151 | Building Employee Loyalty That Lasts | Scott McInnes & Stephen Baer

You can either build your company with Velcro, and by that I mean, you know, it will stick fast. It will, you know, it might be convenient, it might work until too much pressure is applied, and then it will kind of come apart, and that's when people leave. Or you can spend a little more time and a little more effort and build it with glue, right? And that takes, it takes time and certainly requires chemistry, but when things get messy and things blow up, it holds.

At Inspiring Change, we help our clients build work cultures that bring out the best in their people. We created this podcast to share real stories and insights from those who are shaping better workplaces every day. So grab a cuppa and pop in your earbuds wherever you are. You're very welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast. We're excited to have you with us. Hello there and welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Really, really nice to have you. Thanks for joining. Before we get into my guest today, just my usual broken record, I know ask of you lovely listeners, please, if you get 20 seconds, 30 seconds as you're listening in whatever app you're using, just give us a rating and a comment. Really, really helpful to get the podcast out there. And then in return for you, hit the follow button in your app, and that means that any of our new or updated pods will simply land directly into your feed. You don't even need to go looking for them. Today's guest is from across the pond. Stephen Baer is the founder of Engagency, And Stephen's work is all about strengthening, very much like our work actually here, inspiring change, all about helping to strengthen employee engagement with a view to, I suppose, building trust among customers, which I guess in turn will drive higher organizational performance. Stephen's also recently written and released a book, Stickology: How to Build Unbreakable Connections with Employees and Customers for Life. He also has his own podcast, which we'll stick a link to in the show notes for after. And I guess for Stephen, I mean, certainly from having read much of what was in his pre-read. The big, the million-dollar question is why do people stick with companies or walk away? Stephen, you're very welcome to the pod.

Well, thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be here. And obviously a topic that seems to be a passion for both of us, so should be a good conversation.

Yeah, definitely. So look, let's start with that million-dollar question. Why do people stick with companies or walk away?

Well, let me just say, actually, I think it's a trillion-dollar question. And you know, the number's $8.8 trillion of lost engagement every single year due to quiet quitting. Or, you know, Gallup poll shows that 79% of employees are disengaged. So, you know, what's making the remaining 21% stick around? I think it really is human nature, right? And, you know, I think about companies that kind of set up how they're going to get people to stick around. And you can either build your company with Velcro, and by that I mean, you know, it will stick fast. You know, it might be convenient, it might work until too much pressure is applied, and then it will kind of come apart. And that's when people leave. Or you can spend a little more time and a little more effort and build it with glue. Right. And that takes— it takes time and certainly requires chemistry. But when things get messy and things blow up, it holds. And so, you know, the companies that are doing a really remarkable job of prioritizing their people, and I don't just mean, you know, on paper or on a wall, but really prioritizing their people, prioritizing their middle management to make sure that they are empowered and learn how to help those below them and, you know, and really grow those below them. Those are the companies that are winning. And everyone else is taking shortcuts and they might hit a quarterly number, but they're often getting leapfrogged by the companies that are taking care.

Let's talk about that Gallup stat that you called out there, that 4/5 of people are disengaged and only 20%-ish are engaged. That number hasn't really changed in all the time that I've been running Inspiring Change or even the years prior to that. Why is that, do you think? We talk about engagement so much. People like you talk about it. Millions of people are talking about it all around the world. There are engagement plans and engagement surveys and staff surveys and everything else, but that number isn't shifting. In fact, arguably, I think it's getting worse.

Yeah, yeah, it is getting worse. Yeah.

What's going on?

So, as I look at it, I think that there are 3 really important components to any business's success or failure. Um, one is to define a purpose that everyone can believe in. The second part is to have a strategy that everyone can commit to that relates to that purpose. And the third one is developing your people. And you can't out-strategy a lack of purpose, and you can't execute any of the above without great people. Where I think most companies fall short and why I think that there is a tremendous amount of disengagement is that that middle management layer, which is so critical, is not fostered. It's not grown. And in fact, 60%, according to Gartner, 60% of new managers fail within 2 years because of insufficient training or lack of leadership skills or inability to delegate or, you know, poor emotional intelligence. You name it, right? There's a laundry list. But that layer is so critical Because there's the old saying, people don't leave companies, they leave their managers. And if you're not going to invest in that middle layer, that's going to help connect the dots between what the boardroom says is our purpose, our vision, our mission, and what our people are doing every day to understand how they fit into that. And you're not going to build that layer to help grow those people day after day, then you're going to lose them. Little things, right? We talk about how especially younger generations expect consistent feedback. So an annual review, that's not going to do it, right? You need to be giving them feedback daily, good and bad, but constructive nonetheless, to make sure that they understand where they have opportunities to succeed and what things they need to do to get there. And make sure that they feel like they're taken care of. Right. So I think that's a big part of it, Scott.

