Valentine Gatard Work Life Narratives

Nigel Rawlins: Welcome Valentine to the Wisepreneurs podcast. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and where you're from?

Valentine Gatard: Yes, so thank you very much, Nigel, for having me. I'm very happy to be here. So I'm Valentin. I'm 36. I live in Paris, France. And today I'm a coach, speaker, and podcast host. And I focus on the evolving dynamics of our relationship with work.

Nigel Rawlins: Wow. That's what we're going to talk a lot about, I think. But you also mentioned in our chat before we started this that you are quite musical. Can you tell us something about that?

Valentine Gatard: Yes, absolutely. So I've played the piano since I was six years old. It's not as part of my life as I would like it to be at the moment because it's really hard to find the time to practice, but it's still very much part of who I am. And I've, I think I've always had a musical ear also.

I think I've always been passionate about English. It's been one of my favorite topics and subjects for a very long time. I actually studied English in university in Paris. I spent a lot of time in the US and I've always said to people that I think I was drawn to this language because of my musical background.

As I was saying, playing the piano, mainly very classical pieces. And I love listening to pieces very often. It really soothes me. And also, I think what has taken more space in my life these past few years is jazz. I sing jazz covers. I don't write my own songs.

But I did record a few covers in the studio. And I performed. I had my very own concert 10 years ago already, but it was absolutely amazing. It was in a small venue in Montmartre. For people who are familiar with Paris, it's a very nice area, very touristy area in Paris.

And so it was amazing. We had this venue and this theater. I had four musicians, and other than that, I mainly sing to my friends, weddings or parties or things like that. But it's part of who I am. And I think that I've noticed a few times over the years that if I don't sing for a long period of time I don't feel really like myself. It was one time that I really noticed that I hadn't sang for a long time, and I was feeling depressed, and then I realized, oh, maybe it's because I need to sing. And then I started singing again, and I felt better. It's part, I think it's part of my routine I eat very good food and very healthily, I do yoga, I sleep well, I meditate, and I feel like singing is part of this package.

Nigel Rawlins: It forms you. That's the point I was going to make about singing. Quite a few of the guests I've had on the podcast have come from a performing arts background. And it does form how they communicate and how they relate to people. Suzanne Noble was one, she's an older lady, but she also sings jazz.

Who are the covers that you made your jazz songs from?

Valentine Gatard: I think the singers I like the most, actually the other day, I was listening to a few of them and I think that Ella Fitzgerald is the absolute queen and I love singing her music and Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and sometimes also Sinatra.

I think there's a wonderful cover by Peggy Lee that I love to sing. I was thinking about the classic ones, and I didn't even think of mentioning Melody Gardot, who is my absolute favorite singer, and on stage, she is absolutely incredible.

You were talking about communicating, and we were talking before we started recording about the interaction with the musicians. She is, she's just one of the most inspirational people I've ever met. I don't have any particular favorite words. I think I just love Melody Gardot, when you see her on stage with her musicians, everyone has their own role and is as important as the others.

And she's highlighting each and every one of their talents and it's absolutely amazing. In terms of group dynamic, team performance, seeing her and her musicians is absolutely gorgeous. And she is amazing. So talented and really it's wonderful.

Nigel Rawlins: Is she French?

Valentine Gatard: She's American.

Nigel Rawlins: Sounds like she had a French name.

Valentine Gatard: Her name sounds very French, but yeah, she's American.

Nigel Rawlins: So did you find that sort of dynamic when you were in your concert, even though it was a few years ago?

Valentine Gatard: Yeah, one thing I noticed I actually, I think I wrote about this, I don't really remember where or how, but I remember really wondering and rethinking about the connection I had with with my musicians, specifically the guitar player who who was the first one I started rehearsing with, and then he came up with the rest of the band.

So the first few times we've rehearsed together, when I was singing and he was playing, the only way we could communicate was through our eyes. And we had to look at each other. And it created a connection, an intimate connection. It's very rare to look at people really directly through your eyes into theirs.

And, this created a sort of intimacy and connection together, and it was amazing how much we were able to share with one another and to communicate only through our eyes because we could not speak, he could not move his hands so it was really an amazing experience to see that, to go through this process and to see how much we could share only by looking at each other.

