This episode features an interview with Monique Zytnik. Monique is an award-winning, global internal communication leader who presents on best-practice communication at world conferences and guest lectures at universities. Her campaigns have been recognized by Gartner and the Digital Communication Awards. In this episode, Shawn sits down with Monique to discuss the misconception of authenticity, the challenge of creating culture, and why AI will never replace human creativity and connection.
This episode features an interview with Monique Zytnik. Monique is an award-winning, global internal communication leader who presents on best-practice communication at world conferences and guest lectures at universities. Her campaigns have been recognized by Gartner and the Digital Communication Awards.
In this episode, Shawn sits down with Monique to discuss the misconception of authenticity, the challenge of creating culture, and why AI will never replace human creativity and connection.
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“I don't have a car anymore, but when I did, that little blind spot that you have when you're trying to go around the corner and you've always got to make sure you check it. It's the same in an organization. There's always these little spots that you can't really see very well what's going on. You need to take care that your employees in that area are also reflecting your values and that there isn't little fiefdoms happening with particular leaders who don't wish to communicate, and putting employees off or people are leaving because of unsavorable working conditions.” – Monique Zytnik
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Episode Timestamps:
*(02:07): Rapid fire questions
*(06:37): Monique dives into her book
*(10:51): AI’s influence on communication
*(35:09): The role of leaders during difficult times
*(46:34): How AI, leadership, and active listening come together
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Links:
Connect with Monique on LinkedIn
Read Internal Communication in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Connect with Shawn on LinkedIn
Shawn Pfunder: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Cohesion Podcast. Now, today I'm joined by global employee communications expert, Monique Zytnik.
Shawn Pfunder: Monique's work has been recognized by Gartner. Mumbrella CommsCon and the Digital Communication Awards. Hi, Monique. Welcome to the show.
Monique Zytnik: Hello, Shawn. Thank you, everyone, for having me.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, so what we like to do at the very beginning is, we say these are rapid fire questions, but these are not rapid fire questions.
Shawn Pfunder: We need to change what we call them, I think. But there's some questions for our listeners, for me, selfishly, to get to know you a little bit better outside of, you know, You know, being an award winning communications expert. What? What?
Monique Zytnik: It sounds so grown up. I'm like, I know,
Shawn Pfunder: I know. You're like, what's it going to be?
Shawn Pfunder: I'm going to ask you what your favorite candy bar is. I know it's rapid fire questions. I know. Oh, fantastic.
Monique Zytnik: I mean, I'm in Berlin, so Haribo has to be German.
Shawn Pfunder: So is it, so when we say that's the candy, wait, is there a chocolate candy bar that's also Haribo or is it mostly the gummies?
Monique Zytnik: It's mostly the gummies and they are so good.
Shawn Pfunder: They are good. They are good. I, you know, I've worked outside, I guess the plant was in Cologne. Is there one, or there's a Big place in Cologne. It's Bonner.
Monique Zytnik: Yeah. Oh, it's okay. I found out through a client, um, I have to say favorite client now, because, um, I did a keynote and they handed me this giant box of Haribos and they said, it's Harold combined with Bon.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh. And that's the reason why
Monique Zytnik: I know.
Shawn Pfunder: That's why that's the case. Well, great. I know I love, you've tracked it down, you know where to go. I'm a big fan too. I eat them when I'm running, like long, long distances, because it's the same ingredients as fancy running gels and things like that. So, I have my pick of different, Flavors that are out there.
Monique Zytnik: It's so much better. So much better.
Shawn Pfunder: Now the official questions. I hope you're ready. First ones, what's the last book that you read?
Monique Zytnik: Oh, I'm very glad I just started a new book. Otherwise I'd have to confess to a really trashy teen book that I'm trying to read in German. Oh, that's horrible. I'm trying to improve my German.
Monique Zytnik: But I actually have it in my handbag. It's Ta da! For our people watching. Oh, nice. It's employee experience by design by Emma Bridger and Belinda Gunaway. I think it's super important to get all the perspectives on what you do. And this is from an employee experience, more HR perspective than the internal comms, which I love.
Shawn Pfunder: If you could know the truth about any unsolved mystery, What would it be?
Monique Zytnik: I have to say Amelia Earhart.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, that's a great one.
Monique Zytnik: There's two reasons. One is cause she's an amazing, just inspiring person. And I think it was late thirties, her plane went missing. But the second reason is on Lego Masters Australia, one of the contestants did a whole Lego construction out of Amelia Earhart.
Monique Zytnik: With the wing and the goggles and everything, so.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, one of the reasons is Legos. I hope we continue the talking after this podcast. That's perfect. Alright, what is a common myth about your field of expertise?
Monique Zytnik: Oh, that one's easy. Because everyone can speak and most people can write, they think they can communicate at scale.
Shawn Pfunder: Couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more. Been writing for a long time and reading for a long time. And I know when working with people, that's absolutely true. And then what's an insult that you've received that you're proud of?
Monique Zytnik: Oh, definitely as a child, I was that little girl in the library.
