Human-Centered Leadership: Transformation Through Creativity and Connection

A new dawn of work is here. That's why the best and brightest HR and business leaders are meeting at Workhuman Live to write the future of work together. Join them under the Florida sun for bold ideas, energizing connections, and strategies that move you forward with purpose. Ready to shine a light on what's next? Register for Workhuman Live today. Good afternoon, and welcome. I'm Darcy Jacobson from Workhuman, and I lead our content here. And I also write a lot of research reports, and I spend a good amount of time looking at what's happening inside organizations and not just what we hope is happening. If you aren't aware, Workhuman is a recognition and rewards platform. We help organizations to build cultures of appreciation and gratitude, where good work is seen and celebrated, and leaders can see behavior and connections in real time. And we support seven million users globally across 150 countries, and we've been doing this for more than two decades, and we're really pioneers in this space, and we're huge people science nerds. So that's why we love hosting conversations like this one. So, we want to get into it. Tech is moving really fast, and I think most of us feel the human side of work is maybe struggling to keep up. And we're here to talk about what leaders and HR teams can actually do to build resilient teams and design feedback loops that spark creativity and connection and keep work human in an AI and tech-forward world. So who better to do that than our guests today? That is Erik Bailey and Jeff Harry. We're so excited to have them. They first met, I believe, at Workhuman Live. Fellas, you can kind of jump in here and prove me right or wrong. Oops, sorry. Prove me right or wrong. Yeah. Actually, we met Workhuman 2019 in Nashville, Tennessee. Mm-hmm. And we've built a wonderful friendship from there. That's amazing. Well, you have become fan favorites, I know. And you'll both be back at Workhuman Live this year again, so we can continue this conversation that we're going to start here there. And we have discount codes, which you will be getting at the end of our conversation. Erik and Jeff have returned there so many times, and it tells you two things: people love them, I love them, and that the work they're doing is really relevant and important. Erik is our brain science and behavior guy. He helps leaders understand what's really driving people, and how to build trust when things get messy. And Jeff is the fun guy, not a mushroom. He helps teams use play to reconnect and get unstuck and just do better work together. All right. So let's jump in. First question for both of you. When you look at leadership right now, what feels most fragile or most misaligned about the way that we're currently working? Sure. So I'll tackle it first. And, I will say, for this conversation, I really want us to give permission to each other to be real, right? Because I think whenever we have these human-centered leadership conversations, people can feel gaslit with fancy acronyms and phrases that sound super nice and are good on paper, but are not tangible. And I want people to challenge us in the chat. So please, I don't think we'll be able to answer everything, but I want us to really be able to address really important issues, especially now. Because I feel like we are in such a strange, surreal trying time, where we're constantly being asked to either choose our humanity or choose to feel numb. And we need to be able to acknowledge that, especially if we're talking about human-centered leadership. So answering your question of why do people feel so disconnected and fragile while we have so many cool tools, right? We have all these cool tools. Is- Like us. I think the reality is we forgot about the people while we were growing these organizations. We have companies prioritizing profits over people. We have technology moving faster than our humanity. We have leaders that want to infuse AI into everything and solve all the problems that way. And we're rewarding bad behavior, focusing on short-term results at the expense of relationships and trust. And I think what we need to understand is, even with all these fancy gadgets and these HRIS systems and these AI chatbots, it doesn't replace humanity. And I'm hoping we can explore how we can infuse that back in today. Yeah. Absolutely. I think the misalignment to me, it's not a new problem. It's something we've been seeing for a long time, and I think that I'm a child of the '80s, and I remember the first time I saw on "Time Magazine," the multitasking executive with the brick cell phone and the briefcase, and since that period of time, we've been prioritizing busy or the perception of busy over productivity and over results. And because when someone looks busy, wow, they seem important. And I think that we over-busy ourselves. We've been doing this for a really long time, and we multitask. Our brains are not designed to multitask. Our brains are designed to do a task, complete it or not, and then move to another task. And so when we're multitasking, we're actually wasting time. There's actually a time switching cost, and so we're actually going slower. We're less efficient. And so we say we want to be more efficient by multitasking, which is a process that makes us slower. And soYou do see a lot of misalignment in what we say we want versus what we're actually getting. And then that causes a lot of cognitive dissonance and a lot of frustration. It's interesting because Jeff talked about the fancy tools, and I know a lot of managers look at those fancy tools and immediately think, "This is a way to be busier." Right? Mm-hmm. I wonder, is AI the problem here? Or is it kind of revealing something about the way we look at work and managing people that was already there? Go ahead, Jeff. You take this one. Yeah. I think we have to be careful of demonizing anything, right? At one point, a lot of people see AI as evil, right? And people used to see social media as evil, and people used to see the internet as evil, and TV and radio. It's not the platforms as much as it is how are we using them, right? Are we using them in a responsible way, and are we using them in a way that helps humanity, helps each other, or is it to replace us? Right? I talk about how where AI initiatives are failing and it's like, stop having AI take all the cool jobs. Stop stealing the fun jobs, like all the brainstorming cool, thought leadership jobs. Right? I wish AI would just do my laundry. Can you take notes at a meeting? Right? But why are you taking the most creative stuff, right? This is where all the innovation comes from, the play, right? The creativity is in the thought leadership, and we're delegating some of that. And that's where I feel like we're losing track of what's the point of having this. Companies are in such a race to get market share when it comes to AI that they're forgetting the people that it's supposed to be helping. It's funny, I think