[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. Now Dan Hammond, I believe like all best sellers there is. An updated installment of the Hammond bike robbery.

[00:00:28] Dan: So our bikes were stolen. Blah, blah, blah, trying to find them. Then the police told us that they'd found them. And then they had to humbly tell us that. Unfortunately they'd found them in the car of someone who was driving erratically that very night. That car had then been returned to its owner, with our bikes in it. So our bikes were returned to the criminal fraternity. The owner of the car was a known associate of the person who stole our bikes. So we kept an eye on Facebook marketplace, 

[00:00:58] Pia: Because of course that's what you do. Isn't it. You don't have porn shops anymore.

[00:01:01] Dan: Exactly straight on marketplace. And so anyway, a friend of mine spotted one of them and I found the other one, so they were both on Facebook marketplace. And so we decided to this is the, I hope the final chapter I went last week and bought it back. 

[00:01:17] Pia: And it was a special bite. Wasn't it? So it

[00:01:20] Dan: It was so, so this is something, it was, it's a small frame. It had things done to it. If we were gonna try and find a bike, like it would take months to find

[00:01:28] Pia: To get the go faster stripes, the little trail bits off the, off the handle bars.

[00:01:33] Dan: those little, the little strandy. Yeah, exactly. So it's just, it was just going to be too much hassle. So we thought the funny thing is Pia, when a few months when the bike was nicked, a friend of mine said, oh, I had bike bikes done, found on Marketplace. I went and bought it back and I thought to myself, I'm never going to do that. I'm sure I could find a better solution than buying my bike 

[00:01:53] Pia: and a long came karma and taught you a lesson.

[00:01:56] Dan: and the old, yes. Reality stepped in at that point. And basically, you realize that there's a small chance that that bike could be traced. If they find out it's us, we are in a small bit of danger and it's just not worth it. Just not worth it. So, stomach, your pride, and go and buy the thing back. So that's what we did.

[00:02:14] Pia: And so how did you do that? Did you go in a disguise? Did anyone go with you? 

[00:02:18] Dan: Yes. I the lovely Mrs. Hammond wouldn't let me go on my own. I was, and so I did ask for some accompaniment uh, I took someone, took a friend with me and and then he sat there in the car just to make sure nothing went on. The funny thing is that there was just two 16 year old lad. Actually in the end, in the crime industry, it had reached them and they had a little lockup and uh, got Juliet's bike out, which is in perfectly good condition.

[00:02:44] The thing I'm disappointed in is that. Is that I'd hoped that I might, the way set up meant this wasn't possible, but what I should have done was asked to take it for spin and just lagged it, just run biked off. 

[00:02:56] Pia: Wouldn't wanna be here.

[00:02:58] Dan: Exactly. So, but sadly I wasn't able to do that because I'd have deserted my friends. So that's the, that's a strange end to 

[00:03:06] Pia: That's why I don't. I think that's pretty amazing. So you've bought your own bite back

[00:03:10] Dan: Yeah. So

[00:03:11] Pia: that you've had lot that you've had stolen and then passed on by the police back to the criminal fraternity.

[00:03:19] Dan: it's an extraordinary story but, but this one really, it seems like a ridiculous thing to do, but honestly, it's the best thing to do. We could have said, no, we won't do that. But we just spent months trying to sort it out and honestly, it's weirdly it's the right. It was the right thing to do. not, it was the right thing. The best thing to do.

[00:03:35] Pia: the best thing to do best thing to do. And this is a, a great segue actually to talking about the brain, cuz it's all about the mindset and how you see things and whether you remain angry or whether you can see the positive side of it. So none better than sue Langley, the CEO and founder of the Langley Group, who is a global speaker and an expert in EI, neuroscience and positive leadership. And she's gonna talk to us today about how the brain works and the best way that we can optimize ourselves in this crazy world that we live. 

[00:04:13] Dan: Sue. It's an absolute delight to see you and to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us.

[00:04:22] Sue: You are very welcome. I'm excited.

[00:04:24] Dan: So are we it's excellent. Excellent. Tell us a little about yourself. What'd you get up to.

[00:04:28] Sue: Oh, well I'm a human being. No, my name is Sue Langley. I I focus on how to inspire and equip people to be the best they can be through the science of positive psychology, emotional intelligence and neuroscience.

[00:04:42] Dan: Fantastic. I think we've gotta go, go and have a meaty conversation here. But before we do that, I, as we torture our guests with a conversation starter card, and I'm just going to shuffle the cards here and choose one at random for you just to get to know a little bit. Let's see. Oh, this is a good one. The worst piece of advice I ever received was.

[00:05:02] Sue: Well, I think the worst piece of advice would ever be to do things like other people do. If anybody tries to say you should do X, Y, Z the same as everybody else. I don't know if that's always the best piece of advice, cuz each person is different and got different values and different outcomes, et cetera. The best piece of advice I received. And I didn't actually take it for the first 18 months because I just needed to earn money. But the best piece of advice when I started my own business was find your niche and stick to. and ironically, the minute I found my niche and stuck to it, my business took off.

