Episode 10

Cia: Welcome to Employee Activation, the HR podcast that takes you into the minds of some of the world's brightest workforce strategists to find out how they make both their employees, and their organisations thrive.

When we think about what truly drives high performance in the workplace, a lot of things come to mind. Leadership, people strategy, training and development. But what if the key to making everything work in unison isn't just business processes, but something deeper, something wired into our very brains.

I'm Cia Kouparitsas and today I'm joined by Sue Langley, a global expert in the science of human behaviour and workforce performance. As the CEO and founder of the Langley Group, Sue helps organisations apply neuroscience, emotional intelligence and positive psychology to create environments where employees don't just work, they thrive.

Her work spans across industries and countries where she's helped countless organisations unlock the full potential of their people through a deep understanding of how the brain works.

Sue, welcome to the podcast.

Sue: Thank you so much, Cia. It's very good to be here.

Cia: I am so excited about this discussion because I find neuroscience fascinating, particularly when it applies to the realm of workplaces and getting the most out of your people and making sure people feel truly supported and happy in their work environment.

But before we jump into the meat and bones of that, I'd just like to learn a little bit more about you. You've built a career around understanding what makes people perform at their best. What took you down that path in the first place?

Sue: Probably very different to other people, actually, because I didn't even do a degree until I was in my twenties and then my master's, et cetera. So, I dropped out of college. I became a lorry driver. Then I travelled around the world for year. And then I found myself back in the UK where I was living at the time, in a job that I seem to do quite well at, and I was put in a leadership position. So, I was in a leadership position at 23, with no training, no development, no idea how to be a leader.

And I started learning about psychology. And I actually did a psychology A level in the UK via distance education to try and learn about human behaviour of why we did the things we did.

And interestingly, from that, what I used to do is I would close our office for our team once a month for half a day. And I would teach my team about what I'd learned around self-confidence and self-esteem and those sorts things. Nothing to do with sales, but I taught them about themselves, if you like, based on what I was learning. So, it was minimal, you know, that I was teaching, but it's best I could do. And I taught them about things like motivation and why and well-being and those sorts of things. And I watched our profits double two years running.

Cia: Wow

Sue: So I clearly realised very early then there was something to this thing around that if we are at our best, performance and profitability and those sorts of things follow.

And so I suppose then when I moved to Australia, I was really interested in starting my own business. I still didn't have a degree in psychology, but I started my own business anyway. And since then, the last 20 years have really been for me about how do I take the science, and make it real in a way that individuals, teams, organisations, communities can use in a very practical way.

Cia: I love that story. And I love that it sort of was born out of practical need by yourself as a manager, because I think that really speaks to the root of the challenge many organisations and many leaders have, which is how do they get the best of their people?

And it's not until sometimes you scratch beneath the surface of those, you know, daily things that we try and track like metrics and you start to actually think about the individual and what makes them tick, that you can start to see those changes occur.

And is that obviously, you know, throughout your business, you've started to work with organisations to implement these kinds of programs. Is that the outcome you've seen for them as well?

Sue: Yeah, where it works well is when an organisation can look at it systemically. So I often use the analogy of a barrel full of apples, if you like. Yes, each individual little apple, we can give them some tools to make them nice and shiny and make sure their well-being is high so they can look after themselves.

That's one thing. We can also do tools and activities around team cohesion and how people connect and how you lead your team so that you don't bruise and bash the other apples when you rub up against them, as so to speak.

But we also have to then look systemically of what is going on in the organisation. Because you can give tools to people in the organisation as much as you like, but if they're being thrown back into a barrel that keeps shaking them around and bashing them and beating them, et cetera, then we're still not going to get the thriving. And that's, for me, what the area of positive organisational scholarship is about, ah which is a part of the positive psychology space, which is looking at what do the best organisations do for the individuals, the teams, the organisations and the systems and processes that they might be working within.

Cia: So you've mentioned positive psychology and I know your work is rooted in this as well as neuroscience and emotional intelligence. Can you break down what that actually means for business leaders and how they can use it in practice?

Sue: Yeah, so positive psychology is basically about human flourishing. So how do we get the best out of ourselves, teams, organisations. And it's this the scientific study of human flourishing, basically.

So as a leader, most of our programs we run are what's called positive leadership programs because we take all the ethos that comes out of that positive organisational scholarship research.

The reason that the neuroscience piece really works for me is all of our programs are embedded in neuroscience because I did my master's in neuroscience of leadership and I find the brain hugely fascinating, is when you understand how the brain works, you understand why the positive psychology research answers the questions as it does.