So that was the first thing. And then during the concert with the other musicians, yeah, it's mostly about looking at each other, is about what is going through our eyes and it's also very much I think about trusting each other because, so I was on that stage and the one thing was also interesting is that so every time we had rehearsed together, so I had four musicians and myself I was facing them and so when the score was starting and when it was my turn to sing I always had a cue and I knew when it was, and then I hadn't thought about this when I performed actually on stage, they were behind me.

And so I was always looking, I was just trying to look at the guitar player, who was giving me the cue. And, it was weird. And at the same time, yeah, we all had to trust each other. I had to trust them. They had to follow my lead, and I had to follow theirs. It's, yeah, and everybody is as important as I was saying about Melody Gardot, and I actually had never thought about this as much, but it really helps you understand what true teamwork means.

And I think it, it shaped me in lots of different ways and helped me understand how a team can work. And I was mentioning just before also that I recorded an episode with another coach, Leon Patty who is also a musician and he has this very interesting theory about it's not really a theory actually, it's something that he experienced.

He draws a parallel between jazz music and improvisation and coaching. And it's actually the same dynamic when you're coaching someone either one-on-one coaching or in team coaching. It's always about, okay, so what is that person giving me? What are they sharing? And then how am I going to jump ahead and just react, and what am I going to say, and it's always this kind of, it's a dance at the same time, and it's about, yeah, improvisation, so what is happening I have no idea. Sometimes you know it's going to go a certain way, and you have a big intention or a goal. But what is going on is really like jazz music and what is very important also in teamwork and on one one, I mean we're talking about coaching, but it can be about any kind of relationship actually.

How am I going to react and the way I am going to react is going to depend on the quality of my presence, on if I'm really listening to what the person is saying, then I'm going to be relevant, and then it's going to be more meaningful and intimate, maybe, as I was saying earlier.

So yeah, there are lots of things that we can learn from music.

Nigel Rawlins: Definitely. It's interesting about the eye contact Meredith Fuller was on the podcast a couple of episodes back, and she was talking about that eye contact too, that we don't do enough of that. I guess that's the other thing too, like we're looking at each other on, our computer screens.

I'm not too sure, I'm looking into your eyes, but I don't know if you can, the camera's up there, so I guess if I look at the camera, I'm looking at you, but then I can't see you on the screen, so it is a bit strange, but I am seeing your eyes.

Valentine Gatard: Yeah, we tend to focus on looking at the other person's lips when we're talking and it is true that it's very rare that we really have eye contact with people.

Nigel Rawlins: I totally agree. It is quite crazy. I tend not to go out so much anymore because I don't have to, because I've worked from home for many years. So I guess the only time I really go out, I don't see my clients too often. It's probably I see somebody in the supermarket or family members who turn up here.

All right, let's talk a little bit about your podcast. How did that come about? How did you start your podcast? Tell us something about it and what it's called.

Valentine Gatard: Okay, so the podcast is now called Work Narratives. I actually very recently changed the name. It used to have the name of my company that is also changing. So it's been a kind of a road of testing, learning and trying new things these past few years. So yeah, as I was saying, I had always done things with my voice.

I had done voiceovers also, in French and English and, I don't know, podcasts the trend started rising and then I felt drawn to it and then people started talking to me about, oh, but you should have your own podcast, but I wasn't too sure about what I was going to say. I had started a blog back in 2016, 2017. At the time I wanted to launch a co working space for freelancers self employed people. The idea was to create a space where they could work efficiently and take care of themselves. It would have been a wonderful place and there would have been a space for complimentary natural medicine practitioners to be there.

And so anyway, so I started working on this, long story short. I ended up not launching this project. Which is a good thing because if we had opened, it would have been at the start of the pandemic. So in retrospect, it's actually a good thing that this didn't happen. But yeah, so I'd started this blog for when I was thinking of opening this space and I was interviewing people, mainly freelancers about how they were dealing with their work life balance to, to sum it up. So I had these interviews and then I started thinking maybe I could move those interviews into a podcast.

But time flies, and here we are at the end of 2020, and I had written my first essay that is published on my blog, that at the time I called my manifesto, about the reconciliation between our personal self and professional self, and the future of work and the rise of the theories about what work is going to be and because I had started really being involved in the transformations of the world of work for quite a bit.

I had started gaining really major interest in this topic in 2015. So I wrote this long, very long piece, and I thought to myself maybe now is the time to launch the podcast, because I can interview people that I've mentioned or quoted in the text. And maybe I can keep on drawing things and and finding new things to say about the topics that I covered. My very first guest was Laetitia Vitaud, that you know, and this is how we connected. I was very honored and excited to have her as my first guest. For people who might not know Letitia, she's like the queen of the future of work in France.