[00:05:34] Pia: I think, yeah I had a similar piece of advice from one of the founders of L I w stick to your knitting and get really good at it.

[00:05:41] Sue: Rather than trying to be all things to all people. And it's also helps you. I mean, when I say, when you don't earn any money and you wanna say yes to everything, that's fair enough. Um, but when you suddenly go, actually I'm really good at this and I'm okay at this, it helps.

[00:05:55] Pia: I think that's actually, that's quite life defining in a way because we try to be, we feel like we have to beat all things to all people. So I think that's a very great piece of advice to kick us off on.

[00:06:06] So let's unpack, so neuroscience quite new. What is it? How's it come about? So let's just get everybody to understand what are we actually talking about here? And how is it relevant to us as human beings?

[00:06:20] Sue: So neuroscience really is the study, not just of the brain, but of the whole nervous system. And I think what's interesting is we've known for, you know, a hundred years maybe about little neurons and things like that, but it's only really been in the last probably couple of decades as technology has started to improve that we can really, we've really expanded on our knowledge from a particularly a brain perspective. The nervous system we've probably known more about for longer, cuz you can chop up a dead body and you can go and look. But the power now with technology is we can look at what happens in your brain when you are just normal. You don't have to be dead for us to chop it around. So I think the neuroscience is advanced considerably and.

[00:07:03] One of the things I do find frustrating is sometimes when you get the sort of pop psychology that turns, I, I don't do the pop psychology. So, you know, you read a book that talks about the elephant and the rider, which is great and these sorts of things. But I think for me, from a leadership perspective, the more I understand about the brain, whether it comes to more strategic thinking, whether it comes to around habits uh, whether it's about, uh, mental health wellbeing, those sorts of things. The more you understand about the brain, the more it can help us with those things. 

[00:07:33] And also when you look at neuroscience, now it's also integrating. More holistically, how the microbiome, which is the bacteria that's on us in us, particularly in our gut, also communicates with the brain. So therefore we are learning much more about how, what you eat impacts your mood how it's linked to many non-communicable diseases, um, whether it's heart disease, diabetes, whether it's depression, anxiety, all sorts of things. 

[00:07:59] So I think now neuroscience, we're getting a lot more knowledge about how the brain works, how it functions in collaboration with the rest of the body. And because neuroscientists are now connecting more with other researchers in different fields, we are starting to get a lot more knowledge about how it links from a wellbeing perspective, a leadership perspective, et cetera, which is kind of cool.

[00:08:21] Dan: So talk to us, Sue a little bit about what you've seen and what the science tells us about how humans connect.

[00:08:28] Sue: Yeah. And the interesting thing I was talking about this last night with my diploma group, cuz we kicked off on positive relationships last night. And if you think about it for a while now we've known anthropologically that we are wired to connect because um, Robin Dunbar did work around the size of P of different species, prefrontal cortex that the larger your prefrontal cortex, the more social connections you can.

[00:08:50] So we've known about it linking to the brain from that perspective, we know from positive psychology research, particularly amazing researcher Adina who has done hundreds studies, cross cultures, that one of the number one contributors to high levels of wellbeing is human connection. No matter what culture you are from, and it's not about, you know, do you have 544 friends on Facebook? 

[00:09:11] Pia: That's that's not connection.

[00:09:12] Sue: Exactly Pia. It's about, do I have somebody ironically, that cares for me when things are going wrong and more importantly will celebrate with me when things go well? That's really important to us as human beings.

[00:09:24] We know from a lot of positive psychology research that the influence that we have on the people around us, we know from neuroscience that we have certain areas of our brain that are designed for connection. So we have a cool little area of our brain that sort of sits almost between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex, that is called the fusiform gyrus. That's designed to read emotions in faces. So we are designed to see those things, to notice those things. If you think about the mentalizing system and mirror neurons um, I had Marco Iacoboni on my podcast and my Learn was Sue a couple of weeks ago, which was amazing because our mirror neurons are designed to help us understand people. They help us understand people's intentions and without those mirror neurons, we wouldn't have that. We wouldn't care.

[00:10:07] So if you look at everything we know from our neuroscience, anthropological, positive psychology, human beings are designed to connect. And one thing that's interesting for me during the whole cOVID element has been the concern from a mental health perspective, and we have to be aware that many people are flourished through COVID, so we can't just assume everybody's, sort of challenge, but one of the key things has been loneliness because we know human connection is so important, but here's the cool thing if you look at the research and it's obvious, as soon as you, you hear it. One of the key antidotes to loneliness is to go and do a random act of kindness for somebody else.

[00:10:42] Pia: And that's maybe, I think why some people did flourish actually because their world shrunk to things they could do either within their family or within the very close community. And there was that sense of giving and reciprocity.

