47 | Measuring emotion to improve employee engagement

Welcome to the Inspiring Change Podcast, where we talk to leaders about all things internal communications, engagement, leadership, and change.

We've come across that a lot in our pitches. People are like, you know, I really like this platform. And if you could just get rid of that question about how people are feeling and why, we would go with you. And I'm like, no, no, I mean, honestly, I've lost big business. I'm sticking to my guns because this is what it's about.

Hi there, my name is Scott McInnes, and you are very welcome to this episode of the Inspiring Change podcast. One of the things that we do at Inspiring Change is help organizations with employee engagement, something that I was introduced to probably back in the early— I don't know what we call the years of 10, the tens. It's not the noughties, it's not the 20s, and maybe it's the tens. Let's go with the tens, the early tens, around 2012, 2013. And you know what, it just made sense to me. You know, when I look back to episode 45 of the podcast where I was lucky enough to talk to David McLeod and Nita Clark, who penned that report Engage for Success back in 2009, it just struck me as just really sensible. Have a really compelling story, have really engaging leaders, allow your people to tell you what they think, and act with integrity. And if you can do those 4 things, then actually you're going to create a really, really engaging place to work. I think probably what's happened now very much is that people have looked back. I mean, that was, you know, that report came out 11 years ago and, you know, people are now saying, well, we did that. We did engagement, we've done that, let's move on. And for me, what was always really surprising was that it became very much about the survey. People got their knickers in a twist in a huge way about the survey, the output of the survey, the outcome of the survey, what scores am I going to get in the survey? And actually, for me, as I've said on this podcast before, I don't really care about the survey. I care what happens after the survey. I care about the conversations that happen as a result of the survey and what's put out there. Again, back to that whole idea of employee voice, of listening to people. So, I'm delighted today on this episode to be joined by Matt Stephens, who is the author of The Engagement Revolution and the founder of Impulse. Matt, hello.

Hey Scott, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Oh, thanks for coming on. Thanks for coming on. You know, and what we're going to get into hopefully over the next kind of 30 to 40 minutes in this episode is just a little bit more on that area of engagement to try and perhaps rekindle that fire and maybe to put right a few wrongs on the whole engagement thing.

We will relight the fire, don't you worry.

Well, let's relight the fire. There'll be no singing, hopefully. Let's, let's just— please no singing, please no singing. Listen, the way I always start these off is just to let people, I guess, let listeners understand a little more about you, where you've come from, and what you do. So why don't you just give us a few minutes on that to start with?

Yeah, so we'll go back to the beginning. I was born.

Excellent, we all were. That's something we have in common, actually.

Now look, I, um, I'll go— I started my career at Aviva, the insurance company. I worked my way up there and I got, um, I kind of got found actually, because I had ridiculously worked my way into being a developer, right? And I am not a developer, coder, right? Um, but you know what it's like in your early years, it's like, what will get me the next career move? What's, you know, how do I kind of earn more money and get up the career ladder? So And I got involved in the values and behaviors, uh, culture conversations within the organization. And I remember being and meeting the head of internal comms. I was like, oh, that's an interesting title, I've never come across that before. And he kind of headhunted me and he came over, he said, look, I've been watching you, I've been seeing you in some of the sessions that we've been in, they're all about culture and values, you've got some really interesting perspectives, do you want to come and join my team, internal comms? 'What is it? What do you do?' Like, so just, you know, classic, 'Is it emails? Are you just sending out emails?' And, you know, that's because that's what it was really in a lot of ways.

And some people still think it is today, in fairness.

