Jodine Stodart

Episode 83
Brave UX

Keeping Stakeholders Engaged with Design

In this episode of Brave UX, Jodine Stodart shares how to get and keep stakeholders engaged, why it’s important to develop your understanding of self, and the timeless power of listening.

Highlights include:

How important are stakeholder interviews for UX success?
Can UX be successful if customer centricity isn’t a strategic focus?
How do you help stakeholders to make sense of design artefacts?
Why do leaders need to be more conscious of their impact on others?
How do you help someone to see another person’s perspective?

July 29, 202201:14:32

Listen on:

Who is Jodine Stodart?

Jodine is the Managing Director of Fireside Consulting, the UX & Design Coaching, Service Design, Regenerative Design, and Conscious Leadership Coaching practice that she founded in 2019.

As someone who is inspired by the potential for design to help solve complex problems, Jodine is also the co-founder of the online UX community called UXCONNECT, through which she runs regular leadership retreats.

Prior to Fireside Consulting, Jodine was a Director of User Experience at Digital Arts Network in New Zealand, where she worked with key clients such as Auckland Council, Countdown Supermarkets, and Spark.

She was also a Senior User Experience Consultant at Optimal Usability, a leading New Zealand design research consultancy that was sold to Price Waterhouse Coopers in 2014.

Transcript

Brendan Jarvis:
Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, Managing Founder of The Space InBetween, the home of New Zealand's only specialist evaluative UX research practice and world-class UX lab, enabling brave teams across the globe to de-risk product design and equally brave leaders to shape and scale design culture. Here on Brave UX though, it's my job to help you to put the pieces of the product puzzle together. I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings, and expert advice of world class UX, design and product management professionals. My guest today is Jodine Stodart. Jodine is the director of Fireside Consulting, the UX and design coaching service design, regenerative design and conscious leadership coaching practice that she founded in 2019. As someone who is inspired by the potential for design to help solve complex problems, Jodie is also the co-founder of the online UX community called UXCONNECT, through which she runs regular leadership retreats. Clearly a connector,
Jodine was also the co-organizer of the UX Auckland Meetup for over five years, passing on the baton in April of 2019. Prior to Fireside Consulting, Jodine was the Director of User Experience at Digital Arts Network in New Zealand, where she worked with key clients such as Auckland Council, Countdown Supermarkets and Spark. She was also a Senior User Experience Consultant at Optimal Usability, then the leading New Zealand design research consultancy, which was sold to Pricewaterhouse Coopers in 2014. As someone who is highly thought of in the local UX community, it's my pleasure to have Jodine here with me today to share her perspectives with our global brave UX community. Jodine, welcome to the show.
Jodine Stodart:
Thanks, Brendan. Nice to be here.
Brendan Jarvis:
It's great to have you here. This is a chat that's been a few months in the making and like I mentioned, you are someone who's really respected in the local community here and as soon as I put out a call for guests for the show, there were so many wonderful people that I know that had put your name forward, so it's really great to have you. Now, I did notice when I was researching for today that you have many creative aspects to who you are and they extend past design and in particular one of the realms that your creativity extends into is the musical realm. And I understand in certain circles you are known by another name DJ Chicka. Who or what is DJ Chicka
Jodine Stodart:
[laugh]? DJ Chika is Chika.
Brendan Jarvis:
Ah, I should have checked that with you first. [laugh].
Jodine Stodart:
Okay. Because the way I spell it, it often gets misspelled or mispronounced, but that's ok. Yeah. DJ Chika is a bit of a persona that has been created over a number of years. I started DJing in 2011 just after I returned to New Zealand, have some time away and working in Melbourne. And yeah, it just keeps going strong. For some reason people just respond really well to my music selections and that just seems to hold fast. Yeah.
Brendan Jarvis:
Now I understand that part of what you do is you produce music for what's called ecstatic dance. What is that? Did I get that right? What is ecstatic dance?
Jodine Stodart:
Good question. So I guess I first make the distinction that I'm, I'm learning how to produce music at the moment and producing music is quite different from DJing. So I mostly select other people's music, but for ecstatic dance, it's kind of like a sober rave. It's an environment where people can come and it's not a club. A lot of people wanna dance but they don't wanna go to some club. Humans love to move their bodies to music, but often the context isn't what they wanna participate in. So ecstatic dance really offers the community an opportunity to have an experience that is, I guess intentionally designed. So the ecstatic dance is just not four to the floor house music bashing out Chino drum and bass the whole time. It's very different. It's crafted to be a journey is what we call it. So it deliberately has a start, a middle and a close. So an ecstatic is a funny word, but really what it describes is just that peak moment that that's designed into the series of tracks and where everyone feels quite elated naturally high if you will, off movement and dancing and sharing experience together. So that's how I would describe it.
Brendan Jarvis:
I'm getting some insight into, and we don't know each other well at all, right, we've just met, but I'm getting some insight into how your skills in coaching and in design are quite complimentary to what you've described there about the sort of movement of the journey that you take people on through ecstatic dance and the music that you're selecting. I understand that during lockdown in particular you were involved in initiative. That seemed to me looking from the outsider in any way that it was an ecstatic dance kind of initiative called Frock Downs. What were the frock downs? And I'm not sure if they're still going now that we are no longer in lockdowns, but what were they tell us about them.
Jodine Stodart:
This is great, you've really done your homework Brendan. Yeah, so the frock down was really, we called it the social medicine movement, which was the collector that was surrounding the frock down events. And really it was a way of providing a sense of connection when we're all really physically isolated. I think in the 2020 lockdowns I was doing DJ lives, I'd see a lot of friends and a lot of international DJs do these where you DJ online from your home, you kind of set up a nice background so it looks atmospheric, but you're just using what you've got and you broadcast to the world. And this was a fun way both to keep obviously my skills as a DJ Fresh, keep downloading tracks, stay engaged with the community. But for that 2021 it became more of a lineup and they became quite complex events to organize and sometimes it was actually quite stressful. We were transitioning from one DJ to the next as a lineup, but obviously across New Zealand. So we have people contributing from Christchurch, Auckland, Hickey obviously and beyond. But yeah, they were really successful in terms of offering people something to do on a Saturday night, basically something to watch or even participate in so people would get up and dance in their lounge and felt like they had a social life when we weren't supposed to be. So
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, for those of you who are listening that aren't in New Zealand, you would've had your own experience of the pandemic and social isolation that resulted in New Zealand here we had what were called lockdowns as we've just been talking about, and literally it was no contact, physical contact with people outside of your home environment, you know, couldn't even really go and see your neighbors or do anything. So sounds like it was quite an important initiative that you're involved in for mental health, not just your own but also the other people that weren't able to get out and about and do the things that they were used to doing.
Jodine Stodart:
Yeah, absolutely.
Brendan Jarvis:
I couldn't help but notice that you didn't study design, which isn't in itself, I suppose that atypical when it comes to people who work in design. But your undergraduate degree was in something or in two things actually that were quite distinctive, at least to me, they sort of stood out from the range of people that I've had on the show. You have a Bachelor of Social Science and Human Geography and gender studies. What was it, and I know we're sort of taking a little bit of a walk down memory lane here, but what was it that drew you to those particular topics?
Jodine Stodart:
Yeah, great question. It's a bit of a story. I guess it kind of starts with doing an American field scholarship in my last year at high school. So I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to spend a year in Argentina. I learned Spanish and I was curious about Latin culture in general at that time anyway, and I wanted to go deeper. So this was an opportunity to be in a Latin country and really kind of understand what it was all about. And at that young age, I think I was 16, turning 17, what I found was like, this is a different culture but everything feels the same. People still get up, they have breakfast, they have lunch, they things and it all feels the same, but at the same time it's completely different and it really blew my mind. And I had two paths, obviously at the end of high school I could have gone to Polytech and studied graphic design and that was sort of the obvious path for me at the time because I'd done a lot of design contribution to the student newspaper at the high school and things like that.
So design was definitely front and center, but that experience in another culture really kind of made me curious about humans. And when I saw the options at university about what I could study with social anthropology, understanding people in place was really important to me. So that was I guess the human geography part of it. And the social science, gender studies I guess is quite a personal journey. I really identified quite strongly as a feminist when I was a teenager and that was something that emerged out of watching my own mother struggle with the circumstances at the time. And I don't mind sharing this cuz this was really a pivotal moment for me when I guess my parents divorced when I was a teenager and I watched my mom struggle on the domestic purposes benefit at the time with three kids and it really transformed our whole economic situation and the options available to us obviously.
And then I remember with what happened with the government at the time is that those benefits got further rolled back and I saw the impact that had on my mom and I was just like, I will never wanna put myself in that position of having to rely on government support and really seeing what happens in a woman's life when you are dependent on either a provider or the government as a provider or your husband as a provider. So that really I think caused this shift to really focus on women's rights and feminism and that was really strong in my early years at university as well. So
Brendan Jarvis:
Was this Ruth Richardson and the mother of all budgets that you're referring to in terms of the cuts to benefits? Yeah, yeah, I remember that time as well. I grew up in a solo parent household with my mum in a similar circumstance. So I've also had firsthand front row seat to what that was like and felt, feel very passionately about gender equality and income equality. Certainly an area I suppose gender studies at the moment, which is of huge interests globally. And I imagine it has grown a lot the field in terms of gender as a spectrum now which wasn't possibly so much on the forefront of the agenda then. But how have these experiences experiencing your mom, your subsequent studies, how have they flown through the things that stood out to you from those experience into the way in which you've practiced design and potentially even the way in which you are now coaching other designers to improve their practice and improve their world?
Jodine Stodart:
Absolutely. Well I guess my interest in design is that it is a powerful way to create impact on the world and coaching also coaching designers, people that are in a position to make change. And I do coach a lot of women as well. So not exclusively, but it does tend to be the people that reach out to me are woman that have an interest in growing their skills and leadership and growing their influence. And it's a real privilege to be able to support women in tech. I think it's incredibly important that they get that extra boost to have the confidence to put themselves forward for further roles of influence and to know how to respond to the environment around them with that kinda confidence in themselves.
Brendan Jarvis:
So is this something, given that you've worked almost entirely either in a consulting freelance capacity or through I suppose design agencies through an external consulting design cap capacity, is this something that you have experienced this coaching as being particularly strong in that area of our industry?
Jodine Stodart:
I guess, sorry, just to understand, clarify that question. So you're wanting to understand, was coaching prison in an agency style role in
Brendan Jarvis:
The firm? Yeah cuz looking from the outside in at your career path, you obviously got to a very senior level at Digital Arts Network, which is one of New Zealand's you, I suppose premiere UX consultancies but mean obviously do more than that. But that is one of their key strengths. When you were coming up through Optimal and Dan and through your other work experiences was coaching particularly for female design designers or design leaders, was this something that was systemic in the way in which you've seen your own experience in the industry and others have experiences of, or is this an area that's lacking and that you felt compelled to do something about?
Jodine Stodart:
Good question. I would say that coaching is just a way that I respond to my environment and the way I support people around me. And what I realized is it was very natural and that's how I ended up in a coaching business for myself. And of course, yeah, I often mentored other designers and researchers and I've done a lot of teaching us user testing, usability testing. It just seems to be a natural fit for me personally. I wouldn't say that it's always present in the industry itself, but I think that it's growing. I think because there are a lot of people that are wanting to get into UX, it's a very popular field now. People are wanting those opportunities to grow their skills and capability and so it, it's becoming more popular but I wouldn't say that it was always something that was there.
Brendan Jarvis:
I just wanna rewind the clock a little bit before we moved deeper into helping organizations build UX capability to an experience that you had a couple of experience actually after you moved to Australia. So you mentioned you came back from Australia in 2011, I understand that probably quite soon after you moved over there you had a couple of experiences, one of which was being one of 20 people selected to visit India as part of the Oxfam community leadership program. But it's the second one that I wanted to speak to you about which was you spent three months in Belize, which is in south or Central South America. Sure, yeah. And you were volunteering for a foundation called the Cornerstone Foundation. And you described this and I'll just now you described this as my most cherished, culturally rich and challenging learning experience. So is, well we've already talked about where is Belize Central America, but what was it that made you your time there so memorable
Jodine Stodart:
I guess the dips that you go into when you're living in the community that you're working within? So the Cornerstone Foundation does an amazing job of getting volunteers that are living in the foundation itself. So it's kind of not a lot of separation, you know were deeply immersed in the context and they were really wonderful in terms of trying to meet each volunteer's desires for what they actually wanted to do in the community. And there was so much, I mean obviously there was a lot of different programs and things that needed support and so I got to choose, I got to do support women in business, support youth in schools, record some natural healers in the jungle. So it was quite a diverse, quite range of projects that I got involved in and I think that's what really made it memorable for
Brendan Jarvis:
Me. And you returned to, well Central Latin America, I suppose, more broadly speaking, you know, mentioned that during your last year of high school you had that time over there you learned to speak Spanish. I was actually curious about Belize and had a look at its national languages and apparently English is number one, it's the official language, but Spanish is pretty far up there in terms of its widely spoken in Belize. How important was understanding Spanish and having some exposure to Latin culture previously to your ability to connect with the people that you were working with over there in that capacity?
Jodine Stodart:
It had something to bear, but I will say that I did choose Belize because it was English speaking because I wanted to do this experience of doing social work and I didn't want the language to be a constraint. So obviously there are lots of different volunteer programs all around Latin America and I could have chosen to do one in Spanish, but I didn't feel like my Spanish was proficient at a professional level a work day to day in it. So yeah, I had deliberately chosen that for that and that's also what made it really different because it, it's an incredible mix of cultures. You've got obviously the Spanish, but you've also got the influence of the Caribbean culture really, really strongly, more strongly than elsewhere spent time in Latin America.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah cause it's on the east coast next to Guatemala, but it shares the coasters on the east coast, isn't