[00:10:56] Sue: And it's interesting Pia, cuz one of the things I got a little frustrated with at the beginning of COVID was when you got these headlines, mental health, the next pandemic, and I thought how irresponsible we're almost priming it. But the challenge for us was, is most of the research was looking at the bad stuff. There was only 1% of the research during the first 18 months of COVID that was looking for the good, and there was a brilliant paper that came out after the first year with 22 studies done from 22 countries, that actually looked at what were the people who were flourishing doing? Now, I think that's really powerful because I want to know what the flourishing people are doing so I can replicate it. So maybe I can flourish too. 

[00:11:36] And there were so many brilliant studies that looked at the key things that people were doing that allowed them to still flourish. And one of them was interpersonal connection. It was to do with those little moments of laughter, even if it was via Zoom or Teams or whatever you. I had more fun with my family virtually when we were in lockdown than I probably did normally. Cause it was hilarious watching my parents try and play Yachty via Zoom. I was cracking up for two hours. It was the best time. 

[00:12:03] So I think when we put in the effort to still connect and you had all those wonderful stories about people, putting shopping out for people or people talking to each other across balconies and I don't know, I think, the human connection helped people thrive and rather than going, oh, I'm lonely. I'm on my own now I'm working from home, it was what can I do to still stay connected that really helped people.

[00:12:26] Pia: That actually ties in with a previous guest that we had Kathleen Curren, who'd also done some research around this, exactly that. What, what caused teams to thrive and she identified it. And they're not quite exactly as the words describe it, but it was love, care, intent, and hope. And they happened within a team and that's what brought the team together, this almost team leadership of connection but focused about getting things done and that's how people rallied. 

[00:12:57] The bit I'm interested now is, is like, we are now nearly two and a half years through this, and we keep getting challenges in our ways, whether it's climatic, sickness or economic. And I'm seeing a lot of fatigue out there amongst people. That's causing me some concern. What are you seeing? And what's and how do we try and combat that?

[00:13:21] Sue: I, I think to your point Pia there is a very sort of complex answers to some of these things, but you're absolutely right. And, And when we think about fatigue, there's the, the mental fatigue, the emotional fatigue, as well as potentially physical fatigue. But most of us probably aren't necessarily running marathons every day, so it may not be physical. So it's much more the emotional and mental of side of things. If we look at from a brain perspectives, there's a few things that are really interesting for me that help us understand it.

[00:13:46] So I often talk about uh, neuroscientists often call the, limbic system System X, meaning reflexive. It's like a reflex, it's easy to function. It runs very automatically. And then we've got Systems C, which is often known as our prefrontal cortex, which is the reflective system, the system that allows us to think about the past present future, et cetera. So, if we think about those two systems, if you think about your limbic system, it's got an area of your brain called the basal ganglia, which is responsible for a lot of your habits. So these are the things that are reflexive. So think about that reflexive nature. Your habits are very reflexive. 

[00:14:22] So if you imagine when we first went into lockdown, for many of us. All of our habits were knocked out of the window. Just like that. Your habit of your commute to your office, your getting your coffee from your barista, your um, routine of getting up in the morning, getting yourself out in the morning, your routine coming home, where you had that sort of break and that boundary routines to maybe to do with your eat, sleep and exercise that we're all sort of going as you'd plan them, whether that good for your wellbeing or not good for your wellbeing, we all had those habits and routines. And, and I always think of my habits, they sit pretty much in that limbic system, very reflexive, very automatic, very easy to continue. 

[00:15:00] Then you imagine I'm now wrenched from that. And all of my habits, poof, that's now hard for my brain, cuz my prefrontal cortex needs to kick in to try and create new habits. It takes a lot of fuel, a lot of effort. My brain is like exhausted all day just thinking about how I get myself going, because those nice rituals and routines that have been easy for my brain have disappeared. And, And I'm gonna admit something here that I found um, that I was about two weeks into the first lockdown and I realized I'd forgotten to clean my teeth twice, two days running, first thing in the morning. And of course I giggled to myself and I was like, of course you did because cleaning your teeth was the last thing you did before you left the house, and I wasn't leaving the house.

[00:15:46] And if you think about that from a holistic perspective, some people had never worked from home before. So boundaries was really hard for people of knowing when to switch off, of saying, you know what? I am gonna take a two hour lunch break and go for a walk or a run or whatever, because I'm working till seven o'clock in the evening, especially those working cross global boundaries.

[00:16:06] But then of course, what happened is we all started to get back to something and we'd go back to the office and then we'd have to recreate the habits again, and then we'd get wrenched out again. So if you think about, from a brain perspective, it takes a lot more effort when you don't have habits in place.

