The Evolving Leader

'Leading From The Heart' with Mark Crowley

• Mark Crowley • Season 8 • Episode 6

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In this latest episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, Jean Gomes is joined by Mark Crowley, author of Lead from the Heart, to explore how emotion, belonging, and authentic care are redefining leadership for the modern world. Mark shares his remarkable personal journey, from an upbringing shaped by trauma to a career built on leading through compassion. We hear how what began as an instinctive way to give others what he never received became a philosophy now backed by neuroscience and organisational research.

Jean and Mark unpack why traditional engagement models are failing, how the science of emotion is reshaping our understanding of performance, and why belonging and care are now the greatest predictors of organisational health. 

This is a powerful conversation for leaders seeking to create cultures that elevate both human well-being and business results.


Further materials from Mark Crowley:

“Don’t Measure Employee Engagement—Support Employee Well-Being” (2025, Porchlight Book Company)

“5 Leadership Strategies To Help Teams Thrive Amid Uncertainty” (2025, Fast Company)

“Leaders don’t really care about employee engagement. Here’s why” (2024, Fast Company)

“How leaders can address the human energy crisis” (2023, Fast Company)

“Lead From The Heart: Transformational Leadership For The 21st Century” (2011, Balboa Press)

 

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:


 Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)

The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)


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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

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Scott Allender:

When we slow down and connect with our bodies and, just as importantly, our heart. What happens? Well, research shows what the ancients intuited millennia ago. We feel more whole events take on a new, helpful perspective, and we shift how we feel and think about what's important, deepening our motivation and our resolve. Increasingly, we're becoming more aware that our relationship with technology takes us in the opposite direction to a more expedient, short term place where we often feel thinned out. In this conversation, Mark Crowley shares his transformative journey from a challenging childhood to becoming a successful leader who prioritised emotional well being and heart centred leadership. Tune into an important conversation on the evolving leader.

Jean Gomes:

Mark, welcome to the show. It's absolute pleasure to have you here. And you know, I really enjoyed coming on to your show and and talking about our work. Can you set the scene for, you know, the people listening today about what motivates you in your work, what's, you know, the key milestones in your journey? What are you here to talk about?

Mark Crowley:

It's a big, very big question. And, you know, I try to be really concise with it, and I never am. What I will say is that it's been a lifelong journey for me. Jean, it's not a oh, I've been studying this, and now I've had this epiphany. It's more of I led this way my entire career, and have been spending the last 15 years looking for all the evidence that I can possibly find to validate it, and there's just, it's almost as if there's been this printing press of research to confirm it. So big picture. My mom died when I was very young, and my father raised me. He was a very successful businessman, but a very, I'll just say, a horrible human being and a horrible father. And what he did during my childhood was to kind of cripple my self esteem. He really wanted to believe. He wanted me to believe that I had no potential in life, that I was never going to mount to anything, that I would be an abject failure. And then he kicked me out of the house when I turned 18 years old, with no money, no support, and I went to college, and, you know, very much of struggle. And to the end of it, though, I'd gotten into a rhythm where I was working, going to school, working going to school, graduating. And I started talking to the people that are graduating with me, and I said, What are you doing next? And they said, Well, I'm going off to Harvard Business School, or I'm going to law school, graduate school. And I'm thinking, no school would want me. I'm still carrying this voice inside of me, even though I've just graduated from the same top 10 public school in America with with honours, much more of a struggle than these people had, and they're optimistically going ahead, and I'm thinking, God, thank God I got through this. Like that's the best that I can do in this world. And I started thinking about, well, what is it? What's the difference between these people? And I was obvious, that should be obvious to anybody listening, that the way that I grew up, there were certain things lacking that I believed in that moment that would have made me infinitely more successful and thoughtful. Direction, someone to care about me. Someone will love me. Check in, encourage you if you didn't give well on an exam, those kinds of things. So when I went into started managing people, what I did was I unconsciously gave people everything that I always wanted and didn't get. And every team that I had just flourished and Excel. And they just kept promoting me, promoting me, which, by the way, was odd, because I'm looking at myself going, Are you people crazy giving me all this responsibility? But they're looking at me saying, This guy, whatever he's doing, he knows how to lead people. So, long story short, I did this for another 15 years, until somebody who had worked for me for almost 20 years, came to me and said, you realise you manage people very differently, don't you? And I go, What do you mean? And she starts pointing it out. And she starts giving me examples of how people around me, my peers, were managing with fear and intimidation and micromanagement. And she goes, here, you're seeing the potential of people, and you're developing it. You're making people safe. People love working for you, and they're performing for you. She goes, You realise you're doing something very different. And it was in that moment that I went, Oh, my God, I'm 43 years old, and I'm just now realising that this is my childhood, and all that experience had influenced me to manage this way. So I continued. Got two senior level positions, you know, national level roles, big, big jobs. And they ended up leaving. And I decided to write a book. And the friend of mine one day, about 10 months into the process, Sean said, you know, you're going to have to explain why your practices work, right? And I said, Well, what do you mean? And he said, well, people are going to think you need a shitty. Childhood in order to lead this way. And I realised how brilliant that was like. It was like Buddha coming and saying, you know, this is you got to do this. And I realised, so I spent about 15 more months looking for research to validate that people were miserable at work and the reasons why. But the big, big conclusion here is that I reached out to a world class cardio surgeon and wrote a letter and said, I have this belief that what I was doing to get people to scale mountains. For me, men and women didn't matter. Age didn't matter, education, whatever the Jobs was, consistently for 25 years, was that I was affecting the hearts in people, and could there be any truth in this? So she invited me. She happened to be not too far from me, graduated top of her class at her medical school, had written two books, the real deal, and she goes, Mr. Crowley, you figured out something we're just figuring out in medicine, and that is that the heart is much more than a pump, and that the heart is actually influencing our choices and our decisions. And so when you say that you might have been affecting the hearts and people you most profoundly were, and I had tears coming down my eyes because I realised my whole life experience is being validated. So I wrote my first book, lead from the heart. People heard that book title in business and thought he's nuts, like he's either a religious nut or a spiritualist or somebody who doesn't understand business. And so when I realised that I was going to be faced with all this opposition, I started writing for Fast Company Magazine to drip on people, and then I started my podcast, and then I wrote a second edition, 11 years later, and it's been taught in 11 universities. So we're finally seeing people are understanding that I'm not talking about this romantic heart, I'm not talking about that kind of love. I'm talking about a very different kind of experience. So that's why I'm on this journey. I realised that, like we need to transform leadership in a way that aligns in a win win orientation.

