6 Key Employee Engagement & Leadership Lessons

For the last 4 years I have had the pleasure of sitting down, every two weeks, to speak with thought-leaders, experts and operators on the topics of employee engagement, employee retention, culture and leadership. It has all been in attempt to better understand how to create stickier organisations from the inside out. That's organisations who hold onto their best talent, naturally attract new talent and have hoards of raving fans as customers.

We've covered many different topics around these themes, and I can honestly say that I have learned something from every conversation, built a network of wonderful people who are full of passion, energy and knowledge of their subject matter, had some amazing conversations and also a lot of laughs along the way.

As I hit my 100th episode, I took some time to reflect on all those conversations and tried to pull out some golden nuggets and memorable moments from all those conversations. I then set myself the task of using those in my 100th episode. That was a near impossible task to fit into a 45+ minute episode. But what I ended up with was an episode that featured parts of 6 key conversations, that had particularly resonated with me.

Those conversations covered, significance, mattering, purpose, trust, the meaning in work, employee commitment, commerciality, compassion, burnout, employee engagement vs experience, listening, leadership and what lies at the essence of successful cultures.

You can listen to the final episode on the player below, or the transcript that follows on below. You can also listen to the whole catalogue of episodes on this website under the Podcast tab, or by searching Sticky From The Inside wherever you get your podcasts from, including YouTube.

To be sustainably successful today needs a focus on getting results through others. The old command and control method of leadership is fast becoming less effective than in the past, and finding ways to make your people feel seen, heard and valued and then inspiring and supporting them to bring more of their best selves to work, more often takes a different set of skills. Skills that can be developed, and that's what we talk about on this podcast.

Thanks to everyone who's contributed to the first 100 episodes. I'm excited to see what we cover next.

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Read The Full Transcript Here

00:00:10 Andy Goram

Hello and welcome to Sticky from the Inside, the employee engagement podcast that looks at how to build stickier, competition, smashing consistently successful organizations from the inside out. I'm your host, Andy Goram, and I'm on a mission to help more businesses turn the lights on behind the eyes of their employees, light the fires within them, and create tons more success for everyone.

This podcast is for all those who believe that's something worth going after and would like a little help and guidance in achieving that. Each episode, we dive into the topics that can help create what I call stickier businesses. The sort of businesses where people thrive and love to work, and where more customers stay with you and recommend you to others because they love what you do and why you do it. So if you want to take the tricky out of being sticky, listen on okay then. Well, when I started this podcast three or so years ago, I never thought I'd get to this point of 100 episodes.

Looking Back At 100 Episodes

00:01:18 Andy Goram

Look, thank you to everyone who's ever listened to an episode, dropped a rating or a review, reacted to any of the associated posts on various social media platforms, or recommended the podcast to others. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your support. And of course, I could never have done it without the help and expertise of all my wonderful guests who've joined me every couple of weeks to chat with me, educate, inform, share insights, experiences, different perspectives, research, advice, and a whole bunch of sticky notes at the end of each show. And that's where I've set myself a bit of a daft challenge for this 100th episode because I'd like to take a look back at some of my favourite conversations.

With 99 episodes to choose from, this has been an impossible task, especially when you consider my very needy, people focused personality. I didn't want to leave anybody out because there's so many great moments with so many guests that I could have chosen, but I had to pick a few. And I've picked moments from six particular shows that have either particularly resonated with me, made me think, filled my heart, or stuck with me.

Now, long term listeners, you may have your own favourites, and I'd love to hear from you about them, so please drop me a line via my personal LinkedIn or the show's Instagram or X pages, but these are mine and I hope you enjoy them.

Now, to start, we're going to go all the way back to episode nine with Professor Zach Mercurio. Zach was the very first guest that I reached out to that I didn't already know in any shape or form.

It was the first time I took a gamble and reached out and asked someone I admired to come on a tiny, fledgling podcast. When he said yes, I couldn't believe it. And my conversation with him didn't disappoint. Zach came on to talk about purpose and how it was perhaps being misunderstood and misused in business. He's well known for being a sought after expert on the topics of mattering significance and the value in work.

Zach Mercurio: The Meaning In Work

00:03:33 Andy Goram

In this moment, Zach explains the difference between the meaning of work and the meaning in work, but he goes on to give so much more. This conversation validated my own pursuit of my own purpose, to help more people have more fulfilling work lives. And anyway, I hope you enjoy listening to Zach just as much as I did. But one of the things I really like about how you talk about stuff, when we talk about meaning for a sec, the difference between the meaning of work and the meaning that's in work. And there was a little bit on LinkedIn the other day about some guy talking about stuff, and you went straight into the oven in.

