E137 – Personal Values and Happiness at Work (w Jeff Weigh)

and welcome to today's podcast. We've got a really, really exciting conference. Exciting conversation. Today we're going to be speaking to Jeff Wei, who's actually a bit of a friend of a show. He's somebody we met. Jane and I met several years ago when we were starting out on this journey for World of Work Projects, and we've always been in touch throughout that time, so it's great to finally get a chance to speak to him. This is Jeff way. He's a coach and works in L and D space, and does development work like that? And he's also recently the author of a book called stuck now what? And today we're going to be speaking a lot about that and some of the themes in that book about happiness and fulfillment and careers and how we can shape our careers a little bit more. But before we get into that, Jeff, could you say hi and introduce yourself to the audience and say a little bit about your background? Yeah,

absolutely. First of all, James and Jane, who's not with us today. Thank you both very much indeed for giving me the opportunity to come along and share a little bit with you and your audience in terms of the work that I've been doing over the last well, it feels like forever, but certainly last 1518, months when it when it comes to putting that into something tangible, like the book. So thank you very much indeed. I am. I am a coach. I'm now an author, which which I still pinch myself about. If I'm being completely honest with you, I've been facilitating in the learning and development space for probably 1617, years now, and this is very much something that I love. I haven't always thought that I would become an L and B type professional as such. My first venture into a career was hospitality, which stood me in good stead. And then I moved into sales and banking, which provided me with with lots of interesting experiences, is probably the best way to describe them, but, but they're all part of the journey that I've been on, and I use them in the learning and development space, whether that's one on one, working with people in a Coaching capacity or or indeed in organizations looking at leadership and management programs. I absolutely love what I do, and I feel very privileged to be able to do what I do because it involves other people and a degree of trust them to take them on journeys if they so wish to go on those journeys and make some changes in their lives. So that's a little bit about me.

Yeah, that's brilliant. And you know what? We always love to have conversations with people who've had these varied careers. You know that richness of it comes from a variety of different lived experiences in different industries and different professions is something that we think is fantastic. And I've had a little bit of time in the banking world myself. So there we go. We could talk about that another time to start stuff off, when we're talking about the book you've got stuck now, what we're going to really be focusing today on, I guess, careers, and maybe what it feels like to be stuck, and what happiness is in a career, and what are some of the things that we can do fundamentally to try and create for ourselves more fulfilling and happiness inducing careers. And I guess I just want to start at the beginning and think about some of the basics. So if we're going to aspire to get these these careers that give us happiness, a lot of people probably have stuff that pops into their mind about this will make me happy in my career. This will be a sign that I'm having a good career. Have you got any thoughts on some of the things that people aspire to that maybe they think will make them happy, but in reality, or empirically, don't really lend themselves to happiness.

it's a great place to start because, because ultimately, we all in, we all enter into careers for different reasons. But there's a bit of a myth, really, and it's not just my my my thoughts and my research and my experience around money being the most important thing, and then money being the contributing factor to determining how happy people are. Well, you know, I've, like you, listened to lots of interviews in the past where, you know, some of the richest people in the world have been interviewed and said, You know what, I'm no happier than the person that's doing this job or this job. And so it has become this aspirational thing that many people are striving for. And we shouldn't be surprised by that, because, you know, if we could just go back a few generations where, you know, they perhaps didn't have access to. As much money or as a big an earning potential, they've kind of handed that down. And as each generation has followed them, more opportunity has presented itself and and more levels of hierarchy and organizations have appeared to what we've seen in the past, and with that, it's allowed people to aspire to the next level, which has usually then brought this reward of more money and more recognition, and so that's very much been the template for people going into careers and people going into organizations in terms of their measure of success. Now it's served us to a point, but, but actually, there is a whole host of other things that are important to us as human beings that contribute to whether or not we are happy. And the easiest way to demonstrate that is is to ask the person that wasn't happy at some point in their job when they got a pay increase, were they any happier? And if it was for longer than a fortnight or three months, I would be very surprised, okay, and, and that's not me being flippant. That's fact in a lot of cases, okay, we see it all the time. People get promoted, they get given more money to keep them happy. And you will hear leaders in organizations say, give them some more money that will keep them happy. It does initially, because they associate that extra money with whatever it's going to allow them to do, but then they have to go back into work the following day or the following week and do the same thing that they weren't really happy with so we've known this for a while. We just haven't stopped and paused and looked at actually. Why is it broken? And it's broken because, as I've already said, there's other factors that contribute to our happiness, not just in work, but in life. But we're talking about work, so let's talk. Let's focus on work. There's so many other things that are those driving reasons to get us out of bed in the morning, other than the pound sign that we're going to get in return at the end of each month.