Jean Gomes:

Can we before we move forward? Can we get a sense of the degree which you've made peace with your past and your your dad and so on? Because what you've what you're describing there, is what psychologists would talk about as post traumatic growth. Instead of getting weaker, you got stronger as a result of the, you know, the kind of lack of nurture that you had, which not everybody does. I mean, obviously not everybody does. They they can carry the hurt and it hold them back for their whole life. Have you made peace with that? And you know, what do you think it was about you that allowed you to do

Mark Crowley:

that? I don't know they'll ever answer that question. I have a twin brother, to be honest with you, and the experience that we had, everything that I described to you, we experienced together, and it destroyed him. I haven't seen him in 23 years. So to answer, how did I make it out? How did I not I had a woman next door to me who my brother had two but I she just saw my potential and told me not to listen to what was going on at home. And I think I really wanted to believe that, but he had that too, and he didn't respond to it. But it's interesting, because I had all the success in my career, and then I started to write a book and putting an outline together, John was easy. Starting to write it, I thought was going to kill me, because it was bringing up my father's voice again, which was, you're not a writer. You don't have anything to say. No one's going to listen to you. Why are you doing this? And it was crippling. And so I, you know, told my wife a few times, I don't know if I can actually pull this off. It's just so overwhelming to me. So she said to me, she goes, I have this friend, and she's very spiritual person. And she said, like, almost as if, like, your last last chat is to talk to somebody to see if they can help you get through this. So I talked to her, and this is somebody who's, you know, you're asking an important question in my experience, in my journey, because she's not from this planet, because she I never told her I was struggling. I never told her I was writing a book. I never told her what the what the book was about. She just starts telling me. She goes, I need to ask you a question right now. Have you forgiven your father? And I go, yeah. I figure my father. She goes, No, I mean, how have you forgiven your father? She goes, because you're not going to be able to write this book until you do. And I said, Well, what are you talking about? And she said, You need to go out and, you know, the woods somewhere, and tell him all the things that he did to you and experience that again and then forgive them. And I go, I don't know that I want to do that. So she goes, Well, I'm going to bid. I'm going to make it even more challenging for you. She says, I want you to tell your story in your book. So this is my first book, lead from the heart. She goes, I want you to tell it because you will forgive him by the time it's over, because you will re experience it all. And I go, there's no effing way I'm going to do that. I do not want that painting. In like, this was too much. And she goes, You called me. And I knew she was right. So I went to the University where I went to undergraduate, and I was an English literature major in the eighth like, it looks like your your office. I'm up on the a four, this beautiful view, and I'd spent hundreds and hundreds of days there reading and researching and writing papers. And I find this office that I've never seen before, and I go, wow, this is fantastic. I go in with a legal pad and a pen, and I'm thinking, Okay, I'm just going to start to go through the whole sequence of events. And I I thought it was going to kill me. I seriously thought it was going to kill me. But the book starts off. The whole preface of the book is how I got to lead the way I'm leading and telling the whole story. And by the time I got done, I had forgiven my father, with one exception, there's a little legacy here. So I have a twin brother, but I also have five older brothers and sisters, and I've seen three of them die in the last 18 months, all from cirrhosis of the liver. They the pain that they experienced, you know, 1520, years before I did was very similar, and they just drank themselves to heal it. And so when I think about not having my siblings around because of that, there is this little bit of, you know, thanks dad. But for the most part, I think I've, I've moved on from it. It's really phenomenal question. So thank you for asking it.