00:04:14 Andy Goram

And I love that. So can you explain that for people, just so they get it? Yeah. One of the self fulfilling prophecies that's really dangerous for leaders is to ever think that somebody is just there for a paycheck. A human being is much more than what they receive at the under end of a transaction.

00:04:34 Zach Mercurio

And you may think, and this is where we've really screwed up Maslow, because Maslow is misinterpreted. We think that someone has to have all of their basic needs met to desire something. But human beings are both what they basically need and what they inherently desire at the same time. So, for example, when somebody's getting a paycheck, they also desire dignity. They also desire at the same time, meaning, they also desire significance.

Name one person in your life you've ever met who doesn't desire to be significant to someone else. I don't think I can. I don't care. Whatever. Pay scale, right? You can't think of one, right. But we treat people like they're just there for a paycheck. And this is where the distinction between meaning of work and meaning in work is really important.

As you mentioned, meaning of work is why people work. It's the place work takes in their lives. There are many meanings of work. Some of us work because it does give us a sense of purpose. Others work for a paycheck and to provide and just to put a meal on the table. All of those are valid meanings of work. But meaning in work is what people experience when they're there.

And that's the public health concern that I'm concerned with, because there's two dangerous notions of work that are out there right now. One is that work should be a religion, and you should find your sole purpose and fulfilment in it. That's dangerous. Yeah, really. The second dangerous idea is that work is something that you should begrudgingly trudge through for one third of your life just to be able to enjoy the remaining one third of your life that you're awake for.

00:06:12 Andy Goram

That's just a nuts concept, though, isn't it?

00:06:15 Zach Mercurio

Nuts! But we expect it. There's a new movement of people that encourage it, like, just go, you know, go get the paycheck. And we create work environments that promote that, especially on the front line, especially in large organizations with a large percentage of frontline workers.

And it's really dangerous, because how we make meaning in work inevitably spills over to how we make meaning in life. We cannot, even if we want to. You can't just shut off your meaning making brain when you walk in.

00:06:48 Andy Goram

No. Again, trying to find the massive, lofty, huge solution for everybody. It does… It's not like that.

Right. Because when you're talking about significance, you. You're talking about the very basics, or, like, my interpretation is that you're talking about the very basics of listening to people, making their voices heard, giving them respect, all these kind of, like, again, common sense, natural things.

But this is what we. What we mean by adding meaning in work. So you're not just a unit stood on a line in a manufacturing factory. You're Andy, who's part of the team. Right, right. And he's got his own bit, his own kind of skills and weaknesses and habits and passions, and it's about recognizing those things. Right. In day to day stuff. Yeah.

Work: A Paycheck Or More?

00:07:44 Zach Mercurio

Yeah. I embedded myself with a group of janitors for a research study. Every one of them said they worked for a paycheck. None of them said that they experienced meaningfulness because of the money they got. Right. Every one of them worked because they needed money. Right.

But they all said, that's not why I want to keep coming to work. And what sort of things did they say? They all talked about helping another person. Yeah. So helping others, seeing their impact. So seeing a room that was dirty become clean, and then seeing the effect of a student walking into that and just noticing them walk into that classroom that they just gleaned and thinking about what was going on. You know, one of the janitors said to me, the most meaningful part of the job is also the part I hate the most. Interesting, right? Because purpose isn't always pleasurable.

Right, right.

It's that, so that that makes work meaningful. I mean, all human beings want to feel needed, to feel indispensable, to feel part of some bigger whole. And doing that is a leadership skill that can be learned. And creating that environment that makes it easy for people to feel needed is a skill. It's not something that is just intuition.

00:09:20 Andy Goram

Zach Mercurio there. And here's the challenge for today's episode that was just a snippet. There's so much more in the full episode that I could have included. But meaning in work is something I think is so important today. A lot of our conversations today in the workplace are still about wages and paycheck.

And yes, those things are important, but they are table stakes. Paying a fair wage is the absolute minimum you must do. But to be a sustainably successful and sticky organization today, we have to make it more than that, no matter what the job. Now, the next moment is set in the context of all the changes we've seen in the workplace over the course of the life of sticky from the inside. So far, the p and C words have been used a fair amount during our time together. That's pandemic and Covid for the avoidance of doubt. Many people's way of working has changed immeasurably, with remote and, and hybrid working now far more commonplace. We have seen organizations dealing with what was described by one guest as the “hot mess” in many different ways and with many different degrees of success. I mean, remember all the talk of staff monitoring software back in the early days?

Perry Timms: The Changing Workplace

Back in episode 25, I got to speak with one of HR's most respected voices and thought leaders on the topic of the changing workplace, Perry Timms.

I remember this episode because it was one of those that was so jam packed full of case studies, references, book links, live examples, and wonderful energy and passion. When I stopped recording that day, I just thought, how am I going to edit that? What on earth can I leave out? And the answer was, nothing. So in this excerpt, it begins with me asking Perry to talk about the transition from traditional departments to self managed teams.

