Good morning.
Good afternoon and good evening.
Welcome to the Rethink Culture Podcast,
the podcast that shines a spotlight on business leaders
who are creating intentional cultures, who see their employees not as resources
to be managed or directed, but as people that need to be led and inspired.
My name is Andreas Constantinou, and I'm your host.
I see myself as an accidental micromanager who turned servant leader
and over the years developed a personal passion for culture.
And I'm also the founder of Rethink Culture, a company that aims to help
create 1 million healthier, more fulfilling workplace cultures.
Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming Joey Coleman.
Joey is a professional speaker and author
who teaches people to keep their employees
and customers, and we'll hear a lot about how to keep our employees.
He's the author of a couple of books,
including Never Lose an Employee Again.
He loves reading, he tells me reading several books at the same time.
He loves building Legos.
And I think some of the Legos you'll see shortly behind him and his library.
And he's also an adventurer.
He's visited all seven continents, raced along the Great Wall of China
and sailed around the world.
So our expectations are running high, Joey,
very welcome to the Rethink Culture podcast.
Thank you so much, Andreas.
It is an absolute pleasure to be here.
I'm really looking forward to our conversation
and I so appreciate everybody who's listening in or watching in.
I hope you enjoy the conversation and find as much value as I'm sure
I'm going to find in Andreas’s questions and our conversations.
So where do we start, Joey?
What led you to a passion on how to keep employees?
Well, I think if we look at my passion for keeping employees,
it really stems from a number of life experiences.
My career has been very eclectic.
After studying government
and international relations at university, I went straight to law school
where I studied international law, national security law and litigation.
I had the pleasure of working for the United States Secret Service.
I worked in the White House Office of Counsel to the President.
I worked in the CIA.
I worked for business consulting companies.
I worked at a company that did promotional products.
I worked in various law firms.
I was a criminal defense lawyer.
I taught at the postgraduate level.
I ran an ad agency for almost 15 years.
And what's interesting about all of these different career
experiences is in every one of those jobs, the way you succeeded as a business,
as a leader, as an employee within the organization,
was by having a keen understanding of the human condition.
Why do humans do the things they do?
And what can we do to convince, persuade,
encourage them to do the things we'd like them to do.
And that has kind of led me on a lifelong exploration of experience, of human
dynamics, of interpersonal interactions in both a customer setting,
an employee setting, and even just in a human to human setting.
In our travels during in our day to day lives,
So you started by writing this book Never Lose a Customer Again,
and recently you
published a second book, which is Never Lose an Employee Again.
So was the second book always in the back of your mind,
or did it come up in the later stages?
Well, I'll say a couple of things about that.
You know, the I had been in the customer experience space for about 5 minutes
when I realized that you can't deliver a remarkable customer experience
if you don't have remarkable employees who are able to deliver that experience.
Now, that being said, I didn't have plans to write a book
about employee experience until really two things happened.
Number one, after my first book came out, I received an email from a reader
and all the emails said was, Dear Joey, if you wrote
a book called Never Lose an Employee Again, I would buy it.
And it was signed by the reader.
And I thought, Well, that's kind of interesting.
I had considered employee experience,
but I had never considered writing a book about it specifically.
And then I got another email exactly like that.
And another email exactly like that, all from different readers
from all over the world with just the simple message.
If you wrote a book called Never Lose an Employee Again, I would buy it.
That was it.
And that led me to getting curious.
And the more I started to look at employee experiences
and employee retention issues and employee recruiting issues,
I realized that many of the same challenges
that organizations faced with their customers they were facing
at an exponential level with their employees.
That led me to start doing some research, some speaking on the topic,
exploring the topic.
And when I finally felt that it reached a level of
being, for
lack of a better way of put it, worth investing the time
to write a book about it, I decided to go write the book.
And how far ago was that?
So I started to I officially made the decision
to write the book back in about 2019.
Late 2019,
and went to my publisher and they said, We're excited to have this book.
We started working on the book, and almost immediately after
we started working on the book, the COVID pandemic came along,
and I actually reached back out to my publisher and I said, We need to pause.
We need to pause on the
production schedule, because I believe what is happening right now
in the world of work is going to fundamentally
change the workplace and how employees and employers interact
in a way that is unprecedented in human history.
