Keeping Your Team Engaged with Nick Smallman

A Nightmare Scenario: You have a massive project to deliver, you and your team are just barely managing the tasks, and an important team member resigns unexpectedly. It’s more common than you might think. 

So what can you do to make sure it doesn’t happen to you? What are the reasons people leave? What should you do to keep your team engaged, committed, thriving even? Listen in for an insightful conversation.

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💡 About the show:
There is no growth in comfort and no comfort in growth. Business today typically values and promotes leaders for their subject expertise. Leaders who have command of the details and execute based on knowledge and experience are highly respected. However, to grow as a leader you have to get out of your comfort zone – that means learning to lead without just being the expert. Learn to gain the trust and respect of a team that might know more than you do. Get comfortable with ambiguity and with not having all the information. Develop the skills and confidence to lead in a different way.

For female leaders, subject expertise is usually the source of their confidence. Learning to lead outside your comfort zone is one step for breaking through the glass ceiling. The show’s purpose is to give you tips on how can you develop the capability to lead – to get out of your comfort zone.

#WandaWallace #OutoftheComfortZone #Podcast

Transcript

Wanda Wallace (00:08.287)
So here's the deal. You have this massive project. You're up against the wire on the deadline. You and your team are pressing hard and just barely managing. And then in the middle of all that, an important team member resigns rather unexpectedly, something you didn't see coming. So given how often this happens, let's spend some time thinking about what you can do to make sure that doesn't happen to you.

to think about the reasons why people are really leaving and get away from the popular press writing about it all. And then that answers the question of what do you need to do to keep your team engaged, committed, and thriving? And if you're looking at some engagement survey results recently and kind of pondering what does this mean and what I can be doing, well, we have the answer for you today. My guest is Nick Smallman. He's the founder and CEO of Working Voices.

where he advises blue chip clients on leadership, communication and thinking, particularly around how to manage leadership and work culture during this AI transition world, new scenario, I don't know whether we want to call it a transition anymore or not, working with some of the biggest companies that you can imagine, US, UK, Middle East and Asia. And many of them are my clients as well, so we should trade stories about that.

The book we're talking about is Engaging Teams. And I should also give the teaser that Nick has a forthcoming book sometime in the near future on the human cost of rapid AI. So Nick, welcome to the conversation.

Nick Smallman (01:42.476)
Wanda, it's a real pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Wanda Wallace (01:46.623)
delightful and I really do like this book. There are many that I like but this one's a really good one. All right, why do you care about this thing about engaging teams? Well, what's the driving force for you?

Nick Smallman (01:58.144)
It's a very good question. And of course I would have to care about it, wouldn't I? Cause why would I write a book? It takes about two years. And I suppose I care about it because I care about people and I've been at work, you know, before I set up Working Voices, I used to go into an office and if you're not happy there, you spend a third of your life there. If you're not happy there, that's such a shame because we spend so much of our lives working. So.

I wrote it, and also because I suppose I've been doing this a very long time and I've noticed for many years, but particularly in the last decade or so, or certainly since the smartphone became a thing, that people are less happy, more siloed, less connected. And I wanted to write about it and hopefully offer some decent advice.

Wanda Wallace (02:47.389)
I love it. There are tons of studies across multiple continents highlighting the fact that there is a loneliness epidemic, that people are less connected than they have been. And I think that's an important factor in all of this one. I often say just as a fun one, if you look at my website, you'll know that I really care about the quality of conversations. And I think if we can improve the quality of conversations, we improve everything about life.

Nick Smallman (03:14.997)
in

Wanda Wallace (03:15.593)
But I say if I improve the quality conversations at work, then I've improved the conversations in your private life because you're less frustrated, you're less angry, you're less disappointed, you're less disillusioned, and you bring that more positive energy to your private life, and that's a win-win for everybody. So I'm with you on this one. Getting this at work right matters in people's lives.

Okay, so let's take a deep dive. One of the things that I like about what you did was to take a deep dive on a bunch of the research around engaging people. And you sort of talked about five big studies. Kind of walk us through the ones that are the most important to you in a kind of tiny bit of the context and tell us what you concluded in looking across all those studies.