And as you'll hear, it quickly escalates into a much broader view of belonging, making a difference, trust, vulnerability and evangelical leadership. Over to you, Perry.

00:11:35 Andy Goram

Let's then think about this. If it's not departments, it's people, and we're talking about this empowerment. If you like to have self managed teams, I think productivity constantly comes up in the sort of work that you do, the sort of work that I talk about with it, with engagement. And yet we've busted a ton of myths right over the last 18 months about how people working autonomously is a bad thing. We must spy on them. We must control them. Right? So how is the world of self-managed teams moving from what you see?

00:12:09 Perry Timms

So if I loop back to start off with about your marketing proposition and so on and so forth, that whole audience of one thing has, has kind of come into the work market, too, because I think if we take a particular sort of calibre of person who's got a demonstrable understanding of the work they're doing and where they want to go with it and so on and so forth, so, you know, they've made some conscious decisions and what have you. They are thinking of themselves as an audience and they are saying, what's this about for me? But often that's a projection then into but what can I contribute? And this is where it's perhaps a healthy projection that's bigger than me. Because if I'm belonging to something bigger than me, there is a trail of psychology research that says that's when you'll get, like, fulfilment and happiness at work, because it's not about stroking your ego, it's you belonging to something that makes a difference.

And if you talk to anybody about what they like most about their work, they'll often say, making a difference. It's quite ethereal, right? But that's so this audience and one making a difference thing is where I think self management has a really strong part to play in exercising that, because it then says, I've got agency, I can make choices, I can even float conceptual ideas type thing, and people will say,

And that makes a huge difference in people's loyalty and feeling of commitment, that the organization entrusts them with a concept like that. Because this whole sense of how do we improve and how do we innovate is often, like you've said before, there are people spotting things like this all the time. And if there's no channel of that into the machinery, the machinery will never adjust. Itself, people will adjust that system. So, so the system of self-management that prevails is something that's strong but needs attention and stimulation from people, because either it will create laissez faire, you know, indulgences, or it will create that togetherness and that real antifragile thing you talked about earlier on.

With Agency Comes Responsibility

Because agency has to come with responsibility. A bit like the Spider man quote, right? Yeah, it is a bit like that. So I really do say to people, if they're inquiring about self management, it's like, you do know that actually this is a quite hard. But people have to step into a level of responsibility and accountability that they may not wish for.

Once they know what it means because it does stop with them. So the audience of one thing is also, it stops with me. That's the trade with this. I think if you don't know that will struggle.

00:14:52 Andy Goram

It must also link to your point about people feeling more fulfilled and positive to the sort of Dan Pink drive piece. (Totally that, right. Totally.) Autonomy, mastery and purpose. Right. I mean, that all links up to me. And I think underneath all of that, as there always is with the people engaged thing, this underlying platform of trust. But perhaps in self-managed teams, more of a focus on trust in your colleague rather than the leadership and organization's past performance. Right.

00:15:32 Perry Timms

It is. It absolutely is. You have to trust your colleagues to have your back. You have to trust your colleagues to do their share. You have to trust your colleagues to let you in on the conversations you should be in and be inclusive and so on. But you do also have to trust your leaders. That that vision, perhaps that they've set, that you're signed up to, is absolutely the vision.

Now, what I find really interesting, again, in some of the examples I've looked at. So let's take Jos de Blok at Buurtzorg, the very famous Netherlands nursing organization. 100% self-managed, scaled highest level of health patient satisfaction in the world. Jos will admit he doesn't always get that bit right. When they were trying to resolve overtime so that he could have a delegated budgetary responsibility in those teams, he thought it'd be really good if he said,

They pushed back on it. So that was a sort of, if you want a vision where he thought, I can be helpful, but they actually said, we can work this out.

Evangelising Leaders

So it's really interesting when the maturity of the organization is that strong. The leader says, okay, you don't need me for that, so what do you need me for? And they would say stuff like, evangelize, get more of this out there. We want you to be doing that. And for some CEO's, that's like a gift of a job, right? Yeah. So he got given that, I think, really by his own people.

And Dan Price at Gravity Payments, he cut his own salary by thousands and thousands of dollars. And at the end of the tenure, for people having $70,000 across the board, his team chipped in and bought him a Tesla to show they appreciate that. This is it. (Thanks very much.)

Exactly. You create the harmony and the music happens.

00:17:21 Andy Goram

See! That whole episode is like that. Just filled to the brim with stories and experiences illustrating where the world of work is heading, who's pioneering that, what they're doing, and how you can follow suit. Thank you, Perry.

