Why Your Team is Surviving, Not Thriving | Dr. Paul Zak

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Wellness to me is such a low bar. If I'm just trying to be well, then something negative happens. Now I'm unwell. I want to have people thrive and flourish. Let's build up this big area of slack so that when the negative things happen, I have such good emotional fitness that I'm not thrown into a crisis. So again, that emotional fitness often comes from the objectives we have. Am I accomplishing things at work? Do I feel satisfied? And my social relationships at work, at home, with my friends. And so by tracking those, again, I get a key moment. When I hang out with my friend Jess, I'm going to get more of the key moments and adapting my brain to get that big area of slack. [00:00:40] Speaker B: Hello everyone, I am Jess Chapman and this is Wired to Work, a podcast about making work work better for everybody. Today I am absolutely thrilled to be joined by Dr. Paul Zak, who is a behavioral neuroscientist. Again, I keep picking guests who live in sunny parts of the world because he's in California, but he is the founder of Immersion Neuroscience and he has written a number of books that talk about trust and immers in the workplace and the role of oxytocin and what it does for us with trust tied to how we create high performance, high trust workplaces. And at Neuroworks, we would like nothing better than everywhere to be a high trust, high performance workplace. So really looking forward to him taking us through what Immersion is, his amazing 6 app and how we can use it and his thoughts on how we get to that high trust, high performance place. So let's get started. So Paul, thank you so much for joining us today. I am really excited about the work that you're doing with Immersion in with the 6 app and I can't wait for people to learn more about it and be encouraging their organizations and their leaders to make full use of it. So on that note, can you tell us a bit about what Immersion really is in plain language and how it matters for work? [00:01:47] Speaker A: Yes. Immersion is a 1 second frequency set of neurophysiologic signals that captures the value the brain gets from experiences we're having. So it took us many, many years to find this, but it's that a mechanism of the brain that motivates behaviors, right? So what is valued is what is done, what is shared, what is acted on. And so by knowing that for yourself and for your organization, you're able to then optimize the kind of experiences that both employees and customers have. [00:02:18] Speaker B: That's an amazing insight, really, isn't it? Like to be able to have that information as a leader in an organization and know exactly what's motivating your team in the moment, that's quite, quite spectacular. Lots of organizations have previously looked at things like engagement and measured like engagement, which for me is like that lagging indicator of how people are doing. How do you see immersion helping organizations have a better sense of what's going on? [00:02:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I have a pet peeve with the word engagement. I think it's so overused, it's just meaningless at this point. Like how engaged am I now talking to you? Three, nine. There's no baseline. So the nice thing about neuroscience is every brain has a baseline. And because the brain's so energy hungry, it wants to return to that baseline. So when we measure neurologic immersion, we're always looking at changes from your own baseline. So it baselines to each individual. So that's the first thing. And the second is the individual employee learns about himself or herself. What do I love doing so much there? And then on this anonymized enterprise interface, then I can ask, am I creating a workplace culture so that people can really thrive? So what we've shown in the published research is that people who thrive, that is people who maintain positive mood and high energy, get six or more of these well defined peak immersion experiences a day. And so my view is if I want to sustain my organization's survival, profits, growth, I need to have sustainable humans first of all, because until our robot overlords take over, it's humans who are creating value for the organization. And so by optimizing that experience, then we find in the data that people have higher energy because they've optimized their day for what's really valuable to them. It's just one of those weird things, right? What do you love doing? You just put more effort into and you are more productive. Secondly, we actually created a physiologic measure of psychological safety. So again, that's a one second time series. I don't have to ask you in some quarterly review, do you feel safe at work? You still may want to do that. I'm okay with getting people's personal reports, but I'm Jess, neuroscience is expensive and I'm a cheap, cheap guy. And so I think from an organization's perspective, if you find out that your Vancouver office has really high psychological safety and your Toronto office doesn't find out what's happening in Vancouver, just copy it, right? I mean, don't recreate the wheel. So by having these data, I can objectively Then look at the KPI from doing organizational interventions. Have we actually made this department, this organization, more productive, more effective? Because we've created this situation, this set of social norms in which people can truly thrive. [00:04:58] Speaker B: Because as someone who works with workplaces to try and make them better, those pieces about engagement, we often get given tools that are, we didn't engage engagement survey. We did a once in a year engagement survey where we went and asked people questions. And then we may get to interview people about what work they're doing. The problem I have with both of those tools, and I'm not saying not to do them because I think they can be useful, but you're asking me once to think back over the full 12 last 12 months and give you an accurate reflection of all the things that happened and parcel that up. And then you're asking me about what I did today. So when we do like org design work, we'll ask people to track their work and tell us about their work. They don't even remember what they did in the day, nevermind what they did 12 months ago. And so when you talk about your data and what you capture with six, which is the app I'm going to ask you about in a second, I'm like, that's, that's someone's brain telling us