Jodine Stodart:
It? Yeah. So it's sort of more like Jamaica in terms of culturally than it is Guatemala. So going over the border into Guatemala or up into Mexico, that felt familiar to me, whereas Belize was really quite unique.
Brendan Jarvis:
Have you made it back to Latin America since that experience?
Jodine Stodart:
Yeah, I, I think I went to Chile would've been the last time and that was an amazing experience. Chile is so similar to New Zealand in terms of its natural environment that was quite blown away and yeah, I will always go back. It's sort of part of me, it's part of my heart in some ways. So I really love,
Brendan Jarvis:
Well I promise that we come to UX and building capability and organizations through UX. Now as I mentioned in your intro, you were a director of UX at Digital Arts Network, sometimes known locally as Dan. And during your time there and at Optimal, you provided what I'm framing up as UX consulting services to your clients and some of those engagements, from what I can gather were aimed at increasing the design maturity or the capability within the client organization. How much of the success of those types of engagements was a result of the individual maturity levels on the client team side?
Jodine Stodart:
Maturity is everything.
Brendan Jarvis:
There's a big pause there and we're going to leave that in on purpose.
Jodine Stodart:
[laugh], where an organization is at in terms of what we call UX maturity. You know, really change your approach in terms of engaging according to where they're at. And this is something I spoke about, I think one of my first conference talks was about UX coaching and what were the conditions that would help make it more successful. And one of the conditions is that there's customer-centric language in some of those strategic documents from an organization so that it's got sufficient buy-in because if you're working just with a team within a department and there's no wider it, it's a struggle. It, it's almost you're not going to get the resourcing and the hires and the tools and the time to do the work that's necessary.
Brendan Jarvis:
So yeah, you framed that up, I watched that talk. I think you framed it up as needing to see customer centricity as part of the core strategy of the organization and that if they weren't able to sort point to some sort of form formative document that speaks to that, then it did become much more difficult to engage. Difficult or impossible.
Jodine Stodart:
I would never say impossible because I'm optimistic and yeah, there are a number of strategies. It really depends on what else is on fire within the organization, where is it, it's attention. And something that I speak to in that talk as well is there needs to be a sufficient level of pain around something that the organization isn't able to achieve but needs to in order to create again that appetite otherwise. Yeah. And that can create a lot of change, just that in itself.
Brendan Jarvis:
You also spoke about the importance of conversation and I know that this is something that has flown through at least your public talks and other things that I was able to access in preparation for today as being a cornerstone, to use that word again, a cornerstone of I suppose effective change making change effectively is using conversations. How have you engaged or can you talk to maybe a recent engagement where you've spent that time and had those conversations with stakeholders and the role that played or didn't play in influencing a positive project outcome?
Jodine Stodart:
Absolutely, yeah. I tend to start every project with a series of stakeholder interviews, which is always advisable, but stakeholder interviews doesn't really even describe what happens and when you get that time. And it's great to build it in as part of the methods cuz they just say, oh, that's an activity we need to tick off. But what it actually is is a way for you to land within the organization to understand what's going on. It's an opportunity to build relationship through having that time so it feels safe. They're able to be themselves and share authentically about their challenges what's getting in the way of their goals and vision for their role of the organization, for the team, for the product. And it's just a way to start laying the ground ground for the project to be a success. So obviously a typical stakeholder interview question is what does success look like to you? And that's always a really great question and revealing one about what's important to that person and their role. And from there utilize that information, synthesize it, actually use it as data for the project and how you're going to go forward from that point onwards to kind of direct the other discussions and conversations that'll follow. So
Brendan Jarvis:
I'm not sure if you've had this experience, but what have you done if in those stakeholder conversations, you know, sit down with a number of stakeholders and you ask 'em that question about what does success look like to you? And you get different answers or answers that are materially different I suppose is the key point here to each other. If you've experienced this, how have you reconciled those perspectives and potentially attempted to integrate them? What have you done in that situation?
Jodine Stodart:
I guess I try to integrate as much of the diverse needs as possible because your stakeholders are your users in another form and I can't recall a time where the outcomes that people wanted were completely in opposition. Generally the people you're interviewing are aware of why you were called in to help with this project and what the initiatives there to, so there generally is some coherence before they're going to spend money to involve a consultant.
Brendan Jarvis:
Do you don't get blank stares, who are you again? What are you
Jodine Stodart:
Here for? Yeah, yeah. So I guess surprising sometimes that can happen if you stretch out beyond the sort of an immediate project team and you get different people and you can identify internal conflict and that can be really tricky. I guess another example of that would be when I'm doing a service design project and it involves a leadership team across that have different views across different departments, the way I tend to bring them together and to alignment is obviously we do a lot of workshops around what they know and we get them to discuss it with amongst themselves and facilitate, have productive conversations around it and around an external artifact that's quite neutral and we can identify any kind of differences of experience or view or understanding. And then when that's identified we can go out and do research and actually see what's actually going on under the hood. And that could be research internally, what's happening with this process and this area or externally, what's happening with the actual customer need and their experience. And then playing that back does tend to unite everybody because it's this outside in kind of perspective and it's directly from a customer's voice and it becomes very difficult to negate that when you have evidence. So I tend to, that's I guess how I tend to even out any tensions is just through the process and the journey of the project.
Brendan Jarvis:
That makes a lot of sense at it also, I suppose maintains the sanctity of that stakeholder interview or interview series where you're not necessarily taking directly threads that you might hear of any sort of dissonance or differences of opinion in that context. You're actually bringing them together in a workshop setting and externalizing through the use of the artifact or artifacts that you spoke of and helping them come to those agreements or realizations as a group. That makes a lot of sense. Now you mentioned research and moving in into gathering evidence to either, I suppose prove or disprove people's beliefs or hypotheses about what the current state looks like and where they might need to go and reference this. Again, coming back to 2015 now, so it was some time ago when this talk was delivered you said, and I'll quote you again, you want to get them in front of users as fast as possible. So seven years on, do you still feel the same way?
Jodine Stodart:
Yeah, I'd have to say yes. I mean if I think about a project I did last year and where I had the opportunity to interview principals from around New Zealand that was really in very interesting and then play those interviews back to the organization that was supporting them and it just blew their mind. It always does. It's kind of like the fail safe [laugh] way of really uniting people into action. They're like, oh gosh, wow, they really have a lot of pain at that part of the process. We really have to do something.
Brendan Jarvis:
And when it comes to working with a client team who has a appetite or a desire to be hands-on involved in the design work and the research that goes into that, how do you help people who or maybe inexperienced have never done it before potentially and sat down and had a conversation with a customer or a user of their product or service. How do you help them to reach a level of comfort where they can be effective in that context?
Jodine Stodart:
I've done a lot of that. I've been supporting a software company here for the last couple of years and they had no design practice whatsoever, let alone research and kind of pulled together a team of people that had zero experience and I was like, great, this is going to be interesting. How do I get
Brendan Jarvis:
[laugh] blank canvas?
Jodine Stodart:
Yeah, totally blank canvas. And yeah, I kind of always balance it with a mixture of theory and practice. So the sooner I can get them, I get them practicing interviews amongst themselves after first teaching them about the theory around doing interviews and things to be mindful of. And then so practicing amongst themselves in a safe environment. And then I will they'll ride shotgun with me in a few interviews and watch me do it and then I'm like, okay, you can take this last one, have a go and then I'll get feedback. So yeah, it's just a gradual process. I'm not going to drop anyone in the deep end because that freaks people out when they go too far outside their comfort zone and they feel really put on the
Brendan Jarvis:
Spot. You certainly do have that gradual approach and I definitely agree that if you just drop people into the deep end straight away, it can actually be detrimental overall to how they feel about what they're trying to do. And also it can be just an awkward thing to watch and experience as well. So that makes a lot of sense. What have been some of the key areas of improvement that you've observed when you've been working with people who are new to design research? What are some of the gotchas or the things that tech technic the technicalities that they need to refine? Or are there any things that stand out to you as areas for improvement from your experience there?
Jodine Stodart:
When they're new to it you mean?
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, what are the common mistakes people are making and things that they could focus on doing better?
Jodine Stodart:
The first thing that comes to mind would be if they are, I guess being too attached to the product that they're trying to learn about because they're not used to practicing that kind of neutrality, objectivity. And so their questions will be biased by their experience with the product or service and their perspective and where they've been sitting this whole time if they haven't had that experience outside of that. So that's a continuous one to keep working on with people I find that don't have any kind of formal research background or training that's very easy for companies, especially at the moment to be testing their own work design TE teams that are testing their own work. And I call that validation, it's not a valuation. And that's where I see a lot of poor practice to be honest, is it's like, okay, well we need to do this. Let's just check that this is the right thing.
Brendan Jarvis:
A lot of assumptions in there. Yeah.
Jodine Stodart:
Other things that I commonly see, it takes a lot of time. There's the art of writing a good question, a research question. It takes a lot of time to really master that. And so working with somebody like a coach or someone that is experienced I think is essential to continually revise questions and how they're phrased that that's a common mistake.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, that's an area of continual improvement. I spoke with Jason BU on the show a couple of weeks ago, and this notion of the feedback loop for researchers in order to improve their practice is quite common in academia and other areas of study such as psychology for example. There's often a number of thousands of hours that people have to do in contact with patients in this case before they, they're actually certified. But in industry, in UX in particular, there's nothing really of that nature yet. What you are describing that ability to sit alongside someone is they I suppose get their training wheels in running interviews is so vital and it just doesn't scale particularly well because it's a sort of one-to-one thing and it would be nice to see more of that I believe in
Jodine Stodart:
Practice. Absolutely. Because there are subtleties, there's a lot of material out there, obviously there's lots of short courses you can do. There's lots of books you can read, but nothing beats when you've got an actual project and the nuances that are involved, you can't really replace that. So this kind of idea of learning by doing in project is usually the best way to refine your practice. The other thing I think that you touching on that I think is an issue facing our practice is that the way that UX and design has evolved in the industry, how it's not robust, it's not academic and if anything these days it's far more lean and agile which has a lot of compromises to it. But what I see is that technology is having such an incredible influence on the planet, like blanket transforming entire cities and transport networks and industries obviously having a huge impact.
And so the field of user experience is actually huge. Go to a conference and there's everything up for discussion. It's not just about research practice and the smaller parts of it. And I feel like the field does need to perhaps be maybe a little bit more formalized, maybe there needs to be more, especially around ethics, ethics of research ethics of design. I mean we talk a lot about it, but there isn't really, as you say, there's no kind of formal body of checking in and having peer review. And I think that would be really useful because it is scaling impact and its influence massively.
Brendan Jarvis:
You touched on the tension that exists between different ways of developing software like agile and design and that tension's been apparent for quite some time and I suppose the trade-offs that get made, but I can't help think to myself that it's still a garbage in garbage out equation and that you can still operate efficiently, but you do need those guardrails or those best practices, practices or that basic hygiene behind what it is you're trying to achieve in order to ensure that you get fidelity of your findings and that it's actually useful. There's no sense running 10 quickfire interviews with customers if they're full of leading questions and the lens at which you are unpacking those findings is completely biased. So I agree that having some perspective or some distance and some more rigor would definitely be beneficial. One of the criticisms of consultants and bearing in mind here, this is not me trying to be unfair, I suppose I am a consultant as well, I'm an external design practitioner, is that we have all care and no responsibility for the outcomes of our work. Not always, but it is a feeling that is out there, particularly from internal teams when they're engaging with externals. Now I understand that you take particular responsibility and care to ensure that the internal teams are effectively able to integrate and build upon the work that you have been doing for them. How have you done that?
Jodine Stodart:
Yeah, absolutely. I totally understand that perspective of like the consultant flies in, flies out, dumps some kind of 50 page report and see you later and that's
Brendan Jarvis:
Gets paid more to do it right as well probably than in
Jodine Stodart:
Terms. Absolutely. And because I really care about long-term change, that's where, when I'm working with a team, I'm looking for ways to have longevity and for people to be able to take on board the practice alone. So building capability with the team so that they can do it themselves is obviously a big part of that. And if we are creating artifacts, so often I've created or co-created a large service blueprint or a customer journey map and you don't want it just to be kind of a dead artifact, you want it to be a living document. So I often design workshops and activities around how to engage with this, how do we use this, how is this useful? And that could be for a while it was a large printed artifact on the wall, but obviously we don't have physical space anymore, so
Brendan Jarvis:
Mm-hmm All disappeared really, isn't it?
Jodine Stodart:
Yeah. So obviously using tools like Miro and online collaboration tools are really fantastic for keeping the artifacts handy and alive and people can keep adding and building on them, creating card sets, creating the types of artifacts that people will continue to engage with really helps.
Brendan Jarvis:
But now you touched on a project which I discovered of yours where you did create this massive customer journey map. Now, I believe it was a few years ago when you were working with the then director of CX at Digital Arts Network in Melbourne. What cast your mind back to that time? What was the problem that you were trying to solve there for that client?
Jodine Stodart:
They were looking for opportunities to innovate in their retention space. So obviously, and this was working into the marketing team as well, so obviously their focus normally is on acquisition and they were looking for opportunities to innovate more in the customer experience longer term. So yeah, that was really the problem we were trying to solve was kind of delving deeper into what is it like to be a long-term customer and depicting what that journey is like and helping them identify point pain points that then become opportunities for them to innovate, provide something
Brendan Jarvis:
Else. Now maybe this is a little quaint considering as we've talked about, we no longer have physical spaces anymore, so everything's on a mural or a Miro board, but just how big was this customer journey at the end of it, this map that you created?
Jodine Stodart:
I think cuz we were working in an advertising agency, we had the opportunity to use a plan printer, so we just went for gold and they were like, I think there was about four aos, like oh right, yeah. Or something. Yeah, it was crazy big.
Brendan Jarvis:
And you talked about this earlier, about the importance of not just creating beautiful artifacts but actually helping people to make use of them, to understand them and make use of them. You also talked about how you have designed workshops for stakeholders to wrap their heads around that exact thing. In this case you had quite a novel approach, at least to me, of how you did that. How did you help the wider group of stakeholders to understand what it was that they were looking at?
Jodine Stodart:
I think it would also help me synthesize the information that was there as I wrote a narrative, I wrote a story and I actually found that this is so much more impactful because obviously as humans we love a good story and we engage more when we're told a story and we feel the pain of the customer a fit, the story is told from the voice of the customer rather than looking at an artifact and reading through a graph and reading through and you can see the story unfold, but having it told to you is a little bit more impactful I think.
Brendan Jarvis:
So is this literally you're in this meeting room and you dim the lights and then how did this go down
Jodine Stodart:
The scroll of the [laugh]? Yeah,
I think we started with the narrative and then we got them to stand up and go through the artifact and we guided them through what the swim lanes and what everything meant and we gave them areas to focus on, which is often what we do. So we'll split up into teams and say, okay, you guys engage with this part of the map and come up with ideas or what insights that you're seeing. But as an intro, yes, it was literally me standing up in front of the map and reading out what the journey was like for the customers that we gotten close to.
Brendan Jarvis:
It seems to me that the effort, the energy, the time that goes into creating and choreographing this type of experience for stakeholders isn't insignificant.
Jodine Stodart:
I'd say a lot of the those engagements were done in quite a fast paced environment and I often find that obviously cuz I was in Melbourne, I'm only there on the ground for a short period of time and having that kind of time constraint makes you get more laser focused and it was really fun. It was really fun, obviously fun for me to be in a different context and a different studio working with different people and fun to have that bandwidth to be creative about how we are going to go about solving the problem and engaging people. So that's why I love designing workshops because they can be really fun and engaging. They're an experience. So this kind of loops back to this idea that we're talking about with the ecstatic dance that has a journey, always has a curve and a workshop to me has a very distinct beginning, middle, and end. And how you take people through that is how much people are going to engage with the material.
Brendan Jarvis:
And I suspect, and bearing in mind I wasn't a fly on the wall here, but I suspect if you were to catch up with the people that were in that room on that day, that the thing that they remember will be the story that was told. And the way that you facilitated that conversation over and above the minutiae of the detail that was contained in that customer journey map. And when I heard you talk about this experience and how you'd in interacted with the stakeholders in this way, it really felt to me at least that we need to be investing more time and energy in how we communicate the outcomes of our work in a way that people can really connect with so that we actually have impact. You talked about consultants coming in and doing 50 page reports and then flying out. This is the exact antithesis of that, isn't it? This is actually how do we get into the hearts and minds of these people who are paying us to do a job for them to help them so that they can get on and do that job?
Jodine Stodart:
Absolutely. And that's how you create real change is through genuine connection, ideally in the room physical, but we don't often get that luxury these days. And giving them an experience is more memorable than giving them a report basically.
Brendan Jarvis:
Talk to me about the uncomfortable side of what it's like to facilitate workshops sometimes. And again, I'm projecting here, so if this isn't something that you've experienced, that's completely okay, but what way or ways do you manage or mitigate resistance from people to participate to engage in the workshop or in conversation around a specific topic that you are there to help people to understand or to a problem to solve? How do you that dance as the facilitator and try and bring them into the fold?
Jodine Stodart:
I think this is something that practitioners are often fearful of. So people that aren't experienced in facilitating workshops, their biggest fear is that there's going to be somebody or several people in the room that are going to be resistant to participating. Especially when you're talking about a senior leadership team. Mm-hmm. Busy people, better things to do,
Brendan Jarvis:
Checking their phones while you're trying to lead the workshop, that kind of thing.
Jodine Stodart:
Exactly. And look, my philosophy is if they're resistant in the workshop, you've already missed an opportunity
Brendan Jarvis:
To
Jodine Stodart:
Affect them. So for me, the art of the good workshop that everyone is engaged in starts way before the actual workshop, before they're in the room. And this is what I mean about the stakeholder interviews and making sure that you've actually spent a little bit of time with each of those people that's going to be there. So they feel a personal connection with you and they've had an opportunity to feel seen and heard by you. That's really it. I mean it seems really simple but it's quite traumatic. People are often resistant because they feel like they were invited for the last minute as a tick box or I should be here because I've got this role, but nobody's invited me to be part of this project. I had no idea. And you see what I mean? So often they don't feel on the inside and so they stay on the outside.
The things I've found to be really honest most uncomfortable about workshops is when I see the line that you're dancing all the time is what can I really influence and what are the limits of what I can control? And so sometimes there might be something else going on within the organization, restructures all sorts of things, people leaving important people leaving or people are navigating a lot of other things outside that workshop that you don't have any control over and you have to give yourself a break. You can't do much about that if somebody is going through something. And so it's knowing that it's not all you and they're not all things that you can
Brendan Jarvis:
Impact. That is a huge realization to come to. And it's something that I personally have to continually in many dimensions of my life, remind myself of what's actually in my control and what's, it's actually quite a cathartic exercise to try and step back and get that perspective as perspective I've found.
Jodine Stodart:
Absolutely. Yeah. And it reduces your stress.
Brendan Jarvis:
So
Jodine Stodart:
Majors often what I coach people about, it's like what can you really influence and here's what are your options for what you can do and what can't you do? And that was something that I learned over and over again for a long time after being very, very stressed about the level of responsibility and the engagements that I had. Yeah, so it is, it's a good thing to
Brendan Jarvis:
Learn. You're not giving yourself a leaf pass there though. This isn't just sort of sitting back and going, oh well that didn't go to plan, that was outta my hands. Move on. It sounded to me like there was some structure in the way in which through your coaching practice and as a person, as an individual reflect on and then move forward from those experiences.
Jodine Stodart:
Absolutely, absolutely. And even now, I probably still try and take on responsibility for things that aren't really my realm.