So it was really wonderful. And so I started this podcast in January of 2021. So the main goal, as I said, was to keep on digging about what was happening in the world of work. Mainly to think about how our professional values and our personal values meet and how we can reconcile and be considered as people as a whole in our work environment. Just to sum it up because this is key to understand who I am and what I do. My main goal is to draw parallels between what's going on in the world of work and in the world more generally.

I have a, what we call a holistic approach to always see things as a whole, people, the world, and what's going on in the world of work. I started my essay by drawing a parallel between the over medicalization of childbirth in the early 1800s and the The dehumanization of men in the workplace, because it historically and symbolically, it's the same time in history that women started giving birth in hospitals.

And, surrounded by, by men in very cold environment and they were depossessed of their own bodies. And at the same time, you have the rise of factory line, chain workers, things like that. And then there was a kind of a moment in history for a very long time that we witnessed people really getting burned out or really stressed out and work became increasingly alienating.

And so now, for a few years, we've been witnessing a sort of what we call the rehumanization of the world of work. And we are considering people as humans with emotions. And there is something very interesting going on in the realm of feminism, ecology, spirituality. We are witnessing these new trends , and actually, freelancers are at the forefront of what's happening and you talk to Letitia, so you know that's a big thing in these transformations.

So this was part of my essay as well. This is how I started the podcast. And now, I thought it would be a shorter break, but it was, at least a year break. But I kept on recording things. I actually hosted podcasts for other companies or mainly other non profits in the world of HR.

And then I created a collective with other podcasters in the future of work scene. It's called So Wow. It means spreading an optimistic world of work, and so we all have our different perspectives and different podcasts, different angles, different perspectives. And so joined together to create this.

And in September, I launched the second season of my podcast. So now it's called Work Narratives. And in the meantime, I actually wrote another essay. And it's called For a New Narrative of Work. So that's why I changed the name because the main goal was to just start and do something and you learn along the way and for the perfectionist that I am, that was very hard to do but when I started doing this, I was, okay, done is better than perfect.

And you have to try and you learn along the way. And I've learned so much and I couldn't have been able to learn that much if I hadn't tried. Second season was more focused. The name is a little more self explanatory. You know I'm going to be talking about work and you know I'm going to be talking about this new narrative, because what I really think is that we are at a point in history where we are redefining lots of things, we are redefining, reshaping our relationship with work.

It has evolved tremendously. Because our lifestyles have evolved tremendously. I was talking about the early 1900s. In lots of ways, we're still working and companies and work and the working environment and the schedules are still the same than they were a hundred years ago, which sounds crazy when we see everything that has changed and evolved over this period of time for our personal lives.

And so there is this discrepancy between the acceleration of time, the acceleration of progress, and what is really is actually going on inside companies. And this is why we're having these burnouts or now we have we have new terms now. We have bore out and brown out and lots of things like that.

And more and more people are thinking about what is going on in the world of work because we've gone too far to a place of alienation, of stress, and I think the main goal and my goal anyway is to find balance and to see where we can find the right, integration and to rethink about, how is work part of our identities?

Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? I think it's a good thing, but, what I've really realized because I've been teaching students about the future of work, for the past few months, and I was actually very moved because when I was talking about them and hearing them talk about what their future of work was going to be in our Western societies, thinking about work is actually thinking about our existence.

It's about thinking about our lives and what we want to do with it. And how can work help us achieve that? And when we think of work, there are actually so many layers of understanding. And also, as I was saying, we are now considering people as a whole, as holistically, as I was saying. And this also is what we've seen with freelancers.

I've started writing and thinking I drew all of this from my own experience. I was an employee for only nine months in my entire life, working for someone else. And maybe it's one of the few times in my life, and maybe when I was working also for clients, when I was doing a job that I was not a fan of, there was this, internal tension between who I was and what my core values were and what I was doing.

And Freelancers, people that are self employed, that are launching their own company, most of the time they know what their values are and they're not experiencing this tension. And obviously, there are so many struggles that you have to go through when you're self employed.