[00:16:22] So for me, one of the things that I wanted to do is get new habits as quick as possible. And I was lucky and I know Pia, you're the same, I uh, moved during COVID and the minute I arrived here, I immediately said to my other half, I am going for a walk first thing in the morning, the day the first morning. And he said we need to unpack first. I'm like, no, I am putting my habits in place. I'm putting my alkaline water where I need it, I'm putting my green drink where I need it. I'm setting up my house to be the best use of my time from a habitual perspective to get those new habits in place.

[00:16:56] But. It takes effort for the brain. So of course our poor little brain gets tired. Even with that, let alone what the world is throwing at us with, challenges of war in Ukraine of people being locked in apartments in Shanghai. The news that we hear about the turmoil around governments, the sickness that's going around and we're losing people we love. I know I lost somebody that I loved overseas during COVID. There's all of that sort of stuff being thrown at us on top of every day, our brain is having to work twice as hard because our habits have been ripped out from under us.

[00:17:30] Dan: So we started off looking at the, that sort of basic wiring for connection. Is there a dark side of that though? Because we're also quite tribal aren't we we sort of judge and we can easily judge what's the brain doing? Doing no 

[00:17:42] Pia: you may, but I don't.

[00:17:44] Dan: Absolutely not. What's happening there in the brain that, that sort of resisting that connection or some things that, that we might need to look out for where we could actually block that off in some way?

[00:17:55] Sue: Yeah, it's an interesting one because it kind of links partly to what I was just saying and partly to another element that we know from social neuroscience. So if you think about habits, Your habits are very automatic, they're as I say, don't take much fuel to run your brain runs some, you know, little background programs. And those habits could be habits of behavior, like cleaning your teeth in the morning, but they can also be habits of thought. As in how we think about the world. Um, everyone's suffering right now and I say it over and over and over again, or judgment around people. This is what I think this category of people are like compared to this category. And we have those habital ways of thinking that then becomes easy to repeat. There are also habits of emotion. So bear that in mind as well. If we get caught up in that uh, anxiety and it becomes a habit, it's easy to repeat that anxiety. 

[00:18:40] So bear that in mind, our judgements can be our habits of thought. And if we don't challenge those habits of thought, it's very easy to repeat those judgements over and over again. And Ellen Lange has done some brilliant work on how, when we put ourselves in categories, we play to the rules of the category.

[00:18:56] When I turned 40, my mum said to me nobody will notice you now you've turned 40. I'm like, wow, I'm a older than yesterday, but apparently I'm obsolete now. Um, and people start telling you, you should slow down. I'm like why? And we put people in categories. If you think about when people are considered old, we then go, I can't do that anymore cuz I'm too old for that or whatever you. And we do it all the time. We put people in aged care home where they no longer have autonomy and make choices or they feel like they no longer needed and matter because everything's done for them.

[00:19:31] So we do this with the wonderful categories and judgements around gen X, gen Y, et cetera. I would love it if we could get rid of some of those categories. Because the research tells us if I give you the blurb, the paragraph on any one of those categories and take out the header and just give you the blurb and ask you how much you agree with that, you'll agree roughly 70%. So we know they're ridiculous human made categories, but what happens is, as soon as I decide you are in that category, I dunno, let's say you are a gen Y and I know that gen Wises are unreliable and flaky, the minute you're late for a meeting, I go see? Gen Y. 

[00:20:05] Absolutely. And yet they're human made categories. We decided on them and they're not relevant. Human beings are different. People are interested in meaning whether you are 60 or whether you're 16 um, you know, each different person. So I think we need to be careful about when we buy into categories, it creates judgment. But I do wanna come to your question from particularly from a social neuroscience perspective, because one of the things that we know and again, I talk about this all the time with clients is From a social neuroscience perspective, when you agree with me about something. So let's imagine I wing and complain, my boss does this, they do this, they're terrible leadership does this, and you agree with me, I get a reward sensation. So I get a dopamine hit because you've just agreed with me. I also get an oxytocin element if we're in person, because we are bonding. So oxytocin is that bonding chemical. So I like that because you agree with me and we have this bond and we build this bond. Great that builds our connection, but unfortunately it builds it against another, another group usually.

[00:21:09] So one of the things that's interesting is if you combine the science, there's this one area of science that says venting can be useful. It bonds us and it gets it off my chest. But there's another area of research that's come out of positive psychology to do with how we communicate that finds if I moan for up to seven minutes, about whatever my holiday, my work, whatever you, both our wellbeings drop. So, the gentleman called Bilski and his team, they did a whole series of studies of just listening to an audio of somebody complaining. Your wellbeing in less than seven minutes starts to drop. So think about this for a moment. This is what I do. I take the science so that I see how I can put it together. On the one hand, it says that I benefit from getting it off my chest and it bonds me with you. If I whinge and vent. But it then says another area of research that if I moan for up to seven minutes, it drops our wellbeing. So my role is I'm not allowed to wing for more than five minutes, and if it's a big one, write.

[00:22:11] Dan: That's very practical. 

[00:22:13] Sue: That's what I thought.