And I want to give time to see how that plays out.
And so this allowed me to do even more research on things
like remote work on globalization of work, on workplace culture.
And I'm glad we did pause so that we could kind of experience the breadth of that.
The reality is those stories are still playing out today.
They're still evolving. They're still changing.
But I thought we had reached a point where putting a book in place
that would hopefully give leaders a blueprint
and some ideas of things they could be doing to enhance
their cultures and enhance their employee experiences
would be worthwhile for leaders to spend their time reading.
So we reached that point where we could do it.
And here we are today.
What did you
find that you didn't expect before?
Before the pandemic was there?
Was there a an assumption that was challenged,
did you see things completely differently, did you see people,
employees reacting in different ways for your research?
I think what I saw is that the things that I had started
to see and witness and experience in little pockets
became more ubiquitous around the world.
So there was always a desire for employees to be able to have flexibility at work.
But when governments came along and locked down
people's interactions that they could have in person
we shifted to everybody being online, trying to continue
doing their doing their work, not everyone, but a significant,
significant percentage of the workforce globally.
I think we also had a major shift in employers
starting to accept the fact that
their work could continue to be done
even if the employees weren't in the room with them.
And I think that was a big shift that some employers
had already adopted that philosophy.
But as part of the pandemic, almost
every employer was forced to adopt that policy.
And what we found is this experiment of what would it be like if people
worked somewhere other than the office proved out to be a fairly positive result.
Now, let me be clear.
There were tragic things that happened with the pandemic.
Absolutely.
But if there was a an upside or a positive thing that happened
from the pandemic,
it's that I think many organizations that previously had limited
their workplaces to employees that live within 20 kilometers of headquarters
now had this understanding that they could employ people globally,
that those people could work from home, that those people could have more flexible
schedules and more flexible lives, and as a result, more autonomy and freedom
and opportunity in their personal lives to match their professional lives.
This led to a net positive in the world of work.
And how do you feel now that companies are going back?
Not everyone, but
many companies are going back to saying, hey, you need to come back to the office,
because that's how we maintain our culture.
Because
for one reason or another, they weren't
fully committed to remote work, but it's something they had to do.
I think that many of the organizations
that are saying we need to come back to the office
are not being genuine when they say it's because they want
to maintain their culture or that it's for the employees.
I think in many organizations it is for command and control.
I think in many organizations it's because the leaders
are uncomfortable operating remotely.
And I think in many organizations it's because the management team
wants to be able to look across a crowd of people
and actually see these people work for me.
Now, are there benefits to being in person?
100%.
Is it easier to collaborate in person?
In many instances it is.
Is it easier to be more creative in person?
In many instances it is.
But the organizations that are saying
we need to get back to the office because of preservation of culture,
I think are being a little bit disingenuous
because their culture in many of them wasn't that great before the pandemic,
and they haven't made systemic changes in their either office space
or their operations that would give employees any belief
that the culture is going to be better now that they're back in an office setting.
Indeed, I find that you need to design
your processes, how people collaborate, coordinate,
share experiences
and tap into each other's help.
You know, every every form of interaction, you have to redesign it,
thoughtfully, for a remote working environment.
And it's not that someone came and said, here's the manual of how to do it.
It just said, you know, you have to get your employees
working remotely and just figure it out.
And I don't think that period of the lockdowns were sufficient to encourage
everyone to really redesign
how they were going about remote work.
And so what we're left is a mental
way of it kind of works, but we're not sure
how to make it work like it was before, as effective
as it was in the, you know,
face to face work.
And so we'll just ask people to come back.
I don't disagree, Andreas, but I guess I'm curious is when when organizations.
Well, lots of times, so in my consulting engagements
or even in my speeches, you know, leaders will say to me, well,
it's it's not as effective as it was before.
We want to get back to what it was.
And I'm like, great, What are you measuring?
What isn't as effective?
Because I think lots of times leaders will say, well,
it will be better if we're all back in the office. Why?
What proof do you have?
What data do you have?
Because as we look anecdotally at anecdata
or we look systemically or statistically at research data,
it seems to indicate that the great majority of employees
are happier working remotely than want to work
in the office, and that pretty much cuts across all industries.
