Welcome to Hacking Your Leadership. I'm Chris, and welcome to today's guest interview.
Our guest interviews are long form interviews with leaders from around the world.
They've each been selected because of their valuable perspective on leadership and the work they've
accomplished in this space. Today, we're joined by Jim Harder, chief scientist
of workplace Management and well Being at Gallup and co author of the new book
Culture Shock, a book that explores the shift to remote work in the COVID
and post COVID era. Welcome, Jim, say How to our audience.
Hi everybody, thanks for having me again. Chris. Great to be with
you. It's a pleasure to have you back. For those who didn't know,
Jim is the first repeat guest we've had on Hacking Your Leadership. He
was here back in April of twenty one talking about building thriving and resilient teams.
Clearly a lot has happened over the last two years with regard to the
work you do. In fact, your book calls this the biggest leadership issue
of our time. I know, Lorenzo and I spent several hours on the
show discussing the implications of remote versus office versus hybrid environments. So what I
want to know is at what point did the data start to say there was
a problem here, Because for the longest time, I thought that culturally the
Western workforce was already shifting to flexible work environments and COVID just kind of sped
it up. COVID did speed it up significantly, maybe by a couple of
decades or maybe more than that, because the trend was shifting slowly toward more
flexible work. It was the most desired perk wasn't happening quite as often as
it is now. But we shifted from for remote ready jobs. Nine out
of ten people now want out of it. From this experience from COVID,
now want some type of flexible work arrangement. So it's a shift mentally as
well as as what we actually So the experience led to some experiences that I
think are positives in terms of how we can work and live. But I
think it's created some risks as well. But I think we could build Chris
that the best workplaces ever if we if we combine what we learned through this
forced experiment and and also bring in you know, upgraded management. I'd say
I think manage years are in the most difficult positions they've been in historically.
In my tenure anyway, a very difficult job right now, and leaders have
to be more nuanced than ever before. Yeah, there's an analogy that I
kind of think about when I think about this, this remote work versus you
know, returning to office. It's like, you know, before twenty twenty,
you know, people went to the office. That's just that's just what
we did. And that's I liken that to the equivalent of having you know,
chicken and broccoli every night for dinner, and that it's it's you know,
it's fine, it's boring, but it's not going to kill you.
Uh. And and all of a sudden, somebody put a plate of donuts
out there and said, hey, I'm so sorry. This is all we
have right now, and no one had ever tasted the one before, and
they go, oh, I'm okay with this. This is this is totally
fine with me. And then all of a sudden, we're trying to say,
all right, now, look at this. You're gonna die if you
just eat donuts every day. We need to at the very least, you
know, you gotta have the chicken and the vegetables most nights or some nights,
and then have the donuts and and and the people who are saying this,
they're not the healthcare professionals that went to school for this and that,
and that their motivation is the well being of the of the person. That
they're being told this by people who they perceive as having ulterior motives. It's
like, wait a minute, you're you're not looking out for my health.
You just want to be able to watch me or have me sit there.
So I don't believe what you're saying. So even if what they're saying is
right, they're not they're not believed because they have ulterior motives. It's it's
a great way to kind of think about it. We all experienced to an
endowment effect, at least those who were able to work remotely were. You
know, the endowment effect is a behavioral economic phenomenon where you know, when
we get something, it becomes more valuable and it takes a lot more to
give it up than the value placed on it when you originally got it.
And experiments have shown that even with coffee mugs, it's it's they picket more
valuable once you get them, and it's tough to let go of even something
that that's small. But this is no coffee mug. This is our livelihood,
and people experience the new livelihood. And you make a great point about
the challenge for leadership, and people don't want mandates. When we ask questions
of employees about being mandated to do anything or being required to do anything,
you get very negative responses, very low levels of engagement, higher levels of
burnout, all the negative outcomes. So leaders are in a tough position where
they've got to think about how do we make this work? And you know,
have highly productive environments, and I think it all us to kind of
set on some criteria that we filter all of our decisions through. And one
is how we are individually productive. I think people have learned new ways to
be productive and we had to honor that. And the second is how we
collaborate better as teams and how we collaborate better with our team. And most
people decide how where they work not based on a conversation with their team,
but whether whether the whe whether leadership tells them, whatever their manager tells them,
or whatever they decide as best for them themselves. But thirteen percent of
people decide with their team. But a decision based on a discussion with your
team is the most highly related to engagement. But for a few people are
doing that, And so that's one one method, the other the other criteria
I think that we should filter these decisions through. Maybe the most important is
the value we bring to customers. Customer satisfactions have been dropping. Employees feeling
responsible for the quality of service customers receive have been has been dropping. And
so the big risk here right now that we can solve for, but we
and we really need to is the deterioration of the relationship between employee and employer,
which then which then ends up manifesting itself in the deterioration between the organization
and the customers. Yeah, the two things that when I read them in
the book that seemed inherently at odds to me are engagement being at a seven
year low, but also that employees are experiencing a new way to work that
serves their lives better. I mean, leaders have been told for more than
two decades that the happier the employees are, the more engaged they are,
and it seems like, you know it almost it almost means that you have
to redefine what it means to be engaged. Engaged doesn't necessarily mean supportive and
happy with your with your job. It means supportive and happy and productive as
defined by your employer. Yeah, the how we approach it engagement is very
different now, and that we've found that the frequency of the connection because because
we have so much hybrid work and we have less predictability, we've got to
build in predictability into our environments, into our workplace environments. We want to
make it work, and that means we have to have managers who are in
touch with people. And we found, you know, one area of low
hanging fruit is to upscale managers or reskill them to have at least one meaningful
conversation every week with each employee that they work with. And there's a lot
that goes into making it meaningful. The word feedback itself has been kind of
a people repellent for you know, a couple of centuries. But when you
put meaningful in front of feedback, it actually is something that attracts people.
