December 17, 2024 • 44 mins
The future of work is clearly no longer about clocking in at a desk. For this episode’s guest, it’s more about creating a whole new rhythm of leadership and engagement that makes work more human.
Speaker, author, coach and consultant Eryc Eyl shares his unique perspective on the evolving dynamics of the workplace and challenges with how "employee engagement” is understood today. We dive into the generational shifts shaping how we work, a reframing of “quiet quitting” as “calibrated contribution,” and why redefining success around what engagement really means is essential in a volatile and uncertain world.
Eryc offers fresh insights on creating human-centered workplaces and reveals his innovative approach to leadership coaching and consulting—which includes blending DJing with motivational speaking to spark collective energy and connection. Plus, he delves into the key concepts from his book Stop Engaging Employees: Start Making Work More Human, challenging the way we think about work, leadership, and what more authentic engagement can look like.
Join us as we discuss:
Speaker, author, coach and consultant Eryc Eyl shares his unique perspective on the evolving dynamics of the workplace and challenges with how "employee engagement” is understood today. We dive into the generational shifts shaping how we work, a reframing of “quiet quitting” as “calibrated contribution,” and why redefining success around what engagement really means is essential in a volatile and uncertain world.
Eryc offers fresh insights on creating human-centered workplaces and reveals his innovative approach to leadership coaching and consulting—which includes blending DJing with motivational speaking to spark collective energy and connection. Plus, he delves into the key concepts from his book Stop Engaging Employees: Start Making Work More Human, challenging the way we think about work, leadership, and what more authentic engagement can look like.
Join us as we discuss:
- Moving from engagement as something we “do to” employees to a more mutual relationship – one aimed at fostering emotional connections in human-centric workplaces.
- How leaders can nurture engagement by creating the right conditions, not forcing activity.
- Fresh approaches to igniting collective energy and creativity.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to Building Brand Gravity. My name is
Ann Green. I'm CEO with the GNS Integrated Marketing Communications Group.
And it's such a treat today because I get to
talk to a very very old friend, Eric.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome, Thanks, Ann. I'm so excited to do this. This
is going to be fun.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Yeah. So I know a lot about you and it's
been fun catching up. But tell our listeners a little
bit about your background and the work that you do
today and that'll be a good entree into the conversation
we're going to have, which has a lot to do
with the idea of engagement and the pros of it
and the challenges of it too.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. So today what I do is
I help heart driven leaders, heart led leaders to cultivate
more human centric workplaces so that people can become the
best versions of themselves and we can get better results.
And I do that primarily now through speaking and writing
and advising. That's pretty much what I'm doing. I got
(01:02):
here through, as many of us, a very circuitous route.
But I began really my career working in General Electric,
so huge multinational corporation back in the Jack Welch days,
back in the both highs and lows of the Jack
Welch days, and through that I really got to develop
a lot of different skills. We were encouraged to work
(01:22):
in multiple different parts of the business during that time.
They invested very heavily in employee development at the time,
so for my early career that was really valuable. So
I got to get involved in things like six Sigma,
which was really key because I got interested in all
of this sort of data driven statistical process improvement and
then realized that none of it mattered if you didn't
(01:45):
manage the people side of things. So then I got
really interested in the people side, in things like change
management and through that employee engagement, workplace culture, leadership development.
So that's how I ended up here doing what I'm
doing today.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Before we get into of your view and what you've
been bringing to the table and you're speaking and also writing,
I know you just recently published a book that I've
been taking a look at called Stop Engaging Employees, which
is a very provocative title. I enjoy that. What are
the different areas within employee engagement? How have you seen
the idea and the practice of employee engagement sort of
(02:19):
change over time? And it really only came into the
FOE as a language and a practice only within the
past couple decades.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I feel like, yeah, that's right, Yeah, yeah, it comes
out of it's come to life in really our working lives.
It started off in the early nineties, this whole notion
of employee engagement, and there was language used at the
time to talk about people being harnessed to their work,
(02:47):
and some of that still remains in the way that
we talk about employee engagement. But I think, you know, yeah, definitely,
prior to the nineties, the notion of really what employees
are experiencing at work at all was really not really
relevant to the business conversation. And I think in the
nineties it became and really through the early two thousands,
(03:08):
very much about how do we get people to do stuff?
And as you know, that is a key part of
managing a business is sometimes people have to do stuff
they don't want to do and how do we accomplish that.
But I think the idea of employee engagement has shifted
a bit from from how do we get people to
do stuff? To how do we make this a positive
(03:28):
experience for everyone? And I think where I'm trying to
push it as even further, which is to say that
the whole purpose of work is for us to become
the best versions of ourselves and to flourish as humans,
and that's why organizations exist. So I'm trying to push
us even further in that human centric direction and stop
looking at it as something that's something we do to people. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
I was really intrigued in some of your writing on
you and I had to catch up conversation and preparation
for this conversation. You talked about having a bit of
a personal epiphany, and there's so much discussion about what
is the outcome of what we're trying to do in business,
both as individuals and collective as organizations. So I have
that double consciousness. I am a worker and I am
(04:11):
an organizational leader, right, So I'm trying to look at
it from both sides. But for many years, the idea
of stake of a shareholder value was the outcome of
business or you know, maybe obviously revenue, profit and things
like that. But tell me a little bit about the
epiphany you had regarding what the actual end goal might
be of the work we do.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, So I think I think what you're talking about
is really important, right, because I think just to get
us there, so we talk about Milton Friedman and that
was the purpose of the organization is maxim my shareholder value.
That was sort of taking ugh of context, but also
he meant it. And then we get to you know,
I think it was twenty eighteen if the Business Roundtable
comes out and says, actually the purpose of a business
(04:53):
is to maximize outcomes for all of its stakeholders, so
that means communities and suppliers and employees and customers, right.
And and that shift was pre pandemic. I think as
you and I discussed, like during the pandemic, things shifted
even more and I think there was a there was
(05:13):
a real awakening for a lot of folks, myself included
about what the role of work is, what the role
of my job is, uh and and how I think
about my contribution there. So that's where we got to
this really abysmal term quiet quitting, right, which was which
was really just a way of trying to understand that
(05:36):
people were recalibrating the role that their job had in
their lives, how much space it occupied because because for
a lot of us, and again speaking from a position
of privilege, where I could work from here in my home.
A lot of us were able to reevaluate and think
about how much we were willing to give, how much
(05:58):
we were getting, and about that mutually beneficial relationship between
employer and employee. So I think that shifted, and for
me personally, a part of that shift was really realizing,
you know, you and I have liberal arts backgrounds. Philosophy
is sort of in US, and I like to sort
of think about the philosophy of business, and I was
(06:18):
really thinking about the fact that we, going way back sociologically,
we organized as groups of humans to be able to
accomplish more and frankly just live longer. And so organizations
exist to serve us, and we don't exist to serve organizations.
And it's not to say that there's not a role
in our lives for being of service, but that, you know,
(06:41):
I think this mindset shift of people come to work
every day to serve the organization, I think is really
key for leaders, right, And I'm sure you have experience
with this of saying no, that's not true, because they
are actually whole people with whole lives behind and ahead
of them. And I need to sort of find way
for this work experience that we're having together to be
(07:02):
a part of that.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yeah, I love this. It's a really interesting question of
like the business flourishing, organizational flourishing, and also human flourishing,
and that question. I mean, we this is not to
be a detour and something we can talk more about that.
There's also much more question about mental health and wellness
and engagement in the workplace in ways that would be
inconceivable when we had both graduated college and entered the workforce,
(07:27):
especially into those kinds of organizations. Just absolutely not on
the table. But I wanted to. I want to put
a pin in that because I want to go back
to this quiet quitting phrase, and I feel a little
triggered by it because twenty twenty one was quite an
intense year. I think for anybody, whether you're a worker, manager,
organizational leader, and you know, I work in the media,
(07:49):
so I recognize that trends have to have names. You know,
I have great respect for the press in this country,
and it's roiling and messy and chaotic at times. But boys,
sometimes people get their teeth into a trend and they
just won't let it go. And I think a lot
of us are trying to understand great resignation one thing,
quiet quitting another. But what does this actually mean? And
I really enjoyed and I want you to unpack it
(08:11):
a little bit more that the name quiet quitting was
really a misnomer for what was actually happening. How do
you see of what that dynamic actually was at that time?
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah, And I think that's really it's really insightful of
you to home in on that, because I do think
that there's it's it's easy to grasp on to that,
as you say, just as it's easy to grasp on
to notions of generations, which we can talk about later.
But these terms really matter, and the words that we
choose matter, and quiet quitting was a way of sort
(08:42):
of I think, blaming people of putting the putting the
onus on the people in frankly with the least amount
of power in any organization or in society and saying, oh,
they're they're quietly not doing their jobs, and sort of shaming.
And I think what I encountered an article and I
wish I remember the name of the author to give
proper credit, but Sloan Management Review article in which the
(09:06):
author referred to it as calibrated contribution. And I found
that term really helpful, actually right, because it's about calibration.
