People First! with Morag Barrett

Welcome to this week's episode of People First and my guest this week is the fantastic Mark Crowley who is a visionary leader and best-selling author renowned for his transformative approach to workplace management and optimizing employee performance. Mark brings more than twenty five years of experience in the highly competitive financial services industry, and he has defied traditional leadership norms by consistently demonstrating that the key to unlocking human potential lies in emotional connection and genuine care. And we're here today to talk about his brand new book, The Power of Employee Wellbeing, which piqued my curiosity because so much of the first few chapters align with my research and work for both Cultivate the Power of Winning Relationships and You, Me, We, Why We All Need a Friend at Work and How to Show Up as One. In that book, You, Me, We, we reframe the Gallup question, do I have a friend at work? into one that is proactive. Am I a friend at work? So on that note, Mark, I'm curious, what role have relationships played or friends at work played in your success? It's a wonderful starting question, and now I understand why you're asking it. I think, Maureg, that just as a little primary background that has a lot to do with how I was raised. My mom died when I was very young, and my father took over from there. And he was, let's just say, psychologically and emotionally abusing of me. for the rest of my childhood and then kicked me out of the house right after i graduated from high school and so i think what i learned early on was that to be buoyant and to endure that and to triumph over that was to find relationships and find people who saw something in me and So I had a neighbor next door who saw what was going on at my house and saw the abuse and welcomed me into her home. And we stayed close all these years. She was ninety five when she died last year, and we remained very, very close like mother and son all that time. And so she was the first one that told me, showed me that I had value. And I think what I wanted to do when I got into the workplace was to give some of that back to be able to invest in people. And what I found, interestingly enough, was that the more that I gave to other people, the more I got back in return, like there was this reciprocity. And it was healing. So it felt good for me. So I have eighteen years of abuse and then this. And so relationships have always been, you know, I didn't know we were going to talk about this, but I'll tell you, they've been essential to me. And so I'm very good at building relationships. I'm very good at sustaining them. I'm intentional about it. And I've just been rewarded over and over by people in my life who want to give and help me. because of how much they feel I've given to them and how important those relationships are. I just watch even the body language and the energy, the way you lit up when you started to think about those meaningful relationships. And for me, that's what's always been a little disappointing, that when I think about high school and university, it is all focused on the logic of business, what we're going to do, the product, service, widget, systems, technology. And less time and care and attention is given to how business gets done, which is the relationships on my team, in my company, with my clients, with my vendors. And that's what makes or breaks success every single day. And so when I was reading your book, The Power of Employee Wellbeing, the subtitle is Move Beyond Engagement to Build Flourishing Teams. So what do you see as the mistake that leaders are making when they're thinking about engagement? Well, I'll start off by saying that I think the bigger problem is that we have not really gotten to a point in business where we understand what you just described, what you understand, is that the more you support people, the more they're going to give. And the less you support people, the less they're going to give. we think we can have it both ways we think we can squeeze people we think we can pay them as little as possible we think we can overwork them and not have boundaries we're not being concerned about what's going on in their lives we're not giving them growth opportunities scaring them with ai all that and layoffs we're doing all this and we don't understand how much harm we're doing So there's that. But it was interesting. So I wrote a book. Fifteen years ago, it came out in July of two thousand eleven. You can see it in the red and then the blue. It's called Lead from the Heart. And so the title, Morag, sounds soft, sounds like I'm a religious person or a spiritualist or somebody who doesn't understand business. And really what I was trying to show was that there's science that shows that the heart and the mind are connected and that we're not rational beings at all. It's all about feelings and emotions that drive our behavior, something I really wish every leader understood because we would be managing people very differently if we understood that how we make them feel is what's making them perform, not what we make them think. And so in the process of that, I realized a woman told me that I was going to fail with this title and that I was going to pay a lot of a big price for it, which she was right, because a lot of people in business, fifteen years ago, heard the title and they just instinctively shut it down and said, guy doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. So I started writing for Fast Company at that time, thinking I'm going to drip on people. They're going to read something that I wrote and they're going to go, He's not quite as crazy as I thought he was. And then I figured over time they would come