what's important to them, not them filtering it through all. How about they felt today and the bad conversation they had with Bobby made them feel bad about what? No, no, I'm actually getting how immersed they were in real time, which I think is fantastically useful. Yeah. [00:06:01] Speaker A: And also, you know, I say people lie and they lie for all kinds of reasons. Not because they're malicious, because as you said, we remember the end of an experience or the peak of that experience, or people remember the most negative thing. And so that retrospective component again could be useful. Maybe you want to figure out what made you so unhappy in the last 12 months, but from an organizational design and transformation perspective, I really want that detailed data. So we have found at, for example, a number of tech companies that use the 6 app, is that Mondays are the lowest neurologic immersion day. So people kind of burn out on Mondays. Well, I can actually lean into that and go, okay, what should we do on Monday? Let's have. So we worked with a company called Herman Miller, big furniture maker, and they have a big. In their design yard in Holland, Michigan, they have this big coffee bar. And so they bought baristas in. Hey, let's bring in baristas and caffeinate the hell out of you guys on Monday. Right. And then have some muffins and like, hey, it's back to work. We're excited you're here. Let's create this culture where we socialize a little bit, we get to know each other, we facilitate those team bonds. You can actually look at that. Oh, doesn't actually increase those employees ability to really be on and be productive as opposed to, oh crap, it's Monday, I gotta show up at work. [00:07:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And then to your point earlier, you can make small changes and still measure the impact of those changes. It doesn't have to be a massive organizational shift. We can try something simple like shifting the team meeting to a Monday and having some fun at the team meeting and see if that actually changes the data that we're collecting. [00:07:35] Speaker A: Sure. And we found, in fact, and since we're on this, let's keep going. We found yet that there are real differences between people working in the office and working at home. So I mean, at home, I'm at home today, it's nice to work in your stretchy pants and be relaxed and all that. But we find that at work you get actually more of these key moments because you have those random collisions because we're talking about your weekend or your kids. And that is not useless time. That's time that helps build social relationships. And work is social. Right. Even if you're a back office person, if you're not customer facing, you're working with other people. And so that little bit of chit chat that sharing helps establish the stronger bond. So I'm an advocate for return to office at least three days a week, I think is pretty reasonable and really spend some time getting to know that. So there was research published pre Covid, I don't know, 10 years ago by Harvard Business School showing that engineers in Silicon Valley who socially socialize more at work, we're more productive. How can that be? Because they built those ties so when they're stuck in a problem, they know, oh, go talk to Jess or go talk to Roz or whoever. Like this person knows how to help me. And so again, that little bit of chit chat, that hanging out is not useless time, it's actually time where I'm gaining social information that make me a better team member. [00:08:53] Speaker B: I feel like I need to record that and put it on amplify for most business. [00:08:56] Speaker A: Oh my God, every day, all of pasted on the walls. [00:09:01] Speaker B: But I think that's the useful thing about the data too. Right. Because we're not talking perception. I think often when particularly the remote working conversation. Right. There's lots of perceptions out there. They're often based on experience bias. This is how I feel working from home or working from the office. So this must be true for the world. And then you get the data and the data says, no, actually you are more productive when you're in the office. You personally, your data says you are thriving when you're back at work. So it's not the organization forcing you back because we don't want you to work from home. It's actually data driven information that says, no, this is the right mix of time off work and in work for you. That's kind of interesting for me because we went fully remote and now I'm like, should I, should I be doing something to bring more people together? Do we need to have offices again? So that'll give me something to think about for sure. We've talked a little bit, we've been dropping the Word 6 app into the conversation. So can you just talk a little bit about. So the app is there, that's what tracks the data. Can you talk a little bit about how that works and what it's tracking and how you're kind of using it? [00:10:02] Speaker A: Sure. So the reason to have a piece of technology is because this valuation mechanism in the brain that I've called immersion, I give it a name, because it's a combination of signals. And I'll tell you what those signals are in a minute that captures the social emotional value of experiences, is deep in the evolutionary old parts of the brain. So it's out of conscious awareness. So oftentimes when people use the app, they'll say like, hey, I thought that I got home and saw my spouse and I didn't get a key moment. So we call these. And I'm like, sure. Because your brain already knows that that's the person you love, that's a safe person. So this valuation mechanism is modulating metabolic investment in the process or experience you're having. And so again, that brain really wants to return to baseline. So again, for your spouse, people often will get chemomas with their kids because kids are so engaging, but not always with your friends because you already know that it's metabolically less energet use memories. Yeah, I know it. But at work we're always under these challenges, these kind of social challenges. So we see that most people get more of these key moments at work than at home. And because you are not consciously aware of it, we need this piece of technology. And so again, in the lab, you know, I did 10,000 blood draws, measured changes in neurochemicals in the last 20 years. You know, high frequency neurophysiology, you know, really, really deep science. Published people can