Nick Smallman (04:00.364)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, the thing is when you're going to make a big statement with the book and the statement of the book really is that if your teams are not engaged at work, your business will be less likely to succeed. That's what we're saying. So we needed some evidence to back this up. And the great news is, is there was a huge amount of evidence backing this up. We looked at dozens of studies, but we settled on five mainly because

They're the most relatable. One of them, the one we started with was The Need to Belong by Baumeister and Leary. And really their conclusion was is that humans need other humans like we need food.

So if you think of when you get hungry, it's an indication that you need to eat. But similarly, that's a feeling, right? Hunger. But similarly, loneliness is a feeling. You need another human. And you can feel lonely when you're with people. It just means you're not connecting. So that was the first one.

Then we looked at this sort of idea of what is sort of psychological safety, because a lot of the reason why people don't speak at work is they may be a bit nervous about putting their hand up or saying something in case they get shamed in some kind of way. And I think we live in a world where shame is almost a currency, because everyone's filming everything all the time, recording everything all the time. We're a little bit more self-conscious maybe than we need to be. So that was a second.

study. The third one is kind of, I think, crucial and it's, I suppose, was the most interesting outcome. Thomas Malone and Anita Woolley, who are organisational development specialists, they came up with this concept of what they call collective intelligence. And it's fascinating because they took two groups. One group had, say, an IQ of 100 on average. The other group had an IQ of, 120 average.

Nick Smallman (05:52.908)
But what they found was, and this is the amazing thing, that the lower IQ group, if they had better social sense making, if they had a better understanding of one another, they liked each other, they understood each other, they really listened, they had, you know, spent time taking turns in meetings, et cetera. They had a higher collective intelligence and better results than the higher IQ group that was just getting on with their work. So there's a huge amount of.

benefit to really having fantastic camaraderie, connection, communication, collaboration within any team. And of course, if that becomes a cultural thing, then that's really powerful for an organization. So that was number three. I'll pause there just in case you want to jump in with any observations.

Wanda Wallace (06:34.366)
Bye.

Wanda Wallace (06:42.302)
Okay, well, let's just take the obvious kind of acid test if on the street on this one. If I'm not feeling terribly connected with people that are around me at work, I'm feeling a little lonely, a little isolated, you you might get me to dig down and work pretty hard for a while, but I'm not going to continue that pace because why should I? There's tons of plenty of examples of people saying, I worked on the 99th hour when the business is shutting down.

There is nothing after. And I do it because of my friends, my colleagues, people on either side. So you know that connectedness happens to things. We know well about the psychological safety, no question. But this collective intelligence to me is we use the word Nick, collaboration, right, left, and center. I've said it's the most overused and least understood word in the entire business vernacular.

because what it takes to really create that kind of collective intelligence where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, truly. Great teams, great sports coaches, great coaches in general can tell you that when it happens, it is magic. But how to get there? That's a different story. I don't think we have much understanding of how to get there.

Nick Smallman (08:02.978)
I would agree. I'll give you, for the audience sadly, the World Cups coming up, and I'll give you one sporting analogy which is really pertinent to this. So Paris Saint-Germain, who were one of the richest football clubs in the world, they had the three most expensive players, Lionel Messi, Neymar, and Kylian Mbappe. And they desperately bought them because they desperately wanted to win a particular big tournament, and it didn't work.

They sold all three, a new coach came in and created this incredible team. The very next year, they went and won that tournament. And a lot of people said it was because they had real team cohesion, a team spirit, they communicated better, and they weren't just relying on stars. And I think that's a really good analogy for business. You get the right team together. They might not be superstars, but they're committed to one another, and I think it can make a huge difference.

Wanda Wallace (08:54.48)
It's an interesting question, Nick, whether how you do get superstar on a team and still get this collective intelligence, because I've seen that go wrong more often than it goes right. So it's an interesting question, but you can see it throughout the sports world, right, left and center, that that team that really decides they're going to pull together does incredibly well.

But I also see it on the business world. When you've got a team that are popping ideas with each other, they're exchanging, they're saying, well great, I'll help you with this one. Wait, hold on, what happened there? What was that about? could we do, could we try? The collective intelligence that comes out of the group when nobody is feeling defensive is magic. It's absolutely, magic. Okay, so that's three. Connectedness, psychological safety. It is, it is. And easier said than done.

because my career, my paycheck, my promotion are on the line.

Nick Smallman (09:45.12)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Smallman (09:49.208)
Absolutely.

Wanda Wallace (09:50.726)
Okay, all right, are there other pieces to this puzzle? We were talking about the five big conclusions that you had drawn, or are those the three?