to realize that what I was saying was actually quite spot on. And so I reached out to Gallup. So this is two thousand thirteen. And I ended up talking to the head of research at Gallup, Jim Harder. He's the one who created their wellbeing study. He's also the one, thirty-one years ago, who created their engagement study. And I just said, hey, do you have any new research that shows that people are miserable, unhappy because of how we're managing and leading them? And he goes, well, We're just about to publish this massive study called the American Workplace Study. And he starts to tell me that only thirty percent of Americans are engaged and eighteen percent are completely unhappy, like they're saboteurs. They're trying to destroy the company or make sure their boss gets fired. Like this is how bad our management is. And I'm like, wow, like this is this is incredible. Can you imagine the upside if we can fix this? Like I was all excited. So he gave me permission to write an article to put that data into my article. So I was the first person in the world to say engagement is a huge crisis in this country. Well, I've been following it, but sort of loosely. And I got this article. I saw this like update from Gallup about a year ago. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, wait a minute. The numbers are the same as they were in two thousand thirteen. We've done nothing to improve it. And it was just instantly I just was like, this is stupid. Why are we doing this? Why are why are we telling people that we're going to survey you and we're going to get to the heart of how you feel and we're going to make improvements and never do anything that would make engagement any better? CEOs never took it seriously. No manager was ever held accountable. HR had no accountability. Everybody thought it was somebody else's issue. And so I just have gotten to the point where I realized, A, we should stop talking about it because, you know, as a boss used to say to me, don't try to cheat a pig to sing. It's a waste of time and it annoys the pig. And that's kind of, you know, the... The point is that we're making this worse by telling people we're going to survey you and then do nothing with it. But around the same time, I found new research that's emerging and just getting stronger from Oxford University and interestingly Gallup. that shows there's a direct correlation between employee well-being and performance, like week to week. Like, it's astonishing. So when people say, I feel good, my well-being is high, key metrics, performance metrics all went up. And when they said, I didn't have a good week, they went down. So I actually went to Oxford last December and met with the economist who's put all this data together. And really, the simple thing is, is that when we do engagement surveys, we're asking them no less than the twelve questions that you're familiar with, like the Gallup twelve. Because people go, hey, you're going to survey everyone. Why don't we ask them how they like the food in the cafeteria? And, you know, should we repave the garage? And, you know, like, all these extraneous unrelated things. Then you get this amount of data back and nobody does anything with it. It's like, well, that's interesting. I guess they like Taco Tuesday, but nobody's doing anything with it. With well-being, you can ask one or two questions in a poll survey and then respond to that. If I send you, you're my employee and the company sends you a message and says, Hey, Mark, on a scale of one to five, how would you grade your manager, Mark, on his interest in who you are as a person and helping you grow in your career? One, two, three, four, five. So instantly, like technology can give all that data not just to to you as my manager. So you're seeing the results. But I hope I got that right. The point is, the person who's doing the survey gets the results very, very quickly. But you can give it to that person's manager and to that person's manager. So now senior management is seeing it. So if I'm your manager and I'm getting results, but you and your teammates hate working for me, it becomes very obvious very quickly. Very quickly. And what I love about that is, and I think that's the Achilles heel of many engagement surveys, is you do the survey. It takes six months to get the report. It takes another three months to cascade the results, by which time everybody's going, ah, well, that was last spring, and this is what was happening. The cherry blossom was out, and most of our employees are allergic to cherry blossom. Or that guy isn't working here anymore. Yes. And that's what I loved about the book is it's very pragmatic because it doesn't require organizational efforts or grand gestures to change the outcome of, essentially, did I have a good day today? Did I feel seen, valued, heard? Was I able to contribute my best work? It's a yes, no. And if the answer is no, this is where I think your work and mine aligns, is it's not just what can my boss or my colleagues do differently to help make me thrive and flourish, but also what can I own? What am I going to do tomorrow to change the outcome? And that's the power of well-being. I love the way you frame that because, yeah, it's like you don't have to wait for some corporate edict. Like the CEO is going to go, we're now going to be managing well-being. To wait for that to happen is ridiculous. And it's also lazy. But I think we should make sure that everybody understands that this isn't a feel-good strategy. This isn't to be noble. It's nice, and it is a feel-good strategy. It feels good to help people succeed and thrive in their lives in every dimension. But we know that there's a direct correlation to how people perform. So it's in every leader's