could you do me a quick favor if you're

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i lost my dad i lost my marriage i saw

my company then you sort of ask yourself

what are you doing with your life

my name is marcus buckingham he's a

best-selling author a rock star in

corporate america i couldn't say my own

name until i was 12. the more you try to

fix a stammer the worse it gets from a

very early age we start telling people

that strength is what you're good at but

yeah i'm good at some things i hate

what's that that's a weakness i had got

myself into a position where i was

solely responsible for one huge client

disney i look like i sort of feel

confident but i had years of panic

attacks it was super psychologically

damaging

to be trying to be somebody that you're

not

the first relationship you better have

is a really good one with yourself

the best people in any job they find

love in the activities themselves love

is for work and work is for love and if

we do that it's not just

individualistically satisfying it's what

companies want from us

so without further ado

i'm stephen bartlett and this is the

dyrova ceo usa edition i hope nobody's

listening but if you are

then please keep this yourself

[Music]

marcus it's uh it's a pleasure to have

you here in our studio here in la

another brit sir sir we've had quite a

few brits in but um you're one that's

particularly inspired me with your work

when i was doing the research on you and

reading through your book and your prior

book um i

i was overwhelmed with the amount of

questions i wanted to ask you because of

the the depth of knowledge but also how

much the topics you talk about resonate

with me the place i wanted to start with

you though that i found particularly

surprising having met you having spoken

to you having seen how people have um

become very enamored with you as a

public speaker is

you started your life with a stammer yes

a really bad stammer yes how does

someone get from and i want to talk

about that but for context you went from

having a stammer which was pretty

crippling in terms of social aspects to

mark french who's the us us's top

lecturer

the leader of the top lecture agency

called you one of the best public

speakers he's ever seen how does one go

from having a stammer and being you know

really hindered by it to that position

and tell me about the stannah

yeah so when i first started to speak

and this happens for quite a lot more

boys than girls actually as a hams my

synapse synapses um

didn't fire right

and so you have almost immediate

disfluency so my earliest memories steve

are not being able to say my name

one of my very earliest fears was not

ever being able to be married because i

couldn't say will you marry me so you

start off and you start trying to

communicate at three and four

and then you realize that something's

really wrong but you're so young you

don't really understand what's wrong and

then you get older and older you realize

you can't

you can't put words together

um so for the first 12 years of my life

not being able to speak was what i

thought about every single moment of

every day and everyone's got their own

traumas and their own difficulties and

i had lots of blessings in my life but

um i couldn't speak and i had a lot to

say so

i would keep trying and then it wouldn't

work and i didn't know why and a stem is

a really it's a perfect metaphor for

everything that parents

try to do with their kids you the more

you try to fix a stammer the worse it

gets

so i went to the speech pathologist and

they did the whole

peter piper picture peck of pickle

peckers thing and you

trying to sort of get them

the muscles to kick in and it just got

worse and worse and most of us and then

i was one of five boys that was asked to

read aloud in chapel i had kept

volunteering to be in christmas plays

and stuff and i was never picked because

everyone rightly was like uh he can't

talk so i'd never really spoken in front

of anyone at all

when i was talking to you like if i was

seven years old and talking to you like

this i couldn't say anything like i

wouldn't

i would try and then you would be like

this is

mortify so i'd never been asked to read

aloud anywhere anyway that day

i can start

my palms are sweating even just thinking

about it because you realize

my life's over

every single child in the school is

going to see me now stand up i can't

fake the words because they've got the

bible study books because it was in

chapel so they can see what i'm supposed

to read so i can't i used to substitute

words that i could say for words i

couldn't it's an old stammers trick

but they're like you can see what i'm

going to read and

girls and boys at that age as you know

can be pretty cruel um so i'm like i'm

done i'm just baked you know stick a

fork in me

but anyway i walk up and i turn around

and i look at all the faces and i it was

it was like a

a stimulus

and then my response my brain felt

different that's all i can say about it

just felt different felt warmer it felt

fluid

and

i just read the whole piece with not a

single stemmer really just the whole

thing and what

occurred to me was

i love

the eyes on me that sounds really weird

the more people i'm talking to

i'm better

brain comes faster words

come out better stories that i don't

know why i didn't work at it i didn't

struggle with that

it was just that worked on me

in the same way that some people over

summer when they sing they don't have a

stomach so i took that away i was

blown away i didn't understand it but um

then i just went you know what that

should be an unlock for me

we often go to our

deep traumas to try to understand how to

fix ourselves and if you have social

anxiety or what caused it where did it

start and we sort of

we we pathologize ourselves with the

best of intentions but i went the other

way and i was like i know so much about

this dance demo i've been to more

speech pathology sessions and read more

books and i know so much about i just

can't fix it instead i'm going to

i'm gonna decide that when i talk to one

person i'll just pretend i'm talking to

400. i'll just literally pretend i'm

talking to 400.