Nick Smallman (09:57.24)
There are a couple more I can quote. One is just simply a study that Google did internally called Project Aristotle. And they just wanted to understand what made a good team. And so they obviously in Google, they crunched a load of numbers. Of course they did. And actually they came up with nothing.

But they said, well, some teams do do well, so what are we missing? So instead of crunching numbers and doing the data, which is the sort of quantitative thing, they looked at the qualitative stuff and they looked at group norms and they found that.

groups that had high levels of psychological safety, groups that actually had good relationships with one another, those are the ones that performed well. So Project Aristotle kind of just built on the work of the collective intelligence study. And then the last one, I guess, is the most powerful and the easiest one for any business to understand. And that is simply the work of Paul Zak, who is a specialist in trust. He wrote a very important book called The Trust Factor.

Spent 16 years working on this particular thing. And he came to the conclusion that trust is biological and it's actually the exchange or the production of oxytocin in individuals. So oxytocin is the love drug, the love hormone, the love neurotransmitter. And you don't say you have to be in love with your teammates, but you've got to appreciate them. You've got to care about them. And the more that happens, the more trust is built, the more trust is built.

the more information is free flowing. And of course, that's what you want in an organization. You want it to be free flowing.

Wanda Wallace (11:38.322)
That I used to say different things, but what I'm seeing today is very consistent with what Paul Zak had concluded, which is we have to have a reason for starting a cycle of trust. And then as I divulge information or I take a risk with somebody or I do more with them or we dig in and solve a big problem, that reinforces the trust. And then that creates a little more oxytocin and that reinforces the trust. becomes this sort of reinforcing cycle

that over time is pretty powerful.

Nick Smallman (12:11.51)
Yeah, absolutely.

Wanda Wallace (12:15.057)
But you can kind of get it started. All right, so I have, we have connectedness, and I feel isolated. We have psychological safety so I can speak up. We have collective intelligence in that we're all in this together and collectively we're making sense of the whole. We have the norms and the psychological safety, again, coming up from the Aristotle project at Google. And we have this increasing notion of trust. That that's what makes teams in a workplace

Nick Smallman (12:41.538)
Mm-hmm.

Wanda Wallace (12:44.667)
Great. Okay. So now the question I started with, how do I keep somebody from leaving in the middle of a project?

Nick Smallman (12:54.67)
Okay, so if you just think about your regular life, and if you're at a party and you're having a nice time and you're enjoying talking to people, you don't want to leave. If you're feeling isolated and no one's really talking to you or there's nothing stimulating about the party, you're going to want to go, right? And I think it all starts with the leaders. The leaders have to create an environment where

people enjoy coming into work. And the easiest way to do that, of course, is to create moments, sometimes a meeting or a situation where people have the opportunity to share ideas and support each other and to build relationships. And the problem I think a lot of leaders have is simply that they're always pushed to make a profit, to deliver quarter on quarter, P &L, blah, blah. And actually,

It's those relationships that are going to boost your profits and your income.

But I think a lot of leaders don't understand the links. So what I've been doing, for example, is going to organizations and actually talking them through some of the data, some of the science. So the penny drops for them. Because I think once leaders understand the value of, for example, let's say you decide to set up a meeting once a week where people get together and brainstorm ideas. On the surface, you'll say, well, isn't that a waste of our time? Well, whether an idea comes from it or not, what you're doing is laying a lot of groundwork for people to build trust.

and connections and to hear each other out and for people to build confidence. That's really important. And I would say one extra thing with the advent of technology and us leaning on AI in particular, we need to think about us becoming just styled where we're just literally putting stuff into technology. Stuff comes out, we process it, we move on. We stop collaborating with our colleagues because we're collaborating with a machine.

Nick Smallman (14:57.942)
That is not good for culture. It's not good for self-esteem. It's not good for feeling connected. But also by outsourcing your thinking, it's not good for your brain. So we have to be very mindful of how we decide to use technology.

Wanda Wallace (15:10.599)
Right.

Wanda Wallace (15:15.771)
Yeah, absolutely. I just did a big talk for a client that is, like many of my clients, going all in on the collaborative space. The belief that the problems that they need to solve and to get where they want to go ultimately depends upon us being more collaborative with each other. And I have said for years, when I look at any organization, I see pockets of absolute best in class behavior without a doubt. It's just brilliant, best in class behavior.

