Flow is the state of being in which people become so immersed in the joy of their work or activity “that nothing else seems to matter.”

Presence is to be in a flow state of connection with others.

Here’s the last discussion about the Happiness Track

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Emma’s new book Sovereign

HBR: The Best Leaders Have a Contagious Positive Energy

HBR: Proof That Positive Work Cultures Are More Productive

Today is the first of series of podcasts about an idea that needs more consideration in our workplaces. The idea of presence.

Emma Seppala is a psychologist and lecturer at the Yale School of Management – she also runs the Women’s Leadership program there. I first spoke to Emma about 6 years ago when I came across her book the Happiness Track. The hypothesis of that book was in many ways the sweet spot of this podcast: the notion that if you make workers happy then they do their better work. Emma had a new book out this week called Sovereign and it felt like a great reason to have a new conversation. 

The conversation leads into the next block of podcasts which are all about the idea of presence. Over the last 4 years we’ve seen discourse from CEOs about wanting workers back in the office but in many ways they’re putting things the wrong way wrong. A lot of us find ourselves making our way into work and sitting on video calls all day. Or having headphones on because its so noisy. We got home at the end of the day thinking ‘what was the point of that’. 

When bosses say they want us to be present in the office, what they actually describe is something different. They talk us about us interacting, having ideas, watercooler moments. Bosses say they want us to be present in the office, but what they really want is presence, for us to be in each others company.

For me presence is related to flow

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Today’s top episode goes to the heart of an issue that a lot of people raise with me.

They say ‘where do you start when changing a culture’.

To some extent it’s what the episode about the hospital trust in Barking was about, going in and changing the culture of a huge organisation.

I saw one of today’s guests Darren Ashby speak at an event - talking through the specifics of how his company Business Four Zero tried to change the culture of Tesco. Business Four Zero are one of a group of organisations who work with leaders to change company culture. I know there’s a few of these firms. I attended a dazzling event by one firm called Scarlett Abbot in this field about a month ago. 

Darren is joined by Atif Sheikh as they talk through the specifics of what they did with firms like Electronic Arts, Aviva and Tesco. They’ve turned some of their work into a book which you can buy here.

Some of the things that stood out for me:

• What’s the number one thing you look for in a high performing culture? How internal are they? How much time are they spending on themselves vs the outside world?
• Only 28% of workers say they are connected to purpose
• Culture is what are you committed to as group - emotional commitment of what you want to create
• Values - before you define your values know that there are 6 core values shared amongst everyone (sometimes called the 6 Pillars of Character - Trust, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship). These should not be your differentiator. These are universal basic expectations. You need to define something differentiating
• Leaders' role is to bring energy: Satya Nadella told Microsoft’s execs: ‘find the rose petals in the field of sh*t’
• So how do you elevate a culture? They introduce 2 or 3 critical behaviours that elevate a culture Might be ‘be kinder’ And they build a process of how you might enact those behaviours

For example Intercontinental Hotel Group

• Had switched from being a hotel owner to a franchise business
• CEO needed to remove silos
• What did they need? Too many people in the business didn’t understand how they made money - it made spending decisions hard. So they focussed on ‘think return’
• Additionally it had become complacent, so they decided to ‘move fast’
• Finally they agreed to ‘talk straight’ with each other

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Isabel Berwick is a writer and podcaster who focusses on the evolving state of modern work. I’ve celebrated her podcast Working It many times here

(here’s her specials on the 4-day week for example, or her special on meeting-free days was essential listening). I love its ability to react rapidly to the biggest news stories of the moment and to drop a snackable episode midweek.

I talked to her about her opinions on modern work, going deep on the rapidly changing world of employment and where we’re going next.

Isabel has a brand new book out, The Future Proof Career, which she says is for everyone who doesn’t read books about work but wants to be better at navigating it.

Recent episodes you might have missed

• The importance of trust at work - and why it's on the decline
• Charles Duhig on how to be a supercommunicator in your job (and your home life)
• Can improvements to culture fix a broken NHS trust?
• The Big Ange effect at Tottenham Hotspur
• Frances Frei on the importance of training managers

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How should most of us think about the differences between Employee Experience and Employee Engagement.