It's not about just stopping doing something. It's about saying,
what's the right level of me to give to this effort,
and that's going to vary by the person, by the situation,
(09:28):
by the organization, by the mission. And so I think
this idea of how we calibrate our contribution to our jobs.
And I always like to distinguish between jobs and work
because I think that those can get a messy. And
I think a job, the thing that we do to
pay our bills, is a different thing from our work,
which may be something like our purpose. And I think
(09:50):
calibrating how much we give of ourselves to our jobs
is really key to our mental health, to our physical health.
And I think obviously what we have to recognize too,
is that there's such an interdependence here that we know
that what we experience in the workplace doesn't just stay
in the workplace, right and so and vice versa. That's
(10:11):
right exactly, And so if we're if we're burning out
in our work, in our jobs, then what impact is
that having on our friends, our families, our loved ones,
our neighbors, our communities. That really matters too. So I
think that this idea of calibration really becomes a sort
of social imperative.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Yeah, you know, I do want to pick up on
something you just said, and you can let me know
if you have an opinion on it, which is these
dialogues about generations in the workforce, and right now, at
my firm and at many firms, we have four generations.
We have boomers, millennials, gen xers. Don't forget us, We're
still here, and also gen z. I laugh because there
(10:51):
are many articles that just ignore us. We're smaller generation.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
What can you do?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
But you know, I've been around enough long enough, and
you have to and I'm particularly interested from your lens
given the kinds of work you've done in you know,
organizational leadership, employee engagement and things like that over the years.
But there are these ongoing discussions and debates about what
can be attributed to a generation and then versus like
(11:15):
what might be a life stage or what might be
some other kind of dynamic that's at play between groups
and communities of people within an organization. What is your
take on where generational thinking is helpful and where it
might not be helpful.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you for the nuanced question,
because I think that that's the key to this is nuanced, right,
And I think I think that's generations are a useful shortcut, right.
There's certainly that we can use it as a shortcut
for a group of people who were born around in
a certain period of time and may have a certain
(11:49):
shared experience. And that's especially helpful when you have, you know,
something major that happens in a period of time. You
can say, oh, these people went through that thing, and
I think that that can be really useful.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
I think if you look at if we're going to
look at gen Z for example, these are these are
folks who were uh in some cases in high school
during the peak of the pandemic. What did that experience
do to them? What lasting impacts is that going to
have for them? I think the important thing is to
balance out the generational shortcut with the individual human. So,
(12:24):
you know, I think like you and I were born
around the same time, we experienced a lot of the
same things growing up. We were children of twelve years
of the Reagan Bush administration, and you know what did
that mean for us? How has that impacted us. That's
that is true. But you and I also grew up
in very different circumstances and we that matters too. So
(12:46):
you know what what I think, and I think you'll
agree that this that the sociological findings are that things
like like socioeconomic status and and unfortunately in this country,
race have way bigger off an impact than and you
were born. And then I think also if we're to
take an idea like generations and make it and take
(13:07):
it global, it starts to really fall apart quickly because
the experiences I might have had growing up in India
would be very different from the experiences I had growing
up in the US at the.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Same time, So you titled your book very directly, stop
Engaging Employees, and the subtitle is start making work more Human.
Start by explaining that title to me, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, thank you. So you know, and I admit that
part of the purpose is to provoke, to get the wait,
what do you mean stop engaging employees now? So I think,
you know, just just to clear it up, is employee
engagement important? It absolutely is. What I meant to say
with stop Engaging Employees is that it's not something we
do to someone that I always say, I don't believe
(13:50):
we can make someone be engaged anymore than we can
make someone fall in love with us. And if you
try to make someone fall in love with you, it's
it's creepy. And so I think I think similarly trying
to make someone become engaged, because you know, I define
engagement as this emotional connection and commitment, and I think
you know and I recognize that a lot of your
audience are communicators, and sometimes that word engagement can mean
(14:11):
something different to communicators. Often it means we want people
to actually read and understand a message that we're sending. Right,
But I think the idea of being emotionally connected and
committed to what I'm doing is what I think about
when I think about engagement, And so that's not something
you can do to me. What you can do as
a leader, and I think you know this well is
(14:33):
cultivate the conditions in which that's more likely. So the
metaphor I always like to use is that leadership is
a lot more like gardening than it is like carpentry.
So you know, the carpenter mindset, which is what a
lot of folks get taught in business school, which is
that you can design and build a workplace. Culture is
not how humans work, right, But what you can do
(14:55):
is practice consistently over time a key set of disciplines,
like a gardener does to create the conditions in which
it's more likely that people are going to flourish and
become become engaged. Develop that condition of engagement. So stopping
engaging employees is really about stop stopping and seeing it
doing as something we do to someone, but also that
(15:16):
start making work more human piece which goes which goes
hand in hand. It's really also about how do we
think about individual human dignity in these often you know,
profit driven hierarchical as you mentioned organizations. How do we
preserve dignity for all in that process? So I think
that's a big part of what that's about as well.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
It's great, you know, it's funny in business development with
sometimes people talk about gardening or versus hunting, you know,
the cultivation piece, which is really about again cultivating human
connection versus like I want to sell something to you now.
But the carpentry piece reminded me of the old phrase.
You can say it many different ways, but if you're
a hammer, everything looks like a now right, and absolutely,
(16:00):
And that does feel like that rigidity or that structure
that organizations can sometimes have. It's like I need to
put everybody in this very specific place and kind of
hammer it all into place. And it's hard. It's hard
to avoid that. But it's an interesting concept that you're
getting to the heart of, which is engagement is something
we do with versus two. Am I understanding that interact
(16:23):
of your perspective?
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Yeah, that's exactly. I think we are all together cultivating
engaging workplaces. We all want that feeling of emotional connection
and commitment and excitement about what we're doing, but we're
all creating that together. It's not something that you as
a leader design and build and then plug humans into.
All those humans contribute.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, it's true. And you know, one of the things
I was thinking about a lot is that organizational leadership
and a relationship between organization and employees is both very
collective and yet also very individual. So I feel this
dynamic tension very strongly in my role and have. So
(17:06):
leaders want a need to engage with each person as
the individual human being they are, or they should want to,
at least I do, but they also necessarily need to
regard the full staff or the full organism as a
collective entity, and sometimes the needs of the many are
not aligned with the needs of the one. You know,
there's ups and downs and business cycles. Sometimes there's hard
(17:27):
times or easier times. How do you think about that
tension point between the collective and the individual and that
relationship between organizations and staff.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Oh gosh, I've been thinking about that a lot lately
because I've been thinking about it as a sort of
larger sociological context of that tension between independence and interdependence.
And yeah, you know, we are both of those. We
are both individuals having individual experiences. No one else knows
what's going on in this messed up brain right now, right,
(17:55):
But at the same time, we accomplish nothing solitarily, right.
We are all interconnected and interdependent. So I think within
an organization, I think that shows up exactly as you say,
as this tension. You know, when I look at things
like performance management systems and that sort of thing, they're
all very individualistic.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
We're evaluating this individual's this individual employees' performance over time,
and we're trying to isolate that somehow from the interactions
that they have with their colleagues and co workers, and
that's really hard to do, especially as organizations are more
and more creating value through collaboration. Right, Like what you
accomplish in your business only happens among people. It doesn't
(18:37):
happen because one person does one thing. And so I
think this tension is very real. And there's a couple
of different things that I think about that are implications
of this. So on the one hand, I think there
is the individual who has their own unique needs and
aspirations and fears and motivations, and they're unique to them,
(18:57):
and they have their own sort of life behind and
ahead of them, and they come to work with all
of that, and then we want them to We want
to create the conditions in which they become engaged with
what we're all trying to do together. And sometimes that
happens and sometimes it doesn't. And I think this is
something that I've been that I've been having a conversation
with leaders a lot, which is that I think we've
(19:19):
developed this notion that for someone to disengage is inherently bad,
and sometimes it's just the way it's going to go.
That if what you want me to engage with is
something that I don't find engaging. It might be better
for us not to work together, and that's that's a
human centric outcome as well. So I don't think the
(19:41):
goal is for everyone in the organization to be engaged necessarily,
because I think over time, as the clarity of the
mission develops, as we get clearer on what's important to
us and what we're trying to accomplish together, there are
going to be some of us that are going to say, yeah,
that's not really aligned with where I'm headed as an individual.
And so that's how I think about that, that independence
(20:03):
interdependence within the context of an organization. But I do
think it's it's it's not simple, and I think it's uh,
it's necessary, you know, I want to I want to
sort of acknowledge that that these the categorization, the affinitization
coming back to like generations for example, is necessary and
helpful and so and I think within the organization, I
(20:26):
think when we talk about you know, segmentation or personas
right or avatars, we are we are kind of creating
these fictions and they're necessary and helpful. And I think
within the organization that's part of how we how we
reconcile individual and collective experience is by sort of figuring
(20:46):
out what who are we and what are we up
to together? And you mentioned this earlier that there is
no us them, it's all us. And I think that's
so critical in an organization to have that big broad
sense of when we say we, we mean us all.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
You're touching on some really important things. I think that
I see a lot of leaders struggling with and it's
the post pandemic. Are we post now? I don't know
if we are not, but let's call it post pandemic.