Now, are there people that want to be back in the office
absolutely, but it's usually not the majority of a team.
It's usually a small minority.
So we're going to take all these people
who've been working from home for one or two or three years
and now say, come back to the office because it's going to be better?
Better for whom?
Better for the employee?
Statistically, no.
Better for the employer?
Well, maybe conceptually,
but what is the data that they are citing that will make it better?
What I find fascinating, Andreas, is so many organizations
increasingly are driven by data.
We know if an advertisement works based on how many click on it,
how many goes through our funnel, and how many convert.
We are driven by data because we know when we're in our factory setting,
we manufacture to certain tolerances that only allow us to have
a small percentage of defects per million products created.
Yet when it comes to our interactions with our coworkers and our employees,
we say, Well, it'll just be better if you're back to work.
There's no data,
there's no analysis, which to me
supports the belief that many organizations
are completely out of touch with what their people actually want
and instead are trying to force their employees
into a model that they believe will work,
even though they have no data or proof that it actually does.
Do you have a sense whether a choice of remote work
affects engagement?
I think a choice as a general rule improves engagement
because it leads to feelings of autonomy and freedom.
When employees feel that they have autonomy, when employees feel
that they have freedom, when employees feel that they have flexibility,
they are more productive, they are more efficient.
They are happier at work and they stay longer.
All the things that organizations say they want.
Now, the flip side of that, Andreas, is that most organizations,
by giving an employee autonomy, by giving them freedom,
they might not choose the thing that you as an organization want them to choose.
And this creates the conflict.
This leads us back to a command and control structure where we say,
I want you to work these hours in this location, doing this task.
That's fine.
And there are certain jobs
in certain positions where we need to perform in that degree.
But increasingly, in businesses across all industries,
we're not needing employees
who can execute on discrete task.
Those tasks can be automated.
Those tasks can be systematized.
Those tasks can be relegated to robots or A.I..
Increasingly, we're looking for employees who can exercise
critical thinking and critical judgment
and can respond to unforeseen scenarios
in a way that is in alignment with our organizational values.
Those type of scenarios by their very nature,
require emphasis on autonomy.
Emphasis on flexibility.
Emphasis on creativity.
That the typical business structure
is not designed to either create gender or foster.
Is there something else besides remote work that you feel
is a driver for engagement?
Oh, I think there's many things that are drivers for engagement.
I think the number one driver for whether an employee feels engaged
with the work they do is whether they feel seen, heard and valued.
If an employee doesn't feel seen, heard and valued,
I don't care whether they're working from home
or they're working from the office, they're not going to be happy.
And I believe we need to have all three things to succeed.
What do I mean by that?
An employee needs to feel that they individually are contributing.
They need to be seen for their contribution.
They need to be seen as someone who is a vital part
of the organizational operation.
Secondly, they need to feel heard.
They need to believe when they raise their hand and say,
We need to be better at this
or there's a problem I'm noticing or I need more support here.
They need to feel that they're not shouting that to the void,
but most importantly, they need to feel valued and appreciated.
Andreas, I've had the pleasure of traveling to all seven continents,
as you shared.
I have yet to meet a human being on the planet, of any age,
any gender, any race, any religion, any country, any culture,
who has said to me, Joey,
I have enough appreciation in my life,
I never need to be appreciated by anyone else ever again.
I am full. I'm done.
Humans want to feel that they're making an impact.
They want to feel that they're experiencing progress.
They want to feel that they're making a contribution.
They want to feel that their contributions and their impacts are rewarded,
are acknowledged, are appreciated, and are valued.
It's that simple and it's that complex.
So you talk about recognition, being listened to
and being appreciated.
Right? Yes.
So I read about this 100 days methodology,
which you talk about in your book, but can you summarize it for us?
Like, is this
seen, heard and appreciated, is this part of the methodology?
it absolutely is.
So the first 100 days methodology at a high level looks to research
that says the first 100 days of an employee's experience
are the most crucial time in the entire employee journey.
This is where the foundation is established.
This is where an employee is onboarded into an organization.