But you got to get the right elements in there to make it work.
So I really feel like we can solve for this, but it is an
interesting paradox almost were you know, and you know what what engages people right
now is you know, autonomy, But what builds a productive culture involves some
discipline and some predictability. I call it where we actually have a plan so
that when we show up, we make the commitment with that community that other
people are there too, and we can re experience what that in person time
actually feels like and what actually happens. And a lot of people kind of
forget about that. It's good for us mentally too to have in person time
and so psychologically there their benefits for the individual and if we do it right
for the organization, there are cultural benefits. We're you know, particularly for
young people developing young people. We've young people have historically always had a development
advantage for the right reasons, but that's been deteriorating as of late. And
I think it is has something to do with the distance and not running into
people in the office and not having those kinds of relationships, and that's a
big risk as well. Yeah, we are we are social creatures. And
you know, by the time you are in your thirties and forties, I
think you know the what you gravitate towards in terms of a mix between that
you find the the the extroverts and the introverts and the introverted extroverts and vice
versa. All that kind of happens, and then and then you are who
you are. But if if something like this occurs where we're things are kind
of up ended while that part of you is developing, while you're kind of
figuring out what works best for you, it's almost it's almost forced upon you,
as opposed to just allowing you to figure out what works best for you
on your own terms. But also you know, really what works best for
society, what works best If everybody only did what worked best for them,
society would crumble. Yeah, And it's almost like a gig worker mentality,
and that's a risk, you know, where there is no sense of loyalty
necessarily to the organization's just to the to the work itself. And most work,
most jobs, now, you could even look at production jobs, most
of them require some level of discretionary effort. Where you might have a colleague
needs something from you, You might have you might have a customer who randomly
needs something from you. You can't just say I'm going to do the minimum
required and that fit into you know what anybody, any any organization's values represent.
Culture is much bigger than that, and and you know, we're we're
just the other week we had a few of us in the office, probably
like like ten of us together and we solved a problem in ten minutes that
we may not have even thought of solving and nobody maybe would have even scheduled
a call about it, you know. So it's it's things like that that
happened that people have to rerealize what not only the production part for the company,
but also the fun things that happened when we run into people in the
office that you know, those of us who have built relationships for a long
time, It was seamless to get on video and we still had those relationships
to that trust. The work was very seamless. But I really I feel
like the risk is for the more than anything for the younger people. But
the onus is on the older people too to show up and be you know,
to be part of that culture and to be mentors and not just put
it on the younger people to show up. But I think there's got to
be a plan. We found like two to three days for most jobs,
most jobs that requires some level of collaboration, is that is the right mix.
It's going to vary by organization. But I'd also say, Chris,
the plan about when we're together is only a small part of the overall puzzle.
And getting this right and getting the mixed right, we have to have
a plan about that. It helps a lot, but we've got to have
the management there first. We can have people in the office, and if
there's poor management, it doesn't matter. Well. I mean, an argument
can be made that that part of the push to be remote is from a
large kind of swath of the population who didn't like their leader, and and
their idea that they want to be remote is not because they didn't want to
be in an office. It's because they didn't want to be with their leader.
And being remote just says, I get to I have to spend less
time with this person who who who just drains me emotionally and doesn't you know,
add to my life, and and so it was the it was the
perfect solution to a problem that already existed, you know, is going remote.
And it's really difficult to get people to say, all right, I
can separate the two you know, we said for the longest time, people
don't leave companies, they leave leaders. And if people don't leave companies,
they leave leaders. That's essentially what they've done. They found a way to
leave their leader without necessarily leaving their company. Yeah, and this has cut
through all the research we've done historically where we look at policies and look at
the quality of the work experience. You've got to put the quality of the
work experience first. I'm not saying policies aren't important. They are. We've
given some examples here of how they can be important in building some predictability and
structure to an organization, to an organization for cultural purposes. So there needs
to be a plan, but the work experience itself will will by far surpass
the number of days that we're together in the in the office. In fact,
in our global data, when you look at outcomes like stress engagement at
work, how engaged people are as four times more important than where they're where
they're sitting. So it's it's a we got to get the order right and
the first the first level ought to be to reskill managers to be more like
coaches than bosses. And it can be done there's some managers that just won't
ever be able to pick it up. They're just not naturally there. But
most managers can pick up and get some insights if they leverage the strengths of
the people that they're working with. They can learn how to involve people in
goal setting and have continuous conversations about goals. They can have an environment with
high accountability where people want accountability because it shows them how good they are.
