[00:00:00] Dan: Hello and welcome back to We Not Me, the podcast where we explore how humans connect to get stuff done together. I'm Dan Hammond.

[00:00:13] Pia: And I am Pia Lee. Da n Hammond dug. And ask you a question. How happy are you today?

[00:00:19] Dan: Oh, that is actually a trickier question that how are you today? I must say, but, so, yeah, I'm, I'm happy. I'm happy today. I'm happy today. And of course is the theme of today's show. Isn't it, it's almost a sort of, sort of obviously a really important thing. Almost the thing people strive for most of the top of that tree really is happiness, but actually quite a difficult thing to get a handle on. But that's what we're talking about today, which we really, really useful, I think for teams.

[00:00:46] Pia: Happiness now can be like lots of things, get data attached to it. And then we can actually really start to see some interesting parallels. We looked at the data set of Squadify, nearly 3000 teams, and we looked at the question about happiness at work, from an importance and a presence. And there were some interesting findings, weren't there? 

[00:01:11] Dan: It was surprising really because this is through the pandemic and through the move to virtual, to, to work from anywhere. So, um, but despite that the happiness itself, happiness at work, the presence of it actually stayed pretty much flat. What surprised us though initially, was that the importance of happiness had risen. So people are valuing it more, which is fascinating. But what of course this is doing is creating what you might call a happiness gap. So people's expectations of happiness versus reality is, um, is widening, which of course you don't know this, but you could potentially link that to this great, uh, great resignation and the, um, the shift away from organizations that aren't giving aren't meeting those expectations.

[00:01:56] Pia: So who better than to bring along Matt Phelan from the Happiness Index to give us the science behind this. So rather than just a bit of a blurry topic, actually help us unpack what are the key tenants of happiness and why is it so critically important today? So, let's, I want to get in there. I'm going to be happier in the show. 

[00:02:19] Dan: It's going to definitely get in there. 

[00:02:22] Matt. A warm, warm welcome to We Not Me. Thank you so much for being here.

[00:02:30] Matt: thanks for having me off of a pain from a run of having a coffee. So we're all set and looking forward to this, this cards, and then all the stuff we're going to talk about today. 

[00:02:38] Dan: Excellent. Excellent. Where you you're always energetic. So a with a run and a coffee, um, behind you. I think this is going to be a really good, uh, good, good conversation. So thank you for joining us. Um, Matt, tell us a bit about yourself.

[00:02:51] Matt: Um, so I, I started working with, um, animals before I started working with human beings. That's always my starting point. I don't know if. 

[00:03:01] Pia: you, how long have we got?

[00:03:03] Dan: Pia has a menagerie.

[00:03:05] Pia: So currently we have, uh, two, two dogs, a cat, two alpacas and four ducks.

[00:03:13] Matt: Okay. Well that, That I'm going to ask you a question, here, which I'm not going to ask you to answer live. But would you say the animal was in your menagerie are a better communicator than Dan or not? 

[00:03:25] Pia: Well, it's quite interesting.

[00:03:27] Dan: it wasn't meant to go like this. 

[00:03:29] Pia: No no, one of the alpacas really looks like Dan. He's, he's got a slightly gingery mop. And I just feel like there's a little bit of him in my paddock, you know, just, just starting there in the rain. So yeah. You know, Sometimes he doesn't say as much as Dan, but you know, it's strong. It's a strong communication.

[00:03:50] Dan: And I take that as a, as a compliment.

[00:03:52] Matt: Yeah. And you should, Dan, and because my, my whole theory is that human, but that animals are better communicators than human beings. And the reason I believe that is because I believe that, that we over complicate communications through language. Which is ironic because we we're on a podcast, but I would say the alpaca version of Dan is possibly better at sharing their emotions than the dam that we have here today. So I, again, I haven't met this alpaca and maybe I will do one day, but that's my starting point for everything. I always try and understand so bad at sharing emotions.

