How to be a 10X More Productive Leader using the SHARP framework with Angus Ridgway

Multitasking is zero tasking. You're flipping between tasks and the more of these plates that you're spinning in the air, the higher the percentage of time that's spent in flipping time rather than spinning time. And so what we need to do is, from a productivity point of view, is get back to proper monotask.

Welcome to the Happiness Squad Podcast. Your weekly dose of practical tips and inspirations to to help you operate at your fullest potential by integrating the science of flourishing into how you live, work and lead. In each episode we will share insights, tips and stories from leading experts, company executives, and flourishing solution providers that you can implement right away to make happiness your competitive edge and find more success. Joy helps, love and meaning in everything you do. What separates people who flourish from those who flounder despite having the same job, the same degrees, and the same resume? Finding the answer to that question and helping others flourish is what led Angus Ridgway to partner with Tal Bin chahar after a 20 plus career at McKinsey, to start potential Life at Potential Life. Angus, Tal and their team has been helping organizations for over 15 years activate the fullest potential of their leaders using the Sharp framework, a powerful system backed by neuroscience and positive psychology. In this episode, Angus shares why busyness is a trap and how to become time rich instead. How great leaders manage energy, not time, by mastering micro mezzo and macro recoveries, why positive authenticity is the key to high trust teams, and why most leaders get it wrong. Angus believes flourishing isn't reserved for a few. It's a choice, a practice, and a competitive advantage. Stick around to hear the one elevator story that explains the power of reframing one of the key interventions in Sharp and how it might change how you lead under pressure. Let's dive in. So lovely to see you, dear Angus, thank you for joining us on Happiness Squad and sharing just your wisdom from your years of doing this unbelievable work around flourishing.

Delighted to be here. If I could help in any way, I'm always up for that. So I'm really looking forward to today's session.

You know, I want to start Angus first, actually with a little bit of an origin story. Right? You spent over two decades like me. I was at McKinsey for two years, you know, 20 years. You were close to 20 years at McKinsey. You led leadership development for thousands of partners. What inspired you to leave and co found potential life? Like, what was the driving force behind that?

Yeah, it's an interesting question. I've spent some time thinking about, you know, what were the triggers And I actually think it started on day one at McKinsey. So it wasn't so much a leaving after 20 years, but the inspiration started right on day one. And I had this sort of experience in my very early years in the firm. So like everybody, I was in my mid-20s and I was looking around at my fellow colleagues and I immediately saw a rather strange phenomenon which was some people seem to be on fire. Now, I'm not a psychologist, so I get to use words like on fire and by on fire, they, they looked like they knew where they were going, they seemed to be dripping with energy and had good relationships with everybody. And yet others were struggling to keep their head above the water. And that was very visible.

Yep.

And you can say, well, doesn't that exist everywhere? And the answer is yes. But there's something very specific about our environments at McKinsey. There are other environments like this too. And that what's specific is it's very normative in the sense that you have a large organization comprised of 25, 26 year olds that came from the very same small selection of top schools and the best grades from those top schools and they're doing the same job, the same role, wherever you are in the world with the same pace of progression.

Yes.

So it's like an incredible laboratory of sameness, despite maybe some claims to the contrary.

For sure.

So in a world of utter sameness, you had this separation. Very, very. And so I found this to be incredible. Now initially I was interested in this for purely selfish reasons. I thought, well, maybe if I know what some of these folks are doing, totally, maybe I will be more successful. But it started out as a curiosity, that then became a hobby and a passion. And that was the sort of the real genesis of all of this. And then what happened was I met with my co founder who, unlike me, is a scientist, a psychologist, Dr. Tal Ben Shah. And he was able to put the proper words and proper structure around all of these observations and is when we got together we thought, well, there's things happening in the world, maybe we can do something. So that was the. And I can obviously talk a bit more about that, but that was the.

The genesis story, you know, I love that. And it's such. It so resonates with my own experience. Right. At the firm. Absolutely. There are these, you know, in fact I would even say I think there are. I found these three camps. Right. Not two. I think there were these camp. There were this clearly people who were flourishing. I mean, as you said, they were on fire. They Always had energy. They had multiple things. Right. That they had active. They were going on, and they just seemed to kind of surf the waves. Right. And then there were groups, I would say about 20, 30% who, you know, they were drowning in a swimming pool. Like, forget about big waves. I mean, this, that. Right. I mean, they were just struggling with it. And then there was this middle. And I think that was actually. And I think this is true for so many consulting firms, investment banks, private equity, venture capital, you know, this middle 60% Angus that I also found that were just busy. Right. How are you? I'm busy.

Yeah. What a killer response. Yeah. So many times I heard people say, I'm busy. How are you doing? I'm busy.

Right. I'm busy, busy. Right. I'm always running busy. Like, just like, you know, constantly moving. But, you know, if you ask them, are you alive? People be like, what does that mean? Right. And I think so. That I think. And I find that is such a massive loss in organizations like ours that we've been at.

Yeah. And I think this phenomenon of generalized busyness is very dangerous because when you actually look at the kind of things you need to do to be successful in professional services, you have to do things today that will lead to success in the future, of course, but those things are never urgent, despite being important. So if you're busy, you'll never do them. Think of that networking lunch. Although many networking lunches you have with clients, former clients, of course you don't have to do it. There's no immediate payoff. But those people who find the time to do those types of things in five years time have a whole bunch of people calling back because you've been building out your network.

That's right.

And when you're suffering from generalized busyness at the margin, you'll never find the time to do this. So I really like this idea of the time rich as opposed to time poor professional. And it's got nothing to do with the sort of how overloaded you are. Time richness is some kind of in internal compass. We can generate our own time richness. It's a way, a way of going about your days. And when you're time rich, then you will find the time to do those things that are important but also not urgent because you've got space for that.

