Unknown Speaker 0:00 Kurt Nelson, Kurt Nelson 0:07 welcome to behavioral grooves, the podcast that explores the intersection of behavioral science and life. I'm Kurt Nelson Tim Houlihan 0:13 and I'm Tim Houlihan. In each episode, we bring you insights from researchers, authors and practitioners who help us understand why we do what we do, and maybe more importantly, what we can do about it. Kurt Nelson 0:26 Yeah, and our guest today is Mark Crowley. He is a medical doctor turned financial service executive turned author and podcaster. That's a lot of careers. It is. It's a lot of careers now. Mark's new book is the power of employee well being, and it builds on his earlier work, lead from the heart, and he makes a bold case, if we want thriving organizations, we need to stop treating engagement as a checkbox exercise and start generally, genuinely, not generally, genuinely caring about the well being of our people. Tim Houlihan 1:03 Mark argues that emotions, not rational logic, drive both our personal decision making as well as the vast majority of our workplace behavior. He reminds us that belonging is not just a nice to have, but actually the single biggest driver of employee well being. He shows us how simple actions from a leader or coworker asking, How do you feel this week to tossing a bag of candy to each branch manager. Kurt Nelson 1:28 That really works? Yeah, yes, Tim Houlihan 1:31 it can build rituals that create meaning and camaraderie, Kurt Nelson 1:35 the rituals and meaning. There we go. All right, so in our conversation, we dug into why engagement surveys have failed to move the needle, and why leaders still cling to old industrial age myths and how caring about employees is not soft, but actually the path to higher performance. Tim Houlihan 1:54 Ah, so pour yourself a favorite empowerment beverage. Settle in and enjoy our conversation with Mark Crowley. Tim Houlihan 2:08 Mark Crowley, welcome to behavioral Mark Crowley 2:10 grooves. Thank you very much for having me. I'm looking forward to this. It's a Tim Houlihan 2:14 pleasure to have you here, and we're going to loosen up with just a speed round of four quick yes, no questions, and Kurt's dog in the background, Mark Crowley 2:24 that thing sounds ferocious. Tim Houlihan 2:27 Think Thank God we're virtual. Okay, first meet around question mark. Would you prefer to learn a new instrument or a new language? Kurt Nelson 2:36 Language? Any language come to mind? English, I agree there's an aspect for that. Mark Crowley 2:49 I play no instruments, so learning a new one would be, you know, right? I mean, I have no talent for that, unfortunately. So I think it would probably be a deeper understanding of Spanish. I have a living outside of San Diego, so I have a pretty good basic understanding of it and can converse. But to be fluent in Spanish would be great. Kurt Nelson 3:13 Yeah. Fantastic. Cool. Okay. Mark, would you rather live in a 35 year old body with a 95 year old mind or live in a 95 year old body with a 35 year old mind, Mark Crowley 3:24 95 year old body with a 35 year old mind, no question. Kurt Nelson 3:29 Okay, there you go. That was pretty quick, too. Mark Crowley 3:31 I don't want to lose my mind, you know. And I you look around and you see people that are in their 90s today, that continue to be thriving, you know what I mean? And I look at that and I just think, okay, even if you're if you ever can't move out, you know, if you're not ambulatory, but you still have your mind, you can still, like, have a satisfying life. I think, Tim Houlihan 3:57 yeah, I always that's assuming that a 35 year old has a decent mind, that's correct. Mark Crowley 4:05 35 That's right. Tim Houlihan 4:08 Okay, third speed round, question mark, true or false. Emotions drive up to 95% of workplace Unknown Speaker 4:14 decisions, true, true. Tim Houlihan 4:17 So the idea of the rational management thing is largely an illusion, Mark Crowley 4:22 correct? Kurt Nelson 4:27 They're very well done. Yeah, there might be something from your book about that that we might get into a little bit later, but the last last of our speed round questions here, Mark for leaders, which is more important? Emotional intelligence or technical skills, Mark Crowley 4:42 emotional intelligence? Just simply, no question, Tim Houlihan 4:46 yeah. Well, that is a good answer, because we are going to be talking about emotional intelligence and employee wellbeing for the rest of our time together. Here this morning, we're speaking with Mark about his new book, The Power of employee well. Well being and mark we know that organizations have focused on employee engagement for well over 30 years, right? We've got all data from Gallup and other scores, but they also show that employee engagement is kind of stuck in the basement. What have leaders gotten wrong about about this whole engagement disengagement problem? Mark Crowley 5:19 You know, there will be some people listening to this, perhaps that would say, No, no, no. In my company, we took it very seriously and we we did what we needed to do to elevate employee engagement with those few exceptions. Most, most companies, you think they're anomalies. Basically they are. They have to be anomalies because so I'll tell you something interesting I had, I don't know what motivated me to do it, but in 2013 I reached out to Gallup and ended up having a conversation with Jim harder, and he's the head of research for Gallup. He's the guy, yeah, he created the engagement study. He actually created their well being study, which is very interesting. And so I think I was writing for Fast Company at the time, and I had an instinct that they had some data that might be helpful. And so we got into this discussion, and he said, you know, we have this study coming out, the American workplace study, where we're showing that engagement is awful, like it's only 30% in America, and you've got about 20% of people that are actively disengaged. And we're having this conversation, and he's giving me this data, and I just said, Hey, would you mind if I publish this in my article? And