Now, I do love a book reading. For me, though, isn't something that has come naturally. I'm sure there's undiagnosed dyslexia in there somewhere. There's been a fair few guests over the years who've done the amazing thing in my eyes, which is to sit down and write down the compelling vision they need to share with the world.

In fact, ahead of episode 40, Tim Roberts sent me a manuscript of his book, Break the Mould, which I read from COVID to cover on a return train trip to Glasgow, and it's inspired me to get back into reading. So thanks, Tim. You have a lot of to be responsible for, my friend.

But it's a different book that's inspired me to select this next moment. We're going to leap forward to episode 77 and the brilliant Joe Mull.

Joe Mull: Commitment At Work

00:18:22 Andy Goram

Joe has written an award-winning book called Employalty. It's about how to ignite employee commitment and keep hold of your top talent today. Now, my own passion for improving employee retention, promoting effective humanistic leadership, and intentionally building great cultures means that Joe's book absolutely hit my sweet spot. It is genuinely one of the best business and leadership books I've read in ages. And that's mainly because Joe boils it all down to a beautifully simple, evidence based and rich framework to follow.

And he uses real down to earth stories to explain it, not just another Google, Netflix, or Apple regurgitated tale that proves it works. Joe and the message inside employee are now in great demand. And in this clip of the show, Joe looks to answer the question, “Where does commitment come from at work?”

00:19:16 Andy Goram

What a wonderful segue into the framework itself, Joe, because we have teased the living daylights out of this so far. Let's get into this framework because I think this is now setting the roadmap for success going forward. I love the way that you build it in the book. I think the Venn diagrams where it all kind of comes together are brilliant. If I'm going to draw those and stick them on the Instagram channel as part of this episode, because I think they just make something incredibly complex. Dead, dead simple. Really cool. But without me, you sort of like going on and on and on. Talk us through the framework, my friend. Take us through this kind of evidence-based framework that sets up this entry ticket for success.

00:20:02 Joe Mull

Sure. So we analyzed more than 200 research studies and articles on why people quit a job or take a new job or decide to stay with an organization. And we sorted all of those findings into three core areas. And so we can say with conviction that finding and keeping committed employees really comes down to giving people their ideal job, doing meaningful work for a great boss. And if I could go back in time to that podcast, you know, about two years ago now, and that gentleman at the end of our interview said, give it to us in one sentence, Joe, where does commitment come from at work? I would say, well, commitment and retention appear when people are in their ideal job, doing meaningful work for a great boss.

Now, there are dimensions to each of these, what we call factors. These are the three factors of a destination workplace to the ideal job factor are compensation, workload, and flexibility. If my compensation is right, my workload is right, and I have some flexibility around when, where, and how I work, that's my ideal job. That job fits into my life like a puzzle piece snapping into place. The second factor is meaningful work, and that comes down to purpose, strengths, and belonging.

If I believe my work has purpose, if the work I'm doing in my job aligns with my strengths, my talents, my gifts, and if I experience belonging on my team, then that work is meaningful, and I move from having to do it to wanting to do it. And then that third factor is great boss. We just talked about this, Andy, that it's such an influential factor, and there are dozens of things that leaders have to get right for someone to point to them and say, man, I've got a great boss. But we think the three most important are what we call trust, coaching, and advocacy. As a boss, do I grant trust and earn trust?

Do I engage in ongoing coaching conversations with my direct reports? And do I advocate for them, right? Do I act in their best interests consistently? When we do those things, we nail the great boss factor. So that's the Venn diagram that you're referring to.

Employalty: The Nine Dimensions Of Employee Commitment

Ideal job, meaningful work, great boss. Those nine dimensions inside each and that happy little space in the middle where all three overlap is commitment.

00:22:20 Andy Goram

And it's, it goes so far beyond this simple Venn diagram. Three factors, nine pieces that cover all that stuff, because I really liked the added dimension of what I call the three R's in there, right? So I guess the, the outcomes, what you get if you deliver these things, and like any good Venn diagram, if you deliver two parts, you get something, but you're missing a third part.

And the way you tell stories around that, I mean, someone listening right now, they won't have a clue what I'm going on about. But explain where the three r's play their role in your Venn diagram, right?

00:22:57 Joe Mull

So we talk about reputation, retention and revenue, right? So what we know is that if you are trying to get your employees to do all the things that we've been talking about in this episode, right, you want them to join your organization. You want to stay long term, but you also want to activate their commitment, right?

You don't want to just go through the motions and do the minimum. You want them to care and try. But if you only do two out of the three parts of this formula, if you will, you're not going to get that whole comprehensive set. So you have these three factors of ideal job, meaningful work, and great boss. And sad as it is to say, you can nail two of them, but you still won't necessarily become a destination workplace because here the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, right?