Yep. I love that notion of time rich. So all of this work, you know, translated at the core of a lot. I revved your book. I think the Joy of leadership that you and Tal coauthored. I love Tal's work. And you created a framework called Sharp.

Yeah.

Talk to us a little bit about Sharp and all of the five elements, you know, that comprise Sharp.

Yeah, very happy to. And I think perhaps even before talking about Sharp, maybe it's, we need to talk about why Sharp, Why something like Sharp. And this is back in 2011, so, you know, already 13, 14 years ago, and we had this very strong belief. Talon myself at that time, it was a little bit perhaps ahead of the wave that the world of work was going to shift and become something else.

Which year Was this, Angus?

2011.

This was definitely ahead of itself, my dear friend.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, today we don't debate it anymore, but back then it was a little bit weird. And we had this framework about the tightly coupled or the loosely coupled organization. You may remember Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, when they got divorced, they talked about this conscious uncoupling. And there's a way of talking about this, because for many decades, organizations were tightly coupled structures. And by tightly coupled, that meant we took the time to codify what the structure is supposed to do so we can provide clarity to people and stability over time so people can just basically get on with their job. And that was considered to be a worthwhile venture so that we can offer this stability to our employees. And that was the essence of organization. And then we sensed that with technology, with globalization, the accelerating pace of change, we were not going to have enough time to define a tightly coupled organization. So we're going to have to learn to live consciously with an uncoupled organization or a more loosely coupled organization. And this has many implications. One implication is that once the genie is out of the bottle and we're in the loosely coupled world, there's no going back.

Yes.

And many organizations today are heading down the wrong path because they're trying to tightly couple an organization. But we're now living in a loosely coupled world. There's no going back. So instead of trying to force tightness on an organization, what needs to be celebrate looseness. And for the human being, it has a fundamental implication. And what it means for the human being is that we as people in the organization need to decide for ourselves what we do with this space that's been given to us. Because in a loosely coupled world, we have space. We can hide if we want to. We can just do the minimum, just do the job, and because it's loosely coupled, nobody's really going to notice that much. Or we can make a discretionary choice to put much more in to find our sense of worth, our sense of purpose, to use our strengths, to give lots more time and energy. And our belief, Tal and myself, was that with this transition to the loosely coupled world, it would become a differentiator for organizations. If you have an organization full of on fire people because they are choose. Those on fire people are choosing to occupy with their own discretionary time, energy, the space. And so we said, well, we better start to define what it means to be on fire as we transition towards this loosely coupled world. And really that was the why of the sharp framework, which I obviously can now talk about. But I think it's important just to re anchor that because even today, sometimes when I'm meeting with clients, I just flash up this very simple chart with tightly coupled and loosely coupled. And sometimes I think it's almost embarrassing to talk about it today. I mean, everybody surely knows this, right? And then I realize we spend an hour talking about it with the client because actually it's not that obvious to everybody.

Well, it resonates a lot with me and it's so aligned with kind of, you know, where we are going with this. You know, I just use slightly different language, but I love loosely coupled and tightly coupled. When you started talking about it, Angus and Tal, I think it was a little bit like, well, we're moving towards loosely coupled versus tightly. And you know, leaders might say, well, maybe I don't want to move into loosely coupled. Right. Like you're seeing it with the COVID now with back to office. Right. No, I don't want to be loosely. I want you in the office because I don't trust if you're at home that you're working. Right. But what do you do when people are at office? Not present, they're just present, but they're not working. How do you solve for that? I think that's the core of what you're talking about. Loose and tight couple has nothing to do with where you are.

That's right, right.

Located and where you're working. And what I think as I reflect on that is, you know, I use this chalk rep all the time. I actually feel we don't actually have a choice as leaders to accelerate the transition to loosely coupled because the volatility, the uncertainty, the complexity in the world is exponentially rising. And unless we fundamentally figure out a way to shift leadership, make every person in the organization care as much as be on tune with what's happening, to be willing to make changes, we are going to be too slow. And you know, the only thing that happens to slow organizations is they die either a fast or a slow death, but death is what comes.

Yes, I agree and I think this is maybe surprisingly for the two of us, but I believe this is a very real conversation to be had because the, the CEO response of when confronted with this situation I'm going to enacts the control response is still very real.

Yes.

And yet the control response is a false response. It's not a response. There's no path there. And so we have to help people work through and go beyond the control response and move towards something new and better, which is, let's celebrate looseness and then it takes you down the path. Okay, how do we then help our people? And then you're, then you're in business. But in order to do that properly, you have to overcome and abandon the control response. And I think that's not yet. Everybody's really doing that and it is incredibly hard.

Right, Angus? I'm reflecting a little bit on all of my learnings around adult development theory from Harvard and Keegan's work. And Lehi was right. This notion that only 20% of the people are at a stage of development to be self authored, to be more creative versus reactive. And the reactive structures are control, comply, protect. And so fundamentally, it's also a call that you've been making now for almost 14 years is for leaders to actually vertically develop, to learn what is keeping you stuck in control and consciously choose to shift away from that into, you know, internally. That then now allows you to get comfortable with loose coupling. Because I don't think it's a choice. I don't think it's a real choice. I think we can live in this tightly coupled, controlled feeling, the stress of the world on our shoulders, or we can flourish, you know, move in the world with ease and help our people become the best version of themselves.

Absolutely right. Yeah. And maybe we'll, maybe we'll do this podcast again in 5 years or 10 years time and we will celebrate the fact that the world has moved to a new place and we don't need to talk about relinquishing the control response. But as of today, we're still, we.

Still are very much in it. We're very much in it.

Yeah.

So let's talk about sharp because I think that's a very practical way and I love it. You know, a very practical way for us to shift people and make them come alive on fire through really practical things that they can start to integrate into how they work.