I know, you know, a few years on, 20. Um, so, uh, you know, it was, it was just really interesting. And then I kind of did that, but I got to a point, I got to head of comms, uh, in, in Aviva, which was really, really fun. Really enjoyed it, went through some fascinating experiences. I was in in that whole offshoring season in the early noughties to India. And just all the cons around that were fascinating, particularly culturally. And then I left, I became a performance coach because I thought, you know what, I'm gonna change again. And I got really into the coaching, and anyone knows like the Tony Robbins stuff and NLP, neuro-linguistic programming, and really went down that line for probably about 7 years. And so I was then coaching leaders and managers in pretty large organizations, and I'm like mid-late 20s at this stage, so it was a pretty scary place to be at times because, you know, you're standing on your feet in front of 12 senior executives and they're looking at you going, what the hell does this guy know? How the heck's he gonna coach me? And, uh, I'm not sure how I did it actually, but, um, no, I had great fun. And I always used to say, you know, like, how old was Andre Agassi when he won his first Wimbledon? Or Boris Becker? You know, I'd have like 6 or 7 of those. I go through Tiger Woods when he won his first championship. My age isn't really the issue, it's what you do with what you know. And so I was like, that's what I've done. So anyway, did the coaching, and then I moved from the north where I was living in England, in York, moved down near it to London, and I set up what was then Quest Agency, which is very much a communication consultancy. We were looking at 3 things, Scott, you'll resonate with this. We're looking at leadership, culture, and engagement. And was doing it because I was like, every time I was dealing with leaders in these corporates and doing coaching days and all that kind of stuff and programs, culture came up, right? Because it has to, because leaders are impacting the values and behaviors. And then whenever we talk about culture, you'd have to talk about engagement because it's like, well, is it engaging culture? And what's the impact on engagement? And then if you talk about engagement, you have to talk about leadership because it's such a key part of— do you see where I'm going? So I put the three together, I got a little team together, and we started doing some great stuff. And then in 2015, I came up with the idea of Impulse. And that really, Scott, actually plays to some of what you were saying. So we'll bring it to kind of your point about engagement. I was like sick, I was done with employee engagement as it was. I was done with the day of the annual survey was over. I was like, you know, I've written a book about it, as I think you mentioned. And I was just like, the day of the annual survey is dead. We've got to move on. We've got to start doing something different. We've got to stop focusing on numbers and focus on how people feel. And that was really, for me, the big USP. That was my contribution to this debate that we're in and you're part of too, was actually I think you've got to ask people how they feel. And why. And that was a little bit my NLP background, Scott McInnes, because in NLP, how you feel drives your performance is what's believed, or your behavior. And how you feel is driven by what you're focused on. So we'd ask the why question. So when I launched ImpulseWrite, this is hilarious, and ASOS bought it, Unilever bought it, right? It's 2015. All it could do was ask two questions: how do you feel and why? But they bought into like, what a cool concept, how awesome is that? And we had a few other kind of things that made it different, because I felt that the results should be transparent. Because I felt like the day— we were at that point, I think Hillary Clinton's emails were all going around the world, as she was Secretary of State, right? And I was like, everyone can read every single email that she's ever seen, but they can't know the results to their local company survey for like 3 weeks.

Or longer. Or longer.

Or longer, yeah. And I was like, hang on, general elections, right? We vote, and then generally within about 8 hours after we voted, we all know. But somehow, for some weird reason with surveys, we made the people wait. And then of course, you know, that creates that whole like, um, what are the leaders up to? What are they planning? What are they redacting and changing? So I was just like, why don't we just make results transparent immediately? And we were the first company out there doing that, putting them out straight away, live. And then we got all the criticism, ah, it's influencing people. So then we had to go and get some external data scientists in to look at the, you know, basically the patterns to see if there's any patterns, and there weren't. So we're like, phew, it seems that it doesn't influence people. If they see it going negative, they go, yeah, we feel negative. And they see it going positive, they do that. No, it was very mixed. But really the heart of it was, how do you feel about working at Aviva, or wherever it might be, and then why? And the why, Scott, was amazing. Like, people were so pithy. Well, thank God for social media. Thank God for social media, because you and I remember the day where people wrote paragraphs, they wrote War and Peace. And so they put on their, you know, literally their life story about how they were feeling. But social media has just made everyone go, I don't like my manager, they don't talk to me, and I don't get any feedback.

They go, great, perfect, we can do something with that.

We can do something with that. So that was the heart of the system.

Really interesting. And I think actually it's probably something you touched on there, which was the annual employee survey. I think because that became so synonymous with what employee engagement was. It's such a waste of time. People are just scoring a 5 to keep their manager happy. You know, there was a certain sense of cynicism. I think that goes into any survey anyway, but a certain sense of cynicism, particularly around the whole employee engagement survey. And I think that has, as a result, become a bit of a dirty word. And as I said at the top of the, the top of the podcast, you know, when I think back to kind of 10 or 11 years ago, you know, since then I think it has become a word of yesteryear, and people are saying, we've done that now. What do you think about that? Is engagement done and dusted and gone?