I feel that it's the pandemic. Really put got the
highlighter out and just like highlighted everything in bright, bright,
bright color, Which is what the heck does it mean
(21:27):
to be engaged? And how does one signal or perform that?
And how it looks different for different people. And I'll
give you another example. So you take an institution that
I volunteer for that you know well as well, our
alma mater. We both went to the same college. And
one of the discussions we are having about volunteering is
(21:47):
that love for an institution might look different for different people.
For some love might be critique, as in, I care
about this place so I actually want to speak out
and make it better for others. Love me look like
I love it, this is great, like I'm all in
and it's and I feel that over time it was
that kind of I don't want to diminish it by
saying raw raw, like if it's authentic, it's you know,
(22:09):
I'm a very hyped person. I'm very enthusiastic. I get
very into things. So when I really care about something,
I'm into it, right. But it's a lot easier to
see engagement through that lens than someone who a a
may just perform their engagement in a different way, like
may not be the one who wants to join everything,
(22:29):
may need more time to recharge their battery, doesn't want
to come to all the things. Or it could be
someone who's like I want us to do better. I
care about this place enough to want to do better.
And I feel people really trying to understand this more
and now to say, what, especially in a hybrid environment
or remote environment, what does engagement look like? And can
it look different for different people? Do you have opinions
(22:51):
on this because to me, I think it's a really
important set of questions.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yeah, it really, it really is, And I think the
way that you've stated it is is so respect full
of that spectrum of what does exist and what engagement
might look like. And I love the idea of how
am I performing my engagement. I think that's a really
good way to describe it, because I think I think
that the the the tendency is to say an engaged
(23:15):
employee looks like this, and if a person doesn't look
like this, then they're not engaged. And there's sort of
good reasons why we go there. We do. It is
something that we want to keep track of. It's it's
often a KPI in the organization to keep track of
employee engagement scores and what have you, And so we
are trying to trying to establish some kind of standard
(23:37):
or measurement of what it means to be engaged. But
I think engaged can look a lot of different ways,
and I think part of trying to be an inclusive
workplace is trying to recognize too that that people can
show up in a lot of different ways and we
don't know what the internal state is.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yeah, Now, I think that's a really interesting observations and
helpful to just think through. As you said earlier, calibrating
how are people calibrating work in life? For years, this
phrase work life balance has I think been such a joke.
You know, let's call it what it is. I mean,
don't mean to be rude, but the idea, as you said, Eric,
(24:16):
words matter. So work life balance implies there is a
perfection that there's a balance. Balance means that you've found
the point where it's going to be fixed and stay
it'll stay perfectly balanced there. And we all know that
that's not how life is or work is, And so
the idea that there may be a calibration relative to
(24:37):
your enjoyment of your work, or the bonding or the
alignment with the organization, or what's happened in your life.
I mean, I think these are very realistic and thoughtful
things that leaders need to understand and be open to
and continue to contemplate. Because I also don't find it
to be a fixed medium. I think it's shifting all
the time. Individuals are shifting, we as people are evolving
(25:00):
all the time. I mean, would you agree with that
it's it's changes constantly.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Well, I think that's exactly what you what I what
I love about what you just hit on, which is
that is that these are these are ongoing actions. And
so I actually used to used to write and speak
quite a bit about work life balance, but I would
always say it's a verb. It's not a state of
being that we are work life balancing all the time, right.
That's that's kind of how things work, you know. And
(25:24):
if you're on a balance beam, you know that you're
constantly making micro adjustments right to stay balanced. And I
think that's what we're actually doing when we're trying to
maintain work life balance. We don't maintain it at all.
We're just sort of constantly micro adjustments. We're actively doing it, right,
and so and I think that that's also you know,
(25:45):
acknowledging the sort of macro environment in which organizations are
operating today, which is, you know, as people like to
say VUKA right, volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. I like
to add to that emergent that there are outcomes that
come out of organizations that we didn't even know we're coming. Right,
So operating in that environment versus operating in a stable,
(26:10):
predictable environment of maybe fifty one hundred years ago, it's
just going to look different. And so there is a nimbleness,
an activeness to how we all are trying to navigate
these things, and that means we can show up differently
every day.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah, it's funny. I was just speaking about my least
favorite acronym VUKA earlier today in a total meeting. So
now I can call it vuka E the emergent. I
like that. No, it's we're in a Vuka world. It's
it's the Vuka world. We just live in it. I
think that's very true, and that has huge implications for
organizations and their workforce as people as a community. Lack
(26:54):
of that constant instability or the question, the uncertainty you
know it infuses is the atmosphere. So in your book,
you have a number of ease was it six ease?
That's easy, y, Yeah, But tell me a little bit
about I mean, obviously I encourage folks to check you out,
find you look, find the book. I think there's a
lot of good thinking in here as they're hearing already.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
But what are some of.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
The most critical lenses or takeaways or pieces that you'd
want to share as you summarize this work for others.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Yeah, so I think the and I appreciate the question.
I think these these six e's are intended not to
make a leader's job harder because because I recognize that
your job is already hard enough. But they're intended to
bring to consciousness, uh, disciplines that you're that you're weaving
through how you're doing your work and so uh. And
(27:48):
the and the most important one, I think, if I
had to pick one of the six, is the first one,
which is empathized. And this is what a lot of
our discussion has been about today, right, which is which
is really about understanding who people are in the workplace,
what their needs and aspirations and fears and motivations are,
what they're excited about, what they're scared of, right And
(28:10):
and understanding that at a at a very at that
individual level is a necessary precondition to anything else we
try to do to create a human centered workplace. If
we don't start with understanding who our fellow humans are
in the workplace, we don't stand to work together to
cultivate that human centered workplace. And it's it's very similar
to you know, when you look outside the organization and
(28:32):
you look at understanding your clients, right, or look at
understanding the recipient of a message. Right. If we don't
understand them. Then we're just pushing things as opposed to
supposed to doing things together. So empathize definitely the place
where I recommend starting. And it's also it's also not
as hard as I think I make it sound, because
(28:53):
it's really just about one of the one of the
pieces of advice I give at the end of a
lot of my talks is just start to adjust your
speaking to listening ratio. Just start to think about that.
I love. I use a tool online called Fathom. Have
you have you used Fathom? No?
Speaker 1 (29:10):
I haven't.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
It's not an endorsement, it's just it's a tool that
I use and it records conversations and then generates AI
notes and follow up items. But another thing that it
does for the person who's running it is it tells
me what percentage of the time I'm speaking. Now in
this context, I'm supposed to be speaking most of the time,
and that's fine, but in a conversation it's really useful,
(29:32):
and I think as a leader, it would be great
if we had this sort of meter to keep an
eye on how much are we dominating the conversation versus
how much are we listening. And again that's not to
shame anyone. But it's just really to say, like a
lot of what leaders are expected to do is have
the answers and say all the things. But as we
as we start to adjust that ratio to where we're listening,
(29:56):
more than our level of empathy goes up, which enable
us to then do things like enable people to do
their jobs. Make sure that that's one of the that's
one of those six eases. Enable make sure people have
the knowledge, the tools, the skills, the resources they need
to do what we're asking them to do. And the
(30:16):
thing that I always like to say about enable is
every organization wants to raise the bar, but I think
we also need to raise the floor and raise the
floor by just equipping people. So so that's enable, And
then and then empower follows that, right, which is which
is really how do we make sure that we're getting
obstacles out of the way, removing friction, things that are
(30:36):
preventing or making it harder for folks to do what
we want them to do and to become who they
want to become. So all of that, we can't do
any of that if we haven't done the listening and
the empathizing first.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
I love the listening piece and that tool would be
a very yeah, very eye opening situate for me, especially
in others. I mean all of us who love to
who are excited and love to chat and talk and
have ideas, and it can come from a good place.
But I love what you're saying though, about empathy and
how to build that and empathize as an active You know,
(31:07):
you could have said empathy, but you said empathize, and
I assume that that's very deliberate on your part. But
it reminds me, you know, as we have our own
process here of trying to be more inclusive, of looking
at diversity and equity and inclusion and thinking about that
very deeply and not moving away from that at all,
but inclusivity creating that sense of belonging, creating more psychological safety.
(31:32):
I think the idea of empathy we talk about building trust.
You know, when one builds trust, you can remove friction.
People don't spend as much time being like, what are
they actually saying behind the words that are coming out
of their mouths and wondering about things. So it's just
a helpful reminder of simple ways to raise that empathy
quotion and be more engaged with folks.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yeah, I'm glad well. And I think just just adding
to that, I think there's a couple of things that
come up for me. So a lot of times in
organizations that I speak to want their employees to be
more empathetic towards their clients, right, We want to want
them to exhibit empathy for their clients. And so, uh,
you know, I get folks coming to me for advice
(32:15):
on how do we how do we make our employees
be more empathetic? Right? And my my first question back
is how are you showing them empathy? How are you
creating this environment in which empathy is an expectation, in
which trying to meet others' needs as an expectation, because
if it's not there internally, it's not going to show
up externally either. And the other thing that I want
(32:36):
to that I want to pick up on that you said,
you know, during the pandemic, a lot of a lot
of folks were trying to figure out how they could
keep tabs on employees and makes you know that part
of the shift to remote and hybrid work was was
how do we track what folks are doing? My my
sister in law literally had a had an alarm that
would go off on her supervisor's computer if her mouse
(32:57):
didn't move in a ten minute period of time. Wow,
it's absurd, right, It doesn't actually demonstrate any kind of value.