So, for example, if you give someone their ideal job, right, you're nailing compensation, workload and flexibility. And they've got a great boss who is earning and granting trust, who is advocating and who is coaching. You're going to get retention, right? Because people say, “Hey, my pay is great, my schedule is great, I've got a great boss”, and you might even get some revenue out of that. But people… if they're not getting meaningful work, if they're not getting the purpose and the strengths and the belonging, you're not necessarily going get that reputation piece, right?  You're not necessarily going to get that retention piece. Because if I don't find my work meaningful, I may start to get bored. Or, for example, if you have meaningful work, right, somebody is coming to work and they have purpose, their work aligns with their strengths. They're experiencing belonging and they're working for a great boss who coaches them, who trusts them, who advocates them for them. You're going to get that reputation right? You're going to deliver an outstanding customer experience and that's going to result in higher revenue. But you know what you're probably not getting? You're probably not getting a lot of retention. Because what's missing is compensation, workload and flexibility. That ideal job piece.

And at some point I may go from being a single bachelor who can devote a ton of hours and get by on a lower salary to now I'm a family man and I've got a couple of kids and I need some flexibility around when I'm at work and when I'm maybe at home to get the kids off the bus. And if my job doesn't provide that, I may have to go looking elsewhere for it. And so if we want to get retention and reputation and revenue, we have to have all three of these factors of ideal job, meaningful work, and great boss.

What’s At The Core Of Engagement?

00:25.33 Andy Goram

There you go. The secret to eliciting commitment from your people and hitting the benefit of those three R's, revenue, reputation and retention. It comes down to creating the ideal job, allowing people to do meaningful work, and doing it for a great boss.

If you're lucky enough to have a job for a company that's hitting all those things, you are likely to be very engaged in what you do, who you do it with, and the company you do it for. And that topic of employee engagement has been at the core of the show since its beginning. Sometimes in the early days, I was probably a bit myopic, a bit too focused and literal on that topic before I relaxed and realized that there were far more topics that linked to and affected that engagement result that people strive for and talk about.

But what's been great about doing the podcast is that I've got to speak to some brilliant authorities on the topic. And in episode 44, I really got that opportunity when I literally spoke to the person that wrote the book on employee engagement, Emma Bridger. Emma is one of the world's leading experts on the topics of employee engagement and employee experience. And she came onto sticky from the inside. I know. Amazing.

And in this episode, we sought to pick apart the difference between employee engagement and employee experience. But in this moment, we started to examine the link between engagement and burnout, fuelled by a piece I'd read about Elon Musk and Sir Alan Sugar at the time, which suggested a much darker view of what employee engagement should mean.

I've picked this moment because there's still a lot of misinterpretation about what engagement is about, and Emma is very clear about that, even when trying to answer one of my overly long questions.

Emma Bridger: The Darker Side of Employee Engagement

00:27:23 Andy Goram

I read something the other day in time, not that I often get time, time to read time. It just popped up. And there was something in there about the dark side of employee engagement. Right. And it quoted Elon Musk. I don't know whether you've seen what he said about China? Right.

So he said something. I'll get the quote a little bit wrong, but he says something like,

And the sentiment here was that they're so engaged, they just won't stop.

And the piece went on to talk about the connection between engagement and burnout. Right. That you're so engaged that you end up burning out. Right. And I don't know, I wonder whether. I wonder whether in the dark recesses of Lord Sugar's brain is that somewhere he’s, like, people want to work hard and they really, really, if they're really engaged, they'll work and they won't stay at home and they won't go to the cheese box and all that kind of rubbish. And I don't know. I thought that was an interesting thing to read, but a worrying thing, because I have a concern that people could interpret this engagement thing on both sides of the coin. Employees can see that and sort of go, “Engagement? That's just you wanting more out of me.” And Employers going, “Engagement? If you're engaged, you'll work harder.” You know, I don't know. Does that make sense to you?

00:29:00 Emma Bridger

Yeah, it makes sense. And I think, you know, a few things to kind of unpack in there.

I think, you know, for me, engagement is about thriving and being your best self at work. You not be best self at work if you work until 03:00 in the morning. I mean. I mean, even myself, I run my own business. In some weeks, I have to put, you know, quite a few hours in. And it's been one of those weeks this week. And I know I'm not, I'm not. I'm not my best. I know I'm not. And I know it's taking me longer actually to do things because my brain isn't there and there's a whole load of neuroscience, I won't go into it, but I check out the work of Shawn Achor, who's a brilliant Harvard scientist who talks about happiness advantage.

You know, there's a certain level at which, think about the classic bell curve, right? It's a certain level at which we're kind of thriving at our best. And we talk a lot about challenge. Nobody ever says I was really thriving because I was, you know, coming at nine, leave at five. And you know, you look at, quote, quote, quote. The Bible here, the devil makes work for idle hands. You know, a lot of people can't cope with, we need purpose in our life and we need the idea of if you won the lottery, it's like what would you actually do? And the idea for me of not having something to kind of get me up out of bed, it's quite frightening.