It's not just because, oh, let's experience some positive emotions. Won't that be nice. But it's actually looking at what goes on in the brain around how people feel when their wellbeing is high, how their brain is working more effectively. Leaders can make better decisions. We can handle change better. We can self-regulate better so that we can be more strategic rather than impulsive. And the neuroscience research that we've got so far gives us so many really practical clues, social neuroscience about why teams work or why they don't, social pain, social rejection, how that plays out.

And certainly here in Australia at the moment, all the focus on psychosocial risks and hazards. That's again the deficit side. Well, hang on, if we were really talking to people about psychosocial benefits and building well-being education and learning, we wouldn't have the issues. We wouldn't have to worry about auditing for the what's wrong because we have already rectified it with the pull towards the positive.

Cia: That's a really good point. And I'm also curious, how does it relate to the concept of skills as well? Because I also, I find the conversation I have with a lot of leaders is how to get that blend of soft skills and hard skills right.

And a lot of organisations and leaders really prioritise, you know, the technical skills and experience when hiring and planning their workforce. What does the science tell us about what actually drives high performance in employees from a skill perspective as well? Does it, do they go hand in hand?

Sue: Well, they absolutely do. And I'm sure people listening to this, it's not going to be a surprise to them when I say that the soft skills, which I would rather be called essential skills because they're not soft. They're absolutely essential to what we do, is the thing that gets work done.

And if you think about this for a moment, really simply think about yourself when you're in a worst mood, whatever that worst mood is for you. Whether you're overwhelmed, you're stuck, you've got the blinkers on, you can't think clearly, you feel like you're heading towards burnout, and you know you're not making good choices.

You can't even figure out what to do next on your to-do list because you're so overwhelmed by the stuff that's not even made it there yet. You are not creative. You're probably not particularly nice to be around. You're probably not making smart choices.

If you think about yourself in your best mood, whatever that is for you, I can guarantee you are much more helpful, altruistic, collaborative, supportive, you're able to think clearly, you power through stuff.

You don't even need a to-do list because you are ticking things off. And this is what I love is this emotional component, this wellbeing, the emotional intelligence piece, it underpins everything.

But we often don't, we don't prioritise it. And yet all of the research will tell us if we can help people really look after themselves, they will be more productive, they'll be more profitable, et cetera. But if you look at it from what you mentioned around skills, I believe every human being has the ability to be a bad employee or a good employee, depending on how you're feeling. Because our emotional state and our wellbeing will drive and influence that.

So, if we think about skills, one of the things that we focus on in the positive psychology side of things is the strengths-based approach. So let's imagine you're in a role that plays to your strengths.

You are probably energised, you're performing, you're getting stuff done, you leave work every day going, woohoo, nailed it, because you get to play to your strengths every day. When you're doing things that don't play to your strengths, and I'm not saying we let people off the hook for these, but when you're doing things that don't play to your strengths, we wonder why you get demotivated, burnt out, et cetera. And people misinterpret the strengths approach with assuming that you can do something, or you can't.

Cia: I love this line of thinking, because as you know, Sue, at WithYouWithMe, a lot of what we do is helping people find their strengths.

And it's that, you know, psychometric, cognitive assessment, how can we understand the individual to identify the skills they're going to thrive at and the skills they're going to enjoy practicing. And I think we're starting to see organisations come along for that ride where they really do recognise the importance of understanding that every individual is unique and if you want to get the most out of your people, you have to be putting them in an environment where they're naturally going to thrive.

So, I love hearing you talk about the role that positive psychology has in that as well, because I think that's sort of a natural evolution on from where we are currently with many of our customers.

Sue: Well, I think what's really important about this sort of strengths-based approach is it doesn't pigeonhole people and put them in a box, you know, of whether they're ah a blue or a green or they're high this or low this or whatever it happens to be, you know, extrovert or introvert, et cetera.

Because strengths can be used in different ways. You can have two people who are fabulous programmers, but they're using different strengths to be fabulous programmers. Two salespeople who are both brilliant. One's using competitive and one's using relationship deep now.

But what's really important from, again, the research of positive psychology tells us all of this, we've got so much data on it now, is if you can job craft around people's strengths so that they're using their strengths around 70% of the time in their role, they will come out as highly engaged on engagement surveys.

And the reason I think that number, that 70% is really important is because it doesn't say 100%. So if I give you an example, um I have narrator and spotlight as two of my top strengths. So put a camera in front of me or stick me on stage and ask me to tell stories and research and science and share anecdotes. I am really energised and happy.

If you ask me to write, as in write a book chapter, which I've written three, it takes so much energy. Now, you might read my book chapter and say, wow, that's really good. But I'm like, oh, please don't make me write another one. Because it drains me. Now, it doesn't mean to say I ignore it. I can still do it. I can do it well. But if you were to get me to do that all day, every day, I would soon be burnt out and I would be out of here.