best interest to care about their employees' well-being. And we've never thought that. We thought, what do we care? You know, hey, you don't do a good job. There's somebody outside waiting to take your job. So we're managing with fear and intimidation. And the very thing that is the opposite of what makes human beings like us thrive. All right. So I'm going to back up. Well-being. Well-being, as a phrase, also runs the risk of people thinking, oh, this is group hugs and lollipops. It's trust falls. So how do you define well-being and how is it different from engagement? So engagement has twelve different questions. And, you know, I've amusingly said in the past that one of the questions is, do you have a best friend at work when you're familiar with? And another one says, do you have the proper equipment? So I get the results and it says my team has low engagement. Am I supposed to go help you get a friend or go buy you a computer? So there's too many variables for one. Right. So well-being is also something that, you know, it's subjective in the sense that how I feel about myself and my life is my assessment. You could go, Mark, you should feel better about yourself than you do. You know, right. You could try to talk me into it. Right. But what what these researchers found is that people are pretty honest about it. Like they can. So if they're going through a divorce, for example, or their kids struggling in school or they just moved and they can't afford the house as well and they're struggling financially, like they can go. None of that relates to what they're asking me is what's my experience here at work? Do I feel like I have good, good, good experience here? So one of those is having a caring boss. Do I know that the person cares about me personally? Do I matter here? Am I making a difference here? That's a big one, right? But another one is do I matter enough that you would want to help me? that you're interested in who I am and what my life story is so that you can help support it and advance it. So for example, if I'm a young father and I want to take my kid to school in the morning, could you make an accommodation so I could work a half hour late so that I could do that? Or I've got an elderly parent. We've all got life issues. So it's the sense that it's not just you as my manager looking at what my performance is and that's the only thing that matters to you. But this is very simple. It's like, why would you want to manage somebody that way anyway and not know them? Leave your troubles at the door and I don't really care about your parents and all that. There's no joy in that. But there's another aspect of this which frankly surprised me. And that is that belonging is the number one most important driver of well-being. And by the way, we're not talking about wellness. We're not talking about yoga classes or meditation apps. We're talking about how people feel in their experience at work. And the number one driver is belonging, which really kind of surprised me because it's all about connection, which, by the way, happens here in the heart, doesn't happen here. And what people want to know is that, A, they can be accepted for who they are. So whatever that is, right? So whatever my nationality is, whatever my religion is, whatever I like to wear in terms of my clothes, how I present myself. every dimension that people want to feel that I can be Mark C. Crowley and that that's cool. Like everybody accepts that. And by the way, you can be Mark, right? You can be you, I can be me, and that's part of the deal. But there's another component of it is that, and this I think is really fascinating. Gallup has said that the seventy percent of engagement is driven by the manager. And I think you can attribute that to well-being as well. But what's really interesting is that what they found is that the idea that people don't quit companies, they quit managers, it's actually not the number one reason that people quit. The number one people quit is they don't feel they belong on the team. Like the people that they work with, there's not a connection. They don't feel like they have each other's back and they can, you know, be a jerk one day and, you know, let their hair down and be accepted. Yeah. And so what I'm saying in the book is that if you understand that, then you should be going out of your way to helping people build relationships. And by the way, you know, post-COVID has never been more important because people are having fewer relationships and bullying by themselves and all those kinds of things. Right. Not only should we be creating social settings for people so that they can develop these relationships, but that we should be insisting that if you're going to be a part of my team, that this is the value we have. We look out for each other. This is why I'm so excited, because this is at the heart and the crux of all of my work and research is how do you create those cultures of connection? And I was working with people managers last week in a health care system, and I did a very scientific poll. It was how many of you in the last seven days have been surprised or blindsided by the words or actions of a colleague? And you see most hands go up. And then you say, OK, so how many of you got up one day last week and said, I want to, you know, mess with Mark, surprise or blindside him? Of course, crickets. And that goes back to that research. And I saw something similar from Deloitte that seventy five percent of employees report that interacting with their boss is the most stressful part of the day. And yet most bosses don't. with the exception of maybe the brilliant jerk or just the jerk, are trying to do their best. So there's a disconnect. So what's one thing, what's