I first spoke to Emma Bridger, who is the author of a well respected book on this topic and the founder of the EX Space, a learning community focussed on raising the bar in the Employee Experience field.

Then I picked the brains of Melanie Wheeler who leads People Communications at Sutherland, a firm widely recommended to me as outstanding in Employee Experience.

Get in touch

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Charles Duhigg’s bestseller The Power of Habit was the definitive guide to building and sustaining successful habits.

His new book, Supercommunicators, grapples with the knotty topic of creating successful interactions with others.

It’s a thorough and dazzling read that has many applications for the way we work (and how we live our lives).

We talked about:

• the single biggest thing that builds psychological safety
• why moving conversation out of small talk into deep discussion proves more satisfying than we expect
• how teams should use 'who are we' conversations
• how we should think about three different types of conversation (are they looking to be helped, hugged or heard?

Read an extract of Charles' book here

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Many of us have worked in environments that provided bonuses or rewards for success. Maybe they took the form of team rewards or individual incentives, or end of year profit-share schemes. But do these rewards achieve what they are designed to?

Professor Uri Gneezy is the world's foremost expert on the science of incentives - and he comes with a huge warning about what such schemes actually achieve.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is today hosted by Bruce Daisley, Ellen Scott and Matthew Cook.

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This week's Eat Sleep Work Repeat is hosted by Bruce Daisley, Ellen C Scott and Matthew Cook.

Roll up roll up as this week we talk the major trends in work and workplace culture and the big stories of the last month.

Including:

• Wellness programs don’t work - in TikTok form, or in Matt’s post on LinkedIn Research from Oxford University looking at the (in)effectiveness of workplace wellbeing interventions at an individual level
• Chronoworking 
• Gymclassgate
• Ellen on Gen Z workers
• Fewer and fewer of us want to go out in the evenings or weekends
• The dystopian prospect of AI interviews

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I was flattered to be invited to visit the NHS trust of Barking, Havering and Redbridge last year. I spent an afternoon meeting the team and seeing the place in action.

It was an inspiring question that CEO Matthew Trainer was asking: 'can we improve the results by making it a better culture?'

What does that look like? And how is going for them?

Matthew Trainer's CEO note at the end of 2023

Video: Inside the Trust

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We often overlook the fact that trust is the basis for all good culture. I called out some of the remarkable data on this in the Work In 2024 deck.

In Slack’s August 2023 survey of over 10,000 global office workers, trust was the top determinant of employees’ productivity scores. Employees who felt trusted were 2X as productive as those who didn’t. They were 30% more likely to put in extra effort at their jobs. If we don’t feel trusted we’re twice as likely to say we’re looking for

a new job.

But what role does trust play in the modern company? And how can we build it?

Mark McGinn is a senior leader at the communications agency Edelman, he talks to me about their research into trust and how we should seek to build it.

Has our organisation replaced government? Increasingly our company is the biggest thing that we believe we can have an impact on.

Mark explains that Trust in our organisation is based on four things:

• Organisational ability
• Dependability
• Integrity
• Purpose

You'll strongly enjoy downloading Edelman's Trust Barometer and also Edelman's special Trust at Work report.

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The role of managers are pivotal in our working lives but most managers aren't trained or prepared for the responsibilities that they are given.

When we look at the research from Gallup about burnout and why people hate their jobs managers are regarded as having the biggest responsibility. Half of people who say they don't rate their manager say they are looking for jobs. So what can we do to make our relationship with our managers better? I chatted to Anthony Painter from CMI.

Download the Work in 2024 deck

Chartered Management Institute research on the Accidental Manager

• 82% of workers entering management positions have not had any formal management and leadership training
• only a quarter of workers (27%) describe their manager as ‘highly effective’
• of those workers who do not rate their manager, half (50%) plan to leave their company in the next year

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Eat Sleep Work Repeat is hosted by Bruce Daisley, Ellen Scott and Matthew Cook. Sign up to the newsletter

We talk through the hottest topics in work:

• New research says that bosses think going part-time signals the end of career ambition
• Radio 5 Live's Nihal Arthanayake says he feels alienated as the only brown face in a sea of white at his workplace
• Bill Gates advocates for the three-day week but doesn't detail who he thinks is going to pay for it

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