And then you get into the whole kind of like sort of sociological viewpoint around, you know, the protestant work ethic. And you know, work is good and we need to work. And I think the term work often has negative hard work, you know, negative connotations. But, but the idea of kind of just repositioning that and sort of saying I've got something that I do in my life that gives me a purpose and fulfills me, makes me feel good about what I'm doing and also helps me to pay the mortgage, whatever, that's good.

And of course I always talk about those people that perhaps do jobs that aren't great jobs. And I always quote the example of when I was a student and I was trimming lettuces and it was a horrible job. I hated the job, but I still have purpose because I love the people I work with, had a great laugh with them. It's all about people. So it doesn't necessarily have to be about the work you do.

So I think that the Alan Sugars, they've kind of got that hardcore, Protestant work ethic of like work equals good, but only if it's really hard work. And actually we're not at our best when we are putting those sorts of hours. We can do little spurts of that. Absolutely, for sure. But it's knowing when to go. Actually, this has gone on too long now and I'm really starting to burn out here. So it's that kind of bell curve thing for me. So not enough isn't good by work. It doesn't necessarily have to be a paid job. It could be whatever it is that you do in your day to fulfill your time, but too much is also going to be bad for you as well. So I think there's a kind of a sweet spot in the middle where you're thriving.

Can You Link Employee Engagement To Results?

00:31:40 Andy Goram

A very simple but very well-informed view of what engagement is really about there from Emma. And that clip really doesn't do justice to Emma's incredible knowledge and experience. But I just love how simple and clear she is about what this topic is all about at heart. Things don't always need to be complicated.

Now, the topics we cover on the podcast can at times come under attack from the results squad, the kind of people who this stuff is all pink and fluffy and gets in the way of focusing on driving people to produce results and growth.

And I'll be honest, it winds me up a treat. The stuff my guests and I cover is absolutely linked and about delivering sustainable results and the key word there is sustainable driving, rinsing, squeezing our people resources is not a sustainable tactic anymore. To be fair, it probably never was, which is why I love it when I can get operators on the show to share their perspective and how they are achieving results through people. One such guest is Barrie Robinson.

You've probably never heard of Barrie. He hasn't written a book, although he has some great stories that would definitely make a good read. He isn't an academic professor or a consultant. He's an Ops Director for the UK's biggest holiday park company, responsible for the results generated by the thousands of employees in his teams who are out there making it happen every day.

What I loved about this conversation with Barrie, is despite the ongoing tension between short term delivery of financial numbers and the medium to long term focus on developing people that operators have, he has an unwavering focus on the key leadership elements that he expects from his managers and team leaders, commerciality and compassion, which in turn results in brilliant, memorable customer experiences. In this moment, Perry shares his view on leadership experience, team building, achieving commercial success and what fishes and squirrels have got to do with all of that.

00:33:50 Andy Goram

I'm just wondering, sat here listening to you, there has always been in my past a bunch of operators that find it very hard to not just focus on results. And when we think about the commercial aspect and all that results push and then we think about the compassionate stuff, it tends to be a longer term focus. In order to get your people in a place where they feel challenged and supported at the same time. They feel stretched and nurtured at the same time. You give them time to develop. You get to know them as an individual. These aren't quick fix things. And you've always got, as an operator, this tension between short term delivery of result and then this kind of need to develop people to let them learn, let them grow from an operator who's in it on a day to day basis. How do you balance the short and the long term of it?

00:34:43 Barrie Robinson

The results are a consequence of the leadership style that you deploy, aren't they?

00:34:45 Andy Goram

Yeah, that's what I believe.

Barrie Robinson: Creating Great Experiences

00:34:47 Barrie Robinson

What we're fundamentally talking about here is interaction and experience. Now, you and I work and have worked extensively in the leisure sector, retail sector. I think you can apply these, these lead this thought leadership trait to whatever sector you want to work in, because it is fundamentally interaction which creates experience. If you interact with a customer and that customer has a great experience, they want to come back.

If you have an interaction with a team member and that team member has a great experience with you, then they're building loyalty and they want to come to you. That principle of leadership is applicable to whatever sector you work in. You need to get great people around you. If I go and buy a pint from you now and I get to the bar and you say, what do you want? And I say, “I'll have a pint of bitter”, and you say, “It's £2.50”, actually.

00:35:35 Andy Goram

£250, wow! Where are you drinking, Baz?

00:35:38 Barrie Robinson

I come from Yorkshire. I live in the deepest, darkest hills of North Yorkshire.