Yeah, it's kind of going through a— it's like Madonna, right? It's like having a change of personality. You know how Madonna, every 10 years, or people kind of make a change? And you can see it's changing, taking on some new clothes. So often, people now talk about employee experience as a sort of— often, people get it mixed up. They're like, oh, no, we do employee experience. Kind of the new employee engagement. And then some of our competitors that we're in the marketplace with will talk about culture, some will talk about performance, and they'll sort of intersect and mix it all together. I would say, Scott Wright, through the pandemic and through what we've experienced over the last 6 months, fascinatingly, engagement suddenly came— felt cool again but just accepted, like, almost like we don't need to change the name. It's okay because people got it. Like, are our people engaged with us? How are they feeling? Like, because so many people work from home, but even the people who still have to go out at the workplace, particularly, you know, the blue-collar workers, it was like, hey man, we need to just make sure they're engaged and they're okay. And so weirdly, it kind of, from my experience and my sort of seeing the marketplace, both our clients and Perspective, it was just, it was interesting that people didn't, they weren't going, can we have that new cool thing that say 2 years ago in 2018, '17, '16, they were like, hey man, can it do, is it a Pulse thing? Is it an experience? Now they're just like, man, we just need to know our people are okay. And we think we need to do that by asking them, engaging them with them.

Yeah, and I think it's really interesting. I think when you strip away, if we suggest, I mean, you could suggest that, the words employee engagement have just become a bit of a poor brand because when you strip that away actually and you get out to the nub of it, you know, well, are your leaders good leaders? Do they engage their people? Do they listen to them? Do they do what they say they're going to do? Have you got a really compelling story and purpose? And I was, you know, I was down with, I was down with a client last week who make plastic pots that cream goes in and people's pills and they make bits for defibrillators. Why is that such a hard word to say?

I was enjoying watching you try.

Why, why is that So somebody's dying on the pavement and the person says, can you bring the defibrillator? And everyone goes, what? Just bring the defibrillator quickly. I don't know what that is. So they make parts for those things. And I was saying to them, but like, you don't make plastic parts, you save people's lives, surely. That surely is a more motivating story.

Yeah, what you're describing, Scott, is brilliant. Because what you're saying is there's a lot of factors that go into employee engagement. I fully agree. And actually, over the last, again, 6 months, the factor of wellbeing has gone up exponentially. So it was always a factor within engagement. So how do I feel? Do I feel engaged in the workplace? Am I giving my best? That's kind of for me what engagement is. Am I giving my best self because of all the factors that affect me from my leader, as you said, to the culture I'm in, to the experiences I'm having, to the team I'm with. But what was so interesting was watching that wellbeing factor just go vroom. Right up there when truthfully, in a lot of the surveys we're running, I'm not talking about annual, like regular ongoing pulse surveys, well-being was kind of minimal factor. It was sort of there, it was a bit trendy, like 2, 3 years ago, everyone, oh, wellness, well-being, but truthfully, we weren't seeing its impact within the sphere of engagement. My goodness, like COVID just went, whoa, up there.

Yeah, and I think that whole, I think what's been great, you know, I was chatting to Brendan Foley on a previous episode of the podcast, you know, we talked about, let's stop talking about the COVID emergency perhaps start talking about the COVID opportunity. And perhaps one of the things that's really good that's come out of this is exactly that, is that wellbeing piece and people caring maybe a little more about their employees because they take them less for granted because they're not sitting beside them anymore.