Shawn Pfunder: Okay.
Monique Zytnik: Who would sit in the library and read books at lunchtime because I was too scared to go outside and the insult being bookworm.
Monique Zytnik: And it's something I'm now. Very proud of, I love my books growing up. I was restricted to how many I was allowed to read on the weekend. I know you're like, she's a super geek, but I'm proud of it because it's just something that's beautiful, relaxing, and just filled with knowledge. So depending on what you read, of course, I did mention the trashy German book.
Shawn Pfunder: Listen, that can be relaxing. That's how I learned. So only Polish second language. And that's, I was reading, I think, not the trashy teenage novels. I think it was Winnie the Pooh was one of them. And then The Little Prince. And that's how I did my best to improve my Polish at the time. Well, speaking of books, you're publishing a book.
Shawn Pfunder: Congratulations.
Monique Zytnik: Thank you.
Shawn Pfunder: Tell us about the book. What is it about?
Monique Zytnik: So it's internal communication in the age of artificial intelligence. And everyone goes, Ooh, it's about AI. But it's actually, so no, you didn't read the title. It's about the environment that we're in at the moment. Things are changing so rapidly.
Monique Zytnik: We're in this time of technology being out of control. Everyone's absorbed with this whole AI thing. Content's cheap. Anyone can produce anything and we've got all of this change with our employees. They're wanting different things than they did five, 10 years ago. We've got five generations in the work, in the workplace and our leaders need to be the best communicators that they can be to help our people and our companies through all of this change.
Monique Zytnik: And this is what my book is. It shows a really simple model that builds on existing communication models and also has an extra level for the future that incorporates new technology and new ways of thinking and doing things. So for me, it's super exciting, but I know People think, oh, a book on internal communications.
Monique Zytnik: It's actually the first book for leaders. And it's also, I've written it in a real storytelling way with lots of quirky stories, great case studies from Canada, from America, from Australia, from Germany, from, India from all over the world. So it's quirky. It's interesting. I'm told it's a good read.
Shawn Pfunder: I like that.
Shawn Pfunder: I'm told it's a good read. I get the sense that you're probably going to write a quirky book, even if it's about internal communications. I'm reminded when you were talking about the tools that are available to us, like in the age of AI, not necessarily an AI book about internal communications, like you mentioned the myth at the beginning.
Shawn Pfunder: That if people can read it, if people can write, then they're good communicators. Is AI, generative AI, and the way, you know, leaders and people are thinking about it, it's like, oh, I can just get AI to write it. Does the same argument hold? That doesn't necessarily make you a good communicator, even if you can get AI to write a limerick about your product updates.
Monique Zytnik: And AI can write about how your internet site needs a new charger. It can write whatever you please and it doesn't necessarily need to make sense. At the end of the day, we're still in the driver's seat. We're in charge. We are responsible for what we publish. AI is just a tool that's an assistant. It's like your favorite intern, but you need to spend time training them, looking after them, updating them on the latest information, making sure that they're not being told rubbish by the person down.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah.
Monique Zytnik: And it's just a, it's a tool. And I think the hype is going to settle soon. It already is to some extent where a lot of the expectations haven't been met, but at the same time, there's a lot of opportunities that are already there. Also on the horizon, and I like to think of it not as a scale, but as more popcorn.
Monique Zytnik: You've got these little bursts of excitement popping around the place. There's all different sorts of AI, like people get really excited about the generative AI, and obviously there's the videos sort of waiting in the background for all of the, you know, approvals and ticks to be released. So like AI is really great for picking patterns and data crunching, language translation.
Monique Zytnik: I don't know who doesn't use DeepL now. There, there are so many other really cool features that are just popping around in the background and are going to make life a little bit more exciting and interesting.
Shawn Pfunder: When you mentioned the generative AI, the, I love that you're calling it popcorn. That's a little bit more of the distraction, like the joke about people who are easily distracted.
Shawn Pfunder: It's like, how many people that are easily distracted does it take to screw on a light bulb? The answer is, let's go ride bikes. You know, there's like a constant, Sort of like pulling our attention this way. And I'm totally guilty of it. Something will pop up in this new genre of AI thing that's coming out with video or something like that.
Shawn Pfunder: In that case, I can't, I honestly can't wait to read your book. When you mentioned again, the age of AI within that, is there's this room for leaders or do you talk about this area for leaders to be more. human or not rely completely on the popcorn. Just like, oh, here's the newest, greatest thing. I'm going to create an avatar of myself that I use to communicate with my teams instead of being human or connecting with them on an interpersonal level.
Shawn Pfunder: Is that something that you address or talk about? In the age of AI, what we'll need to do moving forward.
Monique Zytnik: At the end of the day, it's about people, Shawn. It's about you and me, and it's about connecting. Our leaders are going to have, and our communication people do already. If you look at, you know, I remember when I started, And it's a little bit of a sidetrack, but when I started in comms, I was originally a physiotherapist and I did my post grads in PR and I went off to America to Washington, D.C.
