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Author & Former Global HR Inclusion Executive | Greg’s Unconventional Career Path
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Greg Morley, former Global Head of DEI at Moët Hennessy (LVMH) and author of BOND: Inclusion and the Keys to Belonging, shares his extraordinary career journey—from washing dishes and working in warehouses to leading HR at Disney, Hasbro, and LVMH across three continents.
In this episode, we explore:
🔹 Why the "jobs no one wants" often lead to the biggest growth
🔹 How to foster true belonging in global, multicultural teams
🔹 The business case for empathy and inclusive leadership
🔹 Lessons from launching Hong Kong’s historic Gay Games
🔹 Behind-the-scenes of writing BOND and why "bonding is fulfillment"
Greg’s stories—from Shanghai Disney’s startup chaos to Parisian boardrooms—reveal how courage, curiosity, and connection shape world-class workplaces.
📖 Get Greg’s book BOND: gregmorley.com
🌍 Follow Greg: @gregcmorley
#HR #Leadership #DiversityAndInclusion #CareerGrowth #CorporateCulture
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Transcript
Intro
Early Career Lessons
00:00:54
Nate
Greg, thank you for joining us on A to Z Jobs.
00:00:57
Greg MORLEY
Thanks for having me. It's great to see you.
00:01:00
Nate
So let's start off, i give us a bit of a background. What's your career and what inspired you?
00:01:06
Greg MORLEY
Well, I've been very fortunate to have lots of great coaches and mentors over my career. And I think that that's one thing I would leave everyone with as we start is to to build those connections earlier in your career.
00:01:19
Greg MORLEY
And I started like, you know, most people start doing summer jobs and and parking cars and washing dishes and busing tables and working in a warehouse for many summers. And actually, when i reflect back on it, those jobs were very formative for me because I sort of understood hard work and I understood what the work that a lot of people later on in my career I would be supporting through my job as a leader in an HR.
Disney and Global HR Experience
00:01:47
Greg MORLEY
So I Left university, I started to work in a call center, which again was ah which a brutal place to work, but actually a great place to learn. and There's nothing like you know every time the phone rings, somebody's on the other end complaining about something to to to refine your communication and and resilience skills.
00:02:07
Greg MORLEY
I did that and worked for GE for about eight years in sales and marketing, and then ended up in in Florida and and started to work for Disney. And my career at Disney was remarkable because I started in operations and then I ended up most of the time there in HR. But when I was in Disney, I was always open to taking the jobs I think that other people weren't so interested in taking.
00:02:31
Greg MORLEY
And that gave me the opportunity to work in Florida, California, Paris the first time, which is where i live now again. Hong Kong and Shanghai and of course Hong Kong where you and I met.
00:02:42
Greg MORLEY
So and from Disney, I went to work at Hasbro, which is a toy company and also worked from Hong Kong in that role in a senior HR job responsible for HR, Human Resources for Asia Pacific.
Writing and Inclusion Advocacy
00:02:56
Greg MORLEY
And then I ended up working in LVMH also in an HR Asia Pacific job and ultimately as the global head of diversity and inclusion, which brought me back to Paris, which was a kind of full circle, uh, way of, uh, ending my corporate career. And during the end of my corporate career in LVMH, I started writing a book.
00:03:16
Greg MORLEY
Uh, which is called bond, uh, inclusion and the keys to belonging connection. And that is, uh, what has sort of propelled me into this next chapter of my, my career in my life.
00:03:28
Nate
That's fantastic. So inspiration, um the title of your books, I guess, gives away your passion. and So is that sort of, is that your, your, was that your reason for being in HR for so long? Was it that, that scope you were working through?
00:03:42
Greg MORLEY
Yeah, and I think even in ah even as a senior leader in ah in an organization, it's very much an inspiration of mine, which is how to get the best out of people while they're at work.
00:03:53
Greg MORLEY
And, you know, i think I i always recognized in the U.S. that there was a that, you know, people worked very hard. They played very hard and there was very little separation between the two.
00:04:04
Greg MORLEY
When I moved to France, people work hard, but they also play hard. But there's a huge separation between the two. So people don't don't mix both of those things. And I i think that's very cultural.
00:04:15
Greg MORLEY
And then, of course, in Asia, people work very hard and play very hard. But it's also a different iteration of that. But as people are working hard, you also want them to feel comfortable and safe and, you know, uh, actualized at work.
