Is This Room Free?
Welcome to Is This Room Free? In this podcast I will be talking to HR professionals and listening to the stories of their careers. I will be finding out about the journeys they have taken and what they learnt along the way. The purpose is to help others in the profession identify and understand the various paths available and take inspiration from my guest speakers. Whether you are someone who is looking to get that first step on the HR career ladder or an aspiring HR Director, I hope you get value from these conversations.
Is This Room Free?
Wendy Macartney - Senior HRBP and Coaching Psychologist (bullying & harrassment, picking your own path with conviction, neurodiversity, progressive workplaces, and even meditation... this one has it all)
Joining me on this episode is Wendy Macartney who is not only a Senior HRBP but also a coaching Psychologist.
This is a fabulous conversation as we really go off-script and barely touch upon Wendy's actual career journey. However, what we do uncover is far more insightful as Wendy is such a fascinating individual.
She gave up a position on a fast-track leadership programme, despite incredible pressure from her friends and family all saying she was crazy, because she believed deep down that it wasn't truly the right direction for her. It was a pivotal moment for her as it took her down a path of self-discovery and Wendy states she's had these inflection moments about 4/5 times through her career, where she has had a realisation she's on the wrong path and pivoted against the recommendation of others.
Wendy was diagnosed with dyslexia as an adult and around that time she was having to make redundancies. Wendy recognised that the majority of these individuals had psychologic disorders or were experiencing hormonal changes, which were affecting their performance. This led to her decising to retrain as a Psychologist.
Wendy works for an organisation who have embraced that everyone is different and they use her psychology expertise to coach line managers into understanding how to get the very best out of people as we're not simply round pegs fitting into round holes. However, in most organisations this isn't the case so Wendy shares ways you can influence business leaders to also look at adopting the principles of individuality but through performance maximisation.
She also has a strong interest in bullying and harrassment, why it happens, but how to educate people in how their behaviour is affecting others as well as explaining some tools to deflect these actions if you're on the receiving end.
As you can tell there's a heck of a lot that gets unwrapped and debated on within this episode but we have lots of laughs along the way too (there's even a spot of teaching me meditation techniques), so I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.