Yeah. So let's talk so sharp is so Tal and I, we spent a year at the very beginning of our collaboration as humble integrators of a body of research that goes back 25 years at least into what does it mean to flourish. And there are many different sources of research in this field and we wanted to create something that was obviously represents the evidence and the science but most importantly is actionable and easy to touch and use so that anybody can look at this thing say that makes sense to me. I get it. So sharp. S, H, a, r, p. 5 letters, 5 domains that represent most of the variants of what you see when you see flourishing people. And so we can just talk about them and maybe I'll try we'll together we can talk about them in a way that talks about how should we be thinking about this. Because it's not that some of these ideas people haven't seen before, but it's rather we've a lot of us are still falling into traps relating to these.

I love that. And maybe we can take each element go into that one step at a time. So at the end of our conversation people have like oh yeah, I get it and I love it. Let's make it actionable for them. Here's this thing you can do right after to make it real for you.

Yeah. So let's start with strengths. Most people have heard that it's a good idea to play to our strengths. We may have been given a book or even done a training session on this well intentioned people trying to help us. That's very good. But there's a problem. There's a problem. Very few people are really using their strengths and there's a reason for this. And that reason is conditioning. We've been conditioned starting all of us starting a very young age, usually starting at school, when it comes to grades or at work, when we get those feedback conversations, we've been conditioned to implicitly believe that the way to progress in life is to fix our weaknesses. Now here's the thing. It is a good idea to fix your weaknesses. So we, we shouldn't stop doing that. But what's happened is while we're looking at all this weakness stuff, it's as though our strengths antennae never really grew. If I ask an audience of maybe a hundred people to shout out tell me what your top three development needs, your weaknesses are. People know what they are. They'll shout out stuff and maybe even be able to tell you they've got a development plan and so on. But you should then take the same audience and say Tell me each of you what your top three character strengths are and how you're living your life with those strengths front and center. What do you get? You get deathly silent.

Yep.

People on even the start of this journey. So that's, that's the sort of challenge. It's not a cognitive awareness thing. It's actually starting the journey by overcoming this realization that it's, it's not about fixing your weaknesses. The prize, however, is huge because when we're playing to our strengths, we feel closer to this kind of what I'm supposed to be doing better version of myself. This is like, this is the, the version of me that I'm the best version of me. We've become more self confident and when we're more self confident, we become more creative, looking around corners, seeing things. And so there's a real special place to go there for us as individuals when we're playing to our strengths. Not even to mention what it means in terms of teamwork. And I often say to people that when it comes to team, if you have a cast of characters that call themselves a team, if they're not consciously asking themselves how are we complementing each other because we're aware of our different strengths, then you're not a team. You're just a herd chasing in the same direction. And I use the metaphor of, of children playing football or soccer. If you take six year old kids playing soccer anywhere in the world, in the us, in Nigeria, Canada and in England, six year old soccer looks the same.

Yes.

You have this sort of herd of kids chasing after the ball around the park. Each kid hoping to have a few seconds of glory with the ball at their feet until another kid grabs a ball and they then have their few seconds of glory. This is six year old football. Then think about nine year old football. All of a sudden it looks different. They've, they've worked something out. You know, the kid who's got the big hands, it works better when that one's in the goal and the one with the long legs is running down the wing and the one that's just got that nick, that knack for putting the ball in the back of the net, that's a striker. So these kids have noticed through trial and error, playing, playing, playing, that when we allow ourselves to acknowledge how we're different to each other and then compliment each other, becomes a team. I actually think it's the definition of team. So when I'm talking to executive teams and I say, so which one are you? Then you. The six year Olds, are you the nine year olds, they go, oh no, no, we're, we're a team. We're not. Okay, so what conversations have you had about how you complement each other? Because, oh, we haven't really talked about. I'm sorry you're hurt. You're six year old. You haven't even. In fact it's at that level we need to be having the conversation on strengths and most people are still at first base.

So yeah, you know, we have you like this, Angus. So I am, in three weeks I'm going to be with 200 people of US ski and snowboard, the national governing body here in the US they really oversee the sport all the way from, you know, young kindergarteners. First time getting up on the, on the slopes in Colorado started three. I literally saw like this child who was on skis, can't even walk, but he was going down. Right. So like all the way from there to like the US Olympic Team usa and we're literally doing an exercise on strengths and they have never done it to your point. And we're literally going to use strengths and we are going to have their team leaders share and discuss strengths, how they use it and how can they use even more. Because I'm with you, I think it is such an important element that, that people don't think about. Right. And I remember, you know, I benefited, frankly, I was I think a, a young associate or maybe, maybe an EM or ap. I don't know where I was. But you were definitely, probably one of those forces at the firm that drove the shift. Angus. I remember when I started it was obviously we have our assessment framework, but somewhere along the way, four, six years into the firm, we shifted to a strength based feedback. Yeah, right. And something tells me, and you'll confirm or disconfirm that you were probably one of the hands who actually helped make that a reality.

Very much so, very much so. But also aware that there's an institutional challenge to actually enact this. You know, there's a lot, I think we're in the position of, with our good intentions trying to thrust this upon an organization, which is maybe a necessary starting point. But I don't think it's the quite same thing as bringing about large scale cultural change.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, and I personally know how much I benefited from it.

Yeah.

Because all of a sudden rather than, and friends, for those who are listening, you're like, what is that? So literally I remember the day when all of a sudden we started the conversations differently in our performance evaluations. We have them every six months. Every person in the firm, you know, has somebody who's actually having a discussion with them. With other eight or ten senior leaders around, how do we help them develop to become the best version of themselves? And we always talk about what are their spikes. We have six different areas, from problem solving to client relationships to knowledge to entrepreneurship. And we always talk about what is their source of sparkle, what are their spikes? And you can't have more than two. You can, but I think then you haven't done the work to really find what they're really good at. Because yeah, there are some who are really great at everything. I've benefited from some of those, but those are far and few in between. Yeah, but when we use those as a way to then say, okay, what opportunities will help them progress? You know, all of a sudden they come alive. Right. Look, for me, entrepreneurship and client relationships were my strengths. Right. Those were things that I was really good at. So go do that. Right.