But this is not what I'm going through, and I think this is very important, and this is what I want to share with people, and the people I, I speak for, and I coach. It's about finding your core values and who you wanna be, and actually understand who and what made you, who you are today and how you can yeah

draw on that to move forward. Just to circle back to the podcast itself, I think it's, an amazing opportunity to have this actually intimate connection that we were talking just about just before ever since I've launched the podcast, this has opened doors for me that I that would have not opened if I had just asked people to just grab some coffee it creates something different.

I feel like sometimes not every time, but for instance, if my guests have written books, I spend a lot of time reading the books and preparing for the interviews and I think there's something very important when you interview someone and they see that you've spent some time researching what they were doing.

Sometimes I spend a lot of time working on an interview and nothing else happened after the recording, obviously, but I think there are a few people that I've met through the podcast, that, it's been an incredible experience and journey, I've made my place in my ecosystem.

I met the people that I really resonated with and it's mainly about meeting people and opening up new ideas and new thoughts and I like to dig pretty deep into ideas. And so this has been really incredible. It's, people have to know if you're listening and you want to launch a podcast, it takes so much time.

It's very it's very time consuming, but but it's really amazing.

Nigel Rawlins: I totally agree. The stories, the conversations, are what I find most amazing. And yes, I do try and speak to people who've written the books I've read. I'm lucky enough to have a room, and it is just covered in books. I mostly read on a Kindle now, so I have hundreds in there.

Because the benefit of a Kindle But I'll just say something about that in a moment, is that I can highlight notes and it feeds into a Roam Research database that I can then pull out the notes and access them. Whereas if I read a book now, I can actually feed that into the database because I can actually speak into the phone and it'll send it off to the database.

But there's an interesting thing about reading books I'm just going to go off a bit and we'll come back to the work thing, is the difference between reading a Kindle and touching on a screen, whereas a book, you've got it physically, you can open it and you can touch the pages. I'm just wondering if that's changing the way we read. The benefit of what we were talking about in terms of podcasts and speaking to people is we're hearing their stories, hearing about their lives. And one of the things you just said is you're getting together with people, is that because you're in Paris that you've got a massive population there? I'm in a little country town with, I don't know, maybe a thousand people around me. Whereas in Paris

Valentine Gatard: I actually recorded a few episodes live in real life, but there are many episodes that I've recorded through Squadcast that we're on now. Some of my guests were not in Paris, so we just do it the way you're doing it.

I must say, I feel like a stronger connection was created with the people that I interviewed in real life. It creates something different, but it's the same like in when you're not recording a podcast. If you meet someone in real life, it creates something a little different, than if you're only, talking through, through your computers.

Although, I've had friendships, or professional connections that really, got stronger through computer. I don't know, I think it really depends on what, how much you want to invest in a relationship. Whatever the channel. But actually just to go back to your idea about books.

I actually read a few days ago that it was better for the brain to read on paper. There is something different that is that is going on and the way that we're touching it and I personally, I love reading actual books. I, it's hard for me to focus on Kindle or my iPad.

There's something about touching the books and I feel like this is something that we need to keep on doing. And actually, there is something very much, that we talk about a lot in the, my ecosystem in the future of work. We're saying future of work, I think it's a marketing thing, but honestly, it's the, now it's the present of work.

So let's just say the transformations of work. There's a lot about, craftsmanship. I think maybe Laetitia told you about that. The idea of crafting things, of doing things yourself. There's a rise in do it yourself activities. I personally I love making cards like greeting cards, especially over Christmas.

I create over 70 cards. I spend a month creating those and every and every single time, every single year, I've been doing this for a few years now. It's the moment, it's the month in my year where I'm the most creative, professionally. And it's when the most things happen. I always write a retrospective about my year every 30 or 31st of December.

I did that this year for 2023. And I realized as I was writing down everything that happened month after month, so November was the month where I created my cards and I was making them. And it's really, it's the month where I had the most intellectual I don't know connections and it's when I had the most ideas, it's when I got in touch with the most potential clients. It's it's amazing. And I think that using paper and concrete objects, things like that, and maybe underlying with a highlighter on our books, I think it, it does create something different. In our brains. And and there is something very important. And also, because we're in an era where it's very hard for us to focus, it creates a different kind of of bubble.

And, I know that for sure it's easier to have all of your notes sent into a database, or, and use it and reuse it, recycle it, and, use AI to create notes and articles. And at the same time, I don't know, now, very often times I highlight Sentences and in the books that I read and I don't now I with my iPhone I just get a photo and then it takes the words out and then I send it to another page It's not the easiest process I must say but it's better than nothing.