Monique Zytnik: Right after September 11 and I was an intern. And we, We, I, I had to, as my first task was type on the typewriter, little labels for the head of the offices, drop down files. And then we did clipbooks. So anyone who's. And we're just doing PR media relations. We used to have to scan the top four newspapers every single morning.
Monique Zytnik: We'd get in early with our cup of coffee, flick through the paper looking for our clients. Cut it out and glue it onto graph paper and get the liquid paper out. I don't know if you remember liquid paper.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, do I?
Monique Zytnik: And photocopy this, and it might be a couple of times until the photocopy looked nice and didn't have any smudges.
Monique Zytnik: And my biggest, most proudest moment as an intern was my friend downstairs worked for the Smithsonian museum. And he told me about this program called Photoshop.
Monique Zytnik: And now, like fast forward to now and you press the button and you have absolutely every single video, every single audio that's being collected for you at your fingertips with transcripts within a matter of seconds from once it's produced. It happens so fast.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Yeah, do you feel, and this might be, again, sidetracked personal question on something like this, I get super nostalgic about the throwback, like I'm gonna make a video Like, I've done a lot of design work, a lot of publishing, a lot of, you know, using Photoshop back in the day, it was Quark and InDesign and Frame, like all of them, digital publishing.
Shawn Pfunder: But I have those moments when I want to go down to the, I don't know, the local shop and cut and paste my magazine together and put it through the photocopier and, and push it through. Like, do you get nostalgic for the
Monique Zytnik: I'm sitting here with an actual real book in my hands, Shawn, because it's nice. And this is the, this is a, in my model at the top, it talks about one of the, one of the key areas for immersive communication is appealing to the senses.
Monique Zytnik: It's not about being digital all the time. You've got to appeal to your sense of taste, touch, smell. It's not just about what you read. It's also about what you hear. This is why podcasts are so important. And. Yes, super interesting. They're working well on digital taste at the moment. And interestingly, apparently, I know, I know.
Shawn Pfunder: Wait, what? Like I'll put something in my mouth or I'll smell something, and I could have that? Wait, you've got to tell me what this means, digital taste?
Monique Zytnik: Uh, so I was in contact with some, this guy in Singapore, his, unfortunately his name's just popped out of my head right now.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah.
Monique Zytnik: Um, but they've got like the, they've been working on digital taste.
Monique Zytnik: Apparently sweet is quite a difficult flavor to replicate.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah.
Monique Zytnik: So enjoy your Haribo gummy bears.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, wow. Wow.
Monique Zytnik: But it's basically the photos are like a box that you put to your mouth with a little, metal thing, and you can taste flavors. They've got haptic vests already, which you can buy for any VR set, but I've got new ones that are heat enabled.
Monique Zytnik: So you can do fire safety training and all sorts of things in a completely virtual environment with these heat vests. And you. can feel the heat on your body. You can smell the smoke as well. And yeah, it's incredible.
Shawn Pfunder: I love that you focus on that and the applying to the senses from a communication standpoint.
Shawn Pfunder: Like that's one of the reasons why I love that is that's early even writing advice. If you're going to write a trashy teenage novel in German, if you want it to be good, And for people to like, keep rereading, you apply to the census, even in your writing, when you're talking about a setting or talking about a site.
Shawn Pfunder: Smell, touch, you want to do all of those. That's what we expect. And that's how we remember things. Being able to do that. I was going to say IRL to sound cool, but being able to do that in real life. With people that you're communicating with, instead of just the read this, read this, read this, you know, the RTFM comments were, you know, Crazy for years.
Shawn Pfunder: Like, well, I wrote it and I sent it to you and you didn't read it. I'm sorry. Uh, but switching that up and being able to appeal to their senses. I, I love that. I think that's remarkable. That's unique from the things that I've talked about with other guests to focus on.
Monique Zytnik: So it's about Being experience focused.
Monique Zytnik: So I've been to events where they've had special scent specialists. And I, I mean, marketing, external marketers use all of this stuff in quite a sophisticated way. But I haven't been to, say, a breakout area in an office where they've actually thought about So it's about the smells in the environment, it's about the texture on the cushions, you can see the lovely workplace that I'm in at the moment, but there's this whole other level and it's these.
Monique Zytnik: Real things that are going to matter more and more in the future, particularly for leaders and people who are looking to create meaningful communication experiences. It's not about quantity anymore. It's about quality. It's about having something that impacts you. I'm sure you've been to, and to all of our listeners here, loads of events, you corporate, let's go to a.
Monique Zytnik: Corporate, conference, two days, intense, lots of people. But if you think back onto them, are there many of those events that you actually remember? Or are they just a blur with lots of people and lots of the same information that you've heard at all of the other previous events?
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, that's right.
Monique Zytnik: And it's about, it's about making something meaningful.
Monique Zytnik: It's about making it really connect with you. that you're involved. So this whole element of gamification, also asynchronous. So all of these discoveries I made when I was working with, I guess I can say the client cause it's in the book, DHL on their 3D virtual strategy house. And I was creating, it was during COVID creating this 3D environment and doing the content for it.