If I look back to the conversation I had with Madison Grimsby from Gallagher in episode 150, we kind of dissected a little bit and there was a huge amount in the report, but we dissected Gallagher's State of the Sector report, which was released just recently a few weeks ago for probably— I mean, I've probably been looking at that report similarly to Gallup for 10 years, more than 10 years, 15 years. And forever it has said exactly what you said there. Fundamentally, our middle managers are really, really important when it comes to sense-making for the organization, when it comes to driving engagement, when it comes to really effective communications. But only something like 1 in 5 companies was actually investing, putting money into helping their leaders be the best they could be at doing that. What is going on? Like, why aren't companies putting their money where their mouth is? Or why don't maybe— what's your take on why organizations don't see the benefit of that enough to warrant putting money into it?

Yeah, well, I have a few thoughts on that, Scott. I think the first thing is that many people who make it into managerial roles, as you and I know, are great performers, but that does— individual contributors. But that doesn't necessarily mean they're great managers, right? Just because you're a great individual contributor doesn't mean that you know how to foster that same behavior or output in people who are going to report to you eventually. So I think that, you know, often companies make the mistake and, you know, it's an understandable one until it's made over and over and over again. Right. But the mistake of saying, well, this guy or gal is a great contributor, they'll be a great manager, they'll get lots of people like them. Well, that takes, that takes certainly some tutelage to make sure that they can get there. I also think that many companies are pressured right now to take some major shortcuts. I think also there are generations that are still in leadership that have the mindset of what the top says is what the bottom does. You know, they don't need to be fostered. They don't need to be taught. They don't need to be trained. They don't need to be, you know, their hands don't need to be held. And the reality is, is that one, I think that hierarchical approach often doesn't work in today's day and age. You know, younger generations are a lot more vocal than previous generations have been. And younger generations want that feedback and younger generations want to have a voice. And so, you know, there's certainly some things that are competing with each other here, if you will.

Yeah, and we definitely— I think those newer generations, and it's really hard not to generalize, but I think they want different things from work. They want different experiences. They do want that purpose alignment. They do want that value alignment, but they want to make sure that they've got all of that and then move on after 2 years. And I guess that can be very very hard. Yeah, that can be hard to drive that level of engagement then if you've got people moving on all the time. But I guess companies have to suck that up, right?

Well, I think they either have to suck it up or they have to rethink about their culture and how they're going to build it so that people don't want to leave in 2 years. You know, I often take the, the Think Different ad campaign that Apple had in the early '80s, and I really actually think it's so applicable to how we treat our employees, right? It's a tribute to the crazy ones who think different, right? And while it's a marketing campaign, it could certainly be used as a playbook for how to run a company. Honor individuality, celebrate curiosity, question norms, encourage dissent, expect breakthrough ideas, right? And you're basically saying, look, to all of your employees, I give you agency. I'm gonna show you what I want to build. And I'm going to help you think about how you can contribute to that build. But I'm also going to step back as a leader. And, you know, I'm happy to meet with you. I'm happy to encourage you. I'm happy to give you feedback. But more importantly, I'm happy to trust you. And when people feel trusted and people feel empowered, they rise, they rise up and they, you know, they fight for the businesses that are giving them that. And the ones who don't, they're happy to go leave. And so I, to me, that feels like an easy decision for any company to make because the results often, you know, pay for themselves. There was a Great Places to Work study that talks about companies that do just this, right? And the 3 stats that I always return to is the companies that take that approach, that really focus on their people, empower their people, train their people, They see 8 times more revenue per employee. They have 1/3 the amount of turnover, and they outpace the S&P by 3.5 times. So look, I've run 2 companies. As a leader, why would I not take that approach? Why would I not, you know, think about that as my first and last way of doing stuff? Because when my people feel empowered and pleased to be there, they're going to outperform anybody.