It's interesting that you speak about that, you know that throwing more money at people in an effort to make them better. And as you were speaking, I was thinking about the word compensation, and fundamentally, that's kind of what a lot of us is, you know, we get paid, we get a salary, but we also get compensated for something that we contribute. And if that something that we contribute comes with more of a cost to us, we need more compensation to end up in that equilibrium of being indifferent about whether we keep working. And a story that's been around this is the summer of 2021 a story that's been around this summer is for Young Bankers at Goldman Sachs who wrote a letter up a chain saying we have abhorrent working conditions and can't sleep and all those types of things. And the response was, Well, let's just pay them more money, right? So that's an interesting, maybe old, you know, less effective way of dealing with these things, or maybe a slightly less informed way of assessing what we can do to improve the experiences of these people. So let's move on and talk a little bit about that. So if we say, you know, salary is one of those things, or income is one of those things, that is probably really a hygiene factor, once you get a certain amount of money, it stops being contributing factor to increased happiness, be it in worker or more broadly. And there's some other things in our progression that sit with that as well, like potentially title or number of direct reports, all those things that we think maybe contribute to that, if we put those to one side, so we're not going to focus on these. What we want to do is we want to step away from all of that and say, what are the things that actually lead to an improved sense of satisfaction or happiness or contentment or well being and work? And I guess I just want to start with that. If I were to ask you, what do you think some of those core factors are? What would you say?

This is a really interesting one, because in many ways, this is why organizations don't go there. And what I'm alluding to is personal values. They vary from individual to individual. So you imagine you're running an organization that has 150 employees. Potentially you you've got within those 150 employees a number of values, any number of values that are important to that person. And so in many ways, it's like, well, how do we keep all of these people happy if that's all their values? And this is why, historically, organizations have have had their own vision and purpose or mission, but also aligned with that is these are the values that are important for us if we're going to be able to achieve this vision. And this is how we want you to behave, and this is why we exist. There's so many factors that that are important to people, and if you were to ask one individual, they would be different to others. But I'll give you some examples of what's important to people, health and well being is important. It's become more important over not just over the last 1516, months, the work that was more prevalent, like three, four or five years ago, health and well being was. Becoming more important. And within health and well being, you've got working hours, or you've got what we often describe, and I've got my own view on this work life balance. And within that, then you've got, you know, number of hours that people are expected to work. And what we've seen in the last 15 months especially is where people work now. All of these form the basis of employee health and well being. Well, what is important to you from a well being perspective will be different to me. And in many ways, the old way of working, or the frameworks for way of working, were very kind of systematic. This is the place that we work from. These are the working hours that we operate within. These are the days that you need to work each week, and you will get X amount of holidays, X amount of salary. You'll get these benefits, and off you go. Well, many of those things are what I call transactional or, as you've alluded to there, that from a motivational point of view. They're hygiene factors, but, but we we've been evolving, and we continue to evolve. And it's not just those factors now. It's whether or not people can can finish early or work hours that are suited to them. It's whether or not they can do exercise before work because they know sometimes after work they've got no energy left. It's whether they can take days off without going through some long, drawn out, winded process of booking holidays. But within that as well, you've also got family time and time with children and And historically, you know, again, we haven't necessarily viewed it, you know, openly. We've looked at, well, this is the process is the policy. This is what people need to fit into. What we're seeing now, and it started before the pandemic, and if anything, it's been amplified through through the pandemic over the last 1516, months, is people have started to realize and ask themselves, what's important to me, and again, in the past, the model was, this is the place to work. These are the hours. These are the pattern everybody fits in. This is what you would off you go. That was stirring up in the air March 2020, because the only way for a lot of organizations to survive was to say you're going to have to work from home, because we can't have you in the office. You're going to have to work at your kitchen table with your dog or your three year old or what have you, but we'll support you in the best possible way. And it doesn't matter if you're you know, you're not dressed as you would be for work as such, or you've got your camera off on on the team meetings, or you need to do the school run, or you need to answer the door for the Amazon driver. And really what they were saying was, it's okay for you to be working more within the values that are important to you. And that worked largely not for everybody, because some people have missed that environment of being in the office, but it worked for a lot of people, and now that's changing again, because organizations, in many cases, say you need to come back in and need to fit into this model or this template, and that's where we're going to see some fallout. And I think we're seeing it already. We're not only talking about health and well being, we're talking about family, we're talking about people's values around autonomy, not just recognition or success as we would have seen in the past, we're seeing other things like flexibility, empowerment, trust is becoming more prevalent. For some people, they felt hugely trusted when they were working at home, and probably more trusted when they work from home than they did in the office environment. But in some cases now they're being asked to go back, and that trust is being challenged. When our challenge, when our trust is challenged, we don't feel as comfortable. We don't feel that we can operate. So there's a whole host of things that are important to individuals from a value perspective, if the organizations are prepared to go there, actually, they'll see some significant results.