It was just it was just a crutch that that
folks developed. And I think when we think about how
do we equip and enable folks to be successful, we
shift to this idea of backing them instead of tracking them,
(33:17):
right to really saying, these people that we've invited into
our organization, how do we make sure they have what
they need? Versus how do we how do we really
create this atmosphere of distrust where we where we think, well,
you're probably not working, so what tools can we put
in place to keep track of you? So I think
that that shift, and you highlighted that, but I think
(33:37):
that that shift is really a key mindset shift that
shows empathy.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Well, and it reminds me over the years because our
work career life has spanned a lot of organizational change.
Just going back to the idea that it would have
been impossible to wear jeans, you know, in the first
ten years of my career, but the dot com boom
kind of changed that one. But one of the things
that I remember saying over time is we have to
(34:03):
distinguish between a policy issue and a personnel issue, meaning
that okay, we're going to maybe put even before the pandemic,
remote work opportunities becoming more normal norm certainly was for us.
And the question of okay, you get this fear, a
fear based mindset that can happen in business and management
(34:25):
of what are people doing right? But you know one thing,
and sometimes you put policies in place that just aren't
good or they don't work, or they're not right for everybody,
and you feel that the anxiety rises, like you just
see their issues right, So then it's a policy issue.
But if you believe in the policy, my attitude is like,
watch for the individual issues. And that's a personnel thing
(34:46):
where you're working one on one with a person who
may be struggling in their own way or may not
be a fit or something like that. So I think
those are sort of these normal push and pulls of management,
especially from and that's maybe where the generations fit, where
other ways of working from earlier times kind of pull
at your set of norms and expectations. And it's been
(35:06):
a real change and challenge these past five to ten
years for sure.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Yeah, absolutely well, and and that I think you're absolutely right,
because I think there is the the what we see
in generations. For first of all, we see agent stage, right,
we just see where somebody is in their life and that.
But but we also do see how society changes over time.
And I think you're absolutely right. Yeah. I had a
boss back in my ge days. I had a boss
(35:32):
who was of an older generation, and every time I
came with him, came to him with a you know,
having identified something that wasn't working, you know, something that
was harder than it needed to be. Or he would say,
that's why I call it work.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
It's an a at a baddie, it's you know, ex
But it really conveys this notion that like, well, work
is hard and bad. So let's let's let's let's just
let's just deal with that, right, And I think where
we are now is not at that assumption at all. Right,
The assumption is not at all that work is hard
and bad. It's rather that that work is a human activity.
(36:13):
Work is something that we do as part of our
expression of who we are. And I think that that
is a shift that we see and we can look
to the younger generations as Bellweathers right of the shift
that is happening. It's not because of them, but they are,
but they are indicators.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Well, I always joke that I try not to live
in a Dilbert cartoon. Dilbert was written just like the
movie Office Space, under the assumption that all management is
the worst, all work is terrible, all organizations are dysfunctional,
And I'm like, well, it all depends on how we
all show up. I mean, we have to make a
lot of choices and good choices in management. But I'm
also I try to avoid having a Dilbert lens like
(36:53):
on my work. I want to feel more empowered than that.
But I want to switch gears for a little bit.
I know you're doing a lot of keynoting and that's
and a lot of speaking. And one of the things,
speaking of engagement, that you're doing that's a bit different
is you've told me that you're combining a couple of
your passions, one of which is djaying with speaking, And
as someone who does a lot of presentation and speech
(37:14):
coaching and presentation skills, I really love that concept. So
what made you think of this and what did it
unlock for your audience and combining those two modes.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, yeah, thanks for asking about that. Yeah. So djaying
is something that I've done for a lot of years.
It was something that I that I dreamed of doing
when I was younger, and then it came to quite,
you know, relatively late in life for being a DJ.
But I've been doing it for a couple of decades now,
and it's something that I just I have come to
love the experience of helping to cultivate again an experience
(37:47):
for people. And you know, when I can help to
facilitate a party as the DJ, it's it's incredibly rewarding
and it's it's I also have that same sort of
sense of ful filment when I'm speaking and I feel
like the message is really connecting and helping people. And
when I see a face light up, when I see
an aha happen in the room, I get that same
(38:11):
sense of fulfillment. And so bringing those two things together
was both an attempt to feel more whole myself, just
to integrate myself, but also to find a way to
convey these messages about leadership in a way that disrupts
the way that people are used to receiving those kinds
(38:33):
of messages, and that creates a collective experience that's different
from the experience we often have when we're all sitting
in a hotel ballroom together. And so what I'm doing
I call this talk be a party rock and leader.
And what I've done is I've gone through these six e's.
We've discussed a few of the ease today. I've gone
(38:53):
through these six e's and said, how do those show
up for me as a DJ? And it turns out
a lot. Being a really being a DJ who really
gets a party going requires great empathy. It requires knowing
what kind of party is this? Is this a quiet
after work happy hour or is this an after hours rager?
(39:14):
You know, what are the kinds of songs that get
people on the dance floor, What are the songs that
clear the dance floor, taking requests from people, noting what
people are responding to. These are things that a great
DJ does to get the party going. And as you know,
these are also things that a great leader does. As
a great leader does not show up and sort of
inflict their mission on the organization and on the people
(39:35):
in it. And a great DJ doesn't show up and
play just the music that they want to play. So
now I'm doing this thing where I'm speaking about these
essentially these same six ease but at the same time
djaying to kind of illustrate and create a dance party.
So it's about two parts keynote, one part dance party.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
I would say, what's the reaction from the audience or
from the listeners, Because you're right, I've been in many
a ballroom listening to keynotes. I have given been the
keynote in the ball room. What's been the reaction when
you've done this?
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Yeah, well, you know, my first time doing it, I
was I was aware of what I was up against.
You know that that folks had been in the room
all day, actually in a two day event. You know,
they were tired, they'd been talked at for quite a bit,
even though it was a pretty well run event. And
to get up in this you know, fluorescently lit hotel
ballroom and try to transform it into a dance club
(40:28):
for a minute, I knew I was I was up
against it. So I just I just recruited the folks
in the audience to be a part of it with me.
So so I got up there and I said, look,
I know where we are, I know what this room
looks like. What can we do together to transform this
into a into a dance club for a minute, and
(40:50):
somebody got up and turned off the lights, and folks
got up out of their seats. And to be clear,
not everyone, you know, this is this is not everybody's vibe,
but but the majority of the room was up out
of their seats when I when I put on the
first song, before I even started speaking, I just put
on a song and got folks dancing, and they were up.
They formed a spontaneous conga line around the ballroom. Folks
(41:13):
jumped up on the platform with me, you know, sort
of completely violating the sanctity of that space and got
out there and we're dancing with me. And when the
song was over, they went back to their seats, and
you know, I started speaking and they were with me,
you know. And so the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
My my best, my best and favorite piece of negative
(41:35):
feedback was he did a great job. It just wasn't
my thing. Yeah, hey, which is great, which is great.
It's not for everybody, which.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Is gonna be a percentage of the audience anyway, no
matter what.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
No matter what. But I feel like what it does
for the audience is it is it not only creates
I was reminded of this term collective efforvescence, right, It
creates this this experience of collective effortvescence that we're all
having an experience together that's outside of our usual, that
is outside of even what we've come to expect in
(42:05):
the past two days in this room, right. And hopefully
my hope is that it then enables people to not
only just take what they've heard and learned from me,
but actually to remember it and start to integrate it,
be more energized, to start to integrate it into their
lives because they're thinking about that that feeling that they
had well.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
And that feeling it brings it back to what does
it mean to feel attached to work or an organization,
or to feel a mission, or to feel a part
of something, To enjoy moments with colleagues, whether they're virtual
or right in front of you. I mean, I think
that's a beautiful way to put it into kind of
come full circle. But I'll ask you my final question
(42:44):
of the podcast, which I always like to ask. So
it's called building brand gravity core theme. So what is
a business or a brand, or some aspect of culture
that has you in its gravity right now?
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Eric m oh, gosh, that's a great question. Wow. I think.
I think one thing that I'm that I'm really excited
about right now is UH is actually relating to DJing.
So there's a there's a there's a company out there.