They become part of a culture that is bigger than themselves,
and they begin to contribute to a culture that is bigger than themselves.
In the first 100 days in most organizations, employees feel overwhelmed.
They feel unconnected.
They feel unseen, unheard, unappreciated.
Because to use an analogy, they are drinking from the fire hose.
There's so many things happening, and this is why we see a huge percentage
of employees quit very quickly.
The research shows that across all industries globally, 40% of newly
hired employees will quit that job
before the one year anniversary.
40%, over half of those will quit
in the first 45 days on the job.
So the number of people that are coming into our organizations
that are barely there and then are leaving is absolutely catastrophic.
It's double digit.
What's scarier to me, Andreas, than those statistics
is that the typical business leader has no idea what their percentage is.
They have no idea how quickly people are leaving
and they have no true idea as to why they're leaving.
And as a result,
they're trying to solve this problem by quickly recruiting someone new.
Refilling the seat, getting someone else in the position,
and we're bringing them through the same broken recruiting process
into the same broken onboarding process, hoping
we'll get a different result when it comes to their retention and engagement.
This is not a recipe for success.
And what I tried to do in the book is outline a methodology
and a framework for thinking differently about the employee experience.
In the first 100 days and beyond in a way
that leaves employees feeling seen, heard and valued.
I can certainly attest to the power of the onboarding process.
And to be honest, I didn't recognize its importance until I messed it up.
So there's this story.
Our current CEO's, I’ve transitioned away from the CEO
to someone else in my business and
the current CEO when they started in the company,
we didn't pay any attention to the onboarding process.
So she started when it was summer.
I was away on holiday.
I was the one person that could onboard her.
She started as a salesperson
and we gave her a secondhand laptop
that wasn't properly, you know,
cleaned, you know, from the previous user.
And that was such a lousy experience.
And then a few months later, when I heard that this was,
you know, how how she experienced the onboarding process,
I realized how important these first days is.
And now when I look at other leaders and I look at the lack of an onboarding
process, to me it’s so intuitive that
this is the honeymoon phase for for an employee in a new business,
it's like when everything is rosy
and you expect like this wonderful job and wonderful colleagues
and purpose-filled mission and this is part of your new life.
So you expect it to be,
you know,
so many things for you, but you see these little things
that don't make sense around you and then you start having questions
and questioning like, did I join the right company or not?
So it's not common for for leaders
to be aware of the employee
onboarding process because it's been a while
since they experienced a lousy onboarding process.
Absolutely.
Andreas, I couldn't agree with you more.
Not only is it been a while since they've been experienced
a lousy onboarding process, but if it's a founder leader,
they were never onboarded into their own organization.
So they have no personal context.
If it's more of a C-suite leader
or a middle manager who may have worked somewhere else, they probably don't
have that great of experiences elsewhere to serve as an idea for them.
And in most organizations, onboarding is
the purview of the human resources department,
which I have a fundamental problem with that title.
Humans are humans.
They're not resources, They're not tools that are to be used.
So many organizations think about HR,
or they think about their human resources or talent acquisition.
I like the analogies of people and teams.
I feel like those words that those phrases align
more with what we're actually dealing with, with the humans we interact with.
And so while I empathize with that concern you had or that experience
you had with the employee getting the secondhand laptop,
what is both sad and yet
not shocking and in some ways is shocking.
This is more common than not.
Yours is not the only organization that is delivered this type of experience
to a new employee.
And so what can we do to change the experience?
In over 50% of the businesses on the planet,
they spend one week or less onboarding a new employee,
and yet in almost every business on the planet, when they hire a new employee,
if I say to them, How long do you hope that employee stays?
Their answer is years.
They want the employee to be there for years,
but they're only willing to invest one week or less in that relationship.
What I think is interesting is when we step out of the business context
and we look at our personal lives.
Imagine you meet someone and you decide to start dating.
How foolish would it be to believe I'm going to show you
that I care about you and focus on you for one week or less
with the hope that this leads to a long term happy, multi-year marriage.
This would not be a recipe for success.
This would be a recipe for failure.
And yet this is how most organizations structure their onboarding processes.
Right.
Yeah.
It's a second or third thought.
If it's a thought at all.