and the stammer went away in a week

i was faking public speaking when i was

just speaking and i was doing it as a

coping mechanism so that i didn't

stammer

and it worked it's fascinating it's

weird makes no sense

right it's like

we're mysterious and that's what i read

about in the book is that i don't think

we've really grabbed hold of that this

huge variability in variety that lives

in human beings

we have talked about it in terms of race

or gender or age or nationality or

religion but we haven't really talked

about it in terms of why are you

different from your brother by the time

you get to be about 18 19 you have a

hundred trillion synaptic connections in

your brain that lead you to love some

things and load others

things that shouldn't go together go

together things that you lean into

that you shouldn't lean into but you do

like for me i shouldn't have loved

public speaking but for some daft reason

i did why no idea but we

we have this unbelievably intricate

network of synaptic connections that

makes us completely different from the

person

we grew up in the same house with

and what no one's ever taught us is a

um how do you understand that uniqueness

like what are the signs life is giving

you and b

how do you use it like can you rewire

your brain to become someone else what

happens if you put your ten thousand

dollars in can you rewire your brain and

become a different human being can you

rewire that network in your brain

well if you have a growth mindset

supposedly you you should and yet

actually we know that's not what happens

at all you grow more synaptic

connections in the part of your brain

you have the most pre-existing synaptic

connections everyone

because you've got the alpha instagram

proteins and the blood vessels and the

infrastructure so actually growth for

all of us is becoming actually a more

defined

version of who you are you don't rewire

your brain becomes someone else the

question in life isn't really growth or

no growth it's where will you grow the

most

so

i don't think we've ever really graph

grappled with the 11 year old who's

basically asking herself who am i

is there a me in there

and we could have 10 years of school

yes where we learned geometry we could

have 10 years going here's how to use

the raw material of a week of school to

start helping you know a little bit more

about that weird

massive and massively filigreed network

in your brain

and we could help you learn to have a

language around that and how to describe

it without bragging or

how to be interested in other people's

network

we could do all of that and of course as

you know as an entrepreneur you want to

hire people like that because then they

have mastery of themselves

so when they join a team they can start

going well you can lean into me for this

and you know here's a bit where i

struggle actually i need some help and

here's where things come really fast and

here's where i'm like a deer in the

headlights

but i know certainly in the company that

i built it's like you don't hire people

like that you tend to hire people that

are completely lovely

and smart but really quite inarticulate

at describing

where

they find love and what they do where

they're at their best and where they

struggle we don't we just haven't

grappled with the beautiful wonderful

extensive variation

of us as individuals

and when you were that age when you

weren't say 11 or 13 or 14 what was if

i'd asked you what you wanted to do when

you're older what would the answer have

been

i didn't if i go all the way back to 9

or ten i wouldn't have known what i

wanted to be

i did know that i started to pay

attention to things that other people

didn't pay attention to and that was

interesting then at 16 i bumped into

this

titan of

positive psychology his name was dr don

clifton

who um was the chairman of gallup but

also his chief scientist

and so at 16 he said

you're going to go study psychology and

i had chosen psychology and he was like

come to lincoln nebraska and i'll say

i'll teach you about positive psychology

and studying what's right with people

and i was like

all right i'll do that

didn't know where it would lead but knew

that research in psychology

real world observed human behavior i

just was always interested in that for

people that don't know what is gallup

oh well gallup's the first company i

joined after school after university

gallup was founded by george gallup who

was the inventor of polling you like

polling i hate it he figured out

something which was

if you talk to 10 000

very carefully selected people your

predictions of what they're going to do

or vote for anything is more accurate

than taking

100 000 people because you're 100 000

people might be skewed but if you have

what's called a representative sample in

your 10 000 then you've actually can

extrapolate from your 10 000

to 100 million

um now there's subtleties around that

but but that's where it started after

george died

don clifton bought the company

and don's focus was psychometrics so how

do you measure things about a human that

are really really important but you

can't count how can you measure

engagement how can you measure strengths

how can you measure

resilience

um

talent how do you measure that

could i figure out a set of questions

that would help me discover

something about you in terms of your

strengths your talents your advantages

your attributes that you don't even know

yourself like i just loved that idea

and so half of gallup was polling and

half of gallup was

psychometrics

and so i was there for the first 17

years of my career and we built this

this tool that 25 million people have

taken called strength finder um strength

finder is all about exactly what it says

um let's try and measure you on 34

strengths and then we'll give you your

top five um so that was the side that i

spent my

first 17 years of my career with is

trying to measure the uniqueness of

human beings

from a top line perspective when you

were in that role because i mean 17

years trying to remember to find the

uniqueness in human beings and

inventing this thing called strength

finder

what is what did you learn about what a

strength is because when i think about

strength i think it is

um

i guess just something that i'm good at

yeah so

when you dive into what a strength is

what you find is it's shot through with

emotion it's what you love to do what do

you lean into what do you find yourself

unable to stop doing there's a there's

an obsessive

um and joyous quality to a strength so

when you push and push and push on a

strength people think that a strength is

what you're good at this is what you're

bad at

but actually if you push on that even

just a little stevie you bump into

people going but i'm really good at that

and i hate it what's that

what's it where you're really good at it

even in school when you've got an a and

you're like i'm thank goodness that

classes over because i don't want to

take it again but your parents go well

you got an a in fact you've got an in

biology so you might want to do medicine

you should be a doctor but deep down

yourself going but i don't i don't like

sick people i actually don't like

sickness at all and yet no matter as a

doctor you keep curing them there's

another one the next day they keep

coming to my darn office you know i'm

never done

and and so we from a very early age we

start telling people that strength is

what you're good at but yet our own

human experiences i'm good at some

things i hate

what's that well you push on that that's

a weakness and so we should change our

definition a weakness

is any activity that weakens you any