The problems are not those pockets. The problems are the spaces between those pockets, what I call white spaces, where nobody's looking at it. It's the past between my area and your area, Nick, where there's just this big gap and nobody's thinking about how messy that is or complicated or slow down or whatever. And it's going into those white spaces that nobody owns, where I believe this real collective intelligence or true collaboration.

Nick Smallman (15:54.187)
Hmm.

Wanda Wallace (16:13.415)
Co-creation, if you will, really starts to happen that makes a difference. Okay, so as a leader...

Nick Smallman (16:17.964)
Yeah, that's such a good observation.

Wanda Wallace (16:22.789)
Okay, thank you. But as a leader then, what we want to do is find ways to get people to collaborate, create space for them, create connections. That time to talk about an idea, even if nothing concrete comes out of it, is an exchange of people around the table. Now, what do you say to somebody who is the more introverted personality?

and who doesn't love all these big meetings and lots of people and so on. What's your response to those folks?

Nick Smallman (16:55.544)
Well, the first thing I would say is they're not alone. The vast majority of people are introverted to a degree. Very few people are genuinely extroverted. I think that obviously our culture is taken up with extroverts. We tend to think there are more people than there are. But I think the vast majority of people...

you know, like to keep themselves to themselves and will speak if necessary. But I think remember that speaking up or connecting with people or saying your piece at a meeting is a skill. And if you have a leader that encourages you to speak up, and that's what I talked about in the collective intelligence bit, if people are taking turns and encouraging people to speak and...

giving them time and space, then, and obviously congratulated for contributing, then those people get some kind of reward. So next time it's easier. And like, you know, with anything, you know, riding a bike is really tough when you start, but then you get the hang of it. And eventually you're thinking, God, I can't remember a time when I couldn't do this. And I think it's exactly the same. You've just got to have a leader who understands human behavior and understands the benefits of getting everybody contributing.

Wanda Wallace (17:53.191)
Yeah.

Wanda Wallace (18:03.933)
Yeah, I would say, you know, the data from the Myers-Briggs analysis of extroversion and introversion is 50-50, by the way. And we have a dominant pattern. It's not that we're ever one thing or all. We just have a dominant pattern. So even somebody who is deeply introverted and wants to work on their own ultimately still needs other human beings. They still need the connection. They may not need as many points of connection.

Nick Smallman (18:16.152)
You

Nick Smallman (18:26.285)
Yeah.

Wanda Wallace (18:30.595)
is those of us like me who are extroverted, whereas more the merrier, but they still need those points of connection. They may want to go off and work on their own a bit, but they still come back and want some points of connection. So I think you're right. It's not an all or none sequence. Okay, let's flip the tables for a minute. I want to talk about your understanding of all the reasons that people are leaving, because you do a lovely deep dive in this book about why people leave.

And there's so much written in the popular press that I'd like to kind of dispel some of those myths. Why are people leaving?

Nick Smallman (19:08.622)
Wow, that's a big question. I suppose you can break the answer down into just a few kind of areas. I think area one is that we grow up with the media ecosystem that we inhabit feeling just generally dissatisfied with life, that there's always something better around the corner. My parents' generation...

would get a job and it would be a job for life and that would be that. And that doesn't really happen anymore. You you go online and someone's creating a startup and making a million or setting up a restaurant or going traveling or whatever, and it all seems very glamorous. So there's always that feeling of discontent. And so those people where the grass is greener, that's gonna be their one. But another one is just because they don't feel particularly wedded to the culture.

They're working hard. Maybe their autonomy is taken away where people are forced to kind of work weekends over time. They're not really getting compensated and they're not really being appreciated. I mean, what's interesting is how often people say, well, if I give them more money, they'll stay. I well, no, it's not really a driver for most people. Most people want a place where they enjoy working and they feel appreciated. So I'd say there's that.

But also I think the corporations could help themselves. There is a culture ever since the financial crisis of we have to do more with less. And this has been going on for almost 20 years now. And so people feel they're constantly trying to squeeze blood out of a stone. Yeah, you can do more with less. You can do more with less. And they use technology to do that. But then after a while, you think, well, what's the point of me? I just seem to be some kind of cipher for the technology.

I think corporations need to work harder to appreciate the human angle in their organizations. They need to train their leaders to encourage and set up these kinds of environments.