Monique Zytnik: And I realized. Not everybody was working, particularly when it came through on the user testing. Not everyone was going through the environment in the same way. And. It's that ability for your user or the audience to actually choose to have that choice of what do they interact with. And then if you think of our amazing art galleries, like the really good ones, you'll go with, you know, I don't know, your friends, your mother, your child, and then you've got someone else who is off contemplating something else in a different part of the exhibition that doesn't speak to you.
Monique Zytnik: And it's about each piece of content fits together for a meaning and you can consume all of it or you can consume one bit. And it's. Each of the individual pieces are interesting to different people, but together it also makes sense. It's not about bombarding your audience with the same piece of artwork, one in landscape format, one in portrait format.
Monique Zytnik: Which is what I think some of us do in internal comms. We do, and we pat ourselves on the back.
Monique Zytnik: Let's use this photo on the intranet homepage. Let's lose this photo in the top of the email. Let's use this same, exact same photo. And then we wonder why our audience gets bored.
Shawn Pfunder: That's interesting because the, I mean, taking that metaphor, or sticking with that metaphor, you're still in the art gallery, meaning there's sort of directionally, if you're talking about, I don't know, annual reviews, so, and some companies do them, some companies don't, but a lot of times that becomes a huge communication project to make sure that people feel valued, that they're assessing their work, that they could be promoted, like, whatever goes with it.
Shawn Pfunder: And, Now you have the opportunity, like, that's the space, that's the art gallery. You have some that will love just to get the email, read the email. Some will like the audio that comes through. Some may even want Socratic method. They just want to ask questions and get answers and try to break the AI that they're working with to try to get, figure out what it is that they're supposed to do next.
Shawn Pfunder: Instead of just, look at my really great, it's so funny you say that. Landscape and portraits. We're like, we diversified. We're communicating to two different audiences. Gen X and Gen Z. Were there any surprises? So things that you came across in writing the book or clients that you worked with where you were really surprised?
Monique Zytnik: For me, I was most surprised about how much I loved Writing the book, because every interview that I did, I got to speak with Priya Bates from Canada, had this amazing case study, the Hewlett Packard compact merger and how that worked. I spoke with people in America who were confessing to me how their CEO had And I was really, really bombed out on a presentation, how they worked with them.
Monique Zytnik: I was talking with Amazon in a Banu is currently in India. And he was telling me about how Amazon, they have a radio in the packing, a sort of associates area and how they have a DJ and how that works with WhatsApp. And it like all of these amazing stories, each and every one of them was just fascinating and interesting.
Monique Zytnik: And I, yeah, I was surprised at how much I just loved the whole. process. I'm already writing my next book in my own head, but I have to get this one out first.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, I had the feeling when you first said, I was surprised how much I liked writing it. I, I immediately thought the sitting down and typing, putting it together, but you're absolutely right.
Shawn Pfunder: The writing of the book is the research, the relationships, having the conversations, discovering what people are doing to communicate better with their employees. That DJ idea, you know, a radio, I mean, it works for that environment, it totally makes sense. But of course I'm thinking, oh yeah, I'm totally gonna, can I do something like that with an asynchronous workforce that really doesn't want to be online when they're not working, and send them a radio.
Shawn Pfunder: But that's brilliant, that is just a brilliant idea.
Monique Zytnik: And there are so many really great stories and ideas in there that, as I said, I just loved researching and putting it together. And once you've got the ideas, it just all goes through your fingers and there's no, there was, okay, so I used Grammarly. To help me do all the, I just think going through, but there's no need.
Monique Zytnik: I know I can write books and Seth Godin the other day, like he's one of my heroes was saying within 10 months, he thinks most books will be written by AI, but it's the human stories and it's those stories. And there's Shel Holtz in there. And the first time I met him over pastrami and rye in Ben's deli in New York.
Monique Zytnik: Oh, wow. That was, that's when I fell in love with Pastrami and Rye.
Shawn Pfunder: That's the moment, that's the moment that you fell in love with Pastrami and Rye.
Monique Zytnik: Oh my gosh, it was so good.
Shawn Pfunder: So good. That bit you mentioned about Seth Godin talking about books. Being written by AI. I remember early on, I saw somebody in testing it or playing around with generative AI just said, Hey, I'm really interested in learning about dolphins.
Shawn Pfunder: What are some books I should read? And the AI produced a hallucination, made up the books. The books didn't exist. So here's the title of the book. Here's the author of the book. The books don't exist. And then A prediction, right after that, was, you know what, within a year, the AI can produce the books fast enough for me to find them.
Shawn Pfunder: Like once it lists these fake books that don't exist, the AI will be able to write the books, you know, put a cover, you know, an author's name on it and publish it and be available. And okay, now I'm just freaking myself out if I talk, because there's part of me that gets excited about that. But to your point on the human stories and that human connection, I'm wondering, you talk about that in your work.