I used to type everything back in the day but Yeah, I think there is something very important about, yeah, crafting, doing things yourself. And it's actually now we're more and more talking about job crafting people creating what they want to do with their jobs. And again, we're going back to the freelancers because we are creating what we want to do.

We are managing our own schedule. We are working on a project. If we want to take a break, two hours to go to a museum or to see someone during the day, we do it very oftentimes we work even more, but. If we want to do it, we can, and there's a way of, yeah, crafting what we're doing, and I think this is very important, and this is why more and more people have several jobs and several ideas, several activities, and because there is so much happening again in society, in the way we buy things. There's also a very important parallel between us as consumers and us as workers.

The world has so much to offer, that why should we keep on having one job, one schedule and things like that. This is why it's changing and sometimes it's also why it's very confusing, because there is so much and there are so much options. And this is also part of my job to help people who don't have the time to follow all the trends and everything that is going on and follow the studies, and my job is also about driving them and pinpointing the right topics for them to to delve into and to find the right, examples, either theories or concrete examples or things that other companies have done, that they can, use or draw inspiration from. And I think this is very important.

Nigel Rawlins: Okay, so let's just talk about that because some of the work you do, you're talking about going into companies and just helping them create a better working environment. Let's talk a little bit about that. What do you do there?

Valentine Gatard: So I have different hats. So I give conferences for companies to talk to them about what is going on, and about the transformations of work and open, open up new doors, lines of thoughts, because, what I like to do, one of my main joys in life is to look at things from a different angle, from a different perspective, and maybe share something that might sometimes seem far fetched to begin with and then when you actually start thinking about it, you realize it's not that far fetched anymore.

And one of the things I like to do is to, yeah, to share my thoughts, my ideas. I also, as I said I read a lot and I like to find connections between different authors, between different theories and gather things together that maybe you wouldn't have thought of putting up together.

So that's one of the things that I like to do to inspire, to create something new. And then to talk about it and see how we can collectively build something together. I like to focus on the trends of words.

I called my podcast Work Narratives. There is a trend about the word narrative. In French, in English, more and more companies, more and more articles. This is something about stories. We are writing something new at the moment. So how can we engage people in this new narrative?

There's also a trend with the words, co working, co creation. The words we are using are telling us that this is what we're doing. I'm not even sure it's a weak signal, what we use in forward thinking. I think they're very strong.

And so my goal is to at the same time, inspire and at the same time to understand what is going on and talk to people and see where they are and where they're at. So that we can keep on thinking and keep on collectively do this. I'm a coach, so I do a one on one coaching, mainly with people in HR, because it's very interesting as well, they're at the moment in time where their role is being completely redefined. They were not considered to be very as important as a CEO or a financial director, but because our relationship with work has become so central in conversations in companies, sometimes it's very hard, it's very challenging for people to understand their employees, that there's something pivotal happening the sector of HR, and so my goal is to help them and my other clients who sometimes are absolutely not in HR, as I was saying, to connect to their core values, to understand Steve Jobs, at Stanford, he had this famous sentence about connecting the dots when you look back on your life and you realize that everything made sense.

So I'm trying to help them make sense of everything that has happened so far and how they can keep on writing their own story, and what they want to do with their own narrative. So it's mainly, as I was saying, about reconciliating their professional and personal selves, about understanding who they are and maybe opening to new connections that they hadn't seen before and about what's going on, mainly in their work life.

But as I was saying, it's impossible to completely dissociate, who we are professionally and personally, because I really believe this is actually one of the questions I ask all the time to my to my guests what has led them to do what they do today. There is something within each and every one of us that is driving us to do something.

Our path. I believe that everything has a meaning. And this is my line of thought. These are my beliefs, and so I think that everything makes sense, everything happens for a reason. And so my goal is to help them understand what the reason is, what the meaning is. This works for individual coaching and it works for team coaching as well.

Mainly to help teams mostly understand better who they are, individually and who they are as a team. Understand how knowing that can help them communicate. We were talking a lot about communication earlier. How it can help them collaborate. The main themes I like is thinking about the values of the company, when the cultural change is happening, then what is going on. There is something that was actually at the very core of my latest essay is, so I don't know if you've read Sapiens by Harari. Masterpiece, obviously. It's, wonderful. And so he says in this book that us sapiens as a species, our main characteristic is to have built everything around fiction. Everything is fiction. The states, the countries, the money, the rules of football or soccer. Everything is just fiction. And this is how we work. Work is a more general term, and I think that today companies, have been delivering a narrative, a kind of fiction, and companies are fictions and they are struggling with what is going on, more generally, mostly with climate change and everything that people are experiencing personally.