one first step that someone can take to nurture that sense of connection and belonging? Well, I'd start off with the bigger problem, which is that if, you know, if the manager of him or herself is creating the most stress for people, you might want to find out what is it that I'm doing? Right. So, so for example, in other words, if I'm, I'm just going to speak in the vernacular here. If I'm pissing people off that much as their leader, I want to start there. If I'm creating the biggest part of the well-being problem, I want to find out why. And again, I think it starts with just not understanding or knowing that well-being matters. It's like, Morag, where are you on this project? When will you get that project? Because I've got another one. Did you make sure that you talked to the other three people that I asked you to talk to? When are those conversations going to be had? If I'm just like drilling, drilling, drilling, and I'm not like, hey, before we get started, how are you doing? What's going on with you? How are you doing? Like if I if I just like start going like this on you and this is my routine with you. there's never going to be any well-being. All people are going to be doing is typing up their resume because the manager is the problem. How do you figure that out? A lot of people think that they're really good at everything and so that's a big problem. If you operate from a point of view that I'm probably a pretty good manager and I think my people love me, I would want to go confirm that even if you think it's true, just because I think there's a lot of people that don't feel that. And so I think there's a gap between what we think we should be doing for people and what people actually want. So we should be finding out what it is. How can I support you in a way that would help you feel better about me and about your well-being? And you have to drill it, because they're going to go, oh, no, Morag, you're incredible. You're the greatest manager ever, and I don't have any issues. And if you just accept that, you're just going to go, OK. But you're not really solving the problem. By the way, your little poll that you did, the reason that people don't go, you said, well, how many of you wanted to go throttle that other person, basically? They don't want to tell you they do, but they want to because they're so upset and angry about it. So once you've gone to your employees and say, you know, tell me a couple of things that I do really well as a leader. And then tell me one thing that could help me improve. Because if you get the two, they're much more willing to give you the one. And if you aggregate them and you start to see a theme to this, and if you can work on and improve that and tell people what you're improving on, you can make a quantum leap in how people perceive you as their leader if you're sincere about doing this. But I also think that there's this idea that it's telling people that our culture is isn't going to be where we're criticizing each other and we're, you know, demeaning one another. And, well, I don't think the way he's doing that over there is, you know, that's right. That's not right. We shouldn't be doing it that way. We should be doing it my way. It's like have those conversations with the person, not everybody else, right? And this is sort of the problem that we get into is that we cater to these individual conversations instead of saying, go work it out with the other person. That's your teammate. You're going to need that person. You're going to want that person to be on your side. This goes back to your very first question. If you're encouraging people to build relationships with one another and you're saying to them, the culture of our team is that we look out for each other, we don't snipe at each other and criticize each other, then if you want to have a conversation about you want to go west, she wants to go East, bring that to me and we can talk about it, but we're not gonna destroy the relationship in the process. It's just a different philosophy, but it all boils down to belonging. And the belonging is the greatest thing. So if you could do two things in the world, one is identify where you are limited as a leader and what you're doing that may be creating an outcome you don't want. And then number two, fostering this cohesive team I mean, you're off to the races if you can pull those two things off. And I think it's just consistency. And I think getting over a cold and consistency. And I think in our hybrid world, this camera has only exacerbated the gap because I know I've done this and it's too easy to do the fake perky on the Zoom call and go, yeah, Mark, everything's lovely. And then you hang up afterwards and you just go, oh my goodness. And so unless we as leaders and teams create that space for consistency, no, how are you really doing? What's working? What's not? What's one thing I can do to make this more effective? Then we're never going to get to that granular truth that makes us essentially better together. Completely agree. A hundred percent. See, you and I, simpatico. So in putting together your book, which as I said, I loved, and there are other phrases like we, instead of me, again, words we use. And, Chapter Thirteen was the one that made me stop because the title for Chapter Thirteen, spoiler alert, everybody, is Care About, Even Love Your People. So you talked about how the title for your earlier book caused people to hesitate. And yet here you are telling us to even love our people. So tell us more about that. So there's two things that go to this. One is one we were talking about earlier, which is that we're not rational people. Descartes said, I think therefore I am. We've always believed it. So we've always