Yeah, yeah,
very true.
And what you said about H.R.,
I, I want to just say
that I 100% agree with you.
I'll say I'm working on a no H.R.
manifesto because I believe we should
maybe I should say ban or maybe I shouldn't say ban,
but we should change away from any term that considers people as resources.
And as I mentioned in the in the intentional introduction, resources
that are
managed and directed as opposed to led and inspired,
I think people in culture, you said people and teams, it's very similar,
but we need to change away from H.R.
and all the major conferences these days they're still about H.R.
this or H.R. that.
So it's a very much hard-coded, deeply ingrained
notion
that will take some time to change.
Hopefully we can keep talking until it does.
Exactly.
Well, I often talk with my wife Andreas, that we never have to worry about
they're not being an audience or not being somebody
that wants to listen to a podcast or not being someone that wants to read a book
because there's so much work to be done in this field.
There will always be opportunities for improvement.
So, Joey, moving to another topic, we didn't talk much about you.
We just talked about your book on onboarding processes and culture
and so on.
But I do always love to,
dive into the humanness of, of people and,
let's, let's just take one, one simple factoid or three, three factoids,
which is this game I like to play, which is the Two Truths and One Lie.
So we don't have the time to get to know you properly, but maybe
we will get to know a little bit about you through Two Truths and One Lie.
So Okay, great.
So I'll give you three and then you can try to guess which one is the lie.
So number one, I've been on the International Space Station.
Number two,
I've been nominated for a Grammy,
the Recording Artist Award.
Number three, I performed as a singer in concerts
on all seven continents.
These are extremely good.
Joey, I
they're like, they're all impossible.
I would definitely bet against the International Space Station
because I cannot possibly imagine how you got yourself up there.
But let's leave the
answer to the end of the podcast.
And what else can we talk about?
Who's who's a role model for you?
Who do you look up to?
Oh, Andreas.
I have so many mentors and I have so many people that I look up to
as somebody who is a student of the human condition.
I have mentors and role models in the world of personal relations,
familial relations, business relations, stranger relations.
So there's a variety of people that I look up to.
You know, I feel like it's it's not answering your question
if I don't point to at least one.
So allow me to point to one that I think is
someone who is often looked up to in the world of business.
But the reason I look up to them
may be a little bit different than a reason
why some other business leaders look up to them.
And that person would be Sir Richard Branson.
Sir Richard Branson obviously is the founder of Virgin
and the various Virgin Airlines Virgin Cruises,
all the different Virgin branded organizations,
has been an incredibly successful business entrepreneur and leader for decades.
I had the opportunity to spend some time
interacting with him earlier this year at an event.
And what I realized very quickly about him
is that he is as concerned
about the little things as he is the big things.
We were sitting at a lunch
having a conversation and someone at the table referenced
they were going to be going on one of his cruise ships
and he said, Well, where are you going on the cruise ship?
And they said, we're going to be going on this route.
And he says, that sounds lovely.
And he says, I'm excited to hear what you think about it.
They said, we'd be happy to share what we thought about it.
And he said, How has it gone thus far?
And I thought, this is really interesting.
This is a billionaire who's talking to a customer who has a ticket on his cruise.
This is as close to the base level
operation businesswise of his cruise business as possible.
And the person said, well, it's actually been lovely and we're excited.
But there was this thing we were trying to do about connecting,
you know, for from one part of the cruise to a different part of the cruise.
And we just haven't been able to really find out the answer.
And he said, give me one moment.
And he pulled out his phone and he said, What's your email?
And the person said, Ah, And they shared their email address.
They were a little caught off guard.
And he said, I'm sending an email to the head of experience
at Virgin Cruises and copying you,
asking that person to answer your question and get everything sorted out.
It's been sent.
And I thought to myself, Here's a billionaire
who's eating his lunch,
who is taking the time
to create a remarkable experience
for a customer that is a one off.
This isn't going to improve the entire cruise line.
This isn't a systemic enhancement.
This is going to improve the experience of one person.
And in that moment, on days,
I realized what I believe has been the secret to his success.
That is, even though he has grown to I think there are over 400 companies
in the Virgin universe, He's still committed
to the remarkable experience of an individual customer.