Yeah. I mean, let me tell you the story of a guy called Angus. I was and still am somebody who lacks attention to detail and tends not to follow through with things and persevere. That's not a very good cocktail. Right. You seriously think somebody with those characteristics can be successful? I could have spent my life trying to fix for those weaknesses, hoping that somehow this would create a path to success. But in reality, I would be a sort of partially redeemed person who's not very good at attention to detail and doesn't really like to follow through. I'm not sure that this would be a path to anything particularly noteworthy. It turns out, however, that I am creative and I'm a communicator. So if you build a life around creativity and communication, you can really forge a path for yourself.

Absolutely.

And this is what has happened today. Now of course still have to do some dealing with the other stuff and that's solvable, but trying to build some kind of identity around the person who's struggling to follow through and keeps making mistakes on their spelling mistakes on the website, because I don't really have much attention detail, you're never going to win by trying to be one of those people. So we really have to find what that magic is. And one exercise that I think is very interesting is to get other people who know you well to talk about you things called the best self stories. You ask five people who know you will know you well to just write a short paragraph describing a time when they saw you at your best. You get these five paragraphs Back, which is already just an enjoyable thing to have of course for our. Maybe for our vanity reasons, but the methods to the madnesses. Those five people don't know each other, but they do know you. They're likely just to describe the same types of things. And so you can see the common threads pull those threads out. Which is interesting from a sort of analytical point of view, but also it's interesting from a legitimization point of view. If everybody else is saying this about me, then it must be true after all. So these little techniques to help people get closer can be incredibly powerful to break through that, make that mindset shift.

In terms of embracing strengths reflected best self.

Right.

And exercise. I love that one. Let's talk about health, which is the second dimension of sharp.

Yeah. Health has to do with the fact that we're all so exhausted. Stressed out. Stressed out. And I think the coming back to what's the angle we need to be taking to move forward on this is we tend to view stress as a bad thing. The number of books you see on airport bookshop shelves talking about reducing stress and so on, reducing burnout is huge, but flawed because stress isn't in of itself definitionally bad for us. We actually need stress. We need some stress. We need the right type of stress, of course. And so on and so forth. I wouldn't be getting out in bed in the morning if I didn't have some stress.

Absolutely.

So demonizing stress as an entirely bad thing is just taking us down the wrong path. What we need to be doing is looking at something else. And this is our recovery and being intentional about recovery from stress. And when I say intentional I actually mean structured about this. And the thought that I really like this about this is this idea of your return on your freshness and this idea that is nonlinear. So a small investment in your freshness leads to a non linear uplift in terms of what you bring to the table. You know, I remember when in my McKinsey days I used to have a client that was two hour flight away. And so on Friday morning I would take the 7am flight which means I was awake at you know, 4:30 in the morning to get to the airport. And we all know that story. And I'd walk through the door of the CEO's office at 5 to 9, we'd have our Friday morning meeting. I did this for years. It was perfectly fine. I didn't know any better. And then something changed in my life circumstances and I started arriving the evening before at this client premises and Just seeing the team for a bit, going to bed, waking up fresh, I was a completely different person. I was daring, challenging the client, seeing patterns, joining the dots. It was a totally different conversation. What I wasn't doing is just kind of going through the bullet points on the agenda which I would have been doing previously. And then I realized, wow, first of all, what an incredibly non linear change. And secondly, what a tiny investment. If only I'd know. Now of course there are other trade offs. Being one more night away from home and all that kind of stuff needs to be worked through. Know that. But just being aware of the power of this and potential. Like we, we talk about horizons of recovery, micro, mezzo, macro, micro is all the little sneaky little things that happen to you during the day that mean that by the end of the day instead of being maybe 70% fresh, you're 10% fresh. The snarky little comment from your boss that just drains the energy from your body. And maybe you have that four or five times during the day and by the time you get home you don't remember anything but you just feel completely drained. That's the micro recovery and we can be intentional about navigating this. Then there's mezzo recovery. This is week in, week out, healthy, light habits that really contribute massively. Obviously things that we're aware of, nutrition, sleep, exercise. And then there's macro recovery, which you might equate to vacation, but it's really not about vacation. This is hitting the reset button once in a time, once in a while and really taking a fresh look around and thinking about where am I going, what am I doing? And being intentional about our recovery. Thinking about this in terms of the non linearity and the three horizons can take us down a completely different path. And understanding that we have the agency here, it's up to us. It's our job to be fresh. It's not the world's job to stop making us stressed.

In fact, can I flip it on its head, Angus? Which is as leaders, I think it absolutely is our responsibility to make sure our people are fresh and we are helping them build habits. I'm going to share a couple of anecdotes around this, couple of examples where I've seen this and I've seen some organizations do this really well and some pieces that we've been able to integrate. Right. So when we run Rewire, we often ask people to do three, what you call micro recoveries. I say between eight to 12, find five minutes where you're going to unplug and you're just going to go out or if you just sit, get a cup of coffee, don't be on your phone. Right. 15 minute between 8 to 12, 15 minute between 1 to 5 and give yourself a little bit of a longer break at lunch. Maybe do 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Maybe you have food outside and you go for a little walk. Amazing. For glucose, I've really gotten very attuned to my glucose patterns and movement with my body. I wear a CGM and how it drops. Right. But like what we notice is exactly what you said, Angus. If people just take 20 minutes in a 10 hour day, they report 30, 40% more energy at the end of the day than before. And they're like, how is that possible? Because if you look at the research From Microsoft, after 90 minutes we are just accumulating stress. But if we build in that micro recovery, we really, really improve. Right. So I mean that really resonates. And there is so much research on this.

Oh yes, it's been researched and it's, and it's been published. So people, one of the challenges with the health stress recovery topic is we're talking with words that everybody has already heard of. It's not like nobody has, hasn't heard that it's good to get a good night's sleep and so on and so forth. Where people need to understand is one of responsibility.