Actually don't know who the parent company is, but they
own a couple of different dj UH sort of equipment
(43:16):
UH companies. And part of what they're trying to do
is really democratize DJing.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
UH.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
So they're creating DJ controllers and things that are really
meant for people who just want to do it as
a hobby. And obviously I do it as more than
a hobby. But I love that what they are doing
is saying everyone can be a dj UH and we're
going to equip you to DJ in your living room,
to DJ in your bedroom, to DJ for your friends,
you know, at your little New Year's Eve party, in
(43:43):
your in your apartment. And and I just I love
so they called new Mark and UH, and what what
they do really speaks to me because it's really it's
really enabling people and empowering people to pursue a thing
that they may have thought was.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Out of free I love it. I love it. That's
a great answer. Well, eric Ile, thank you so much
for joining us on building brand Gravity. I appreciate your
time today.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Thanks, and this has been really fun and let's talk
so all right.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
We are GNS Business Communications. We are a team of
media strategists, storytellers, and engagement experts who meet you at
the intersection of business and communications. To learn more, visit
gscommunications dot com. You are listening to building brand Gravity
attracting people into your orbit a GNS Business Communications podcast.
(44:37):
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please rate the show. That helps us to keep delivering
the latest in industry influence. Thanks for listening. Until next time.
Hello, and welcome to Building Brand Gravity. My name is
Ann Green. I'm CEO with the GNS Integrated Marketing Communications Group.
And it's such a treat today because I get to
talk to a very very old friend, Eric.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome, Thanks, Ann. I'm so excited to do this. This
is going to be fun.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Yeah. So I know a lot about you and it's
been fun catching up. But tell our listeners a little
bit about your background and the work that you do
today and that'll be a good entree into the conversation
we're going to have, which has a lot to do
with the idea of engagement and the pros of it
and the challenges of it too.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. So today what I do is
I help heart driven leaders, heart led leaders to cultivate
more human centric workplaces so that people can become the
best versions of themselves and we can get better results.
And I do that primarily now through speaking and writing
and advising. That's pretty much what I'm doing. I got
(01:02):
here through, as many of us, a very circuitous route.
But I began really my career working in General Electric,
so huge multinational corporation back in the Jack Welch days,
back in the both highs and lows of the Jack
Welch days, and through that I really got to develop
a lot of different skills. We were encouraged to work
(01:22):
in multiple different parts of the business during that time.
They invested very heavily in employee development at the time,
so for my early career that was really valuable. So
I got to get involved in things like six Sigma,
which was really key because I got interested in all
of this sort of data driven statistical process improvement and
then realized that none of it mattered if you didn't
(01:45):
manage the people side of things. So then I got
really interested in the people side, in things like change
management and through that employee engagement, workplace culture, leadership development.
So that's how I ended up here doing what I'm
doing today.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Before we get into of your view and what you've
been bringing to the table and you're speaking and also writing,
I know you just recently published a book that I've
been taking a look at called Stop Engaging Employees, which
is a very provocative title. I enjoy that. What are
the different areas within employee engagement? How have you seen
the idea and the practice of employee engagement sort of
(02:19):
change over time? And it really only came into the
FOE as a language and a practice only within the
past couple decades.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I feel like, yeah, that's right, Yeah, yeah, it comes
out of it's come to life in really our working lives.
It started off in the early nineties, this whole notion
of employee engagement, and there was language used at the
time to talk about people being harnessed to their work,
(02:47):
and some of that still remains in the way that
we talk about employee engagement. But I think, you know, yeah, definitely,
prior to the nineties, the notion of really what employees
are experiencing at work at all was really not really
relevant to the business conversation. And I think in the
nineties it became and really through the early two thousands,
(03:08):
very much about how do we get people to do stuff?
And as you know, that is a key part of
managing a business is sometimes people have to do stuff
they don't want to do and how do we accomplish that.
But I think the idea of employee engagement has shifted
a bit from from how do we get people to
do stuff? To how do we make this a positive
(03:28):
experience for everyone? And I think where I'm trying to
push it as even further, which is to say that
the whole purpose of work is for us to become
the best versions of ourselves and to flourish as humans,
and that's why organizations exist. So I'm trying to push
us even further in that human centric direction and stop
looking at it as something that's something we do to people. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
I was really intrigued in some of your writing on
you and I had to catch up conversation and preparation
for this conversation. You talked about having a bit of
a personal epiphany, and there's so much discussion about what
is the outcome of what we're trying to do in business,
both as individuals and collective as organizations. So I have
that double consciousness. I am a worker and I am
(04:11):
an organizational leader, right, So I'm trying to look at
it from both sides. But for many years, the idea
of stake of a shareholder value was the outcome of
business or you know, maybe obviously revenue, profit and things
like that. But tell me a little bit about the
epiphany you had regarding what the actual end goal might
be of the work we do.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, So I think I think what you're talking about
is really important, right, because I think just to get
us there, so we talk about Milton Friedman and that
was the purpose of the organization is maxim my shareholder value.
That was sort of taking ugh of context, but also
he meant it. And then we get to you know,
I think it was twenty eighteen if the Business Roundtable
comes out and says, actually the purpose of a business
(04:53):
is to maximize outcomes for all of its stakeholders, so
that means communities and suppliers and employees and customers, right.
And and that shift was pre pandemic. I think as
you and I discussed, like during the pandemic, things shifted
even more and I think there was a there was
(05:13):
a real awakening for a lot of folks, myself included
about what the role of work is, what the role
of my job is, uh and and how I think
about my contribution there. So that's where we got to
this really abysmal term quiet quitting, right, which was which
was really just a way of trying to understand that
(05:36):
people were recalibrating the role that their job had in
their lives, how much space it occupied because because for
a lot of us, and again speaking from a position
of privilege, where I could work from here in my home.
A lot of us were able to reevaluate and think
about how much we were willing to give, how much
(05:58):
we were getting, and about that mutually beneficial relationship between
employer and employee. So I think that shifted, and for
me personally, a part of that shift was really realizing,
you know, you and I have liberal arts backgrounds. Philosophy
is sort of in US, and I like to sort
of think about the philosophy of business, and I was
(06:18):
really thinking about the fact that we, going way back sociologically,
we organized as groups of humans to be able to
accomplish more and frankly just live longer. And so organizations
exist to serve us, and we don't exist to serve organizations.
And it's not to say that there's not a role
in our lives for being of service, but that, you know,
(06:41):
I think this mindset shift of people come to work
every day to serve the organization, I think is really
key for leaders, right, And I'm sure you have experience
with this of saying no, that's not true, because they
are actually whole people with whole lives behind and ahead
of them. And I need to sort of find way
for this work experience that we're having together to be
(07:02):
a part of that.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yeah, I love this. It's a really interesting question of
like the business flourishing, organizational flourishing, and also human flourishing,
and that question. I mean, we this is not to
be a detour and something we can talk more about that.
There's also much more question about mental health and wellness
and engagement in the workplace in ways that would be
inconceivable when we had both graduated college and entered the workforce,
(07:27):
especially into those kinds of organizations. Just absolutely not on
the table. But I wanted to. I want to put
a pin in that because I want to go back
to this quiet quitting phrase, and I feel a little
triggered by it because twenty twenty one was quite an
intense year. I think for anybody, whether you're a worker, manager,
organizational leader, and you know, I work in the media,
(07:49):
so I recognize that trends have to have names. You know,
I have great respect for the press in this country,
and it's roiling and messy and chaotic at times. But boys,
sometimes people get their teeth into a trend and they
just won't let it go. And I think a lot
of us are trying to understand great resignation one thing,
quiet quitting another. But what does this actually mean? And
I really enjoyed and I want you to unpack it
(08:11):
a little bit more that the name quiet quitting was
really a misnomer for what was actually happening. How do
you see of what that dynamic actually was at that time?
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah, And I think that's really it's really insightful of
you to home in on that, because I do think
that there's it's it's easy to grasp on to that,
as you say, just as it's easy to grasp on
to notions of generations, which we can talk about later.
But these terms really matter, and the words that we
choose matter, and quiet quitting was a way of sort
(08:42):
of I think, blaming people of putting the putting the
onus on the people in frankly with the least amount
of power in any organization or in society and saying, oh,
they're they're quietly not doing their jobs, and sort of shaming.
And I think what I encountered an article and I
wish I remember the name of the author to give
proper credit, but Sloan Management Review article in which the
(09:06):
author referred to it as calibrated contribution. And I found
that term really helpful, actually right, because it's about calibration.
It's not about just stopping doing something. It's about saying,
what's the right level of me to give to this effort,
and that's going to vary by the person, by the situation,
(09:28):
by the organization, by the mission. And so I think
this idea of how we calibrate our contribution to our jobs.
And I always like to distinguish between jobs and work
because I think that those can get a messy. And
I think a job, the thing that we do to
pay our bills, is a different thing from our work,
which may be something like our purpose. And I think
(09:50):
calibrating how much we give of ourselves to our jobs
is really key to our mental health, to our physical health.
And I think obviously what we have to recognize too,
is that there's such an interdependence here that we know
that what we experience in the workplace doesn't just stay
in the workplace, right and so and vice versa. That's
(10:11):
right exactly, And so if we're if we're burning out
in our work, in our jobs, then what impact is
that having on our friends, our families, our loved ones,
our neighbors, our communities. That really matters too. So I
think that this idea of calibration really becomes a sort
of social imperative.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Yeah, you know, I do want to pick up on
something you just said, and you can let me know
if you have an opinion on it, which is these
dialogues about generations in the workforce, and right now, at
my firm and at many firms, we have four generations.