And often if we can be quite hard on ourselves sometimes we're always trying to achieve the best outcome, the most perfect outcome. And as human beings we're kind of trained to always do this, what's called sort of negative scanning. So our brains are actually wired to constantly looking for the gaps and things that didn't go well and what needs to be fixed. And that's the automatic loop. Our brains, our primitive brains are constantly going in cause it's scanning for risk and it's a way of being able to step back as you say, and really reflect on, well how's the quality of my thinking here? Am I really, are these things that are actually expected of me that were within my realm of control? Or am I just trying to solve everybody's problems with this one project and being really overly ambitious?
Brendan Jarvis:
Is that something that you've found either yourself or the people you are coaching are able to do in the moment? So when things aren't going to plan, when that stakeholder in that workshop as busy checking their phone and your sort of voice of fear starts going off about the implications of what that behavior means for you and your future and it becomes a life or death death situation, is this something that you've been able to interrupt in the moment and regain some perspective and get some distance f from that? Or is it something that you actually need to put some physical time and space in the middle of?
Jodine Stodart:
I think it's both really. If you can catch it in the moment, amazing. And that's why it's useful to design pauses into the workshop. Give yourself a moment when they're busy doing activities. You're like, okay, let's just re-scan houses this going, are we, do we need pivot it? Do we need to change direction? Buy yourself some time, go take a bathroom break, go grab a coffee if you really need to speak to somebody as well. Look for the opportunity, create, use a break, and always design and break. So then you can have those break conversations maybe with some people that you feel have something else going on and they're not able to bring their full attention to the workshop and that gives you the opportunity to have a quick chat with them, just check in just like, oh, what's your day going? You don't know if something may have happened for them really big at home and you don't have that awareness. So I guess you can design it in, but also obviously after the fact, always debriefing with yourself or with your team, how things went.
Brendan Jarvis:
I'm going to do a disservice here because I can't remember the name of the particular bias, but when I was speaking with David Dylan Thomas, who is the person who knows the most in our community, at least as far as I can tell about biases because he had a podcast called the Cognitive Bias podcast. He told me about this bias that's once you know about it and the name's not important, but the bias is basically that we think that people can read us much better than they actually can. And so when you are up in front of a workshop and things aren't going to plan, it's easy for us to fall into a trap where we think that everyone else can see us without our clothes on and that we're exposed and they're going to know that we're a fraud and that things aren't working out. But that's not the case.
People don't have they don't have x-ray vision into our hearts and minds and our souls. So it's actually quite comforting when that, that's one of those little triggers I've used in the past at least, where things aren't going to plan to get some composure back and to realize that I can choreograph this dance and I'm still in control. And I love what you said there about using breaks and maybe tangentially approaching someone, check in with them to see what's going on for them. Cuz that same principle or that buyer applies to other people is we don't know what's going on for them. So that is such a great insight. And you also mentioned workshops. I wanna come to a workshop that you delivered recently for UX New Zealand in 2022, which was called Conscious Design Leadership. Now this is something that you feel, and we've been dancing around this, but you feel very personally connected to, and you've said about this that, and I'll quote you now, supporting the development of conscious awareness and action both for individuals and organizations can result in more positive human impact for our planet. What led you to believe this? What was it that you experienced? Maybe it was a combination of things, but what led you to believe this?
Jodine Stodart:
I guess it's just been part of the journey I've been on and really to offer some insight in terms of that workshop and how it came together. For me, it was an opportunity to consolidate where am I really at in my career and what what's really important to me. And as you've sort of spoken to in my history, I've obviously been strongly in design and UX for my whole career, but at the same time I'm constantly going out and experiencing, well, what's community development with Oxfam? What's social work and Belize? And that these were my attempts to try and find how can I create more purpose and meaning in the work that I do? Do I need to completely leave this field behind and jump into something else? And in the end, I think what I'm trying to do with exploring conscious design leadership is how do I take the experiences that I have and the tools that I have and use them to create more positive change.
So that's where conscious design leadership comes from. It's my way of, I guess, applying what I've learned and also some courses that I've recently done over the last couple of years and bringing those together to offer that to the community. So one of the most mind-blowing courses I did was the regenerative design practice course. So that's taking a very much a more environmental lens on the world. And what I'm trying to do is actually re-engineer it back into design practice and what regenerative practice talks about a lot as this thing called nested systems. So it really is kind of systems thinking, systems design, which is in our field now. People talk a lot about this, but it's really acknowledging the larger context that we're all in order to do that we can't be wrapped up in the day-to-day fears. We need to take that moment to pause and just see and draw back and get that larger view of what's going on and what influence influences are at play and forces that I have control of and that I don't have control of.
And being able to come and operate from that larger view. Ideally acknowledging the potential impacts of decisions that we're making. And I mean, this is something I think that David Dylan Thomas also talked about was software can have unintended, unintended users and how do we know who those are if we don't stop and take a pause and really look at, well these are our target customers, these are the people that we wanna engage in that we can get a subscription from or whatever the commercial objective is. But who are the unintended users is a fantastic question in terms of looking at the kind of invisible players in our environment that we're impacting
Brendan Jarvis:
Someone else. Who comes to mind when you are talking about unintended consequences and who else might be a user that's outside of our immediate was Eva Panzi Mok, who wrote Design for Safety. And we spoke about that very thing when it comes to the design of tech products and how they be used or weaponized to enable domestic violence. And it's a often bias that we have in design that we focus very heavily on the happy path and we don't spend a lot of time thinking about the alternate and perhaps less happy paths that our products or our services or our experiences can lead to. So that makes a lot of sense. You've obviously been trying to bring some higher level perspective sort of down into the trenches of design leadership in terms of product and service design, leadership from other experiences that you've had in courses that you've been on, how does what you are working on in terms of conscious leadership, how does that differ to regular everyday status quo design, leadership? What are the key areas of difference between those two?
Jodine Stodart:
Really, I think it's a way of really just shining the light on leadership itself requires awareness. Winner [laugh] calling it conscious design Leadership is just a way to shine the spotlight a bit more on your intention as a leader and the practices that you're using to keep yourself honest and keep growing as a leader to not take advantage of the authority that you've been given, but you could just call it leadership, good leadership, great leadership. That leadership is such a complex thing and it's something that we really need at the moment is leaders that can deal with complexity. Obviously our environment is getting more and more complex. The demands on leaders are getting more complex. It's not enough just to have authority and tell people what to do, especially in the next generation of designers and researchers. They don't respond to command and control. What I notice is that way of leading is it's designed for a certain context.