just, you know, go to Google Scholar and download all my papers. But eventually we were able to trace out the PAT pathway from this network in the brain through the cranial nerves. It's like the brain's output file, the cranial nerves. And we can actually hack signals from smartwatches and fitness wearables, transform them to capture this second by second value of the experience you're having. And then that data is private to the individual employee. Like, oh, so I'm learning about my own preferences, right? Maybe when I work on spreadsheets, I get a lot of key moments. So we find about 80% of those key moments are social, but 20% are loners. So, like, I write every day. I like writing. I like the mechanics of writing. I like putting things together. I'll get key moments by myself writing because I just find it enjoyable, Right? So I've learned about myself. Oh, actually, it's not that writing is a burden or I really like doing it. It's fun for me. So give me more. You know, when we have a team meeting, I'm like, oh, we need a new blog. I'm like, I will do that. I'm happy to write a new blog. That's fun for me. So what are we measuring? So we found that there's sort of two primary components that create high value for an experience in your brain. The first is you've got to be present, right? And we know that distraction is really tough. And one reason to work at home sometimes is just fewer distractions right at work. And we can talk about. We've done research on office design, and I'm going to come back to that if you'd like to talk about it. Surprising findings. So first, you've got to be present. If I'm distracted, Jess, I'm not going to have a nice experience hanging out with you. But the second is that experience has to generate emotional resonance. So it's got to actually. Emotions are how we tag things with value. So if I'm present, which is associated with the action of dopamine, and I get value from that associated with oxytocin, social, emotional value. Those two neurochemicals interact with each other and induce electrical activity that we can measure after 20 years of grinding out the science with smartwatch as a fitness wearable. So from an employee perspective, we have companies that will offer six as an employee assistance program, part of your wellness package. Because we want you to flourish, we want you to continue to work here and create value and feel satisfied with your job. We're going to give you the app. We may or may not pay for a smartwatch or a fitness wearable for you. You can use your own. And we're device agnostic. I don't care what kind of wearable you have. Oura Ring or Whoop or Apple Watch, doesn't matter to me. So as long as we can hack into those signals and transform them. And then what the enterprise gets is this enterprise interface where they can see anonymized data that it could tag by, say, department or location on that value and safety two by two matrix that we all love to see. And so if you're feeling comfortable, you have high psychological safety and you're putting effort into your job, you're getting a lot of value from it. That value is an effort. I'm like, oh, I dig, I'm in. I'm all on versus people who are either feeling very unsafe and or also are just not putting effort in. It's just not their thing. So I say, okay, again, what's happening in one office versus other, what's happening in this department oftentimes, and this will not surprise you from your work. It's a leadership issue, right? So as you know, the primary reason that people quit their jobs is not because of money. It's because I hate my boss. Right? That's number one. Okay? So to me, that doesn't mean these are evil people. It just means maybe you need more training. Maybe you've got to be a better listener. You've got to be kinder. This is where coaching comes in. You know the famous example of Michael Dell. I started Dell Computer. Probably a genius, right? Dropped out of college, I mean, just a billionaire, but people wouldn't work with him. He couldn't keep his leadership for more than a year. Like people couldn't stand a year with him because he'd interrupt. He was very aggressive and this is all public knowledge, but he finally, one of his board members, he was saying like, oh, all our senior C suite staff quit. I can't figure out why. And they're like, michael, it's you. You just run over people. Like, you don't let them talk. You interrupt them. You're too aggress. And so he got executive coaching and I think did some very smart things. First of all, learned about himself and he said also made him a better family man, better husband. But he put little reminders on his desk. He has a plastic ear to remind him to listen more and talk less. He put a little elephant on his desk to remind him that wisdom is drawing information from others, not just from yourself. And so from a neuroscience perspective, that's really smart, right? I'm reminding myself to do these things, changing these default pathways for whatever reason he had in his brain into let me shut the hell up. Listen more, process more, don't interrupt. Maybe I can anticipate what you're going to say. That's okay. Finish your sentence. Right? [00:16:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we spend a lot of time talking about the leadership piece. I want to come back to the. The pieces you said earlier about the thriving moments. Because when I was, when I first started using the app, I was shocked to discover that I had thriving moments shopping for groceries. And I was like, I kept thriving moment shopping groceries. And then I thought about it and I was like, well, actually, one, I like food, so that's not terribly surprising. But two, I get some time on my own, right. I'm not having to respond to anybody else, deal with anything from anybody else. Like, I spend most of my day dealing with tangly people. Things like, I'm grocery shopping. The biggest decision I have to make is which sort of pasta I'm going to buy. So it's like actually lovely. I can choose things that I like. I don't have any pressure what time anything has to be done or where I have to be. And I was like, it's kind of not terribly surprising when you think about it that way. But I would never. If you'd asked me what was the most important time for me to preserve in my day, I would not have said when I go grocery shopping. Right. But actually things are happening for me in those moments where I'm getting to relax and recover and be engrossed in what I'm doing and