Shawn Pfunder: That human centric approach or those stories, just like AI is not going to produce this pastrami on rice story. Well, we'll produce it, but it won't be the same because you and I are, are talking about it. How are we going to keep that? How will we keep that connection with all? I feel like I'm going to get fooled, you know, like I won't know if it's, yeah, human or not.
Monique Zytnik: And I, uh, this conversation can go in so many directions. This is, we can no longer tell If something is real or not. With all of the abilities of the deep fakes, I'm not sure, my favorite ones, the Keanu Reeves deep fakes, where actually you've seen him, he runs around and he cleans.
Shawn Pfunder: Yep. And it looks like Keanu Reeves.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Yeah.
Monique Zytnik: But the one where he's like with a fluorescent girl while he's cleaning his bathroom. Anyway, they're hilarious and fun, but all we need is, I mean, it's already happening with misinformation. There are photos that have been made up from, there was a famous one recently, a baby. In a war zone. And it was supposed to be that it was a baby's on the forefront.
Monique Zytnik: Oh, wow. And that was published in the news and it wasn't actually a real photo. And people, once you see something, you can't unsee it, but this has happened since before AI. Yeah. This is what we need to remember that there's stories forever about. People are convinced, I don't know, the food pyramid myth and all sorts of myths.
Monique Zytnik: There's all of these stories but people still remember their first impression or their first idea or first part of the story. Storytelling is super powerful. As you know, but AI just makes it easier for us to be fooled with all the video technology that's coming out. Still at the moment, I mean, fingers are still an issue, continuity.
Monique Zytnik: So taxis changing color as they drive past, those sorts of things are still issues, but they're going to be fixed soon. And I think there is a lot of, you know, Issues like if you look at the workforce, we're getting very philosophical here, Shawn, but I think if you look at the workforce and this idea of productivity as well, there are people, particularly post COVID who was starting to question why, like, what's the point of doing more and running faster for an organization.
Monique Zytnik: And we're already seeing this with the quiet quitting. I think. In Belinda's book, she was mentioning 57 percent were sort of already moderately disengaged at 19 percent completely just born mentally. And there's Germany's trialing the four day work week. I think there's a huge plus throw in the asynchronous work in the mix, which a lot of organizations still haven't worked out how to do effectively.
Monique Zytnik: I mean, when I was working in Australia for a consultancy, I was up until one o'clock sometimes in the morning, simply because we had. To have meetings to get things done. So we've got this like melting pot right now of our workforce of still a war on talent. There was a report that came out at Kornferry.
Monique Zytnik: I think it was late last year that is making even more dire predictions about. The right talent being less available. So I'm wondering what next, what's coming next, Shawn, for our workplace. Are we going to be embracing the four day work week? Are we going to be looking at the universal basic income? Are we going to have AI?
Monique Zytnik: And sort of the robotics are really rapidly improving as well at the moment. Are we going to be living in some video game? What's coming next? It's exciting, but terrifying.
Shawn Pfunder: It is a little terrifying and very exciting. You know, when I think about, well, you mentioned Grammarly or any of those types of programs.
Shawn Pfunder: And I know, you know, previously managing large comms organizations, employee experience organizations. We had an Editor, or a person that primarily that's what they did, and did it the old school way, the, you know, the triple underline to capitalize something, or you had to know proof reading marks if you worked on the teams, you knew what you were doing.
Shawn Pfunder: And now, like, I don't have an editor, I don't have a copy editor. I was, primarily it's because of the tools that I can use, and if you know how to write enough, you can use that. Well, does that mean Shawn do more? Or does that mean Shawn, keep doing the same amount of work, but now you have more free time to only work four days a week, or You know, go to the circus.
Shawn Pfunder: Like, I, I don't know. It's interesting to see where we're headed. Yeah.
Monique Zytnik: There's a lot of organizations are positioning it now as an opportunity for you, Shawn, to be doing all of the other things on your list that you couldn't get to before. But again, I get the sense there's a bigger change. And I'm curious as to what direction that will head in.
Monique Zytnik: And I think there's a certain amount of framing that we can do as communications people, and we're obviously being paid by the organization. But at the same time, we need to be asking the difficult questions from leaders because that's what everybody else is asking as well. It's like, do you want your chat function turned off?
Monique Zytnik: And not listen to the noise that's happening, or do you want to engage with the discussion that's happening right now?
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Personal question. So if you didn't have to work like you work now, what would you do? We've, we've talked about this before, but we think everybody's still like, I would have to work.
Shawn Pfunder: I don't know what I would work on. I mean, maybe I would finally learn how to fix a car. I don't know, or learn how to make a great cup of coffee or be a barista instead of what I'm doing, but. Is there anything for you that you would work on if there was less of the, I don't want to say opportunity, but less of the pressure to just, or is that a uniquely, not uniquely, but is that a more of a.
Shawn Pfunder: A US thing where we're like, I have to work because I have to get healthcare. I have to work because I have to do, if those things freed up, would it be different?
Monique Zytnik: I think there's definitely different cultural elements at play. There are people who are in more privileged positions who can choose to, or choose not to work.