It feels like, certainly over the last 1516, months, and probably in the run up to it, we've reached a stage where many individuals are no longer taking part in a one size fits all type experience of a workplace. So, you know, it used to be, we go in and everybody who was a grade seven FQ in the xx function, whatever it is, you know, they had probably the same experience, right? And that was kind of a way we did things. Now that everybody's been put into a situation where we've adapted and created our own relationship with work and our own structure, because, by definition, we're all unique experiences. If we're all in a unique place, it feels to me a little bit like that might have led a bit of a genie out of a bottle in terms of that difference of experience, that maybe customization or personalization or choice aspect of what. Work means to us and the uniqueness of our experience. Do you think that's a bit of a catalyst in terms of helping or leading individuals who are working to think more about their experience and what matters to them?

Yeah, it absolutely is. And in many ways, if this pandemic hadn't happened, we we'd be in a similar position to it to where we were, you know, March 2020, where, you know, in terms of mental health and well being, suicide, stress, anxiety, all of these things were going in the wrong direction. You know, in many the way this big hand break has been pulled and everybody's had to kind of jump forward and stop and kind of reassess. I understand from an organizational point of view, the desire to, you know, and in some cases, individual point of view, to go back to this normality, because there was a degree of comfort to be taken from from that framework. But again, like the person that got that wasn't happy in work, they got the pay increase, but two weeks later, was still miserable and not happy, and we have to accept that. You know, in the old way of working, there was a lot of people that weren't happy, even though they took comfort from the fact that my my job starts on a Monday, at nine o'clock. I can finish at five o'clock on a Friday. I get X amount holidays. This is my reward and what have you. It wasn't working, and in many ways, that's where I wanted to go with my book. Initially, I left the publishing office with a working title of, this is work but it isn't working. And it was my own kind of I thought a clever play on, hang on a minute. We say this is work but it's not working. And the more I played about with it, the more I thought about it and shared it with a couple of people, I thought I'm going to have to explain this too much for people to get the point. But the point is real. It wasn't working for a lot of people. Yet we've still got this desire, in some cases, to go back. And I think this is why some organizations are holding out for a hybrid model, because a hybrid model is is a sense of a framework and something they can operate within, and something that appears Fair, which then people have to fit in with. Well, some will, but some won't. Some will appear to but then they'll quickly, if they haven't already arrive into that working environment, that hybrid model, but they'll be feeling stuck, and they'll be feeling, I want to get out. This isn't for me, and it isn't for me because of the experience that I've had, and I've enjoyed that experience, and I want that experience, but I can't have that anymore. And really, again, all we're talking about here is my values were being met. I could do more of the things that were important to me and still operate and function from a work perspective, but now they're not, they're being challenged or they're being overlooked. And so I'm I'm in this space if I call it stuck, but it's about being unsure. And when I mean, when I say unsure or stuck, it's I'm ready to move somewhere, because this isn't helping me, because I feel like I don't know what to do, but I want to do something else, because this isn't helping me. And this is where people, in some ways, start when it comes to going down that road to stress, and that comes from pressure, and that can lead to anxiety, and in some cases, it can lead to, you know, depression, but you'll see it manifest initially in terms of people start to get sick or take sick days, or their absence goes up, or, you know, they'll have days where their performance is not as good as it was. And, you know, there's lots of indicators for leaders and organizations to realize when people get stuck often, we overlook them. James, and this is, this is the ironic thing, and I, and I've labeled them, and I don't like to label them as plotters. We overlook them because we think they're the plotters in a working sense, and we think, well, they're okay, because they just, they come in, they do the job to go home, they create little fuss, and they get on with it, and they they're resistant to change in some cases, but they go with the flow. And we refer to them as a safe pair of hands. You know, Mary and finance been here years. You know, she doesn't cause a fuss. She's okay. She's not a high flyer, and she's not one of those people on the curve at the bottom that's causing aggravation. I don't have to, you know, take them through a HR process, but there's so many signs for this group. And you know, generally, you're going to be looking at 60% of your organization that could find themselves in this space. You've just got to know what the signs are, and then have different conversations with them to help them move out with this place. And I'm a big believer. I've written this book, not for individuals necessarily that are stuck, although it will help those people, and that's the lovely feedback that's coming through, but for organizations that have that foresight. It. But can see those people in that middle bracket, if you like, in an organization or maybe getting stuck. What do I do with them? How do I help them and create an environment that allows them to get themselves unstuck and move forward in whatever they want to do, but within the business, not necessarily leaving the business, which the reality is some will, but some will stay, and some will will get stuck, and that's not helpful for them, or indeed, the organization.

