Why Human Connection Wins in an AI World | Nick Smallman | Episode 358

Scott McCarthy [00:05:25]:
Nick, welcome to the show, sir. So good to have you here.

Nick Smallman [00:05:29]:
Thank you, Scott. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Scott McCarthy [00:05:31]:
So we’re here, we’re talking about team engagement, which is, it’s like both an amazing and frustrating topic. I say amazing because it’s so crucial to have, yet it’s so frustrating because it’s, I would argue, so poorly done across from what I hear so out of the gate is like, why are we failing here? What are we as leaders doing wrong in this domain?

Nick Smallman [00:06:06]:
Okay, thank you for such a great first question.

Scott McCarthy [00:06:09]:
Just straight out of the gate, man.

Nick Smallman [00:06:12]:
You’Ve teed up beautifully. And I would say every leader, team leader in any capacity, could be two people or 200 people or 2,000 people, knows how to lead a team well, the question is whether it’s not whether they can be bothered, but it’s because I’m saying when they know, they know intuitively how to lead a team well, because we have plenty of examples in our lives of people who can lead well. And the likelihood is if you’re working in a business, you will have experienced good leadership somewhere. So we know what good leadership looks like, feels like, and we know what they do if we’re paying attention. The problem I think for leaders in the 2000 and twenties is they’re under a kind of. Although you would argue that balance sheet and profits and efficiency is nothing new, I would also argue that because we digitized our lives, numbers, metrics, there are 28 ways to sort of slice different data, et cetera. And we’re always being completely and utterly sort of overrun by data, et cetera. So I think leaders are like bees to honey.

Nick Smallman [00:07:19]:
They go for the data because they want to understand how to make themselves more efficient. And maybe people are spending too much time looking at things like KPIs and not understanding the direct link between having a high functioning team, a creatively intelligent team that will boost those KPIs. And I think it’s. Sometimes you just forget the power of teamwork. Now it’s interesting. We get examples all through our lives. You see great sports teams who maybe didn’t have any stars, but worked brilliantly together to win the super bowl or whatever. Similarly, you have all kinds of teamwork, whether it’s some kind of organization like the army, and obviously lots of examples of good business.

Nick Smallman [00:08:04]:
So I suppose the counter question I always have for you is why is it going wrong? It’s like, is it? We just need a better sort of PR activity to explain to people the value of good teamwork and actually a lot of the answers, conclusions I come to in my book are very much kind of simple human led solutions that are not. You don’t need a PhD to do them. You just need to have open eyes and open ears and be prepared to engage in conversations, etc.

Scott McCarthy [00:08:39]:
Yeah, it’s interesting and I enjoy the kind of flip back question, you know, you asked, you know, do we know the value of teamwork? I would argue that we do because like everyone you talk to, like, oh, teamwork. Yeah, it’s important. Teamwork. Teamwork, yes. We need to work together as a team. We’re talking to talk, but we’re not necessarily walking the walk.

Nick Smallman [00:09:04]:
But don’t we have that also in other circumstances? Like for example, we all know that eating healthily and exercising is really good for us, but we also know that the whole population doesn’t do it. Yeah. And this is the thing, humans are fallible. They’re very flawed. And I always say, well, I started saying recently, should I say to some of my audiences, I’ll say while I’m talking to you, I want you to think of yourself as what you are, which is a biological organism, okay, with impulses and needs and flaws and all kinds of complex psychological programming from your entire life that you can’t possibly fathom. And it’s understanding that, that helps us to understand what we need. And once you understand what you need, it’s, it’s much easier to interact with people in a meaningful way. So I’m not saying that team leaders need to be good psychologists, but they just need to observe human life and what works and they can get to where they need to go.

Scott McCarthy [00:10:12]:
Super interesting. I definitely like the rebuttal, especially about the exercise and eating healthy and stuff like this, because we talked about it before we even hit record there. We had a similar conversation. So we, as leaders, we know it’s important. We know the effects of it. We know we might not necessarily be doing it right. I guess my question to you now is how do we make sure that we, you know, how do we know if we’re doing it right or not doing it right or what are we doing right but not necessarily doing right? You know, how do we define and figure that out?