[00:04:31] Dan: I'm sure you're right. To be perfectly honest with you. So, so you started them at what, what, where did you go from there and what, um, yeah. W where, where did you head on? 

[00:04:40] Matt: So I, then I studied marketing and geography. I studied geography cause I enjoyed geography and I studied marketing. Cause I thought our probably can't get a job in geography. So even though that was something I really enjoyed, I thought okay. I was studying marketing And my first few jobs when marketing. And I worked for a company that got acquired by the guardian newspaper, which was quite cool cause it got done work there. But then I got my sort of dream job. which I thought was my dream job, but The culture was terrible. and I'm sort of knew that on day one and I, and I, and I left, um, I resigned in my probation, my Fremont probation, which I don't know, maybe they were going to find me anyway. But, um, I just couldn't handle it there, and I decided to start my own digital marketing agency, which was about three months before the financial crisis in 2008.

[00:05:32] Yeah, it feels like really bad timing, but anyone who's just been through the pandemic and we've, as we emerge out of it, anytime there's a bit. A big change. Like all the marbles are chucked up in the air and, and the horrific stuff happens in these events. So I'm not downplaying, but the goalposts and everything can moved. And if you're looking to start something, it creates like a new, a new game. Um, and, and so, although it can feel like in a horrific time to start something when there's big change in the world, but that there can't be opportunity. Um, and that's not to downplay the horiffic things that happen in all these events, but that we started our, um, digital multi-agency and we have this saying that, um, customers don't come first. So we used to say employees come first. If we look after our employees, they look after our customers and we look after our customers we'll make those the money. 

[00:06:24] That was, but that was the basis of it in 2008. And that went well. And we sort of built that company up and sold it. But as we were building It up, we were a data company and we attracted how our marketing was working, but we weren't actually tracking whether our thing that we said, actually worked. Like if you look after your employees, does it actually make your customers happier? Cause it sounds okay. In theory, isn't it, it sounds like something you'd read on a, on a slogan. I think We took it from a Richard Branson quote, but think that's where it came from and we adapted it for a digital marketing agency. But that's why, that's how we invented the happiness index. We just wanted to track how our employees and happy customers and we, we didn't even know what correlation and causation was at this point.

[00:07:12] We just want us to see if they looked like the same thing on the graph. Like if one went up, did they go up and then, and that's what it was. That's all the happiness index was set out to. We sold that company. And then we reinvested all our time and energy and money into the happiness index. So that, that's how it goes from animals, through to happiness. 

[00:07:31] Pia: I have to ask you, do you have any animals?

[00:07:34] Matt: Well I live in London, and I have a little kit and on the way. So at the moment I don't, but I willing, then I have a real strong, other, a real strong love of animals. But I also, I really struggled with people that have animals that don't have the time or that the area to look after them. And that it's almost not on the downbeat some, but sometimes. I meet people. And they say they're an animal lover. And I think, Wow. I know How is it? How much of this is about how much you need? the animal versus the way that you're looking after it. So I haven't tell in London that I could look after an animal, even though I do love animals and we've, we've got our first kit and on the way we started small. But I think for me, you have to be you really have to, if you can call yourself an animal lover, but you really need to be prepared to look after an animal.

[00:08:24] Pia: So tell, tell us a bit more about the happiness index. So w so what does, what does your organization do? What what's it trying to achieve?

[00:08:33] Matt: So If we go back to the industry for a second the term employee engagement with was coined by someone called Bill Kahn in 1990. And employee engagement was originally called personal engagement and It was supposed to include in the definition things called emotions. But if you fast forward from Bill, Bill Kahn was at Boston university. If you fast forward a few years later into the mid nineties. some of the universities that were teaching and some of the big consultancy firms that were started to adopt employee engagement and sell it as a thing, probably turning it into every four box quadrant that you could imagine somewhere along the line, emotions got dropped out of what employee engagement meant.