activity where before you do it you

don't want to do it while you're doing

it time drags on when you're done with

it you feel drained

that's a weakness i don't care how good

you are at it if that's how you feel

after it and then somebody were to say

to you build your career around that

that's sadistic

but that's

that's

that's the proper definition of a

weakness is if it weakens you definition

of a strength is any activity that

strengthens you before you do it you

lean into it you sort of just can't stop

yourself from volunteering while you're

doing it time whips by and you're like

you look up you thought it was an hour

right it's and it's now it's it's

you've been doing it for seven hours and

you're like oh my god and then when

you're done with it you're like

i i know i feel

completed or i feel like me or i feel

authentic right i don't feel drained i

might not want to do it right away again

but i'm like

you're from the latin right you're

invigorated you're strengthened

which of course means if a strength is

what strengthens you and a weakness is

what weakens you what's super cool about

that is that you're the best judge of

both no one knows better than you what

we consider and what strengthens you

from the nine years old we could be

saying to people hey what strengthens

you about even video games okay which

video game what what about it is it

multiplayer game as a first person

shooter we could start to get people to

be

cultivating their own kind you know

genius about

what what are your strengths

somebody else is the judge of your

performance no question so if you say i

really really love um

remembering people's names

no one can come in and say no no you

don't they can't say well you should

probably use that to um give better

customer service and here's how you

might want to do that but no one can

come in and say you don't love that

because if you say no no i no i do

then you're the best judge of that now

we might want to help you learn the

detail of that well what do you mean by

helping people what do you mean by

learning their names or what bit about

it so we could help you get more

detailed around it but a strength

is what strengthens you and you are the

only genius when it comes to your

strengths 17 years with gallup that's

sort of the biggest takeaway

and strength finder or other tools like

that can help you sort of get in the

vicinity

of what are your strengths

but really a strength there's an

activity that strengthens you

and

and life frankly is waking up every day

kind of putting on a show for you going

what about this what about this what

about this what about this

um

and yeah you're on the receiving end

going hmm

how about that what is it about that

17 years at gallup you know

the other thing i was thinking about

before you arrived was you must know how

to ask a good question

because that's sort of central to

gallup's work is knowing how to ask the

right type of question and there's so

many questions that are trying to get to

the same answer but there's various

routes you can take and the divergence

between i guess the in terms of outcome

of a good question and a bad question

must be quite significant like if i'm

trying to find out what motivates you

there's a number of ways that i could

ask that and i think a lot of the ways

that i would ask that simple question

would actually lead me to the wrong

place because they're like laced with

biases and presumptions and maybe

they're not open maybe they're too

binary so how does one go about because

asking good questions is so important in

life generally whether you're trying to

help a friend you're trying to hire

someone you're trying to understand

anything it's all about inquiry um how

does one ask better questions is there

did you learn anything about that i got

it

well you're right that's that's what the

product is

and you would test it out you would do

what's called a concurrent validity

study where you take 100 really good

managers and 100 average ones and you

try out 250 questions

250 questions and you see which

questions elicit patterns of answers

that the best people in a role do versus

ones that are less successful

and many of the questions that you

thought were great questions you have to

throw out because they don't work as in

the most successful people don't answer

them in any way that's similar to each

other and different than these people so

that's really what the business was

trying out lots of different questions

to figure out

what are the best questions you can ask

in this case for a particular role or

job but in general

if you wanna if you wanna ask really

good questions the first thing to know

is you should be asking open-ended

questions

so you're asking

um what did you love most about your

previous work

um

open not yes knows like just open-ended

what what did you love most about that

so the that's the it sounds like an

obvious thing but it's amazing how

close-ended our questions are as opposed

to like what would be an example of a

close did you love managing people are

you an overachiever or an underachiever

um you know or um do you like overcoming

people's resistance to your ideas

yes so you can

if you're not careful you close the

answer down

best questions are always like uh

tell me about a time when you uh

when you built something you didn't

expect to build

it's just open hard to measure though

right if it's open that's why i think

people avoid open questions right

because then because then you get such a

dive like variety of answers how do you

like

put them in categories

well when it comes to psychometrics you

have a listen for and you code it

plus when you hear the listen for and

zero for everything else like boiling

and not boiling so when you're actually

building an instrument it's maybe too

inside baseball as it were but

inside cricket

but that's how you do it when you're

building an instrument so for example

you take a question like um how do you

know if you're doing a good job of

listening

let's say that

you're trying to figure out empathy and

you decide that one of the ways to

measure empathy would be a question like

how do you know if you're doing a good

job of listening so you take your study

group of highly empathetic

people

your contrast group of less and you

experiment with a whole bunch of

questions one of them is that one well

it turns out by the way that one does

have a listen for

a really good listen for what to listen

for

um a pattern of responses that the most

empathetic people all seem to share even

though they don't know one another okay

and the listen for if you imagine all

the possible answers to that question

how do you know if you're doing a good

job of listening you could imagine

somebody's saying well if i can repeat

back to the person what they said or if

i just nod or like all sorts of uh if i

mirror their embody language

turns out the most empathetic people all

say the same thing

um

they don't say it in exactly the same

way but they say exactly the same thing

they all say i know

i'm doing a good job of listening when

the other person keeps talking

well that's interesting because that

means the empathetic person

instinctively knows that the job of a

listener is not to understand what the

person's saying

interestingly the job of a listener is

to be

however they do it in such a way that

you keep talking

the job the outcome of listening is the

other person sharing

what you realize in most interviews

frankly first of all that the interview

split of time is 60 40 the wrong way the

interviewer talks for 60 of the time in

the interview he talks for 40.

