WEBVTT - Design love in, with Marcus Buckingham 0:00:02.960 --> 0:00:09.200 Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning. 0:00:10.280 --> 0:00:15.480 This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's 0:00:15.520 --> 0:00:18.160 episode is going to be a slightly longer one part 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:21.280 of the series where I interview fascinating people about how 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:24.000 they take their days from great to awesome and any 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:26.880 advice they have for the rest of us. So today 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:29.840 I am delighted to welcome Marcus Buckingham to Before Breakfast. 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:33.639 Marcus is a longtime thought leader on leadership. He's a speaker. 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:36.479 He is also the author of the new book Design 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:38.840 Love In Marcus. Welcome to the show. 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:41.040 Thanks for having me, Laura, Yeah. 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:42.720 Very excited to have you. Why don't you tell our 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:44.199 listeners a little bit about yourself? 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:49.199 Well, I'm a psychometrician actually by training, which means that 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:52.320 I measure things about human beings that are really important 0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:54.160 but you can't count. So how do you measure strengths? 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:56.520 How do you measure talents? How do you measure how 0:00:56.560 --> 0:00:59.000 satisfied or half you are with your life? All those 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:00.960 kinds of things that kind of make life worth living. 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:03.640 So I spent seventeen years with the Gallop organization and 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:05.760 building something called strength Finder, which is all about how 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:08.280 do you find out what your strengths are? And then, 0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:11.399 in the seventeen years since then, just built my own 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:14.200 business focused on how do you help leaders to get 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:16.160 the most out themselves and the most other people that 0:01:16.160 --> 0:01:17.399 they lead and the people that they serve. 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:20.399 Absolutely well, I know a lot of listeners have done 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:24.760 the various strength finders' assessments over the years. So in 0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:26.840 the intro to your new book, to Design Love in 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:29.880 you talk about coming to love as a topic, which 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:31.880 we'll get to at a sec but at some kind 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:34.200 of dark moments for yourself. I wonder if you could 0:01:34.200 --> 0:01:35.280 talk about that a little bit. 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:41.120 Yeah, well, I've built my company over ten years focused 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:44.520 on folks, on helping leaders to get the best out 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:48.400 of the people that they lead. And we've built this lovely, entrepreneurial, 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:52.640 passionate group of people who'd come together to serve our 0:01:52.680 --> 0:01:55.400 clients in a way that was very loving. I mean 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:58.600 it was. It was the kind of environment where you 0:01:59.040 --> 0:02:02.000 have family member joining the company and everyone else who 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:05.280 is friends feels like family. Everyone's sort of wearing company merch. 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:09.720 It's all very passionate actually. And then because I believed 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:12.600 in the mission so much, I sold the company in 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:15.880 twenty seventeen to a much much larger fortune of average 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:18.200 company that had three thousand salespeople. Because in my brain, 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:20.560 I'm thinking, if you want to spread the mission quickly, 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:22.400 you need a lot of smart friends. So a three 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:26.040 thousand person sales person organization is enticing because of that. 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:32.640 And yet over time, quite quickly, the passion drained away, 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:34.919 the love drained away, And it wasn't It wasn't the 0:02:34.960 --> 0:02:38.160 bigger company's fault, per se. It was just when you 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:43.680 get inside a big organization, other considerations start to dominate 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:47.320 the conversation. It's the monthly returns, it's the quarterly earnings, 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:50.080 it's the performance reviews, it's the run this by legals. 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:55.440 And what happens with love passion isn't that. It's not 0:02:55.480 --> 0:02:59.360 like it gets killed. It just dies from neglect. You 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:02.840 just start talking about other things. So for me, I 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:05.200 saw up close and personal what happens when you don't 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:08.120 make love. I know how to say that sounds I'm 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:10.239 saying of it. If you don't make love the central 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:14.840 organizing principle of how you do work, whether it's the 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:17.120 employee side of things or the customer side of things, 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:20.320 then it slips away and you wake up one day 0:03:20.320 --> 0:03:22.640 and you realize that nobody talks about it anymore, and 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:26.480 everyone's just going through the motions of that day. And 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:28.320 so that was the impetus of the book really is 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:31.119 to go, wait a minute, there is life is too 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:33.840 short for us to be going through the motions of 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:37.280 the day to get through the day. So that was 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:39.240 the impetus of the book. Yeah. 