[00:09:20] So the happiness. index all about bringing emotions back into employee engagement and, and that's that's, um, the happiness index measures that. So the reason I always say that is we don't like to do. Like typecast, as an employee engagement platform, even though we measure employee engagement and we measure them for, we have this, um, this, the emotional part that is really important to us. Um, and It goes right back to the whole animals thing and the Dam the alpaca and so on. But that for us is a really important thing about what we do. 

[00:09:53] Dan: it makes really good sense. And I think we're going to explore a little bit Matt, how this plays out, but I'm going to ask you one of these card questions. First. You've shared quite a bit about yourself and it's admirable that you started with the kids, and then you'll end up with, uh, an alpaca in your London property. I'm going to, I'm going to pick, I'm going to pick one of these conversations, started cars, just to see if we can get to know you a little bit, even more about you. So. Um, oh, here, here's a good one. It's a red one. They have different colors. This is a more tricky one. If I was arrested with no explanation, my family and friends would assume it was for. 

[00:10:25] Matt: Um, it would definitely something to do with the train companies, because I almost got arrested by the train companies or the police turned up and you would assume that I'd been stubborn in an event and I was holding my ground and they'd be like, oh no, what's happening. Who is he? Where is he standing and refusing to move? 

[00:10:45] Dan: oh, I love it. Arrested for stubbornness. 

[00:10:47] Matt: Yeah, it's a real, it must be in the genes somewhere, but it's a real, any kind of like unfairness type thing. It would just, 

[00:10:57] Dan: And you're going to make us take a stand. 

[00:11:00] Matt: you're familiar, even for the smallest thing and you think this is completely pointless, but it just, it runs through the family. 

[00:11:06] Dan: Brilliant. Brilliant answer. So, uh, Matt, take, so let's pick up that conversation again around, around happiness. And, um, let's go into these small groups, we call teams. So, um, Yeah. what have you learned about what makes makes people makes these teams tick from your work? 

[00:11:24] Matt: Yeah. So for those that have read my book, and, and, and got the stuff that's about been about for the last couple of years, the relationships. is the number one driver of happiness. Okay. So relationships involves teams. You guys talk about teams, somethings or by communities. Some people will talk about whatever, a collective group of people and the thing that drives us, individual employee happiness is relationships. So obviously that is impacted teams. Uh, because you can't get that from yourself. You need that. that. is part of the connection of the people around you. So two points that I was really excited about sharing with you, dad and Peter is firstly, you can't build a relationship. So I'm only going to share two data points. These are not my opinions. This is just what we see in the data.

[00:12:16] Firstly, you can't share, you can't build a relationship and you should, unless you share emotions. You can build a relationship without sharing emotions, but how real will that relationship be? Because you may be holding back stuff that you think, oh, this person doesn't want to see that side of me. And you're filtering the view of yourself. So you may build a relationship but is it what people call an authentic relationship. So I want to that what I'm doing there is taking a step back. The source of relationships is emotions and the source of how is relationships, why I want to share that with you, anyone who's listening on a team's perspective. And again, this is not my opinion. I'm just sharing that. If, if I was, looking at a team that didn't share emotions, I would be thinking about the whole data connection. I would think, well, if they're not sharing emotions, they won't be building relationships If they're not good in relationships they won't be as happy at work as they would be like, extend it forward, into our research. that means that they're not going to be performing as high as they could, which means the company or the organization might not be achieving its will success. So that could be financial metrics, that could be a team, a sports team achieving their goals. So,

[00:13:41] Dan: That is really juicy. That's really juicy. And it, it really resonated with me actually a, a few times when I'm working with teams and we're using Squadify data to help them to look at their teamwork. There's, you've really summarized it, but I've had this challenge where there are, and we've talked about this, haven't we, period, they've got some sort of corporate they've got armor up. It's really hard to sort of penetrate that armor, um, to get them to express more actually. And you've really simplified that. All they is that team sharing emotions with each other. And I think that's a really good test and probably presumably practically, where you can go to start to build that relationship in some of these more authentic.