It's it's hugely inspiring.
And at the same time, to me, it raises a question,
which is what is the definition
of the ideal leader?
Because there's this example where, you know, the leader
of a large organization goes and taps
a senior staff member,
ask them to help a customer.
There is more extreme examples
in Elon Musk's biography where and he,
you know, he's still living, so it's technically half a biography.
So where he he's extremely
attentive to detail
to the point of micromanaging everyone around him.
And the question for me is,
at what point
is the model of a servant leader,
allowed, if at all,
to be so attentive to detail that they immerse
themselves too much into the business and start creating some
disruption or chaos?
Or is that maybe setting the right example?
Like I don't have an answer, I'm wondering if you do.
Well, I don't know that I have an answer.
I certainly have some thoughts.
And I think at the end of the day, being a leader is a balance.
It's a balance between setting a vision and being strategic
with acting tactically and specifically.
It's a balance of where are we going as an organization, where are we going
as a culture, and where are we right now in this moment?
It's also a balance of where have we been and what have we learned
and what has brought us to this moment.
What I really loved about this interaction
that I observed with Sir Richard Branson was that
he helped the customer,
but he also sent a very clear message to his team.
He didn't say, do this.
He didn't say, get them a better room.
He didn't say connect them in this, solve this problem.
He just said, as I understand it, the way he related it, I didn't see the email,
help these people
with their question.
What I felt that does is
it sends a very clear message to the leadership in his team
that their goal should be to always be helping,
to always be finding opportunities to enhance the experience,
and that if he's willing to do this and live this in his personal life,
hopefully his leaders should be willing to do this.
And by default their direct reports will see them doing this.
And this is how you have an organization
that is driven by the concept of experience
as opposed to driven by the bottom line or driven by the
more data elements of,
Well, as long as we achieved the result, how we got there doesn't matter.
Right.
So it's the is the leader who has
to stay behind the scenes and coach,
but from time to time has to jump in
and set an example.
In that case, for excellent customer service.
Absolutely.
We happened to, one additional aside.
We happened to be at his private island in the Caribbean, Necker Island,
and not at this meal, but at another meal.
I saw him get up when he was done
and pick up his plate
and walk it over to the server
instead of leaving it on the table for the server to collect.
And again, I observed this and I thought to myself,
Here's someone who
does not see themselves
as above the other members of the team.
Now, some might say, well, he was
he was taking that server's opportunity to clear his plate.
I don't think the server was thinking, I wish I had more opportunities
to clear plates.
I think the message that he was sending in that moment is
I want to help wherever I can.
And at least that has for many years
I've tried to adopt that as my own philosophy
that I don't want to micromanage, but I would never want anyone on my team
to feel like I'm asking them to do something that I wouldn't
be willing to do myself or that I haven't done myself,
and that I am always available to them to do the things that maybe are beyond the
scope of what they can do, the resources they can access, the phone calls
they can make that I might be able to do more easily.
I try to be available in that context for them.
Loving to serve others
is something we don't get taught,
but it's something that
elevates all of us,
both the person being served and the person doing the serving.
I learned this from one of my mentors
that I have the utmost regard for, Warren Rustin, who,
said something along the lines of We need to
love to live, love to learn
and love to serve.
And the other thing that
your story reminded me of is how powerful
is for each of us to be driven
by our values, to
be extremely resolute
because it requires extreme resolution of what our values are.
And so, you know, even if you are a billionaire
and your value is, let's say, you know, I,
I love to serve or I love to
just do my my due
to take the plate and just offer it to, you know,
just,
you know, take care of it, essentially.
But the importance of values,
we talk about it at work,
but we don't talk about it enough on a personal level.
And I think the very few people around us
relatively speaking, who are very resolute about their values,
these are the really charismatic
leaders and role models.
I agree.
And what I think is challenging about
being driven by your values and living by your values is two things.
Number one, we have to get clear on what our values are.
And in my experience, getting clear on what our values are
usually comes from making mistakes that go outside the bounds.
And we eventually course correct to say no.
Actually, my value is this because of this consequence,
this experience, this mistake I made, something I felt.
But then once we get
clear on our values, we have to recognize that
the only thing we can control
is our effort to live by our values.