So, you know, engagement, strengths, performance management, those things can
all be blended together for managers to do a great job in this current environment
and to be in touch with people and have that combination of some autonomy and
high performance as well. Yeah. I like in leadership a lot on our
show to parenting because I have three young kids and you know they the idea
of having routines and structure and accountability in place is something that that people don't
necessarily say that they want, but but they do want it. People do
want it. And it's not just that it makes my life easier when my
kids are held accountable. It makes them happier people. When they are they
are happier people, and they are nicer to each other and nicer to the
world around them. When there is some structure and accountability, it's it's inherent
and and without that, they might say they're having more fun in the short
term, but in the long term, I think it it's it becomes this
this depressive cycle where they they can't tie it together, like, well,
I'm I don't like everything right now, nothing's good, but I have all
the I can do whatever I want to do. But yet I'm still not
happy. And they believe that there's a disconnectween the two. It's like that
that couldn't possibly be related, but it is related. It's exactly why they
are unhappy is because they're allowed to do whatever they want to do as opposed
to having some type of structure. Yeah, you know, and a lot
of us experiences ourselves personally, I did I know, you know, I'm
I always had some time planned to because I write and do research and absorb
get very absorbed in in our work. And so I've always had planned,
planned time an office at home every week when I wasn't traveling. But then
suddenly, you know, I was here every day and it wasn't it wasn't
that bad, and I could easily get into the mindset of this is just
the way I'm going to work forever because it works. And I've already got
relationships bill with my colleagues. But we have a bunch of interns coming in
every summer, you know, and uh, and if you force yourself and
I don't, it's not really a force you've got to drive into work.
But but but when you're there with the people again, you start noticing what
you actually experienced in person. Again, it's easy to forget that. I
think I think all of us can can who've done it, can relate to
that. But you also build relationships with the new people. You know,
Internships are a great way to build future employees because it's good for them,
you know, to get the to have smart projects to work on and to
get that experience. But it's also good for the organization to see some of
that game film in terms of how they actually collaborate with one another. It's
hard to see that from a distance. You need to work with them with
them, and I think you make great points Chris, that we've we've got
to have some structured plans so that we build a real cultures inside organizations.
Otherwise you got a bunch of independent workers who aren't as end up not being
as happy, they're not as engaged, they're not as interested in their work
over time. And there's nothing better in my mind than achieving something with a
team. And it's it's just a great fulfilling experience to achieve something big,
to complete a big project with a team of people, and that works a
lot better when you have some of that in person time. Right. Well,
there's a video that I saw probably five or six years ago now out
from Simon Sinek, and one of the things that he says is that the
relationships are not built in the meeting. They're built in the five minutes before
the meeting. You know, they're built when people are kind of mingling.
You know that you arrive at the meeting room and there's a there's a there's
a three to five minute time when people are just kind of chatting with each
other before whoever's running the meeting kind of starts things off and gets into the
agenda. And you know, I know that that doesn't happen over Zoom.
You know that doesn't happen over Microsoft teams. The meeting starts. You get
there at a certain time and we're going right into the agenda. And it's
because it's not it's not inherently easy to mingle and have small talk when every
voice is over every voice, you know, you you have those that small
talk, those mingling moments are just between you and one other person, and
and that's where the relationship happens. That's how you build trust between two people
is talking with them about things that might have nothing to do with work.
They're just about who that person is. And you build a relationship and you
build trust, and then that's the kind of person you want to work with
on the next team. And then you get your best work done alongside that
person. And we've we've gone right from the the you know, hi,
how are you to? Let's get the work done. And that doesn't necessarily
mean that it's that it's not going to get done, that the work isn't
going to be good work. But over a long enough period of time,
there's no question there's going to be a decline. There's you can't sustain that
without the levels of trust and relationship and camaraderie that existed before. It just
doesn't happen. People won't do their best work for someone who they don't have
that relationship with I completely agree with that. When we've studied even before the
pandemic, we did a big study of social time and what types of social
time matter the most, and we looked at different moods that people were in
during different activities, and most forms of social time, even technological social time,
matter from a mood perspective, But the total amount of time, particularly
for in person time. In person time, by the way, it mattered
the most, particularly when you're doing something with someone like eating with them or
just casual times like that seem to matter the most from a mood perspective,
But the total amount of time, and I think this is an important principle
to pull away from all this. The total amount of time mattered less than
actually making it happen. So having some ritual, some habits where you actually
make sure that it happens, some plans is more important than saying I've got
to spend you know, every day every week or x number of days every
week with the same people in person, but having a plan for it.
Some people might relate this to holidays. They might know that they show up
to holidays, have a good time for a while, and then it's it's
fine to leave, not maybe not all their relatives or people that hang out
with all the time, but showing up matters and it builds those relationships over
time. I want to talk about more about what you said about meaningful feedback,
because I agree that in order to convince people that the person talking to
them has their best interests, That's that's kind of where the rebber meets the
road here. If I if I give you feedback and the feedback is coming
from a place forget the words themselves. If in my mind I'm thinking,
how what do I say to Jim so that he stops making my life more
difficult, then then that means that the feedback I'm giving you is not inherently
based around what is best for you. It's based on what's best for me.
And and if the feedback switches to what can I say to Jim that
will help him be a better employee, a better human being, open up
doors for him in the long term, and whether or not he does that
has no impact on my personal life. I am. I am simply a
conduit for this information, and Jim will see that it is coming from a
place of I just want what's best for Jim. Then over time, you
you get that trust. And and if the leaders who are saying come back
to the office, there's saying come back to the office because it makes my
job easier. They're not saying, come back to the office because this will
inherently make your you a better employee and you'll accomplish better work. They're saying
that, but they don't have the credibility to say that because forever they've given
feedback that was based on how to make their own lives easier, you know.