When you were speaking there about that description of being stuck, I think there's a lot of really powerful stuff in there, and that word stuck is is strong. It's got connotations of being, you know, in a viscous liquid where you just aren't free. You're on agile, you're somewhat lacking in control. And in my mind, I was thinking it's kind of like, you know, living in black and white when you could be living in color. That's kind of your if your working experience is resigned to being in this black and white world. And you are, you know, you might be preservatively described as a plotter, with that with that assumption that you're happy to be a plotter, but really, it feels like the color has just been drained every time, and you're just in that role, and you're like, you say stuck there. I think that's a really, really powerful, powerful phrase.

if we find ourselves stuck, or if we think there's somebody is in our in our team is stuck, or in our organization, and we agree that doing something about that, you know, bringing the collar back to our life on sticking them would be a good thing to do. It feels like there may be several different ways that we could go about changing or introducing change to help them be unstuck. It feels like there's an aspect maybe, of personal change, and there's an aspect of change to the things that they do. So we can change ourselves, or we can change our job. Is that split fair? Would you do? You think there are things in both of those areas we could do, and where would you start? I think that tends to be how we look at it.

And in many cases where people, where people go first, and it's maybe not with with a great deal of conviction, but where they tend to go first is they tend to go to their line managers. They tend to look around the business and say, Well, what else could I be doing? In some cases, they might fall into the trap of saying, Well, if I have more money, I'll be happier. Well, we know that doesn't work in a lot of cases. Or if it does, it's only short term but, but but they'll reach out to where they're at. They'll look for opportunities. They might apply for a job internally. They might say to their manager, but again, not with any great conviction, where's my next move? I want to do something different. I've been doing this for a while, and the reason I say that that's tends to be what people do first, is because the other thought is leaving the business. And for most people to entertain and sit with that thought of leaving the business, it takes, not in all cases, but in many cases, it takes a lot more effort, a lot more energy. And the reason I say that is because they've got themselves comfortable. They've been whenever they've been in that business for however long they're getting the salary. They have good days and bad days. They tell themselves that, okay, these are the people that dread Monday, okay? And on a Monday say, Oh, we really go again. And these are also the people that you know celebrate hump day on a Wednesday. I mean, what on earth is hump day? Okay? And I say to people, what's hump day? It's like, oh, it's halfway through the week when nearly the weekend. I'm like, this is an indication that what you're doing, you're not getting as much fulfillment from as you'd like to. You're accepting it, because the other option is to entertain the idea of leaving. I think what happens with some people, though, if they follow their instinct first of all, and they don't get a positive response from the manager or a role doesn't appear Well, there isn't the scope to to move into that next position. That's when they start to look elsewhere. That's where their head and their attention gets turned. That's where, you know, recruitment agencies start to tap into these people, and then they then they've got a choice, and I've seen it. I've had a conversation with somebody this week of the exact same thing that I'm describing. I'm happy where I am, usually means I'm not 100% happy where I am, but I've been approached and offered this job elsewhere on more money. Okay, right. Here we go. So what are you saying to me? Well, actually, if I got more money, I'd stay where I am, right. Okay, well, you need to think about how you're going to position this. And actually, let's not just look at money. Let's park that and look at what else do you enjoy about what you're doing, but what else do you want to enjoy in this organization, that if you were to approach your manager and say, You know what, I'd really like to do this. I'd really like to do that. I'd like to know about this. I'd like to grow in this area. And it is important for me to to get recognized and rewarded as I'm doing that, or as I'm going along, you're going to have a different type of conversation. And now they don't always happen, because the individual, if they don't get a positive response, and they then start looking elsewhere, and they then get another offer. You know, what tends to happen is, at that point of offer, they come in and say, Oh, by the way, Company X has offered me X amount more, and I'm thinking of going even then they're holding out to stay where they are, because this is how we're conditioned as human beings. We are tribal, as you know, and we are drawn to connection with one another. So even if we don't like our employer or the environment that we work in, we've built relationships. Okay, people don't leave organizations and say, you know, I hated the people I worked with. I hated my team. You know, they tend to leave and say, I didn't like my manager, I didn't like the culture, okay? And they keep in touch with those friends, and those can be enough of a reason for people to stay, which isn't always a good enough reason, but they tell themselves it is. Some people go and they go in the hope that where they're going it will be much more aligned. They think they're going for more money, but actually, they're not unconsciously the questions they ask. You know that what they're picking up the vibes when they go and have a look around the organization, on the research they do is they're looking to see are more of my important value is going to be met here, because if they are, then I'll stay. And actually, while we're talking about people that maybe are unhappy and people that might leave, it works the other way, those people are happy that stay and stay longer and become loyal and become the champions then and the storytellers in the future for people coming through are the ones that have had more of their personal values aligned and being met by the organization, and just haven't brought that into the conversation.