Nick Smallman (21:05.838)
And once you start doing that, you can reverse this trend relatively quickly. I've seen teams go from completely disjointed and demotivated with people leaving to teams wanting to stay late and wanting to work together and socialize together and do things because they've created a sense of purpose, a sense of joy, a sense of connection.

And I think sometimes in the modern world, if it's not a technological solution or a technical solution, it's somehow wrong. But actually, those softer skills that people talk about are now the modern hard skills. And technical skills are now being given over to technology. So the only skills left are human skills.

Wanda Wallace (21:44.06)
See you soon.

It's interesting, I can't tell you how many thousands of conversations I've had and I imagine you've had more about people believing that it's all about pay. And to which I say, yes, of course, who doesn't want more money? Please bring it on, me included, I'll take more money. Is it gonna really make a difference in my motivational level? Maybe two weeks. I if you stop and say, how long does that feel good factor happen after a bonus or after a raise? Not long.

So I think what people ultimately want is to feel they're contributing to something that matters. They're working with people that they enjoy and have a connection with, that they see that they're being appreciated. I think those three are kind of like they have some degree of autonomy, that those pretty big ones in terms of getting people engaged.

Nick Smallman (22:34.494)
Exactly right.

Wanda Wallace (22:37.82)
Okay, okay, so that means, what does that mean as a leader I need to be doing? I need to be focusing on the human element, but give me for the technical leader who wants the playbook, what's the one, two, three, four, five play you would give?

Nick Smallman (22:51.214)
For the technical leader, I'm assuming this technical leader is ambitious. They want to do well in their job. They want to have a high functioning team. Well, you're not going to get a high functioning team by simply using more technology. That's simply not going to work. That is part of it. And any organization will upgrade their systems to make them more efficient. But there are two sides to this.

And the other side is people. it's really interesting. Someone once asked me, why are some people popular? What's the trait of a popular person? And actually a popular person just tends to really like people. And so that thus they're popular. People like being liked, right? So as a leader, the first thing I'd say to a really technical leader is just get out and talk to your team. Get out, find about them, be interested in them and, you know, sympathize with their lives. So, you know, from my perspective, my, my, my team are all over

Wanda Wallace (23:33.563)
Hehehehe

Nick Smallman (23:50.096)
the world. They've got wildly different lives and I try and treat my team as...

fully 3D human beings who've got all the challenges and problems that I've got. And you you give them a break where they need it. And of course, if there's really good trust, they will not, no one takes advantage of people where there's a really, really good trust and connection. So I think if you treat people as whole people and not just as like, you're just a unit that works in my team, that's, think the biggest thing. And then of course, way to show that is to really be listening, really remember stuff about them and really

Wanda Wallace (24:21.073)
Yeah.

Nick Smallman (24:27.216)
set up those environments where those people can thrive. And that may be doing things a little bit different sometimes.

Wanda Wallace (24:35.836)
Yeah, I love that. you treat me or think about me like a box, like a cog like those are gear that can just be slotted in, then don't be surprised if I decide to leave in the middle of the project. Because I'm just a box or a cock that can be slotted in with something else and okay, fine. And if I'm not connected to my team members, you know, well, okay, you'll figure it out. Nobody's gonna, you know, it's not all dependent on me folks. Okay, next.

All of these things come back to life when you realize that if people feel like a box they will act like one

So, okay, all right, so well said. So that means listening, really understanding something about people's lives in general, giving a little bit of grace about what might be happening in their lives, building some trust, building connection between yourself and the team, as well as among the team members, because it doesn't all have to come down to the leader at the end, and looking for those moments of collective intelligence. Okay, so I wanna shift one more time before we close, which is about wellbeing, okay?

into the pandemic. You said already that we are trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip, to use an old expression from my life. We've had layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of cut, cut, cut, cut, squeeze. There's nothing left to squeeze. There's no space left to squeeze. And I see this right, left, and center in my clients around the world. All right.

So stress levels are really high, because performance demands are high, fears are high about my career, my progress. Stress is real, okay? And we've been trying to tackle that in organizations with well-being programs. But my read is none of those are working. And I want your take on it, because I know you write about it, and I want you to know what we need to be doing instead.