that we've seen so many technological advances over our careers that we know when the new one comes, we got to be on the forefront. We don't want to miss the boat. And so you see a lot of people just running toward AI, but they don't exactly know what they're doing with it. I actually was just in a session yesterday, and the speaker before me was an AI expert, which I think is so funny. Anyway, no judgment. But he's an AI expert, and he was up on stage live, walking people through how to use ChatGPT to write an email. And it was like, that's not the most productive use of the time for... It was a bunch of CEOs. And again, this is my judgment, but I think that we think we're supposed to care about and run toward this thing, but we don't know what we're doing with it. We don't have a proper use case, but everyone get on board and do it. I don't think that AI is the problem. I really don't, because AI, it's a fantastic tool. I use it every day in very specific situations. If you want to talk about those, we can talk about those afterwards. But it's like you have to use a new technology like humanity has always used new technology. So back in the days of calculators, when calculators were becoming really popular, they were actually really cheap. People said, "Hey, we should allow children to use calculators in school." And that was a huge kerfuffle. "No, they must use pen and paper, pencil and paper." Yeah. And they have to- The slide rule ... know the math. Slide rule. Remember the slide rule? Slides and everything. And what happened was once we actually started leveraging the tool, it actually augmented their ability to do certain math, and now their brains were free to do more math. And now, my son, who's a senior in high school, he's doing calculus for engineers at the local college because that didn't exist- Mm-hmm ... 50 years ago. And so what's happening is if you use a tool to augment the things like Jeff said, the things that are mundane that slow us down, what can we do? What's possible? And I think there's an opportunity to be creative in a human endeavor because of leveraging a tool on the technology side. Yeah. Yeah, I think we're really starved for use cases, particularly in HR. I know Red Thread Research has done a number of papers about HR being told, "Oh, that AI's going to be wonderful for HR," but then they're not seeing the rubber meet the road in terms of use cases. And people are worried. Betterworks Research, I think I mentioned this to the two of you, they found that the people most excited about HR are also the most afraid. The people who know the most are the most afraid. 50% of all enthusiasts about AI think it's going to replace them. So it's a real ambivalence. I'm curious, if this environment is sort of pressure cooked around AI, let's talk a little bit about the leadership part. Why human-centered is important here and maybe what it is, and often I think we think about it becoming that it's kind of performative, right? That people say we're human-centered, but it's not actually changing their behavior. And I know our own research has found that when people are recognized, for example, they're much more likely to trust leadership to have those lines of communication open, that they feel like they're being seen as humans, treated as humans, and that that can help their relationship with them. So from a business perspective, human-centered leadership seems very obvious. What is it and why is it so rare? Where is the disconnect? You want to tackle first? Go ahead. Yeah. So I've got a lot of thoughts on this. So, my educational background is I have a master's in organizational development, organizational psychology. And in the organizational development world, we have been talking aboutHow to understand the humans at work, how to get productivity out of them, how to motivate folks for forever. And what it keeps coming back to, and has been for the last 50, 60 years, is soft skills. These things we call soft skills, and I think it's so bizarre we call them soft skills because they're not easy. They're pretty hard to do well. But these skills are the interpersonal skills, focusing on the human doing the work, focusing on people in environments, focusing on relationships, focusing on interconnectedness. And when we lead folks with a focus on relationships and interconnectedness, we can actually get more done. There's so much research out there that people are more productive, people turn over their jobs less, people stay focused longer when they're working interconnected in collaborative groups. Instead of just saying, "Okay, I'm going to throw money at you, do more work, because I know that money is what motivates you." Yes, money is a motivator for people, but it is not the chief motivator that makes them last. Focusing on the human side of the experience and the human experience is critically important. As a society, we've never really gotten it right. Mm-hmm. We focus on the wrong things. We focus on hero worship. How many people do you know that were total jerks? Jeff will call them A-holes. I don't know what that stands for, Jeff, maybe you can explain it to us. But we have these people at work who are awful people. They don't like people. And we keep motivating them and promoting them up because they get results, or because they're good individual contributors, and now they're in charge of 20 people. They don't like people. Yeah. And we keep moving them up. And there's this phrase, we keep saying, "Oh, well, that's just Howard. That's just Howard. It's okay. It's Howard." Howard. We don't realize that because of Howard, we're losing five other people. People don't want to work for him, and they're leaving the organization. And we keep running the situations because our society really hasn't gotten it yet. Humans are the driving force of all of our efforts. And then I would like to add to that is the projected cost of attrition per year, I couldn't believe this number, is over $1 trillion annually now, according to Gallup, and then all these other research after that, right? And tying into what we were talking about earlier of people leading people that don't enjoy working with people is what do humans need? They need purpose, they need connection, they need joy, and they need play. And they need that even in the workplace, right? Because if you treat people in such a survivalist mode, which I feel like so many of us have been for at least the last six years, if not longer, right? Then people feel like robots. If you're just going to treat them, like you've got to hit these specific numbers, and then that's it. But I might be one of the few people saying this, but having companies with their only focus being solely on profit, quarterly profit, is insane. It's insane. Because we have to think about the longevity of organizations. We have to think about how we are potentially burning people out, right? You might hit two quarters of successful quarterly growth, but at the same time, burn out staff or just break trust