Even in a world and in an environment where our values
may not be accepted by others.
In fact, our values may be challenged by others as being foolish
or foolhardy or negative or not the good way to go.
I had an experience last week.
I was giving a speech, and whenever I give a speech
at the end of the speech, I like to give prizes to the audience.
So I said, Here's the chance.
I want to give some prizes to the audience,
but there's so many of you here, I can't hand them out in person.
So what I'd like you to do is text this number
and give me your email address
and then I will send you the prizes.
And then I said very clearly, by the way,
this does not mean you're being added to an email list.
This does not mean that now I'm going to email you a newsletter every week.
This is not mean that I'm going to email you four emails,
and then the fifth email is going to be asking you to buy something.
You are going to get two emails from me.
Email number one is when I send you these items,
because when I send you these free
gifts, I'm also going to ask you to complete a survey.
And if you complete the survey, you have the chance
to win more prizes.
The second email will be when I send you
the email with the more prizes.
If you choose to complete the survey, you're not required
to complete the survey to get the prize, you get the prize with the first email.
But if you share your thoughts and share your feelings about my presentation,
I will give you a second email and that will be it.
There will be no more additional emails.
Someone came up to
me after the speech and said, I have a problem with your speech.
I said, this is exciting and interesting.
Not always the feedback I get after a speech.
And I said, What's your problem?
And they said, You should be sending more emails.
And I said, I appreciate that,
but it's not a decision I've decided to make.
I've decided to only send, as I shared
the two emails, and you're really only guaranteed to get one.
You only get the second one if you say, I would like the second email
and then that's it.
And this person said, You're leaving money on the table.
And I said, That very well may be the case.
And in fact, statistically, I will agree with you
that I am leaving money and opportunity on the table.
But I think I am gaining more
by my
approach than I would by a different approach.
So thank you for your suggestion.
And I think you're just being true to yourself.
Right. And that's golden. Exactly.
And that works for me.
Now, has my business grown as quickly as it could
if I sent everyone ten emails a year?
No, of course not.
But I'm okay with that.
So, Joey, when it comes to workplaces
and given everything we discussed and onboarding process
and engagement, thoughtful or unthoughtful leaders, what do you think
we should be more conscious about?
What should leaders be more intentional
about when it comes to workplaces and workplace culture?
I think there's a couple of things that leaders
could be more intentional about and I'll rattle off a few.
And if any of these seem interesting, I'm happy to dive deeper.
Number one,
we need to elevate the role of people and teams in our organizational structures.
Many organizations have a chief marketing officer, a chief sales officer,
a chief technology officer, a chief executive officer, and then
a director of human resources.
We need to elevate the people element.
And I know there are some organizations that have a CHRO
or a chief people officer, but they are few and far between.
The language we use matters.
Number two, we need to think more strategically about
the personal and emotional connections we're trying to create with our teams.
We have lived for many, many years, decades with this fiction
that there is work and there is personal life.
And as businesses, as corporations, as employers, we thought nothing
about asking an employee to stay late at work.
We thought nothing about asking an employee to take the conference call
while they're on vacation.
We've thought nothing of sending an employee an email at 3:00
in the morning on Saturday and expecting them
to respond over the weekend before they come back to work on Monday.
As organizations, we thought nothing of that.
And yet when an employee works remotely, our fear
is, well, are they doing their laundry when they should be working?
What if they're watching a show?
What if they leave their desk?
Can they go outside to play with their child?
This is offensive.
We thought nothing of having work creep into their personal lives.
But the moment there's even any possibility that their personal life
might creep into the work hours, we become uncomfortable
and almost offended in many instance.,
I think that's a fundamental problem.
I think organizations need to employ someone who every day
when they wake up their prime directive is, What can I do today
to make this the best company in the world to work for?
What can I do today to make the employees love
coming to work, love engaging at work, feeling fulfilled in what they do?
In the typical organization, the H.R.
department is about compliance,
is about benefits administration,
and is about making sure that the organization doesn't
step itself into a lawsuit or a claim against the organization.
The way we change that is with our leaders.