[00:22:13] Pia: My observation is that the press, the way the press communicates with us is a massive is playing with our brain. So effectively you, you do the same thing. And I look at the sort of like three categories of headlines, sensational. It's all kicking off. It's likely to kick off second headline for probably the next week. And then the third headline is like, we're doomed is kicking off forever. So, and that plays that's exactly the loop, because then we just start moaning 

[00:22:45] Sue: Funny you say that Pippa, cuz I just did a keynote in the positive European positive psychology conference in Iceland. And I was, my headline was the future is human. And one of the areas that I touched on amongst many others was the media. And again, if you look at the results over the last hundred years, the tone of our media has got significantly more negative. So the positive tone has literally dropped over the last a hundred years. 

[00:23:09] One of the things that's really interesting. And again, I was talking about this last night is when you go to a positive psychology conference, you will meet the most people who never watch the. Because it's really not helpful for us. And again, if I go back to that study that I mentioned around the positive aspects of during COVID of what people did, they found that a buffering effect was around using social media and using things to watch and, and time spent with the news. So people who spent less time watching the news during COVID had higher levels of wellbeing. The more time you spent watching the news scaring, social media, et cetera, The worst your wellbeing got.

[00:23:45] And to the point my husband says you need to know what's going on in the world. It's like, I do, I will always hear when we had a change of government here, David said, oh, did you know we've got a new prime minister? And I'm like, yeah. And has my life changed in the last two days? No. So what does it matter whether I watch the news during that whole changeover? 

[00:24:01] So it's interesting to think, where are we getting our news from? Because to your point the negativity is huge and maybe it's our job to start putting more positive stories out there and challenge a little.

[00:24:13] Pia: 100%. And I would echo that, that during COVID the 11:00 AM briefing, which happened and was a, became that habitual response. So at 11:00 AM, we'd be told how many cases there were and what was happening and what were the next set. But you would look at that from a neuroscience perspective, poof, we just, it is not great. News never was really.

[00:24:37] Sue: Yeah, but it gets then habitual. So the cue is 11:00 AM. The habit is I watch the news and then the reward is, yeah, I feel like I've got updated, but I end up feeling flatter, but then I do it again the next day and the next day and the next day. 

[00:24:49] Dan: So Sue, let's just dive in a bit deeper into this current environment that teams are operating in there. We are thrown into a world full of opportunities, actually. Hybrid, remote working. There's some real positives there, but obviously it presents challenges as well. What, how should a team engage with that challenge in the most positive way? What's a, what's some things that they could be thinking about for the brain science point of view?

[00:25:12] Sue: Yeah. Thank you, Dan, look, it's an interesting question because you'll know there are some teams who've done this very well, and some teams really struggl. One of the things I always come back to is the science. I'm a bit sad when it comes to science. I read research papers over breakfast, and I like to see how I can integrate. And one area of science as part of the sort of positive psychology space is self-determination theory. And it's um, been sort of studied for the last 40 years. But interestingly during COVID, there's been a real push around using self-determination theory to see why people, some people and teams are flourishing, some people and teams are not.

[00:25:44] If you think about self-determination theory, what it talks about is basic psychological needs. So again, across human beings, what are the basic psychological needs that help motivate us if you like. And there are three very simple things and people will be familiar with them if they've read more pop psychology books, whether it's your Dan Pink Coya David Rocks, um, around the scarf model, but the basic psychological needs are autonomy, competence and relatedness. So, if you think about those three things, autonomy is my ability to have agency over my life to make decisions. So if you think about how that links to motivation, let's imagine, and I know we've got people listening from all over the world, but I'm gonna use Victoria as an example, cuz they probably had the they did have the biggest lockdown in the world. Your autonomy is taken away completely. You will stay indoors. You will not leave five kilometer radius of your house, there is army on the streets to make sure that you don't. So your autonomy is completely taken away. And that is very demotivating and links to fatigue that Pia you mentioned before.

[00:26:43] So if you think about autonomy, Autonomy is my ability to make choices. The teams that have done this really well in the hybrid working space is where the leader has been able to connect with each of the teams of what do they need, particularly in the going back, because I had one lady who said to me, our CEO is just announced. We've all gotta go back five days a week, and she said, I'm thinking of quitting, because again, her autonomy had been completely taken away

[00:27:09] So a leader who can provide the boundaries and then allow me the choice, the decision making of how I live within those boundaries, how I work are gonna have much more success. So giving me autonomy over my role. And again, you think of people who flourish during COVID. You will see their autonomy has risen. They've been given scope to get on with their work, if they wanna work evenings, cuz they wanna be with their kids during the day or whatever that autonomy really works for people and it keeps motivation up. So that's the first one do I have agency of my life? Do I have autonomy? 