Yeah, I think, I think you're spot on. I think the opportunity is presented. Oh, I mean, let me tell you this, Scott, right? We've got clients who were doing annual surveys They're now doing monthly surveys. We've been arguing with them for 2, 3 years going, guys, come on. We get it because they're a big corporate, they're a big tanker, so they're slow to change and all that. We've been trying to encourage them and influence them. Honestly, mate, it's like now they're going, Matt, we're monthly, nothing less. We need to know each month what's going on. They've also gone, let's stop asking. We only maximum would do 20 questions, and even that's a lot. It'd normally be more like 10, 12, but they're like, no, no, get rid of all that. We just need to get the key factors. Key one, obviously, is wellbeing. So the opportunity it's given is people have realized actually having some regular metrics that enable— and I loved what you said at the beginning— that enable a conversation is key. It is key, right? Because I always use the analogy of— maybe not you, Scott, because I know you've got this huge house over in Dublin apparently, and you live in a castle or something. It's always the image I have, right? But most of us check our bank balance at the end of every month, and we sit down and we get the metrics and we go, okay, how much I spend on my credit card? Okay, am I near my overdraft? And then we adjust and we have a conversation. We go, you know, Matt, stop going to the pub, you know, whatever it might be, because we see that we need to make some change. But the metric, right, isn't in a sense the important thing. It's still key because you need it, but that enables the conversation. And that's how I put it to clients. Like, it's just giving you something so that you as a team you as a manager then can go to your team and say, hey, here's what we can see. We need to adjust this because obviously, you know, whatever it might be.

Yeah, yeah. And just for clarity, I do have those— I don't really have that. It's not really a conversation that I have at the end of the month about finances. It's just my wife telling me, who does the review, to stop spending money willy-nilly on things that we don't need anymore. So yeah, so that's—

Kit Kats, how many Kit Kats can you buy?

Yeah, that's kind of how that conversation goes. Yeah, yeah. Loads of Kit Kats. So tell me, so you've mentioned the word culture a good few times. And when I put out a bit of a poll on social A couple of months back, one of the things that people said they wanted to hear more about was the impact of things like leadership, engagement, internal comms on culture. So, for you, what role does all of that play in creating great cultures?

Oh, it's just, it's huge. And, you know, there's an old saying, everything rises and falls on leadership, and it really does. And I know we live in a world of bottom-up as well as top-down, and that is so crucial. So don't hear me just saying leaders at the top, but there is no doubt the influencers, which doesn't mean the badge people, you know, the title, but the leaders have such a huge impact because, you know, people watch, people watch and they see, they observe and they understand what is valued and they understand what's not valued. And so, You know, even the sort of— I can't say who, but an investment bank who's been going through some things recently. I've got a friend who's a very senior there, and he's just like, we're doing this performative nonsense of making all the employees come in 3 days a week.

Oh God.

And because we're trying to show that we're all back to normal and everything's fine. And I can't mention them, but, um, you know, the global company.

Yeah.

And, and he's, he's kind of going, the conversations are ridiculous about— but it's being led by the leaders who are going, I want the people in, right?

Because I don't trust them.

Oh yeah, yeah, totally. Largely, the presenteeism is how can we know how they've done. Now here's where, here's where it gets really interesting. So you know that to be true, their half-won results were the best— I've got to be careful because you'll start to work out who they are— but some of the best like 10, 12 years. So it's really thrown a spanner in the works because the data suggests that actually you can trust your people and actually they can work from home because they were, they were obviously in lockdown. But, but they're still— but, and so this is when you, when you say about, you know, what creates culture, leadership has such an impact on it. Because then what people realize is, okay, like my friend said, I just got to turn up the office. And Matt, do I want to go? No. Do I want to risk it? No. Do I even want to have to? I've got two young children, I want to be there on the evenings almost. But no, I'm going in because It's expected, but that's how it works.

Yeah, for sure. And I heard, I heard a similar story about, um, a, a U.S., uh, multinational with offices in London, where the offices in London line was, listen, you know what, I think, you know, if everybody can come in just one day a week, just to show willing— they actually said just to show willing to the U.S. that, you know, we're doing the right thing. Yeah, like, yeah, to make people travel 3 hours on trains, to not spend time with their families, to spend 7 quid on a Pret sandwich, to spend tenner on coffee to all that stuff, and arguably put their health in danger, and danger that doesn't have to happen.