Jean Gomes:

Well, I mean, it's, it's an incredibly painful thing to keep on reliving. And thank you for, you know, having the courage and, you know, fortitude to do that. But I think you know what it's, you're not alone in this many people.

Mark Crowley:

I mean, you're so insightful. John, I mean you I we've had a conversation before, and I knew that then, but like, just the questions you're asking, I'm like, 90% of the people I talked to wouldn't even think to say what you just said. So one of the things is, her name was Lisa Renee, and when I spoke to her, she said, You're not just doing this for you. She goes, Do you realise how many people have had similar experiences and need to heal it, and need to see that you can actually overcome it? So I didn't know. I had no experience with it, and so I wrote the book. People started reading the book. I started to go speaking. Men especially would come up to me afterwards and go, Hey, you know? Could you come over here for a second? I want to talk to you for talk to you for a second. And then they go, I had the same thing you did, and I'm happy to see that you over, you overcame it, because you can just see it in their eyes that they hadn't, they hadn't really confronted it. So, like she was onto something, like, I'm helping people by having them read this. It wasn't just me having this catharsis.

Jean Gomes:

Yeah. So, I mean, you know, if we were having this conversation 1015, 20 years ago, there would be a majority of people listening to it will be switched off by now, because this is not business relevant. This is deeply uncomfortable. This is something that you know like, man, doesn't do you don't go back, yeah, you don't accept these things. You you you stuff it down, and you deal with it and, you know, and you process it by drinking or, you know, taking it out on other people. You know, you become a bully, or you get power to wield over other people, to demonstrate that you're worth it, and so on. And as as the economy has become more and more sophisticated, and we spend more of our time at work and trying to find meaning in work, this conversation now becomes more normal, and it was really interesting. I was reading a piece the other day, Manu Shafiq, who's the former president of Columbia University and a director at the London Business School. And in the past, she said, jobs were about muscles. Now they're about brains, but in the future, they'll be about the heart. And I thought, you know, like there was a beautiful kind of lead, you know, segue into our conversation, which is, your time is here, you know, there's a convergence between the way the world is evolving, particularly driven by AI, a understanding about what human value looks like at work, and then more people not willing to put up with just bringing a partial dimension themselves to the to the equation. So can we just quickly, you know, because I'd like to talk about your new work as well, but can we talk a little bit about, you know, lead from the heart, and, you know, what did you cover in that work?

Mark Crowley:

It's really interesting. I forget her name, but there's a there's a famous television actor, actress in America. Holland Taylor is her name, and she was on some TV show about eight or nine years ago and won an Emma. And I think at this point in her life, she was probably. Like, in her late 50s, maybe early 60s, and she's a star, star, you know, like it all happened, and she said, I'm an overnight success that took me 20 years. And that's kind of when you're saying, This is my moment. I thought it was going to be my moment when I introduced the science that showed that, you know, human beings are actually influenced by two forms of intelligence. It's not just our brains, but that our hearts and our actually our bodies are influencing us constantly. And I thought that, you know, CEOs especially, would say, hey, we now have a better understanding of human nature, so we should align our business practices and our leadership practices to this. And what a naive thought. That was because they want people clawing their way up the ladder and stamping on the foot of the guy among all of them. And, you know, they want all that competition and fear and and so, you know, it's a bottom up thing that's happening now, I think is more of what's happening here. That sophistication is that companies are looking and they're saying, We cannot continue to manage this way, because people won't put up with it for a long, long time, like my generation, our generation is basically people like, okay, I guess I have to suck it up and take this crappy boss of mine. And people are like, I'm not doing that anymore. That's a big difference. But to answer your question, the big picture of the book is that not just that, that that there's something called the vagus nerve. And the science that I ended up learning about through what's called the Institute of Heart Math, 15 years ago, was introduced to me by Dr Mimi ganari, who's a heart surgeon, cardio surgeon, that she was like, You're so onto this. I'm going to introduce you to the people who are informing me, and they were very willing to help me. And what they said was that we, we the heart is not just a pump. We've always believed that's all it did, but that it's a feeling, sensing organ. It actually has its own mini brain. It's formed in the embryo before the brain. So it's almost as if nature said, Eeny meeny, miny moe No, we're, we're going to put the heart in charge of developing this human being and but the big issue is that you have communication going on 24/7 with the heart and the mind, and the heart actually sends more communication to the brain than the other way around. But there's a component of this that's really fascinating, which is that, and I've, you know, I've pulled these pieces together over the years, and they're all really fascinating, but they connect. And Barbara Fredrickson, who's, you know, one of the stars of the positive psychology movement, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, she proved that human beings are hardwired to thrive on positive emotions, like we need them in order to thrive. And there's a guy in the University of Washington, John Gottman, who's proved that all relationships require a four to one ratio of positive to negative emotions in order for people to thrive in them. So people, you know, partnerships, people that are married to each other, they he can detect almost immediately whether or not the relationship is going to endure because they can see the exchange what's going on, right? It's so I'm saying so if that's the case, then we should be paying people an emotional currency. We shouldn't be thinking that money is the solution to all problems. We should be giving people the experience of positive emotions. But six months after the book came out, I ended up meeting Roland McCrady, who's the head of researcher, head chief scientist at the Institute of Heart Math. And he goes, tell me about what you did, like, what did you do as a leader? So I told him all the things that we just talked about. And he goes, whether you are aware of it or not, you couldn't have done anything better for people in terms of setting them up for optimal performance. He said, when you were caring about them, making them feel safe, giving them encouraging encouragement, giving them growth opportunities, coaching them, appreciating them, all that was this drip, drip, drip, drip of positive emotions. He said, you set people up for optimal performance. But there's a biological reason for it. There's this communication that's going on between the heart and the mind. He said, when people are thriving because they're exceeding that ratio of four or five to one, positive emotions to negative emotions. He said that is called coherence, and where we are in coherence, we can perform optimally. So I'm saying, Okay, if that's the case, then we should be creating and long before of this new book, I'm saying we should be creating environments where people experience well being, because that's how they perform best. There's one other component of this that is that we're, we're not rational. We think, you know, vicar said, I think, therefore I am. And we've always believed it, and we've always gone out and hired the brainiest people in management. And why is it that only 30% of people are engaged? Because the people that we tend to bring in are really smart, and they're good with math and data, and they're not good with people, and they don't understand what it is that draws out the greatness in people. So you. It's really feelings and emotions that are driving us our decisions under the hood. And I say this a lot, and people go, Well, you know, I just want you to know, Mark, that I'm the exception. I'm a real data guy, and I'm a real analyst and and what the science shows is that it's going on under the hood, whether you know it or not, feelings and emotions are driving your decisions and the choices that you make, and we rationalise those decisions, trying to use our minds to say, well, this data shows this, but we've already made the minds in our hearts and our bodies. And so you think about that, it really challenges us to kind of wipe clean the whiteboard and go, if all this is true, then the way we've traditionally managed people are just so misaligned that we might want to do it a little bit differently.