We have boomers, millennials, gen xers. Don't forget us, We're
still here, and also gen z. I laugh because there
(10:51):
are many articles that just ignore us. We're smaller generation.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
What can you do?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
But you know, I've been around enough long enough, and
you have to and I'm particularly interested from your lens
given the kinds of work you've done in you know,
organizational leadership, employee engagement and things like that over the years.
But there are these ongoing discussions and debates about what
can be attributed to a generation and then versus like
(11:15):
what might be a life stage or what might be
some other kind of dynamic that's at play between groups
and communities of people within an organization. What is your
take on where generational thinking is helpful and where it
might not be helpful.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you for the nuanced question,
because I think that that's the key to this is nuanced, right,
And I think I think that's generations are a useful shortcut, right.
There's certainly that we can use it as a shortcut
for a group of people who were born around in
a certain period of time and may have a certain
(11:49):
shared experience. And that's especially helpful when you have, you know,
something major that happens in a period of time. You
can say, oh, these people went through that thing, and
I think that that can be really useful.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
I think if you look at if we're going to
look at gen Z for example, these are these are
folks who were uh in some cases in high school
during the peak of the pandemic. What did that experience
do to them? What lasting impacts is that going to
have for them? I think the important thing is to
balance out the generational shortcut with the individual human. So,
(12:24):
you know, I think like you and I were born
around the same time, we experienced a lot of the
same things growing up. We were children of twelve years
of the Reagan Bush administration, and you know what did
that mean for us? How has that impacted us. That's
that is true. But you and I also grew up
in very different circumstances and we that matters too. So
(12:46):
you know what what I think, and I think you'll
agree that this that the sociological findings are that things
like like socioeconomic status and and unfortunately in this country,
race have way bigger off an impact than and you
were born. And then I think also if we're to
take an idea like generations and make it and take
(13:07):
it global, it starts to really fall apart quickly because
the experiences I might have had growing up in India
would be very different from the experiences I had growing
up in the US at the.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Same time, So you titled your book very directly, stop
Engaging Employees, and the subtitle is start making work more Human.
Start by explaining that title to me, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, thank you. So you know, and I admit that
part of the purpose is to provoke, to get the wait,
what do you mean stop engaging employees now? So I think,
you know, just just to clear it up, is employee
engagement important? It absolutely is. What I meant to say
with stop Engaging Employees is that it's not something we
do to someone that I always say, I don't believe
(13:50):
we can make someone be engaged anymore than we can
make someone fall in love with us. And if you
try to make someone fall in love with you, it's
it's creepy. And so I think I think similarly trying
to make someone become engaged, because you know, I define
engagement as this emotional connection and commitment, and I think
you know and I recognize that a lot of your
audience are communicators, and sometimes that word engagement can mean
(14:11):
something different to communicators. Often it means we want people
to actually read and understand a message that we're sending. Right,
But I think the idea of being emotionally connected and
committed to what I'm doing is what I think about
when I think about engagement, And so that's not something
you can do to me. What you can do as
a leader, and I think you know this well is
(14:33):
cultivate the conditions in which that's more likely. So the
metaphor I always like to use is that leadership is
a lot more like gardening than it is like carpentry.
So you know, the carpenter mindset, which is what a
lot of folks get taught in business school, which is
that you can design and build a workplace. Culture is
not how humans work, right, But what you can do
(14:55):
is practice consistently over time a key set of disciplines,
like a gardener does to create the conditions in which
it's more likely that people are going to flourish and
become become engaged. Develop that condition of engagement. So stopping
engaging employees is really about stop stopping and seeing it
doing as something we do to someone, but also that
(15:16):
start making work more human piece which goes which goes
hand in hand. It's really also about how do we
think about individual human dignity in these often you know,
profit driven hierarchical as you mentioned organizations. How do we
preserve dignity for all in that process? So I think
that's a big part of what that's about as well.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
It's great, you know, it's funny in business development with
sometimes people talk about gardening or versus hunting, you know,
the cultivation piece, which is really about again cultivating human
connection versus like I want to sell something to you now.
But the carpentry piece reminded me of the old phrase.
You can say it many different ways, but if you're
a hammer, everything looks like a now right, and absolutely,
(16:00):
And that does feel like that rigidity or that structure
that organizations can sometimes have. It's like I need to
put everybody in this very specific place and kind of
hammer it all into place. And it's hard. It's hard
to avoid that. But it's an interesting concept that you're
getting to the heart of, which is engagement is something
we do with versus two. Am I understanding that interact
(16:23):
of your perspective?
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Yeah, that's exactly. I think we are all together cultivating
engaging workplaces. We all want that feeling of emotional connection
and commitment and excitement about what we're doing, but we're
all creating that together. It's not something that you as
a leader design and build and then plug humans into.
All those humans contribute.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, it's true. And you know, one of the things
I was thinking about a lot is that organizational leadership
and a relationship between organization and employees is both very
collective and yet also very individual. So I feel this
dynamic tension very strongly in my role and have. So
(17:06):
leaders want a need to engage with each person as
the individual human being they are, or they should want to,
at least I do, but they also necessarily need to
regard the full staff or the full organism as a
collective entity, and sometimes the needs of the many are
not aligned with the needs of the one. You know,
there's ups and downs and business cycles. Sometimes there's hard
(17:27):
times or easier times. How do you think about that
tension point between the collective and the individual and that
relationship between organizations and staff.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Oh gosh, I've been thinking about that a lot lately
because I've been thinking about it as a sort of
larger sociological context of that tension between independence and interdependence.
And yeah, you know, we are both of those. We
are both individuals having individual experiences. No one else knows
what's going on in this messed up brain right now, right,
(17:55):
But at the same time, we accomplish nothing solitarily, right.
We are all interconnected and interdependent. So I think within
an organization, I think that shows up exactly as you say,
as this tension. You know, when I look at things
like performance management systems and that sort of thing, they're
all very individualistic.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
We're evaluating this individual's this individual employees' performance over time,
and we're trying to isolate that somehow from the interactions
that they have with their colleagues and co workers, and
that's really hard to do, especially as organizations are more
and more creating value through collaboration. Right, Like what you
accomplish in your business only happens among people. It doesn't
(18:37):
happen because one person does one thing. And so I
think this tension is very real. And there's a couple
of different things that I think about that are implications
of this. So on the one hand, I think there
is the individual who has their own unique needs and
aspirations and fears and motivations, and they're unique to them,
(18:57):
and they have their own sort of life behind and
ahead of them, and they come to work with all
of that, and then we want them to We want
to create the conditions in which they become engaged with
what we're all trying to do together. And sometimes that
happens and sometimes it doesn't. And I think this is
something that I've been that I've been having a conversation
with leaders a lot, which is that I think we've
(19:19):
developed this notion that for someone to disengage is inherently bad,
and sometimes it's just the way it's going to go.
That if what you want me to engage with is
something that I don't find engaging. It might be better
for us not to work together, and that's that's a
human centric outcome as well. So I don't think the
(19:41):
goal is for everyone in the organization to be engaged necessarily,
because I think over time, as the clarity of the
mission develops, as we get clearer on what's important to
us and what we're trying to accomplish together, there are
going to be some of us that are going to say, yeah,
that's not really aligned with where I'm headed as an individual.
And so that's how I think about that, that independence
(20:03):
interdependence within the context of an organization. But I do
think it's it's it's not simple, and I think it's uh,
it's necessary, you know, I want to I want to
sort of acknowledge that that these the categorization, the affinitization
coming back to like generations for example, is necessary and
helpful and so and I think within the organization, I
(20:26):
think when we talk about you know, segmentation or personas
right or avatars, we are we are kind of creating
these fictions and they're necessary and helpful. And I think
within the organization that's part of how we how we
reconcile individual and collective experience is by sort of figuring
(20:46):
out what who are we and what are we up
to together? And you mentioned this earlier that there is
no us them, it's all us. And I think that's
so critical in an organization to have that big broad
sense of when we say we, we mean us all.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
You're touching on some really important things. I think that
I see a lot of leaders struggling with and it's
the post pandemic. Are we post now? I don't know
if we are not, but let's call it post pandemic.
I feel that it's the pandemic. Really put got the
highlighter out and just like highlighted everything in bright, bright,
bright color, Which is what the heck does it mean
(21:27):
to be engaged? And how does one signal or perform that?
And how it looks different for different people. And I'll
give you another example. So you take an institution that
I volunteer for that you know well as well, our
alma mater. We both went to the same college. And
one of the discussions we are having about volunteering is
(21:47):
that love for an institution might look different for different people.
For some love might be critique, as in, I care
about this place so I actually want to speak out
and make it better for others. Love me look like
I love it, this is great, like I'm all in
and it's and I feel that over time it was
that kind of I don't want to diminish it by
saying raw raw, like if it's authentic, it's you know,
(22:09):
I'm a very hyped person. I'm very enthusiastic. I get
very into things. So when I really care about something,
I'm into it, right. But it's a lot easier to
see engagement through that lens than someone who a a
may just perform their engagement in a different way, like
may not be the one who wants to join everything,
(22:29):
may need more time to recharge their battery, doesn't want
to come to all the things. Or it could be
someone who's like I want us to do better. I
care about this place enough to want to do better.