00:35:41 Andy Goram

I'm going there, mate.

00:35:42 Barrie Robinson

It’s not two pounds, 50 pence here either. If I go into a bar, we. Buy a pint, it's five pounds, you give me the beer. We've done the basics there, we've transacted. We've had a service transaction. If I come to you and say, “I want a pint”, and you say, “Baz, it's great to see you, how are you?” And I say, “I'm really fine, thanks, Andy. Looking forward to having this pint.” And you say, “There you go, it's five quid”, and I give you the five quid. Fantastic. We've had an element of hospitality there.

I guess there's a tier above that around experience, isn't there? So, when you start asking about how my wife is, when you start asking about how the kids are, when you start asking about what I'm going on holiday, then we're creating and generating experience. That same scenario applies exactly the same to leadership. And anybody who comes into work with me, I want to make sure we create…. we don't have a transactional exchange, we don't have the base hospitality exchange. We create an experience. Because I think when we do that, people will then build loyalty. They'll want to work for you and they'll deliver the results. The results will become as a bi-product of that.

Leadership Characteristics

Now you're suggesting that that takes a long time to do, and you put that at the expense of short term results. I don't think that does. I think you could create a lot of momentum very quickly. And there are three things that I ask the guys that work with me to think about, and that is fundamentally, I ask them to look at their teams that they work with. And I think, from an experienced perspective, work with, rather than they work for is important. We're all in this together as a team. We all have different job titles, but that doesn't matter. We're all in pursuit of the same goal, which I believe is to look for experienced creators and generators. So we all work together.

But I ask the team that work with me to say,

So they look at the team that are working with them, they're heads of departments. So our General Manager might look at his Complex Manager, or our General Manager might look at a Maintenance Manager and say, “Can that Maintenance Manager do a better job than I would be doing if I was in that role?” If the answer is yes, then that is absolutely brilliant. Because if they are, the absolute key piece that has to happen then is that that General Manager needs to put that arm around that maintenance manager and say, “I cannot do this without you. You have all the technical and tactical stuff. You can cut the grass, you can move and site a caravan. You can make sure that we're, from a health and safety perspective, totally compliant. You can do all the technical and tactical stuff, but the compassionate stuff is that you now know I can't do my job without you. So I am absolutely going to have you as my, a player, my banker. I cannot do this without you.”

It might be that you look at the Complex Manager and think, actually that complex manager isn't doing the job as well as I would be able to do it. But they can do, if I do A, B, C and D, and I coach them and I develop them and I support them and I stretch them and I give them all of that pastoral, all of that edifying care that they need to be better, which is brilliant, because those two people then become really important key members of your team that you're going to nurture, you're going to work with, and you're going to make sure they progress, they'll get that, they'll see that, they'll be with you.

There will be the third person that fundamentally cannot be better than I would be if I did that job. Regardless of the coaching, the training, the development that I gave them, they just can't do it. It's a little bit like I once worked for a guy who said,

So letting somebody go and having a tough conversation pretty quickly is as important as finding somebody who can be better than I can be doing the job. Because if you do that, then what you've got around you, fundamentally, in the first instance, are really good people. But really good people that have that technical and tactical transactional training and transactional gain. But then they've also got that compassionate value that they align to their skillset, and then they start to deliver.

00:40:17 Andy Goram

I just love Barrie’s approach to blending the commercial and compassionate skills to leading successful teams. I think we could all do with more leaders following that code.

As we approach the final look back moment, I wanted to pick something that has impacted me personally. There are many things I could have included here, because pretty much every conversation I've had over the course of the podcast so far has either challenged or validated my beliefs, made me go and look deeper at something, or introduce me to something I'd never considered before.

And it's that last perspective that is behind why I've chosen a moment from episode 61 with Oscar Trimboli. Oscar is the author of the book “How To Listen”, and he's on a quest to create a community of a hundred million of what he calls deep listeners. In this episode, he shared so many wonderful insights into what deep listening is all about and how to listen, which I think is a vital skill in today's workplace for anyone. But within this clip, Oscar shares three numbers that completely revealed to me as to why I've had so many frustrating conversations, often misinterpreted what people have said and found myself drifting off during important conversations.

These three simple numbers have changed my world, and subsequently I've shared them with goodness knows how many other people who I've been lucky enough to work with during many a leadership development program that I've been running. You might think this is a strange clip to end with, but I'm so very grateful to everyone who's listened to this podcast to date. I felt it was quite apt to share or remind you of these numbers linked to listening in the hope that they may help you to understand what's going on as much as they've helped me.

Oscar Trimboli: 3 Numbers Behind Deep Listening

00:42:00 Andy Goram

When you say deep listening, Oscar, what are you defining as deep listening?