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:41.560 Well, love is kind of a funny word for a 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:45.000 business book, as I know, you know, and you kind 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:47.960 of shied away from that word at the beginning, right, 0:03:47.960 --> 0:03:51.320 You kept looking for like synonyms that sound more business appropriate. 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:54.640 Yes. Well, the first thing to see is that when 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:57.120 you look at the relationship between an experience, let's say 0:03:57.120 --> 0:04:01.680 it's an employee experience, the relationship experience, and an outcome 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:07.720 like profitability or productivity or loyalty, the relationship isn't and 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:09.280 this is going to get a little datory, but the 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:14.760 relationship isn't linear. It's curve linear, which means that if 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:16.280 you've got a scale of one to five and the 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:18.840 quality of the experience five being strongly agree and one 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:22.560 being strongly disagree, moving someone from a two to a 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:25.479 three experience or a three to a four experience doesn't 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:28.000 drive their performance at all or their loyalty. It's really 0:04:28.000 --> 0:04:31.359 only when you get to a five strongly agree that 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:34.000 you can see any kind of relationship to their next behavior. 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:37.640 So when you look at extreme positive behaviors, the thing 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:43.279 that drives them is extreme positive experiences, not fours, not threes, fives. 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:45.560 And then when you dive into the fives and you go, 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:48.440 what the heck of people saying when they say that 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:51.240 they're having an extreme positive experience at work, in their day, 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:53.159 in their life, what are they saying? Well, the word 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:56.240 they actually say, the word we humans always say, which 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:59.120 you want to extrive an extreme positive experience is love. 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:01.200 We say I love that. Now, we say it about 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:02.760 all sorts of things, Laura, we say it about I 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:05.240 love those shoes, I love that movie, I love that song, 0:05:05.360 --> 0:05:07.719 I love my mom, I love that mentor so we 0:05:07.839 --> 0:05:10.640 use it in all sorts of interesting contexts. But when 0:05:10.640 --> 0:05:13.760 we're trying to explain something extreme positive, we pick the 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:16.640 word love. And I kept hearing it as a researcher, 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:18.400 and I kept trying to change it into things that 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:22.320 were more palatable to the business world. Those so things 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:25.960 like passion or joy or engagement or stray and those 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:28.840 are good words, but they're not actually what the words 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:31.640 that we humans use when we're trying to explain something 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:35.680 that's extremely positive for us, the word we pick is love. 0:05:36.279 --> 0:05:37.680 And so as a researcher in the end, I just 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:40.159 had to go crying out loud, Marcus. Just go with 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:43.680 the word people are using. Let's explore it, let's be 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:47.000 curious about it, because it's the only thing that drives behavior. 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:51.240 So love is predictive of positive human behavior in a 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:56.000 way that no other word is respect, learning, enjoyment, satisfaction, 0:05:56.560 --> 0:05:59.159 None of those predict what someone's going to do next. 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:02.520 So if we want to be serious about actual, super 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:05.279 productive human behavior, well we've got to go to the 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:08.160 thing that causes it. And the thing that causes it 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:08.719 is love. 0:06:09.640 --> 0:06:12.560 And how do you define love then, because people like again, 0:06:12.839 --> 0:06:14.360 you use it with all sorts of things. I love 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:16.760 my mom, I love my job. We mean different things 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:17.520 when we're saying that. 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:21.040 Yeah. Yeah, so well, first of all, there's eight billion 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:23.080 definitions of the word love, right, there's many as many 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:26.200 definitions there are humans alive. And yet when you look 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:28.160 at the data around the world, when people use the 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:31.080 word love in China, we can predict their behavior. People 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:33.560 use the word love in Argentina. We can predict their behavior. 