00:04:31
Greg MORLEY
And as ah my career grew first in in non-HR roles, but then in ah HR roles, I saw how important that was because when somebody brings their whole self to work and they can be themselves at
Cultural Insights and Inclusion
00:04:43
Greg MORLEY
work, we know that you know so science and data tells us that those people can can be more productive.
00:04:44
Nate
Thank you.
00:04:51
Greg MORLEY
So ultimately, it's a business challenge to create an inclusive environment at work because that's how businesses get the best out of people. And ultimately, we all want to go home and whether we have a spouse or a cat or a dog or kids, we want to be good human beings when we're outside of work. And oftentimes work has a very strong reflection on that part of our lives too. So I think there's somehow an obligation for us, uh, those of us who are employing people to also be thinking about that is, you know, what's the, what's the state of the individual that we actually send home each night and that comes in in the morning and, and,
00:05:28
Greg MORLEY
Again, people that work in inclusive environments and feel like they belong in that environment are better at both of those phases of the both of those pieces of life, the home life and the work life.
00:05:40
Nate
How do you like the thing that fascinates me is is sort of the cultural agility, being able to particularly for those managers working across multiple regions and and countries. how do you How do you do that successfully? how is there Is there training or did you have to seek out your own understanding of how you know the play hard, work hard culture is sort of universal, but in a different format?
00:05:56
Greg MORLEY
Yeah.
00:06:02
Nate
So how do you find, how do you understand that?
00:06:04
Greg MORLEY
You know, I was very fortunate that my parents were very curious travelers. So my mother, even when she was a young woman, she picked up and taught elementary school in Saudi Arabia, of all places.
00:06:21
Nate
Oh, yeah.
00:06:21
Greg MORLEY
Now, this was in the late 1950s.
00:06:23
Greg MORLEY
So, you know, as a woman of her age, single, living in a place like that, Then she traveled around and we always heard these stories about that. And i think for my sister and I, we became very curious about that life.
00:06:36
Greg MORLEY
And then, you know, as we got older, my parents would take us traveling and and and they and embedded this curiosity in both of us. And both of us ended up studying abroad during university and and and then working outside the U.S. And I think part of the the key that I learned over time and I learned it the hard way, I would say, when I first moved
00:06:57
Nate
Mm-hmm.
00:06:58
Greg MORLEY
even outside of my home location where I grew up in Philadelphia, when I moved to the south of the U.S., it's very different culture, even in the same country. And, um you know, being curious and listening is really a key to being successful in those different environments because, you know,
00:07:17
Greg MORLEY
If I use the example of Disney, Disney sends me from California to France for some reason, because I have some knowledge, I have some experience and there's a gap that they need to fill.
00:07:29
Greg MORLEY
But I know nothing about working in France. And so what I learned very very quickly was I needed to be the guest and I needed to be the learner and I needed to be the curious versus being the imposer and the smart one and the person that knew everything.
00:07:48
Greg MORLEY
Uh, and I think that's oftentimes how you see people being successful in multicultural contexts is they, they listen, they're very curious and and they listen with genuine intent.
00:08:00
Greg MORLEY
Um, and of course at some point point you have to, to, to share or impose what you are, you were brought there to do. But if you listen, then you really understand the, the, the insight of people who live there and then it can, you know, you become one of them and they kind of help you along. And that served me very well when I went to Hong Kong and then into, into mainland China.
00:08:25
Greg MORLEY
Again, to have this kind of open minded curiosity and also to be a bit resilient, because when you're in those contexts, you just don't know what's coming next. And, you know, the reality is we're always trying to find like peace and calm at work.
00:08:41
Greg MORLEY
At some point you want things, gosh, I just wish things would calm down or I just wish things would go normally tomorrow. mean, the reality is companies pay people to do a job to be very much problem solvers.
00:08:54
Greg MORLEY
And so you can only be a problem solver if you really know what the problem is. And so by being curious and asking questions and allowing people to challenge you in in the way that works in that culture is the way that people can be, you know multi-culturally competent.
00:09:09
Greg MORLEY
And you're an example of that. You move from one country, you go to another country, you have different jobs in different companies, and it takes time.
00:09:11
Nate
Hmm. Hmm.
00:09:18
Greg MORLEY
And, you know, we talk about culture in aggregate. So European culture or French culture, American culture, Australian culture, Hong Kong culture.
00:09:29
Greg MORLEY
Well, companies have cultures too. And even within cult companies, the you know the culture of Disney in the US s versus France versus Hong Kong versus Shanghai, we're all very different.