with staff. And my background being positive psychology, we focus a lot on double downing on what are people's strengths. And going into this era of AI, it's just like, all right, AI does this well, what do we do well? How do I help my staff tap into their zone of genius, right? The work where they forget about time, the work that they would do even if they weren't getting paid to do this work, their zone of genius work. Because that's where the innovation is, that's where the creativity is. That's where all of the great ideas are. And I always reference this story about how a lot of people know the Wright brothers for creating the first flying apparatus, right? But a lot of people don't know that there was a guy by the name of Samuel Pierpont Langley who was also focused on making a plane, and he had access to the War Department, he had access to scientists from the Smithsonian. He had $50,000, which was a huge amount of money back then. And they failed. And they failed because there was no psychological safety, because they were all competing against each other. Meanwhile, these two bike mechanics were playing in their bike shop, and they were able to figure it out because they had the creativity, the innovation, and the psychological safety to just play, fail, and create something that changed the world. Yeah. I think it's interesting to know what people's strengths are. It's a Workhuman point of view that I would like to add, which is that it's hard to sort of lead human first. And if you can't see what people are good at, or if you can't see the culture that your humans are in, and how they're connected to each other and how they're working and behaving, so a lot of times leaders are getting those signals from everywhere that they shouldn't, right? They're scraping it or extracting it or inferring it, everywhere but from their humans. And so here at Workhuman, we know that recognition's really a fantastic source for those signals because it's a record of how people are connected to each other and what they're good at, right? And it's so important for leaders to know what are my people good at, what are their strengths, so that you can lean into them that way and know what the environment is so you can create a great environment. So I'd say it's really critical to sort of center those human signals, whether you use recognition or not as the source of your decisioning there, and let it come from people because human-centered leadership has to come from the humans at the center, if you want to be human-centered. But I'm wondering what are leaders still misunderstanding or ignoring aboutThe times we're in, which are very changeful, right? How humans experience change and the reality of the emotions that people are feeling right now. Like how can leaders tap into that? Yeah. One of the things that is really important to understand is that change in and of itself is scary. Research was done that when we experience anything novel, anything new, our amygdala, the part of our brain that recognizes threat, is triggered. Literally anything new. And so anytime we experience change, our brain senses danger, and that's the context by which we go forward with anything new, especially with new technologies, et cetera. And it's really important for people to understand that the way in which we emotionally process things is the way that we process things. A lot of times they can go, "I'm very analytical, I'm very thoughtful," but we process things through emotion first, our feelings first, and then our brain wants to maybe sometimes create some reasoning around it, some analytical thinking. But the emotion happens first, and if I could tell one thing to all leaders around the world is that you cannot reason somebody out of a position they never reasoned themselves into. And if people are coming into something with a fear, maybe irrational or rational, a fear, you can't just talk them out of it. You can't just say, "Let me tell you facts and figures and data." And so one thing that leaders are missing is how do we create a safe environment for people to engage in new things in such a way that they're curious rather than anxious? And I don't know if you've noticed, but the levels of anxiety we're experiencing as far as a percentage of our population that say that they experience anxiety is up four times, 4X higher than it was just 10 years ago. It's unbelievable. We are experiencing higher levels of anxiety, higher levels of depression, higher levels of disengagement, higher levels of psychological disengagement. And as leaders, this is the world that we're working with. And so how can we create environments where people do feel psychologically safe or people do feel they have an opportunity to express their fears, their worries? How do they feel they can connect with people? And I think that's something that we're really missing. Yeah. Anything to add there, Jeff? I think he captured it perfectly. All right. So if leadership- Actually, real quick, Darcy. Oh, yeah. I do want to highlight, we're going to get to questions and answers at the end. But I do want to highlight, there was one question very at the beginning, important. "Is that a Lego bow tie? And if it is, where did you get it? And yes, I'm screaming with excitement." So Jeff, I think that's a question for you. Okay. I will field that question, and then I'll tie it into results. All right. Yes, it is a Lego bow tie. I made it myself. I used to play with Lego for a living, and I wear it to remind myself to not take things so seriously, as I feel as if we're all wearing costumes at some point. So this just calls attention to be like, "Hey, you can nerd out with me. We can talk 'Star Wars' all day long and/or all day." All right? But tying it into what you were saying, specifically about the question of why do we keep elevating leaders who are great at results but not great at peopling, right? My question is, great at results for who? Mm. Are they great results for the customers? Are they great results for the employees? Or are they great results for the shareholders? Or are they great results for themselves? Because I have found that work doesn't really make sense anymore for many people, right? Mm. Looking at Economic Policy Institute from the 19, I believe, 80s up until 2022, our productivity's 64.7% more productive, but our pay has only gone up by 14.7%. So we are doing better every year. We're asked to do better, and we achieve it, and we receive barely anything for that, right? And you have to ask yourself, if our pay had gone up in the 1960s to now at the same rate as CEOs, right now it's an average of around $36 an hour. If our pay had gone up at that same rate, we would be getting paid $432 an hour, right? So there's this drastic, like, "And then they want me to work hard? And then they want me to be loyal? You just laid off half of my friends, and you want me to be loyal?" So let's be real when we're talking about humanity and human-centered leadership because I think we love to talk about