[00:27:41] The interesting thing is you can have too much autonomy. Barry Schwartz talks about it as the paradox of choice. You give me too much. And I don't do anything. I just wander off my own way and, and or I make no decisions. And brains don't like it when they're overwhelmed, the easiest decision is no decision. I just leave it as it is. So again, as a leader, you give enough autonomy within a boundary, not too much that I'm flailing and I don't really know what I'm doing. So that's the first one. 

[00:28:08] Second one is competence. And again, you can see how this played out, particularly around those last two and a half years, as you mentioned Pia with all the challenges and changes, not just COVID. Competence is, do I have the ability to use my skills towards an outcome? And do I have the ability to grow in my skills? So if you think about again, when people were first in lockdown, all of a sudden my competence of how I ran my life and my work, I felt probably I wasn't as competent because, how do I put my boundaries in place? How do I make this work? How do I work in my kitchen with my kids behind me? all of these sorts of things. So again, I will be more motivated when I feel that I'm using my skills towards an outcome and when I'm growing my skills. So competence is those two components. And I know you talk about confidence, a lot, being the important ones um, whether it's the skill and knowledge side of things or the behavior and attitude side of competence.

[00:29:06] The third one is the interesting one again which is relatedness, which is our ability to stay connected. But the interesting thing about this, sometimes teams forget there's two sides of this. So relatedness is, do I feel I belong? So again, if I'm in a hybrid working situation, do I still feel included? Do I still feel I belong? And it's not about, did I get invited for Friday night drinks? Cuz we might not be doing that anymore. Cuz we're all working remotely, but do I still feel I belong when we talk about the projects, the outcomes, et cetera, am I included? That's the one people often pick up on that sense of belonging, but the second one is actually. Do I matter to people as in what I do, does it, is it contributing to somebody? And that's an interesting one when we've had so much change is sometimes people are working on a project and then all of a sudden it's pulled out from under them and it's changing direction. So it's like, so what I did made no difference then.

[00:30:01] So again, teams that are working well that are considering that, not just do I have an online quiz night or whatever you, I mean, personally, I'm not overly sociable, so I don't do those sorts of things. But it's not about that. It's do, are you feel included in what's going on and more importantly, does what I'm contributing, make a difference to people? Does it matter? Do I matter? And you see that on any engagement survey, those sorts of things is, do I feel like I'm adding value? Do I make a difference to people?

[00:30:35] So teams that do that well think about those three things because it increases motivation. And again, self-determination theory talks about the difference between a motivation when I just don't care and I don't do anything, and I'm not motivated, all the way through to autonomous motivation where I will just get on with my work, because all those things are in place, which is pretty cool.

[00:30:55] Dan: It is cool. It's a really pragmatic way. Actually. I love the way you broke that down because I think any lead or any team can look at those and actually really use that as almost just a guide to say, are we looking after these things for every member of our team? I think that's a very helpful way to look at things in a changing time.

[00:31:13] Sue: Yeah, we had a client in the UK that we did some stuff with. And um, one of the things that we measured as part of the sort of wellbeing measurement was self-determination theory and going through it for the whole organization. We soon found that relatedness wasn't an issue. They had that covered. They were doing that. The key one was autonomy. So talking to the senior leaders, then it was just a case of, okay, this is the lever you need to pull to increase wellbeing, to increase people's sense of connection. They had something like a 50% flight risk when we measured it. But of course then when they're trying to then increase autonomy, it was a simple lever of how you gonna do this in your day to day as leaders to give more autonomy back to your people.

[00:31:54] Dan: Yeah, I think it sounds good that autonomy, when I was talking to a leader of the last week who when they went to remote working, was, seemed to really strike that balance actually of not giving too much autonomy. They've merged with another company that um, said, oh, you can do whatever you want. And that, and actually what he said was actually. We are moving remotely, but you, your customer first, team second, and then you're, you're next. Build that autonomy in there. And it's really working for them to have that sort of not too much autonomy that you can just do whatever you want, but to really build that the place in the middle there actually, where they're managing to balance the needs of different stakeholders. Cause I can see that being a really relevant way to build that autonomy and that right in the right region, I guess.

[00:32:40] Sue: Yeah. And they talk about it from a leadership perspective of autonomous support, whether you're a parent or whether you're a leader in business, how do you provide autonomous support where you are there you are showing your support for your team. You're being there in service of them, but you're actually also then that hands off and I have to say my team's amazing. We've done brilliantly through COVID and I've watched my team. They, yeah, I've give them support. I give them what they need materially, check in with them periodically. But most of them, some of them, I don't talk to for two months, cuz I'm busy doing stuff and whatever you and they're all puling along, getting projects off and running. And these four people are working on that and I'm like, yep. Give me a check in tick box off you go. It's brilliant. I love it better than it's ever been.

[00:33:21] Pia: Yeah. And I think I think that autonomy is is such a life force. Isn't it? That just as you're talking about that motivation and I think people are feeling too. Sometimes the system is not allowing them to be. Autonomous. So they're either in a transformation inside their own organization so it gets taken away or they're short staffed, or they've got a supply chain issue. There's all these other elements that are actually eroding that sense of our, almost like our personal autonomy, as well as our team autonomy.