so we've got a big imbalance and by the

way the interviewer rates the person

more highly in a job interview when the

interviewer talks most there's a very

strong voice really yeah totally

when i've talked to you

i rate maybe you didn't when you're

building your company but

across the board when you study this

there's a positive correlation between

amount of time the interviewer talks and

the rating of the interviewee wow um but

anyway the in terms of building the

instrument once you've got oh wow

all the most empathetic people say the

same thing to that question how do you

know if you're doing a good job of

listening when the other person keeps

talking well then that becomes a listen

for and then whenever you're trying to

measure empathy you throw that question

out you shut up

you let the person talk and then if you

hear unprompted off the top of their

head if they just say unprompted by you

no cues from you no biases from you no

nudging because i like the look of you

when you walked in you just shut up even

when the person says what do you mean by

that you and by the way this is one of

the tricks of interviewing you have to

learn your parry phrases a parry phrase

is like

when somebody because everyone wants to

try to narrow you down i'm sure in

dragon's den you've seen this like

people try to narrow you down towards

getting to the place where you say yes

and so when somebody says you know how

do you know if you're doing a good job

of listening the interviewee tends to

say well what do you mean by that you

mean at home or at work do you mean if i

know them really well if i don't and the

tendency because that's just what humans

do is to go oh uh

work

or when someone you don't know what and

you narrow it down so they can get the

right answer so you have to learn a

parry phrase like

well i know what i mean by that but i'm

interested in what you mean by that just

to knock it back just to knock it back

and then

if you aren't if you ask a question like

that and the person spontaneously goes

if the other person keeps talking and

then you actually code that you can

score it going back to your question

about how do you score it you can score

that you didn't tell them what to say

you asked an open-ended question and you

knew what you were listening for and so

you can code it in this case a plus and

everything else isn't a bad answer it's

just a non-predictive answer of that

particular trait

um

there's a whole bunch i mean

if you wanted to select really good

sales people

um

here's a great question

how do you feel when someone doubts what

you have to say

how do you feel open-ended how do you

feel when someone doubts what you have

to say imagine all the possible answers

to that question

and what you find is highly successful

people get 100 of them less successful

salespeople get 100 of them

these people

in answer to that question how do you

feel

when someone doubts what you have to say

they all say

it pisses me off

the successful ones yes

look

don't buy from me that's all right

disagree with me that's all right don't

doubt me

what we called we did call it this a

negative emotional reaction

because when you're a salesperson you're

like listen

i i respect the fact that you can choose

what product or service you might want

to go with don't doubt me it's like when

people say with salespeople well you

shouldn't take rejection personally the

best salespeople are like are you

kidding

that's what i'm selling

i'm me

so in this case when you put the word

doubt in there

it's like

it's like a bang and you're like oh uh

uh

don't doubt me so the listen for there

is like very specific by the way when

you ask great teachers that question

and average teaches that question

they say completely the opposite

they say the best teachers go i love

that

because to them are not all teachers

because there's a whole bunch of

teachers who don't say that but you look

at great teachers they go no the doubt

is a student

i want the student to be doubting that's

learning

and so you've got asked that for the

great nurses average nurses the question

doesn't work anymore

because who doubts a nurse yeah you know

so it's

with all these things i'm sure you found

with your business you can ask one

question and then

you're really just trying to pin your

ears back

shut the heck up

and let the person ramble because it's

so

revealing

even a question like what did you enjoy

most about your previous work yeah i

mean what a great question that is and

again people will say well what do you

mean with previous work do you mean this

job but you'll go hey

what did you enjoy most about your

previous work just talk to me about it

it's

well i think it's fascinating and it's

predictive like you can start to predict

what people are going to do

if you can hear what they have

repeatedly done people say you know past

behavior is the best predictor of future

behavior no it isn't repeated past

behavior is the best predictor of

repeated future behavior so if you want

to know repeated past behavior you ask

an open-ended question and then you shut

up and top of mind is what the person

repeatedly does or thinks or feels and

it's so revealing

we just mostly in conversation we just

talk at each other well i did this well

i did oh you didn't fall asleep wasn't

that i didn't policy loves neither you

missed your plane i've missed my place

yeah you know it said like waiting to

talk exactly in your first book um you

talked a lot about employee satisfaction

so your first book is called first break

all the rules and

you really highlight the importance of

employee satisfaction and i think you

know a lot of people might think oh yeah

keeping employees happy is you know

you know i'll we'll do our best but

um it really is

from your read from your um your work

it's clear that it's central to the

success of a company i guess my first

question is then

what is the single biggest predictor or

the unexpected predictor of employee

satisfaction in the workplace because i

would think it was like you know one

might think it would be

how much you pay them or how many

holiday days they get what did you find

out

well the two biggest things from all of

this research and it sort of goes full

circle from first break all the rules

which was the first book

i wrote which is based upon gallup

research in you know way back when but

it comes all the way full circle steve

to this book which

is all about love

um

when you push and push and push on your

question what you bump into is an item a

survey item

that just keeps showing up

in people

that are more likely to stay with you

more likely to be productive more likely

to have fewer lost work days less likely

to sue frankly if they have an accident

on the job like all sorts of really good

predictive real world outcomes are more

likely to happen when someone says

firstly

um i have a chance to use my strengths

every day

or i love what i do and i'm good at

um

there's something about person work fit

person work fit this job has some big

bits of it that fit me

now who me is is variable of course but

is this job in any way an alien job to

me or is that actually part of me when

you have that in any job

we were talking before about the first

job i ever studied was housekeepers

where we think oh you know how to keep a

stupid job i mean i bet they all just

want to get out of it as quickly as they

can but you study the world's best

housekeepers and you're like oh my word

there are some people that love certain

aspects of that role any role done at

excellence has got a lot of love in it

and every role done averagely is

loveless if you have loveless work

you're a worse worker we now know all

sorts of biochemical reasons why that's

so but it just kept showing up in survey

after survey after survey

work you fit however you want to talk

about that is huge

which is why of course i'm sure when you

built your company you realize this

teams are everything teams are

everything because they make homes for

unique individuals and you can start

going ah you're all weird but but you do

this and you do this and you do this and

you do this and lo and behold the team's

well-rounded precisely because each

person on it isn't well-rounded and then

the team leader of course can be really

creative about well which bit of it do

you love and can we get you to do a bit

more of that and then you can lean into

this person who weirdly loves balancing

the books but you hate it well that's

interesting they love excel you love