Have to happen. And let's just build on that, right? Because then you've got things— let's go a little deeper. Then you've got things like, can I give my leader feedback? Can they receive it? Or is it a no-no? Because we know here— so guess what? You get a culture where— in fact, there's a very famous case of this, Korean Airways. Where there was, I think it was a crash in the '80s, and it was because no one would tell the pilots. The co-pilot wouldn't tell the pilot he was doing something wrong. And then they looked into it and they went, the culture doesn't allow for those below to talk to those above and to be able to give that kind of feedback. So they completely changed the culture, credit to them, completely changed the culture. That is ridiculous. If you've got the data and you've got the information, then you need to share it regardless of your hierarchy.

And it's very interesting, a friend of mine who's just become a pilot, he's sort of become a captain, he's just passed his captain's exams last week. When he was doing his final sessions in the simulator, when things go wrong like a bird strike or you're leaking fuel or whatever happens that they throw at you, his first, the first place that he went was to turn to the right-hand seat where his co-pilot is sitting and say to the co-pilot, what do you think? Which, as he said, gave him a bit of time to think.

Yeah, really good.

But also empowered the person in the right-hand seat who's an up-and-coming captain eventually to have their say and to feel involved and to feel as though, well, you know, the captains maybe aren't the guys up there in the ivory towers. You know, they're looking for my advice, my input. And of course, that feels good.

Yeah.

That feels good.

No, totally. I love that. It's a great example. And then let's go deeper again, another layer. Purpose, right? So people do what we know, we know all the books, but people, like the books are really good, like people read them, and then the reality stays the same. And I've been around a lot of leaders who've read lots of books, are they putting into practice? So when the rubber hits the road and when you're right there and you're giving— even if, let's give an example, you're giving a town hall— do you refer and start and keep referring to purpose? Or really, do you just get to numbers? Because Scott, how many times have we been in, in those kind of situations, right, in our careers, where we go, right, so what we all understand is it's all about the numbers, it's not really about purpose, so therefore cut corners, do whatever is required Don't worry about it's actually about saving lives, or it's actually about helping. It's just really about hitting the numbers. Yeah.

And look, you can put values, company values in that same bucket as well, alongside closely aligned to purpose. And of course, from a leadership perspective, you totally expect— one of your values is respect. The first time that the MD walks past you, you say hello, and he ignores you, or she ignores you. All bets are off. Done.

Yeah, yeah. Here you go. Gotcha. Gotcha.

How does that work? Yeah. Your feedback's important to us, and I'd really appreciate it if you could please take a couple of minutes to rate this episode of the Inspiring Change Podcast and perhaps leave a few words of feedback. Thanks so much. So let's talk a little bit about measurement. Is we kind of threw the annual survey under a bus earlier on. I do still believe though that that whole idea of what gets measured gets done. And measuring engagement, I know from an Impulse perspective, is one of the things you're really passionate about. I wonder, for me, it's not the be-all and end-all. And I think what's really interesting is that in the book, you talk about data being useless without action. So I wonder, from your perspective, what's the action and who's doing what to who? What are you expecting to come out of the end of that survey?

Yeah, I think the, the, the, um, just, just backing up slightly, um, that gives some context. So for us at Impulse, what has always made us unique is that we focus on how people feel and why. And then we do the engagement index, you know, because everyone's addicted to it. So fine, we'll look what's the right engagement index, what are the factors that we should include, of course, you know, totally unhappy with that. And then we'll look at some other things about the NPS. Whatever. But at the core of our approach is how do you feel and why. And that really, for me, because imagine going and saying, well, we're 4.268 more engaged. Well done, everyone.

Excellent.

It's like, you know, this is a sketch. This is a skit. And there's still millions of managers around the world doing that.

Oh, they all, they all have that conversation. Well done, everyone.