00:09:40
Greg MORLEY
And then within a company, you have its own you know subculture. So culture is a, it can be a bit frightening, overwhelming, in it but it's also fascinating when you start to understand how you can leverage all these different unique components to build a successful team or successful company or ultimately successful career.
00:09:59
Nate
And you mentioned, so at the start, you mentioned you you left college and went to to the call center. Was that, did you finish college and then went to the call center oh college wasn't for you and you decided a different path?
00:10:11
Greg MORLEY
I'm not sure college was for me or for not, but I did finish. um
00:10:15
Nate
Good. Yeah.
00:10:16
Greg MORLEY
I had a good time in school.
00:10:17
Nate
Yeah.
00:10:18
Greg MORLEY
I was not a great student. and And i i finished university and I went to work in the call center at GE. And I recognized that I wasn't done learning.
00:10:31
Greg MORLEY
So I was learning at work, but I also so i also had a curiosity about learning more academically. So I started to take some classes on the side that were related to my job, not anything sort of any so program.
00:10:43
Greg MORLEY
And then ultimately I went back and I got a master's of business administration because I felt like, okay, there's there's more room in my brain for some knowledge. And I think somehow in the future, this is going to help.
Mentorship and Career Growth
00:10:57
Greg MORLEY
um i surprised myself by being better at that intake of education than I had been academically at the and the first part. And I think it's because I had the reference of work.
00:11:09
Greg MORLEY
You know, i could I could, you could talk about things and there was something to refer it back to. i think when I was in undergraduate, it was, you know, the class was something you had to do between hanging out with friends and doing sports and doing other things that but that were within the university context, but weren't necessarily about graduating.
00:11:28
Greg MORLEY
And then ultimately, I when I got to Disney, I was promoted into ah an HR job. I did not have any HR experience at all.
00:11:39
Nate
Mm-hmm.
00:11:40
Greg MORLEY
But this goes back to the power of mentors and and and coaches. When I was at GE, my boss said to me one time, he said, you you you might consider being in HR. I think you could be pretty good in HR.
00:11:52
Greg MORLEY
And I had like no idea what he was talking about. i was I had kind of had in my mind, like maybe I'm just so bad at sales, like he thinks anywhere but sales would be good for you.
00:12:03
Greg MORLEY
And i think that was part of it, frankly. and But part of it was he saw something in me that he believed would be a successful profile in HR. And when I got to Disney, I was working in an operations job.
00:12:17
Greg MORLEY
And my my manager at the time said, would you ever consider being in HR? And now he had spent time in HR. So I knew he like knew what he was talking about. And he was a pretty senior person in the company.
00:12:30
Greg MORLEY
And I said, no, I hadn't. But, you know, if you think it's something that I should pursue, I trusted him. And he eventually promoted me into this job of being the HR manager at Epcot.
00:12:41
Greg MORLEY
Epcot's one of the theme parks in in Florida. Now, Epcot has like 7,000 employees. It's like a big HR job. And I very quickly realized i was i was just very ill-equipped to do the job well.
00:12:55
Greg MORLEY
you know i I could do parts of the job well because I had good relationships with people, which is very key in HR. But there were a lot of things that I just technically didn't know. So I had sworn to myself when I graduated with my MBA, I was done with that.
00:13:11
Greg MORLEY
And here I was six months later walking across the parking lot the other direction to start a master's in ah HR program. And that was very helpful for me too, because it gave me, if nothing else, it gave me confidence and credibility that I was in the right place.
00:13:29
Greg MORLEY
It also reinforced as I went through the program that actually i knew more than I had given myself credit for. And ultimately, it was an extremely good foundation for me to pursue the the HR career that I had over time.
00:13:43
Nate
So now about the book. So tell me more about this book. How long has this book journey been? What has that involved?
00:13:48
Greg MORLEY
So the book is A COVID Baby. I started the book, I think even when I was sort of towards the end of my time at Hasbro, I started thinking about this as is maybe like 2018, 2019.
00:14:02
Greg MORLEY
two thousand and nineteen And then I got more serious about it when i was when we were in lockdown, because as you we recall, in in Hong Kong, we had some pretty heavy duty lockdowns. So there wasn't much else you could do.
00:14:17
Greg MORLEY
and And so I started working on the book and doing the interviews for the book. And I also in my work life, because when I went into LVMH, I was working in Moat Hennessy, which is the wines and spirits part of the company.
00:14:32
Greg MORLEY
They had asked me if I would, in addition to being the head of HR for Asia Pacific, if I would help them kick off diversity and inclusion for the company globally, which I had a lot of passion for.
00:14:40
Nate
Mm-hmm.