Cia: Everything that you're saying makes complete sense, Sue, and it's something like the examples that you've given, I think I can certainly relay them to my life and understand that, yes, that is absolutely correct. I'm curious how organisations and HR leaders get these kinds of programs over the line because I know that HR is very stretched at the moment. We're in an economic climate where you know budgets are tight. There are so many conflicting priorities, particularly with things like workforce evolution and the impact of AI and augmentation.

And by nature, we all know this, but how do you actually get these programs over the line with your leadership so that you make a focused effort on getting the best out of your people through positive psychology?

Sue: Look, it can be tough and often it is a case of a one-hour wellbeing webinar or something. The thing where it works is when it's embedded into every aspect. So a bit like the barrel we spoke about before that the apples are in, how do you weave it into the barrel, into the fabric?

So we run a diploma of positive psychology and wellbeing, and one of our electives is positive HR. And so from that and the learning and people wanting more, we created a positive HR toolkit. And it's a way of saying to HR, how do you embed positive psychology principles into every aspect of the employee lifecycle from um attraction, selection, recruitment, all the way through to potentially someone departing.

And sometimes it's the little things that you will weave through that might give you a bigger impact. But what we know is if you can weave that positive psychology, positive leadership approach throughout everything, so performance conversations have a strengths-based edge to them. If somebody is underperforming, often we put them on a performance improvement plan and usually they end up leaving. But if we were approaching it from a strengths-based perspective, we would probably understand why that person isn't performing in their role. And if we're lucky, we can job craft or nicely help them move to something that does suit their strengths. So, I think for me, it's about having a more holistic approach. And it's one of the reasons we've had a lot of HR and OD and L&D professionals come on the diploma so that they can learn the science, so that they can actually start to apply it themselves rather than necessarily paying somebody to come in as a consulting firm and “fix you” and then jungle off again.

Cia: Well, and I think that's critical, isn't it? So that it's not a one-off program that you think is going to be a band-aid for all of your organisational problems moving forward. It is that sort of building it into the very fabric of the organisation across everything that you do, which is so important.

Sue: And wellbeing education. So there's a wonderful research paper that came out a few years ago that's sort of starting to do the rounds now. It's probably seven years old now by La Montagne, who talked about three pillars of workplace wellbeing.

So one is managing illness. And we often do that. You know, we have mental health first aid programs, or ah the return to work. We might look at sort of managing people coming back to work. But the third pillar that organisations haven't quite got to yet is the promote flourishing. And that's where, as an organisation, if we committed to education around the wellbeing science about how to help people be their best, this is not about being happy all the time. It's never about being happy all the time.

But it's about teaching people how to handle the adversity that's coming at them. You know, we hear the terms languishing and flourishing. Very simply, I think of that as, do I have more tools in my toolkit than the current adversity coming at me? I'm probably flourishing.

Do I have fewer tools in the toolkit and the adversity coming at me has gone up? Then I might be languishing. So the more tools we can put in people's toolkit and the more that we can support around the resources to help people, because adversity is going to hit all of us. It already has. Everybody listening to this has had adversity.

Then it's about how do we have the tools? And that's the bit that sometimes in organisations we're still, to your point, doing the technical stuff and not realising if we actually did some of the essential skills around emotions and wellbeing, they'd have the tools to deal with stuff and they'd be able to do the technical stuff more effectively anyway.

Cia: It's so true. It's so true. I would like to shift the conversation um to the future of work. We sort of touched on it before, but something we hear about all the time is the impact that AI automation and augmentation is going to have on our workforce and our people. And things are constantly changing, and it requires a lot of people, you know, both technically and emotionally to be evolving with their organisations. And I think resilience has become something that a lot of people are talking about um as a critical aspect for people in this evolving world.

From a scientific perspective, how do you actually build a resilient workforce or build resilience into an individual?

Sue: Great question. um So there is really good research around resilience that many people, when they use the word resilience in the workplace, are not paying attention to. So the research does give us answers.

So when people talk about resilience, sometimes it is used as almost something to beat you over the head over, as in, well, you should just be more resilient Cia, that would help. And I put some tools in your toolkit.

But again, back to the apples in the barrels sort of analogy, I suppose, for a moment is, I can give you lots of tools to be more resilient and I can tell you to be more resilient. But if I'm also asking you to do two jobs as opposed to just one, if I'm not putting the systems and processes in place that support, then potentially, no matter how many tools you've got in your toolkit, the adversity coming at you is more.

But here's the thing that I love that comes from the work of Michael Ungar, who's one of the leaders in the positive psychology space on resilience at the moment, is he talks about two types of resilience. And we talk about this in all of our programs. Mostly people talk about the first one. The first one is what he calls rugged. How do I make you a rugged individual so that you can handle what life is throwing at you?