And I feel people really trying to understand this more
and now to say, what, especially in a hybrid environment
or remote environment, what does engagement look like? And can
it look different for different people? Do you have opinions
(22:51):
on this because to me, I think it's a really
important set of questions.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yeah, it really, it really is, And I think the
way that you've stated it is is so respect full
of that spectrum of what does exist and what engagement
might look like. And I love the idea of how
am I performing my engagement. I think that's a really
good way to describe it, because I think I think
that the the the tendency is to say an engaged
(23:15):
employee looks like this, and if a person doesn't look
like this, then they're not engaged. And there's sort of
good reasons why we go there. We do. It is
something that we want to keep track of. It's it's
often a KPI in the organization to keep track of
employee engagement scores and what have you, And so we
are trying to trying to establish some kind of standard
(23:37):
or measurement of what it means to be engaged. But
I think engaged can look a lot of different ways,
and I think part of trying to be an inclusive
workplace is trying to recognize too that that people can
show up in a lot of different ways and we
don't know what the internal state is.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yeah, Now, I think that's a really interesting observations and
helpful to just think through. As you said earlier, calibrating
how are people calibrating work in life? For years, this
phrase work life balance has I think been such a joke.
You know, let's call it what it is. I mean,
don't mean to be rude, but the idea, as you said, Eric,
(24:16):
words matter. So work life balance implies there is a
perfection that there's a balance. Balance means that you've found
the point where it's going to be fixed and stay
it'll stay perfectly balanced there. And we all know that
that's not how life is or work is, And so
the idea that there may be a calibration relative to
(24:37):
your enjoyment of your work, or the bonding or the
alignment with the organization, or what's happened in your life.
I mean, I think these are very realistic and thoughtful
things that leaders need to understand and be open to
and continue to contemplate. Because I also don't find it
to be a fixed medium. I think it's shifting all
the time. Individuals are shifting, we as people are evolving
(25:00):
all the time. I mean, would you agree with that
it's it's changes constantly.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Well, I think that's exactly what you what I what
I love about what you just hit on, which is
that is that these are these are ongoing actions. And
so I actually used to used to write and speak
quite a bit about work life balance, but I would
always say it's a verb. It's not a state of
being that we are work life balancing all the time, right.
That's that's kind of how things work, you know. And
(25:24):
if you're on a balance beam, you know that you're
constantly making micro adjustments right to stay balanced. And I
think that's what we're actually doing when we're trying to
maintain work life balance. We don't maintain it at all.
We're just sort of constantly micro adjustments. We're actively doing it, right,
and so and I think that that's also you know,
(25:45):
acknowledging the sort of macro environment in which organizations are
operating today, which is, you know, as people like to
say VUKA right, volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. I like
to add to that emergent that there are outcomes that
come out of organizations that we didn't even know we're coming. Right,
So operating in that environment versus operating in a stable,
(26:10):
predictable environment of maybe fifty one hundred years ago, it's
just going to look different. And so there is a nimbleness,
an activeness to how we all are trying to navigate
these things, and that means we can show up differently
every day.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah, it's funny. I was just speaking about my least
favorite acronym VUKA earlier today in a total meeting. So
now I can call it vuka E the emergent. I
like that. No, it's we're in a Vuka world. It's
it's the Vuka world. We just live in it. I
think that's very true, and that has huge implications for
organizations and their workforce as people as a community. Lack
(26:54):
of that constant instability or the question, the uncertainty you
know it infuses is the atmosphere. So in your book,
you have a number of ease was it six ease?
That's easy, y, Yeah, But tell me a little bit
about I mean, obviously I encourage folks to check you out,
find you look, find the book. I think there's a
lot of good thinking in here as they're hearing already.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
But what are some of.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
The most critical lenses or takeaways or pieces that you'd
want to share as you summarize this work for others.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Yeah, so I think the and I appreciate the question.
I think these these six e's are intended not to
make a leader's job harder because because I recognize that
your job is already hard enough. But they're intended to
bring to consciousness, uh, disciplines that you're that you're weaving
through how you're doing your work and so uh. And
(27:48):
the and the most important one, I think, if I
had to pick one of the six, is the first one,
which is empathized. And this is what a lot of
our discussion has been about today, right, which is which
is really about understanding who people are in the workplace,
what their needs and aspirations and fears and motivations are,
what they're excited about, what they're scared of, right And
(28:10):
and understanding that at a at a very at that
individual level is a necessary precondition to anything else we
try to do to create a human centered workplace. If
we don't start with understanding who our fellow humans are
in the workplace, we don't stand to work together to
cultivate that human centered workplace. And it's it's very similar
to you know, when you look outside the organization and
(28:32):
you look at understanding your clients, right, or look at
understanding the recipient of a message. Right. If we don't
understand them. Then we're just pushing things as opposed to
supposed to doing things together. So empathize definitely the place
where I recommend starting. And it's also it's also not
as hard as I think I make it sound, because
(28:53):
it's really just about one of the one of the
pieces of advice I give at the end of a
lot of my talks is just start to adjust your
speaking to listening ratio. Just start to think about that.
I love. I use a tool online called Fathom. Have
you have you used Fathom? No?
Speaker 1 (29:10):
I haven't.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
It's not an endorsement, it's just it's a tool that
I use and it records conversations and then generates AI
notes and follow up items. But another thing that it
does for the person who's running it is it tells
me what percentage of the time I'm speaking. Now in
this context, I'm supposed to be speaking most of the time,
and that's fine, but in a conversation it's really useful,
(29:32):
and I think as a leader, it would be great
if we had this sort of meter to keep an
eye on how much are we dominating the conversation versus
how much are we listening. And again that's not to
shame anyone. But it's just really to say, like a
lot of what leaders are expected to do is have
the answers and say all the things. But as we
as we start to adjust that ratio to where we're listening,
(29:56):
more than our level of empathy goes up, which enable
us to then do things like enable people to do
their jobs. Make sure that that's one of the that's
one of those six eases. Enable make sure people have
the knowledge, the tools, the skills, the resources they need
to do what we're asking them to do. And the
(30:16):
thing that I always like to say about enable is
every organization wants to raise the bar, but I think
we also need to raise the floor and raise the
floor by just equipping people. So so that's enable, And
then and then empower follows that, right, which is which
is really how do we make sure that we're getting
obstacles out of the way, removing friction, things that are
(30:36):
preventing or making it harder for folks to do what
we want them to do and to become who they
want to become. So all of that, we can't do
any of that if we haven't done the listening and
the empathizing first.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
I love the listening piece and that tool would be
a very yeah, very eye opening situate for me, especially
in others. I mean all of us who love to
who are excited and love to chat and talk and
have ideas, and it can come from a good place.
But I love what you're saying though, about empathy and
how to build that and empathize as an active You know,
(31:07):
you could have said empathy, but you said empathize, and
I assume that that's very deliberate on your part. But
it reminds me, you know, as we have our own
process here of trying to be more inclusive, of looking
at diversity and equity and inclusion and thinking about that
very deeply and not moving away from that at all,
but inclusivity creating that sense of belonging, creating more psychological safety.
(31:32):
I think the idea of empathy we talk about building trust.
You know, when one builds trust, you can remove friction.
People don't spend as much time being like, what are
they actually saying behind the words that are coming out
of their mouths and wondering about things. So it's just
a helpful reminder of simple ways to raise that empathy
quotion and be more engaged with folks.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yeah, I'm glad well. And I think just just adding
to that, I think there's a couple of things that
come up for me. So a lot of times in
organizations that I speak to want their employees to be
more empathetic towards their clients, right, We want to want
them to exhibit empathy for their clients. And so, uh,
you know, I get folks coming to me for advice
(32:15):
on how do we how do we make our employees
be more empathetic? Right? And my my first question back
is how are you showing them empathy? How are you
creating this environment in which empathy is an expectation, in
which trying to meet others' needs as an expectation, because
if it's not there internally, it's not going to show
up externally either. And the other thing that I want
(32:36):
to that I want to pick up on that you said,
you know, during the pandemic, a lot of a lot
of folks were trying to figure out how they could
keep tabs on employees and makes you know that part
of the shift to remote and hybrid work was was
how do we track what folks are doing? My my
sister in law literally had a had an alarm that
would go off on her supervisor's computer if her mouse
(32:57):
didn't move in a ten minute period of time. Wow,
it's absurd, right, It doesn't actually demonstrate any kind of value.
It was just it was just a crutch that that
folks developed. And I think when we think about how
do we equip and enable folks to be successful, we
shift to this idea of backing them instead of tracking them,
(33:17):
right to really saying, these people that we've invited into
our organization, how do we make sure they have what
they need? Versus how do we how do we really
create this atmosphere of distrust where we where we think, well,
you're probably not working, so what tools can we put
in place to keep track of you? So I think
that that shift, and you highlighted that, but I think
(33:37):
that that shift is really a key mindset shift that
shows empathy.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Well, and it reminds me over the years because our
work career life has spanned a lot of organizational change.