I'm not saying it's outdated it is needed. Sometimes in times of crisis decisions need to be made quickly and people need direction. But more and more I take a very much a developmental model where I believe that we are, we're on a trajectory of constantly responding to these changes and constantly growing these skills to deal with it and to create environments where everyone feels like they're equally participating and that they have a voice. And yeah, I see it around me all the time. People that are in these different organizations that have different ways of leading and different ways of operating and what that means for the type of work that people are able to do and the level of joy, happiness that they have, and showing up for work as
Brendan Jarvis:
Well. This is quite timely. I was on the way back from Matt on the weekend, and which I was very fortunate to get out of Auckland and have some nice food up there. But I was listening to an audio book by a coach, actually, he's an executive coach called Marshall Goldsmith, and he wrote a book called What Got You Here Won't Get You There. And it's almost like what you're talking about is echoing, or maybe he's echoing you this idea of how people can be quite successful using a particular style in their careers. But often all of us have our blinders on and are woefully unaware of the behaviors that we are playing out that other people are cuz of our position of status and authority in the organization are interpreting in ways that we otherwise wouldn't intend. So he gave an example of a C E O that would give design feedback and the design team would then go and implement that feedback cuz they took it as an order where he was just thinking that he was just offering up some thoughts. But it's almost like this, the conscious nature of what you're talking about is very much like you said, I think you used the term shining a light on what it is that we're doing as leaders and actually getting some evidence and perspective to support our current performance. At least that's my interpretation of what you're talking about.
Jodine Stodart:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that classic book, what Got You Here, won't get you There. That definitely is a part of my philosophy, and we see this a lot in design and UX practice, is that people that have been really on top of their game with their practice doing what I call the doing, it's the moving from doing to leading and being rewarded as a oh, now you're a manager. I feel rewarded for all those projects that I delivered. Well and all the impact that I created. And if you need to, when you're moving into leadership, it's not actually about you anymore. The irony is that even though you've been gifted this authority and this visibility and this influence it needs to stop being about you being the hero and achieving and seeking further reward and more about the team that you're supporting and how can you enable them? And that's the switch that a lot of people struggle with because they're like, what? They also don't delegate cuz they're, they're trying to do, solve all the problems when really now you have a leadership position. You need to use strategy and different ways of working in relationships to help facilitate those problems to be solved and not muck in and get into the detail and think, oh I could do that better. So yeah, it is an important shift.
Brendan Jarvis:
Nothing kills the enthusiasm of a team more than a leader or a manager rolling up and getting their sleeves dirty in advance of the team itself. I wanna come to back to something that you mentioned earlier, which was you take a developmental approach and I understand that the field of adult developmental psychology has played quite an important role in shaping your thinking around conscious design leadership. That wasn't something that I was familiar with and I'm assu, I'm assuming unless I'm the only person on the planet that others won't be as well. What is adult developmental psychology?
Jodine Stodart:
Well, it's specifically I, I've been reading Robert Keegan's work, so there's a lot of different work on adult psychology, but I think it was through being interested in organization design and following those threads that got me into adult developmental psychology and how I would explain it, how I explain it to other people and I don't under not a psychologist, so it's taken a deep study into this, but it is an ongoing thing that I'm studying is that for a long time psychologists thought that there's just childhood development and then you reach adulthood and you're done, you're baked and that's it. And then what they realized was actually there are some stages that we go through as adults and that can be through events in our lives or just the process of time and different stages that we develop different levels of awareness. So this is Robert Keegan's work that there are these identifiable shifts in our ability to basically engage with complexity and it's, it's easy to see it as a maturity model, but it's not really about what's required for the position you're in.
And if you are in a position of leadership, it does require a different level of thinking from you. And if you keep operating in the other way before you're a leader, it makes leadership harder, it makes it more difficult. And you might find that, oh, I'm having challenges my team, they don't like me or I'm not getting them engaged or I'm not making any progress. And it may be because of where you're sort of operating from and what you're able to see from where you are. And in a way it's a bit of an experiment for me, what I'm piloting is the idea that if we can create safe spaces for people to really come and bring their whole selves and these retreats for example that I run or a leadership cohort or program that I'll be running later this year where people can be themselves and share their challenges and share different views and through also deeply listening to each other. It creates a growth path. Basically if you're open enough you can start shifting your awareness through different practices. And that's what I'm interested in because what I notice is obviously with increasing complexity of our world, it requires a greater ability to understand and hold difference, hold different perspectives equally, be able to zoom out and see the complexity of what's in front of us without trying to oversimplify it or our own values and philosophy and impose that on everything. And it's not necessarily easy, but I think there are some tools that can
Brendan Jarvis:
Help that is such a hard thing to do. And there are certain issues that it's harder for people to do that than others. Clearly there are some things playing out at the moment in the United States which would be very difficult for many people to hold the alternate perspective without feeling some sort of anger or resentment or just overall overwhelm with what's playing out. And yes, I'm talking about the right for women to choose what happens to their bodies. Doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to imagine that that is quite an emotional topic. But I feel like you are right that it is important to at least have the facility to adopt that arm's length perspective in leadership and realize that not everyone sees the worlds through the same set of glasses that you do. And you've said, and I'll quote you again, once you find your truth and in your values, it's very important to find that orientation. It's also important to be able to dialogue with other people with different views. How do you encourage or do you do this maybe yourself, but how do you encourage the people you are coaching to adopt that perspective or try and embrace the fact that not everyone sees the world the same way and then use that.
Jodine Stodart:
I often get them to use curiosity and deep listening and I often speak to this principle of first seek to understand and then be understood because when we are rushing or when we're angry or in a reactive kind of space, there's no room for the other person, the other person's perspective or experience. And a very typical thing I'll do in my coaching is that if somebody is experiencing a conflict of interest with another person I will encourage them to have some one-on-one time. Don't email, don't slack, don't have some one-on-one time and be open to just listen and understand what that person's vision and objectives is. What is it that they're trying to do? What's their situation, how do they see things? And then also mirror it back to them so they know that they've been listened to and that you haven't spent that whole time going.
But in your own mind I might genuinely, genuinely listen and play it back and check that you've heard them correctly. That alone starts creating a new bond in that relationship and kind of calms things down when people feel listened to. It also gains respect that you've taken the time to really understand that person and they're likely to be more open to hear you out as well. So it is the basics of deep listening and mirroring back. They're really fundamental in human relationships and I really believe they have a lot of potency to transform the way we connect. Difference or differentiation is something that as humans we really struggle with and we struggle with it because of our primal brains, again, getting in the way and thinking this person's different from me, they're a threat, they're not part of my family or I don't feel safe with them because they're different and I feel safe with people that they might even just look the same and that makes me feel safe.