Nick Smallman [00:10:52]:
Well, sometimes you need a guide. And I guess one of the reasons I wrote the book with my fantastic co author, Dan Parry, I want to give a shout out to him because he’s a remarkable human being. But we wrote the book because we saw our clients struggling with a lot of these challenges. I mean, obviously 2008, for example, was a crisis of leadership. Leaders didn’t step in, they didn’t intervene. The world cratered because of really, really poor leadership. And then the trauma of the financial crisis, I think is still with us because a classic. And I say this a lot in the book because I think it’s important.

Nick Smallman [00:11:30]:
There is a mantra in a lot of corporates, we have to do more with less. And that sort of culture of efficiency I totally understand. But then, of course, what do you do in order to do more with less? You start using technology which is efficient. And of course, AI is just going to go boom and make companies potentially super efficient. But there’s going to be a lot of collateral damage with the employees who are insecure about losing their jobs potentially. But also just the speed of change, I think is going to be fine for some people and a little bit overwhelming for others.

Scott McCarthy [00:12:05]:
I think AI is going to be. I shouldn’t say is going to be because I think we’re already seeing the effects starting massive. And, you know, in my day job.

Nick Smallman [00:12:17]:
That’S what they say.

Scott McCarthy [00:12:19]:
That’s what they say. I think I’ve already seen that’s what they say.

Nick Smallman [00:12:22]:
I mean, that’s the thing. We are. Yeah, I agree. I agree.

Scott McCarthy [00:12:26]:
Right. You know, whenever I open my mouth about modernization at my day job, like, everyone, like. And I’m just like, guys, slow down. We’re modernizing. But I guarantee you it’s not to cut people, but rather reallocate to other work that we need to do. And that has been my kind of my messaging from day one about it, because, one, it’s true. But my point is just that immediate hesitation about modernization and technology because you kind of hinted at it, is like people automatically go down the rabbit hole of, am I losing my job?

Nick Smallman [00:13:11]:
Well, there’s a lot of talk about it, obviously, in the media about these sort of. I think the CEO of Salesforce said that 50% of his workforce would be AI quite soon, or our AI or something like that, which I think is quite shocking. And of course, we know AI is a race. You know, all these companies are trying to have the best AI. I’m sure there won’t be six AI companies in five years. I’m sure there’ll be one or two. And so it’s all a race to develop, develop, develop. And we are seeing AI clippings.

Nick Smallman [00:13:41]:
I mean, I read about 10 papers every day, and there’s always an article about AI. Something’s happening, and a lot of it is to do with the implications of AI. And I think people are rightly concerned because we haven’t. No one sort of like asked us to vote on this. It’s like it’s happening whether we like it or not. Which you think about it, it’s just so ginormous, certainly in the way it’s portrayed. You think, this is going to change my life forever and I hope I’m on the right side of the line because we know there are going to be some very, very wealthy winners and a lot of companies will do really well. But there’s going to be a lot of change.

Nick Smallman [00:14:15]:
And one thing I know about people is that people don’t really like change. We like consistency. We can’t build trust when things are constantly changing. And trust is such a fundamental part of connection and happiness. So it’s a human upheaval I’m more worried about than the technological one.

Scott McCarthy [00:14:34]:
So how do you foresee this impacting us as leaders in our day to day? As we move down the timeline of this getting bigger, more prominent, what do you foresee potentially coming for us or maybe even here when we just haven’t realized it yet?

Nick Smallman [00:14:54]:
From an AI perspective?

Scott McCarthy [00:14:56]:
Yeah, from an AI technology perspective.

Nick Smallman [00:14:59]:
Okay, well, you could break it down into several compartments, really. Compartment number one, I guess. I don’t know if you saw, there was quite a prominent MIT study, it’s new and it was quite small, but it was in Time magazine and they were talking about the fact they tested people. Two groups. One group just did the work and the other group used ChatGPT. And they found that the cognitive capability of the ChatGPT group declined. And also their sort of attitude became more lazy and more cut and paste. And so what it was trying to say is that overuse of AI, when AI does the thinking for us and we stop thinking, that’s not good for our mental health.