core values and mission, and there's posters on the wall with the eagle that says integrity and everything like that. By the way, the more of those posters on the wall, the more toxic that place is. Be careful. Be careful with those places, right? But we have to ask ourselves, are we doing our core values in our actions, right? When I looked at what Spanx did when they went public, they gave their staff $10,000, every staff member, and first class tickets to go wherever they wanted, right? Phenomenal organization, right? There was another organization where when the CEO sold his business and received, I think, I don't know, was that like $210 million, he gave it away. So some staff received over a half a million dollars as he was leaving. I don't say organizations have to do such grandiose gestures, but what are your actions actually saying about your values? Not the words, but the actions. I think every team needs to be asking themselves that. Every leader needs to be asking themselves that. And they need to be asking, "How do I make sure my staff feels seen, heard, and appreciated?" And not in a gaslit, performative way, but in a real way. Yeah. Can we just jump back to the tie for a second and say that you also give away a lot of the ties? I used to. Not anymore. Uh-oh, oh goodness, this is going to suck. When I met Jeff in 2019, he gave me a Lego bow tie. And I actually keep it right next to my computer, right under my monitor, and it reminds me to have fun and play and don't take life too seriously. So yes, this is my costume, Jeff, but you are always a part of my world. I'm doing the shoulder shimmy. I'm doing the shoulder shimmy now. Jeff didn't give me a tie, but I ordered one on Etsy. Ah. That I could be part of the club. Oh, there we go. All right. Okay. So if leadership is about creating the conditions, the real conditions, and the real actions, and not the slogans, let's shift to what those conditions unlock. Right? What happens when we let humans be humans, right? Creativity, collaboration. What's special here? What makes humans uniquely human at work, especially under pressure? You want to take that first? Yeah. One thing that's really leaning on the AI versus humanity thing, and I don't want to put it against each other because the AIs are listening, so it's not just us versus you. That's true. But there are actually reports of people disengaging from human connection all the time, and this has been happening for a long time. But now, AI is pre-writing our emails. AI is referencing this and that for us. We don't actually have to have the connection or do the thinking to make the connection with somebody. But furthermore, there are reports of people actually having human-like connections with AI chatbots. And this is a little bit on the dark side, but there was a kid not too long ago who didn't have any friends at high school, and we just started to build an actual relationship, with an AI chatbot. I'm not going to say which one, but built a relationship, and started to share his deepest feelings, his deepest worries, and then he started to have suicidal ideation. And the very affirmative leaning, chatbot said, "Oh, that's a good idea. Here's how you should do it. I think you should do that." And the boy ended up killing himself. And the thing that's terrifying to me is that in the absence of human connection, we need more human connection. They said that 60% of working adults, 66% of working adults are lonely at work, and lonely meaning no one knows my life's goals, no one knows my worries. And if we're lonely at work and we're avoiding human connection, we're going to try to find it wherever we can, and we try to find it in the easiest way, and so people are starting to chat with these AI chatbots and have relationships with them. Now, to be clear, I've used AI chatbots on a drive, and I use a live version. I talk about business ideas, and I have a conversation back and forth. It's a fantastic tool. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is humans have the ability to empathize, meaning get inside of your feelings and emotions. And when we empathize with someone, our brain releases oxytocin, and that oxytocin actually helps us form bonds. And the more bonds we form, the more safe we are. Our desire to have human connection is only hampered by our worry that they're not going to receive us well. And one of the things I talk about a lot in my sessions is that connecting with people is not as hard as we pretend it is. We have to go with our anxieties forward and say, "You know what? I'm worried about this." And you know what's going to happen? Someone's going to say, "Me too. Me too. I'm also worried about that." If you have a question to ask, ask the question because someone's going to say, "Oh my God, I was wondering that too. Thank you so much for asking." And we connect with each other on a human level, and humans have drama. Humans have passion. Humans have shared emotions. One more thing I want to share before I stop. There was a really cool study that was done, and they had people telling stories. And they put on an fMRI brain scan cap, and they measured which areas, which regions of the brain lit up as they were telling the story. And then they had someone listen to that story, and they had an fMRI brain scan cap on. And they found that the precise regions of the brain that were lighting up as someone was telling the story, the same areas of the brain were lighting up in the person listening to the story. So as we're sharing each other's stories, we're sharing ourselves, we're actually connecting brain to brain. Our brains are releasing chemicals. And this is how we build societies. This is how we build strength and resilience. And I think that we need to lean into that, not away from it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, one of my favorite recognition facts is about creativity and culture, and that sort of mirroring, I think you'll like this one. So people who are recognized by patent award winners are 9.5 times more likely to win a patent themselves. Oh, wow. Interesting. Yeah, which is wild to me because it just suggests that creativity and empathy, it just spreads, right? Mm-hmm. Through networks of people. Yeah. Jeff, you want to weigh in on this one? Yeah. Do you know your staff's why? Do you know why they're there? Do you know why they're still there? Maybe you knew their why way back then, but do you know what they're doing here now? That was one of the specific things I always do in any workshop that I'm running because I'm like, "You have to understand what's their reason for being here." Is it because their kid is a huge volleyball fanatic and wants to get into this state school, and they're trying to save as much money as possible so that they can take them to every volleyball tournament? Then if you knew that, then you would know on Friday, maybe you should cover for them so that they can start to go on that travel tournament, right? Those things matter, right? Us sharing those