powerpoint okay well that's it that's a

team and and so that's

that's all about person work

uh fit

so that's a huge one um and then of

course the second one in terms of

um

in terms of all the discoveries around

engagement is um

it's your manager stupid

it's like

if you think if you don't trust your

manager if your manager doesn't know you

if your manager doesn't pay attention to

you

then your whole company becomes the

manager

and you can actually walk around your

neighborhood going you know what it's a

pretty good company

but i freaking hate her

and if you freaking hate her you leave

i left the company's great now if you

flip that around so you can go the

company's terrible like the pay is bad

and the and the

you know the benefits package isn't

really what it's cracked up but my

manager steve he's i mean i would follow

him anywhere

which by the way sometimes happens when

steve moves companies so those two

things of everything i'm i'm not saying

that pay is nothing or benefits and

nothing people like those things but if

you want to see where people give that

discretionary effort if you want to see

where certain teams saw and you go why

why is that team crushing it and this

team's struggling which by the way you

go inside companies you start measuring

anything uh lost work days productivity

sales profitability and what you find

and no one talks about this but you find

variation you go inside of

you go inside of home depot

or you go inside of marx and spencer's

or you go inside of goldman sachs so you

go inside of tesla you go inside of

disney oh well disney's got this culture

tesla's got that culture all of that is

rubbish you go inside a company let's

just take tesla and you start measuring

what's it like to work here what you get

is range

what's it like to work at tesla depends

massively on which bloody team you're on

and if you are working on a team down

here that's disengaged your manager

doesn't care about you're not trusted

that's tesla and when you leave you're

leaving that

now this team over here is a super

engaged ship that same business card

tesla tesla but you i don't know you

read the i don't know what you read but

you read the business press it sure

looks as though companies have one

culture rubbish they have as many

cultures as they do teams they have one

stock price

but that's a totally different ball game

so in terms of what drives engagement on

this team does someone really think

about how i can fit the work that i'm

doing a lot of and then do i really

trust that my team leader is out to make

me bigger

better he's interested in that when

those two things i'm not saying there

are other things recognition's important

mission you're going to talk to simon

while you're here the why is important

but the why doesn't compensate for the

what if what you're doing on that team

doesn't fit you

it's like nurses

you know why we have such burned out

nurses in the nhs and over here too

their why couldn't be stronger of course

their why is so

vivid and yet they're burning out they

have higher levels of ptsd than veterans

that return from war zones

it's like we're crushing our nurses why

well one many reasons but one reason is

the span of control one nurse supervisor

to 60 nurses

which is the average over here i don't

know exactly what the average is in the

nhs but it's really big there's no teams

in hospitals hospitals aren't built

around teams they're built around

vertical areas of expertise so if you're

a nurse

60 of you one nurse supervisor that poor

nurse supervisor can't do those two

things i just mentioned he or she can't

get to know you in terms of where your

strengths and passions lie

and then they can't put you on a team to

help you be collaborative with others so

that together you can reinforce and

support one another in those areas where

you don't have strength or love or

whatever

humans have been working in teams 50 000

years and if you go to hospitals

there are no teams because the structure

is set up to make it impossible and then

we wonder we go out and we clap

but it's all a bit

it's like hey rather than

dragging people out of the river who are

drowning

why don't we go upstream

and see why they're why we're pushing

them in in the first place

with nurses we've built a system where

they don't get those two things those

two needs met no one's interested in who

they are and what they bring and no one

has enough time to pay attention to how

they're feeling what they're into what

they're not into who could they can work

with like all of that stuff that humans

need

that particular profession

doesn't get and that's the reason why in

all of our studies i run the adp

research institute now which is a big

global institute

it's the least resilient profession of

all even pre-pandemic it was

and funnily enough the second most

uh burned out is teachers

so the two

most burned out least resilient

professions have the clearest why

the clearest sense of purpose

but the reality of the work the

day-to-day reality of the work is super

disengaging there's no teams in schools

it's like wherever you see no teams

you get no trust in team leader and no

link between you and your work you and

your role you and your role it's like

teams of this magic

technology

that we discovered 50 000 years ago when

we tried to bring down big game it's so

interesting you say that because um i've

always pondered so there's so many

things that i thought about there the

first thing was actually how right you

are having seen in my own organization

over the years where i would do my

one-on-ones with team members and

if

jason fisher

was managing the team

even though they were in the same room

they're all in the design department but

the 15 people jason fisher was managing

would have reported tremendously high

levels of job satisfaction

a team sat next to him doing pretty much

the same work would come in and i was

i felt like i was fighting to keep them

in the company because they were managed

sat next to the other team managed by a

different person and the crazy thing is

in the second team i describes

one-on-one sessions with me they would

ask to be managed by jason fisher

they would say could we

and then eventually our decision as a

company was to put jason fisher up above

the whole

design studio so he was he was in charge

of 40 people but then he could like

oversee

the team and those people were happy and

then the second thing you said just at

the end though which really made me

think was um

about freelancers

and about their levels of engagement and

motivation they are not in teams they

tend to work at home alone on computers

on work which actually is not connected

to them a different project today a

different project tomorrow and i believe

that

they

mus just it's this is an anecdotal thing

that i've seen in my friends that

freelancers i think they struggle the

most in terms of fulfillment and

happiness in their work generally

obviously there's perks

but generally

no you're absolutely right the data

would back you up a thousand percent

we've just finished we did a 25 000

person 25 country study two years ago

just came out of the field three days

ago with a 27 000 person study 27

countries the least engaged really least

resilient professions are people who are

uh alone who are working as

exactly as you said

um that doesn't mean that there aren't

some benefits to your point they do

actually like the flexibility

but

they only want places where it really

works is where the company and there's a

few companies that do this actually

because of the labor laws or whatever

you stay fleet you know in a freelance

role but actually you're brought into

the team you're treated like a member of

the team

look that

in 2017 i wrote about this too because i

just was fascinated by the fact that the

el the oldest human art we've ever found

like in 2017 this guy in the little

island of sulawesi in indonesia he's

climbing up in a limestone cave and he's

looking for a hand print because that's

the oldest art we've ever found is like

a red handprint in ochre or something

he's looking to see if he can find it

and he comes

climbs in

takes his um iphone and he's got a

15-foot mural on the wall

and the mural turns out to be 50 000

years old so it's the oldest human art

we've ever found well maybe sorry 44 000

years but they think it's actually

conservatively it's 44 000 years old

and it's a painting not a hand

not of a foot or a face even it's a

painting of