Jean Gomes:

Who's inspired you as a you know, as a great leader that that does this?

Mark Crowley:

It's an interesting question, because there are people that do it and then they don't do it. Doug Conant, he was the CEO of Nabisco. He lived in Philadelphia, and his office is in Newark New Jersey, which, if you've never been to Newark New Jersey is like kind of a really awful place, but he had a driver. He was a CEO, and he had a driver, and it's, I think it's like a two hour drive. So every day he would write, he would use the two hours that he had in the car to write personal thank you notes to all of the employees who, you know, managers bubbled up and said, you know, Jean Gomes was exceptional. And just, could you please send them a note and he would hand write it out, Jean, you're exceptional. Thank you so much for what you did specifically. And like, the performance of the company was like magnified. It was like overnight people are like, somebody actually cares about me here. And it was something so simple. It was just an experience of love. It was like, You matter here. I'm the CEO. I'm sitting in my car. I could be reading my newspaper, I could be sleeping, I could be listening to the radio. I could be doing a million things, but I'm taking the time to write them. And I think that's sort of like the first time where I said, Okay, there's somebody out there that's actually thinking this way

Jean Gomes:

now. So when you wrote the current book, what were you trying to solve for? What was the kind of big idea that that led you to to work on this?

Mark Crowley:

So it's interesting. So remember you were saying, you know, few years ago, people listening to this would be turning off this. This is another one of these moments. We're at risk of that. So I'm not I'm not kidding. I when covid hit and the gyms closed, I didn't have anywhere to go in the morning, and it was important part of my ritual to go to the gym. And so I live near the ocean, so I just instinctively got up the next morning at 430 got on the beach at five o'clock and walked for an hour, and I immediately was like, Oh my God, why haven't I been doing this instead of the bright lights and the music at five o'clock in the morning, I've got all this peace and tranquillity and time to think and and I'm still, you know, getting in a little cardio workout. So I've been doing that ever since. And one day I was coming off the beach, and this word primer came to mind. And I was like, huh, like Emma, it's a piece of intuition, like something's going on there, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this. So I have this friend of mine to sort of been my coach for a long time, and I go, Hey, like this word primer came into my mind. It's not a word I ever use, so I'm trying to figure out what it is. And she goes, that's an inspiration to write another book, and that's what you have to take it and do it. And I was like, I don't know that. I want to do this. So I read Rick Rubin's book on creativity, and he says, in this he said, the difference between creative and non creative people isn't that the other people aren't creative. It's that the creative people understand that there's all this information circulating in the ether, and when it comes to them, they do something with it. He said, Because if they don't do something with it, it goes to someone else, not because the universe is punitive, but because the time for the information is now, and so I'm reading, and I'm like, I'll do it like, don't take it away from me. I'm not kidding. So so then I had just written this article in Fast Company, where I'll put it this way. 12 years ago, I'd worked with Gallup. I just reached out to them on a whim, and I just said, Hey, do you guys have any new information that you know shows that the workplaces are getting any worse? And I ended up talking to Jim harder, who's the head of their research, and started their engagement and well being study. And he goes so in the conversation, I think he just felt good talking to me. And he go, he said, Well, you know, we have this new report, and it's called the, you know, the American workplace study. And you know, I'm happy to let you publish it in your article. So I literally am the one who published an article saying that only 30% of Americans are engaged at work, and this was in 2013 so I get this update from Gallup, like, you know, a year ago, and I'm like, wait a minute, these numbers are the same. They're the same as they were 13 years ago. And it was like this big fire drill. And everybody's talking about how important engagement is, and we never took it seriously. So I wrote an article saying this is like mythology, that we should not be investing another dollar in engagement, because no one's really taking it seriously. And so the premise of the book is that Wall Street never took it seriously. CEOs never took it seriously. And so it's always been this sort of ceremonial once a year, twice a year, survey that no one's ever been held accountable for, and that we tell people it's important, but we really don't mean it, and we're not changing our leadership practices. So then I read a study that happened where you are and at the University of Oxford, and it demonstrated that there's a direct correlation between employee well being and productivity, like, you know, how people perform. And the cornerstone of the research was that it all boils down to feelings. And I'm like, Okay, this is, like, you know, massive confirmation for something I wrote about 11 years ago. And so I started digging into it, and it was just this very clear thing for me, which was, stop talking about engagement. It's too complicated. You can't hold people accountable. And let's focus on well being. If we know that that sets people up to perform their best, then let's teach managers how to do it and why they should do it. And so that's really what the book is about. It's a primer that teaches managers how to specifically elevate employee well being while concurrently driving for performance.