Nick Smallman [00:15:52]:
It’s not good for our understanding of the world. The things that make us human rely on our growing intelligence. You would like to think that a 70 year old will be wiser than a 20 year old because they’ve learned stuff. But if you take away the ability to go through and all real learning experiences have some form of pain or hardship attached because you’re changing the structure of your brain every time you learn. But if instead of doing that, now we just ask ChatGPT and we just take that as the answer, that is incredibly concerning. So this bucket number one is you want to make sure that your staff are cognitively agile and remain so. So if we are using ChatGPT more, there must be compensatory activities to keep people’s brains sharp. And I would advertise, advocate things like brainstorming, creative meetings, discussions, town halls, you know, anything really that gets people talking, gets people thinking.

Nick Smallman [00:16:52]:
If the machines are doing a lot of the thinking for people. Otherwise you’re going to really have a lot of isolated people who aren’t connecting that much.

Scott McCarthy [00:16:59]:
That’s super interesting. And what I hear from you, especially from the earlier part, what you just said there is again, it’s not the end all, be all. It’s a tool. We need to use it like a tool, but still use our brains and think. Right?

Nick Smallman [00:17:22]:
And that’s why conversation is so important, because if you think about it, you can think by reading, but people read less now than they used to. You can think by writing. You write things down and it helps you to remember things and make sense of them. But also you think through conversation. And I think that’s the most powerful form of thinking because you’re having a dynamic thinking process where, like you and I are doing now, I’ll say something, you react to it, you ask me a question, it makes me think again. You know what I mean? So I would encourage all organizations to make sure there’s healthy conversation of different genres within the organization, to build connections, but also to increase cognitive capability.

Scott McCarthy [00:18:07]:
So how do we as leaders now? It’s going to sound really weird, but I think you’ll probably get where I’m going with this. But how do we not force, but get our teams engaged in conversation? And I think when I say that, I mean more so than just, hey, did you see the latest TPS report? Did you go and get the new cover, the memo, the new cover form for TPS report. But meaningful conversation or some kind of dialogue that, that forces them to have that conversation, but intellectual manner so that you’re thinking they’re kind of challenging each other and they’re growing at the same time.

Nick Smallman [00:18:50]:
Okay, so a couple of things I would do. Number one is you need to switch on your observation part of your brain. You’ve got to start noticing things. Because it’s when we notice people and how they react to things, that gives us an understanding of how to behave next time and then how to get the best out of people. You’ll notice you talk in a certain way and someone’s sort of eyes light up and you realize, oh, that’s good. So the thing is, if you see each person that you’re leading as an absolutely unique carbon life form that needs a specific Type of nurturing conversation. That’s the first thing just to understand that rather than just doing a sort of a big group. It depends obviously how large the group is.

Nick Smallman [00:19:37]:
If you’ve got a very large group, then obviously your direct reports is how you do that and you get them to filter it down. But the key is to really motivate people by tapping into who they are as individuals. That’s the first thing I would do. Because once you have a proper dialogue, it’s much easier to ask people to do things and to give them the reason why because you’re telling good stories that they’re picking up and responding to. And I think a lot of the time leaders are in a hurry, which I totally understand, but they kind of forget this kind of these building blocks of an effective team. So once you’ve done that, then I would set up an environment where it’s like continuous dialogue. And that also goes for reviews. I don’t believe in retrospective 360 reviews.

Nick Smallman [00:20:22]:
I think ongoing conversations are a much smarter way to stay ahead of where people are. Because sometimes a year later or six months later it’s like, well, that’s sort of in the past now. But if you’re having an ongoing conversation, A, it’s part of the culture, but B, everyone knows each other much better. And that’s one of the. And I’ll, I’ll stop it because I know you’ve probably got another question. There’s one amazing study that we, we read about and we read loads of studies and we had about 10 that we put in the book. And one of them was Anita Wool and Thomas Malone. And it was around collective intelligence.