so before they published it in 2013 my article went out, and it was the shot hurt around the world that says, Oh my God, we've gotta, we gotta fix engagement. This is like killing us. And, you know, and so, but the amazing thing is that the numbers that were in that article are the same as they are today. Yes. So if you, if somebody wants to argue that, oh no, we've taken it seriously, you really are an anomaly. Because if an aggregate across America, and by the way, it's not any better outside of America either. It's actually worse. It's them, you have to own up to the fact that, in the big picture, the companies didn't take it seriously. CEOs didn't take it seriously. It was like, you know, like, you know, somebody telling you the world is going to end tomorrow, and you wake up and you're like, you know? So once that happens, it's like, well, it doesn't really matter. People were hitting their numbers, people were hitting their goals, and they were like, engagement doesn't matter to this. So why should I be concerned about it? So they do the perfunctory thing, which is to survey people twice a year, and then they take their time in digesting the feedback, and then they distribute it to the managers, and there's no accountability. And people think, well, it must be an HR initiative. And so this is just the silliness that we've been talking about, except that it keeps showing up in articles, you know, and I'll tell you a funny story that when, when I pitched this book to my publisher, apparently there was a whole group of people in the room that make the decision as to whether they're going to do a book or not, and they were like, hallelujah, like somebody's saying that this is stupid, that we should be continuing this. And I said, Well, why? They said because we do a lot of leadership books, like, they get 1500 pitches a year. And he said, almost invariably, somewhere in the book, it'll say, and according to Gallup, engagement is only 30% and like, they're the first ones saying it, and they're like, we're so sick and tired of it, because nobody's doing anything with it, you know? And by the way, investors, the stock market, never really took it. They never put pressure on CEOs to deal with it. So, you know, Shakespeare said, pass his prolog. If we just continue, it's going to be 30% five years from now and 20 years from now, and it just makes no sense to continue with this. Kurt Nelson 9:05 So mark if, if companies are achieving their goals and they're hitting their numbers and they're doing all this, does it matter then? I mean, obviously, if leaders aren't taking it as seriously as we want, I mean, the the scores are bad. But why should we care if, if I'm a leader, and I'm going, Well, I'm still hitting my numbers, it's fine. I don't need to really focus in on this. Mark Crowley 9:28 Well, I think you answered the own question, which is that they don't care. Like it's it's all superficial. The whole thing is, is a shell game. You know, it's not sincere So, Tim Houlihan 9:42 but the shell game isn't is important enough to continue doing it, right? I mean, almost all companies do it. Mark Crowley 9:50 I think it's like, you know, the the language that Jim harder used in one of our conversations, which really large with me, was, it's a check the box activity. It's. Just demonstrate to people that we we take this seriously, and so we're doing this survey. But you know, so let's say I work for you Kurt, and you never appreciate me. And so in my survey, I write, you know, I work for a manager who's never appreciative, and I, you know, I kill myself every day, and I just would like to be appreciated, appreciated. So you know, the survey gets back to you and it doesn't say Kurt, just says my manager, right? But it comes to you and you see it, and then there's never any accountability. You don't come back to me and say, I got survey feedback. And some people don't think I'm appreciative. I'm going to work on this. So the next time I get the survey, I'm like, Why do I bother putting anything in there? Kurt never got better. He never appreciated me. Nothing changed. So now you have it's even worse. It drives engagement even further down, because people are like, well, you know, in the vernacular, screw this. Like, this is all very insincere. And so it's sort of just, it makes no sense to continue talking about this, but Tim Houlihan 11:04 at the same time, you're hopeful that you Is that, am I mischaracterizing the book in and your perspective on that mark, you have a sense of hope and optimism. Don't you about what? Specifically, yeah, well, about about managers could be better and employees who are engaged could be more productive. You know, there's 12 Mark Crowley 11:28 questions in the engagements, in the engagement study, and as broad ranging as you know, I know what I'm supposed to do every day. To, I have a boss that cares about me. To, I have a best friend at work, right? So it with 12 different questions. So low engagement, if you get a if you get an indication that you have low engagement, is, do I do I fix the friend problem? Do I fix the the you know, right? Which one do I go after? And so it's very complicated in a sense, and managers don't have the time to really digest this and the and the other thing is that we measure this twice a year, so, right? But you so you go, Okay, so we're going to really invest in making sure that people know what they're doing. We got to wait another seven months to find out whether we're succeeding or not, right? So it to me, it's just very complicated. But what, what I find fascinating, and why I wrote the book is because it's, it's as simple as this sort of it's almost ridiculous what I'm going to tell you, but it's so powerful at the same time, which is, and I wrote an earlier book. My Book lead from the heart. A basic premise is that we're not rational people. We're driven by feelings and emotions, right? So now we have research that shows, if you just simply ask people, How do you feel at the end of this week about work, what? What's your overall sense of well being at the end of this