Monique Zytnik: I do very SEO, and was just listening to one the other night with a comedian, but they were talking about how, They would still do what they're doing, even though they could quit and retire right now because they're the kind of people that are motivated. I'm like that to some extent, to a large extent. I love what I do.
Monique Zytnik: I get super excited by it. I didn't have to write a book. I wanted to, I desperately wanted to, and that was, that was weekends and evenings and a lot of sacrifice, but there are other people. And I think. I'm going to loop back to the workplace, but there are other people who are very happy being busy doing other things.
Monique Zytnik: And there, there are a lot of jobs such as carers jobs, looking after children, community roles that are not paid. I do a lot of volunteer work as well because I want to give back. So I, I do things for the IABC, for the Global Women in PR, a lot of different organizations, the Mentoring Club as well. And that's.
Monique Zytnik: Not paid, but I choose to do it because it makes, uh, I feel like it does give me purpose and it, it's personally rewarding to see other people grow. But at the same time, I can't And, sorry, we're getting very philosophical here.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, don't, don't worry. Yeah.
Monique Zytnik: I can't look at somebody else and tell them that's what they should be doing.
Monique Zytnik: When we come to the workplace, I always like to look at my team as, who are my superstars? Who are the people who are rising up and who are like leading the pack and just amazing who are my rock stars, like the people I can depend on, and I don't expect them to go the extra mile, but they're there.
Monique Zytnik: They're always going to do a great job, they might not overextend, but that's fine because I know that they're there and they're reliable and they're contributing to the team. And then who are the emerging stars? The people who might be. Occasionally brilliant, still learning a lot, need a lot of investment, but you know that they're going to, you know, they've, they're giving back in other ways.
Monique Zytnik: And I think it's that holistic view to what we need in a team and that diversity as well as more broadly societally.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, well we see then, like, all this talk about AI, and I get quieter the more we talk about AI, like, but you mentioned probably the core to making this work, I think, and you talk about this in your book, you talk about this in other work, is, you just illustrated that in talking about being a leader.
Shawn Pfunder: So, what do you think? Leaders, what's their role in all of this moving forward? It's really interesting, like where we're headed, and it's exciting, and it makes us nervous at the same time, and there's all sorts of things that are happening environmentally and within a business, and affect the way that employees think about the world, their anxiety, can I get a house, can I not get a house, where am I going to live?
Shawn Pfunder: How are leaders? positioned, or how should they be, I guess, pulling us forward through this?
Monique Zytnik: Leadership is the most crucial skill right now. And communication is the most essential skill for a leader. So if you talk to any leader, most of them will say at least 50 percent of their role is communication.
Monique Zytnik: This is why a lot of leaders as perhaps a bit more old school leaders, but there is a distinct group of leaders who prefer the. In office experience, because it's easier to influence. It's much easier to use your communication skills when you are there in person. And cause you've got that richness in the context.
Monique Zytnik: I had lunch with a friend of mine, quite a senior VP. And, He confessed that 50 percent of the time his job was communication, he had a global team, but 80 percent of the time when things go wrong, it's because of bad communication. It's because of miscommunication. And so what our leaders can do, they have an important role in setting the vision.
Monique Zytnik: And this goes back to, look back at Kotter's work or any sort of, Proseki, sort of the, the Adcar models, any of those change manager models, you need that leadership to, to set the vision and then work out how you're going to get there and, and communicate along the way to bring people on the journey. And if people aren't coming, then quite often, you know, you can.
Monique Zytnik: delay a project or you can change things so that you get the results just because it's your plan that you wrote a year ago doesn't mean it's the right plan now. And our leaders need that flexibility, those communication skills and the ability to be human. I think I don't like the word authentic.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah.
Monique Zytnik: Human, the word that I'm going for.
Shawn Pfunder: What is it about the, I'm allergic to the word authentic these days as well. What, like, what is it that's made us so allergic to that word?
Monique Zytnik: I've heard three different definitions of that.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh boy. Today.
Monique Zytnik: Yeah. And everyone's talking about being authentic and then you actually say, Oh, so what do you mean by authentic?
Monique Zytnik: And they're like, well, what you say and what you do is the same thing. And I'm thinking, but that's, isn't that trust? Doesn't it? Isn't that trust? That's trust. Yep. And then someone else is saying, Oh, you're bringing your whole self to work. But then again, I told you, I, I love Seth Godin's stuff. And he goes on this brilliant rant where he says.
Monique Zytnik: If you are getting your knee operated on, do you really want an authentic surgeon? You just want your surgeon to do a good job regardless if they've broken up with their wife or they've had a bad day or they've broken up with their husband, whatever's happened. And if you're having your house painted, you don't want someone to be authentic.
Monique Zytnik: You want to do a good job. I've realized my beef comes down to the fact that there are so many different definitions of authentic, and it's a bit of a buzzword. It's like telling someone to lead and not defining what leadership means to you. It's like telling someone to be strategic. And this is where I'm feeling a little bit bad because I use the word strategic in my book quite often.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah.