not feel stress and pressure that are really useful. So I think that even as someone who would like to think they're relatively self aware, being able to have the biometric data, being able to have the app allows you to do a deeper level of exploration than you might even do even if you're relatively self aware as a person. So. [00:17:32] Speaker A: Right. [00:17:33] Speaker B: I think it's very cool. Very cool. [00:17:37] Speaker A: Little bubbles. So I looked at my data from yesterday. I got three of my six little bubbles. And I can tell you, I had meetings, I had my lab meeting and I was teaching. I'm like, oh, I was around the humans. So again, as nice as it is to work at home seven days of the week when you go into the office, go into the lab, and you're like, oh, I get to mentor these nice, smart young people. I get to teach. And to me, that feels like a privilege. Like, oh, my gosh, someone wants to actually hear what I have to say. It's so nice. And then you get that kind of positive feedback, and it's very motivating. So I do think that's what we've lost in the post Covid hybrid or remote work world is that this is great. And by the way, pre Covid, we actually did research on the value of video conferencing versus text. Texting. Texting. Get a little value neurologically. If you're texting another person, the video conference, about 50% of being there in person, 50 to 60, depending on who you're talking to. Surprisingly high to me. But I may be getting one now. I'll check in a minute. So zoom is not bad. Video conference is not bad. But the in person, I'm getting so much more bandwidth hitting my brain, right? I'm getting touch and smell. I'm getting more emotion from the face. And so, yeah, I think we got to do stuff in person. It's probably like, you as well, Jess. Like, I feel like I'm always better in person, right? In person, you have that shared energy. So what we've shown in published research and other people have shown as well, is that when you're in the same situation with another person or other people, your brains begin to synchronize. We almost become a superorganism. We're all kind of working the same way. And that's a very human trait, Right. Most other animals don't do that. But this valuation network synchronizes us, right? So all of a sudden, we're sharing emotional states. And I go, oh. Not only do I understand why Jess is doing this is I can intuitively understand why it's important to you and why I want to be part of that solution that you're creating these networks that allow us to rapidly integrate with other people. It's an amazing thing. This is why humans are sending, like, right now, astronauts around the moon and chimpanzees, we share 99% of our DNA with them. They're not doing that. It's because we have this really big prefrontal cortex and then this evolutionary old ability to connect anywhere. I travel a lot like you do, probably. And it's a amazing to me that I can fly for five or six hours. In a metal tube, be bounced around, and then people are nice to each other 99% of the time. Like, that's just absolutely amazing. So for listeners, it's supernatural to bring a bunch of strangers together to do something, to go to a concert, to work, whatever that is. It's totally natural for us. It's just what we do and it helps us thrive. [00:20:15] Speaker B: Interesting. I do wonder if part of the. So I see a disconnect between often it's senior leadership that want to return to the office and employees that say they want to work remotely. And I wonder sometimes if the disconnect is that folks are trying to work remotely because we have an issue with cognitive load of the work that we're doing. And so if I'm at home, I feel more comfortable, more relaxed. And so I feel just generally less stressed rather than actually, I don't realize what I'm missing out on by not being in the office anymore. Do you know what I mean? We're trying to solve the wrong problems by going remote with people. And that idea that because we did do it means it's the right thing to do or they're not the same thing. Just because we did it in Covid and we could make it work does not mean it's the best thing for us. And that is a difficult thing for people to get their head around. Sometimes I think, yeah, I have two [00:21:06] Speaker A: solutions if I can for that one, as I mentioned Herman Miller, we've done research. Herman Miller, in the, I don't know, 60s were the pioneers of the open office plan. And so they asked us to look at that degrees of openness. And this is published research, you can find it. And what we found is that that very open area with a coffee bar and with people milling around, people had the highest neurologic immersion. It's noisier, but people like it, as opposed to more closed spaces, like being in a little carrel or something. And so that tells me we can do both. I can still have. And so they. At their design yard in Michigan, they do hot desking. So you bring your laptop, you sit wherever you want to sit, CEO sitting there. And there's conference rooms if you need those. But it's kind of being around people, which I think is evolutionarily valid. And so as opposed to closed offices or closed rooms, think about an open space that captures kind of that relaxation you have at work. I'm sorry, at home, when you can kind of put your legs up, which is really nice. The second is, I always tell business leaders who want to have return to office. I'm kind of again against forcing people to do anything because it feels wrong. But you should cheat, right? Like if you want people to show up on. First of all, if you show up, people start showing up because they sort of get, oh, the boss is here. But you know, pizza and beer on Friday at 5 o'. Clock, I'm okay with that. Or pay for lunch for people who are there. Like, you know, start incentivizing people. Get them used to that. Because it is nice to be sort of lazy, not have the commute. On the other hand, that commute is also that kind of liminal time where you're kind of thinking about work or thinking about home, but you have that, that ability to kind of downregulate. I remember talking to Accenture. He's used our technology for many years. SVP at Accenture during the COVID times. And I said, you know, what's the worst thing about working at home? And she said, I take the train. She lived in Connecticut. I take the train into New York City. And she goes, you know, I get that 45 minutes to read a book, to think about my day. And it's my transition time