[00:14:22] Pia: if relationships are the number one driver of happiness and even 50% of relationships end up in divorce at home, do we really know how to relate in order to be happy?

[00:14:39] Matt: Yeah, I think, I mean, I was reading an article on Sunday about it was from someone who'd. I think they'd spent 30 years speaking to couples. Um, that they like lead couples therapy. And the bit that I really remember from it is they were saying one thing that people in couples do all the time, if someone shares that they're anxious or worried, the other one tends to say, oh, don't worry, there's nothing to worry about. And what, um, what I took, what they was, what they were saying is if you do that, you don't share the anxious, the anxiety, or the worry, you just push it back into that person. So it doesn't as an energy source, it doesn't leave them. Whereas if you say something like oh, that must be really, that must be really tough, can I help? My data version of why the while read it, interpret it? Is it that takes out half the anxiety and worry, and then you share it. Whereas if you just push it back by saying, oh, don't worry, you're just dismissing what that person's feeling. 

[00:15:42] So I think I know I need to keep my work is specifically in the wa in the workforce. So that's where my research I've come from. So I just want to caveat that, but I did find that I'm not a super interesting piece of insight. 

[00:15:55] Dan: Th this is such a powerful thing. I was, it was about five years ago. I was at a conference and a speaker. talked about this, about parenting actually, and said the same thing that. When you a child comes home from school, how are you doing? I'm really sad because so-and-so hit me. What we do is, or whatever we set, tend to say, oh, don't be sad. We negate our children's emotions, which of course has all manner of on, you know, as you say, shoves it back into them, causes them to have a poor relationship with those more. Traditionally known as negative emotions. There's nothing more than being sad, actually. Um, so, but the, the problem for me was I had, at that time had a 14 and a 16 year old. So I realized that we'd stuffing up, uh, all of that, but it was Too late, too late. Yeah, exactly. But I've made amends since then. So I'm now really conscious of that, but anyway, that's really interesting to, to, um, that the same thing came up in those that those relationships

[00:16:50] Pia: But I suppose the point is then if we find it difficult to relate and you, then you think about teams in the workplace, we don't have the muscle power to have the right conversation. And then we don't feel entirely happy and then we just blame other people for it. 

[00:17:07] Matt: Yeah. 

[00:17:07] Pia: So it's, it's a cyclical thing, isn't it? You know, whereas it's about our own ability to be able to relate.

[00:17:14] Matt: Yeah. And that's why I always remind people we're not called the high happiness index. We're just called the Happiness Index. The point of an index is it goes up. And the learning and where you can improve things for the future is in the drops. And the, uh, one of the other things we've observed in our data, um, which we did in the Ted talk was happiness is really something that you need to practice. Once story short, if you look at a date, if you look at someone's happiness data, every time it goes up, it goes down every time it goes up, it goes down every time it goes off, it goes down. So when you look at that, oh, what's the point? What's the point I focus in on improving happiness. If every time it goes up, it goes down. But what you see, what was really interesting is if you practice Sharing emotions and so on. And all the things that we talk about, like for relationships, the more it goes up, the less, it goes down the more it goes up, the less it goes down.

[00:18:11] So the only way that I can explain that to people is like your heartbeat, and a healthy heartbeat, which is if you do all the right things, like exercise, more, eat the right foods. your, your heartbeat um, just become stronger. And you, can you say your resting heartbeat either? They say a lot of athletes, doesn't it where their resting heart beat is. So when I realized that that's why I suddenly realized is you're learning from the downs so that, um, you can have less downs in the future, but if you just ignore them this, then your you're missing out on what we would say is a data point. Like I just look at all the emotions now as data points, rather than thinking, oh, I've done it. I don't have time to listen to this. I think, oh, it was a data point coming on my way here. I don't want to miss out on this data, which is a really well, I look at it, but that's what I said. I say to myself, I'm going to learn something here. And if I switch it off and dismiss it, I'm missing out on an opportunity to learn, whether that's my own body and my own brain. Speaking to me, one of my team, my partner, or my children. 