Nick Smallman [00:21:05]:
And it kind of was my eureka moment in lots of ways because I didn’t know it. But the conclusion they came to made total sense to me and was basically this. They had two groups of people, one with a say of an IQ just above average maybe 110, and a group that had an average IQ of like 130. But they found that the group of 110 knew each other extremely well. They had what’s called high social sense making capability. And so they understood each other, they knew each other, they were interested in each other, they empathized with one another. Ergo they all trusted each other and they all felt a sense of belonging that’s perfect kind of social well being right there. The other group were just a bunch of very clever individuals working pretty much in silos and communicating in a transactional manner.

Nick Smallman [00:21:53]:
And you won’t be surprised to hear that when the Results of the two teams were kind of published. Team A, the one that had all the social sense making, outperformed team B because they had higher collective intelligence.

Scott McCarthy [00:22:09]:
Interesting. You’ve said a lot of interesting stuff there, to be honest. But you said something that kind of really piqued me. Like my eyes went up when you said, when you talked about 360 reviews, which out of the gate. Don’t worry, I agree with you. I think that concept is, is flawed or there’s flaws in normally how we execute it. It’s hard to do a 360 really well to achieve the desired intent.

Nick Smallman [00:22:38]:
Exactly.

Scott McCarthy [00:22:40]:
So back to you on that on those terms is one, what’s your problem with them? So the leaders out there can understand your issue. Two, how do we go about then assessing? Because you still gotta do these assessments. You still have to, you know, give feedback to people and let them know where they’re, where they’re going, what strengths they have, where things are going well, where things need improvement. You know, you gotta have that dialogue, as you like to say. So how would Nick recommend for the leaders out there to run that?

Nick Smallman [00:23:16]:
Well, the first thing is all the things in the 60,360review that you think are really valuable, you incorporate them into the smaller conversations. My big thing with this is it deals with stuff in the present rather than things retrospectively. And because it’s an ongoing conversation and in smaller bursts you can kind of get energy towards it and build something. Whereas, you know, Sometimes with a360 review your manager is like very, very busy and they got to fit it in and they’re running to another meeting. Do you know, you can’t always have the perfect one, but if it’s an ongoing dialogue, you just keep picking it up. So what I’m saying is you’re strengthening the bonds throughout the year and obviously you can formalize it to a degree if you want to. You say pop in and have a quick 10 minute chat with me at this time. But it’s constant checking in.

Nick Smallman [00:24:02]:
And also you can spot things earlier because sometimes you’re reviewing stuff that happened and only if I had that conversation with you like a week before, maybe we could have done something about it. It’s that sort of thing because I think the world is moving faster. I’m sure you agree with that. And there’s something, it seems a little bit 20th century about the retrospectively looking back at. Let’s look at the last 12 months. So that’s my reason.

Scott McCarthy [00:24:25]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. What I personally would like to see, okay, great, you’ve done whatever in the past 12 months, but what are your plans for the future? What do you plan to do? Achieve the next three months, six months, 12 months moving forward? How are you taking this organization to the next step? And it always feels like we’re no different where I work. And it’s just. It’s always past focus. Like, you did this, you did that, you did this, you did that. Great, Cool. But what about where we’re going?

Nick Smallman [00:25:06]:
Yeah, and that’s about the ongoing story. What story? As a leader, are you telling your staff about why they’re doing this and why it’s important and why it matters and why they should be proud of themselves. And, you know, people need motivating. And we all know, we’ve. You know, I had a teacher at school who was so wonderful. I’d run through a brick wall for him because I thought he was amazing. And he, he just really. And I didn’t have to try in his classes because he was so engaging and he seemed to really care about his subject and was really interested in us learning.

Nick Smallman [00:25:36]:
And, you know, that was my earliest sort of experience of a really great leader, a great teacher. And I think a lot of us have great teachers that we admired for whatever reason and wanted to work hard for them. So it’s that secret sauce that we probably experienced that, you know, we could utilize.

Scott McCarthy [00:25:54]:
Absolutely. Nick, this is great. I want to change things up here.

Nick Smallman [00:25:58]:
Yeah, sure.