Jean Gomes:

So what's the first move that the leader, the manager, needs to make?

Mark Crowley:

This is a surprise to me. It was a surprise so in the research. So like, if we could just, you know, if we, if you and I and 10 other people were in a room, we said, what do you think is the drivers of well being? You know, you'd probably see money and, you know, health and million other things, but the number one driver of well being is belonging. And that was a bit of a surprise to me, and it's a surprise to everybody based on the data, like they asked a whole bunch of leaders, you know, where would you rank all these different things, and most people didn't even have it on their horizon, like it was never even an idea. And then when they told them, Well, it's part of this. It's one of them. Where would you rank it? They ranked it, you know, almost dead last. But it's interesting. So listen to this. These are statistics that just came out this week. The average American spends 24% less time socialising and communicating with other people than 10 years ago, 24% KPMG, most people, 81% today would trade 20% in salary in exchange to work with close friends. 81% and 45% feel lonely at work every day. So I didn't have those statistics. By the way, I had something similar. But I'm looking at this, I'm like, this is like, huge confirmation that what we've done through, you know, a year of solitude after covid, during covid, that we never adjusted, and that our reliance on texting people and, you know, using social media as a form of communicating and connecting isn't working. It's undermining us. And so by the way, connection is all about the heart, right? So if we're not connecting, we're not having well being. If we don't have well being, we can't perform at our best. And so that's why you've got 45% lonely, and you've got people desperate for friendships, and you've got people that are really unhappy. So you look at that and you say, well, where, how do we fix that? And so one of the chapters in the power of employee well being is is saying, guess what? With all the different things you've got on your plate, mister or missus, manager, you're going to have to take this on. And the way you take this on is to create a culture where people don't compete with one another on their teams, that you're not judging them in respect to one another, that you're creating a cohesive team, and you're saying to people, if you want to work for me and you want to be a part of this team, you have to have each other's backs, like we are here to help one another. We're going to share ideas. We're going to share best practices. If you do something exceptional, John, you're going to get celebrated for it, and then you're going to tell everybody what you did. Who are going to lift all boats that way, but also giving people social connection by literally just not saying, Hey, we're going out for drinks after night, which 40% of the people can't go to because they have kids to pick up from school, or, you know, they're going to night school. Or whatever. You do it in the daytime. You say, hey, you know, grab a cup of coffee, and let's all get together. And, you know, let's just have some conversations and just give people that time. And managers like, well, we don't have time to do that. We need to produce, you know, we have to get this work done. And I'm like, okay, that may be true, but this is such an essential part of how you're going to get that work done that you might be wise to invest the time to do.

Jean Gomes:

So you talk in your work about the importance of self awareness in this because many people are cut off from the feelings that they have about feelings of loneliness or presentment or these kind of things that are actually governing how they relate to their work, to their colleagues and so on, and particularly leaders who are sort of numb to those feelings. So what? What have you got in terms of thoughts around building that, that understanding and reconnecting with, you know, how you're really feeling?