Yeah, and trust is a massive thing. I was actually only doing a workshop over the past few days with a client, and we were talking a lot about Lencioni and the 5 dysfunctions of a team. And of course, anybody who— if you don't know that model, go off and have a look and read the book. It's a really, really good book written as he calls it, as a leadership fable. But the very bottom of that pyramid of his model is trust. And he basically says you can't have conflict, commitment, accountability, and high performance unless you've got trust. And I think what's really interesting, and I agree with you, Stephen, those leaders who trust their people to get on with it, who can set a very clear north star, a very clear direction, can take that strategy, can sense-make it into something and make it relevant to their teams, and therefore give the team something to be all pulling towards. I think that's brilliant. And we can give trust But I think staff, people, employees, and organizations have to believe that they are trusted. And my sense is that often people don't see that. They don't see that people are trusted, and therefore, they kind of go, well, I could take a risk. I could try and push things forward, but actually, it might go wrong, and therefore, I might not bother. I worked for a big organization for a few years. I remember one of the CEOs standing up and saying, you know, look, it's good that people fail. You know, we want people to fail because if we're not failing, we're not trying hard enough. And everybody in the audience was going, yes, absolutely. But in their head, they were going, but not me. Somebody else.

Well, you know, I love WD-40. The way they approach stuff is there's no failing. It's a learning moment. And if we treat it like a learning moment, in fact, that's the origin of their business, right? The reason they're WD-40 is because the first 39 times it didn't work.

Right.

And they finally got to the formula that worked. And so that, that is—

I didn't know that. That's brilliant.

Yeah. And that's the foundation of the way that they think about stuff. Right. There's, there's— we're always going to learn from our failures. In fact, you know, I come from prior to starting my own businesses, I come from the video game industry and I love video games because why do people stay in front of video games and fail over and over and over again? Because they're safe places to fail and you learn each time and you try it a different way the next time because you learn what doesn't work. You know, I think, Scott, about the, the companies that are, that are taking this approach and it's, and it's not necessarily even just the companies that do and the companies that don't. There are companies that have transformed dramatically. Two examples I happen to love and I talk about often. One is Microsoft. And I think about under Steve Ballmer versus Satya Nadella. Right under Steve Ballmer, it was an extremely toxic, competitive environment, really slow on innovation, very low morale. Right. But Satya Nadella came in and he really turned that, that culture into a collaboration culture. Innovation rebounded significantly. And it wasn't just Stephen or Scott's success. It was our team's success. Right. And that's really important. And if you look at the, you know, the financial success of the business under those two leaders, Cytadelic, I mean, it is just crazy how much spike there was in both revenue and profit. And if you take the same comparison of Home Depot and you look at Bob Nardelli and you look at Frank Blake, under Bob Nardelli, he led with fear, intimidation, micromanagement, right? He certainly gutted employee autonomy, right? But Frank Blake came in and he had a totally different approach. He built trust with the frontline workers. He walked the floor. He went to every store over and over again. He was really known for his servant leadership. He'd write thank you notes to hundreds of employees every week, you know, so same thing. If you look at the charts on their true leadership skyrocket in both revenue and profit under Frank Blake. And so I think it's about the tonality that starts at the top and you think about leaders when they walk into a room, what is the tone of the room? Does it change? Does it change for the positive? Does it change for the negative? Do people get nervous? They're nervous, that's probably not a good sign for the culture. If they're excited and they're ready to share and they want to, you know, show what they're thinking or push back on something that's not working, that I think is magic.

I was working. Yeah, absolutely. I was running a workshop. For a client a few weeks ago on accountability, and we were talking about it, and I said, anybody got any experiences of where it worked really well or maybe didn't work quite so well? And somebody put their hand up and said, we had a CEO, when they walked in the room, and the exact words they used were, when they walked in the room, the temperature dropped. Yeah, like being that— I mean, imagine being that CEO and thinking that that was the impact you were having on roomfuls of your staff. And I think probably that's Perhaps to the Microsoft example you were just talking about there, that's like the Ballmer effect nearly. Gates went, he built up the company, Ballmer comes in, runs the company. And I wonder, was it less about what Satya Nadella then did to kind of rekindle that spirit, or was that spirit always there but Ballmer had put a kind of a lid on it and was just pushing it down and people were just waiting for that spring for Nadella to come in and they could then reblossom.