00:14:42
Greg MORLEY
And I had some experience. So was like, OK, fine. I have. what else am I going to do? I've got plenty of time around here. And so I started that project, which full ultimately became my job several years later.
00:14:55
Greg MORLEY
But what I saw with the the work that we were doing is that, and we were trying very much in in the kickoff of doing it in Moet Hennessy, was to make diversity to inclusion an expansive and an and inclusive effort.
00:15:11
Greg MORLEY
So that we didn't start with, as an as an example, we didn't start at the underrepresented group. We started at the culture. So how do we build a culture that understands its unconscious bias? How do we understand, build a culture that leverages the values of the organization to be more inclusive, a greater sense of belonging?
00:15:30
Greg MORLEY
And what I saw in the world of diversity and inclusion was that was a bit of an exception. was a lot of, there was a lot of focus on the underrepresented, the misrepresented.
00:15:43
Greg MORLEY
And there was a lot of focus, I think, on the tension that was being created. And people were starting to check out of the conversation because, you know, I say something that's incorrect and rather than trying to help me be better, I'm scolded for what I said.
00:16:00
Greg MORLEY
And so when people get into that environment, they they walk away from something. After a couple of times, you're maybe willing to play the game, but eventually it's like, I don't really need this anymore. I'll focus my area somewhere else.
00:16:12
Greg MORLEY
And so I wrote the book with the intention to make inclusion more inclusive, which was to tell the stories that I had from my career with things that I had done right and many things that I had done wrong.
00:16:26
Greg MORLEY
and try to invite people into this discussion about why inclusion and belonging is so important to businesses. And so that, you know, it it was kind of a blessing.
00:16:39
Greg MORLEY
What was a meant blessing for many ways that COVID ended, because I think if it hadn't ended, I probably would have never finished the book. So i started you know I started to have some deadlines and finished the book and it's been an amazing journey for me since that, since the publishing of the book.
00:16:58
Nate
How hard is it to write a book? Was it hard do you have to wake yourself up like a day job and sit there for hours writing? Or what was your approach to to to doing this book?
00:17:07
Greg MORLEY
So i I had in my mind, one of the reasons I never wrote the book was never had started the book, any book. was I always had in my mind that I wanted to be a travel writer.
00:17:19
Greg MORLEY
And um my husband at the time, my husband, not at the time, he's my husband now, but my husband was at the time, um the owner of a business that actually published a magazine.
00:17:33
Greg MORLEY
And one of the things they did in the magazine was they would do travel articles to very high end places.
00:17:33
Nate
Thank you.
00:17:40
Greg MORLEY
And his editor was on vacation and they needed to do an article. So he and I wrote this article about this place in Fiji. It was amazing. And after the process was over, i was like, you know, I actually like traveling more than writing about travel.
00:17:53
Greg MORLEY
And part of the thing was I always had this sort of very Ernest Hemingway mindset of the way people would write a book, which is you would sit down in the morning for four hours and, you know, once upon a time in a land far, far away, the princess did this, that ah which wasn't at all the the process. The process was more, I would say, like a term paper.
00:18:13
Greg MORLEY
which was you collect some things, you put them together, you collect some things, you put them together, you write it up, then you go back to it.
00:18:13
Nate
Uh...
00:18:20
Greg MORLEY
you know The first time the whole transcript of the book was together, it was a mess. And so I read through it. I was like, okay, this doesn't work. There's nothing here. And and you know then it's like, you have to refine it and and and and play with some things, add some things, take some things away. So It's not a linear, at least for me, it was not a linear process. It was a very iterative process.
00:18:45
Greg MORLEY
um And I was given advice by somebody that was very helpful, which was to not over edit what I wrote also, because the more times you read it, the more times you think, oh, I should clean that up.
00:18:56
Greg MORLEY
I should change that. I should add that. And then eventually you make it, you know, you're back to a white piece of paper because that's the only thing that's pure enough that you're willing to to move forward with.
00:19:03
Nate
Yeah, lose the personality.
00:19:08
Greg MORLEY
So, so ultimately that that was the process. and And now I'm actually embarking on a second, writing a second book. And I have to say the first book, i I, if I have one tip of, of writing a book, it's talk to people who wrote books earlier in your process because book writers and authors are generally, okay, I have to get the door.
00:19:34
Nate
That's all right.
00:19:35
Greg MORLEY
Sorry.
00:19:36
Nate
That's okay.