They might not actually be the same at all. They might have a completely different view. And what I believe is in the workplace, it's such a unique opportunity to come across people that are different from you because in your own life you have your family and your friends and your family are familiar to you and your friends, you are familiar to you and you've chosen. So the workplace is one of the few places in your life that you will get to practice. How do I deal with difference? Differences? Could be anything. I mean obviously there's the obvious ones but they're also subtle ones. These come up in, even in intimate relationships as well, people that we've chosen to be in our life and you come up against a difference and you want to not see it and you want to just make it all the same. And it's so important to just create that space to really listen. And what it does is it teaches our brains that there is someone else there who has their own experience and they are different from us and it's okay and it's not a threat. So yeah, I really powerfully believe in that. The power of deep listening, it really is changes as
Brendan Jarvis:
Well. Yeah, it certainly does. I was wondering about this cuz it's something that I feel like I work on and the work that I do, given what it is that I do, and certainly in this podcast I've had a number of guests say to me that it feels like they've just had a therapy session, which I'm not sure is a good or a bad thing. They didn't say it was a good or a bad therapy session, but there is something powerful in really genuinely being interested in what other people have experienced and how they think and feel about things. Is use of this knowledge though of how to listen and then using that in a leadership role to engineer a situation, to suit what I would assume would be the leaders end goals. Is this leadership or is this walking a line between leadership and manipulation?
Jodine Stodart:
Well, again, yeah, it depends on your intention. And this is where I come back to values and what it is that you are trying to achieve as a person. Of course, you know can have an intention that's quite self-serving and you can employ any kind of tool if that's your intention, that's what the result is going to be. Yeah, that's why I start with the individual. So I talk about in the Conscious Leadership program, I talk a lot about the three lines of work and the first line of work is itself. You first got to understand yourself and understand where you are and what you were about and who your ancestors were and what they were about and how that informs who you are. And it's quite a deep inquiry, but you need to do that work before you can then go out and look at what influence, what things am I influencing and impacting
Brendan Jarvis:
That is a confronting space to find yourself in. I did a leadership retreat, I was more like a series of residentials when I was 18 called the Future Leaders Program. I'm not sure if I'm now currently a leader, it's, I think that's up for debate, but that was some time ago. This is going back 18 years or so. And that program started with self and I think we spent the first six or nine months out of the 18 months on self journaling inquiry conversation with others about ourselves from memory. So yeah, it's one of those uncomfortable spaces that we very, really give ourselves, and I'm generalizing here, but enough time these days, I feel like we're so busy a lot of the time that the kind of retreats and that you facilitate and these opportunities that we have to actually step back and dive into some of these things at depth, particularly when it comes to our own self, is just such a vital thing to do and can really help you to be a better human and also be more effective when you're working with helping other humans to achieve what they want to achieve.
Jodine Stodart:
Absolutely. Yeah, I think these spaces are becoming more and more important, the ability to carve off a few moments for yourself to do those practices like journaling and whatever it might be, whatever suits the individual. I'm not going to be prescriptive about, do you know half an hour of yoga and half an hour of meditation every morning, [laugh]
Brendan Jarvis:
Like homework,
Jodine Stodart:
Work it into your life. Everyone is so different and yes, things are hectic. And I guess what I would say though is that the outcomes are greater enjoyment, less stress, and those are things that people want and that can't, I don't believe can be achieved by continually just rushing around and responding to the needs that are around you. You need to take some time to
Brendan Jarvis:
Jodine. You've been in the trenches of design for over two decades and you are actively helping designers to improve their practice through what you've done with the coaching business that you've set up. When your back's been against the wall, when things haven't been going your way, when you've been working through that inevitable resistance that comes up for all of us, what's the story that you fall back on? What's the thing that you tell yourself? What's the that message that helps you get through those challenging situations?
Jodine Stodart:
I'm not sure if it's a method because, yeah, I mean I use different kind of, I guess mantras at different times when needed to motivate and to focus, et cetera. But I will say that there is somehow this inherent drive within me to make things happen, and that tends to keep me going and give me momentum and that tends to be independent of what's going on around me. When things get really sticky and tricky, and they often do. For me, in the past, I've been known to take on the really tricky projects or was given the ones that were really unknown and ambiguous and I'll be like, yes,
Brendan Jarvis:
Run to the fire, run to
Jodine Stodart:
The fire adventure. Because I always think if you take on the things that are different and quirky, you're going to develop yourself in interesting ways and you're going to develop skills that maybe other people don't have the opportunity to if they're going to play it safe. And there's nothing wrong with playing it safe either, it's just in terms of how I've been shaped on my life, I tend to want variety and newness and yeah, I guess regardless of the difficulties, I would say maybe one of my biggest drives is just growth. It's going to change me. I'm going to get the learnings and that's motivational.
Brendan Jarvis:
Jodie, I've really enjoyed our conversation about design and getting into conscious leadership with you today. Thank you for sharing your stories and your insights with me.
Jodine Stodart:
Oh, it was a pleasure, Brendan. It, it's interesting to be on the other side of things and being asked the interesting questions and which helped me crystallize my own perspective. So it's been really useful and interesting for me too.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, you've certainly given me some things to think about over lunch, that's for sure. Jodie, if people wanna find out more about you and about Fireside consulting, what's the best way for them to do that?
Jodine Stodart:
Well head to my website FiresideConsulting.biz from there you can book a time to chat with me if you're interested in coaching. I just do a free little chat to kind of understand what your needs are. You can also join UXCONNECT, which is an online community, happens monthly, and you can also register your interest in the retreats for the leadership program. So yeah, love to hear from you, even just to say hi.
Brendan Jarvis:
Great. Well, I'll make sure that I post those links on the show notes. Thank you. And to everyone that's tuned in, it's been great having you here as well. As I mentioned, we'll be linking to all of those great resources in the show notes, including where you can find Jodine and there'll be detailed chapters of our conversation as well on YouTube so you can hop specifically to any area that has been of particular interest to you. If you've enjoyed the show and you wanna hear more great conversations like this with world class leaders in UX, design and product management, don't forget to leave the podcast to review, subscribe as well, so it turns out weekly in your podcast app and also pass the show along to someone else who you feel would get some value out of these conversations about design and product depth. If you wanna reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn, just go just LinkedIn, search me Brendan Jarvis, it should turn up or you can find a link at the bottom of the show notes to my LinkedIn profile so you can get to me that way or head on over to thespaceinbetween.co.nz.
That's thespaceinbetween.co.nz. And until next time, keep being brave.

Jodine Stodart

Keeping Stakeholders Engaged with Design

Subscribe

Who is Jodine Stodart?

Transcript