As you're as we're talking about, I was thinking a little bit about how you know, it what we're describing with being stuck. It's not, it's maybe not a binary thing. You don't go along unstuck and then suddenly become stuck. It's probably a gradual shift and change and and your change in experience as a result of small changes around your organization, changes in yourself, changes in your context, changes in your peers, all those changes. So I could imagine there's a bit of a boiled frog type of analogy with this, in that, you know, the water around you gets warmer and warmer and warmer and you don't notice each incremental piece, but eventually it's boiling. Do you? Do you get a sense that people are necessarily aware that they've become stuck, or is there a moment of realization? How do you think that sort of perception and self awareness associated with being stuck manifests itself for people? I

don't know that people necessarily see themselves as being stuck, and that's okay, because you know, for some people, this this idea will be a relatively new one, but I think if they're honest with themselves, they'll realize that things aren't right, okay. And often managers and leaders will say to me, Well, how do I know if one of my people is stuck, they appear to be doing okay, and they probably are doing okay, and in terms of their performance, they're doing okay, and they probably fit into the plodder category again. So apologies to the plotters. But if you want to know if your people are stuck, you need to understand the types of conversations that having with their loved ones when they get home each evening or before they leave work or their friends if they're not in a relationship or they live on their own. Those are the signs and and and people say, Well, how does that work? And I'm like, okay, so you get home and you describe your day to your loved one tonight. Okay, how are you going to describe it? Oh, it's been brilliant. I've I've enjoyed this. Had a brilliant conversation with so and so. I've helped so and so as well. They're progressing. They're developing. They took on board that idea. I've been acknowledged by the leadership team as well. That's been recognized, and they want to put me on this program. Yeah, the days flown by. I doesn't, I don't know where the time has gone. Okay, we can, we can absolutely look at that and say a lot of the important values for that person or in alignment have been met, versus the conversation of the person that gets home and says, You know what? What an absolute horror of a day. Okay, you won't believe what happened to me in this meeting so and so over spoke me and shut me down. Okay? I was then late to another meeting, and I was challenged, and I got into some conflict here, and then sat down. You know what I've asked this person to do? They haven't done it, so I'm gonna have to spend more time with them. Both parties are describing the same thing. They're describing the values that are important to them. The person that's had a bad experience is telling us that actually. Being recognized and being seen to have a voice, and maybe being being able to influence and maybe having some authority. These things are important to them, and really, without saying it, with those labels and those values they're saying to their their loved one, this is the part we can play. Sometimes it's very challenging is the as the other party when your partner comes home is they're saying, I'm not happy because my values are out of alignment, versus I am happy because my values are in alignment. And again, we all respond differently to how our loved one, you know, he's got, yeah, I know what you mean. I've had a crap day as well, and this has gone wrong, and that thing I was expecting to land today are, you won't believe the problem, and it's not helpful. It's reality in some cases. But then we're saying, well, both parties values aren't being met, and so what do we do then, versus Well, I've had a great day as well. Let's go out and celebrate. You know, this is worth celebrate. So the signs are there, but leaders and managers have to, have to look past the and I see it all the time. I deliberately don't do it. I was in an organization on Wednesday. I won't go in of a morning when I'm working with a client and ask people how they're doing, okay? Because managers do this all the time. Good evening, last night. Yeah, not bad. Okay, okay, let's move on, um, or good morning, yeah, I'm not bad. How are you? Yeah, and then off we move. I'm the type