Totally. And I wanted to go in and go, um, Fine, we might have that later, but start with, start with, "Hey, I can see from our survey that 37% of us feel excited, and I can see why." The why is because we're looking at the future and we think we've got a great future as a company. "And I can see that 40% of us are nervous, and I can see it's because you're worried about the next 6 months and there might be redundancies." Suddenly, right, you're in a totally different conversation. It's human, It's real, it's relational, it's impactful, it's emotional. Yeah, it's emotional because you talk about how people feel and what that means, because that's how people are living their lives, you know. So when you ask what's the action, well, in many ways it's the conversation. And I say this a lot to leaders, like, what people are looking for more than anything, especially today— just give me an example, and I'm sure you know this— the fastest growing podcast segment is the long form. I'm like, that is fascinating. People are hungry for truth. They're hungry for proper content. They're hungry for proper conversations, right? And that's the same in work. Let me just give you an example in my own company. We've got 20 people, right? So we're not huge, but I think Sam's very, very small company. Um, but one of the things in lockdown we've been doing a lot more is just talking, like just jumping on and we now meet once a week. All together. On the first kind of hour, we call bands, uh, and we just— and then always ends up with bands. You start with banter, and then you actually end up getting some quite good deep conversations, right? And you start to learn, you start to listen, and all that kind of stuff. And also, just, just on that, it's key— when you say action, the action I want is that the manager listens. I really want the manager to listen, to hear what's going on in the room. Yes, you've got to share. So you've got to have some date, something to get the conversation going. And that's why we obviously have the survey, but then it's like listening to what's really going on.

And if you think about then, I mean, I know that traditionally in organizations that look at engagement, one of the things that they'd be expected to do is put together with their team and kind of an action plan, you know, an outline of some things that based on the fact that people are feeling nervous, to take your example, on a step, "Um, you know, what can we do to maybe stop you feeling quite as nervous, or perhaps turn some of that nervousness into positivity and excitement? And let's put in place a couple of things that we'll all commit to doing." What role do you think there is for that kind of form— I'm saying formal with a small f— that formal action planning process? Is there a role for something like that?

There is, but I always caveat it with this. I really love Stephen Covey's circle of influence, circle of concern. So we try as much as we can, as much as clients will allow us, to coach managers to understand that when they get into conversation, there is the circle of concern, which is, I'm really annoyed with Parliament and the decisions they're making, which wherever you are in the world, um, I'm really worried about COVID Total circle of concern, right? Get it. But we've got no influence over it. And what we've got to move them to is the circle of influence. So the things that we can implement. So, okay, we're feeling nervous about the future of the company, but what can we do about it? You know, what are the actions we can take here locally? The reason is, right, if you don't do that, you just— it becomes a bit of a, you know, bitching fest, put it bluntly. And you actually leave more frustrated because you've talked about things you have no control over. You come up with— and you know this, Scott, you've seen this, right? You can then come up with the most ridiculous actions that you know that no one's ever going to be held to because it's like, we will make sure the company does its best. What?

How will you do that?

Exactly. It's just so vague and loose. But you're like, well, because we're in the circle of concerns, you have no idea, actually. So it's hard, this. And it's a real change in mindset. But it's getting people— I've got 3 sons, so I enjoy talking with them about that, even in the sports they do and their school. Well, you know what? You're not the head boy or whatever it is now, so you don't have that influence. So it's just concerned, but guess what, son? If you grow your circle of influence, then you might have some input into that, you know, rule that the school have just introduced.

Yeah, the idea of, I think, of control the controllables is a very powerful one. Yeah. Otherwise, it actually— what you end up doing is driving more frustration.

Oh, totally. Don't you see this all the time? We see this all the time where teams are leaving conversations more frustrated. So my advice to anyone listening question, right, is get a circle of concern out. Sometimes we say 5 minutes circle of concern, bitch and moan all you like, the leaders are this and the environment's that and the economy's this. And they go, right, we're done. Let's get to the circle of influence. Okay, what do we got control of? And get into that.

Yeah, powerful. A lot of what we've been talking about over the past little while is very much in in the more emotional space than the rational space. You know, you're not asking questions like, you know, how do you score your colleagues on their ability to deliver on time? Or how engaged at work do you think you are? You know, you're asking questions like, how do you feel and why is that? Which is very much, you're looking for an emotional response. And I think that companies still really struggle with the emotional side of people despite the fact that that's probably where more of the power lies. Why, why is that? Why do they still struggle with it? And what can they do to try and tap into it a little more?