Mark Crowley:

Well, yeah, you know? I mean, it's interesting, because people are surprised that the book isn't out, comes out in like 15 days, but there are the people that have read it are surprised that my first chapter. So in other words, the book sets it up, saying that engagement needs to go away, and here's why, and here's why, well being is much more important. But once that happens, then it's okay. So now we've established that well being is more important. How do we actually do it? And the first chapter is called Know thyself. And so this goes into what you're asking me, which is, why would you put that there first? And I find that you know, and it is true with men a lot of times, that you know, we've created this culture where we go, you know, don't feelings. Don't matter. Don't get caught up in your feelings. Don't let ever anybody else have feelings either. So, you know, shut leave your troubles at the door. Is sort of our belief system for a really long time, and we don't understand that we're emotional beings. We're not rational beings. So they're happening anyway. So you might want to entertain them and allow them and understand them and see what they're influencing. Here, it's data, it's emotions or data, right? So I think what I'm saying in the Know thy self component is, you know, you might be smart like me. I mean, we've already established how I got where I got to, right? And it had to do with some serious introspection, even healing of some very painful experiences. My mom dying at nine years old. I came home from school one day and they just said, your mom died. And like, Why didn't anybody prepare me for this? Like, nobody told me I knew she was sick. But, I mean, it's like, it's still this devastating experience, but you got to believe that that will influence you in your life. If you don't address it and say, how is that impacting me in terms of how I interact with people? I'll give you a better example. So my father was, you know what his influence was? So basically, the driving force for me for many, many years in my life was to prove to him that I wasn't the abject failure that he said he was. The interesting thing was, he kicked me out of the house at 18, and I never saw him, you know, basically he wasn't in my life. And then he died 18 years later. The most experiences that I saw of him were in the hospital when he was dying. So I'm out there working every day, trying to kill myself, trying to perform and try to achieve for a ghost and but guess what? I'm also setting up an example where, you know, people knew, like that guy, does he work all the time, like he's here before anybody, he leaves after everybody. And so it got me where I wanted to, and I learned so much. And, you know, so there were benefits of that, but I'm also undermining the well being of people, because I'm setting a ridiculous standard of what work should look like. And so I think I was, like, 50 years old when I went I don't need to prove to him anything, but it took me that long. So if you can know thyself, if you can go back and say, what are the influences? What was my father demanding? Was he approving? Was he, you know, did he set high standards? What about my mom? What about my siblings? Did I have any tragic experiences? Did my parents go through a divorce? Did we lose, you know, certain financial situations because we carried them with us. I mean, one of the most best selling books right now is called the body keep score. This is like, right? And so what, what that means is that all that trauma is still in our bodies until we take a look at it and heal it. And it's not always that you have to heal it. It's just that you have to understand it. So in my situation, understanding it meant I'm trying to prove unconsciously, that I'm worthy and have value, and I was doing it by working, working, working. And that's what my my mind told me I needed to do. If I was 30 years old and somebody said, Know thyself and start thinking about what motivates your behaviour, I might have had 20 years of perform because it's important to you. Mark. Not because you're trying to prove to a ghost.

Sara Deschamps:

Welcome back to the evolving leader podcast, as always, if you enjoy what you hear, then please share the podcast across your network and also leave us a rating and a review. Now let's get back to the conversation

Jean Gomes:

so you talk about replacing the engagement surveys with more kind of regular pulse check of the organisation. Can you talk us through that?

Mark Crowley:

Yes, if you don't mind, I have. I'll mention. I have an article coming out the it's tomorrow, so I'm telegraphing to our audience when we recorded this. It's coming out on the 13th of September. And I interviewed two of PhD data guys who create the pulse surveys for two of the biggest companies in the space, workday and culture amp, and basically just tried to get a sense of how effective have they been for you? Because they're sort of on the cutting edge. But the big picture Jean is, I'm saying you do a you do an annual survey, or a semi annual survey engagement. By the time you get the data out, you know, it takes another month, and then you give it to people, and managers are looking at it. And let's say you and I, you work for me and and I can see, you know, I'm not supposed to look to see if it's Jean Gomes doing this, but I can kind of figure it out, because he can say, I have this situation with Mark, and he didn't handle it very well. And I'm looking at it, and I'm like, Yeah, but that's That was five months ago. I'm not going to take that seriously. That's all. That's water under the bridge, right? So we can't really do much with that data, you know, and then on top of it, so you're not happy, because you're like, Why did I fill this thing out? Mark's no better of a manager than he was when I filled it out. We just keep doing this every year, but, but I think that, you know, the thing that really just one day I was like, Oh my God. Like, the whole premise of this, twice a year surveys, you can't do anything with them. You can't recalibrate you. And so if, if I say to you, if I go out with a survey, and I just say Jean at the end of this work week, how would you grade your well being, 54321, or bright green, orange, red, you know? And you, you look at those scores, you can say, Well, wait a minute, we've got a workforce that's not very happy right now. Their well being seems to be low. You can deal with that then. But not only that, the part that I love the most is that that information gets distributed immediately. It's like, you know the technology, you fill it out, and you know, the next morning, it's sitting on everybody's desk. So managers can look at this and they can say, Well, Mark, you know you're hitting your all your goals, so congratulations. But your people hate working for you. Like the feedback that we're getting on you on a consistent basis. With one question of, does your manager coach you often? Do you feel you have growth opportunities working for Mark? Do you feel like you're appreciated like the scheme of things, Mark is demonstrating that you're not doing a very good job of caring about people's well being. So you're on warning now that if you don't improve this so what do we need to do to help you become a better leader? Because now I can hold Mark accountable for being a better manager. And what I love about that is that we never could do that with engagement. We never held anybody accountable. People could get away with it like murder. But now we're forcing managers to improve, and if we're sharing the results peer to peer, and they can see they're not doing well in relationship to everyone else, they're going to fix themselves. And so now, all of a sudden, the opportunity for every employee to work for a really good manager just has completely escalated. It's just completely magnified.