of person that goes into organizations and says, what's going well? And they're like, What? Where's that come from? And I'm like, tell me what's going well. Because if I ask you what, what's not going well, I'm never going to get anything positive. And again, I'll see in those conversations how people light up or what the change is in physiology. And, you know, I don't think it's that difficult. But then I've been working in this space for a while. And it's the space that I love, working with leaders and managers, because the better you know your people, the better the signs that you will pick up. And when you pick up those signs and and you know what, James, it can be, something as simple as person apps, okay? Always brings in a pot lunch, okay? And always goes to parkrun at the weekend. All right? And you notice that over the last week they haven't brought their pot lunch in every any day they've gone to the canteen. So they're making a different choice, all right, but they haven't told you on Friday, as they normally do, which Park run they're doing at the weekend. Those are signs. And people were like, what would you mean? Jeff, look, there's a change. There's a reason why they haven't brought in a pot lunch. It's probably because they were either late going to bed or late getting up, or they just don't care much about their health and well being. So they've been eating pizza all week. Well, we can dismiss that and say, well, they're having a good week. They can eat pizza. Of course they can. But the fact that that they haven't told us about parkrun as well, would probably indicate that they're not going to go to parkrun. So if I'm tuned in as a leader, I'm going to ask that person I was parkrun, probably knowing that they didn't do it and then probably also wanting to explore. I noticed you didn't bring a pat lunch last week. What's happening you normally? You normally got something healthy, you're normally showing people, you know what, what the green veg you're eating, or this that didn't happen, and then you'll start to understand what's happening or what's out of alignment. Now, leaders say to me, well, whose responsibility is, is it when it comes to personal values? Because they're like, well, and I do, I encourage leaders all the time to go through, you know, a particular values exercise. It's, it's great at providing insight. And they'll say to me, Well, these are their values, but how can I possibly meet those values? And I'm like, they're missing the point. It's not about you meeting those values. It's about having those values in front of you that says, person X. These are the values, okay? Number one is family time. Number two is security. Number three is autonomy. Number four is making a difference, and number five is being able to influence you don't take ownership of those values for the individual. And you say, Right? Which ones are being met at the moment, and which ones can you work on? And if you tell me that actually your number one value, family is not being met, I'm going to challenge you and say, Well, what does that look like? What does family time look like to you? Well, actually, family time means not working on my emails in the evening or doing stuff over the weekend, right? Well, what can you do differently to start meeting that value? And how can I support you? Okay? And that support can be a simple message as you walk out on a Friday that says, Remember, leave your laptop here or put it to one side. Okay, anything that happens over the weekend you can pick up on Monday. You. Uh, it can be something as simple as that, but it's the same with the other values. Understand what they mean to the individual and say, what do they mean to you? And how can you start to get more of those aligned in the role that you do or do? We need to have a bit of honesty that says, actually, the role that you're doing right now is not aligned to your values. So let's work towards something else, and then, how can I support you and and these are relatively new concepts for a lot of leaders and a lot of organizations. As I said earlier on, a lot of organizations have their own vision, their own mission and purpose, and they'll have their own values. But what, what they haven't necessarily done is look at individual values and say, how do, how do your individual values align to the business values? Because actually, when you look at successful organization, that's what's happening. Consciously, we might not know that, but unconsciously, that's what's happening.