Scott McCarthy [00:25:59]:
Moving in. You know, we talked a lot about. So I talked about three domains of leadership on the podcast. One, leading yourself to leading your team, and three, leading your organization. So, yeah, yourself is obviously you as the leader. Your team are the individuals. So the Jacks, the Jills, the Sally’s, the Sue doozies, etc. Let’s talk about organization.

Scott McCarthy [00:26:20]:
And one of the things I love talking about when I talk about organization is organizational culture and how, you know, how can we get the best organizational culture out there? Because, my God, there are a lot of great examples of how not to be when it comes from organizational cultures. But I’m sure, you know, you have some. Some great ideas about how leaders should be, especially from the engagement standpoint, how we can bring our teams together from a culture. So I’d love to hear more about that.

Nick Smallman [00:26:55]:
So I’ll go back to something I looked into. I looked into happiness about 15 years ago, and I wanted to understand what made a person happy. And I found this really interesting essay through some research about the sort of the five things that make a human being Happy one was having close, deep, personal relationships. Second was exercise. The third was being in the moment and actually appreciating your life. Second to second. The fourth was the continuous acquisition of knowledge and skills. And the fifth was giving, as in giving.

Nick Smallman [00:27:38]:
So if you see that these are all sort of universal things we understand make us happy. They’re all free and they’re behaviors. Ultimately, we know that exercise releases endorphins and makes you feel good. We know that a good conversation with a friend makes you feel good. You know that when you notice something, it feels good. You know, when you learn something, it feels good. And we certainly know that giving people things and making them feel good makes us feel good. So these are all obvious, but if you could then turn that into sort of a form of social well being.

Nick Smallman [00:28:12]:
And it’s social well being that I think needs to cascade down the whole organization. So it obviously starts at the top. And it means that the business isn’t just focused on results, it’s focused on being a good place to work and mean it. But you can only mean it because the people above you are setting that example. So it’s that people will have conversations with you, they will listen to what you have to say. They’ll value you. Because the thing is, you work hard. If you feel valued and if you’re just ignored, then it’s just a job.

Nick Smallman [00:28:46]:
Right? And so I think it is a cultural thing that starts with the leadership and then it’s just like, this is how we’re going to be. Because if you want to create this incredible environment where you’re setting up proper social wellbeing to build that trust, build that belonging, build that respect, that’s through action. It’s not through slogans and posters on the wall saying, this is who we are. It’s through people actually changing the way they interact with their teams. So I would say it’s a kind of almost as a social contract with the business to say, this is how we want you to work. This is how you’re going to be treated. This is how your manager should treat you. This is what we expect from you.

Nick Smallman [00:29:29]:
And everyone feels, wow, thanks for the transparency, that’s really good. And if that then happens, you go, God, this is such a cool place to work. They said they’d do it and they actually delivered. Do you see what I mean? That’s how I would do it. But you can hear I’ve got quite a big mouth, but I’m not sure all CEOs are like that. But I just think you can the heart and brain need to be balanced? You can’t be all brain because it’s dull and you can’t be all heart because it’s unpredictable. You need to have both working in harmony. And when someone can hear a very bright person speaking with profound connection to the business and the people and you know that they really care, then that’s so powerful for a business.

Nick Smallman [00:30:13]:
And you see it all the time, especially in places like America, where you have these sort of star CEOs who are kind of deeply charismatic and are very driven, et cetera. But you also have a lot of companies that are extremely well run with very quiet CEOs, but they have obviously a good infrastructure in place.

Scott McCarthy [00:30:29]:
It’s interesting, you talked about all these different aspects that makes up a good culture and a great organization that leads to happy, productive members. And in my head I could almost hear like, oh, it’s kind of like Maslow’s hierarchy needs. So as, as you think about this, is there like a pecking order here? Like, is there one thing that’s most, you know, without this, nothing happens. You can’t move up to the next level and without that you can’t. Or is it kind of like, hey, this is kind of like a soup and you just could, you know, it’s a, it’s a recipe. Put a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a pinch of this, etc.