The the that's a switch that is I don't want to say it can't
be taught, because it can. It absolutely can be taught, but it
has to start with the leader actually genuinely liking people. They have to care
about people, and that's a tough one to teach. You have to either
like people already and care about them or you might be you know, kind
of missing the cost of admission there. Well, and it starts, you
know, for for executive leaders, it starts with the people that report directly
to them. That's how you build an authentic culture. And they've got to
also have you know, meaningful weekly conversations with those folks. And there are
there are ways to do it. But I agree with you, Chris.
It starts with trust. If you don't have trust, you can give people
critique and it feels like criticism. People actually want critique, they want they
want that type of feedback, but they want it from someone who, as
you said, is genuinely interested in them, in their in their future.
And but as you said, leaders need to explain why the why part.
But the components to go into a meaningful feedback are really pretty basic. It's
kind of low hanging fruit. Actually one of them is recognition, but that's
we actually studied people who said they had extremely meaningful feedback. Those people,
by the way, eighty percent were engaged in the US averages now thirty thirty
one and the global average is twenty three. So just that one actor,
it's really hard to in science to find something like that, you know,
meaningful conversation or meaningful feedback, boosting it up to eighty percent. But so
a recognition was one of them. But to get recognition right, you've got
to actually be in touch with what someone's working on. You got to you
gotta know what they accomplish, so it's authentic recognition. You also need to
know how they like to be recognized. It's only ten percent of people are
even asked how they like to be recognized. There's more to lohanging fruit.
Another element of meaningful feedback is discussing collaboration, how how the individual collaborates with
with others. And I'm not talking about critiquing it, but more a managers
in position where they know all the colleagues on the team, and they know
where collaboration works best, and they know you know who should be collaborating with
who to get the right results for the organization. And they also know the
strengths of each person ideally so that they can match people together that have complementary
strengths or even common common strengths to get the work done. Goals and priorities.
Of course, it is an important component of having meaningful feedback every week,
So goals change, priorities change pretty quickly. If we don't do it
every week, we don't have that cadence, could easily be backtracking trying to
correct something that should have been corrected earlier. So having that cadence and also
makes it makes the conversation performance related, uh and you can you can.
It also feeds into that recognition component down the road as those goals get accomplished.
And then I mentioned this, but strengths. People said strengths were a
part of meaningful conversations and that even before the pandemic, the younger generation was
asking for a workplace that emphasize their strengths. And I'm not talking about everybody's
saying ignore my weaknesses. It's more I want you to lead with who I
am and help me develop through who I am instead of trying to make me
be everybody else. And you know, we've got a tool, clift and
strengths been used by thirty million people now and it's been a really effective tool
in identifying strengths. But it doesn't solve the issue. It opens the door
for having a meaningful conversation with somebody in a more efficient way. So so
that's been useful as well and just making managers jobs more efficient. But that's
how you build trust. And when you have that kind of cadence and you
build trust, then you can ask people to do things and and and they'll
say, I can see why now because it fits into this bigger picture of
what we're trying to get done. So I want to talk about the term
quiet quitting a little bit because it has gone from something that like I saw
it and it was intriguing, The idea of it was intriguing, like I
wonder, you know, this is this is kind of a new thing.
And and then it it became almost like co opted towards everything else. Now
now we have you know, quiet firing and quiet hiring and quite all these
different things, and it's become a buzzword. But at the heart of it
seems to be this idea that the definition of what it is is different from
for a lot of people. So let me let me tell you what I
mean with that. If you if you talk to a leader, they might
say that quiet quitting is someone who is, you know, not fully engaged
in their word work. They have just decided to phone it in, you
know. And that could be. This can be done in an office versus
or remote, doesn't matter. If I just don't care, I'm doing the
bare minimum in order to not get fired. And then there are there are
employees out there who say, if you're talking about going above and beyond,
what you're saying is you want me to do more than what you're paying me
for, Like you you're you're saying, this is the job you hired me
for, you're paying me this, I'm getting this job done, and now
you want me to do more than that. You want me you want me
to go to me above and beyond says you want me to do work for
free, essentially, And and that's a that's a really tough conversation to have.
I think I think a lot of people are they're getting lost in translation
here because I grew up in an era that said do the job that you
want, not the job that you have. Show people that you can do
the job that you want, and then then they'll have an easier time putting
you in that job when you want it. And I think it's it's a
lot harder now for people to do that. They want to inherently say,
give me the job first, then I'll show you that I can do it.
And that's a lot tougher for a leader or an organization to kind of
just, you know, to place a bet on without seeing how it's going
to work out in advance. Neither entity is inherently one percent wrong. So
how do we how do we kind of bridge that gap here to where people
understand that they're not being asked to do work that up being paid for,
but that that you you have to show that you want something by doing it
before you actually be you know, before actually giving it. Yeah, it's
been. It became a really hot topic last summer, about about a year
ago. Actually, the lesson that it started taking off in the media and
through TikTok, and some of the people who call themselves quiet quitters were actually
or quiet quitting. We're actually loud quitting because they're getting on TikTok and talking
about how they're gonna do the minimum required in front of everybody, including their
employer, which is kind of interesting. But but the psychology behind and the
contrast you just put in front of everybody, I think is a really important
one because bridging that gap is really about having good management again, and I
don't point at the individuals as much. And you know, there's some people
that probably just don't want to work hard, and we know that there's some
variants there, but most people come to work wanting to make a difference.