a bunch of little human figures some

carrying spears some carrying rope

and then very clearly the local um fauna

so an anoa a deer

uh a wild cat and clearly

this group of people is trying to get

together to capture or kill these

animals

and what's cool about it is that the

artist and they think most artists cave

artists was done by women so they think

it was women

has drawn each human figure

with an animal characteristic

so one of them has the face of a lion

one of them has a

tail of a crocodile one of them has a

trunk of an oven

and they're called therianthropes

who knows why but anthropology is called

half man half animal um

therianthropes

and

what it looks as though has happened is

the artist has looked across

the cave across the fire and going ooh

she's super wily like a crocodile and

he's really strong so he's brave and

this one and

she's represented a team of differently

talented people

so what's super cool about it i think

and i could just be geeking out on it

but the oldest human expression of us

with each other

is a manifestation of how different we

are from one another

in the cave

and how acutely astute that person must

have been to spotted and then went hey

what happens if we all

came together and then we could do

together what we can't do alone and then

everyone went all right i'll try that

and then it worked and then they

memorialized it on a cave and that's

called a team

and then fast forward 50 000 years we go

to schools and hospitals and we build

places with no teams or call centers or

manufacturing facilities and it's like

uh you've run a business you what you

just said by the way data backs this up

a thousand percent too you can go into a

company and you can ask a question like

i trust my team leader or do i know

what's expected of me at work and you've

got two teams in the same room and

you'll have one team where ninety

percent of people strongly agree that i

know what's expected of me

and this doing the same job right next

door where less than 40 percent do

and i remember when i was like really

young in my career i'd walk back into a

company and the ceo would go because we

did these surveys and they would go

what's our culture like and i would go

um well uh

this team everyone knows what's expected

of them and then right next door there's

a team that doesn't has no idea what

they're doing

and that you could see o what what

because we've got policies and we've got

goal setting and we a software that

enables cascaded goals to hit people

like and you go yeah i know we've bought

a new sofa for the whole lot too so they

should have the and you're like i don't

know but there's huge variation inside

that room

and

you in terms of your experience had that

ins you know

every single place you looked you found

variation but you don't it's funny you

don't really read that much about it i

don't you don't you don't it's actually

weirdly this is kind of the first time

i've really deeply pondered it i i can

see it having happened in my company but

i can see it happening office to office

so our office in manchester versus

office in london eris in london was

really not good good in terms of

satisfaction at one point our office in

manchester was amazing and just

yeah and i and you the real point that

stuck with me is that you don't have one

culture

i'm like that's kind of been a bit

unnerving for me it's made me rethink a

couple of the decisions i made but um

the other thing i i

i know you wrote about in that before we

get on to this one is you talked about

how great managers handle

underperformers

and how every team has people that

underperform that are for whatever

reason

from what you've understood

how do great managers handle people that

aren't performing

to a certain standard

so the first thing that we've got to

remember about all managers and again we

don't hear this much discussed either is

um

like why do we all hate the performance

review why do we all hate the annual

performance review

many reasons because when i go through

it and somebody says you're a four i go

well i'm not a number

um so there's that part of it but also

it's too infrequent right once a year so

you go in going i've got to tell this

person everything i'm worried about

anxious about thinking about because i'm

not going to talk to them again for a

year it's too infrequent the best

managers know

that the world moves quickly there's 52

little sprints that's a year 52 little

sprints

so the best managers are checking in

with each of their people really light

touch like 10 minutes 15 minutes but

every week

one-on-one every week one-on-one

really simple questions like would you

love last week and load what are your

priorities this week how can i help but

like that every week little because

remember the goals you set the beginning

of the year are irrelevant by the third

week of the year i mean we're in the

middle right now like also it's a global

conflict we didn't know that three weeks

ago so we also know from data by the way

people don't go back in and check their

goals so

less than four percent of people

once they set a goal at the beginning of

the year maybe there's a software

program that records it or whatever

they don't go back in and check it but

we all know it changes so dramatically

even in the next couple of weeks so the

first thing is the best managers are

frequently going how was last week how

was next week how was it it's really

this sort of that rhythm it's like 52

little sprints like that

and of course that means if you've got

an underperformer

you are hitting it

really early you don't wait until

december and go you

have had a bad year you're a two right

you're hitting it every week and because

you're hitting it every week

you've got an opportunity much earlier

to start saying two things the first

is

and this is so it sounds so obvious but

for one of the questions that separates

a good manager from a bad manager by the

way is you put this question to them

you've got someone who comes into work

consistently late what would you do so

you take a study group take a contrast

group 100 great managers 100 average

ones and you just throw that question

out you've got someone who comes into

work consistently late what would you do

when you again think of a million

different answers to that question these

folks here they all stay the good ones

yeah the stuff we call it the study

group when you're doing a concurrent

validity study you take a hundred

great ones measurably and then 100

average i won't get into how you measure

it but it's like

that's that's how you do it

and anyway these ones here their first

their top of mind response unprompted is

i would ask why

before i do anything else i would say

why are you coming in late maybe is it a

bus issue did you miss that you got

something with your kid is it a drop-off

time should i change your start time to

9 30. so you can get you can what if you

start by assuming this is a real human

you start by assuming this person's not

trying to get one over on you which is

kind of an interesting mindset it's like

the best managers start i think douglas

mcgregor called it theory x you start by

assuming that people want to do good

work

and so if someone's underperforming you

start by assuming there's something

going on that i don't know

and so that's the beginning you and then

because you're doing it every week it's

like

the person's not going wait that was

three months ago i fixed that now no no

this is last tuesday and wednesday

remember

15 minutes late oh well now the person

may come up with an excuse but the first

thing you do is you ask a question you

shut up you let the person define their

own reality

of course if you're doing that every

week and you're putting together little

strategies to help the person in this

case show up and they don't

then

the

the instinctive insight the best

managers seem to have and the best

coaches

is that your job isn't trying to put in

what god left out

your job is to try to draw out what god

left in your job as a manager is not to

make someone your job as a manager is

not to perfect someone your job is to go

who the heck are you

and then can i find work or indeed a

work context in which you can express

you

and if i've consistently seen

underperformance from you it's not

because you're a bad human it's because

for some reason i put you in the wrong

role in which case my caring doesn't

stop

my loving doesn't stop

i just practice sometimes tough love and

i'll come in and i'll say to you quickly