You. You mentioned there that you know this is a space that you love to work in, and you've worked in this space for a long time, and with that comes knowledge and language and insight and awareness and perception and all those types of things. And yet, if we go back a little bit in our conversation, when you're speaking about somebody coming home from work, talking about their day, a lot of the people in those conversations maybe don't have that awareness, so they're speaking around the subject, and they might maybe know that something's been depleting for them, or retiring or unrewarding, or something's been fun and rewarding. But they can't necessarily use the building blocks of language around values, but you can use what could somebody do to either develop that knowledge and understanding or or really start to interpret for themselves what their values are, what their you know what their touch points are, what the building blocks are for them when it comes to reward and value in the workplace.

So the best thing any individual can do is be clear first and foremost on what what their important values are. And I use an exercise, and it's it's been designed deliberately to to get people to think at different levels in terms of their personal values. Because if I would say to you, James, you know, in the context that your career, we're talking about career, we're talking about work, what's important to you, you're going to start to reel off some of the things that are really important to you. And that's great, because you're going to be smiling like you are now, when you're going to get animated and you think, yeah, these things are really important, but they might not be the only important thing. So I'm going to ask you some more questions then, because I really want you to go deeper. Because the deeper we go with our values, we might unearth some some some kind of unconscious values that we weren't really aware of. So when I when you think you've exhausted telling me what's important to you about work. I'm going to say to you, Look, can you think of a time when you were really motivated in the work that you were doing? What were you doing? What was happening? Describe it to me, and as you describe it to me, I'm going to draw certain words out of what you said. You mentioned this at that point. You mentioned that you were leading on this project here, or you were the one responsible, or you got recognized for that. Are those things important to you? Because you haven't mentioned them when I asked you what's important to you in the car, and you're like, yes, they're important as well. Well, let's get them down so we've got them as well. You're feeling pretty good at this point, and I'm and I'm feeling pretty good because we've got this list of values at this stage. And then I'm going to throw a couple of other questions in really just the challenge of thinking, and I'm going to say to you, let's imagine for a moment, James, all of those values that you've shared with me has been important in terms of work. Let's assume you've got them right now in your role that you're doing okay, what else would cause you to leave? And this is where I'm asking you to think about, look at those values. What else? Stop and pause for a minute. What else would cause you to leave? If all of these values were present and you were happy, what else would cause you to leave? And you tend to get a couple of things that people haven't considered, probably because they've overlooked them. You'd be surprised the amount of people I take through this exercise, they get to the point of answering this question, and they say a family if something happened to my family, right? But they don't value that as important necessarily, but it is important because they're telling me now if something happened to their family, then they would leave. You know, if the organization uprooted and moved to Doncaster, there's nothing against Doncaster, but then you'd be like, well, there's no way I could move away from my family. So location is important, right? Okay, and you get the depth, and you don't have to be as experienced as I am. And I don't use that flippantly, this is all practiced. I've learned all this and and done lots of. Lots of interventions and sessions with people around values. You can do it. You just got to start and then when we've added that, but I'm going to ask you one final question, okay, because if you've told me that family and location are important to you, I'm then going to say to you, Okay, what else would cause you to stay now, that sounds like a daft question to ask, but I'm going to ask you that because I want you to consider, is this something that you haven't thought of, that would also allow you to stay and is also important to you? And

then once we've got all those values, I'm going to ask you to rank them, and there's none exact science, but I'm going to ask you to rank them for number one. This is the most important. Look at your list. Doesn't matter where you put them down. Look at the list and rank them and write a number next to each of them, number one, this, number two, and so on, until you've done them all, and then you're gonna ask you to write down your top five. Because as well as much as all those values are important to you, actually our top five are key if we want to understand at any point whether people are stuck or how happy people are in terms of the work that they're doing right now. Because if you say to me, these are my top five, and then I say to you, James, or out your top five, how many right now are being met? I'm going to link that right back to the conversation that you just shared with me about your loved one when you got in from work last week, because that top five will tell me everything I need to know. And if you say to me, four or five out of five are present, the likelihood is what you're doing right now, you're happy with and I can see that. I can see that in terms of your behavior. I can see that in terms of your results. But if you tell me only one or two, I'm going to be a little bit cheeky, and I'm going to say to you, have you updated your CV? Or I'm going to say, Have you had a dentist appointment recently? And you're going to be like, Oh yeah, dentist, yeah, okay, because these are the signs. And if you then say to me, yeah, these three aren't being met, and you I put that conversation that you've just had with me about, I'm unhappy about this, I'm miserable that, and you won't believe this. It's pointing to the values, and then it's a case of, what do we do with it? What I would add, while we're talking about values, is one of the most important values for some people, not everybody, today that we hadn't seen before. The pandemic is working from home. Now, people might have put that in their values as I took them through an exercise in the past, but it wouldn't feature in their top five. It's starting to feature in people's top five, which is a challenge for organizations, because this is how it works. If working from home is in your top five, and let's say you know, one or two other values aren't being met, that's going to be a problem, because that person's already looking elsewhere, and they're probably looking at employers that allow them to work from home. Now a leader in an organization might turn around and say, Well, if we can get your other four top five values being met and in alignment. That might be enough. It might be, but it often depends on how high up that working from home is, and this is where people will make decisions. I spoke to a colleague last week, and he's got between him and his wife, they've got five children between the age of 20 and 26 and two out of the five have turned around and said, If we get made to work from the office, I'm going to go and find another job. You know, these are millennials. I thought there might even be Gen Zs that saying that actually working from home is an important value for me, and that's one of the things I'm going to

look for, one of the questions I was going to ask was about whether our personal values change as the context of our lives change. And it seems, from what you said, that's very clearly the case. So presumably we should return to think about our values and do exercises like the one you've described, reasonably often, so that we've got that sort of guiding compass around,

it does and the signs are there. You know, somebody that goes off on maternity to have a baby, their values change, even from a paternity perspective. You know, first time dad, their values change. Somebody that gets promoted into their first management position, their values change. We know not everybody enjoys that first management position. It's because their values are changing. So there, there are signs that we can look for.