But the problem starts with when people start assuming that work is just a bunch
of tasks that I've got job requirements, and unless it's a very task oriented
job. Most jobs anymore require some discretionary effort to to take care of something
for a colleague randomly that comes up, or to take care of something for
a customer that randomly comes up. And if an employee thinks that that is
beyond the job description, then they probably aren't very closely in touch with what
the culture the organization is really about, what the objectives of the organization is
really about. And most jobs nowadays or knowledge type jobs, and you could
even go to you know, many production jobs where discretionary effort is involved,
but most other jobs as well are highly and knowledge related jobs where we have
to make decisions and we have to use discretionary effort. But I think this
quiet quitting it aligns with a construct of engagement we've been measuring for quite some
time, and the category not engaged, which is showing up to the memo
required. But the cause of it rests in not taking care of the basics
of management, like whether people have clear expectations. When people don't clearly know
what's expected of them, they start psychologically separating from the organization. It's me
versus them. If they don't feel connected to the mission or purpose of the
company, and don't feel like they can see how their work connects to the
bigger purpose. Then they start getting more burned out. If they don't feel
like they're recognized when they do good work and their managers and in touch with
them, they start getting more burned out and they feel like they need to
separate. So this work life kind of continuum I think is really important to
consider. Now give you another little example. Some employees consider themselves more like
splitters in that they like to split work in life. Some are more blenders
where they their best life imaginable is where work in life are blended throughout the
day. That those two psychological preferences with work in life are about fifty fifty
in the US population US working population. Both can be productive, but managers
need to understand that they understand each person's work life preference. Think about how
easily you could offend somebody if you don't know that they like their work in
life separated or if they like it blended. I mean, if they like
to blend. They may not be online at a particular time, but you
know they're going to be working later on on some projects, and you know
that they're going to be productive in their own way, if they want work
in life split and you connect with them on off hours when when they are
taking care of other family duties or whatever they do in their non work time,
you could easily offend them then, but knowing that preference and that preference
might change throughout someone's life depending on their life situation, but knowing that both
can be engaged in productive and if we know, but if we don't,
if we don't ask, we don't know, and we can't assume that everybody
has the same work life situations. So I think a lot of this went
a little bit of tangent there, But I think a lot of this quiet
quitting phenomenon is can be pinned back on just managers not listening, managers not
being reskilled to manage people in the right ways right now, and then we
end up with that gig worker type mentality where it's just me versus the company
and if you're asking me to do anything besides these very specific job tests,
then it's more than you're paying me for. Yeah. I think a lot
of leaders would hear what you just said and they would interpret that. They
would say, well, that means I have to be both if I have
a team of ten people, and five of them are splitters and five of
them are are blenders. That means that I have to be both. That
means I'm essentially working any time my people want to work, which which if
I'm one or the other. If I'm one of those and not the other,
because people are inherently one or the other, that seems inherently unfair to
me as the leader. If I'm a leader, I should be able to
say this, this is what the expectation is of the team. And it's
one that kind of doesn't make everybody one percent happy, but it's one that
allows people to, you know, kind of have you know, some some
of the blending and some of this of the splitting, and and and to
know that at the end of the day, we're not individuals. We are
a team, and at some point in time, the team has to be
together. You know that that seems like a fair thing. And if I
need to accommodate each person with what they want, that seems like it's inherently
unfair to the leader. That's why we have to have a plan. And
I would also contend that the leader needs to communicate with their with their best
work life is leaders are going to have more on their shoulders for sure,
because that's part of the role of being a leader. They they're probably gonna
have to at certain times step if they are a splitter, they might have
to make some accommodations for that. But but but if their team knows that
about them, then we have mutual respect about how we work. And you
know, somebody knows to send their leader, you know, an email or
a request, you know, at eight am instead of in the middle of
the night, or they know that they won't read it until then. But
there's that kind of mutual mutual respect. But there might also be, you
know, crises that they need to solve for. If you're a leader,
you're gonna have to help solve for those crises, and that's going to be
part of the part of the job. I work in an international organization,
and I know that I even if I am a blender, but even if
I were a splitter, I know that I'd have to accommodate some international things
and have some meetings at night. You know, It's just part of part
of my job. And so there is that reality in being a leader in
an organization. But I think if we communicate those things with one another,
we have a much better chance of respecting one another's preferences. It doesn't mean
everything is always going to be perfect, and that goes with team members as
well. At the end of the day, here this, all of this
comes down to the you know, acquiring and maintaining relationships with customers, whoever
your customer is. That's the lifeblood of whatever your organization is, whatever whoever
the client is. And if you know, we know that a highly engaged
employee will be more likely to drive a highly engaged set of customers, and
you know, disengaged employees will will not cultivate those those customer relationships. You
know, the book says that we're starting to see this already, or I
think we've been seeing it for a while. I'm sure. I'm sure when
those words were written, it was probably you know, months ago, and
it's even it's devolved even further since they were put down on paper for the
first time, so much so that just in my own personal life, I've
almost become numb to it. You know, it started, you know,
a year and a half ago, where the service would decline at whatever the
place is, it doesn't matter. It was a it was a retail establishment