Nick Smallman [00:31:09]:
I don’t think it’s as simple as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I mean, I would also observe that the hierarchy of needs has changed somewhat in the sense of what matters to people. So back in the 80s and 90s, the sort of second to top section, which was reward and recognition, that was very, very popular. But now the younger generations want security. And I think that’s a reflection of the world we live in today. I mean, if you look what has happened just in the last 10, 15 years globally, we’ve had a pandemic, we’ve had rising income inequality, there’s wars, climate change, blah, blah, blah. There’s all this stuff going on. So people want security, I think a lot.

Nick Smallman [00:31:49]:
So making people feel secure in the workplace is a great way to get buy in because they come to a place where they feel happy and safe and secure. So that’s number one. But also the middle bit of massive hierarchy of needs is about friendship and connection. And I think that nowadays, because the world is less sort of calm, security coupled with friendship and connection in the hierarchy of needs is today’s secret sauce. And then you’ll get to the recognition, but you’ve got to get that bit right first. But I also say the way to actually make this happen is to give people learning opportunities where they can understand human nature and understand how to talk to each other and understand how to it. Good listening skills, good emotional intelligence, good executive presence, good presentation skills. All these things are incredibly important.

Nick Smallman [00:32:47]:
And people in the way really want to learn this stuff. But sometimes businesses want to go down the AI route and the E learning route, which I get because you can reach a lot of people at once and you can. But my impression of the last 10 years is that they get quite low figures for people actually showing up to AI sessions because it’s just watching television. So I think having people in there who come and dynamically talk and change you, I think is quite important.

Scott McCarthy [00:33:16]:
Yeah. I could see turnout being pretty low. If I’m just going to show up and watch a video, I would much rather have a conversation with a senior leader of the organization about how we’re going to implement it. And two, what does it mean for me now when we’re talking there? When you were talking, I should say, you said something which was really interesting to me.

Nick Smallman [00:33:41]:
Yeah.

Scott McCarthy [00:33:42]:
I wasn’t sure if I really bought it. And you said that current generation you believe is after security. Now, your rationale was sound. But everything when, you know, I’ve interviewed guests and, you know, probably this show’s been around for like eight years now. It’s insane. So probably around five years ago, Millennials was like the big hot topic that we were talking about a lot.

Nick Smallman [00:34:02]:
Yeah.

Scott McCarthy [00:34:04]:
And one of the things that was discussed was like, listen, just get used to them coming and going, as in they’re going to show up to a job for a year or two and move on to another job. Which kind of goes against exactly what you talked about, where they’re needing security.

Nick Smallman [00:34:22]:
I do hear what you’re saying, but I think it depends who you’re interviewing in the sense that I imagine on this show people who are kind of high achievers and people who’ve got something to say. So they’re going to be naturally more confident, I think. But I think a lot of people, a lot of people who do the kind of over 50% of the jobs are people who just go in to work and just want a steady paycheck. There will always be people in the job market who jump around to get advance their career quickly, but the vast majority of people don’t advance their career particularly quickly. And those are the people you have to reach. Because it’s interesting that there’s quite an interesting. I’ll give you an example. How much money do you think the average corporation spends on wellbeing initiatives every year?

Scott McCarthy [00:35:11]:
Well, being probably in single digit percentages of their.

Nick Smallman [00:35:17]:
It’s $10 million or $11 million roughly. And one of the studies we looked at from Oxford University, they looked at 90 different wellbeing initiatives and they found that 89 didn’t really move the needle. And there were 46,000 people in this particular cohort and there was only one that did move the needle. Can you guess what it was?

Scott McCarthy [00:35:49]:
I can only imagine. I’m dying to know.

Nick Smallman [00:35:52]:
It’s volunteering.

Scott McCarthy [00:35:54]:
Ah.

Nick Smallman [00:35:56]:
Because. And think about the value of volunteering. It’s about reaching out of yourself, it’s about connecting with people, it’s about giving, it’s about building relationships. Right. And so this gets back to this idea that it’s social connection is incredibly good for employees and that helps them to feel secure.

Scott McCarthy [00:36:18]:
Interesting. And you know, and as soon as you say volunteering, like in my mind, I’m like, oh my God, there’s so many studies out there about the benefits of volunteering just at the personal level, let alone what that does at work and for employees. And it’s interesting you mentioned the number like 10 million. I was actually shocked. I didn’t expect it to be that high. But it’s interesting because arguably the number one thing costs zero dollars because you’re just letting people have the time to go do it.