[00:33:53] Sue: Yeah. And you said earlier Pia about Sometimes we can trick our brain, and, and one of the things that I think's really useful to, to do yourself is when you're feeling that uncertainty, discombobulation, you're feeling like your autonomy's taken away, one of the things that I think's always really useful is to note, just telling your brain, what can I be certain of right here right now? What decision am I gonna make right here right now to focus for the next hour? Cuz I know I've got a job till the end of the day. Woohoo. All of a sudden my brain starts to calm down and again, I use this. If I'm having one of those discombobulated days, it's like, okay Susan, what can you focus on right here right now that you have a choice over?

[00:34:30] And funnily enough again, I was having this conversation with some people recently. It's sometimes on the days when you don't have enough structure. So I had a senior leader again in the UK on Tuesday night and he was saying, he said, ah, he said, I had a really bad day on Friday. He said I had no meetings in my diary. I no set agendas. I knew I had work to do, but he said I was wafting around, didn't really seem to get much done. He said, I couldn't give myself permission to take the day off. And he said, and I ended up, my wellbeing started to drop. So again, that's an idea that sometimes we actually need to put these things in place, our own boundaries. And I do this again regularly. One of my top strengths is time optimizer. So I, if I'm having one of those lofty days, then I go, okay. You've got 15 minutes to clear your emails, bang go. Or, you know, you've got 20 minutes to focus on doing a jigsaw puzzle and then you get on with work, but I'll always put timeframes on myself because I know I'm making the choice and I'm using my strengths, which is, um, for me, one of the key things around uh, motivation, energy, those sorts of things, so that I really work to that regularly.

[00:35:36] Dan: I think that's so powerful, actually. So it's a simple. A simple thing that we can all look for. I think if, to use your word, we're in the Ear of discombobulation, aren't we? And, and I think having those little strategies to just in all of those things, what can I control? What can I be certain of? I think that's just so handy for us to help us all to be grounded and do something for this next time box. However much complexity is whirling around us. I think that's something I'll take into my own work. That's for sure. 

[00:36:01] Pia: And Sue, as we kind of bring this all together, we've got a lot of team managers and leaders working with their teams. What would you give us advice to them to? Because I, I don't think we're looking ahead and seeing that it's all be roses in the next six months. It's probably gonna go for a little while. But they're leading people. It's really critical. What resources can they draw on?

[00:36:23] Sue: Two things that are coming to mind. Um, there's so many things that we know help us be the best we can be. The first thing is take wellbeing seriously. And by that I do not mean set up yoga classes, massages, have your fruit bowl. There is a whole science of wellbeing that is far better than the soft and fluffy side of things. So take your wellbeing of your employees seriously. And I mean that from a neuroscience perspective, if I am looking after my brain, my brain will make better decisions at work. I'll be more productive.

[00:36:54] One of the things that I've seen during COVID is people not being able to prioritize people, not being able to make decisions because of that discombobulation. That's classic sign of your brain not being fueled up, not working well, because we know the easiest decision is no decision. Leave it as it is. So one of the key things I'd say is when you think about wellbeing, don't think about it from, let me introduce a meditation course. Yeah, that could be useful, but that's one strategy out of hundreds to help people's brain. And I think of wellbeing from a brain perspective. How do I keep my brain working the best possible? So take wellbeing seriously. 

[00:37:29] The other thing that I think the other side of it, and I just touched on it was strengths. Personally, if you can change your performance in your team to focus on strengths, you get a lot more out of people, but most importantly, it increases people's resilience, they're flourishing, their wellbeing, their goal attainment, et cetera. So again, I know myself, if I get to the end of the day and I'm feeling energised, it's probably cuz I've used my strengths today. 

[00:37:55] And I'll give you an example. So I just mentioned my number one, strength was time optimizer. My second strength is work ethic. Basically. It means I work all the time, but I get energized by it. So if I give you my example, last week I was down, I flew down to Melbourne. I did a full the day before on the Monday on the Tuesday, I did a nine till five MechE accreditation face to face with a client. Three days, but we did two days face to face doing the rest virtual. So nine till five, I linked it back, 15 minute walk to my hotel room. I managed to cook and eat in 25 minutes. Then I jumped on a Diploma of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing from six till nine. Then I was in bed and asleep by nine 30, woke up at 10 30, did a half hour session for a client in Europe, went back to bed for an hour and a quarter, did another half an hour session for a client in Europe, went back to bed at two 30, slept till six 30, got up, did the same thing again the following day, all the way through, till nine, the diploma in the evening, and then flew home the next morning. I was so energized because I'm playing for my strengths.