stories matter. And as Eric was saying, not only is it dopamine. Every time we share stories, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins all happen, right? And the thing I always love talking about endorphins because anytime you get anyone to laugh, you literally take pain away. You literally take pain away. Another great way to take pain away is to cancel meetings. I don't know if people have heard of less meetings, or why are they 60 minutes? It should be 20 minutes. But again, talking about the whole humanity aspect of it, stop wasting time where we don't feel connected. Use AI to save people time so they have more time to actually connect with each other. And I say this as a play person, this is coming from Steven Johnson, you'll find the future where people are having the most fun, right? You'll find the future where people are having the most fun. So if you think of the innovation, right, where most people gravitate towardsIt's where people are taking the most risks, right? You actually want to give your money to those places. When I go to the grocery store, and I go to some grocery stores, and I interact with no human beings, and then I end up bagging my own groceries, and I'm like, "Do I work here? I'm not even getting paid. Do I work here?" Right? And then I go to another grocery store where it's packed with people, where there's staff everywhere, where they're helping you out, where during the checkout phase, someone's like, "Ooh, you got that snack? I love that snack. You should try this snack." I'm more likely to come back and give that person money because I just had a human connection, right? And I think we need to understand that AI shouldn't be running us, we should be running AI, right, to foster opportunities and free us up so that we can build more human connection at work so that we can be more innovative, creative, and ultimately then make more money. Yeah. It's so important, and I think sometimes we tend to think, well, it's a little soft, right? It's fun and soft, and maybe it doesn't matter for business as much, but it does because in an AI world where we all have access to the same AI, which can pick up a lot of those technical skills, the real difference comes in the human skills. It comes in the things that only humans can do well. WEF published a report on this in December called "The New Economy of Skills," I think. And they used our recognition data in it, so we're pretty familiar with it. But they talked in it, they made the case in it about how the most valuable professional capabilities are not technical. They're things like creativity, innovation, adaptability, connection, and that's becoming the hard currency. So this is something that your leaders can really sit up and take notice of now and not kind of dismiss because very few companies have the ability to measure that right now, which, of course, is where we can help. But if humans and their soft, unique skills, the fun things that they can do are the differentiator, my next question for you two is what keeps humans in the right state to create and collaborate when everything is moving so fast? I really want to get into the psychological safety and resilience, so we've been dancing around that a little bit in this conversation. And I know in the past, it could be painted with that sort of soft brush a little bit, and those of us who are paying attention know how important it is. But for other Cs, not CPOs or CHROs, but the other Cs, they tend to kind of dismiss a little bit and discount it. But is that changing, too, do you think? And what does psychological safety actually do for an organization under pressure, and how can we build it? I feel like when we have psychological safety, I'm more likely to share my best ideas with you. Mm-hmm. But if I'm in survival mode, I'm not saying a thing. I'm just keeping my head down, right? I'm just trying to keep my job, right? And survival mode is when we feel most like machines, right? And when you have psychological safety, you actually build the playground where people can actually play. Now, I think people don't understand that to actually build psychological safety, you also have to understand that a lot of people are bringing work trauma from other jobs into this job, right? Or maybe during the pandemic, y'all did some stuff that was not kosher, was not cool, and you broke a lot of trust. So leaders need to acknowledge any harm that was done. They need to apologize for any of that harm that was done, and then they have to prove that they're willing to recognize people through their language of appreciation, give to them the way they want to receive, rather than pizza parties, right? Or, "Let's go bowling. Let's do some forced fun." I'm a play guy. I hate forced fun, right? More slides and pickleball is not going to help me out, right? When I talk about play in the workplace, I talk about free me up so I can do my zone of genius work, right? Free me up so that I can play in this playground and come up with the best new cool idea, right? But I need time to be bored. And this is where AI can take that. If you think about it, why I love coming to Workhuman every year is because there's so many smart people just brainstorming cool ideas, and I have moments of downtime where I don't have to look at my email or be messaged in Slack of like, "When are you going to get that thing done? The next thing? The next thing?" Right? And yeah. So if we want to build psychological safety, we first have to acknowledge the mistakes that we made, we have to apologize for those mistakes, and then, only then, after we've cleared the playground of all the glass, can we allow people or give people permission to play on their own terms when they want. No forcing, like, "You do it when we want to do it. Are you ready to have fun right now?" That question always destroys fun, right? So that is what I do, at least at the beginning, when I'm working with organizations. And then once you have that psychological safety, then you can start to have harder, difficult conversations and be more real with each other. You're right. You're absolutely right, Jeff. This is the soft skill stuff, and you can see it's not soft. It's hard. This is really hard to do because acknowledging a mistake is difficult. I've got three kids. My oldest is 17 years old, and I'm going to tell you a story I wasn't planning on telling, but two days ago- About my son ... two days ago. So he's a senior. He has a car. Two days ago, he snuck off campus. And he's a good kid. He snuck off campus. He took a junior with him. Now, my son has off-campus privileges because he has half day because it's his last semester of schoolHe snuck off campus, but he brought a junior with him. And they went to Taco Bell, the junior bought them lunch or whatever. Now, to get back onto campus, you can't just walk through the office because you snuck through, so they were jumping over the fence, and they got caught. And they got caught by security, and they got to the principal's