Monique Zytnik: But you say, Oh, strategic. Be more strategic, Shawn. And you're like, sure, what does that mean?
Monique Zytnik: Sounds good. Yeah, I do have a bit of a beef with authenticity.
Shawn Pfunder: We miss on those stuff. And yeah, when you have somebody, a team or even a leader, and this will pull us back to the leadership bit, a couple of thoughts and questions I had about that. But it's the same as you stand up in a room full of people and say, Hey, we have to change what we're doing.
Shawn Pfunder: We have to pivot. We have to come up with something new. Be creative. Like, okay, or be authentic, or be smart, you know, it's just a sort of a demand to do something without the, the guidance or the leadership to go with it. And that, that reminded me when, That's so true that you have a leader, a CEO, a division manager, a VP, they know how important good communication is because they know how much it can bite and be frustrating if it's not there, if it doesn't work out.
Shawn Pfunder: And there's this mix between, not even a mix, informing isn't enough in some of these cases. There's got to be this inspired piece, which is kind of. I want to say it's like informing on steroids. It's still informing, but it's memorable and gets people excited, or at least they understand what the role is, what the vision is.
Shawn Pfunder: I'm wondering at that level, when you talk about having a clear vision, being able to, I don't know, get people to take off on that same journey together, what are the common missteps that you've seen? Or in putting together a book and talking about these things, like where are people getting that? I don't want to say wrong, but that's not necessarily the right way to say it, but where are they veering off a little bit?
Shawn Pfunder: Because I've had that experience where somebody will say like, well, we have a vision. This is what it is. Or we have employee values. This is what they are. But it's not getting us the inspiration or you're still getting employees, you know, every year you do the survey and say, my leaders are not communicating with me or senior leadership is keeping secrets.
Shawn Pfunder: It's like, what? Where is it, where are we missing each other in that regard?
Monique Zytnik: So with the strategy, you know where you want to go and you have to be really honest about where you are now, but then you need to actually know and understand the people who you're trying to communicate with. And unless you do that.
Monique Zytnik: Do that little bit of, I think my favorite one that I, I heard the other day was I was at a conference, I was speaking in London at a conference and this guy called Richard was saying to me, yes, we have like this ticketing system every time there's an issue and it will send an email to our frontline staff so that they can resolve the issue.
Monique Zytnik: But none of them have email addresses, so someone has to, someone has to go in and like take the email that's been sent to them and either send it to them on a text message or some other way. It's like this complete disconnect. It's like when you, when a great example, another great example is the employee leave.
Monique Zytnik: So in Australia, employee leave can occur, accrue over. And that's actually a liability on the balance sheet. In some countries at the end of the year, it just goes back to zero, but in, in at least in Australia, and then a large campaign is often run, okay, employees take your leave, but if you're targeting people who are working in a shop and Or in the shop front and they need to have a certain number of people rostered and they're short staffed anyway, are you, are you going to make them happy by telling them they have to take their leave, otherwise they'll leave, they'll, they'll be shut out of their email system.
Monique Zytnik: It's like a complete misunderstanding of the actual people who you're trying to communicate with and the kind of environment that they're in. And that's where I think most of goes wrong.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Yeah. That reminds me of, Nancy Duarte wrote a book, Resonate, about giving presentations, analyzed a lot of different really great speeches or presentations where it's compelling or to inspire people.
Shawn Pfunder: And one of the things that I loved about it was this reminder that whenever you're communicating to a team or a group of people, that you're not the hero of the story. You're the fairy godmother, you're Yoda, you're, here, like, I'll get you the dress, I'll get you the shoes, I'll get you the carriage, but you gotta go to the ball, sort of thing.
Shawn Pfunder: And you have to really understand who your employees are before you say anything. Oh, and And not only that, I think they need to believe, oftentimes, when you're conveying a vision or a mission. They have to believe that you understand, like, who they are, what their situation is, what's happening. It's a joke, that's the easiest way to start a cult, is by just getting up in front of a group of people and saying something ridiculous that shows you understand them, like, sometimes I'm really tired and I don't like it out of, I don't like to get out of bed.
Shawn Pfunder: Does that sound like you? And you have a small army of people. Yeah, that sounds like me. Would you like it to be different? Yes, but that's a small thing just to show that you understand who they are and that they're the hero of the story and you're not the hero of the story. It could go a long way. Yeah, it could go a long way.
Monique Zytnik: Shawn, I think that we all like to feel that we're listened to, and we all like to feel that we are understood and any small step that one can make in that direction, because quite often we forget that communication isn't just about talking, it's about listening. And it's about understanding. So there's been some really brilliant work that's been recently done by Dr.
Monique Zytnik: Kevin Ruck and Mike Pounceford and Howard Christ in the UK, organizational listening, and they've done a study over a couple of years, looking at the different aspects of organizational listening, um, their book is out. Now as well. And I think that's something that our leaders could perhaps step away from the broadcast approach to the, uh, more listening and understanding approach.