Just going back to the idea that it would have
been impossible to wear jeans, you know, in the first
ten years of my career, but the dot com boom
kind of changed that one. But one of the things
that I remember saying over time is we have to
(34:03):
distinguish between a policy issue and a personnel issue, meaning
that okay, we're going to maybe put even before the pandemic,
remote work opportunities becoming more normal norm certainly was for us.
And the question of okay, you get this fear, a
fear based mindset that can happen in business and management
(34:25):
of what are people doing right? But you know one thing,
and sometimes you put policies in place that just aren't
good or they don't work, or they're not right for everybody,
and you feel that the anxiety rises, like you just
see their issues right, So then it's a policy issue.
But if you believe in the policy, my attitude is like,
watch for the individual issues. And that's a personnel thing
(34:46):
where you're working one on one with a person who
may be struggling in their own way or may not
be a fit or something like that. So I think
those are sort of these normal push and pulls of management,
especially from and that's maybe where the generations fit, where
other ways of working from earlier times kind of pull
at your set of norms and expectations. And it's been
(35:06):
a real change and challenge these past five to ten
years for sure.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Yeah, absolutely well, and and that I think you're absolutely right,
because I think there is the the what we see
in generations. For first of all, we see agent stage, right,
we just see where somebody is in their life and that.
But but we also do see how society changes over time.
And I think you're absolutely right. Yeah. I had a
boss back in my ge days. I had a boss
(35:32):
who was of an older generation, and every time I
came with him, came to him with a you know,
having identified something that wasn't working, you know, something that
was harder than it needed to be. Or he would say,
that's why I call it work.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
It's an a at a baddie, it's you know, ex
But it really conveys this notion that like, well, work
is hard and bad. So let's let's let's let's just
let's just deal with that, right, And I think where
we are now is not at that assumption at all. Right,
The assumption is not at all that work is hard
and bad. It's rather that that work is a human activity.
(36:13):
Work is something that we do as part of our
expression of who we are. And I think that that
is a shift that we see and we can look
to the younger generations as Bellweathers right of the shift
that is happening. It's not because of them, but they are,
but they are indicators.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Well, I always joke that I try not to live
in a Dilbert cartoon. Dilbert was written just like the
movie Office Space, under the assumption that all management is
the worst, all work is terrible, all organizations are dysfunctional,
And I'm like, well, it all depends on how we
all show up. I mean, we have to make a
lot of choices and good choices in management. But I'm
also I try to avoid having a Dilbert lens like
(36:53):
on my work. I want to feel more empowered than that.
But I want to switch gears for a little bit.
I know you're doing a lot of keynoting and that's
and a lot of speaking. And one of the things,
speaking of engagement, that you're doing that's a bit different
is you've told me that you're combining a couple of
your passions, one of which is djaying with speaking, And
as someone who does a lot of presentation and speech
(37:14):
coaching and presentation skills, I really love that concept. So
what made you think of this and what did it
unlock for your audience and combining those two modes.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, yeah, thanks for asking about that. Yeah. So djaying
is something that I've done for a lot of years.
It was something that I that I dreamed of doing
when I was younger, and then it came to quite,
you know, relatively late in life for being a DJ.
But I've been doing it for a couple of decades now,
and it's something that I just I have come to
love the experience of helping to cultivate again an experience
(37:47):
for people. And you know, when I can help to
facilitate a party as the DJ, it's it's incredibly rewarding
and it's it's I also have that same sort of
sense of ful filment when I'm speaking and I feel
like the message is really connecting and helping people. And
when I see a face light up, when I see
an aha happen in the room, I get that same
(38:11):
sense of fulfillment. And so bringing those two things together
was both an attempt to feel more whole myself, just
to integrate myself, but also to find a way to
convey these messages about leadership in a way that disrupts
the way that people are used to receiving those kinds
(38:33):
of messages, and that creates a collective experience that's different
from the experience we often have when we're all sitting
in a hotel ballroom together. And so what I'm doing
I call this talk be a party rock and leader.
And what I've done is I've gone through these six e's.
We've discussed a few of the ease today. I've gone
(38:53):
through these six e's and said, how do those show
up for me as a DJ? And it turns out
a lot. Being a really being a DJ who really
gets a party going requires great empathy. It requires knowing
what kind of party is this? Is this a quiet
after work happy hour or is this an after hours rager?
(39:14):
You know, what are the kinds of songs that get
people on the dance floor, What are the songs that
clear the dance floor, taking requests from people, noting what
people are responding to. These are things that a great
DJ does to get the party going. And as you know,
these are also things that a great leader does. As
a great leader does not show up and sort of
inflict their mission on the organization and on the people
(39:35):
in it. And a great DJ doesn't show up and
play just the music that they want to play. So
now I'm doing this thing where I'm speaking about these
essentially these same six ease but at the same time
djaying to kind of illustrate and create a dance party.
So it's about two parts keynote, one part dance party.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
I would say, what's the reaction from the audience or
from the listeners, Because you're right, I've been in many
a ballroom listening to keynotes. I have given been the
keynote in the ball room. What's been the reaction when
you've done this?
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Yeah, well, you know, my first time doing it, I
was I was aware of what I was up against.
You know that that folks had been in the room
all day, actually in a two day event. You know,
they were tired, they'd been talked at for quite a bit,
even though it was a pretty well run event. And
to get up in this you know, fluorescently lit hotel
ballroom and try to transform it into a dance club
(40:28):
for a minute, I knew I was I was up
against it. So I just I just recruited the folks
in the audience to be a part of it with me.
So so I got up there and I said, look,
I know where we are, I know what this room
looks like. What can we do together to transform this
into a into a dance club for a minute, and
(40:50):
somebody got up and turned off the lights, and folks
got up out of their seats. And to be clear,
not everyone, you know, this is this is not everybody's vibe,
but but the majority of the room was up out
of their seats when I when I put on the
first song, before I even started speaking, I just put
on a song and got folks dancing, and they were up.
They formed a spontaneous conga line around the ballroom. Folks
(41:13):
jumped up on the platform with me, you know, sort
of completely violating the sanctity of that space and got
out there and we're dancing with me. And when the
song was over, they went back to their seats, and
you know, I started speaking and they were with me,
you know. And so the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
My my best, my best and favorite piece of negative
(41:35):
feedback was he did a great job. It just wasn't
my thing. Yeah, hey, which is great, which is great.
It's not for everybody, which.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Is gonna be a percentage of the audience anyway, no
matter what.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
No matter what. But I feel like what it does
for the audience is it is it not only creates
I was reminded of this term collective efforvescence, right, It
creates this this experience of collective effortvescence that we're all
having an experience together that's outside of our usual, that
is outside of even what we've come to expect in
(42:05):
the past two days in this room, right. And hopefully
my hope is that it then enables people to not
only just take what they've heard and learned from me,
but actually to remember it and start to integrate it,
be more energized, to start to integrate it into their
lives because they're thinking about that that feeling that they
had well.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
And that feeling it brings it back to what does
it mean to feel attached to work or an organization,
or to feel a mission, or to feel a part
of something, To enjoy moments with colleagues, whether they're virtual
or right in front of you. I mean, I think
that's a beautiful way to put it into kind of
come full circle. But I'll ask you my final question
(42:44):
of the podcast, which I always like to ask. So
it's called building brand gravity core theme. So what is
a business or a brand, or some aspect of culture
that has you in its gravity right now?
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Eric m oh, gosh, that's a great question. Wow. I think.
I think one thing that I'm that I'm really excited
about right now is UH is actually relating to DJing.
So there's a there's a there's a company out there.
Actually don't know who the parent company is, but they
own a couple of different dj UH sort of equipment
(43:16):
UH companies. And part of what they're trying to do
is really democratize DJing.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
UH.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
So they're creating DJ controllers and things that are really
meant for people who just want to do it as
a hobby. And obviously I do it as more than
a hobby. But I love that what they are doing
is saying everyone can be a dj UH and we're
going to equip you to DJ in your living room,
to DJ in your bedroom, to DJ for your friends,
you know, at your little New Year's Eve party, in
(43:43):
your in your apartment. And and I just I love
so they called new Mark and UH, and what what
they do really speaks to me because it's really it's
really enabling people and empowering people to pursue a thing
that they may have thought was.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Out of free I love it. I love it. That's
a great answer. Well, eric Ile, thank you so much
for joining us on building brand Gravity. I appreciate your
time today.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Thanks, and this has been really fun and let's talk
so all right.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
We are GNS Business Communications. We are a team of
media strategists, storytellers, and engagement experts who meet you at
the intersection of business and communications. To learn more, visit
gscommunications dot com. You are listening to building brand Gravity
attracting people into your orbit a GNS Business Communications podcast.
(44:37):
Keep connected with us by subscribing to the show in
your favorite podcast player. If you like what you've heard,
please rate the show. That helps us to keep delivering
the latest in industry influence. Thanks for listening. Until next time.
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