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:35.919 Wherever you go around the world, love is predictive. So 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:40.480 there must be something common about that definition of love, 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:42.919 even though every humans got their own definition. So in 0:06:42.920 --> 0:06:44.600 the end, if you push and push and push on that, 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:48.320 what you bump into is this definition. Love is the 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:50.880 deep and unwavering commitment of the flourishing of a human 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:54.640 So if you think about their word flourishing, every single 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:56.200 one of us as human beings feel that we've got 0:06:56.200 --> 0:06:57.800 something unique inside of us, and we want to get 0:06:57.839 --> 0:06:59.080 to the end of our life and feel that we've 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:01.520 had some chances to express what's inside of us. If 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:03.280 you've got kids, you want them to be able to 0:07:03.360 --> 0:07:06.560 express what's inside of them. And yet most of us 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:09.960 go through life balled up like an armadillo with armor 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:13.200 plating because the world's scary and frankly, it doesn't care 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:15.480 that much about us. So we go through life balled up. 0:07:15.960 --> 0:07:18.120 Any time we bump into any sort of experience that 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:21.120 allows us to take one plate of armor off, even 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:23.320 if it's a small thing, like I love that outfit, 0:07:23.440 --> 0:07:26.640 I know it sounds silly, but if you feel more yourself, 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:29.320 if you feel more fully yourself wearing that outfit, the 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:31.440 word you pick is love. If you work for a 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:34.280 leader who cuts through your performance review and allows you 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:37.480 to stretch yourself in some way that expresses the best 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:40.520 of you, use the word love. If you've seen a 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:43.440 movie where a scene, or a character or some aspect 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:46.600 of the movie helps you sort of explain your own 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:48.960 experience to yourself a little bit better. You walk out 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:51.120 of the movie and go, I love that. So in 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:55.720 a way, love just means bigger any experience, no matter 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:58.560 how small or how large, which lets us take the 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:02.880 armor plating off a moment even and let's just take 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:06.960 what's inside and put it out. The word we humans 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:11.480 reach for to describe the specificity that experience is love, 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:14.720 whether it's about a shoe or whether it's about a 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:19.400 mom So there is something common about what we mean 0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:21.680 when we say love. And it's not like it's not 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:24.440 lots and lots and lots of like. Love is just 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:27.720 categorically different as an experience. 0:08:28.480 --> 0:08:31.880 Love isn't just more likes. Well, we're going to take 0:08:31.880 --> 0:08:33.560 a quick ad break and I'll be back with more 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:43.760 from Marcus Buckingham. Well, I am back talking with Marcus 0:08:43.760 --> 0:08:46.720 Buckingham about how to design love in so we've been 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:50.840 talking that, you know, people having love as a driving force. 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:52.440 You know, we want to be a company that people 0:08:52.480 --> 0:08:54.920 love to work for, or you know, companies that are 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:58.520 selling things want customers to love their products. But part 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:01.720 of that is flourishing as humans. And you know, you 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:03.240 talk about this a lot. So much of the world 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:06.560 seems designed not for humans these days. I mean so 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:09.360 much of what we experience in terms of you know, 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:14.320 robocalls or you know, horrible customer experiences at a doctor's 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:17.280 office or in an airline. I mean, it's like people 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:19.040 forgot there were humans or something. 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:22.560 Yeah, it's funny we coming out with the word love. 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:24.360 I thought the problem would be that people would go, 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:27.160 oh love, that's not real, or oh love, come on. 0:09:27.600 --> 0:09:29.679 I thought they'd pushed back against the word love. But 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:31.960 funnily enough, the word that people push back more on 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:37.320 is experiences we humans we go through. Let's say you 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:41.640 go to the doctor's office. That's an experience for us, 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:44.960 and we as the human are going through that experience. 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:48.080 You would have thought the doctors, let's say, would have 0:09:48.120 --> 0:09:50.719 designed an experience as though the whole human was going 0:09:50.760 --> 0:09:53.440 through it. But we don't. We design it for process. 