00:19:38
Greg MORLEY
So if I had one lesson for people writing books, I would say, talk to people you know that have written books. And I did that relatively late in the process. I don't know why it just came to me like, oh, my gosh, I have a number of friends who written books.
00:19:51
Greg MORLEY
And that was very helpful to me because it grounded me. It helped me get through the process. It relieved some of my kind of end of book writing anxiety.
00:20:02
Greg MORLEY
And now as I embark on a second book, I'm much more confident about the process and and you know the ah the ups and downs
Cultural Competency and Business
00:20:08
Greg MORLEY
I know that are coming. And I'm actually enjoying it much more. because I'm less anxious about where it's going.
00:20:15
Greg MORLEY
And especially as I interview people for the book, which are just, you know, that this is one of the great blessings of my post corporate career has been the the doors that have opened and the and the doors that the book has opened.
00:20:30
Nate
Are we allowed to know the title, well, the working title or the subject or it's all under wraps for now?
00:20:35
Greg MORLEY
Still, ah it's, it, it, imagine it's a soup, but all the vegetables are still sitting on the cutting board.
00:20:42
Nate
that's That's a good analogy, I like it. i'm I'm in the process of writing my own book. I've been dabbling with it just ah because I've been working with so many diverse clients and it's, it's back to the the cultural agility piece, it's, it's So common, the the things that people, it doesn't matter if you're from from Taiwan or if you're from ah from Edinburgh, everyone has the same challenges when they're moving country and they have the same challenges and the same fears.
00:21:08
Greg MORLEY
Mm-hmm.
00:21:10
Nate
So i might hit you up for a second podcast more about book writing and we can talk more about more about book structure.
00:21:17
Greg MORLEY
Yeah, happy to. And I think the the the work to do on helping people be culturally literate or culturally competent, especially as they go through high stress times in their lives, um is really noble work. And and I had done, that was part of one of the things that inspired me to get into this was when I joined the Shanghai Disneyland project,
00:21:43
Greg MORLEY
we had a we had developed a program called Doing Business in China. And the program was to ultimately create a company culture because we were starting from scratch, except that we had China and Disney.
00:21:59
Greg MORLEY
So it's not really scratch, but the company is like new. And so how do you bring the best of those two things together and create a culture in which, you know, everyone can sort of thrive and survive and the project can be successful, referencing a lot of Disney projects that struggled when they first started, especially the ones that started outside the US.
00:22:23
Greg MORLEY
And so that really opened my mind to this kind of jewel that is cross-cultural competency. And in that project, you know, when we did that program, it wasn't just foreigners coming into China that went into the program. It was everybody that started there, whether they were from mainland China or not, sat in a, you know, one day program together and we ran it every week.
00:22:48
Greg MORLEY
And that created a culture, it created a language, it created a way of working. And ultimately, ah I think was a foundation of the success of that project.
00:22:58
Nate
That would have been a fascinating time. i The HR part of me just loves the idea of being able to get in there and do a culture from the ground up like that. It would be amazing. I'm very i'm very jealous and envious.
00:23:09
Greg MORLEY
And it's it's ah it's a lesson from you know what I was saying earlier is that's the kind of work that oftentimes people don't want to do because it's a bit...
00:23:21
Greg MORLEY
scary maybe, or it's in China and and that China, I don't understand what that's going to look like. um It seems far away. How am I going to get the food I want? You know, all these things go through people's heads.
00:23:32
Greg MORLEY
And for people who are in, ah especially in an in an HR space, if you want to accelerate your career, it's you do it through things like that. You go into areas that maybe other people don't want to take on.
00:23:46
Greg MORLEY
that may be a little bit risky, but they have higher reward. i mean, ultimately, even if you go into some environment like that and it doesn't work out, you still have that experience and you can leverage that experience for something that's the next play for you. So I really encourage people to not be afraid of what seems risky because likely it's an experience that will benefit you in the long term.
00:24:12
Nate
but I suppose we're talking a lot about the positives in your career. Is there any negatives? Is there something that stands out as um you've struggled with or that you wish you had done differently?
00:24:25
Greg MORLEY
um Yeah, i there's there's one episode in my career that I wish I could play back. I don't have too much sort of anxiety about the past, but when I first got to Hong Kong, I had a manager and we just didn't get along.
00:24:43
Greg MORLEY
Now, fortunately, we only worked together for 11 months because I think if there had been a 12, I probably would have left. um And when I reflect back on that in my sort of more mature self, what I wish i had done better sooner was kind of call out what it was.