where when I'm working from home, it's kind of. It never stops, right? I'm either doing between work, I'm doing my laundry, or I'm talking to my husband and then I'm working in it and he says, I don't really have a clear demarcation of work versus non work. [00:23:20] Speaker B: Can we talk a little bit about the app? Because I had chatting to somebody. So I did the immersion coaching program that was offered through the NBN hub, which is awesome. And I was talking to some of our potential clients about the program and one of them was like, what happens to my data? So there was a big kind of question about like neuro privacy and that kind of stuff. Can you talk a little bit about how the data gets managed and what happens to it? Because you said some of that earlier, but I think people would have question marks about that. [00:23:44] Speaker A: It's a really big deal. So the app again is getting neurophysiologic data every second. It's private to the individual. It will link when you have key moments, it'll link to your calendar and your location so you'll know where and when those are happening. So like I showed bubbles on my phone before. If you click on the bubble, it'll give you information and then there's an AI assistant that will give you some insights. What does this really mean and what can you use with it? So after a week of using it, it'll start giving you prospective advice. Like, hey, when you hang out with Jess, you always get a key moment. Ask her out for coffee. Haven't seen her in three weeks, right? So you're like, oh, okay, here's the things that are important for me to do to build up my emotional fitness. So just as an aside, I'm against the word wellness. I have lots of pet peeves, Jess, as you can tell, wellness to me is such a low bar, right? If I'm just trying to be well, then something negative happens. Now I'm unwell. I want to have people thrive and flourish. Let's build up this big area of slack so that when the negative things happen, I have such good emotional fitness that I'm not thrown into a crisis. And so, again, that emotional fitness often comes from the objectives we have. Am I accomplishing things at work? Do I feel satisfied? And my social relationships at work, at home, with my friends. And so by tracking those, again, I get a key moment. When I hang out with my friend Jess, I'm going to get more of the key moments, and I'm adapting my brain to get that big area of slack. So privacy individual. To me, the superpower of the app is, though, sharing the number of key moments, just the number of key moments with other people that you trust and care about. So if I can give you a concrete example, we just did a small rollout for one division at one of the sort of big five tech companies that I probably shouldn't mention, but a tech company that you know in that group anyway, so 500 employees. Let's try this out for three months. And these are giant companies, so you've had this experience, I'm sure, where you're talking to people all the time and then you sort of become friends with them. So this company's based in the Bay Area, and I'm up there in San Francisco. I'm up there a lot. So had dinner with this guy a couple times. He and his wife and I had dinner. And so we're social friends and we're sharing our key moment data from the Six app with each other. And I have 60, 70 people that I'm sharing data with because I made the app and I have lots of friends. So anyway, I start my app, and this guy's really dynamic guy. He'll get five, six, seven key moments, like he's just killing it all the time. Then a couple months ago, I see he got one Key moment. Oh, that's weird. Okay, whatever. Next day he got one key moment. And then the third day he got zero, which is really unusual for him. His name was Rich. And so I just texted him, hey, Rich, are you all right? Turns out that he was on vacation with his elderly mother. She failed, broke her shoulder, had to have surgery overseas, fly home with a cast on the plane. He's got to take time off of work to. No, he's having a terrible time. So I'm like, I called him up. What can I do to help? Like, think how powerful that is, that I can actually be a better friend, I can be a better colleague at work because we are supporting each other on this journey to really thrive together. And I think that's the cool superpower. So again, if you want to, as an individual user, you're not going to share your location and the time of your key moment. So just see a number. It's easy to understand and it's a nice goal. It's like 10,000 steps. This is, this is the 10,000 steps for emotional fitness. So I think being on that journey together is really important. And we do see these strong connections at work. And given how social humans are, we're going to form friendships at work. It's totally fine. And if you're a boss and you're friends with the people, your direct reports, also fine. That's totally normal. They're aware that you're writing the checks. There's no confusion there. You can go to happy hour with your team. It's totally fine. You can still hold them accountable. So the example I give is my kids, right? So I have now young adult kids. But I would hold them accountable. I love them to death, but I would hold them accountable for the things they're doing because otherwise they don't learn how to follow tasks. So again, they know I'm dad, but I can still have fun with them. It's no big deal. [00:27:45] Speaker B: It's very similar parenting leadership. I'm not sure they're that far apart in the grand scheme of things. So one of the things that I think could be very powerful about this app is what you were talking about earlier with a leader having an idea of the key moments of their team. So we spend a lot of time trying to encourage leaders to have one to one connections and to have good conversations. But I was in a conversation with leader this week and she was like, I'm pretty sure this person on my team is not okay. But I keep saying, are you okay? And they keep saying, yes, but I'm pretty sure they're not. And I don't know how to have that conversation with them or how to open the door when I'm asking the question. And they keep saying yes. And I. My thought was, how much more powerful would it be if that leader had access to what you just described, which is you're usually in the six or seven key moments a day range and you've dropped to a one right then I have data to kind of have that conversation. So I think that could make a big difference to the