Jean Gomes:

So, you know, and there's, there's a lot of evidence around the fact that when people have a sense of autonomy and control over their lives, their well being, takes a great in leap forward. What have you found out about that aspect about you know, in a world that's becoming even more uncertain and fast changing, where people don't necessarily feel and control their lives, how can leaders and organisations try to make people feel like they have more autonomy.

Mark Crowley:

So you can see that this is another example of how I've been influenced by your part of the world. There is this magnificent study that was done at Whitehall, which is the government offices in London for people that aren't familiar. And the common denominator of Whitehall is that they're all government workers, and they all have sort of a level of pay and responsibility. And so if I were to ask most people, so, if you think about any organisation, the CEO down to the you know, the. Uh, people that sit in, you know, in the in the, you know, welcoming you to the building, somebody less, no responsibility whatsoever, as as opposed to somebody who's got massive responsibility. That, if you would say, where is the most stressful experience? Who's having the most stress? Most people would say, well, the CEO is clearly got the most responsibility, so he or she has got the most stress. And what Sir Michael Marmot found, he they made, they knighted him for this is he found that it's actually the opposite, that the people at the bottom of the of the rung are the ones who have the premature death, strokes, heart attacks much more regularly than anybody else, particularly people at the top. And the bottom line conclusion was we're not giving those people control. So you and I, you know, today, what time do I get up? I get up when I want to or unless I've got an appointment, but when I want to take a break, I take a break when I want to go to lunch, I go to lunch when I want to end my day, I end my day. I can do I have much more flexibility. Whereas we impose lots of disciplines on people, you need to be about by eight o'clock. Your break is 20 minutes be back on time. You know, we tell people specifically what to do in their jobs without a lot of autonomy, and that kills our spirit, is really the conclusion. So what we need to do is to learn to trust people. We need to learn to tell people specifically what their jobs are and what the expectations are. We need to teach them how to do them so that they know how to do it. They're competent. We need to make sure that we have metrics so people can look at themselves and say, Am I doing well or am I not doing well? And by trusting people to do that and holding them accountable, you're giving people freedom, and that creates massive well being.

Jean Gomes:

And one of the reasons why organisations tend to default into over control is when things become more uncertain and there's lots of change, and you talk about normalising ambiguity to kind of offset that tendency. Talk to us about that.

Mark Crowley:

I mean, I think that. I mean about you, but like, the world we're living today is, you know, every day you get up and you're like, we're just becoming inured to it, like, it's just like, you know, is this craziness that we're living in? I guess this is the world we're living in. But I our tendency as human beings is to want to control it. We, you know, and so I think when, when things are most uncertain, we want to, we want to lock things down. And I think what I found is, from a leadership standpoint, is that we are far better off by sort of, this is the third time where we're going to lose some of the people listening, because you have to kind of have like, a zen attitude about this, which is like, no matter how much we plan, we have this illusion that we can control every outcome and we can and no matter how well we plan. So you've met those people that think this, this plan is rock solid, and this is the way it's going to roll out, because I'm telling you so, and then nothing goes that way. And they're like, Well, I don't know what happened. I gave you a great plan. You people didn't execute it right or something. And it's like, No, we cannot plan. We can't we need to. We need to consider what the options are, but we also need to be receptive to the fact that life is going to interfere. And what happens, more than, often than not, is that when life interferes and something doesn't go well, we want to curse the gods. We want to go, you know, why are you doing this to me? And instead, if we put ourselves in a position of, I did my best to plan this, we had the best people planning this didn't go the way we want to. What do we do now? Like you just accept that life is going to give you a bad hand, as opposed to getting pissed off about it. And when we get pissed off about it, we want to go back and defend the plan. We want to go, well, that plan was really good, and, you know, I don't think we should deviate from the plan, because we think that's how we get back where we need to and where we really get back to where we need to, is to say, based on what we know now, what do we do? That's a very big difference. And I think, you know, if leaders understood that, and they just have this attitude of, I'm not happy that this didn't go the way I wanted to. I thought we had the right plan, but we're not going to shoot anybody. We're all just going to get together and figure out, how do we go forward? I mean, Matt, just feel that into that, right? It's like, okay, that sounds cool to me, like I can go with that. So let's do that. And people get energised. As opposed to, who the hell put this plan together or who executed this? We need to talk to you, you know, so now all of a sudden, you're just making it worse, and this is how we do it. I've been in the world too long to know that, you know, you make a bad you make a bad plan, or it doesn't go the way. And, and it's like, Well, who do we kill? You know, who do we fire? Bring them in here. And it's like, that's not sort of acknowledging what the real world is like. As long as people are doing their jobs and you think they're putting their best work. Into it, then bring those people back into the discussion and say, Okay, this didn't go away. We wanted let's figure out where we're going to go. And it's interesting, because I found that when you get these situations, I don't know about you, but I have had a lot of setbacks, and you get the setback, and then all of a sudden, three months later, something happens, and you're like, that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't had the set the setback. So, like, all of a sudden, now I'm really grateful, like, didn't go the way I wanted to, because there's a better outcome that's also the way the world works. So I think kind of have to sort of accept all of that.