00:42:08 Oscar Trimboli

So, active listeners listen to what's said. Deep listeners notice what's not said. And I want to share the maths, the neuroscience of listening. So you understand, for somebody who has this calculus and with relationship with numbers, these three numbers, when I talk to clients about it, like, the penny drops really quickly, whether it's a customer care person inside a bank or whether it's a prison guard, whether it's a school principal, or whether it's somebody works in a pharmaceutical company or a financial services company.

So back to the numbers. So, 125, 400, 900. Let me unpick each of those numbers so you understand it. First, I'm going to describe it from the speaker's perspective, because the hardest position in listening is actually to be the speaker. Most people think it is to be the listener, and then I'm going to describe the numbers from the listener's perspective. So bear with me. I'm going to do each individually, because listening is a simultaneous equation.

And like comedy, the value of listening doesn't sit with the comedian as it's in the audience. From a speaker's perspective. Right now, I can speak at roughly 125 words per minute. This is the workplace average speaking speed. Now, if you're a horse race caller or a cattle yard auctioneer, you can be speaking at about 200 words per minute, and we can completely understand everything they're saying at 200 words per minute, no problem. Yet the speaker can think, on average at 900 words per minute. So that means the very first thing they say is 14% of what they think and what they mean. I'll say that again. The very first thing that somebody says is only 14% of what they think and mean.

Speaking is like a ring cycle for the brain. It gets the idea out, and people who have their mind in a wash cycle, it means it's turbulent, it's sudsy, it's agitated, and it's not moving anywhere, it's just going left right, left right, left right. Yeah. When you speak, you get this rinse cycle opportunity to say it out loud. And when you say it out loud, you often go, “Okay, that wasn't all I was thinking.”

The Difference With Deep Listeners

For most people, they want to take a gamble and just have a conversation with someone with our 1st 14% of what they say, the 86% of what they say is what I want to talk about. When we come to deep listeners, active listeners are listening to the 14%. They're trained really well to listen to what people say. Deep listeners are trained not only to listen to what people say, but to notice what they haven't said, what they haven't thought, and what they haven't meant.

The role of a deep listener is to help the speaker communicate what they truly want to communicate, not the very first thing they say. Imagine typing an email and just pressing send without checking it. Well, that's what most conversations are like. Now, let's move from there to the listeners position, because sometimes we just don't realize that we have different listening styles. We're coded through the education system to listen for similarity, and there's two ways of attending to the world. Listening for similarity and listening for difference. And Harvard has done an implicit bias assessment of over 20 million people. And again, it reinforces that 92% of people have a thinking pattern and a listening pattern for similarities. They're trying to match with previous experience, previous professional training, previous family interactions, previous industry experience. So just notice neither is correct or incorrect, by the way, you can listen for similarity and difference. It's just you need to choose as a listener which one's going to be effective.

Now, although I can speak, Andy, at 125 words per minute, you can listen probably up to 400 words per minute. So we can all watch YouTube videos, in fact, some of you are listening to this podcast of 1.5 times speed, and you can still understand everything that's going on. And while you are listening for the 125 words per minute, there’s a balance of the 300 words, you're just filling in, you're jumping ahead, you're anticipating your pattern matching, you're disagreeing, you're thinking about lunch, you're thinking about dinner, you're thinking about some gardening you should have done on the week. Whatever it is, you're not completely in the moment. And again, good listeners drift off and don't realize they're not connected to the conversation. A deep listener just notices when the distraction is there and they come back into the conversation much, much quicker.

So just knowing those numbers, the ambassador community and the people we've worked with all say when you know that you got peripheral hearing as well as peripheral vision and you can listen much faster than they can, you don't beat yourself up so much when you drift away and you're just conscious of it and you come back to the conversation so much more quickly.

00:47:38 Andy Goram

So there you are, 125, 400, 903 numbers that have, frankly changed my world and I hope will unlock a much needed skill for you, too. Not just at work, but at home also.

Podcast Close

And so that's it. That's my 100th episode. Very nearly done.

I hope you've enjoyed my selection of personal moments. I also hope that they go on to maybe inspire you to continue to bring the human to your leadership style, to intentionally be out there trying to build great cultures and to work hard at making work more than just a paycheck for the people that you work with. Next time, we'll continue our quest to build stickier organizations from the inside out by speaking to more experts from around the world, asking them to share their experiences, thoughts, research, opinions and advice. And if you want to listen to any of the episodes highlighted today in full, please check out the show notes.

Well, that's it from me today. I'm Andy Goram. You've been listening to sticky from the inside. And as always, thanks for listening.

Andy Goram is the owner of Bizjuicer, an employee engagement and workplace culture consultancy that's on a mission to help people have more fulfilling work lives. He's also the host of the Sticky From The Inside Podcast, which talks to experts on these topics from around the world.