00:25:04
Greg MORLEY
You know, to say this isn't working. We have a disconnect. How can we work this out? But what I was trying to do was kind of in a way protect myself for what was coming, whether that was, you know, to be pushed out or, or to move to some other job, which is eventually something that happened.
00:25:27
Greg MORLEY
And, um, that, that is a, I would say like, i would maybe the one regret I have in my long, uh, is to not have addressed that early on because it ended up being 11 very difficult months in and an environment where the work was not easy anyway.
00:25:46
Greg MORLEY
So we were trying to build the, the the The park and in in Hong Kong, the beginning of it was very tough. And it ended up also affecting my personal life to to to one point where I remember one conversation with my husband and I, we were talking about something and he said, you might talk to people like that at work, but don't talk to me like that at home.
00:26:07
Greg MORLEY
And so that was like a wake up call for me. Like, okay, this this this way of, this pressure is not sustainable. Now, I never really properly dealt with it because that woman that I was working with moved on very quickly. She didn't stay very long.
00:26:25
Greg MORLEY
And so that's that's something I wish, you know, in any in any work relationship, I think it's um important that, especially when things are starting to go the wrong way, that we have the courage to call it out.
00:26:39
Greg MORLEY
Um, and it, could and it could be that, you know, had I called it out earlier, maybe I would have ended up moving somewhere else to some other company. Um, which also would have been another path and another career. and I'm sure of what it would have worked out, but that's, I think something that's important.
Networking and Professional Growth
00:26:54
Greg MORLEY
Uh, something.
00:26:54
Nate
That courage though is very hard to draw upon. It can be very difficult.
00:26:57
Greg MORLEY
Yeah.
00:26:58
Nate
Yeah.
00:26:58
Greg MORLEY
Especially when you're more, junior, I mean, the, the, the level between me and this person was huge. And but that's also part of the ah role of HR people is you have to be able to have those difficult conversations.
00:27:06
Nate
Hmm.
00:27:15
Greg MORLEY
It's always easier in HR to advise other people of what they should do rather than what you should do. I think which was also the the lesson I wish I had given myself at that time, which is, you know, you're helping other people through these difficult times. You need to give yourself a little bit of that that advice as well.
00:27:33
Nate
well So if someone's listening and they want to fast track, they decided, yes, h r sounds fantastic, particularly the diversity inclusion space or ah workplace culture. how What advice would you give them in terms of ah fast tracking that that career for them?
00:27:52
Greg MORLEY
Well, I think, you know, my my winding path of getting, you know, getting some solid educational experience was important.
00:28:03
Greg MORLEY
But also i go very, very far back to the jobs I was doing. So like doing the jobs that people are doing that you eventually in HR are helping people to do better is important.
00:28:15
Greg MORLEY
So, you know, I reflect on even at Disney. I spent a day in a character costume in the summer heat in Florida as Tigger. And so until you do it, you don't understand what the job is like.
00:28:30
Greg MORLEY
We would spend holidays filling Cokes, cleaning up trash, um And it wasn't in my job description, but it was part of how you appreciated what people do. And I think for HR people, it's very important to appreciate the job that people are doing as part of your own understanding of how you can support them, how you support the business.
00:28:53
Greg MORLEY
and also how you are credible. So people see you out doing stuff that helps. So in terms of fast tracking to say, HR or diversity and inclusion, it's important that you have credibility that you've done the work so that you can say, okay, well, I've done that job. I've worked in the warehouse. I've driven ah delivery but van. I've done these things, which ultimately helped me to be credible.
00:29:20
Greg MORLEY
And because I had those experiences, when I interviewed for jobs, it made me much more interesting in the interview because I wasn't i wasn't sort of, and didn't have this kind of clinical path towards something.
00:29:33
Greg MORLEY
I was collecting experiences and interactions and relationships that were very critical to to my success. And I think there's ah there's a second thing that it can never start soon enough. It's like saving money.
00:29:48
Greg MORLEY
you know start building your network as early as you can and nurturing the network. So building a network is one thing like, OK, you and I can connect because we knew each other way back when and and and now we're doing a podcast.
00:30:04
Greg MORLEY
So that's great. But during the interim, you have to water it. Otherwise, it doesn't survive. And so i encourage people to take network building as seriously as anything in your career, because at some point you will want to rely on the network and you want to take the vegetable from the garden.
00:30:27
Greg MORLEY
But if you don't plant the seeds now, then when you want the, when you need the food, it's not going to be there.
00:30:33
Nate
i mean
00:30:34
Greg MORLEY
And so it's important that network is, is a key to people. And some people are very good at it. Some people aren't. And I would say to people that would say, I'm not good at it. Then you just have to make it something you're better at because it's and it's indispensable for you in your career.