[00:39:02] And this is the thing people say to me, you should slow down. You should, you know, when I think what would I do? I'd waft around and watch Netflix? That's not playing to my strengths. So when I have a day where I'm playing to my learned behaviors, the things that I'm good at that deenergize, my writing, I wrote a book chapter however many years ago, and everybody went, Ooh, it's great. Can you write some more? And I'm like, oh no, please don't make me write. I'm sitting here on my butt. It should be more energizing, but oh, the idea of writing, I did one last year and it really crucified me because I'm just like, it's, I'm good at it, I can do it, but it drains me. 

[00:39:39] So from a leadership perspective plan to answer your question is what can leaders do is, change your one on ones, change your performance conversations. Look for people doing something well and find out what their strengths are that energize them, not just what they're good at, because it'll change performance and there's research that has found that focusing performance reviews on strengths increases performance by 36.4%. Focusing performance reviews on development opportunities reduces performance by 26.8%. That's huge.

[00:40:14] Dan: So 50% gap there you've opened up immediately. Yeah. Amazing. I think that's wonderful, Sue, and I think it's really consistent with everything you've said that even your view of strengths I've realized is a brain based view. Isn't it? It's not, I'm really good at Excel or I'm, it's, it's not sort of it's skill, skill things. It's actually what your brain really flourishes on. So I think that's um, that's very powerful.

[00:40:36] Sue it's been absolutely jam packed with goodies, that. I think this is this I knew we were in for a great episode. And uh, yeah, you've really treated us to a big tour of the science, but made really practical, and I think um, anyone listening will be able to take a lot from that and be really inspired by it, and start to live a really positive life and bring others along with them. So thank you so much for joining us.

[00:40:59] Sue: You're very welcome. It's been a 

[00:41:00] pleasure. Thanks Dan, thanks Pia.

[00:41:02] 

[00:41:02] Dan: In a way it's really obvious, but having listened to Sue the importance. What came home to me was putting your brain first, your brain health and it's is everything. I love the way when she thinks about wellbeing, it's the wellbeing of your brain. Yes, you've got physical aspects things, but it's that. And when you think about strength, it's not, are you good at Excel as I said, but it's actually about what's. When did your brain feel its best? And so, I think that's easily ignored. And sometimes we just, you know, use our resilience to just push on through. But actually that's the theme that came through to me first of all, I think Pia, was um, how we put our brain first and we really tend to its needs. So that we're at our best.

[00:41:51] Pia: And that's how they, what neuroscience has done because, you know, with the FMR mapping, we're actually able to see what goes on now. It's all been a little bit um, smoker mirrors. Or nothing in there, one of the two. But I think now it's got a more scientific and that that's, the whole self-determination theory is a, is a part of that. It sounds like a dry theory, but it makes a lot of sense. And you're able to map that and see what's actually going on in the brain when you've got that level of autonomy, you've got that level of relatedness. So I think our point was, yeah. Take your brain and take your wellbeing seriously, and build habits, and pay attention and attune to things that you need to do to be on your game. It's a bit what Steve was talking few interviews ago, being on your game, what you need to focus on. And I think what Sue gave us was just a brilliant scientific, but really. Relatable and understandable perspective of that.

[00:42:47] So I thought it was interesting too, Dan, that Sue made particular mention about. Looking for the strengths that energize the team. Um, and when you're a bit fatigued and a bit overwhelmed, it's easy to let you remember. Lucy talked about the wrong wolf in and, and the negativity, but actually you've gotta build out on the strengths. I think that's, We see that with the Squadify results. They're some fantastic results where teams have really thrived during incredibly trying times. And that's gotta be celebrated. That's gotta be brought out, not oh, but you missed this bit.

[00:43:20] Dan: And that sort of 50% gap in performance that emerges from either taking strengths based or a deficiency based approach was huge. And, to be honest, Pia, when we were talking to teams and looking at their Spotify results, I know that when we're looking at the sort of strengths and the challenges people's eyes are going what are the challenges? And try to hold them in that space. And you can actually look at those strengths and take a moment to say, this is what we are really good at. And also we know that if we focus on though, that's, what's gonna help us to get better at everything else. We've got to hold onto that. Not constantly feel we are deficient. And I think that works as what Sue shared and you say the neuroscience and looking at people's brains on the FMRI scanners and things. It's shown us that this is where our brains are gonna be healthy. And and it's in, it really works. 

[00:44:11] And I, yeah, I think looking at that whole of ourselves as well is obviously important with the microbiome and so on, but really having that focus on what's best for our brain.

[00:44:22] But that is it for this episode. You can find show notes and resources at squadify.net. Just click on the We Not Me podcast link. If you've enjoyed the show, please share the love and recommend it to your friends. Also, please do give us a rating on your favorite podcast platform. You can contribute to the show by leaving us a voice note with a question or a comment. Just find the link in the show notes. We Not Me is produced by Mark Steadman of origin. Thank you so much for listen. It's goodbye from me.

[00:44:49] Pia: And it's goodbye from me.