way that leaders think about, about engaging with their teams. From the work you've done and you've worked with lots of different organizations and lots of different ways, what are some of the things that you see that are different in high immersion workplaces? Like, what are some of the patterns and trends of how they approach the work that they do that drives that immersion? [00:28:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. I'm going to come back to, like, what do you do with the data for people who are low very quickly, which is we have a number of organizations kind of, I'll say high stress organization. What organization is not high stress, but organizations where you tend to have fairly high turnover. And in these organizations, including this company, we just did the proof of concept at there's all kinds of wellness apps that no one uses. And so we've had digital health providers use our SDK to just prompt people privately, like, as opposed to the boss having to do that. And it does feel like kind of big brotherish, a little bit like, I'm just reading. I care about you. You're an employee. I'm being careful. But what we found is if the app goes, hey, you actually don't seem like you're doing that well. You've got a free hour of tele counseling that you can use right now on the clock. Like, having that private conversation allows that employee to utilize these resources a lot. And so I think that's a way to automate and get rid of the stigma of, I'm just not doing that well. And it may not be the work issue at all. Maybe that my marriage is falling apart or my kid is really ill or my dog died. I don't know. It could be lots of things. Things. But I agree with you. I think a good leader is looking at those emotional states and then trying to provide solutions so that everyone, again, it's too expensive to hire people. Again, I'm a cheap person, so I'd rather keep you working and satisfied or take some time off and then come back in a week when you can really be here. So I'm against the presentism thing. Like if you're actually not able to function, you should resolve that issue. We like you, we hired you, we care about you. Yeah. Come back on Monday and next Monday and let's see if things are better. So anyway, I think the automation of that. So what are these high immersion businesses doing? This may or may not surprise you and I would love your feedback on this. We find that there's a high degree of autonomy in these high immersion businesses. Now, is that counter to what we said before about return to office? I mean, the most autonomy is I'm working at home and again, you can see my productivity if you're my supervisor. So it's not like I'm working at home and goofing off. Right. I have milestones, I have projects I have to finish. But I think you can have both. You can have autonomy and be in the office. Right. So the way I think about this is train extensively and then delegate generously. I really want to give that individual the ability to use the skills, the passion, the energy that he or she has to complete this project the way they think they should do. Not what I think, because each time you do a project it's gonna be a little different. You have a different client, you have a different go. And so if I micromanage you, that's a sign of low trust and induces low psychological safety. So autonomy is one and the second is clear communication. Right. So a lot of time in businesses, we have this new initiative, we have a new goal, we have a new client, and we focus a lot on the what but not on the why. And we found in now published research as well, Besides just using the 6 data, is that when a supervisor, when a leader spends time listening, like Michael Dell and discusses the why, here's why we're doing this new thing, here's the results we expect to have, here's why we think it's great for our employees, for our customers, that why is really important. It's that purpose, it's that focus on why we're doing what we're doing, not just what. So I think that's a communication issue where I think that we're so busy and we are stressed and we don't take the time to make that human connection and really to realize that again, these individuals who have volitionally chose to work here and presumably like the kind of work they're doing and enjoy the process of that, besides getting paid. We should elevate them to let's take all those ideas, let's be good listeners, let's gain all that wisdom from the entire crowd so that we can make the best decision as leaders as possible possible. [00:33:00] Speaker B: Yeah. The autonomy thing doesn't surprise me. I think the trick is trying to figure out for most people what's the right balance of challenge and support. So freedom to do it versus for some people that is also too much freedom. And I don't know what I'm doing and I feel stressed because you've left me to my own devices. And for other people that's super motivating. And they're like, great, I've got the freedom. So it's being able as a leader to know, yes, with Sarah, I need to sit down and take her through it before how you give them the autonomy, I guess. And I loved your trust. Train extensively and delegate generously. I think that's a really neat nugget for people to take away because often it's delegate generously without the training extensively or training extensively. And I've made you and equipped you and I'm going to micromanage you and you don't see the point of all the training you've had. So that would make a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I mean, I don't know that the leadership stuff is for many, a lot of it is common sense, but it's being intentional about it. And sometimes we forget to do the things that matter, like the why. Most people would know intuitively. Sharing why is good. But I think when we're the ones doing something, we assume all of a sudden everybody else knows and we assume it's clear to everybody. And so things like sex and immersion can help just remind you to be intentional about what you're doing in the way that you're doing it with that person and the way that works for them. [00:34:16] Speaker A: Yeah. One of the applications in coaching is, you know, you can actually look at the coachee, you know, look how he or she are responding to coaching for that say hour you're together and actually see if you're making this connection. And look at the neurologic synchronous. But same thing for meetings. We have a number of companies because there's a. I don't