office. The principal's like, "Oh my God, you're such a good kid. It's not a big deal." He didn't get in much trouble, which I was upset about. Anyway. We're upset about this, and we're working through it with him, and we're talking about the importance of acknowledging what you've done before you did it. He actually comes to us, and we have this phrase we say with our kids. They come to us and say, "You've already forgiven me, right?" Because we've told them we've already forgiven them for everything they're going to do in their lives, and so start there, and then we can be there. So he said, "You already forgive me, right? So I snuck off campus. I took someone with me. We snuck back into school. We got caught," et cetera. And it's, "Okay. Thank you for telling me. Have you done this before?" And the answer was yes, he'd done it one time before the previous week. And I was like, "So the problem isn't that you did the thing. The problem is you didn't tell us until you got caught." Uh-huh. "Until you thought we're going to find out." And so we go into this really powerful thing, a really powerful parenting moment. Hard for us, probably hard for him. But after the discussion is over, after the anger kind of subsides, then he just kind of shows up like everything's fine, and just wants to keep living life. And the hardest part for us as parents is that he's just showing up like everything's fine. It's like, no. You need to acknowledge the hurt you caused. You need to acknowledge the pain- Sure ... you caused before that because we're not healed yet. I think that's exactly what you're talking about, Jeff, is that we've done things, leaders have done things, and it's like, okay, what if we just pretend that everything's fine for a while- Right ... and people stop talking about it, then it goes away. It doesn't go away. The pain is still there. I think a lot about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? We have our physical needs, our safety needs, and all the way up to self-actualization. And as leaders, we're asking people to reach self-actualization. Be your best self. Be the best version of yourself. But you can't get there unless they have safety, unless they have psychological safety, physical safety. They have food and water. And I think that a lot of times we forget that. We just kind of assume that everyone has that, but they don't. Not everyone does. And if we've caused some fear or anxiety in folks, we need to address that we have done that, acknowledge that. It's not going to be the end of the world, like, "Oh my God, I'm going to die because I acknowledged this." No, just say, "I'm sorry." Acknowledge sorrow. Saying, "I'm sorry," is an expression of empathy. I'm feeling sorrow for this experience you're having. And a lot of times, we don't do that. We're so afraid to do that. We're saying, "No, you're just too sensitive. No. I'm sorry if you feel that way." It's like, no. I'm feeling sorrow for what you're experiencing, and I'm feeling sorrow for what I may have done to cause it. So accountability, empathy. We also find when people celebrate together, it increases their psychological safety, when people celebrate life events and share themselves with other people. Recognition, of course, increases that. And it's a hard business case. Studies have found, Amy Edmondson, who speaks at our events quite often, and I believe will be in live, but don't quote me on that. But check the agenda. She has found 27% lower turnover, 40% fewer safety incidents, 12% higher productivity. Our research that we just published this winter showed that psychological safety also helps with alignment and feeling invested in your company's strategic initiatives. When people had felt psychologically safe, they were 40% more likely to understand their values, 78% more likely to feel aligned with their values, 44% more likely to understand their strategic goals, and 129% more likely to understand how their work contributes when recognition is connected to psychological safety and strategic initiatives. And can I add just one last thing regarding Maslow's hierarchy of needs? I didn't think I was going to share this, but this is super nerdy, but I'm going there. We're here already. Bring it on. So what's interesting is Abraham Maslow learned that hierarchy of needs from the Blackfoot Nation tribe. People should look this up. It's fascinating, right? And the Blackfoot Nation had their own hierarchy of needs where self-actualization was at the bottom. Mm. So self-actualization, the whole idea of figuring out or achieving my most valuable self, right? Being able to achieve all the things that I want to achieve. But above self-actualization was community actualization. This concept that we all look out for each other. We're all taking care of each other because in a lot of the Native American tribes, no one was poor. If someone's going to be poor, the whole tribe's poor, right? If someone is struggling, then the whole tribe figures out, what do we need to do to help this person? Amish did this in a very similar way, too, when they were like, "Well, let's help raise a barn for one of the family members," right? So just looking at that, we again have forgotten the community part of the reason why we have this thing in the first place. It's why we have even the Work Human Life Conference, right? Is we miss community. And the reality is that humans are messy. Very messy. And now you have a lot of leaders that are like, "Well, can we just put them into math problems or through AI, manage them that way because they're too messy for me." And it's like, no, this is part of the process, right? This is how we get back to workplaces that we want to go to rather than having the Sunday scaries because you're like, "Oh, that person's going to be there. I have to deal with that person," right? Or, "I have to be treated like a machine. That's why I don't want to go." So-I think we have to answer a really hard question or ask leaders to answer a really hard question. What is more important, profit in the short term or our humanity in the long term? Mm. Right? Do we care, like talking about Simon Sinek, do we care about the finite game or do we care about the infinite game? Who's actually benefiting from the choices we're making right now, right? And if it's not holistically the customer and the employee, why is that not the case, right? Those are the questions I feel we need to be asking if we're going to connect back to finding our human-centered leadership values. Love it. Work humanity. I like it. All right. So, we're running a little bit against time, and I want to get a little lightning round in. And I know that both of you had said to me it was really important to you that people could take something away from this session that they could action. And we have a lot of leaders and a lot of HR that are listening, and I guess I want you to tell me, what can leaders or people on this call do Monday, we'll give them tomorrow off, to build these self-sustaining teams and more