hired the brainiest people for leadership positions. We've never thought about do they have emotional intelligence? Do they have empathy and compassion? Do they care about people? Do they want to see the best in the well-being of other people? And so, by the way, I'm an advocate for changing the model of who we hire. You need to be smart, you need to be competent, but you have to care about people. If you don't care about people, I actually, I mean, I'm explicit in the book, get out of leadership, go do something else, go be an individual contributor, stop managing people because it's not who you're meant to be. If you don't love people, you can't. But there's an interesting thing that happens. So in the course of my journey, I obviously have learned through my own direct experience, but have found a preponderance of research to confirm it, that we're not rational, that we are up to ninety five percent of our business, all of our choices and decisions are made by feelings and emotions. And people tell me all the time, you know, Mark, I know that's true for most people, but I'm like, you should see my Excel spreadsheets. I'm like the most rational guy ever. And they don't understand that it's all going under the hood. It's not happening. They're not conscious of it, but this is the way we do it. And then we rationalize our beliefs. So I was having a conversation with Barbara Fredrickson, who's one of the top positive psychology experts in the world, professor at University of North Carolina. And so she gave me the confirmation. She goes, look, I'm one of the people doing the research to prove that. So it was made me just feel like that was the end of the conversation. I kind of just said, you're incredible. This is wonderful. Thank you. But instead, I got greedy. And I just said, can I just ask you, is there anything else that you've learned that I should know? Like, is there anything really cool about this that you've learned? And she goes, yeah, I'll tell you. She goes, when you think about positive emotions, what are they? And I go, well, interest, joy, awe, love, appreciation. She goes, yep, those are all positive emotions. She goes, what we've figured out is that, and by the way, the premise before I tell you the punchline, is that we thrive on positive emotions. This is the gift that she gave me. She goes, we are hardwired to thrive on them. We need them in a massive distribution like four to one, five to one ratio of positive to negative emotions. So if that's the case, we should be making sure that people have positive feelings at work because that's what we need to be optimal. So that was the piece of information that I'm like, you know, just stunned by. And then I said, well, okay, so tell me the greedy part. What else you got? And she says, what we've discovered, and by we she meant herself, that any experience of positive emotions, so awe is love. Attention is love. Appreciation is an experience of love. I know this is right. I mean, like, I mean, I, I got, I'm no pun intended, but I got emotional when I heard this because it just so confirming of everything that I've been working on my entire life and everything that I saw in terms of why people worked for me and scaled mountains for me is because they were experiencing love in so much that they were just so appreciative that they wanted to give it back. And so people routinely, no matter what their age was or what their education was, man or woman, didn't matter. Every job I ever had of managing teams and small teams to very, very nationwide teams, people responded to me the same way. So what she was saying is you were loving your people and that's why they were responding. So when I hear it that way. I'm like, I'm not going to have a problem. I'm the guy who said heart, you know, so I've already paid my dues. I'm saying love your people because that's what we need. That's what we're all here for. And it doesn't mean I love you more egg or can I give you a hug or a lollipop? It means demonstrated to them. Ask how people are. Find out what their growth interest is. Do you want to be CEO? Do you want my job? You want to just stay doing what you're doing? Is there something you could learn? Is there a sideline opportunity that you might want to do? You know, just, hey, I read this article and it made me think of you and I just wanted to send it to you. Just telling people that you're interested in them. These are all experiences of love. So it's like be grown up. I mean, I've had a podcast now and I haven't made a decision whether to continue it next year or not. But for seven straight years, I've ended every episode saying, love your people. And I think people get it because it's not this. it's this it's the you can see on the um on the blue one the second edition of lead from the heart it's not a romantic valentine heart it's the anatomical heart that responds to it it's it's human nature Mark, it has been a true pleasure just scratching the surface of your work and research. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for talking specifically about the power of employee wellbeing. I encourage everybody to get their hands on this and lead from the heart. But how can people learn more about you and your work? Oh, thank you for asking that. When I wrote Lead from the Heart the first time, I found out there was another Mark Crowley out there. So I had to add the C. So markccrowley.com, markccrowley on LinkedIn, markccrowley at Twitter. You get the idea. And then obviously the books are on Amazon. And I'm going to have to ask then, so what does the C stand for? Christopher Crowley. Okay, there you go. Thank you very much for sharing, Mark. You're very welcome. Have a fabulous end to the year. Thank you. Thank you.