Yeah, my guess is it's a mix of the two, right? I mean, obviously it was such a long period. Bomber— under Bomber's leadership was about 10 years. And so, you know, I imagine a lot of the people had come and gone at that point. But you think about that industry, that industry is filled with just brilliant people who want to create stuff. They want to— they want to change the world. They want to change the way that we do stuff every single day, right? So why not tap into that? You know, one of the things that I, obviously much smaller companies than the ones that I've led, but my philosophy has always been whether you are 20 years my senior or 20 years my junior, I have something to learn from you. And you know, the more that leaders are open to what people can teach them, because we all have different experiences, different insights, different, different ways of moving things forward or approaching things, you're gonna see a lot more success. You're gonna see a lot more innovation. You're gonna see a lot more excitement from your employees because everyone feels like this is partially my business. And that's what you want them to feel.

Well, as people and as leaders, are you suggesting that we are getting in our own way because we are just not allowing those conversations to happen? We're not allowing space to say, I think perhaps we should do it this way. But do any of you have any ideas of how we might do it better or differently that I might not have thought about? Is it just that those conversations aren't happening?

Well, I would even change the way you said it, right? First of all, I don't think those conversations are often happening, but with all due respect, I think one tweak to what you said is I wouldn't want to say I think we should do it this way because that's automatically going to make people say, oh, well, should I dissent? Right? So it is, Hey, here's our goal. Here's what we're trying to get to. I'd love to hear from all of you about how we can do it. What's the most effective way? Let's figure this out together, right? You know, that way you're putting nothing in there other than opportunity for people to contribute. And I think that's what people want to do. People want to have an impact, right?

If we think that, so I agree. If we think that what we need to do first of all though is make sure that we've got a really clear, And you said earlier on, purpose, strategy, and then developing our people. For me, having that really clear purpose, but having a strategy that people care about, because often, so often, and we see this all the time with our clients, strategies are just boring because they're not written for the average employee. They're written for boards or regulators or shareholders or whoever. They're 90 pages and they're written badly. How do organizations go about actually communicating their strategy in a way that makes people want to care?

Well, once again, I think it's that middle management that's critical, right? They're the ones who I think can most effectively connect the dots between that mission, vision, purpose that's up top that maybe came out of a boardroom and what's actually going to happen down below. What's the strategy? How are we going to accomplish this? And by the way, it might be accomplished very different in the finance department versus the marketing department versus the sales department. Um, there are those 3 stats, right, going back to having a great purpose, having a great strategy, and having engaged people. And so I, I, I, I love the comparison when you think about scenario 1, where you might have a, a score of 100 and an absolutely amazing purpose, and, uh, you know, maybe an 80 for your strategy, but you have really poor employee engagement because that middle layer hasn't engaged them to participate, and we call that a 30. If you multiply all those, you get $240,000. But if you take it and you say, once again, I have a great purpose, I have an okay strategy, because they give it a 60 instead of the 80 that was in the first scenario, but you have 80% of your employees participating, and you multiply all those, you have twice the, twice the score. And so You really need high, middle to high scores on all 3 of those components. Great purpose, great strategy, great engagement. And if you don't have the great engagement, no matter how good your purpose or strategy is, it's not going to be pushed forward.

What makes a great purpose?

I think, well, I think to me it is tapping into both your employees and to your consumers Wants, minds, needs, right? So I, you know, it's funny, I think about the brands that I have stuck with for years and years and years, and they're the ones that I can relate to, uh, the ones that, uh, you know, stand for something that's special, uh, and it makes me come back over and over again. And that's as a consumer, right? And it almost is, you know, multiplied tenfold if you have a great purpose internally, right? But the reality is your consumers are not even going to be there. They're not going to buy in if your employees aren't bought in, right? So I always talk about kind of like the, the, the engagement cycle, right? You need to have a great purpose that is going to get real employment engagement and buy-in. And when you have happy, successful, enjoying, you know, enjoying life employees, it is, you know, it's infectious. Customers will feel that and they will often mirror that. And by the way, when you have upset, annoyed, disengaged employees, same thing. That's infectious, right? So which one would you rather have? You want to make sure you have a purpose that people can get around, right? And that people feel great about and that it isn't, we're going to make a trillion dollars. It's, we are going to change the lives of these people. We are going to move this industry forward. We are going to fundamentally improve X, Y, or Z. Right? So—

Yeah. And I wonder, I was having a chat with a CPO in one of the pharmaceutical companies here about 2 weeks ago, and she said, oh, our purpose is to manufacture drugs that save lives. And I was like, oh my God, you are so lucky to have a purpose like that because that's something that I think we can all stand behind. If we work in a hospital, helping people get better so they can go back to their lives, their families, and their loved ones could be your purpose. But I wonder where organizations— so, I suppose where I'm going with this question is around kind of purpose washing, I guess, and maybe the weaponization of purpose that sometimes organizations try too hard that if you're a manufacturer of bricks or you're a manufacturer of toothpicks or whatever you might be, but it doesn't have that same human connection piece, that heart piece that really good purposes have. How can organizations go about trying to purpose-ize, if that's even a word, how do you purpose-ize that?