Yes.

It's up to you to be fresh because of the opportunity of this return on freshness. It's not the world's fault that you are stressed out. So it's on you 100%. Yeah. And so I think that's where we need to take this conversation. There's nobody else to blame. Nobody's coming.

Yeah. And you know, and I think about this, right. It's an individual responsibility and I really think it's the leader's responsibility. And here's the reason why.

Yeah, I agree.

Would you be okay if you, let's say you run a fleet of trucks? Are you okay if your trucks are only 40% efficient?

Yeah.

Every day or they start at 80% but by the time half of the day comes around they're at 40%. You would never accept that. But because, right. Humans don't walk around with this meter of how full are you, how fresh are you?

Yeah, I really agree on this. And in my earlier life I did a lot of work in grocery stores or supermarkets and my job was to interview the store manager. So we'd be in the back of a store interview and then at the end of the interview, the manager would escort me out of the store. And this is quite a long walk. Some of These stores have 100 employees. And I noticed two types of store. There were stores where the manager was a absolute giver of energy and as he or she escorted me through the store, tapping people on the back, noticing that somebody come back from illness, somebody else going on vacation, and you had a hundred pairs of eyes looking up and lighting up as you walk through the store. I never realized that this was any anything particular until I also met another type of store manager who as they escorted me out, all they were thinking is my next meeting starts in 90 seconds. I got to get this guy out as fast as possible. So we charged the store and you had a hundred pairs of ice just down on the shelves. And the vibe in the store was tangibly different. And they think, boy, as leaders we have such a massive influence on the energy that we bring to play the radiation. It's such a, it is an integral, it's maybe the most integral part of leadership.

We hope you're enjoying this episode and would love your help in spreading awareness and furthering our mission to help a billion people Rewire for Happiness. Please consider leaving us a review and sharing this podcast with others in your personal and professional life who you feel could benefit from some of these very insights. It's a really simple way to extend and spread positivity. Also check out Rewire, our proprietary offering to move you from knowing to doing. On the Happiness Squad website www.happinesssquad.com Rewire uses the science of habit formation and the power of community to help you build happier habits in five minutes or less daily. Now back to the episode. And I love the three horizons you mentioned micro what you do in the day miso. Right. Which are holistically metso the structural things like sleep, nutrition, exercise and then the ones that are macro, which is, you know, are you recovering? Are you stepping back? Are you looking at your life? You know, I think in the U.S. 40% of the people, I think if I remember the stat, don't even take their two weeks of vacation. And then we wonder why we are a stressed out, anxious, burnt out nation.

Yeah, we have the data on this at Potential Life. So for example, in Sweden and in France and Spain and Italy, they take the whole month of July or August off us is totally different story. And you have completely different barometers from the data we collect on the need for micro versus macro recovery. Personal story of mine, when I lived in France for a long time When I first went to live in France, I was rather annoyed when I was under the obligation to take the whole month of August off because I want to be able to take my holiday when I want. Don't force me into August, but, you know, I had no choice. So the first time in my life, I switched off for a month and I noticed something. The first two weeks were vacation. Week three, I was starting to have some weird ideas about new stuff to do. And week four, I was starting to implement those new ideas whilst I was still on vacation. I'd never been anywhere near this space of creativity before because two weeks wasn't long enough. I was still just recovering. I was still in micro recovery actually, before I could actually get into macro recovery. And I think, again, being intentional, I think is so important.

I love that. So, strengths, health, let's shift to absorption.

Yes, absorption. So this has to do with the fact that we're also incredibly distracted all the time. Think of the many millions of people listening to your podcast right now, Ashish. And of course, we're trying to make it as engaging as possible for them to listen to us, but they will be getting notifications from their phones and then they'll have this random thought that comes through their head or somebody just walks in front of them. They don't know why, instead of looking at the screen, they're following their. The gaze is following the person.

Shiny objects.

Yeah. And the thing that we get wrong here is that we tend to view multitasking as something that leads to greater productivity. So we're inviting distraction somehow into our life. And in reality, there's no such thing as multitasking. Multitasking is zero tasking. You're flipping between tasks.

Yep.

And the more of these plates that you're spinning in the air, the higher the percentage of time that's spent in flipping time rather than spinning time. And so what we need to do is, from a productivity point of view, is get back to proper monotasking. For this, you need to figure out ways of dealing with all of the distractions and being absorbed in what we're doing. This has everything to do with mindfulness, everything to do with meditation, everything to do with getting into flow. This is really what we're talking about here. But in the world of business, it's not only incredible driver of personal productivity, which is a good thing, but it's an incredible driver of quality of life experience. It's a win win. It's a double whammy. You get to be happier and more productive. Sounds good. Let's do some of that.

Yeah. And isn't it crazy that we over the last 20 years have given away our ability to be able to focus? You know, we've all become dopamine addicts thanks to this continuous pings and notifications. And like, I'll give you this example, Angus, of what you're just describing that I witnessed firsthand. So I was working for a bank. This was when I was at McKinsey and we had a team where we wanted to increase their productivity. So this was. And luckily this was a team where we could actually measure productivity. Because when it comes to productivity of humans, people are like, how can you actually measure it? Well, in this one we can, because what this team was doing was something really specific. This was a team that worked on fixing bugs. Now, bugs when very easily be categorized into small, medium, large. Small takes two to four hours. Medium is maybe a day. And then larger, you know, then they're big overhauls that need time. They had a group of 120 people who worked only on fixing problems. Right? Now you might wonder why 120 people working on fixing problems, shouldn't they be working on new stuff? But that was this reality of this team. And Angus, they were unknown to, right? We did two things. We just did two things. We took. We said to them every day. So every week out of 40 hours, we need you to find 12 hours. We don't care how you do it, but you find 12 hours where you're only gonna work on one thing. You will not be available by email, you will not get phone calls, you're gonna turn notifications on. They're like, well, we can't do that. Business calls us all the time. I'm like, no, we're gonna create a control room. They're gonna get the things. And when you are in this space, you are just working on this, right? So that was one thing we did. And number two is we want to make sure that as you think about it, this is the other thing. We are going to get together every. Every day, we're going to talk about what we got done. And if we learn that somebody else is able to do things faster, we're going to ask them what they're doing and learn from it, right? So focus and learn. So we are continuously upgrading in eight weeks, in eight weeks, that team got 30% more productive. How do we know that? How can you know if somebody gets more productive? Well, we knew because we took 36 of them and we moved them out of the group. So now they only actually had 84 people working. And of those 84 people, but I think they got even more productive because they had an eight week backlog that they were working on before. At the end of eight weeks there was no backlog.