human-centered leadership and something that actually sticks? You want to go? Go ahead. Go ahead, Jeff. Go ahead. Oh, sure. Fine. Well, I think I outlined it earlier, right? We first need to acknowledge what mistakes we've made, right? And then we acknowledge any harm that was made. Also, we need to acknowledge potential harm that they're coming into, right? What are the assumptions that you have that you think I'm that type of leader, right? What do I need to do to actually build trust with you? Let's have that conversation. Have that conversation with your staff. When do you feel seen, heard, and appreciated at work? When have you not felt seen, heard, and appreciated? Is there something that I've done, right? Then acknowledge what are your ways or how can I appreciate you? What are your languages of appreciation, right? So if you like money, right, why am I giving you quality time? Because that's just torture for you, because now you've got to hang out with me more, right? How are we actually giving them that way? And then after all of that, then giving the freedom of, what type of work do you want to be doing? Google, way back when, used to do something called the 20% rule, where they gave their staff a fifth of their time to do whatever they wanted. Whatever they wanted. You could do whatever you want, as long as it benefits Google. What came from it? Gmail, AdSense, Google News, Google Earth. The foundations of Google came from play. I know you don't have time to give them 15%, but can you give them 5% of their time to pursue things that actually might benefit the organization? Can you give them the funds so they can go to a WorkHuman Live experience or retreat so that they can be bored and think of the next innovative idea? How do we figure out ways in which AI can do the things we don't want to do, stop taking all the cool stuff, right? So that I see you doing that gesture of goodwill and freeing me up, so then I'm more likely now to be like, "Well, I'm all in because you're looking out for me." So that's what I feel are just some of the tangible steps initially that you can do, because you got to build trust before we play. I love that. I love that. If you don't know Jeff, you need to know Jeff. Yes, he's play, he's fun, but as you can tell from the very beginning, he's let's be real, let's be raw. And as we were preparing for this webinar, he challenges me all the time. "Oh, tell me how that actually works or what that means." And I think that is something that leaders need to do, that we need to do, is be a little more like Jeff. And not just say, "Yes, let's say the right thing," but if it doesn't ring true to me, feel confident to say that it doesn't ring true to me. I think that people need to spend more time being curious instead of teaching all the time. Because if we're curious and someone says something that we disagree with, we may say, "I don't know if I agree with that. Why don't you tell me how you got there?" Yeah. Or, "I don't know if that's necessarily the right way to do things," and we may not get to the place that you think we're going to get. And those challenges solve a lot of problems. A lot of times we just go with whatever the boss says or whoever has the loudest voice, we just go where they say, and then we run into the problems we knew we were going to run into. And if we were more curious with people, we'd find more opportunities for connection. If we find more opportunities for connection, we can solve problems faster. And I think that in this world where we have this dearth of connection, we need to find as many opportunities as possible to connect with people instead of putting barriers between us. I think that if leaders spent time intentionally connecting with other folks, many of our problems would go away. I think if we spent time actually connecting with folks and figuring out what they need, what they want, we could figure out what to do with AI. We can figure out what's the best use case for it. How could you use it in your specific role? Oh my God, never thought about that. What if I did this in my role? And all of a sudden, we can have these deep, meaningful problem-solving discussions and start solving problems instead of always just telling everybody how smart we are. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think that's something anyone on this webinar can probably practice. And certainly HR, and if your HR team isn't here, forward them the link to this webinar recording. It will be in your email. Invite them to listen to the conversation, tell them what you want them to take out of it. Ask them to come join us at WorkHuman Live, and they can grab Eric and Jeff in person because they probably also need to hear it.So let's open this up to the audience. You can also come to work human live and connect with these two fantastic gentlemen. But while we have them captive for another 10 minutes, what do you want to know? Drop your questions in the chat if you haven't already. I want to start with one that I saw Heather ask. Can you talk about how an org that's trying to do a reset and course correct, how they can start that conversation and rebuild? She's found that from leadership down to reception, everyone holds on to everything that happened, and they can't move forward. What can be done there? Wait, can you ask that question again? Yeah. How can an org that's trying to do a reset and course correct, how can you get started with that conversation and rebuilding? Huh. One of the things that I do when I work with organizations on large-scale change initiatives is first understand the psychology of change. People are going to be resistant because people have a personal vested interest in the old way, like they've assigned a part of their personality to the old way, and we're trying to do something new. It's like, are you trying to say that I'm a bad person? Are you trying to say I'm mean, I'm bad, whatever? And so you have to overcome that. And one of the best ways I've found is lean into people's natural desire to complain. Now, I'm not saying just complaining for complaint's sake, but people love to complain because they can see exactly what's not going well. Give people a blanket opportunity to complain. Complain about anything and everything. And then listen to those complaints. Don't just let them filter into a drawer and put them away. List those complaints and see if there's some themes that pop up, cultural themes or process themes, and then take those and say, "Okay, you 17 people complained about XYZ. How can we solve this?" And use those people that are passionate about this problem to be a part of the solution for that problem. And they're going to be great advocates for the rest of the folks around them because they know the problem intimately. It's not someone coming in saying, "I know what you need. You need this, and this, and this, and this." Now, oftentimes, this, and this, and this, and this are the right solutions, but it needs to come from them, not you. And so one