So much there, Scott. And so starting at the senior leaders, part of it is because we still live in an age where most senior leaders are left-brained, not right-brained. So they're very logical, rational, analytical, processed. Therefore, emotion to them is something to be avoided or ignored. Because they're nervous. I see this all the time. I can't remember if I've ever told you the story of going to a global bank about 4 or 5 years ago, gave the presentation, and at the end, one of the senior execs said, why on earth would I ever want to know how my people are feeling? I was just genius. He went, I don't even normally care how my wife feels. That's what he said.

Did you just turn on your heel and leave?

I was going to have some fun with him. So I said, well, the reason is because whether you know it or not, they feel that way and it's having an impact on their work. So you'd be pretty stupid not to want to know. I didn't win the business.

No, but you got your point across.

But I got my point across. I thought, you know what, I'm happy to lose to kind of make a point because I was just like, that's madness. But to be fair, we've come across that a lot in our pitches. People are like, you know, I really like this platform. And if you could just get rid of that question about how people are feeling.

The emotional bit.

We would, we would go with you. I'm like, no, I mean, honestly, I've lost big business. Yeah, I'm sticking to my guns because this is what it's about. So, um, so why aren't they— left brain is really important, like, if they're nervous. So we've got to help them take them on a journey. And I give credit to some great senior leaders. I'll, you know, Leo Quinn at Alphabet, the CEO, he's a bit of a bastion of British industry over here, and You know what, I remember being in the room with him and he was like, come on, let's do it. I'm up for this. That was, I think, 3 or 4 years ago and I give him full credit for being willing to go into that. And there are others, many others who lent into it. You typically get like ASOS wasn't so hard to convince because you can imagine average age is 23, I think is something very millennial and they were totally up for it. But we have some quite traditional companies who have who've gone for it and been willing to explore the emotion. But I think the left brain is a big part. The fear— so there's still a fear of what do I do with that emotion. I'm like, well, you're kind of having to deal with it anyway, just now you know it, right? So, and the worst thing to do is ignore it, as you know, because then people either just completely switch off or actually they become well poisoners and they go around again gossiping and causing pain or damage to the organization. So Our view is that some of it is the nervousness of getting it wrong. And so again, part of our approach of working with the client is we actually bake in with Dominic Walters, who I think you know, we'll actually do some coaching sessions around how do you have those kind of conversations around emotion? Because it is very different to, we're 4.6.

Yeah.

You know, much better. So yeah, we will actually tool them up and help them know how to go through that type of conversation. And the biggest thing is never to take anything personally. Like, because it gets people so— they get trapped because they go, "Oh, it's at me." It's like, no, no, you've got to have the conversation. You've got to lead and facilitate the conversation.

It is what it is. How you decide to handle that is entirely up to you. And it's interesting when you talk about the fear of what to do with the information. I think that sits really beautifully alongside vulnerability. Vulnerability, which is something as a leadership trait that comes up all the time on this podcast. And we expect our leaders to be a little bit more vulnerable. And actually, maybe in that example you gave there, the CEO who said, you know, why would I want to know? You know, gosh, I'd love to know that, but I actually have no idea how I would handle that data or what I would do with it. Can you help me? Is maybe more of the response people might look for.

So Scott, I love that vulnerability. And I describe— I stole this from somewhere. But so it's probably somewhere very famous, but I like the description of vulnerability as transparency with emotion. And I think that's really, really powerful, that it is transparency with emotion, and that's what you look for people. So as you said, to be transparent— gosh, I had no idea. And actually, if I'm honest, I'm feeling a bit nervous now because I found out you're all feeling angry with me, but I've gotta lean into this and have the conversation with you. That's so— everyone goes, you know, what you find is people will lean into that and go, totally, I want to help my manager.

Totally.

Acting like that. So when they turn up, they go, well, would you believe it, 64% of you are really annoyed with me. What the heck?

How dare you?

How dare you, isn't that right? So true.

Oh yeah, too right. Yes, yes, we do. Yes, we do. We've probably worked with a few of them together actually. And it is, you know, I just think it's really interesting that the power that vulnerability piece can have, that people will, as you say, they will lean in, they will help, they will support, they'll, you know, they'll really help to drive business forward if they know that you need help. And actually, why not? So I mean, if that's one benefit that being a more maybe kind of, kind of emotional company or emotional leader can have. What are some of the other benefits it brings, and why is it important to company success? How is it going to make me more successful as a CEO or an MD in my organization?