Shawn Pfunder: I think that's probably where, I love that you bring that up. I have a couple of other questions, but one that's related and I think that listening is core, my guess is, you tell me, of course, you're the expert, you tell me if I'm wrong on this, but if the culture is another word that can drive me a little bonkers, like authenticity.
Shawn Pfunder: People like create the culture or make a culture or grow a culture and whatever goes with it. So we're talking, we've talked about, you know, the age of AI. We've talked about leadership and how important that is. And then active listening, making sure that you really understand who your employees are. How does that all come together?
Shawn Pfunder: If I'm a, if I'm a CEO or I'm a, I'm an executive and I'm like, I really want a culture of creativity, or I really want a culture of high, that also, it's like an authentic word, but I really want a culture of high performance in my company. How do these things come together, or what would be your recommendation of sort of pulling these things together in order to, I don't know if create a culture is the right phrase, but affect a culture or develop or champion a certain culture.
Shawn Pfunder: How do you see those things coming together?
Monique Zytnik: I see, I see a culture as a living, breathing thing that can be.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah.
Monique Zytnik: Easily damaged. It can also be created and changed over time. And that's why it's almost like a person. It does need care and attention. And to bring it together, you not only need all of these elements, like the company values, the employee value proposition, all of these bits and pieces.
Monique Zytnik: It might sound boring, but it's A way of one person communicating to the other what's important. So unless you have written down what your values are, how are you going to agree and talk about it? It's like that concept of the limit of your language is the limit of your world. And you need to know and understand what those different elements are.
Monique Zytnik: So at least you can have the conversation.
Monique Zytnik: And then once you've got. Once you've got the, say the values, you can go with just five or three. They can, they need to be embedded in everything. So looking at your performance in incentives. So there was a company that I worked for and I thought it was brilliant.
Monique Zytnik: We had these values and we had to write our performance goals in terms of those values. They needed to. I think one of them was being bold. I still remember. And this is back in 2010 and then many organizations since one of them was being bold and you, you had to write like in your performance, how you were going to be more bold than you were last time.
Monique Zytnik: And that's just one, that was just one thing. And if you're being assessed and measured and your bonus is, is, you know, Connected directly to those KPIs. It's like another example, another company who was doing packaging delivery and a lot of their packagings were being damaged and they couldn't work out why, and they were trying to communicate with them, telling them, okay, guys, you need to be more careful with the way that you transport and process these packages in the warehouse.
Monique Zytnik: And it wasn't until I worked out that the. The bonus and the KPIs were linked with the number of packages that have been processed that they got any change at all. So these KPIs are so important and that's where the culture needs to be linked with it in some way. There needs to be a definition of, okay, bold.
Monique Zytnik: What does bold mean? What does that look like? And we need to have a conversation about that. And then. That needs to be reflected in everything from the way that you attract talent to the way that you off board, the way that you do your communications. So in this particular company, all of the, I was the, I was starting out the internal comms for this company.
Monique Zytnik: And so it was really exciting and got to do everything how I wanted to. Right. And. It was like every single intranet article that I wrote. And as I said, it was back in 2010 on the SharePoint, 2010 SharePoint, it was
Monique Zytnik: new at the time. That was my first project was change management for the new 2010 SharePoint.
Monique Zytnik: And every article had to reflect these values. So it's about using it as your yardstick. It's what you say, you know, what the values are and actually what you do, like what you produce, what you write, what you're measured against, the way that you interact with other people, the decisions that you make.
Monique Zytnik: It's absolutely everything. But I think it comes back to a couple of very core basic things. And then obviously there are little black spots around The organization where you don't have visibility. It's like when you're, I don't have a car anymore, but when I did that little blind spot that you have, when you're trying to go around the corner and you've always got to make sure you check it, it's
Monique Zytnik: the same in an organization.
Monique Zytnik: There's always these little spots that you can't really see very well what's going on and you need to take care that. Your employees in that area are also reflecting your values and that there isn't little fiefdoms happening with particular leaders who don't wish to communicate and who are putting employees off or people are leaving because of unsavourable working conditions.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Well, then it's just communications again. I mean, it all comes back to that and what you're talking about, like listening, conversing, talking, checking in. Even when you discover the fiefdom, you know, you close your eyes, close your ears, la la la la la la. Uh, like I know Tom's doing this, but I don't want to be the one to talk to him.
Shawn Pfunder: Um, but yeah, just the communications that come with it. Well, I'm very excited about your book. Can you tell us where we can find your book?
Monique Zytnik: So, my book is available through Business Expert Press, who's my publisher, as well as the Eurospan bookstore, which is for the European and the Australian markets. But if you go to business expert press, they've got all of the links there.
Monique Zytnik: And also Amazon.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, awesome. Well, very cool. Thanks again for joining us. This has been great and quirky, a little quirky. But very helpful and very inspiring for me. So I really appreciate it.
Monique Zytnik: I love the conversation. Thank you so much, Shawn, for having a laugh with me and enjoying the beautiful view from the nighttime Berlin.