Nick Smallman [00:36:57]:
Well, it’s also that wonderful time, isn’t it? Because the thing that really is in short supply in our modern lives is time. And it goes back to this conversation we were having earlier about optimization. Because the sorts of people who use wellbeing initiatives, I think it’s about 20%, they’re already well, which is why they’re using the initiative, because they’re go getters. And they said, oh, this would be great, a free yoga class. Oh, I’ll have that apple that’s sitting there. You know what I mean? It’s like these are people already in that place. But you’re trying to reach the 80% who aren’t, who won’t go to the wellbeing initiative. So wellbeing has to be a cultural thing or it’s not going to work because it’s not going to hit the people you want to hit.

Nick Smallman [00:37:37]:
Do you see what I mean?

Scott McCarthy [00:37:38]:
Absolutely, for sure. Yeah. And just in my mind as you’re talking there, wow, what a great team bonding and building activity let’s exponentially double down on this. So let’s take this initiative, which is the number one thing that as you said, moves the needle. Let’s bring people together, let’s have a mission. We go out and we focus on, I don’t know, maybe it’s home search, Habitat for Humanity, let’s go help build a house today as a team.

Nick Smallman [00:38:13]:
Absolutely. I mean, people are already experimenting, aren’t they, with four day weeks and stuff like that, to try and give people more work life balance. But what’s interesting, if you spent four days in the office and sort of once a month you went and did something useful and it was an ongoing project and you built relationships outside of work, but you felt very valuable. And it’s actually the volunteering that would feel more valuable than your job. But the fact your job gave you access to the volunteering and set up that infrastructure for you means that you value the work because you can see the work has decent priorities. Most people are decent and they want their employer to do decent things. And it kind of underlines, you know, you can give a big donation to an organization, but that you haven’t given any time, you’re just given a check. And that’s, it’s.

Nick Smallman [00:38:54]:
So it’s, I would say it’s, it’s much more advantageous to get your people involved.

Scott McCarthy [00:38:58]:
Yeah. I often say people generally don’t wake up and think to themselves, how am I going to go and screw up at work today? I wonder.

Nick Smallman [00:39:10]:
Everyone wants to do well, of course they do.

Scott McCarthy [00:39:14]:
It really doesn’t happen. But it goes back to setting expectations and all those things. But I love this idea, this topic we’re on right now of hey, let’s volunteer, let’s bring everybody together and feel good about ourselves. And you mentioned the four day work week. And as we wrap up here, I want to pick your brain on that one because I’ve read contradictory things on it. Some places say it’s amazing, other places say it’s no real difference. Where do you fall within that spectrum? Where should we go here?

Nick Smallman [00:39:51]:
Well, I think you can also think of the hybrid one, which is, I mean, the problem is if an organization is under the hammer, a four day week might not be good for them because maybe things are really tight and they’re just trying to hold on to people and they genuinely need all the time they can get. I understand that and some organizations can go through that for years. But for organizations that have surplus cash and want to make sure their staff are looked after, maybe something like it’s a five day week. But if you get all your work done by Thursday, you can have Friday off. But that’s up to you. That’s your call. You just trust people to get their stuff done. And their colleagues will know if they haven’t because they say, oh, no, I didn’t get this report.

Nick Smallman [00:40:31]:
You see what I mean? So what you’re doing is you’re really building a kind of a powerful bond and a trust with your colleagues to say, look, I respect your time. If you’re needed on Friday, you’re at work. But if you’re not needed on Friday because you’ve done everything, take the day off or once a month or whatever the business thinks they can handle. But I think it’s nice to give people the flexibility to live the kind of life that suits them. So for example, we talked earlier about different sleeping types and the fact that I was a wolf and you were a lion. And I think people also have different ways they live their life. Some people have kids, some people are very active in the community, some people travel, some people have sick parents. There’s all kinds of stuff going on with people.

Nick Smallman [00:41:20]:
So to respect their, their real life, I think is again, is a very powerful message to send to your employees if you want them, if you want to get real retention and engagement in the workplace.