That's where most resilience programs focus. And that's important. But the second piece is resourced, which is the systems and processes, the tools that I give you or take away from you potentially, that actually enable you to be rugged. And I'm going to give you a quote that Michael Ungar uses that I think is perfect to describe what I'm, I’m trying to explain here. 

Jon Kabat-Zinn has a quote that is beautiful that says, you can't stop the waves, but anyone can learn how to surf. It's beautiful. I agree with it. It sounds lovely. Yes, that's the rugged. That's you learning how to surf, et cetera. Michael Ungar adds, which I think is the resourced piece, which is really important is, and yes, it's easier if you have a surfboard, a wetsuit and a coach.

Cia: It's so true.

Sue: That's what resilience is. It's those two together. Yes, I've got to give you personally the tools to be more rugged and handle the adversity coming at you. And as an organisation, I need to give you the resources.

We do a certificate four in wellbeing science and the certificate four in wellbeing science was deliberately so that organisations could offer it to their employees to give them tools, to give them a qualification and some tools to develop the rugged.

But they've given them as a resource. They've basically said, we will pay for this for you and we will give you these tools. We've got organisations who have shifted their internal policies and procedures and stick to them.

Equally, there are some who don't. So I'll give you another example about the resourced piece. We had one organisation, who was one of the first organisations we'd worked with to come up with their own internal new ways of working that included shorter meetings.

So they said all meetings now are either 45 minutes rather than an hour or 25 minutes from 30 minutes. Many organisations have done this since. What was really interesting for about nine months after they put that document out, every meeting invite that we got as their providers was one hour. After a couple of months, we stopped replying, we've kept declining and said until you send us a 45 minute meeting, as per your new ways of working, we will be declining.

And if you think about that, that's the, the resource is sometimes we say we're going to put these processes in place. We say we're going to do certain things with systems, processes, whether it's artificial intelligence tools, et cetera, and we're not doing them.

I was lucky enough to be at the OECD Global Wellbeing Forum in Rome at the end of last year. And there was a big conversation from all the governments about the impact of artificial intelligence on the workplace. And one of the things that I thought was really interesting that stuck in my mind that one of the leaders said from one of the countries said, artificial intelligence will not take your job, but if you don't know artificial intelligence, then you will probably find yourself obsolete. So it's not necessarily that artificial intelligence will take it from you. But if you know it, you'll be able to morph your job in order to be able to take advantage in a particular way. And I thought that was just a lovely way of framing it.

Cia: It is, I love that one as well. And I think it rounds out beautifully to the last question that we like to ask all of our guests. And you kind of touched on it before when you were talking about promoting flourishing. And that is that, you know, we all want our employees to thrive. We want them to flourish. But at the same time, as leaders in organisations, we also need to make sure that the organisation's objectives are being met, of course.

So what is your top tip for leaders out there who are looking to really activate their employees in the direction that an organisation is going so that, you know, the individual thrives, but the organisation is also getting what they need?

Sue: And I think for me, that's where the positive leadership comes in, because if leaders are having performance conversations based on strengths, they will get the results that they need. But equally, again, three of the key things that come out of creating a positive climate is um gratitude, compassion and forgiveness.

So if you're in my team and you stuff up, I'm going to use forgiveness. I'm going to say, ok, you made a mistake. Let's have a conversation. If you stuff up again and you keep making the same mistake or you're not performing, I'm also going to use compassion to have a compassionate conversation where I say this isn't appropriate.

And again, if I've created the right climate, I can potentially handle that performance issue far more effectively from a strengths based approach, than I can by trying punitive situations, et cetera, that only lead to everybody, well, you wanting to quit and me still having an underperforming team because I've now got to recruit again.

So for me, it's the how does the leaders create this um strengths-based approach to performance where you can still have serious performance conversations but from a pull approach rather than a push?

Cia: Fantastic. And Sue, I've just found this conversation so incredibly insightful. I think it adds a new dimension to the work that we do. And I think leaders everywhere, certainly when they're looking at their people and when they're looking at their workforce and priorities, should not and cannot underestimate the importance of positive psychology.

And you've articulated extraordinarily well why that is. So I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your perspective on this topic. And for listeners who want to learn more and learn all of the different things you've mentioned books I'm sure there's so many different resources we can have from you we'll pop that onto the WithYouWithMe website and the Employee Activation podcast page so they can link through and connect with you if they want to and I just wanted to yeah say thank you again it was a wonderful conversation and hopefully we can get you back sometime.

Sue: Thank you Cia. Absolutely fabulous. I love chatting.

Cia: Thanks Sue.