[00:19:12] Dan: These are two really useful data points. The first one you made, there was a. Flow from emotions will build relationships, relationships with both happiness. And you mentioned happiness. We'll build performance. What's that last link? Just talk to us about that for any hard headed, uh, people, listeners who, who just want to some sort of proof of that. 

[00:19:33] Matt: Yeah. So I mean that, that really Dan as well, I wrote the book, the business case for happiness, for those people, because some people intuitively just think, you know what, it's good to look after your people and they'll be happier. They don't need more than that. I don't need more than that, but not everyone's like that. Um, the hard metrics, um, and let's not type cost CFO quite often. It's the CFO. Um, that's asking that, but.

[00:19:58] Dan: Yeah.

[00:19:59] Matt: so you got to bring in this, these, these hippies happiness index, like what's the return going to. be? So I'll put in use the longest study in this area, which is 28 years study by professor Alex Edmonds. And they took American stock market data, and they showed that companies. with happier employees outperform those with less happier employees. The minimum increase was about 2.4 per year and share price, um, going up to something like 3.2, three and a half. It's all in my book. if you want to check the study, but effectively, if you were just looking at where to invest your money, you will be looking for companies that treat their employees well and have happier employees So that that's not just like a 1, 2, 3 that's 28 years of stock market data that, uh, that the companies with the hacker employees outperform those of their peers. 

[00:20:54] The interesting thing in there that, I found interesting in that in that, in that study is it doesn't change via vertical or sector? So Sometimes people think, oh, maybe retail is more important for employee happiness because you see the staff face to face compared to maybe a steel company where everyone's behind the scenes, the flow through of happiness to share price and financial performance is, is the same in every industry. And it's hard for people to get their heads around that. But again, um, all I'm here to do is not give you my opinion because I've given you my private opinion. It's all about animals and all that kind of stuff, which is all, this is just the, this is just the data that we're seeing, um, and bringing together in one place. 

[00:21:36] Dan: So Matt from all the work you've done, if we think about these little mysterious groups called teams, what is, what's the big message for, for our listener? 

[00:21:45] Matt: So let's recap what we've learned so far. So one we've got emotions as a source of relationships. We've got the importance of, of using happiness as a data point and the fact that you need to practice it. What I'm about to share with you now is what we've seen, in over 100 countries, um, in over about a million human beings. And all I can share with you is what we're observing. Everyone needs to interpret in their own way. But what we're starting to see more and more is that happiness. in its simplest version is a team sport. And let me describe what we see in the data is the only way I can describe again, using nature, cause we like to use nature to describe our data because guess what human beings are part of nature is that happiness works like homeostasis.

[00:22:35] So homeostasis is obviously something that brings you back to a certain set point. So we've heard before other happiness experts talk about having a set point. So someone has like a certain level of car and then they go and buy a car. I think that's gonna make them happy and you just return to your set point. That's what's known.

[00:22:56] But the new stuff we've learned is that you actually at work. to return to the team's happiness. So that's massive because if you're a team of 10 people and the average happiness is eight, and you are a four and you join that team, the most likely thing to happen is you will go up. towards the team's happiness. But you also need to seriously consider this the other way round, which is what if your happiness on average, but you join a team where everyone's a four?

[00:23:29] Now the reason I want to share this is it's, it's what we're observing is huge, but also, for people's mental health and wellbeing, they really need to be asking questions before they joined an organization or a team about a culture and saying things like if I was interviewed tomorrow for a job, I would ask that person interviewed me, how about. you? How happy. is your team and How happy is the company? And I would listen to them and I would also ask them to evidence it. And if any of those questions make them feel uncomfortable or they fought, I was out of order for asking those questions, I would also learn as much as I could from the date, because I would, I would understand that they're not taking this stuff seriously. Because you, by know that you know that, everyone who's listening on this podcast that knows that, that the happiness of a team could impact your own wellbeing. mental health, and happiness. 