Nick Smallman (26:35.168)
It's an interesting one. It's an interesting one because there's a really interesting quote by a very powerful man in Silicon Valley called Mark Andreessen, who's one of the sort of the big titans in Silicon Valley. And he wrote a manifesto.

is a sort of an evangelical love letter to technology. And he says this quote, which I think is not useful, but he says this quote anyway, it is, there is no problem, whether natural or technological, that cannot be solved with more technology. So he's of the opinion that tech solves everything, right?

Wanda Wallace (27:07.429)
Haha

Wanda Wallace (27:16.89)
Hmm, okay.

Nick Smallman (27:19.98)
But the problem is, is that I've noticed that corporations will absolutely give people an app to sort out sleep or fitness or stress.

But all it really does is measure stuff and offer tips. And the reason why people are stressed, the reason why people aren't sleeping is not going to be solved by using more technology. It's going to be, it's a human problem. It will need to be solved by human contact and human communication. So I think one of the reasons wellbeing programs don't work, and there's a great New York Times article from, think, January 24, January 25, I can't remember. It was definitely January.

one of those years, I read it because I was abroad at the time and a colleague sent it. And there was a huge survey done by the New York Times on wellbeing programs and whether they worked. And the conclusion was that the vast majority of wellbeing programs didn't work at all. They were just window dressing. And was so corporations could say, well, we've got loads of wellbeing initiatives. What was interesting, there was one type of wellbeing that really did work.

I wonder if you can guess what type it was.

Any thoughts?

Wanda Wallace (28:39.481)
I would make a guess, but go for it, tell me.

Nick Smallman (28:42.926)
It was volunteering. They found that volunteering actually made people feel better. Now, of course, what is volunteering? It's about connecting with people who aren't like you, people who are different to you, people in need of help. I mean, there's oodles of evidence that...

Wanda Wallace (28:46.733)
Uh-huh.

Nick Smallman (29:03.938)
People who give to other people are generally happier than people who take from other people. Even though our entire economy is about having stuff, giving stuff seems to be the secret source that people need. So when you have organizations that are very committed to CSR of some kind and they involve their employees, you find those people are actually very fulfilled.

in lots of ways and feel that their business is connected in some way to the wider world which I think can be very important.

Wanda Wallace (29:38.884)
interesting. It's interesting to me, especially as I sit here and interview so many different people in the podcast, which has been a blast and also good for my business, that how many people come at a similar problem from very different angles. Like, let's take Rob Kross, who did a whole piece of research around microstressors, the little tiny things that add up that at the end of the day cause too much stress. And the people who don't seem to suffer from microstress, okay?

Number one, those people seem to have multiple points of connection where they have significant relations with a different group of people. Not that they see them all the time, but they just have a meaningful connection. Number one. Number two, they seem to have a place where they have a sense of purpose or a sense of giving. Often purpose is tightly connected to giving. It's the same stuff you have been saying from the very beginning.

Feeling connected, feeling a part of different groups, not just one, but different groups, and then this sense of I am giving back. Yeah, how hard is that to figure out?

Nick Smallman (30:50.338)
Well, you'd think it would be self-evident, wouldn't you? But I think what we're going to find is over the next few months and years, as technology continues to embed itself in our lives, this kind of conversation is going to become.

Wanda Wallace (30:54.405)
Yeah.

Nick Smallman (31:06.84)
more and more relevant and I think more and more people are going to have it. And you're right, me and the guy you were talking about and you, we're all saying the same thing, just coming at it from a slightly different angle, but it is ostensibly the same.

Wanda Wallace (31:22.681)
Yeah, I find it when people come from very completely different angles to the same conclusions, even if it's slightly different words, that we should have merit in the fact that that is a thing and we need to get on with doing it. Okay, I teased at the beginning about engagement scores and having taken engagement surveys. I know something you also know a lot about. Often leaders get an engagement survey and it will say things like the leadership isn't trusted or we don't know the direction that we're going in. There are all sorts of

questions and then people sort of still go chasing those particular questions that show up. right. My hunch is that the questions are just indicators of something else. So I'm interested in your reaction to what I just said and I'm also interested in your advice for readers when they're looking at engagement scores that they're not very happy with.

Nick Smallman (32:13.068)
Yeah, I mean, I would ask also when you put a survey into your team, the responses you get are going to be based on people's security at work. I know, for example, there was a very, very big investment bank and I spoke to their head of learning.