That's fantastic. And in a way there are two types of challenge when it comes to this idea of monotasking or being absorbed. There's a challenge of the external distraction which you can maybe take steps to eliminate. Switch off notifications, that's an external distraction. But there's another challenge which I think is the more challenging one, which is the challenge of the internal distraction.

Yes.

And you know, imagine yourself in the most distraction free environment in the world on some beautiful desert island. Can you still be distracted despite the fact this. And the answer is completely, absolutely. And I don't know if you read the book by Oliver Berkman, 4,000 weeks. Brilliant book about time management.

Yes.

Beautifully written and quite quirky and provocative. I encourage people to take a look. But he talks about what's going on with these internal moments of distraction and he, he talks about the trigger being a moment of psychological discomfort that requires a moment of relief. For example, you're working on a presentation, you're in deep flow and it's actually good and it's fantastic. Then all of a sudden you have this worry, am I going to finish it in time? Or you imagine yourself on stage and saying, are they going to like me? So many possibilities of momentary psychological discomfort. What do we do? We seek relief from the discomfort. What are we doing next? We're on Instagram. And so, or equivalent. So the way here, as is the case with mindfulness meditation, is recognizing the moment, the very moment you start to be distracted because then you can yank yourself back once you're distracted because you're distracted, you're distracted. You don't know. You don't know you're distracted because you're distracted. So once you're in on the over the other side, it's really hard to come back. But the very second you can feel it, you can feel that discomfort. So. Oh, I think I know what's happening here. Yank myself back. And that's a muscle that we can develop. It's a sort of reflex we can build. And I think that's the way that we, the path that we need to go down at least as far as the internal distraction side of things.

How do you help people do that, Angus, as part of potential life?

Well, that's a great question about how does potential life work? And we're Going to. We're talking about sharp, which is very much grounded in positive psychology. The other side of what we do at potential life is very much grounded in neuroscience. In other words, the science of how we as human being change many parts to this, but the most. One of the most important is to just try things. This idea that you. When it comes to personal development, we can't think our way out of trouble, much as we like thinking away and reading books and studying, forget it. Enough books have been written already on mindfulness. We don't need to write nor read anymore. What we need to do is just give it a try. So what we do, a potentialite, is take people to the edge of the water, where the only thing left is to try is to put your foot in that water to experiment. We call them behavioral experiments, by the way, because it's an experiment. It might work, it might not work. But if you don't try, you'll never know. You would have spent your life just thinking about the experiment. So the idea of experimentation is very important, and you can just try and take people to the edge of the water. When it comes to the next time you feel yourself getting distracted, notice it and bring it back. Oh, yeah, I did that. Okay, interesting. Now do it again and again and again. And from the neuroscience point of view, you're developing these neural pathways that at some point become your default channels. And that's how we. How we make these habits practice.

Right. Bridging the gap from knowing to doing, making it small.

Yeah. I like this idea of dumbing things down. In a way, it's not a very nice expression, but in order to be provocative, I think we should say this. It's not about being clever. It's not about knowing more. It's about just doing something, doing it again.

Yeah, yeah. The other word we use instead of it's not about make. You know, we don't have to dumb it down. We can just make it tiny, in the words of BJ Falk. Right.

Yeah.

So tiny habits is what we built. Rewire around is how do we take small things? But I think this is so true for all of us when we try, we like to be, you know, we want to. Like, I want to run a marathon. How about I. How about you run for five minutes and call it a victory, and then if you like it, run for five minutes more? Or like, you know.

Yeah, talk about it. We talk about the difference between willpower and way power. Willpower. We know willpower is this sort of deliberate, conscious. I must brush My teeth, I must brush my teeth. And then way power is just when things have become a habit and you don't have to think about it anymore. And by the way, I really like.

That, I really like that way power. I really like that.

Yeah. And I mean tooth brushing is an interesting example. We as adults, most of us, we just get up in the morning, we brush our teeth, we're not having to remind ourselves to brush our teeth in the morning. So it's way power. But our 12 year old kids, they haven't developed the way power anymore, so we actually have to use willpower to put them into it. And then at some point, maybe when they become adolescents and become interested in the way their breath smells and so on, then maybe they actually start to develop that more quickly.

Well, that's a very real reality for my 16 year old, 15 year old right now, Angus. So by 16, I hope he becomes way power. I'm going to share this with him. Yeah, talk to me about relationships. R. Yeah.

So this again, relationships is a word that we've all heard of. So what are we really talking about here that moves things forward when it comes to flourishing and being on fire? And I think that here the important thing is to understand we now live in this uncoupled, loose, rebound world where the way that we all interact with each other is paramount. So how do we put some shape that characterizes what good looks like here? And we saw that the two most important drivers are positivity and authenticity. And a lot of people struggle to do them at the same time.

Very true.