or a restaurant or or literally anywhere if the service was was in decline,
I'd get up in arms about it and just be like, this is this
is insane. I'll never come back here again. It became so ubiquitous that
it's just almost like accepted, like I this is how life is now,
is that the service is poor in a lot of places there. People are
short staffed, there's there's less people doing the same work they did they did
before. And I've I've lowered my standards as a customer, and I think
a lot of customers have done that. A lot of customers haven't. A
lot of customers are are responding to that negatively, and they're they're taking it
out on the employees, which then further drives the employees into being disengaged,
because why would they ever want to go above and beyond or go the extra
mile for a customer who just finished yelling at them about something that they had
no control over where they perceived they have no control over this. We're kind
of in this really bad cycle right now, and it's going to be difficult
to get out of it, especially if more people like me start to become
numb and accustomed to it. Yeah, and that was one of the outcomes
that we saw with after the pan or during the pandemic. I guess where
you know, people realize they had some choices, and those that were in
customer facing jobs didn't want to deal with customers anymore, found higher paying jobs
with other organizations, maybe even even in different industries. But to give you
an example, and I'm not suggesting this example works across the board, but
certainly is one that I've experienced in this space. A year ago, we
have a local restaurant out here and the service was terrible, understaffed. You
couldn't get a drink or food for if it was crowded, it would take
well over an hour. New manager this year, incredible staff, a lot
of a lot of a lot of staff there and isn't because there's there's more
staff availability. He went and found and he build a culture where people,
I think look forward to doing the work that they're doing. He found some
local people to work there, some kids as servers, and they respond much
more quickly to service. It's it's just completely changed, change the menu everything.
But I think if you build the right culture, you you will attract
people who really want to make it different. I'm not and I'm not discounting
the labor shortage issue at all, but I think there are ways to increase
your probabilities of getting high quality people that do serve customers effectively by building the
right kind of culture and work environment in the ways we've been describing, where
people see the importance of their work and feel committed to their co workers and
want to show up because they have feel a responsibility to their co workers and
to their customers, and to start building relationships with customers as well. There
are very few things that I've heard that have a bigger duh, like like
that's that's the duh. But it's so much easier said than done. If
I'm a leader and I'm listening to this, I'm thinking everything that he's saying
is correct. But with the limited resources that I have to do this,
how do I do this? How do I how what is the what is
the step by step guide in making this happen? Or at the very least,
what is the first step, What is the the you know, a
couple of things that I have to start with and then know that it will
grow from there. If I just feel like this is an overwhelming TA right
now. Well, I think you've got to start with the outcomes you want
to achieve in the organization and then build a culture where you're focusing on the
right kind of elements with each employee. And it does. You know,
you have to know the employees, and you have to spend the time.
And I could argue from our data, fifteen to thirty minutes a week with
each person is enough if you do it right. We've got an instrument called
Q twelve that we've used for decades across industries. It works effectively and building
the right culture, and it does start with knowing whether people know it's what
their job is, what's expected of them. People want to come to work
and know what their role is and know the importance of their work. People
want to have a job where they can use their strengths and do what they
do best. Whether that's in a you know, we're talking food service,
whether it's in a customer facing role or behind the behind the counter role.
They need to be positions where they can do what they do best. I
would also argue if you build a culture that is highly engaging, word gets
out very fast and you attract more people, so you're going to increase your
probability. Again, it doesn't it doesn't overcome the economic issue around labor shortage,
but it increases your probability of getting the right people and also having people
were let's say you have five people that could do the work of seven people
because they're just more engaged in their work. So it does come down to
quality managers, having managers who are in touch with people, because that's that
builds your employment brand and it attracts the right individuals so that they can then
attract the right customers. That link between employee and customers very strong, and
you're not going to build customer retention or customer loyalty if you don't have employees
who customers see that they're they're looking out for their best interests, and you're
not gonna have as many customers that yell at people either. If if you've
got employees who are who are not just well trained, but also who are
are recognized and who feel they have opportunities to develop inside inside the organization,
I think what you say about fifteen to thirty minutes a week with each employee
is enough if you know how to do it. Right. I couldn't agree
more with that. I think the issue that a lot of leaders run into
is one it can be very easy to make that prescriptive, right. It
can be very easy to think, all right, here's here's my fifteen to
thirty minutes with this employee and this employe and this employee, and it could
come off like they're just checking boxes as opposed to, you know, kind
of clearing out everything else that's going on in their lives and really focusing on
that employee for that fifteen to thirty minutes for what it's designed to do,
which is to build a relationship with that employee, build trust with that employee,
and figure out how best to serve them as the as their leader,
as opposed to just saying, oh, i've i've I've met with every employee
this week. Yeah, now it's time onto the next week. That That
is the first step to it. The second part of it, though,
is that when you when people are are meeting like this. I had a
mentor once who said that a good performance review can be done on a napkin,
and and what you meant by that basically is that if if if the
relationship is there, you don't need a form to fill out, and and
that's mostly true. I think there's there's some formality necessary in whatever that form
is if you want to be able to hold people accountable to objective standards and
se show people when they're prepared to be promoted and prepared to move up.
