to your life, to the younger version of you, the inner kid, the inner child, as they say, and going, Hey, younger Zoe, you've got the keys, you can get the driver's seat now. It's your turn to play. Let's see what you got. So for me, creativity is giving your
Brad Eather (37:58.692)
Yeah.
Zoe Teh (38:02.998)
self-permission to be that kid again and to just go all out and see what could happen and use different ways to create and produce and make things. Because you might surprise yourself as well if you let yourself do that and give yourself permission to do that. I know for some people it can be scary because you think other people are going to judge you or you think it's just
being childish, but in a way, if you honor your inner child, honor your younger self and give that person permission to create and be creative, then you're gonna enjoy it so much more and have so much more fun along the way.
Brad Eather (38:49.37)
about life yeah yeah
Zoe Teh (38:51.126)
Yeah. Because yeah, creativity is like being a kid. think for me that's, that's, that's what it is.
Brad Eather (39:01.102)
Just for a moment, put your psychology hat on and...
Zoe Teh (39:04.375)
yet.
Brad Eather (39:06.692)
Talk to me about that feeling of judgment. You mentioned that people feel a sense of judgment when they apply themselves to creativity. Just talk to me about that quickly, what your thoughts are.
Zoe Teh (39:20.756)
Yeah, so I I came, I work in corporate, right? And like in big four, corporatey spaces, people are expected to come to work in a suit and tie and like be all formal and whatnot. But then you have the young ones come in and you can tell when someone's a grad based on how they look because they are super formal suited up thinking that they have to look
Brad Eather (39:45.242)
You
Zoe Teh (39:50.669)
the part because they don't want to get judged, right, for being unprofessional or whatever. But then by week two, week three, they start coming in t-shirts and jeans because they realize that, this workplace is actually quite safe and no one's going to judge me for what I'm wearing. And we have a policy that says dress for your day. So if you got a casual day with no meetings, you can just come in and track is if you wanted to.
So judgment is a fear that we all have. And I think social media has made it harder for us to be more compassionate to ourselves because we judge others on social media, people judge us on social media. And so to combat that, creating or having a place that does feel safe then breaks it down and makes you feel like you can just show up as yourself, whether it's in trackies or in a suit.
or whatever. And that also links back to collaboration and creativity because you can't collaborate if you feel like someone's gonna shoot your idea down or say, that's stupid. Like, what would you think about that? Like you need to first establish that safety so that people can feel like they can be their most wacky, weird, authentic, vulnerable self.
And they can come and bring all of their ideas to the table to figure out how to solve for the problem. Because other times the flip side to that is if you come to the table all gung-ho and you've already got the ideas, you've already got the solution even though you don't know what the problem is and you tell your customers, okay, so your problem is this, this is my solution, I'm going sell you all of these products. As a customer, you're going to feel like, whoa, like this person doesn't care about my...
problems they just want me to give them money.
Zoe Teh (41:53.003)
So I think building that trust, that giving people permission to be vulnerable or to be themselves then opens up more doors and helps you not just, yeah, like build trust, but also like helps you find the right solution for that person. But then also along the way you end up building loyalty as well and that person is going to come back to you.
Brad Eather (41:59.76)
Mm.
Zoe Teh (42:19.362)
get you to help them more because they feel like you listen, you trust them, you don't judge them, and you accept them for who they are.
Brad Eather (42:24.602)
Mm.
Yeah, absolutely. Zoe, thank you so much for joining me on the Selling Creative Podcast. Where is the best place to get in contact with you? And do you have any news about what's happening next for you?
Zoe Teh (42:41.582)
I think the best place would be LinkedIn. My full name is Zoe Denise Tay, so that's my LinkedIn. Where I'm at now, I'm actually in between jobs. I think by the time this episode is out, I will be starting a new job with Court Services Victoria looking at psychosocial health and safety. But my Psych Passion project is helping young Asian Australians
professionals. And initially I had the idea of creating a community called Breaking Bamboo Crew, but then now I realized that there's already so many existing communities. So instead I'm just going to go into those communities and help them. And then my long-term vision is to start building collaboration and connections between the existing communities so that they can start talking to each other and work more collectively. Because everyone's kind of doing their own thing at the moment, but no one's really.
talking to each other, which happens a lot in these kind of things.
Brad Eather (43:44.921)
Yeah. Yeah. So I'll include those details in the show notes. Thanks for listening everybody out there to the Selling's Creative Podcast. If you've enjoyed the episode, make sure to like and subscribe. And in the meantime, happy selling.
