Talking Partners: A New Kind of Buddy Scheme – Henry Searle and Tarun Gidoomal

In: BlogDate: Aug 05, 2016By: Claire Lickman

Talking Partners is a new kind of buddy scheme, supporting a co-worker to be the best they can be. Find out more in this two minute video.

 

Hi, we are Happy

We are leading a movement to create happy, empowered and productive workplaces.

How can we help you and your people to find joy in at least 80% of your work?

More about Happy

Talking Partners

We have co-CEOs now and talking partners started with them. So everything we do at Next Jump is this framework of one-one-all, so you make it work for yourself, make it work for someone else and then start scaling it to the rest of the company. So, Charlie and Megan, our co-CEOs, started doing talking partners then the leadership below them started having talking partners; when we saw that was working we scaled it out to the rest of the company. Now you do, to a certain extent, chose who your talking partner is, but we have some guidelines of how to choose.

What we say is:

You want to have shared responsibility, so it wouldn’t necessarily work if Tarun was talking partners with someone who started 6 months ago, because that would be a one-way mentorship programme for Tarun mentoring them. It should be a co-mentorship programme, so shared responsibility really helps with that.

The other thing we try and encourage is people who are quite different, so Tarun and I are very different people, we have very different characters and that helps because I see where Tarun’s lacking and Tarun sees where I’m lacking.

Sometimes talking partners work better – there’s elements in there like trust. I think one of the most important things about talking partners is being authentic with each other and being able to bring anything up, so if you can have a trusting relationship then that can be the first start, but generally you choose yourself.

What’s the culture in your company and how do you give that feedback?

It is anonymous; we find that, especially for newer people, that allows them to be a lot more honest. A lot of the feedback that we have through apps is anonymous. And you give feedback to others in the way that you’d want to receive it yourself. No one’s out there to be malicious, no one’s out there to hurt you, so the feedback that goes in there is often constructive or honest. I think they’re the most important things, that one – it’s honest, so: “Did you even speak up at all?” Maybe that’s not constructive, constructive would be: “You could have spoken up more/given your opinion more”, but at least it’s honest, and that’s the most important thing.

Henry Searle is Co-Head of Next Jump’s UK Office. He joined as a software engineering intern in 2011 and joined full time in 2012. Since 2014 he has lead the UK engineering team and has overseen product developments which have driven record revenue growth in the UK. You can follow him on Twitter @henrysearle.

Tarun Gidoomal currently serves as the Co-Head of Next Jump’s UK office. Having joined Next Jump in 2011, Tarun has helped quadruple the business in under 4 years as they expand globally. He frequently speaks on leadership and corporate culture. Tarun is a member of the Virgin Unite’s People Innovation Network – a community of 30 businesses brought together by Richard Branson and Arianna Huffington, all of whom are passionate about re-defining work to help people thrive. You can follow him on Twitter @tarungidoomal.

Why not sign up to our newsletter?

Sign up to our monthly newsletter, full of tips, tricks and news to help you to be happier and more productive at work.

Sign up here

Claire Lickman

Claire is Head of Marketing at Happy. She has worked at Happy since 2016, and is responsible for Happy's marketing strategy, website, social media and more. Claire first heard about Happy in 2012 when she attended a mix of IT and personal development courses. These courses were life-changing and she has been a fan of Happy ever since. She has a personal blog at lecari.co.uk.

More by Claire

Next Conference: 2024 Happy Workplaces Conference

Our Happy Workplaces Conference is our biggest event of the year, and we'd love for you to join us on Wednesday 15th May.

This will be a hybrid event — we will host up to 50 people in the venue at Happy's HQ in Aldgate, London, and up to 200 people online via Zoom. The speakers will be a mix of online and in person. However you choose to join, there will be interaction, discussion, space for reflection and opportunities to network with others.

This year's event is CPD accredited, and speakers include Isaac Getz, Michele Zanini, Caron Bradshaw OBE and Michelle Hill.

Find out more