Yeah, it's a good example. Just going back to the WD-40, and I'm sorry, I don't have this off the top of my head. I was going to look it up while you were asking the question. But their purpose is in many ways almost as grandesque as that pharmaceutical business that you just mentioned. And you think to yourself, you're a can of oil. What are you talking about? Right? Like, you know, that's, but you know, uh, when you talk to Gary Ridge there, you know, the former CEO and, uh, chairman, um, he, you know, he talks about how they want to have impact on this world. And he even talks about how As a leader, his philosophy always was, and the company's philosophy still is today, is I want— and this is not their purpose, but their philosophy is, I want to make sure that I make— I want to make sure that my employees are happy because when they go home, they will most likely have happy families. And if they have happy families, they'll probably contribute to a happy community. And you have a happy community that will probably contribute to a happier world. And I know that you think to yourself, well, that's pretty grandesque, right? But actually, I think, and I told him, it's incredibly cheesy, but it's beautiful. I actually really love that. I love the pressure that is put onto the leadership's shoulders of not just contributing to having 20, 40, you know, 100, 1,000, 10,000 happy employees, but the, you know, the domino effect that you can have on society. And if our leaders put a little more pressure on themselves to do that, I think that, you know, in aggregate, it would absolutely make society a lot better.

This episode is brought to you by Inspiring Change. We work with senior teams to help them be clear and intentional about the culture they need to be successful, to communicate change in a more human way, and to give their leaders the skills, tools, and confidence to be amazing catalysts for change. To learn more about our work and who we do it for, just pop along to inspiringchange.ie. We're doing a piece of research at the moment on disconnection and on the impact that disconnection has on culture. And the research itself with chief people officers throwing up some really interesting themes and reasons for that. But I know having chatted to you before, Stephen, your belief is that engagement trumps connection when it comes to building loyalty and driving high performance. Why is that? Is it that it's one over the other or do you need both or what's your take?

Well, I think that connection and engagement, and then unfortunately, sometimes they're truly defined in a way that maybe is too similar. But when I think about the businesses that are making us connected right? We are more technically connected than we've ever been, right? But we don't get the warm fuzzies out of a text or a, or a, you know, a Slack or email or any, any, you name it, right?

Any of those things, even actually, or even a FaceTime or a video conference, really, we don't, we don't, although I'm enjoying looking at your face here.

But, but I will say, nobody, no guest has ever said that. Well, there you go. It's a first. All right. What, but, but what we really get, I think, makes us feel good and makes us feel good about our managers is those that really are able to emotionally connect with us, emotionally engage us. And by the way, it doesn't have to be rocket science. I talk about middle management doing the following, but I think that leaders and anyone who's overseeing a team or individuals can do this. It comes down to 3 things in my mind. And once again, maybe falling into the corny side, but greeting them, knowing them, and growing them. And so what do I mean by each of those, right? At the end of the day, I think it's so important when I'm talking to someone to make sure that they know that I'm really thinking about them. And I'm not just thinking about them when I'm talking to them. Scott, it is great to see you. By the way, yesterday I was just thinking about you. I was thinking about something you said a week ago. It kept me up at night because it was really interesting and I see how we could apply it to this business. Well, then you know that I'm listening to you. I'm thinking about your contribution. I'm really considering how can we use that. That is simple. That's a really simple thing. So that's on the greeting them side. Knowing them. Take the time to know them. You know, I talked to another author probably about a year ago who I just fell in love with what she said here, she did, and I do today, I have all of my employees write a user manual. And so what is that? I mean, literally, what makes them work? What makes them not work? What motivates them? What ticks them off? And I don't just mean in the office. Who's important to them at home? You know, what are their priorities? So that I know as their boss and their colleagues know how to use them most effectively. And where they're gonna break down and make sure that the entire team, when you're kicking off a project, just reviews these user manuals so that we know as a team how we're gonna go forward most effectively. And I know as a manager how I can make sure that I'm tapping into where you want me to and staying away where you don't. So that's knowing them. And the last one is growing them, right? And this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, but There is a gigantic disconnect between the mission, vision, purpose that is determined in the boardroom and then what people do on a daily basis. So grow them, help make that connection between this is the big picture, this is what we wanna accomplish. You're amazing at this. This is your job. Let's, let's, let's make this your KPI for this quarter. Let's really dig in and do that. And let's meet once a week. Let's, Think about how are we doing this? Let me help you. Let me coach you. Let me also get out of the way so that you can just do it. If you want feedback, I'm here. Greet them, know them, grow them. And no matter who you're managing, I think that those 3 things are critical.