So I've got just about one last question I want to I want to touch on, which is clearly from what you've said, values make a big difference to us as individuals and our fulfillment at work, getting our values right and being in roles that fit with our values lead to us being, you know, more engaged in our work, probably performing to a higher level, which helps organizations. So clearly, there is a win win around us for individuals and organizations. My My sense is that for many organizations. And conversations about values don't take place. It's a little bit of an out there conversation. It's maybe a bit touchy feely for some organizations, depending on the sectors that you're in, there could be some natural aversion to bringing this into open conversations, introducing common language about things like this. So I guess my question is, if somebody out there is a leader, and who's saying, Well, you know, I can clearly see benefits in this, and obviously they're there. How can we go about introducing this type of language and conversation into an organization so that we can get some of the benefits of discovering values and changing our ways and jobs to support people to be more aligned to their values? I think

in many ways, organizations are better set up than they realize. And the reason I think they better set up than they realize is in most cases, they have an organizational vision, and they have organizational values. And really, you know, it's how we extend those conversations to say, these are the values for us as an organization. How do they fit with you and and we know that when people are applying for roles in an organization and wanting to go and work for that organization, they're looking for a good fit, and they're looking for a fitting value, but we just don't use that language. So we've got a perfect opportunity if we don't do a recruitment. And I try to encourage organizations when they're recruiting people to ask those questions that I just asked you. You know, in the context of work, what's important to you? If we don't do it, then we've got an opportunity. When people come into the organization and they're onboarded, or go through an induction, or they spend that first couple of weeks with their manager to say, Have you had a look at the business values? How do they fit with your values? In fact, what are your values? And it doesn't have to be a difficult conversation. It can be just an adult to adult conversation. We don't have to go down the touchy feely bit because we're using the organizational values. You know, I work for marks and spent some money in my in my career, their values were the same values as M and S, quality, value, service, innovation and trust. And if somebody were to sit next sit me down and say, Jeff, these are the values of m and s, how do they fit with your values? Well, trust is really important, actually, and service is hugely important because, you know, that's where I do my best stuff. I might need some work around quality and innovation. I'm not sure I get that and where that fits in my role, but we've started a conversation, and I think as long as organizations have a vision and values, then those conversations don't have to be difficult. I think we we make them more difficult because, as you've rightly said, our perception is, these are touchy feely type conversation. Well, they can be, if you if, if that, if the conversation allows it to be, there's nothing wrong with that, you know, Daniel Goldman and emotional intelligence and those type of people would would view that as empathy and social awareness. So, you know, we absolutely want to be doing a little bit more of that. And the great thing for me is, if we're prepared to have conversations about values, then actually it becomes a lot easier to have conversations about well being or performance. Because, you know, I use the iceberg as a reference point, we can see through people's performance how they're doing, good, bad or indifferent. We can then drop down and look at the service level that says, Well, what are the behaviors that are driving those performances? And if we're bold enough, we can go underneath and explore values with people and say, Ah, I can see why you're not behaving and getting those results. It's linked to your values. So I think it is easier than we realize, and the starting point we already have, because in a lot of cases, organizations have some organizational value. Brilliant,

well, I'm going to start to wrap us up here. I think it, you know, reflecting back a little bit on this conversation, I think it's clear that individuals can take some action to explore values and and, you know, pursue some of the exercises you spoke about, and even just do some of the reflection about what's working for them and what isn't and what's making them feel stuck and what's helping them feel unstuck. And it feels clear that organizations or leaders specifically, can start to open up some of those conversations, and if both parties do that, it would lead us to a good place. In the interest of time, I'm going to wrap it up. I just wanted to hand over to you to see if you could share a little bit more about how people can learn more about you or find your book or explore some of the activities that you referenced when we were speaking earlier.

Well, it's very kind, James, and thank you for being a wonderful host and and delving into to some of the topics that we've we've delved into, if people want to find out a little bit more, the best place for them to go is the stuck. Now. What website so stuck? Now? What.com and the reason I say that is not a. Only can they download a free workbook which has all of the exercises from the book itself, in relation to the six V's, which, which I know we haven't discussed here, but you know, vision, values, view, vehicle, valor on voice. It's got all the exercises there. So if they, if they just want to dive into the values exercise, first and foremost, they can do and they'll also find some other bits and pieces on on that website, which they can get access to, and they can watch a couple of videos, and they can download a free copy of chapter one of the book. So if they're intrigued and they want to, you know, either do this as an individual or a leader, then, then that would be the best place to go. Stuck. Now what.com download those bits and pieces, and by all means, get in touch. Let me know, ask me some questions, and if I can help them, then I'll respond to those and give you the benefit of my experience as well.

Brilliant. And we'll share a link to stuck now what.com when we share a podcast as well. So it's just time for me to say, huge, thank you. Great conversation. Really interesting topic. Huge. Thanks, Jeff.