i love you

uh and you're fired

and i still love you because this job i

i put you in it maybe

and it's wrong for you i can see it you

can see it we can all see it so let's

move you out quickly because this job is

we're not going to rewire your brain

so that you get to be somebody else

you're you and this job doesn't fit you

and it it's my job again another great

question this is a close ended one but

ask great managers would you give people

what they want or do you give them

what's right for them

and you then you just shut up and they

go with the second one you get people

what's right for them even if

occasionally isn't what they want

so

i mean there's more to it than that of

course but but in terms of how best

managers deal with poor performers

frequency ask questions and shut up and

then stop trying to rewire people's

brains

most of high performance is the function

of talent role fit

and when you get low performance is

because the person's not a bad person

it's because they miss fit

and i bet you've seen that with your

people you've had a thousand so you

moved i bet you moved some people

sometimes not always but you go from a c

minus ah so frustrating and then you

tweak the job even just a little and

you're like yeah who are you

and they're extraordinary yeah that's

why i always hate the stuff where people

go well they're an a player it's like

stop categorizing people

a players depend upon which flipping

role you put him in i could take your a

player i'll make him a d

so don't there's no a players there's

just people who really fit their role

and get real joy from it and i'm have

mastery in it etc etc

and then there's people that don't

i bet you've been a b-minus in something

right me too put me in finance i'm at e

yeah right oh he's an a player uh have

you seen his spreadsheets yeah like

so that's that notion of like i'm not

trying to fix you i'm trying to see you

and then find roles in which you can

express you as woo-woo as that sounds

you and i both built businesses we know

it's like no that's not we were at all

that's a good night's sleep that's what

that is when you've got a person and a

team that you go oh

that that's a thing of beauty

one of the things you said as well was

the hardest thing about being a manager

is realizing that your people will not

do things the way that you would

i think everyone can resonate with that

part of the part of the frustration i

think of being a

founder as well is

you

because you're very often very clear on

the way that things you think things

should be done whether that's right or

wrong you just have your own subjective

opinion on how it should be done

or

how hard people should be working

whatever it's sometimes difficult to

appreciate that other people don't have

the same clarity of vision or

perspective as you do i see that

throughout my teams and just with

managers generally they tend to be quite

um what's the word

resentful that their their teams might

not be

doing it the way that they would do it

yes we um some of us get into management

because we want more control yeah and

then you're like uh surprise

you now have to manage by remote control

like you're sitting here people are

doing stuff and you're not there you're

here it's like ah but that's why you

know we talk a lot these days about

feedback and of course the opposite of

feedback on some level is is ignoring

people and people don't want to be

ignored there's no question if you

wanted to destroy your team just ignore

them but

feedback's actually pernicious the best

managers don't give feedback

by which i mean

feedback meaning are you doing this

wrong let me tell you how to do it right

i don't mean feedback as in you got that

fact wrong

um but

in terms of me telling you

this is what your performance is

and this is how you should do it better

that's feedback well you read a lot

right you'll see a lot of tools articles

books even on how you should learn how

to give and receive feedback

uh that's that's

how you grow somebody tells you because

you're blind spots other people they

know the truth about you so they're

gonna tell you who you are because you

can't see it that's called feedback but

of course what that means is that

the person the manager is assuming a

that i do own the truth about you which

they don't we have observer bias like

crazy and i don't mean race gender age

bias i just mean idiosyncrasy in fact in

psychometrics it's called the

idiosyncratic rater effect which means i

have a unique pattern of rating that i'm

unaware of and then when i'm rating you

and i'm rating this person over here and

this person my ratings should move

because i'm looking at different people

they don't my pattern of ratings moves

with me which means that basically all

ratings reflect the rater not the rate

even though we end up paying or firing

or promoting the rate as though the

ratings reflect the rate but they don't

reflect the rater we've known this about

this in in psychometrics for years and

yet in businesses today still most

people

are rated by their manager

but the other thing is in terms of

learning when you give when i give you

feedback and i go do it my way

i mean even with the best of intentions

most feedback basically ends up meaning

you would be better

if only you were more like me yeah

there's a realization at some point

isn't there as an entrepreneur where you

go

i think what i really need to do

is actually just create the conditions

in which a person

can express the best of themselves

rather than me

assuming that learning for that person

is just information transfer and dumping

it into their

blank slate like that's not

at some point as a entrepreneur you

learn what basically brain sciences have

learned for a really long time learning

is insight all learning is insight it

comes from within the person

and so all you can do as a team leader

or manager is create conditions which

within which a person can interact with

the world

a client a prospect a thing they're

making it and then go oh ah ooh ah

and then the person has the learning

you're not telling them how to be when

the moment you tell them how to be is

the moment you're assuming that they are

wired like you are so trying to tell a

person how to sell

it's like

no you sell when the person believes you

and

the prospect believes you and everyone

has a different source of belief

what's yours some people sell through

competence some people sell through

relationships some people sell through

impatience some people sell through

being silent some peop it's like

everybody's source of

belief and trust is totally different

so

yes tell people your reaction as a

manager like if somebody comes in late

you can say look when you come in late

it makes me think you don't care

the person can't then say well you

shouldn't feel that because you go no i

do feel that i feel like you don't care

when or in that meeting when you

interrupted your colleague i felt like

you weren't listening

because i felt that felt weird to me you

shut her down that's what it felt like

to me

that's a reaction

when you then tell the person what to do

differently tell the person how to

change their behavior that's feedback

and you've basically just crossed the

feedback bridge and now you're telling

them how to be

and how to be is how to be more like you

and so

as we talk about in the book a lot it's

like give people your reaction you own

that

don't give people feedback and if you're

on the receiving end of feedback

shut it out because no one knows you

like you know you

it's so true because yeah i mean

everyone says how the importance of

giving feedback and communicating and

the narrative i've always heard in terms

of like management

advice is always you know you've got to

give people constant feedback to help

them

grow

yeah people don't want feedback people

want attention that's different

if you give people no attention they'll

shut down i mean loneliness is a killer

we knew so that's true but people don't

want feedback and imagine when somebody

says to you hey sit down

you want to have a conversation i want

to give you some

feedback

it's like an anvil on your head your

brain leaves the room and all you're

thinking about is how do i survive this

darn thing with marcus because it's

going to turn out to be marcus didn't

tell me something that he's got the

truth about me that i don't have and

then he's going to tell me a bunch of

things and i'm going to have to do this

as he tells me a bunch of tactics and