know if you've looked, but there's called an event tab. [00:34:37] Speaker B: Event tab? [00:34:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Measure from 10 to 11 during my all hands meeting and just invite people, put a QR code. Hey, I want to make sure this is a great meeting. We're actually going to grab your anonymized data and make sure that I'm doing a good job. Would you guys just scan this? And so I think that transparency, again, that's communication. I want to make sure I'm doing a good job as leader. I'm communicating effectively. Collectively, I'm a good listener. I'm a good aggregator of information. That's what leadership is to me is aggregating information and then deploying that to move the organization forward. [00:35:10] Speaker B: I liked what you said earlier too about the other supports because the data does show that in most organizations, things like the EFAP support is massively underused, at least in Canada. I don't know about the US and so being able to tag those supports in and actually they're already paid for by the organization, they already exist. They don't cost the organization any money to do that. But it might actually encourage people to get the support they need to be in your thriving as opposed to, well, space. Right. And that's a very simple way to make the data turn into action for people without costing the company any more money. It's really neat. [00:35:45] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, what we found in this big tech company in the last three months is that people who are consistently using the 6 app have 14% more energy at work. So I like the energy. That's a good question. Like, how much energy do you have at work? And I'm sure, Jess, you've walked into organizations like I have where people, their shoulders are dropped, they're kind of shuffling, they're like, oh, these people are not turned on by what they're doing. And then other places you walk in like, hey, Jaz, you're here. Great. When they're full of energy, you're like, oh. So anyway, for listeners, you know, have people rate their energy at work, that's a pretty good sign. That correlates pretty strongly actually with the 6 data, which is pretty nice. And so again, understanding that, you know it's going to be up and down. But yeah, I think just observing that, like, do you love being here here and also having these discussions? I'm into the sort of forward looking annual review, not the backward looking, it's just too late to go back a year. But talk about growth, talk about where you want to be and also talk about whether you should be here in the next year. You've been here five years, I feel like you kind of maxed out and I think these are very. I do want some turnover, even though I'm cheap and I want to pay for employee acquisition costs. I do think at some point you see employees who are just kind of coasting. You're like, is this still fun for you to work here? Do you dig this? Or is it time for you to go somewhere else? And when you have employees who are good but just kind of blah, kind of burn out, I think also it's smart to kind of say, yeah, maybe it's time. Maybe it's time for you to move on. And you're an awesome person. Happy to recommend you to other places, but I feel like you've kind of lost the passion for what we're doing. And I think that's a useful conversation. [00:37:23] Speaker B: It is. And it. It creates the trust, right? And you can have conversations of that level with people, like, do you still really love it here? Because I don't feel like you really love it here anymore. Like, and it's okay to say, if you don't love it here, it doesn't mean you hate me or hate the people you work with or anything else. You've just been here long enough is no longer novel enough for new you, or no longer new, or you no longer feel like you're learning. If we can change something to make that better, then let's. But if it's. If it's about moving to somewhere new, you can always come back. I've said to people, you can always come back. [00:37:52] Speaker A: In fact, come back with some new skills that you can share from the [00:37:55] Speaker B: new ideas and innovation and all that [00:37:57] Speaker A: I was working with, I should suppress it. But the largest pharmacy benefits manager in the U.S. amazing place. So they provide all the drugs and blah, blah, blah for employees. And they were talking about the customer experience. And so because we have insurance in the US it's all complicated. So you have phone people that are going to help you make sure your insurance will cover this drug that your doctor prescribes through your employee health program. And anyway, they talked about, we want to really improve the customer experience. And I said, tell me about it in the call center. And they said, yeah, we have this lady who's worked here for 20 years and she doesn't want a promotion. I'm like, she likes being on the phones with people and she's done it for 20 years. I'm like, well, she's special. What do you know about her? Like, oh, we don't know anything. I'm like, can I go talk to her? Because that's interesting. And I spoke to this woman and she said, you know, two things. I love helping people and Every day I help people. If I'm supervising other people, I don't feel like I'm helping people directly. So I love that. And also she said, when I leave at 5 o', clock, I'm done. I have family I want to see. I'm not thinking about all the stress. I have to meet goals. I have done my job well. And I thought, here's a lady who enjoys her job so much, she doesn't need to have a new position. She doesn't need. Hopefully they're giving her some raises once in a while. But she was extraordinary. So I think, again, for listeners, I don't need everyone in my company to want to grow. As long as they're satisfied with their job, they love what they do, they're doing it well. That's okay too. Like you can reach the level in which you're totally happy and then stop there. And this lady was extraordinary at her job. [00:39:32] Speaker B: Just, she was a sweetheart, but she was thriving. Right. So back to your point. The metric was she doesn't want a promotion, therefore there must be an issue. And actually, no, she's thriving. Like she's found the perfect fit for her. The job fits with what she wants out of life. It gives her meaning and purpose. Purpose. It ticks all of her boxes. So she's thriving. It's. It's other people's metrics laid on top that make us think it's a problem. I love, I