And I just written the book, it was just last year, and I was talking about how important engagement was. And he said, don't worry, our engagement scores are off the charts. And of course, I knew they weren't because we'd been, me and my colleagues had been speaking to people and saying that they weren't feeling engaged at work. But of course, people sometimes are likely to write what's, you know, the path of least resistance. I think the only way you really get to know what's going on is to have conversations with people.

and making time. You've got to see it as important rather than just a nice to have. And I think, you know, I've been doing this for 28 years this year. And when I started my...

you know, they regularly talked about this is soft skills training, like it wasn't important. But the technical skills, that's where we put all the money. And it's still happening today. People plow all the money into the technology and very little into the training. But actually in real terms, those soft skills that are slightly dismissed a few decades ago are now becoming the difference.

Wanda Wallace (33:26.958)
Yeah, right.

Nick Smallman (33:45.646)
if you want your organization to really prosper. So my advice is you can put a survey in, but it's much better to have a conversation because you can answer it just questions like, what percentage do you feel happy? mean, it depends what I had for lunch, you know, or I don't want to go that deep with you. But whereas if you go and have a conversation and get to know people, you'll find out.

Wanda Wallace (34:02.224)
Yeah.

Wanda Wallace (34:06.689)
Yeah.

Wanda Wallace (34:15.001)
I think I've said this a couple of times on the podcast, who's a senior leader I know, who wherever he goes, he picks people up and down the organization at all ranks and just meets with them once a month, once every other month, just to hear what's on their mind, what's working, what's not working, what are they like? And he says, the only way I have any information on what's actually going on in the company. And I find that strategy incredibly useful for a time. Okay, Nick, wow, put a lot. Go ahead.

Nick Smallman (34:39.721)
deeply

Wanda Wallace (34:45.999)
Say that again.

Nick Smallman (34:47.168)
It's just really easy to do. It's what humans do. They talk, ask questions and gather information. That's what we do. So I would suggest that that sounds like a really good way of going about business, to be honest.

Wanda Wallace (34:56.091)
You

Wanda Wallace (35:01.689)
That means I have to create some space in my calendar in order to do that. That means I have to stop doing some other stuff in order to create time for the human connection. All right, Nick, if I walk through all that we've said, keeping your teams engaged is ultimately about creating connections among team members and perhaps from team members to other parts of the organization as well. So that it's not just a small circle, it's a broader circle. It's the sense that as a manager, I genuinely appreciate people

They feel appreciated, I understand them, I know where they're coming from, I know what's happening with them. That means having a conversation with them, not putting out a survey, as we just saying. That means that there is enough psychological safety where people feel that they can tell you the truth, unlike the survey questions we were just saying, where I'm gonna give you a high number because otherwise I know it's gonna come back to bite me. It tells you nothing about what I really think. And that we wanna lean into the collective intelligence.

The places where all of us together are going to be smarter than any one of us alone or any pairs of us alone and create time and space for that, not throw another technology on top of it, but create genuine connections, stronger sense of purpose. How'd I do?

Nick Smallman (36:17.144)
That was near perfect.

Wanda Wallace (36:20.347)
Okay, what does it take to get perfect? Is there one last piece you want to add to it?

Nick Smallman (36:25.186)
Well, I don't think there's such a thing as perfect. And I certainly think that people waste their time with it, especially when it comes to human stuff, because we're naturally kind of unpredictable and messy. But you certainly summarized our conversation really, really well.

Wanda Wallace (36:28.859)
Fair.

Wanda Wallace (36:34.106)
Yeah.

Wanda Wallace (36:39.205)
Perfect. Wonderful. All right, Nick, I loved it. What a great conversation. Fabulous book. It's called Engaging Teams. My guest today is Nick Smallman. And Nick, if somebody wanted to reach out to you, where's the best place to find you?

Nick Smallman (36:52.474)
So my website is workingvoices.com. That talks about everything, all the work that we do. So, or nick at workingvoices.com is my email. But yeah, love to hear from anyone who's interested in having a conversation.

Wanda Wallace (37:08.188)
Great, fantastic, Nick, thank you. I love it, I love the work, I love the book, it's awesome. And thank you for joining us for this episode. If you'd like to watch this conversation, check out the YouTube channel, at Out of the Comfort Pub. We'd love to hear from you, outofthecomfortzone.com. Just send me an email of any form, ask your questions, and we'll do our best to answer them at some point in time. See you next week.