Think about somebody who's highly authentic, very direct. We tend to associate that with maybe not very positive, you know, that sort of driving, direct person. As though that's the way is we, we have a segment, we call this the driver segment. Other people are the other way around. They're very positive, kind and caring and empathetic, but maybe have a tendency not to actually say everything that they should be saying, holding back, that's not authentic. So this is high positivity, but low authenticity. We call this the pleaser segment. So many of us are so stuck in these one, but not the other segments. And what we're saying is that we can and must become positively authentic or authentically positive. In other words, practice both of these simultaneously. The key word here is simultaneity. We all know there are times when we're authentic and there are times when we're positive, but in the same interaction. That's the magic zone here because people need authenticity, they need to hear what they need to hear, but they want to hear it in a way that's delivered in a kind, caring and empathetic way.

So, Angus, I love that. What's a move that they can make, whether they're on the positivity or the authenticity side, to go into that quadrant where we are positively authentic?

Well, I mean, the first thing is awareness on this. So we collect a lot of data, first of all, to help people see which of these segments they are in. And then all you have to do is practice one for most people, one of the two missing things. Yes, I have to practice being more authentic or more positive. And that has certain pain points for some people. If you're a driver, highly authentic, it's quite hard to imagine that the people will hear your message if you also do it in a positive way, because oftentimes drivers somehow fear that there'll be dilution of message if I wrap this message up in kindness. So giving them a situation in the week ahead where they are interacting with somebody again, create an experiment, see how it goes. Was it a disaster after all? Oh, actually it worked. And then you have the same idea for somebody who's perhaps a natural pleaser, trying to take themselves out of their zone, when at this point this is perhaps as far as I would normally take it in terms of really saying everything. I'm going to try and say one step more, see how it goes. It's okay. There are of course, cultural biases here. There are in terms of national cultural biases. There are many national cultures that are placed, sit differently on this spectrum in Asia, Sweden, for example, tend to be cultures that are more pleasing cultures. And so, yes, actually quite a challenge to, to put your authenticity on top of your, your, your positivity, you know.

And I'm reflecting on a conversation, Angus, I had with Rasmus about three, four years ago. You know, Rasmus, who got Trump, who just wrote this book More Human, which is how can we be more human in the age of AI? And I think this is where, you know, what triggered for me what you just said is in a positive way is, look, this is where I think AI can actually help us. So here's how I would use AI, dear friends, in this, right? Let's say if you're very authentic but maybe not very positive, you can use AI to actually give the full context of what you're trying to do. You can even train it where it asks you for some prompts around what are some good things that that other person does and then say help Me recraft this in a way that is authentic, that tells them what I want to say but also does it positively. You can by the way for example also train it around all the work that's been done on the five is to one magic ratio of positive to negative interactions and the effect of that simultaneously. You can also do the other where if you are very positive and you don't necessarily like giving know authentic feedback, you can again on the same way give it the other side.

Absolutely. I think this is incredible opportunity and we could even go beyond AI which is helping us with the, the, the the smart formulations. But you can easily manage and I think this is probably already happening, this sort of simulated goggle type situation where you just practice a hundred times over CBT type thing and, and you get yourself, you just practice 20 times and say okay, I know how to do this now. In the same way that we can deal with our fear of spider, we can do that exposed to spiders. We can, we can deal with our fear of authenticity by, by just doing it 20 times and getting comfortable with the, the enactment of it.

I think that's absolutely. So talk to us about the last lever purpose.

Yeah, I think this is one of the, the most important ones and in the, the year post, the post the first of the post Covid years it was a very important one. This has to do with the why question. Why when I wake up in the morning and say why am I doing what I'm doing? What do I say to myself and what scope do I think I have to influence the answer to that question? Most people don't think that they have scope to change the answer to this question. It is what it is. I'm in a crummy job. It's repetitive. Why are you telling me to answer differently the why question? It's just what pays the pay packet. But there's been a huge amount of research done on meaning making at work with Jane Dutton, Amy Wisniewski in hospitals. And they researched the two extreme hierarchies in the hospital, the surgeons and their cleaners, asking them unprompted to characterize their work. And they could choose between it's a job, it's a career or it's a calling. And the seminal research concluded even in the most menial tasks, you're a cleaner in a hospital that's pretty, you know, challenging environment. There's a substantial segment of cleaners who when characterizing their work said things like I'm helping to create a clean environment. Their lives can get Saved it. That's not a job. That's a calling. There's something bigger than me there. I'm being drawn to something that's bigger than me. I'm playing my part in saving of lives. Now, that's cool. But then when you interview the surgeons they've studied for 10, 15 years, in some ways they are doing God's work. And you ask them to talk about the work. Of course, there's a segment of surgeons who know how have very strong meaning. But there's a very real segment of surgeons who say things like, do you know why I went in and did those extra hours on Saturday? It's because I'm worried about the upkeep of the payments on my boat, for example. What's that? That's the job. And so regardless of the environment we find ourselves in, including in the most menial of environments, we have scof to influence what is the essence of our work. Realizing this, first of all, is very important. A lot of people just think the answer to that question is no. Actually, the answer to that question is yes. And we go throughout our days, every day with moments of meaning, moments of boredom, moments of it's just a job, moments, it's a career, moments, it's a calling. And we need to understand that we can choose to fill out our days differently.

Yeah, I love, you know, like, I have had the good fortune Angus of the last two years gotten to really work and spend time with Jane.

Yeah.

And she is unbelievable. You know, she's. I think she turns 72 this year. And I mean, I've. I've loved the job crafting exercise that they created. Yeah. And it is so easy. It is so practical to apply and use and most leaders. You know, I was talking to somebody just frankly, last week I was at a Conscious Entrepreneur and I was having a conversation on this, and this person said, you know, well, it's not my job to get my people to find meaning. I'm not their mother, I'm not their whatever. And I said, yeah, but tell me one thing. If what you did had meaning versus what you didn't, would you put in more or less? It's the same story as machines. If you know that you can actually get a machine to operate at a higher efficiency and effectiveness, would you not do it? But why do you think just because here it's a human, you say, well, that's your problem. As leaders. Look, friends, I mean, you know, this was the McKinsey research from two years ago. It was around the same time of COVID Angus, when you mentioned where we found that 85% of leaders find meaning in what they're doing, 15% of frontline. Now think about how many more people do you have on the frontline versus leaders? I don't know. The last I checked there were 12, 15 senior leaders, but there were thousands of frontline.