0:09:54.120 --> 0:09:57.199 So in the doctor's office, there's a series of handoffs 0:09:57.200 --> 0:10:00.480 that you have from the person who's there as the 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:02.520 receptionist or the person who that hands you off to 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:04.840 one nurse, to another nurse, to the doctor, to a 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:08.000 different nurse on the way out to and insurer, one 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:11.000 handoff after another. If you call your bank, it's one 0:10:11.000 --> 0:10:14.520 handoff after another. If you call your airline, it's one 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:18.320 handoff off another, call the insurance company it and we 0:10:18.400 --> 0:10:21.960 have to we as the human, have to contain the 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:26.040 coherence of our own story, repeating our story, whether it's 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:29.120 at the hospital, whether it's at the restaurant, whether it's 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:31.680 at the bank. We're the ones who have to try 0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:33.800 to keep the coherence of our story together because the 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:36.520 whole darn world we live in has not been designed 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:41.040 for a coherent experience. It's one vertical process after another, 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:46.080 and we're just handed off. The whole world's been designed transactionally, 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:48.760 which is why, for the first time, by the way, 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:51.560 in thirty years, we asked this question. I started doing 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:54.599 this back in the early two thousands when I was 0:10:54.640 --> 0:10:57.920 still at Gallup. We were just measuring trust, trust in 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:01.680 big business, trust in school RULs, trust in the government, 0:11:02.520 --> 0:11:05.920 trust in big media. Last year was the first year 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:08.400 where not a single one of those institutions I've just 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:10.880 mentioned had more than fifteen percent of people saying I 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:14.280 strongly trust them. We are living in a world where 0:11:14.320 --> 0:11:17.199 we just do not trust the institutions that are a 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:19.640 big part of our world, from schools to hospitals to banks. 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:22.280 But we just don't think it's not built for us, 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:28.280 because it's not. It's built for process and efficiency and transactionalism, 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:32.319 and it feels terrible for us. It feels terrible when 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:35.000 you call your bank. It feels terrible when you try 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:38.120 to buy tickets for a Taylor Swift concert and she's 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:42.160 outsourced the selling of tickets to Ticketmaster, who then gouge you. 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:43.880 But by the way, which is why she took that 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:48.000 back interestingly enough, because she did take the experience seriously 0:11:48.080 --> 0:11:51.440 and started, I think it's taylorswifticks dot Com to take 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:55.480 it back in so that she could own the totality 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:58.040 of the experience. But most experiences for us in our 0:11:58.080 --> 0:12:02.680 world are designed as though we aren't the human going 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:04.360 through them and it feels rotten. 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:07.200 Yeah, and you say that it's not so much that 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:09.240 people are evil about it. I mean they're not. It's 0:12:09.280 --> 0:12:12.560 not immoral. It's just a moral right that it hasn't 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:16.320 been considered to make a human being flourish, right. 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:19.880 I mean. The simplest and the most banal example would 0:12:19.880 --> 0:12:22.400 be you go to a restaurant and the person who 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:25.400 you made the reservation through, who is probably interactive voice response, 0:12:25.440 --> 0:12:28.560 by the way, which is not a relationship strategy. It's 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:31.440 a containment strategy. That's what IVR is. You've made your 0:12:31.480 --> 0:12:33.920 reservation online. The person you bump into at the hostess 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:35.520 down is not the same person whose voice you have 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:37.679 been when you made the reservation. The person who seeks 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:39.320 you is not the same person. The person you can 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:41.760 order your drink from is not the same person. The 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:44.319 person who then takes your order is not the person 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:48.360 who brings you. The whole thing is designed to efficiently 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:53.760 contain table four as efficiently as possible. It's not designed 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:56.360 to go you're a human, you probably want to feel 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:59.200 as that there's another human going through the experience with 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:03.440 you who's probably thinking about you as having a holistic experience. 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:08.480 Even something as banal as a restaurant isn't designed that 0:13:08.520 --> 0:13:10.959 way for you. And so we live in a world 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:17.120 where trust is low, love is low. There's an experience 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:21.200 which back in the late eighth nineteenth century, actually a 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:24.880 very famous sociologist called Amil Durkheim coined to term an 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:29.120 m which means alien nation. We live in a world 0:13:29.320 --> 0:13:33.599 which feels like it's blind to us humans as employees 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:36.480 of work. We're not called employees. We're called full time 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:41.480 equivalents FTEs or headcount. All of the human capital management 0:13:41.520 --> 0:13:44.920 systems that do our pay, that do our recognition, programs, 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:47.280 that do our goal setting, those are all extensions of 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:52.400 financial systems. All of our human systems are actually financial systems. 