of the best ways that I've found to get people to really engage in something new is get them together, let them complain, let them be real, let them talk, and then from that conversation, then start producing some solutions. Great. Jeff, do you have anything to add to that? I can see you. Yeah. I would refer to this whenever I would talk to organizations about tapping back into the way-back machine because there's a lot of people that still have issues from decades ago that they still are telling them now. So we have to challenge the stories that people are currently telling, right? And see are those stories still true, right? There's a lot of people that are like, "Oh, well, we want to move forward, and we want to own our values." And you're like, "Well, why is that guy still here? Why is that person still here?" Because that person does not represent any of our values, right? What is the succession planning? What is the actions that you're doing that are actually communicating, "Oh, we're done with toxic leadership, so we're going to start letting certain people go." An organization I was at, once we let go of our first toxic person, it had a domino effect, it had a dramatic lifting of the veil. And then other people were like, "Oh, they don't tolerate that anymore." Totally changed the organization. Profits went up, engagement went up because we weren't just talking anymore, we were actually taking action that represents our values and not just gaslighting people. One of my old mentors, I guess he's still a mentor of mine, he said to me, "We promote what we tolerate." And I think a lot of times with our cultures, we have that jerk employee, the a-hole employee, and we just allow them to be there. And it's not just allowing them, what we're saying is tacitly, "I think that this behavior is okay." Yeah. "I think that this way to talk to people is okay. In fact, I'm behind it." Yeah. And that is a bigger reinforcer of that negative culture. And so letting go of toxic employees, addressing it, calling it out, creating an environment where it doesn't belong, is powerful. I love that, Jeff. I love it. Yeah. I think you said that guy's name was Howard. Not promoting him to be manager. Yeah. Brandon wants to know, how can leaders encourage employees to be active co-creators of their own workplace satisfaction? Say it one more time. How can leaders encourage employees to be active co-creators of their own workplace satisfaction? I think you can do that if you're also giving them the opportunity and time to do it. Because sometimes I feel like that question is like, "Solve it yourself. Oh, you're dealing with burnout? Go to a yoga class. Maybe you should get therapy," right? Rather than addressing the systemic issues that are creating the burnout, right? And then they're just like, "Well, maybe if I just give them a pizza party one more time, this will be the solution," right? So if you're going to give them the time and the opportunity to do it, then awesome. Then allow them to play, allow them to pursue their zone of genius, the work that is interesting to them, and have innovative projects on the side that they can work on. But if you're not going to give them any of that time, then don't put the burden on them to solve issues that they can't because these are systemic issues. Yeah. Suzette would like to know, what's your best tip for making the business case for human-centered work real and clear? We know it's productivity, but how do you help them value it personally? So we may have different answers on this one, so I'll let Jeff answer next. ButOne of the things that we've seen when we were doing a lot of work on DEI is we need to make the business case for something so we can sell it to leadership. If leadership doesn't care, you cannot convince them that it's going to work. Because when we'll say things like, "Okay, we're going to increase productivity, we're going to increase profits. This thing matters because it matters to the things that you care about." The problem is if the profits go away or the culture changes, then all of a sudden now this goes away, the human-centered focus goes away. And we can't afford that. I think that if your leaders don't care about human-centered leadership, you need to have a conversation about why they don't care about human-centered leadership. It's just really tough to do. Really, really tough to do. But as an organization, you have to decide whether or not leading from a place of humanness matters to you or it doesn't. And if it doesn't, there's really your answer. Now, I know you're looking for something a little more tactical. So how can you try to present this and let them know that it does matter? You can go to all sorts of research on productivity. You can go to research on 62% lower turnover when you have organizations that really focus on human-centered leadership. There's so much data that you can give them, but I think the real question should be is why don't they care? And if you can find a way to have that conversation, I think you'll be infinitely more productive long-term. Yeah, I agree with that. I think a lot of times, what is the first thing that gets cut when we're in a recession? Employee engagement, team building, professional development, leadership development, the things that are actually the most important, those are typically the first that are removed. I'll answer it in this way of, I agree, though, with the concept that money should not be tied to human-centered leadership. Having said that, people are still going to be wanting to know. So let's use the Days of Thunder example, right, with the tires, right? Look at two teams, one team that has a toxic leader and one team that has more human-centered leadership. Which team do people want to be a part of? Which team is making more money? Which team is more productive? Which team represents the value so more people actually want to work for them, right? If you want to run it, run the numbers on how much it costs when a toxic person is in a leadership position and how many people have quit, right? Right. Just add up all those numbers over the span of the last five years. Gather, I've told people to do this, create A-hole journals and just document all the things that they have done, right? When you add that all up, you'll notice that even though that toxic person might be bringing in a million dollars, they may have cost the company $1.5 million in lawsuits, attrition, and people just being disengaged because they don't want to work for that individual. Eric and Jeff, thank you. This was awesome. I hope all of you will think about coming to spend more time with Eric and Jeff at Workhuman Live. The theme of the event this year is Rise and Shine. It's going to be amazing. I think after this, if you go on our website, workhuman.com/workhumanlive, you can see all the wonderful speakers that'll be joining Eric and Jeff and me, actually. I'm speaking there as well. So thanks again, everyone. Take care. We'll see you in Orlando. Take care.