love that your challenge was she's special as opposed because they were coming at it with like something wrong with this person. She doesn't want to grow. And you're like, no, no, she's far higher. More people like her for this job because they'll love what they're doing and they'll be thriving in this role every day. Yes, Fit. Fit is a wonderful thing if we can find it right. Fit is a wonderful thing if you look ahead five years from now, what do you hope organizations know about neuroscience and have data for that we don't do today? [00:40:24] Speaker A: Well, I have very modest goals, Jess. You know, the app is free, the 6 app is free. There's a premium version if you want more features. But honestly, I don't really care. I just want. My goal is to get a billion people on the planet to use the app. So we have some really interesting partnerships with employee assistance programs with health insurers. Just get it out there and have a way to talk about emotional health in a non clinical way. I really talk about thriving and how we grow as human beings. I think the most important thing we've seen from the data in my 30 years of research on humans is that we're all weirdos. So by that I mean, because our brains are working unconsciously, we're going to be inconsistent. You yourself will be inconsistent. You don't know it, but you're going to be inconsistent because you didn't sleep well or you missed a meal or whatever. And that also means your direct reports are going to be inconsistent. Doesn't mean they're bad. It just means that body and brain are adapting to a new environment. So again, if the dog died last night, yeah, it's terrible when dogs die. I mean, humans dying too, it's terrible too. But it's so painful. And you're sort of emotionally invested in your pets. And so again, you may say consciously to yourself, my dog died, it sucked, and kids are sad or whatever, but at work, you're carrying that extra burden, and you may carry that for a couple days or weeks. Weeks. And so if you're a good leader, I think inquiring about how people are doing is really important. Getting objective data would be very useful. But also understanding that everyone's going to be inconsistent, including yourself, your spouses, your kids. I mean, kids are completely inconsistent because their little brains are still wiring up. And even as adults, our brains are completely. Not completely. Our brains are adapting to new environments all the time we're not aware of. Right. As individuals. And so I think that really means accepting people as they are, certainly co workers, coaching them to better performance and thriving. Coaching is essential for everybody because again, we don't know if we're missing the mark. Right. We actually need someone outside to go, okay, here's the stuff that you'd like to do that you're not doing very well. Let's work on some skills that will move you to that level so that feedback is essential. And even people like me with gray hair, we can still adapt well into older age. And in fact, we see thriving has a nice positive gradient with age. That is, as we get older, we're better able to emotionally regulate. We actually get better as being social creatures, employees. And so, yeah, let's, let's have the old people bring on the gray hair. [00:42:54] Speaker B: I like it. My stylist calls it wisdom hair, which always makes me feel better. [00:42:58] Speaker A: Oh, much better. I'm gonna steal that. That's great. [00:43:00] Speaker B: Wisdom hair is good. Yeah. No, and I think the coaching point too, like even the looking at the app and the concepts of immersion for coaching, because quite often, particularly if you're engaged as an external coach, you're not there to see what's going on. You're not there to see the reactions of the person. You're only getting that secondhand description from the individual. And then you can go like, well, let's talk about that. Because you're saying it was an awesome day, but you've got two key moments and your data looks a little different than it normally does and it allows you to think, to dig a little deeper with people than they might normally bring to the table. There's a whole lot of self awareness that I think can come from sharing this kind of data in all kinds of ways with all kinds of people. It's very exciting. Exciting. You must be very proud of what you've accomplished. And I will do what I can out here to get you to your billion people. [00:43:44] Speaker A: Oh, bless you. Yeah, lots of. We have elves in the basement working 247 trying to make it better and better. So yeah, we're in version two where we're bringing out version three in a couple of months. And you know, I just think to have that social component that leveling up, that gamification, having a goal, I mean, we've never had a predictive goal for emotional health before and without emotional health, physical health is going to follow and decline. So anyway, I really appreciate you having me on and talking about this and we can make the world a better place and leadership is an essential part of that. We're social species, we want leaders. Even though we're seeing this reduction in hierarchy in many organizations, which is probably a good thing, we still need leaders to tell us where we're going and why. And if we have that and leaders that really care about their employees, I think we can have again these systems, sustainable businesses over the long term. [00:44:37] Speaker B: Look, we're almost out of time, which is sad because I'd like to chat to you forever. But thank you so much. I think what you're doing is awesome. I will be, I am personally committed to your billion people on six because I think helping people thrive and I love that definition of can we get past wellness and be talking about thriving? Because then we give all this buffer for people to have the right capacity to manage what life throws at them. So I think that's a great goal and I will be proud promoting six and the immersion program where and when I can. [00:45:03] Speaker A: So you are awesome, Jess. Thank you so much. [00:45:06] Speaker B: So that's a wrap for today. Thank you very much for joining in and if you liked our conversation today, please do like and subscribe. You can find us on Apple, Spotify and YouTube. You can also check out our websites E3CA and Neuroworks CA for more information about what we do in the wonderful world of work. So thanks again for joining in and I hope I look forward to seeing you on another episode.