But in general, those little conversations they can be done on the back of
a napkin or with no paper at all. But a lot of organizations,
in a desire to kind of make up for the fact that a lot of
their leaders are ill prepared to do this, they come up with prescriptive forms
for it. Here's the here's the paper that you're going to have with you
when you meet with your employees for fifteen to thirty minutes every week, and
here are the questions you can ask. And it becomes a meaningless fifteen to
thirty minutes to the employee because they think this isn't about me, this is
about the leader checking off the box. And that's a real tough one for
I think a lot of leaders to get into it. Yeah it is.
It can't feel inauthentic, and we have found there are methods they don't take
that long to reskill managers so that they can have the right kind of conversations.
And I'm not saying it'll work for every management or work for most of
them and making them better than they were before, and light bulbs start to
go off, and that includes helping them with you know, how do I
listen better? You know, how do I ask the right questions so I
can hear it? Because that the people inside organizations are going to be closer
to the customers than most leaders or managers are, and they'll have some insights
in terms of how things can get better. And sometimes those are easy fixes
for things to get better. So there's a benefit to the organization. It's
not just about I'm trying to make this employee feel better. It's it's it's
both ways. It's people want their opinions to count, but organizations get better
when people's opinions do count. And that that makes it authentic, that makes
it real. There's a real exchange where this this employee, I don't care
how young they are, where they they see things and they want to contribute
and they just need someone who's going to check in with them and spend some
time listening to And it's kind of a lost art. Right now, only
about one and four people strongly agree that their opinions count. But there are
methods that we've found that lead to higher attention rates, lower turnover rates,
higher levels of engagement for the manager, higher levels of engagement for for the
manager's team. And it's really it's education around how you move from that mentality
of boss to coach and get leaders and manages into a mindset where they're doing
more coaching continuously. That starts to build a culture where you start attracting more
people and more employees end customers because you build a brand about this is the
place to work. And if you don't think people don't share that, I
mean even more so now than they did in the pass through social media,
then you're missing it, missing a big point. Employment brand is really important
and it doesn't happen unless you get the right things happening in the organization where
employees are having the right kinds of experiences. And I don't care whether it's
you know, part time retail jobs or full time on site jobs or whatever
industry you're talking about. You can build a really strong employment brand if you
have managers who are more like coaches and have the right the right up skilling.
And again it doesn't have to be a major. They can learn things.
I guess my point is they can learn things very quickly, like how
to leverage someone's strengths, how to aim those strengths at expectations and accountability and
all the things organizations want. Yeah. I was in human resources at best
Buy fifteen years ago and that was right at the time when the Home office
was incorporating the ROW you know environment, the ROW Results oriented work environments,
and it was basically the first kind of iteration of kind of flexible work environments,
you know, work from home and and come, you know, come
to the office. You know, this is we're not going to hold you
to the number of times your name badge punches in. It's going to be
whatever you work out with your team. And after a year of doing this,
there was just incredible uh gaps between the different teams reporting whether or not
this was successful. Some teams were saying this is amazing, we love this,
and some teams were saying this is terrible, we don't love this.
The people who were saying it was terrible were the leaders, not the employees.
And it was it really came down to if the if the leader made
something you know, kind of prescriptive to everybody, then it was inherently taken
as a mandate, like this is what you know, We're going to meet
at this time every day, and you know, if you talk to me
if you want some time off or you want some time away. Other other
leaders reported the employees were in the office just as much as from the other
teams, but that they felt they had complete flexibility to kind of you know,
you know, come and go and and it really came down to the
teams where ROW was successful, where the teams were the employees reported incredibly high
engagement already they already they liked their leaders, they liked their team members,
they wanted to be with them. They just loved the idea of that,
hey, you know what, if my kid has a soccer game on this
day, I can go to that. It wasn't you know, I'm gone
and let me know if you want me there and I'll see if it fits
into my schedule. It's I have some flexibility now, And I think in
a lot of organizations, and you've seen this in you know, as the
return to work movement started out by a lot of companies having these mandates or
prescriptive things, even if it was remote forever, that that impacted their entire
organization, right from the CEO, whether they had forty employees or four thousand
employees, and it's everybody's the same thing now. And those were the ones
that it seemed like it didn't work because four thousand people, no one,
they're not all the same on anything, let alone being home or being remote
or working from the office or or whatever. And in the areas where it
was left to the decision process of the individual leader with a five to twelve
person team, it tended to be more successful, even though inherently you might
think it wouldn't be because you're not talking about objective criteria for everybody. You're
like, hey, every team can decide this on their own. Well,
what do you mean they get to be remote and I have to come to
the office. No, if that's the if that's the response, then you
already have a poor culture that has to be you know, kind of combated
against to begin with. But when it worked, it's because everybody felt like
they could do what they what worked best for them, and it isn't the
same thing for every employee. In fact, it might be ten different things
depending on the types of work you're doing and the types of teams you have.
Well, that's kind of in a nutshell with that combination of every organization
needs to be thinking about in this new world as a combination of autonomy and
some structure, right, and the structure can flow through the team's individually.
I think organizations also need to have some organizational predictability, like and we say
this in the book, just make don't take this literally, but or maybe
you do. Maybe do. But Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are in person
days. It doesn't mean there's not going to be exceptions, but those are
the days when you come in the office you can see other people there,
and we build a lot of in person things around those days. And that
seems to work really well because it fits with the research in terms of the
amount of in person time people need. And I'm talking about remote ready jobs
again, it doesn't fit for it. There's other ways to being flexible for
on site jobs, but it builds in that autonomy plus and for some people
it takes a little push also. But if they do work through their team,
then they think about it as a responsibility to my team not to leadership,
and if they think about as responsibility to their team, there's a little
bit more social pressure to re experience what that in person time is like.