stuff that don't feel like me

and

and you're just trying to think how do i

survive this conversation here let me

give you some feedback it's like

ah so yeah i'm on a bit of a campaign

going that is so arrogant feedback is

arrogance what people want is attention

which could be your reaction so if you

said to me marcus you know halfway

through that whole session that we did i

thought you got a bit off track

i can't then go no you didn't think that

because you went no i was lost man well

you shouldn't have been lost because i

was being really clear and you go you

but i was lost well that's a reaction

and people do want a reaction there's no

question that's why once a week the

managers really that's what that is is

that once a week check-in is like just

frequent attention they don't want

feedback because they're not you

and they don't want to be you

and i know for me as an entrepreneur

that was the hardest thing to learn was

like

step back

they'll show you who you are who they

are and then you can

help kind of arrange a world in which

they

get to express and express and express

i had a few words to say about one of my

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give me a tag anyway

back to the podcast

why did you call the book love

and work why the word love in particular

well i i did it as a

two reasons one the juxtaposition is

always interesting

like one piece like love and work you

just don't hear them

said that way

um so on part of it was like

it just gets your attention

and the other part of it from a research

standpoint if you interview people that

are really really good at what they do

and that's really been my entire career

and i was talking to you before about

study group contrast for 25 years that's

all i've been doing you take

100 great nurses 100 great teachers 100

great housekeepers 100 great lawyers

and you're just asking open and get

ended questions you're shutting up

you're tape recording the whole thing

transcribing it and going hmm what's

there and when you do that

the best people in any job they don't

all love the same things but there's

love in what they do

there's um

vanishing into the activity the activity

isn't something they're doing it's

something they're being

whether it's cleaning a room and

vacuuming themselves out so they can see

the lines and they get kicked out of the

lines whether it's another housekeeper

going i lie on the bed and turn on the

ceiling fan

and i remember back then going why

because that's the first thing a guest

does after a long day at the theme parks

and i like looking at the room through

the lens of the guest you're like

whoa but i love looking at the room

that's why i sit on the toilet or i lie

in the bath even though there's rules in

the job description say do not lie you

know in the bath or sit on the toilet

you're like whoa

so when you look at really really good

people in any job they find love in the

activities themselves

interestingly though they don't love all

they do the whole cliche about find what

you love and you'll never have to do a

day's work in your life again

and i'm a bit of a data nerd so you look

around and you go is that true

and you study the most successful people

my first um master's thesis actually at

school was the social and psychological

issues of entrepreneurship

even the best entrepreneurs don't love

all they do and so you go okay find what

you love to do and you never have to

work around your life again is there any

data to support that at all no none so

let's stop saying that

and let's rehabilitate with science the

word love

measurably when you study highly

successful people they find love in what

they do they don't love all that they do

but they find love in what they do they

find activities or moments or situations

every day

that they love

how many 100 50

20 is a really good threshold mayo

clinic research shows doctors and nurses

who are not burned out have at least 20

of their activities be things that they

love take a bunch of emergency room

nurses they love different things but 20

you get below 20

19 18 17 it's like you start getting

really dangerously psychologically

damaged

even if it's you know

21 though 27 50

it doesn't seem as though you get

necessarily a massive uplift in

resilience it's not like you need to

love all you do

20 is a threshold like get above that

and every day feels different

every day feels different so

and then of course if we dive into the

brain science of it you find that when

people are actually in that state of

the positive psychologist who we lost

last year mike czech shema high he

called it flow

okay when you get into that flow state

even if it's just 20 of your time if you

look at someone's brain when they're in

the moment in the zone in their element

whatever your phrases they have the same

chemical cocktail in their brain as you

do when you're in love with someone

so vasopressin oxytocin norepinephrine

with the addition of this weird

cocktail called anandamide which is

brings feelings of wonder and ore

but your brain on love

looks at work looks a lot like your

brain on love with another person

and when you're

doing something that you love

you are more open measurably you perform

cognitive tasks better your memories

better you're more accurate in measuring

or identifying the emotions of other

you're just better

so love and work was like hey

if you want this is kind of when i was

sitting there trying to fill the pages

and thinking why are you writing this

on one level i mean one of those

thinking my kids i want my kids to be

happy in life and have joy in what they

do and most people don't and i wanted to

have something i could go read this yeah

you know um but on another level i

wanted to write to ceos like you and me

and go

listen

if you want collaboration if you want

innovation

if you want creativity if you want

really authentic customer focus you

can't get it without love

so if you feel a bash talking about love

then shut up talking about these other

things you won't get them

loveless excellence is oxymoronic

and that's not just a phrase it's like

you look at what people look like on

love at work

and they're amazing

so if we took it seriously

at work

and we thought about what do you love

how does that turn into work and how

does the work that you do inform the

detail of what you love and then it

becomes this wonderful infinite loop

of work is to help you sorry love is to

help you figure out contribution

which then informs what you love like

your life is like this you've already

built a company you've sold it now

you're doing all this other stuff

because your love leads you to turn it

into contribution which required you

spending tens of thousands of pounds to

do something and then now you're doing

it and we're sitting here and there's

there'll be stimuli that information is

going into your brain right now and it

will add detail to that which you love

this whole thing but over here in l.a it

will have a little more detail and your

life will be this now listen i don't

know your mom and your dad but if your

life was like this they would go

yes i don't care how much freaking money

he makes if he knows that which he loves

and turns into contribution then on his

deathbed he'll feel like he lives a

first day version of his life

and i've got an 18 year old and a 20

year old

and i just wish in every fiber of my

being that they get to feel that loop

that's love and work love is for work

and work is for love and if we do that

it's not just individualistically

satisfying it's what companies want from

us we just haven't taken it

we just haven't taken it seriously

um you talked about which i think i

don't know if this was before we start

recording but this the the curse of you

know i remember a conversation i had

with a with a young lady who was a

lawyer

and um she was clearly dissatisfied in

her job

and it transpired that the reason she

was a lawyer is because that's what she

had been good at in terms of a levels

then um university and also her mum and

dad had said like that's a good job and

she she was almost on the verge of a

midlife crisis when she spoke to me

because she had she was so good at this

thing that it kind of dragged her off

into the future and she she was now that

that was her identity so many people

listening to this now will resonate with

that in various ways they would have

become

a banker because their parents were

bankers and they were really good at

maths

what have you found out about those