0:13:52.920 --> 0:13:56.080 And so we live in a world where of humanity. 0:13:56.080 --> 0:13:59.040 Even at school, if you think about it, the uniqueness 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:01.240 of the student from the ages about zero to ten, 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:03.240 the uniqueness of your child is kind of interesting to 0:14:03.280 --> 0:14:07.160 schools from ten onwards, it's how closely do you match 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:09.080 up to the standardized testing that we're going to do 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:13.000 all the way up through college actually, and the great 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:15.600 point average of the seniors who graduate from the college. 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:20.080 That's the preoccupation of schools, education at large, and then 0:14:20.120 --> 0:14:23.160 it continues at work. So and there are exceptions, that's 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:27.400 beautiful leaders and beautiful managers and beautiful teachers who really 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:29.920 get to know us as unique humans. But most of 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:32.640 the world is set up to turn us from a 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:36.960 human into a financial element of a transaction and more. 0:14:37.160 --> 0:14:40.680 With AI barreling down the track, we're going to get 0:14:40.880 --> 0:14:43.920 more of that, not less of that. And the point 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:47.120 of this book is that's stupid. It makes very bad 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:49.760 business sense. Why because love's the most powerful driver of 0:14:49.800 --> 0:14:53.000 productive human behavior for employees or for customers. So when 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:56.880 you put systems in place that drive love out, you 0:14:56.960 --> 0:14:59.600 are undermining the behaviors that you want, whether it's productivity 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:02.160 or loyal or advocacy or word of mouth or whatever 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:02.480 it is. 0:15:03.360 --> 0:15:05.800 So let's say somebody is yeah, listening to this, and 0:15:05.840 --> 0:15:10.320 they are a manager of a team, and they're like, Okay, well, 0:15:10.320 --> 0:15:12.720 I may not be the CEO of a huge corporation, 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:15.240 but I would still like people to love to work 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:18.960 with me, yeah, right, and to help my team members flourish. 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:23.360 What are some of the things that a manager can 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:27.200 do to cultivate that within their team. 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:29.960 Well, the simplest thing that you can do if you 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:33.720 think about what's the handmaiden of love? Well, attention is 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:37.200 the handmaiden of love. Humans don't do very well when 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:39.240 we're ignored. Like, what's the opposite of love? Hate? No, 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:42.800 the opposite of love is ignoring someone. So the simplest 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:45.400 thing that a manager can do, which so many managers don't. 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:48.280 But you know that put upon and the company's yanking 0:15:48.320 --> 0:15:50.480 them one way and another. But really, what you should 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:52.080 do is check in with each of your people for 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:55.360 fifteen minutes, one on one every week. It's the simplest thing. 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:57.720 Are some two questions, and do it fifty two times 0:15:57.720 --> 0:15:59.960 a year. And the two questions are how do you 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:01.760 feel about last week? And what are you working on 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:03.720 this week? And how can I help? Do it fifty 0:16:03.720 --> 0:16:06.840 two times a year. It's fifteen minutes and you're not 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:11.480 coming in with some amazing coaching tip every week, that's fine. 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:14.720 What you're doing is giving someone the benefit of attention 0:16:15.440 --> 0:16:18.800 about the short term past. How was last week for you? 0:16:18.840 --> 0:16:21.760 Did you love it or loath it? What'd you love like? Seriously, 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:25.160 go what'd you love about last week? And what's your loath? Okay, interesting, 0:16:25.240 --> 0:16:27.840 I'm right with you now. What's your focus for this week? 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:30.520 How can I help? And you just keep doing that 0:16:30.720 --> 0:16:34.680 fifty two times a year. Then for all of you, 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:37.120 but you and the rest of your team, what you'll 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:42.280 be doing is establishing emotional harmony with your team, because, 0:16:42.360 --> 0:16:44.800 if you think about it, a year oscillates. Everybody goes 0:16:44.840 --> 0:16:47.520 through ups and downs and challenges, and what you want 0:16:47.520 --> 0:16:49.120 as a person on a team is just having a 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:51.000 leader who pays attention to it. They don't have to 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:53.680 fix it, they just have to pay attention to it 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:56.520 every week. Now, maybe on some weeks you can tweak 0:16:56.680 --> 0:16:59.280 or adjust or course correct, but for most of us 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:02.240 when we go to work, we feel unseen. So if 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:05.480 you want to fix that, have a frequent light touch 0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:08.160 check in or conversation call or whatever you want, check 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:10.679 in touch base. It turns out when you look at 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:12.800 the modality, it doesn't matter. You can do it online, 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:14.200 you can do it with an email, you can do 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:15.960 it face to face, you can do it on the phone. 