Jean Gomes:

So every time I ask you a question, we lose another chunk of our audience, potentially, I

Mark Crowley:

think we're down to one, just like you, and I know

Jean Gomes:

it's just as a new title for your book. You know the seven lies you're telling yourself that you don't want to hear, or you know inconvenient truths. But there is a you know, the book. Towards the end of the book, you you talk about this idea that you know, like our core need from from people that we follow, is to feel valued by them, to feel cared by them, and and that is so counterintuitive to to many leaders who don't care for themselves, they don't take care of themselves. You know enough, their sacrifice mindset means that, you know, it's the last thing they they feel they can do is to look after the needs of other people, because that is somehow, you know, infantilizing them, or something. You know, there's some story that's in their head around this. Talk to us about why we should really shift that mindset, why we should shift our thinking on that

Mark Crowley:

Well, I mean, the the first answer is, is, this is what people want. You know, we it used to be that people went to work for a paycheck because they had to meet their basic needs, and now most of us can meet our basic needs. And so we ascend up Maslow's pyramid, and we start looking for growth and opportunity and self expression and belonging and all these components of leading up to self actualization. So when we go to work every day, it's like, I'm not going to work just for a paycheck, like I want to know that I'm working for somebody that knows who I am outside of this place and cares about who I am outside of this place, not just you. You're here to get that job done, and I don't really care about the rest of you. These are, this is some this becomes very important. So if you're managing people, and you're and you are the I don't really care enough about myself to take care of myself, but I'm really not going to take care of you. You're not going to keep people very long. People very long, and I think that's part of what what people are seeing. But I'll tie this up in a vote, which I think is really fascinating. So I interviewed Barbara Fredrickson, and she, in this conversation, was told me about how we human beings are hardwired to thrive on positive emotions. And that was just like mind blowing to me. It was just one of those moments where I was like, this is such complete confirmation of my whole life experience, but to have it empirically proved. And I got greedy with her. Don't ask me why? But I was like, I just sort of said, thank you for what you just did for me. Instead, I said, You got anything else up your sleeve, like something else you haven't told me that, like is going to blow my mind. And she goes, Well, yeah, I do, actually. I go, Well, go on. So she says, when you think about positive emotions, it's like interest, attention, love, joy, awe. She said what we have figured and by we, she meant her, what we have figured out is that any experience of positive emotions is an experience of love. Awe is love, appreciation is love. Attention is love, interest is love. That is the reason you want to care about your people, because that's what we're all here for. That's what we all need. That's what optimises human beings. Is Love. Now that doesn't mean you go up and go Jean, I love you, I love you, I love you, man, you know, or I gotta hug you man. If that's That's it. That's so reductionist and stupid. That's not what we're talking about. Just show people, demonstrate that you're interested in them. Find out who they are, find out what they're there for. What do you want to do? You want to be my you like my job. You want to be CEO. You want to stay with what you're doing. What would you like to learn? How do you like to be appreciated? I had an assistant for 15 years who edited my book. We were tight as thieves, and I had all my managers together like 35 people in a room one day. And she had just she was exceptional. She was just exceptional. So I said, Hey everyone, could you do me a favour? Give Susan a round of applause. She's just like she helps all of us. It's not just. Me. Place went crazy. So meetings over, I go back in my office, I'm working. She comes in and she goes, Don't you ever do that to me again? And I'm like, and she goes, You know, I don't want that kind of appreciation. I want to hear it from you, but I don't like, I don't want that. I don't I'm an introvert. And I'm like, Oh my God. Like, so here I'm thinking, I'm doing great, because it would have been worked for me. I would have loved to have had that recognition in front of a million people, not her. So, right? So it's understanding what people want and need and giving it to them that is, is the reason why you want to care about them. It's the it is. It's the cornerstone of everything that I've learned as a leader. It is the most important piece of information. If you care about your people, they will reciprocate. We are naturally wired to reciprocate and perform in ways you probably will never imagine until you do this,

Jean Gomes:

and that is a brilliant place to leave our conversation. I wish we had more time to talk, but Mark, I really wish you greatest luck with the new book. Thank you your work. It's really important. It's much needed in the world. And you know, wishing you continued success and satisfaction in what you're doing. And thank you again for for joining us on the evolving leader, you.

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Jean Gomes

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Scott Allender

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