00:30:49
Nate
I think people over, I believe people overthink it. i like I was reading somewhere, one of the easiest ways to do the sort of the watering of the network is just open your LinkedIn messages or your contact list, scroll to the bottom, who haven't you spoken to for the last six months?
00:31:04
Nate
Send them a quick message, just say, thinking of you, how's it going? yeah Any updates? And it can be that casual just to touch base with someone.
00:31:11
Greg MORLEY
That's absolutely the case. People often get intimidated by, oh you know, Nate's really busy. I'm sure he has a lot to do. I don't want to bother him. I can tell you that I'm pretty busy. i have a lot to do. And when somebody sends me a message out of nowhere, it's like, whoa, great.
00:31:28
Greg MORLEY
Let's connect. So it's not ah it's not a sign of like you gave me something else to do when you asked to connect with me. It's that you recognize that there's some interest that we have together.
00:31:42
Greg MORLEY
And so don't deprive others of that kind of interaction and recognition by thinking, oh, they don't want to talk to me. If they don't want to talk to you, they won't talk to So electronic communication is easy enough.
00:31:52
Nate
Yeah.
00:31:54
Greg MORLEY
It can be ignored. And so if you want to reach out to somebody and you think there's something interesting for you to share or even just to say hello, do it. Do it. it'll It will pay off.
00:32:06
Nate
just ah Just last weekend, it was Dragon Boat Festival and I got a message from and old colleague that used, I did Dragon Boat a few times but back at Hasbro and got a message from an old Dragon Boat colleague going, I'm actually living in your hometown now in Adelaide and I thought of Dragon Boat and thought of you just saying hi.
00:32:22
Nate
It's such a nice, I love it.
00:32:23
Greg MORLEY
Yeah.
00:32:23
Nate
I think it's a nice connection.
00:32:24
Greg MORLEY
Yeah. Yeah. yeah And you don't know, like maybe next time you go to Adelaide, you'll catch up with that person and then you'll say, oh, we actually have more in common than we thought.
00:32:29
Nate
ah Absolutely.
00:32:32
Greg MORLEY
And maybe we, Maybe it's a personal connection or a work connection. You you just never know. i
00:32:37
Nate
It all helps.
00:32:38
Greg MORLEY
I have found that this stage of my career, so in this sort of more independent world that I'm living in, that a lot of those connections from my past are now coming back in different ways, in different iterations.
00:32:52
Greg MORLEY
And i'm I'm really enjoying that.
Lifelong Learning and Impact
00:32:55
Nate
So resources, any books or podcasts or anything that you've you've used that you keep returning back to or anything that stands out as a ah resource that you would recommend people to check out?
00:33:10
Greg MORLEY
Um, I am a, I've started to do a lot of reading to try to be less, uh, dependent on social media. And I'll tell you my, my method.
00:33:21
Greg MORLEY
So my method has been to first read about subjects that are at this point in time relevant to me. So right now it's relevant to me to understand France and French culture and French language because I have to survive and and and bloom where I'm planted, so to speak.
00:33:40
Greg MORLEY
But the other thing that I think is important, and especially for people that are in human resources, is to reach out beyond your barrier. And so i what I do now is every two weeks I buy two books.
00:33:55
Greg MORLEY
One book is about here now, France language culture. And the other book is something that's totally outside of my my normal day to day.
00:34:06
Greg MORLEY
So it could be a book on leadership about a topic that I don't know anything about. Like I just bought a book called millennium Millennial Thinking. It could be a book of, I just finished a book on Irish short stories.
00:34:19
Greg MORLEY
i mean, so so they're really like try to be very far afield in terms of my mind.
00:34:22
Nate
right.
00:34:24
Greg MORLEY
Because one of the things that i i believe what's happening to a lot of us is that through social media, we're becoming I wouldn't say dumber, but more narrow.
00:34:37
Greg MORLEY
We're probably coming deeper in what we see, but more narrow in what we see.
00:34:37
Nate
so
00:34:40
Greg MORLEY
And I think for people who are developing your career, again, you you want to develop yourself as an interesting person who knows things. And so in addition to learning about the craft of HR, which is important, you know learn about other things because they have they will ah ultimately there's some relevance to all of those things back to our work.
00:35:02
Greg MORLEY
So those resources to me are not necessarily specific, but it's ah it's a way that I'm trying to continue to educate myself and expand my mind beyond what's right in front of
00:35:14
Nate
Yeah, and even like even if you're short on time and don't have time to read a book, even just searching a different ah different YouTube channel or a different audio book will do the same thing.