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:20.080 What matters isn't the modality of it, Laura, it's the 0:17:20.119 --> 0:17:22.760 frequency of it. Do you repeatedly touch based on each 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:24.840 of your people about the near term future every week. 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:27.679 If you don't do that, by the way, that sounds 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:31.119 boring to you to do, then you shouldn't lead people, 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:36.879 because leading is actually individualized attention to the human and 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:38.720 the work and the human and the work and the 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:40.560 human and the work. Gosh, you do that fifty two 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:42.520 times a year, you'll be in the top five percent 0:17:42.600 --> 0:17:45.320 of leaders in terms of the loyalty and the productivity 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:46.280 you get from your people. 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:49.160 And then one other thing you mentioned is is sort 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:52.159 of paying attention to customs, which I know a lot 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:53.960 of people listening to this show are very much into 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:57.719 routines and rituals. Are there certain sort of rituals that 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:01.919 good managers do in our to build love into their teams. 0:18:02.640 --> 0:18:06.800 Well, the two but by the way, every single leader, 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:11.199 of course, I call it the ABCS of leadership Authenticity, beliefs, customs. 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:14.440 So whatever your customs are, they better be authentic and 0:18:14.520 --> 0:18:17.119 they better be a manifestation of your beliefs. If you're 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:21.960 trying to fake it. If your customs are just a manipulation, 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:24.840 we humans can sort of sniff that out. So the 0:18:24.840 --> 0:18:28.000 C comes after the A and the B. Authenticity means 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:29.680 we don't need you to be perfect, we need you 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:32.840 to be you beliefs means don't assume that we can 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:36.120 read your mind. What do you believe is deeply important 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:37.960 to you? Tell us, help us know that because we 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:41.600 can't actually dive into your heart. Customs would be like, 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:43.440 what are the things that you repeatedly do that bring 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:46.160 those first two to life? If you were to think 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:52.159 about some super predictable ones that probably work for most leaders, 0:18:52.200 --> 0:18:54.320 although the way in which you do that might vary 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:56.760 according to your style. First of all, catch people doing 0:18:56.840 --> 0:18:59.480 things right. There's a million different ways in which things 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:01.840 can go wrong. Your goal as a leader should be 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:05.720 to keep looking for excellence. And when you say good job, 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:08.239 that is not the end of a sentence. It's the 0:19:08.240 --> 0:19:11.160 beginning of an inquiry. So when you say good job 0:19:11.200 --> 0:19:13.320 to someone, that should be the beginning of why did 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:15.400 that work for you? Let's unpack that a little bit, 0:19:15.640 --> 0:19:17.639 why so that you can do it again, so that 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:19.919 we can refine it or improve it. Let's look at 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:23.000 the bits that worked. Because excellence in any job isn't 0:19:23.000 --> 0:19:24.800 just the opposite of failure. It's like you don't write 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:27.920 a great poem by fixing all the dangling partibles or 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:30.199 the split infinitives. So you as the leader. You've got 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:32.639 to be really interested in what works. When it works, 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:35.320 what works, catch people doing things right, not just to 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:39.760 make them happier, but because that's the raw material for 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:45.200 future greatness. Is current goodness, not current badness. So many 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:50.119 leaders get kind of get drawn into remediation and fixedness. No, 0:19:50.600 --> 0:19:53.440 keep looking for what's right. And then another custom, which 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:58.000 is do it once a quarter for yourself. I would 0:19:58.000 --> 0:19:59.560 suggest you actually don't want to quote it with each 0:19:59.600 --> 0:20:01.879 of your people, but start with yourself. Just take a 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:03.720 black pad around with you for a week, draw a 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:06.040 line down the middle of it right, loved it at 0:20:06.080 --> 0:20:07.880 the top of one column, and loathed it a top 0:20:07.880 --> 0:20:09.480 of the other. Take it around with you for a week. 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:12.880 Any time you find some activity or interaction that you love, 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:16.040 that you lean into, that you find yourself looking forward to. 0:20:16.119 --> 0:20:18.080 Time speeds up when you're doing it. Scribble it down 0:20:18.080 --> 0:20:20.120 and loved it column and in the loaded it when 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:23.000 you see the opposite when you're procrastinating, when time drags 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:26.000 on when you're doing it, Okay, scribble that down. Take 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:29.359