Leaders need to be committed
to creating personal and emotional connection
with the people they work with, and not just the people
who are in their immediate circle of coworkers and colleagues,
but people throughout the organization.
When we have personal and emotional connection, when we work
with our friends, it's a lot more difficult to quit.
You can quit a job.
It's hard to quit a friend.
You can dread going into work.
You don't usually dread spending time with your friends.
I think there's an opportunity to us for us to think more strategically
and intentionally about those type of connections we create in the workplace.
Joey, your your words are music to my ears, to say the least.
And given you're a voracious reader,
is there a book you would recommend?
Whether it's relevant to how we should rethink culture
or just any topic you are passionate about at the moment.
Well, as I mentioned, I have a or as you mentioned, rather,
I have a tendency to be reading many books at or near the same time.
I usually have about three or four books going.
It's the way my brain works.
I don't necessarily recommend this as a strategy.
But one general comment about how I choose
the books to read and then two specific recommendations.
As a business owner and someone who aspires to be a business
leader, I do my best to alternate
and not always read business books.
I try to read one business book and then one fiction book and then back
to another nonfiction book and then back to another fiction book. Why?
Because I think the best way to learn about humans
other than interacting with humans is to read fiction.
Because fiction increases our opportunity for empathy.
It increases our opportunity to see perspectives outside of our own.
It helps our brain to do better at that.
So a fiction book I just recently finished, which was absolutely delightful,
is a book called The Gentleman in Moscow
by Amor Towles, T-O-W-L-E-S.
It is a fantastic story about a gentleman
living in a hotel in Moscow, and it tracks his time there.
The interactions he has with the employees of the hotel, the guests of the hotel,
people inside the hotel, and people outside the hotel.
It's beautifully written and a lovely piece of fiction.
On the nonfiction side, I'm about halfway through a book called Never Enough:
When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic and What We Can Do About It.
It's written by a woman named Jennifer Breheny Wallace.
And the entire book, at least the first half that I read,
is all about how we are driving children
to succeed, to get great grades in school, to go to the best
universities, to be involved in as many organizations as possible.
I'm reading this for a couple of reasons.
Number one, I'm a parent and I want to have a better
understanding of my parenting as it relates to my children.
Number two, I'm a member of a society and I want to have a better understanding
of the culture that we are creating globally with this drive.
And number three, as an employer,
I want to have a better understanding of young people entering the workforce.
What they've grown up in, in terms of this push for more to achieve
more, to have more line items on the resumé to succeed more, how
that will affect their ability to perform within an organizational structure.
And so those are two books that I would recommend that
I'm enjoying reading or just having finished right now.
Thank you. Thank you, Joey.
And just as we wrap, a final question for you,
which of the three facts is a lie and what are the truths?
Okay.
So the first one was I've been on the International Space Station, No way.
and that is true.
However, I was on the space station
before it was launched into space.
I had the opportunity to tour the modules for the space station
when they were being built and set up
at the Houston Space Center here in the United States.
Number two, I've been nominated for a Grammy.
That is also true.
The group that I sang with
in Washington, D.C., has actually been nominated for several.
We never won any Grammys, but we were indeed nominated.
The last idea or the last statement I had offered is I've performed in concert
on all seven continents as a singer.
That's not true.
I've only done performances on two continents, multiple countries,
probably north of 15, but not all seven continents.
I've had the pleasure of visiting all seven continents.
I've had the pleasure of being on stage as a speaker, on all seven continents.
But I've never had the pleasure of singing
in a concert on all seven continents.
So it's something to potentially work on for the future.
So, Joey, maybe next time you can talk to us more about your artistic side.
It sounds like you have a lot more going over there.
Thank you for your
authenticity, I
would start with, your energy, your enthusiasm, your passion
for the human condition, which
is rare to find.
And thank you for sharing your insights with us.
And I hope we get a second chance to hear lots more about,
you know, working with people
evolving beyond H.R.
and just being true to ourselves.
Thank you, Andreas.
And thanks to everybody who watched or listened in.
I hope you've had as much fun listening in as I've had talking with you, Andreas.
Thank you again for having me on the show.
And to everyone listening, thank you.
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And don't forget to tell us what you think by emailing rethink@rethinkculture.co.
And keep leading.