Yeah, no, great questions. And so we believe we have the evidence through our surveys that emotional engagement is the highest level of engagement. Now, I can bring you lots of data, but instinctively you know that to be true. So you think about a sports team or a film or a friend that you're engaged with in that sense that you're totally passionate for, but where there's emotion with it, oh, it's strong. Therefore, for business, the impact on the performance of the business is really, really good. And I use actually Belfer Beatty. They've been through some of the toughest times, and yet they're one of the highest performing construction companies. And there is, uh, I'm not allowed to say, um, there's a causation, but there's definitely a correlation between the emotional scores that we've been seeing them get and how they've gone through the last 2 or 3 years, which have been pretty difficult for the construction industry. And actually they've survived and to a degree thrived. Um, uh, and again, there's no doubt there's a correlation there between having highly emotionally engaged employees and the success business success or business performance. So we can see that. I think the other one is it starts to change culture. So this is what's been exciting now because we've been around long enough. It's our 5th year as Impulse. So we're starting to really see some changes. I can't say necessarily across the whole of organizations, but definitely some pockets of organizations. And there's a Norwegian company we work with, a big marine company, I think 10,000 employees. They said it's really had an impact on the conversations they're having, how they— now if you know, it's often Northern Europe, typically not that sort of, you know, emotionally minded.

Very black and white.

Yeah, and so that— but they've said it's really started to change. We had— I can't say which company— but come to us and say, we all now start our team meetings with, how are you feeling? Brilliant. Just a lovely little— so they took the question from the survey because obviously they weren't doing it daily and weekly, the survey, they're just doing it, I think, quarterly. But they said just Every team meeting when we gather, we've said to our people, just ask them, how you feeling? And then why? And just 5 minutes. We're like, man, what a cool idea. And they said, it's just softening and it's making it more human. And you know, Scott, there's a lot, there's a movement out there, rightly, and I'm all behind it for how do we create more human organization.

Yeah, totally. It's interesting. I had, there was a podcast guest on here a few episodes ago who said that she did the same with her teams, went around the room and asked you know, how everyone was feeling. And you weren't allowed to say good or something average, you know.

You use an actual emotion.

How are you? Oh, nice, good, yeah. You know, you had to, yeah, you had to actually say something.

Yeah, it's been better.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Listen, we are, we're largely out of time. It's been a really interesting conversation, Matt. Thanks for coming on. We've covered a huge amount. People can obviously go to Amazon and have a look at your book, The Engagement Revolution. I will put a link to that in the show notes. So maybe you'll see a little spike there. Tell us a little bit about Impulse and how people can get in touch with you.

Yeah, so look, we're a boutique engagement company. We really love working with clients who want to come at things a little bit differently when it comes to engagement. I think that's come across, hopefully, that we want to focus on emotion. We want to work with your managers. Where we want to get into the conversations at the end and help you think about how to navigate them. So they're kind of our USPs. We're not just going to sell you a platform, and our platform's awesome, but we're not just going to sell it to you and say, "Here you go, we're gone." We want to work with you and help shift your culture as we go through the engagement revolution. So, I mean, most people come to Impulse.com, I-N-Pulse.com, and what we find is there is definitely a desire for something relational. And what I mean by that is, in my world, Scott, it's all about just the product and the platform. But we're going, well, actually, we also want to really be a team that you're in partnership with. Because you know me, Scott, we've worked together in a couple of places, and the way you partner together, external, internal, you could do some— I mean, you can do some real damage. I mean, in a positive way, you could do some great things. I was privileged to be part of and seeing some of your journey and things you achieved at AIB. I think we supported that, but actually, it was the team together that enabled things to really change.

Yeah, for sure. Matt, I think we'll leave it there. Thanks very much for coming on the podcast today. I really appreciate you taking the time.

Thanks for having me.

It's been great fun.

Yeah, definitely. Thanks, Scott. Cheers, mate.

Thanks. Good luck. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening. To hear the views of other leaders in our podcasts, to read our blog, or to find out more about Inspiring Change, please visit our website at inspiringchange.ie.