Yeah, that's right.

And I think in all of your work that you all have done over the last 10, 12 years, I mean, you have so much proof around when that number one, this is possible no matter who you are, what your job is. And second is if you do it, you get more productive, you actually get more resilient.

There's no doubt about this. Yes, I think that the case for this is very clear. I think the question we should be asking ourselves is where do we need to be shining a light so as to move things forward? So where's the crux of the problem as of today?

Yes.

And in the same way as we talked about in some of the other letters, Sharp, there's a specific framing that reflects where the world. And I think it's beyond job crafting. And I'd like to introduce this idea of instinctive benefit finder. Once you've crafted something, that means you've practiced the art or the science of reframing. Reframing is this idea that instead of looking for activities with meaning, I look for meaning in my activities so that I choose to reframe how I perceive the existing thing. And job crafting is an example of reframing. The point is, however, it's not something that you do once, it's something you do a thousand times a day. And by doing it a thousand times, it becomes an instinct. And you go about your days being. Becoming an instinctive benefit finder. Every instant in your day is an opportunity. I have a story actually. I was once in York going up in an elevator to a meeting. I was actually in the Empire State Building, but not, not to going to the viewing deck, just going for a meeting. And it was like 5 to 9 in the morning. The elevator was full. And very unusually the elevator kind of stopped somewhere like in between two levels. We were kind of stuck. And you don't know you're going to be there for an hour, what's going to happen? And there were two young men, the suited men with their New York style ties and stuff. They looked like they were going for job interviews. And I saw two very different reactions. One guy started banging on the alarm button and shouting and sort of making threats that all Sorts of stuff. The other guy, young booted guy, he just started striking up conversations with people in the elevator. And after 90 seconds, the elevator carried on and life carried on. One guy was an instinctive benefit finder. So you know what? It's not every day I'm imagining this is what he's thinking. It's not every day we kind of, we're locked together. Maybe I can share a few business accounts, meet a few people. Who knows, stand my network, maybe just meet five people. That was the response, the instinctive benefit. Find the response. And we have to take ourselves to a point in our lives where that's, that's the instinct. We're reframing all the time, seeing the good in what we're doing. And I think that's, that's the opportunity for us all. Now, as leaders, we need to create environments that help people do that. So there's lots of interesting questions about what this means for leadership, but I think in terms of individual behaviors, that's what we should be aspiring for.

Yeah, and I think that's what I love. I think that's where such a beautiful compliment, right? Because you're like, look, if you're able to get a leader to work with you and do job crafting, that's great. But it's up to you again to become an instinctive benefit finder. You don't need anybody's permission to do that because you're not talking about changing what you are doing, you know, you're not changing, talking about changing your work to something you love. You're talking about loving the work that you're doing right now. Find something in it that ties to, you know, in what ways is it really, really helping? Just keeping an eye on time. Angus. Look, I'm not going to give it away. I think what I loved about this work and this framework is when people engage and do this work, they multiply their leadership potential, they multiply their effectiveness. And I want you to tell me what that multiple is, because it blew my mind.

Well, yeah, I mean, you heard me talk about non linearity before or maybe exponential, but we love this idea of the 10x leader. 10x 10x 10 times more productive. And again, this is really emphasizing that we're not scratching a few percentage points here. That's not the game, that's not the prize. We're taking ourselves into a completely different place. So the appropriate meta 45 is 10 times more productive. And this is possible. Just imagine you are a person who's found their magic and not anxious about the things they're not very good at. You're a person who's dripping with vibrant energy because you're really being intentional about your recovery. You're a person who's not wasting hours of your day throwing hours out of the window through distraction because your mindful engage, you're zoomed in and focused. Massive uplift. A person who's really engaging authentically and positively so you can collaborate in teams. And this person who's this driven, who's got this energy that comes from being this instinctive benefit finder as opposed to somebody who's maybe just going through the motions and doing the minimum tries here, is huge. And think of this in terms of a personal operating model. It's a way like we, like we refer to this disposition. It's not a set of skills, it's not even a set of behaviors, although of course there are linked behaviors. It's a disposition. It's a sort of way of viewing yourself when you wake up in the morning and get out of bed. And that's the helping people transform their disposition. Dispositional leadership, if you like.

Jane. Jane Dutton, in her research on positive organizations, talked about this zone of possibility, zone of potential, right? This, this massive triangle. And friends, if you are listening to this, both for you as individuals, but as leaders, tune into that. What becomes possible if every one of your people operated at 10x their potential?

Great question.

That's the possibility for you. Not 10% better, 20% better, but 10x better. What would you be able to do? How would you be able to serve your clients? How would you be able to overcome the problems that you're facing? Angus, I'm grateful, my dear friend, for almost 14, 15 years of the pioneering work that you started. You started this work when these concepts weren't even being talked about. Partnering with TAL to build a system that organizations could implement at scale. We're just two and a half years into our journey here at Happiness Squad. I'm grateful to know you, I'm grateful to learn from your lessons and for your generosity. Thank you for being on this podcast, sharing this powerful framework and for all the wonderful.

It's a joy and I hope we can do lots more together. This is the joy of our existence, is we get to collaborate and more collaboration is a good thing. So let's do that.

Thank you. That wraps up another episode of the Happiness Squad podcast. We hope you found the insights actionable to enhance your journey towards happiness and fill your life with more joy, health, love and meaning. Please consider leaving us review and share the podcast with anyone in your professional or personal life who you feel will benefit from some of these very insights. It's a really simple way to extend support and spread positivity. Take care and remember, happiness is a choice that's available to you moment to moment in the here and now. Take care and see you next week.