Scott McCarthy [00:41:33]:
You know what I hear there? It’s, let’s focus on the outcomes, Vice, simply the framework or the box that we want to put our people in. You know what I mean? Like, you got everything done that you need to get done. Cool. Like, I was in a very much a job. So then get into my background. So by day, I’m actually a senior Canadian army officer.

Nick Smallman [00:41:54]:
Oh, wow.

Scott McCarthy [00:41:55]:
Yeah. Yeah. And one of my jobs was we were a high readiness organization. So literally we get a phone call, we’re gone. Right. And don’t know when you’re coming home. That was the life. And I told my team, I said, listen, we’ll go through times when there’s gonna be highs and lows, you’re gonna be working like crazy, and then there’s gonna be absolutely nothing to do.

Scott McCarthy [00:42:18]:
And those times when there’s absolutely nothing to do, don’t do nothing here, right? Like get what you, what I need you to do done today. Have a look at it. Double check with me if there’s anything else I need done. If it’s not like adios, like, I’ll see you tomorrow. Because I don’t know if I’m gonna call you tonight and say, hey, I need you on a plane.

Nick Smallman [00:42:41]:
Yes, absolutely. But there you can see you’re creating a kind of social contract with them to saying, I mean, you know, any relationship is about trust. If I say I’m going to do this, I believe you’re going to do that. And that’s what we’re trying to achieve on kind of a grand scale in a corporation where everyone is kind of in harmony, working together because there’s more respect, more trust, and obviously everyone feels a sense of belonging because, you know, to coin a phrase, their team is engaged.

Scott McCarthy [00:43:07]:
Yeah, yeah, 100%. Nick, man, this has been fantastic. I really like this intellectual level conversation. We’ve hit a lot of different things. Is there something that you think would be important that we haven’t hit yet that you would like the audience to walk away with at the end of this episode?

Nick Smallman [00:43:23]:
Yeah, actually there is. And it’s my next book that I’m writing with Dan. It’s about the effect that AI is going to have on us like you. I mean, it’s a fascinating conversation, but I have no idea what’s going to happen over the next few years. But if you put it on a spectrum at one end, a lot of stuff is going to change pretty rapidly. And all I would say is to all the listeners, remember that the things that make you happy are other humans. Computers can never fill that void. And don’t retreat to convenience and sort of digital stimulation because you will be missing something fundamental in your life for your happiness and your well being.

Nick Smallman [00:44:10]:
I hope there’s going to be what I would call an analog sort of renaissance while AI is taking off. Because what it will do is humanity will be ring fencing the important parts of human connection and using AI for things like medical and engineering and all the good stuff. That’s my hope. But it’s up to us to insist on the human stuff and that we keep talking. And that goes for communities, churches, military, and obviously corporations and businesses.

Scott McCarthy [00:44:48]:
That’s fantastic. I can’t wait to hear about this as you launch this book. So good luck with that. And then finally, before we wrap up the show, how can people find you, follow you, be part of your journey? Shameless Pug, sir. Have at it.

Nick Smallman [00:45:04]:
You’re very, very kind, Scott. Thank you. Okay, there are a couple of things. My business website, if you’re an organization and you’re looking for some extraordinary training, then I have teams all over the world and quite a lot in America. And you can get me at www.workingvoices.com. and if you’re interested in AI and the future of AI. I have another website called what Happens To Us? And it’s what Happens to Us. And basically it’s a conversation about some of the implications of AI and what you should do in order to thrive in this really exciting kind of moment in human history.

Nick Smallman [00:45:53]:
When you can buy the book on.

Scott McCarthy [00:45:54]:
Amazon, but of course, absolutely. And for you listeners, always, it’s easy. Just go to leadthoughtboss.com this episode, number and digits and the links to those websites. The book on Amazon, obviously, will be there in the show notes again, sir, thank you for taking time. Yeah, we talked about me being a lion, you being a wolf. But still, it is almost midnight there in the uk. So thank you, regardless, for joining me this late at night. I appreciate it.

Nick Smallman [00:46:25]:
You are incredibly welcome. Scott, thank you so much for having me.