I think that that actually works if you if you have an overall leadership structure
that isn't a mandate but says here's our here's our days when you can expect
to see your colleagues in the office and these are these are the days.
It's not a requirement, but it's a strong push that that this is when
we're going to be together. At the same time, you balance that with
what you said, the autonomy of working through the team and the responsibility of
working through the team so that we're meeting customer objectives. I think there's another
element to this too, which is that when when the return to office push
first started, there was there was an incorporation of that along with still a
heightened sense of COVID awareness and COVID safety, and so it became this you
know this team, you know these people come to the office on these days.
These people come to the office on these days, and and good luck
convincing an employee that they are more productive in the office when they just come
to the office and the closest employees thirty feet away, and they can't talk
to them anyway. They're not allowed to be in the same room with them.
If they get within six feet, they got to put a mask on.
You know. It's like, yeah, of course that doesn't do anything.
That's just you wanting somebody to be in an office, right, And
so a lot of employees I think they came away from that thinking there's no
benefit to being in the office, and they're not thinking about the fact that
no, there is just not under the circumstances that you were first told to
come back to the office. It's it's the collaboration has to be there,
you know. It's almost that like that that masking experience in the office primed
people into what the new experience or the old experience would be again if they
revisited it. But there's also there's also that reality that you know, that
commute has now become less tolerable, and so people have to have a reason.
You know, a thirty minute commute now is intolerable for people where it
used to be forty five. So our perspective on a lot of things has
changed. I think part of the reason why a lot of the remote push
is being done by younger people. I think there's some economics associated with it
too. I think a lot of people they that are younger may have longer
commutes because they can't afford to live where they work, and so they live
outside of whatever that metro areas or city areas. And the idea of working
remote said, oh, you know what, if it's remote, I can
I can buy a house that's two hours away from the office, and if
I'm only expected to be there, you know, one Monday a month,
I'll drive two hours one Monday a month, you know, and then and
I'll and I'll live two hours away. And now I can afford to be
a homeowner where I couldn't afford that before. And I think a lot of
people think that that that the push back to the office is the is like
the final nail and the coffin of them ever being able to kind of put
down roots somewhere and buy a house as the as the prices continue to you
know, skyrocket worldwide, and so I think there's a lot of push from
that too. Are you are you seeing that as well? I think there's
that reality and I think leaders need to understand that reality. I do think
that though there's also you have to be exceptional to be a full time remote
work or I'm not you can do it. We've got a lot of full
time remote workers where where I work, and and we've got a lot of
exceptional ones that do you know, excellent work and connect with colleagues well,
so it can happen. But and I think we need to understand that economic
situation as well. And the other side of it is a lot of managers
and leaders have relocated during during COVID and if you don't have them in the
office, then that makes it even more difficult, you know, to to
to get other people in there. So I think I think it's it's kind
of understanding the whole situation. And I think there's some some people that are
economically going to have a tough time getting there, and so I think that's
where the manager and the team come into play and how we get the work
done best. But for people that are within within distance, within reasonable distance,
I think you can build a strong culture and in some cases that attracts
people to find ways to do the same thing. Eventually. Yeah, the
last question don't have for you today, Jim, is that if if I'm
a leader and I'm I'm listening to this podcast right now, and I'm thinking
that all the things that I'm hearing are they resonate with me. I want
to start taking steps to make changes, but I don't, you know,
I can't just you know, magically make more resources happen. I'm working in
an org structure where I don't get to decide my labor budgets or you know,
how much time I have to do certain things. What's one thing I
can do right away to start this process of trying to change the level of
engagement my employees have and therefore the level of engagement my customers have. I
would start down the road of reskilling your managers to have one meaningful conversation a
week with each employee. And if you don't do that, I don't think
this hybrid working situation will will work out. I really don't if if managers
aren't doing that core fundamental once a week and again, it just needs to
be a habit, and it could be fifteen to thirty minutes. Sometimes it'll
need to be longer because of the situations they're in. But if, if,
if your managers aren't int with each person if your leaders aren't in touch
with the people they manage at least once a week and having a meaningful conversation
everything that goes into that, I would strongly suggest that this, this hybrid
working, massive experiment will not work out for your organization very well. I'm
inclined to agree with you. What's an ask for our audience, Jim?
What where can they go? We'll put a link to the book in the
podcast description, but give give our audience and ask for you what can they
do for you? Well, if you want a copy of the book,
you can just go to Amazon dot com. It's on Amazon Books there.
If you want more information about all the reports we're producing at Gallop, we're
continuously reporting new articles, new research, new reports, gallup dot com,
gallup dot com. You can find everything there. That's awesome. Thank you
so so much for your time today, Gym. I've always love having on
the show. I think this is an incredible insight. I love how everything
is so data driven and it's not just kind of a you know, one
person's emotional opinion on what's going on based on what they see. It is
truly backed up by the numbers. And I think that's something that that Gallup
has always gotten right. Well, I appreciate that, Chris. Thanks for
having me on again. Great talking with you.