And so there is a struggle between the fictions and the narrative that companies are offering today and what is actually going on. One of my goals is to help companies write a new narrative in which people will get involved, that will engage their employees. This is not really new in the sense that every, every single company has a vision, has a mission, and has been working on this for a very long time. But I feel like this is bigger. This is what kind of narrative do you want to be part of and what I think is very new, is how much the employees are getting now part of this writing and they're really building this with the founders, with the CEOs and CHROs.

So I think this is one of the main things and also what I've written about is that, so you have this fiction, that is the company, but inside that, what is going on is actually real life, because the connections that we have with one another the links, the connection, the relationships, this is real life.

And I think it's not very surprising that there are so many coaches now, so many, even therapists that don't really work inside companies, but there are so many jobs now that focus on helping people nurture these relationships because I feel like the most important thing now in companies and in the world of work is: what is going to nurture these relationships and what is going to keep us human, obviously we're still humans, but as I was mentioning something has been happening for for more than a century and, there are things that we've lost, the connection to who we are individually and collectively.

And this is what we're working on at the moment, and this is why so many people are using the word re humanizing work. It's a trend. Why is it a trend? And I love to understand these trends and to share them and then when I share them with people it's a virtuous circle, because there's always something new, there's always something new to discover, to uncover, and my main goal is to discover, help people as individuals, as professionals and companies navigate these transformations in the world of work and in the world more generally.

Nigel Rawlins: So what I'm hearing is that it's more about being human and I'm almost thinking about the metaphors that we think about in terms of work in the past, like the industrial era, where you were just an asset or a number. You weren't seen as a human and your job was to do this and put out these many widgets and things like that.

Whereas in a human centred organisation, it is about relationships and working together. So the nature of work has actually changed, but you're saying that the narrative.

The narrative we share hasn't caught up with it and that's where probably the confusion is and somebody like yourself is coming in and saying look you know it is new we have to see it differently the story is different or the narrative is different, yeah, I get what you're saying and with your human resources people I'm thinking if more and more talented people are out there and they don't want to work in a job, but they need those talented people, they don't need them all the time, but they might need them for a project, how does a HR person figure out how to get hold of them? How are they going to adapt to it, in an organization and say we can't attract the people we want, but there's probably 20 or 30 of them out there who'd love to come in and work on a project for maybe three months or six months or 12 months.

How can they adapt to it? There are very different ways and different things and we could go on for 12 episodes on this topic, but what I'm mainly seeing is that, they have to know, their options and today there are different ways of filling up a position. So they can create an environment in which they understand what people need and if they really spend time understanding what candidates are asking for, applicants, they can create this environment.

Valentine Gatard: One of the things that is really important to keep in mind is that, what is going on inside the company has to match what they're claiming, because there are more and more people getting into it, starting with a company and then leaving after a few weeks or a few months because there's too much of a discrepancy between what they were expecting and what they are actually experiencing.

So they have to maybe not shoot for the moon and and just think about what can I offer these people for sure, and then maybe you will not claim that you can go to the moon, but it will be at the right level and then we'll know what to expect.

Also there are new ways of working now. For instance, my latest, interview, my latest guest that I published very recently, he created a company, it's consultancies have existed for a long time, but his employees are actually consultants, CHROs, who spend two days in a company and then two days in another, and so they have several projects, they work for several companies, so maybe a company will not have someone full time, maybe they will have someone part time. There are lots of different kinds of companies, different kinds of options, different kinds of way we handle work. And I think that, for instance, this company in particular, it works with the TEAL model.

So it's a free form company, flat organization. The idea is not to encourage people to all have this kind of organization. There are people who want to be really autonomous and responsible for what they do. And some people just don't. And I think that the main thing to keep in mind is that today there are options.

And actually another of my guests was saying that, and I was mentioning it before, like we are, as consumers, we have to plenty of options. All the time. And and it's not because we all have all of these options that we are going to buy everything. Some people do buy everything, but mainly we can find what will suit us, what will be tailored to our needs.