00:35:23
Greg MORLEY
Exactly. exactly i mean, Spotify is amazing. the The audio books that i listen to, whether I'm at the gym or walking around town or making eggs in the morning, whatever it is, you you really can learn a lot. and And the thing is, everything's a bit disposable. So if I get into something, it's like I cannot do it anymore.
00:35:42
Greg MORLEY
I can stop. So use resources like that, but try, I think very much try to listen and be curious about things. You know, back to the origins of my story is be curious about things that may be you wouldn't naturally be curious about because in those things you're going to learn about how to learn, you're going to stimulate something in your mind to learn more.
00:36:08
Greg MORLEY
And I think that those things are really important for people who are coming into the working world or building careers or we're coming out of careers and coming into the next chapter.
00:36:19
Nate
Another thing i i I try to do as well is to, because I tend to drift towards nonfiction. So i you know, every couple of weeks I try to try to pick up a fiction book just to stimulate different parts of the brain and get get thinking a bit differently.
00:36:32
Nate
So I think any avenue just to just to mix it up is ah is a a healthy, healthy habit.
00:36:35
Greg MORLEY
Yeah. I think opening your mind to things that are different, it's you know back to the the the beauty of the world of diverse and inclusive teams, is that if you are somebody who has exercised your mind to be open to difference,
00:36:46
Nate
Hmm.
00:36:54
Greg MORLEY
then the way you come into work, the way you work with other people is going to be more sophisticated than somebody who has always sort of narrowly focused on one topic in one area. You might be an expert in that.
00:37:09
Greg MORLEY
And, you know, even in HR, I spent like almost 30 years in HR. So I was pretty good at it. I think I knew a lot about it. But even that, you know, things change so rapidly.
00:37:20
Greg MORLEY
that I had to constantly be a learner as well. So I'm not just i'm not accumulating all this knowledge. I accumulated a lot of experience. I'm not sure how much the knowledge over time was evergreen. It had to be refreshed. I had to continue ah to build my own my own understanding. And that by going out and learning things that are totally outside of my normal day to day was also a way to keep exercising my mind that way.
00:37:46
Nate
Fantastic. All right. As we wrap up, any quotes, any any mantras or anything you sort of rely on for a little pick me up or just a reminder in life?
00:37:57
Greg MORLEY
Yes. So I have learned something. This was like in the last couple of years from a good friend of mine who I went to university with. um And her father, who's I think in his 90s, mid 90s now, he had this he has this phrase and he says to them all the time. And it is ah he says, it's later than you think.
00:38:20
Greg MORLEY
Now he's 95. So, you know, take, take the point. But, uh, we had a long conversation about that over breakfast and I really took that to heart and why that means a lot to me is, um, I just, my, my mother passed away a couple years ago.
00:38:36
Nate
you
00:38:36
Greg MORLEY
She was 93. So she lived a great life. And, but, you know, I remember her when she was my age. And so I start to think, okay, I, Not that I'm rushing to do a million things, but I'm trying to spend my life in ways that I think are meaningful, that have meaning to me, that can be like sitting and reading a book all day. It doesn't, it doesn't have to be that I'm going to run for president of France, or I'm going to, you know, I'm going to go to the moon or I'm going to be on, I'm going to be the first person on a Mars, uh, Elon Musk rocket, but that you do things with intention and that, that things have meaning because, um,
00:39:18
Greg MORLEY
you know It's later than you think and you don't want to spend you don't want to look back and think, oh, gosh, i just that that was a kind of a year lost.
00:39:26
Nate
Yeah.
00:39:27
Greg MORLEY
you know I look at what you're doing and it's very impressive because you're helping other people with you know you know it' so it's something here, something there, something there. and You don't have to impact a million people.
00:39:43
Greg MORLEY
You impact one person meaningfully and that's like, you can do that once in a lifetime and that can be a lifetime. And so to do that over and over, I think is really impressive.
00:39:53
Nate
yeah
00:39:56
Greg MORLEY
And to do it in in meaningful way is what I try to do with my life.
00:40:01
Nate
That's beautiful. What a lovely way to wrap it up. Thank you, Greg. It's been great having you. I'll make sure we put links to your books and everything in the profile description so everyone can check it
00:40:11
Greg MORLEY
Thanks for inviting me and it's nice to be back in Hong Kong for a few minutes.
00:40:15
Nate
Thank you.