[00:24:28] Pia: And yet it's not surprising because Dan and I are working with teams day in, day out, and this is what we see. And what, what is also interesting is that I guess there's a scale here and then there's really happy. And then there's sort of media. And there's a lot of people that are pulled down from actually being quite happy to being mediocre without themselves even realizing it. And all of a sudden they're thinking, God, this doesn't feel great, but it's been a slow burn over a period of time. I don't know whether you're seeing that in the data.

[00:25:11] Matt: Yeah, well, it's a, it's a, it's a level of. conformity, isn't it? And it can be subconscious that that's happening. The problem is If you think of teams as a Venn diagram, and you think of your work team as one circle, then you think as your family, if you call your family a team for a second, and then you call your friends that could also be impacting that because your home team might just be you, the alpaca and, um, and your sister. So it's going to impact the rest of life. So again, I always say. like, we collected this data up work, but with collecting this data about human beings. So It's not a great leap to think about how, this is impacting the rest of your life. So again, I'm just while I think it's powerful, is it, you guys have already observed that, but now we're observing it across a million people. So it goes from. Dan and peer guide always seeing this too. No, this is, this is here. Now. This is this is what we're seeing on a regular basis. which just, they stops that like argument about how important stuff is. Cause you're just like, it's just there. It's just like people say that you should have good sunlight in the office. Now you should be looking at how you're looking at team happiness. 

[00:26:23] Dan: It's incredibly powerful, man. Yeah, it's bad. It's intuitive. But the data makes it urgent actually to deal with this. So in your experience, what if the team is feeling like it's either got poor happiness, so even happy people are being brought down, but they're not happy, or it's just sort of that sort of mass level of happiness. What can a team do practically to start to move that upwards?

[00:26:49] Matt: So I'll take again. I've shared one of you. I showed you the number one driver of happiness. which is relationships, but I'm going to share with you the fourth point, which I think is the starting point. So it's in the top four, so it's, if you were doing a league table, relationships would be number one. I'm going to share with you number four, which is psychological safety. So people always want to know where to start. And I always think Maslow's hierarchy of needs is we all love it, but it's slightly out of date. It doesn't mean it's not useful because it's a good connection point for people. But I always think psychological safety is the starting point because that's where people don't share.

[00:27:32] We've just had in the last couple of weeks, the first footballer to be openly gay and it's like, I've played in football environments where homophobia is rife and toxic masculinity runs wild. You can't go to a football match without hearing it. It's why I take my children to watch Tottenham women rather than Tottenham men. But I mean, now we know that stuff about psychological safety, relationships, forming fake relationships, if you as an example of spending your whole career as a footballer, But not being able to tell your team and your colleagues, how much has that impacted? We don't know. Um, but that comes from a psychological safe perspective because it, and it may in that scenario, not might not be the teams. it might be it may be the crowds that people are worried about and the reaction, so on. But I bring that example out just to say psychological safety, I think is always the point because that is a Hugely normal human thing to be, but that per, that we've only just now in 2022, had a footballer feel that, um, they can say that they're gay whilst they're still playing rather than waiting to retire.

[00:28:45] Pia: It draws it all nicely together because you need to have that trust and that safety to be able to feel able to be yourself in order to be able to relate to each other, in order to be able to share your emotions, you know, and yet, strong personal connections, which is key to all that is actually one of the lowest importance in a Squadify score. We still think that it's somehow not appropriate in the workplace to bring our full selves to work. It's w um, actually. Somehow we've ended up tying ourselves in knots because I don't think anyone's made that mandate, but somehow that's just a belief that we are on and it's costing us. It's costing us hugely, and your data just completely supports that.

[00:29:38] Matt: Yeah. And my image to leave everyone with, I call what Dan called the armor, I call it everyone's super happiness suit with inbuilt emotional deflector field. I am very geeky, which is something that 

[00:29:50] It's not like there's an evil villain boss that is doing this. Everyone's doing it. And we're all part of it. We're all deflecting the odd question about how we really feel. We're all part of it, But we can all together, get rid of these these suits. They're not needed. Um, but it, takes time and every day there's an, there's a step forward, but I think the data reinforces how important it is for us, for us to be ourselves and share how we truly feel. 