And it's actually the same thing in work. We can find what will be tailored to who we are and this is why it's important to understand who we are and what we truly want because that way we can make a choice. And for people in HR, it's important for them to, first of all, understand who they are and how they can deliver.

And understand what options there are. Understand what is going on. And then they can also co create something with their employees, with their team, and it's very interesting to see how there are lots of companies, mainly startups, that are testing things. There is one bank in in France, called Shine, and they're actually really at the forefront of these trends.

They've just released last year a salary grid. Everything is transparent regarding wages. So when you apply, for instance, there, you enter a few items and you know how much you're going to make instantly. This changes lots of things in the process, in the relationship with the company.

The other day, I think it was the CHRO, I know she has a high position in HR in this company. She published an amazing post on LinkedIn, saying how wonderful each member of her team was. She said, I was told that you shall always hire people who are brighter than you on certain topics. So yes, this person knows so much more about me than on this. And I think what is hard for them is to create this new posture, this new position, this new role and at the same time we were talking just at the beginning of the recording about jazz music, about the dance, about how we respond and I think that today it's what it's all about.

It's about, okay, what do I need? What does this person need? What am I saying? What are they saying? It's a continuum of thoughts and words and conversations. And I think the most important thing is to keep in mind that it's changing so fast. Things we've seen with AI recently. We have to take a step back, and look at things sometimes, and just say, okay, so this is happening very fast, but this is something that is not changing, that is very important. And so how do I find my balance in all this? It's very easy for me to give this advice. I know it's really hard when you're actually, inside the company and it's more easier said than done.

But I think when you start asking yourself these kinds of questions, then it's easier to to keep on doing what you have to do.

Nigel Rawlins: Now that's interesting, because really, I guess what you're saying, if you're an intelligent person you need to start considering how you're going to tailor work to fit who you are. And I think that's the sort of information we're starting to spread out there now. Not everyone can obviously do that. They don't have the ability to do that.

And the other thing, like yourself, you've got several hats that you wear, and I think that's like a portfolio of things that you do, and I think that's really quite important. I think the world of work really is changing, and it is for young people like you, because I'm thinking I'm, 31 years older, I think, than you.

What are you going to be like in 30 years time? What's your life do you think going to look like? With the thoughts you're having now about the nature of work, the fact that you've got several irons in the fire to do things, what do you think your future will look like?

Valentine Gatard: Wow, that's a very interesting question. I actually, I've never thought about who I was going to be in 30 years. I'm not sure I want my life to be very much different, in the sense that I hope that I will still be doing lots of different things.

I've always been like that, always been super curious. Strangely adventurous when I think about it. Even though I'm not a daredevil at all. But I've taken some risks in my life. I think my main goal is to be fulfilled with my activities.

I hope I'll be able to write and to read and to help people transform. I have a gratitude journal and things like that. Almost every day I write what I'm thankful for and grateful for. And, it's mainly about people, the people I spend time with, and the people I love, and what I'm discovering, and new thoughts, and I think I'm, maybe what I'm wishing for is to, I hope I'll be even more creative.

I hope I'll have the ability to do all of these things that I've been doing, and maybe I will do something completely different, because who knows how many new jobs and new things will have come up, by the year 2054, if we if we still exist but hopefully we will, if we don't burn the whole planet down, since then. And yeah, I'm I just hope that my main goal is for, yeah, humanity to just maybe find more simplicity, more minimalism, finding ways to really connect with one another.

Sometimes I have this thought that I know some people find daunting and very sad and scary, but I really don't think it is. I'm, I feel like I'm realistic that humanity will not last for a very long time from now on. It's the end of my latest text, actually.

I want us to be the best humans possible for the end of the show. And I really hope that I don't know if maybe we'll, that we will go instinct in a thousand years or two thousand years. I don't know, but I just want everyone to be able to, yeah, to be the best person they can. And it's hard to do that at the moment with everything that's going on in the world.

But I do believe that, I don't want to sound cheesy or, but I know that we all have light inside of us. And I think that there are more and more people who are ready to spread this light and to actually do the work. To be more, sane and human and and better just better.

And I think I'll be happy in 30 years if I feel like I've really done my job and done my part to to make this this light shine.

Nigel Rawlins:

That is amazing and fantastic. And yeah, unbelievably, those 30 years go fast, I can tell you.

I think this is probably a good spot to finish too, because that's just brilliant. And just let people listen to that and reflect on that. Thank you for joining me.

Valentine Gatard

Thank you so much for having me.