Yeah, brilliant. And really simple. Really, really simple. What do we do about the people? And we know them. I suspect you, from having chatted to you for half an hour, Stephen, I suspect neither you or I are these people, But there are other people that don't necessarily want you to know them. They don't want you to know the ins and outs of their life. They're quite private, that work is work and home is home and ne'er the twain shall meet. And actually, I come here at 9:00 on a Monday morning, I leave at 5:00 on a Friday evening, and I don't really think about work in between those times. So, what about those people? How can you connect with those people really effectively to help them get their work done in a way that they need?

Yeah, I do think that you can still accomplish at least the minimum byproduct there with making sure they understand the big picture and making sure that you understand from a professional standpoint what they like to do work-wise, where they shine, where they're nervous, right? If you don't want to tell me about your husband or your kids, I get it. That is your— that's your business. But while you're here, let's make sure that We are growing you and we are leveraging the things you like to do and we're not asking you stuff you don't like to do. Or if we are, we're doing it with good reason that we both agree on. Right? And so I think that's just important, having at least a slight conversation there within their comfort zone.

I think it just highlights as a leader your level of empathy that whilst we're making, you know, everyone else fill in these user manual forms, actually you just might not. We might do that on a day when you're not here because I know that you're not comfortable with that stuff. Tell me this. When I think about sensemaking and I think about how we bring strategy to life, of course, I think for people like you and I that do the work that we do, storytelling is a big part of that, is creating stories and building stories and telling stories. What's some best practice that you've seen around that?

First of all, I agree with you. One, I think it's about celebrating those within the organization that are bringing forward what you want to, right? So it takes, it takes a village. And I think every single time you can celebrate John or Mary who might be super junior, but contributed to a project, let's talk about what they did. And by the way, let's give them some applause and let's And let's give people reason to think that, oh gosh, I see management's looking out to see everyone's contribution. I want to, I want to be spoken about. I want to be, I want to be celebrated. So I think that's first part of it. I think also the more that you can really show the customer impact and, you know, talk through, you know, the success stories, not just inside your four walls, but what you're hearing from outside, the more that you can draw that connective tissue between what you say and what you do and how it impacts people both inside and outside your walls is important. There's, every company has dozens, hundreds, thousands of stories to be told and everyone who's contributing deserves to be recognized, celebrated.

And those customer stories, marketing has drawers full of them, but they're rarely, in my experience, handed over to internal comms so that we can use them internally to really start to drive, you know, recognition, to really start to drive pride, and ultimately, I guess, drive engagement. Stephen, in finishing up, because we're nearly out of time, what would you say are the top 3 things if I'm a leader in a small organization, say, and I'm looking and I've got a sense, because it is a sense, it's a feeling perhaps, that my people aren't quite as connected as I think they maybe could or should be. What are some of the practical things that I should be doing?

I think it starts with getting your team outside of the office, sitting down and saying, hey, this is what we're trying to do. This is where we are right now. I think transparency is really important and humbleness is really important. I think saying to them, I think we're falling short here. I don't have the answers to how to do it. But I know that together we can do that. We can figure it out. And empowering people. I think that's probably the most important one. Get out of the office, get out of their way, explain what you're trying to do, and recruit them to help solve the problem. And people want to be helpful. People want to be successful. They want to contribute. Um, they don't want to fear. They don't want to feel judged. So if you can provide a culture where they can stand up and really participate, 9 out of 10 times, they're going to blow you away.

If you want to grab a copy of Stephen's book, Stickology: How to Build Unbreakable Connections with Employees and Customers for Life, you can pop along to Amazon. We will put a link to the book, Stephen, in the show notes. If we want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?

You can reach out to me right through my personal website, stevenbaer.com, and happy to bounce around ideas with anybody. I'm really just truly passionate about this stuff. And if I can be of help, or I can be a sounding board, please, please reach out.

Brilliant stuff. Steven, it's been a pleasure having you on the podcast. Thanks a lot for taking the time.

Thank you so much, Scott. I enjoyed it very much.

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