[00:30:15] Dan: It's a brilliant vision map. And, um, and I think a real, yeah, a very clear mandate for teams everywhere to do something a little bit different today. So thank you for sharing your humanity and your data with us today. And we want to wish you the very best of luck. You're on an amazing mission to humanize the workplace and make us all a bit happier. So thank you so much, Matt, for joining us today.

[00:30:38] Pia: And if you want to come and pat one of my alpacas, you're very welcome to come over and do so. 

[00:30:42] 

[00:30:46] Pia: I think we got a very early insight into some pretty astounding data research there around relationships. So relationships are the number one driver of happiness. So, you know, we're seeking to find a mate in life and to be happy, I can understand it from that perspective, but I'm wondering how important people see that team and the relationships they have in their team. And I questioned that and, and this to me is really solidified it,

[00:31:19] Dan: And you mentioned, to Matt, that data around the important bit, the way we see the importance of personal connections in teams is really is the lowest of, of any metric that we have. And, um, that just says we've got a problem actually, of expectations and the realization that, that our happiness is going to be derived from the relationships we have with our, with our own team. That bit of data. He shared the new data around that set point. You know, it reminded me of, he mentioned that, but you know, you people when the pools or the, the, the lottery or whatever, and they, um, they get happier and then it drops back down to that old set point or people. Literally on a little research on this, people have a limb amputated or they, their happiness drops down, but they come back up to that same level of happiness. And it's that sort of model I have in my mind of this with teams, you put a happy person into an unhappy team and they are going to be brought down to, to that set point. And so it's a, it's an absolute matter of urgency for teams to engage with this and to build those relationships. And how do you do that? We learned from Matt, you express your emotions. I thought that was in a way of really potentially simple, potentially hard, but a really good test of whether those relationships are being built.

[00:32:37] Pia: And you know, you and I have witnessed that together, professionally working with teams when one person has taken a step out to change the chemistry of the conversation by actually being incredibly authentic and courageous to go, I'm not happy about this, or this makes me feel. Really owning it. And it changes everything. It changes everything because it's extremely unlikely that the rest of the team's going to go, well, we don't care. They're going to go, gosh, help us understand what is that? Or yes, me too. Actually, I don't, I don't feel that good either.

[00:33:17] So that th this just ratifies the lived experience we have professionally, working with teams and seeing where people are at, and this is the science that's going to help us.

[00:33:30] Dan: Completely. So if anyone's out there. And they want to make a, make a difference. What we've seen really make that difference is to express an emotion and to really see if you can start to open that up. Hard sometimes in those tricky team environments, but it could be done. So wonderful episode and, uh, just great to talk to Matt.

[00:33:47] Pia: Huge huge. It's really, really clear, simple, but incredibly insightful. So what's next then? Where, w where do we build from here?

[00:33:56] Dan: Well, in a way we've got a good little segue because the next week we're talking to Kathleen Curran, who we've known a very long time from the leadership development world. And she has taken actually the Squadify dataset and she's done a big bit of analysis, and looked at what she calls regenerative leadership in teams. And so she's given some good, really solid guidance on areas for teams to focus on to really make a difference. So can't wait to talk to Kathleen about that.

[00:34:24] Um, but that's it for this episode, you can find show notes and resources at Squadify dot net. Just click on the We Not Me podcast link. If you've enjoyed the show, please do share the love and recommend it to your friends. Also do give us a rating on your favorite podcast platform. You can actually contribute to this show by leaving us a voice note with a question or a comment, just find the link in the show notes.

[00:34:46] We Not Me is produced by Mark Steadman of Origin. Thank you so much for listening. It's goodbye from me.

[00:34:51] Pia: And it's goodbye from me.