week? That there's a linear relationship to how they produce, and it goes all the way deep into organizational success. So in other words, if people say on a scale of one to five or bright green to bright red, very happy to very unhappy, either way you want to measure it, that generally people are leaning into the green, you're going to see productivity soar. And if people are marinating in fear or not being appreciated, or all the different kinds of things that would lead to them to say, I don't really feel that good. You're going to suffer. Right? So if we understand that, you can ask one question, every once in a while, how do you feel? How do you feel generally, this week after after your work week? How do you know on a scale of one to five, how do you feel about your boss being supportive of you? How do you feel about your growth opportunities? So now I'm asking you a question, one question or a couple of questions. And there's technology now that like the immediately it gets distributed to all the people are impacted. Then you can have a meeting. You can go, hey, people are generally feeling that, you know that we're really not appreciative. What do we do about that? How do we fix that? So you now you're recalibrating in real time, and that gives people power. So to get to the heart of what you just asked me, Tim, when you realize that it's that simple, and you can just pulse people, and you can recalibrate if you need to. Sometimes it's just, life is rough, right? So if you ask people during covid, are you seeing enough of your friends? Of course, you're going to get these bad scores. There's nothing you can do, but you can offset that by other ways of integrating and connecting people, right? So it's intelligence, it's knowledge, and it's real time, and it's so simple, and so where I'm optimistic is that I think that managers don't want to lose good people, they don't want people to not be happy. They just haven't had the know how to make that happen, and they haven't had the data to know how people generate. Generally are feeling. So it's sort of like, oh, you're quitting. Why? Like, how come you never told me, right? So if you're doing these surveys, you're getting a much better understanding of people. And if you really do have a sincere interest in people's well being, which is the point of the book, it's all in your best interest, not just theirs, then people can feel that. And that goes to my original book, which is that when people feel you care about them, they want to reciprocate. So we, Tim, we at the beginning of this conversation, you said you live in a community where you know people just on a habit, make bread for themselves and have extra and they'll come on by and drop the some off, just to be lovely, right? Yeah. So Robert caldini, who's you guys are probably familiar, right? His, his famous book Influence, he, he uses this example where, so let's say I live next door to you, Tim, and so instead of bread, I bring you a tray of brownies. I say, My wife just made brownies. I couldn't possibly this is much too much of a temptation. I'll eat them all, and we have extra. So here's a dozen Tim Houlihan 16:12 brownies. So you're doing me a favor if you take these brownies from well, yeah, but I'm also Mark Crowley 16:17 being generous too, right to be the story, and it's not like I just want to get rid of them, and you're the gotcha, right? So I bring them to you. He says, What's your immediate instinctive feeling? So I'll ask you both. So okay, so what? So I come to both of you and I give you a dozen brownies. He is. He says, Be honest. What's your first response? Gratitude. Okay, Kurt, Kurt Nelson 16:45 I feel like I need to give you something back. I need to reciprocate. Mark Crowley 16:50 It ain't gratitude. It's, I'm just gonna speak in the vernacular here. It's like, oh shit, I got to do something for this guy, like a glass of wine. But the reason, right? So the reason is, you may feel you may also feel gratitude, right? But there's something inside of us that says I got to do something for him, and the way Cialdini, or Cialdini, I don't know what it is. Cialdini, yep. Cialdini, okay, so what he says is that it goes back to like prehistoric times, when I have a piece of meat and you don't that, I will give you a piece of my meat to sustain you, but as soon as you get a piece of meat, you got to give it back to me like so this is his theory of reciprocity. And what I've learned is that when you genuinely care about people, and people can feel it because you're displaying it in so many different ways. It's authentic, it's irrefutable, that people want to reciprocate in the very way that he described. Kurt Nelson 17:49 Yeah, hey, grooves, we're interrupting your regularly scheduled programming with some big news, and we want you to be a part of it. Tim Houlihan 17:58 That's right. We've got not one but two massive milestones hitting at the same time, and we're throwing a party to celebrate both of them. Kurt Nelson 18:07 Okay, so milestone number one, we are about to cross 500 episodes this fall, when we started this thing back in 2017 Tim, did you ever dream that we would make it to 500 Tim Houlihan 18:19 I did nothing, not at all. Never, never crossed my mind. And milestone number two, it's our eighth anniversary, so we're combining both celebrations into a single epic live event in Minneapolis. Yeah, and Kurt Nelson 18:33 that live event is going to happen October 16, 2025, so mark your calendars, and we're going to be taking over a private room at Malcolm yards in my hometown of Minneapolis, where Tim used to live when he was cool. And here's the kicker, if you attend, you'll get to participate in a live behavioral science experiment with Nick Eppley, Tim Houlihan 18:55 yeah, the famous university of chicago professor, the researcher who proved that talking to strangers can actually make your day better. He will be sharing some observations on a happy life, and the audience will participate in a hands on experiment. Kurt Nelson 19:10 And this isn't just a party, it's science in action. So check the show notes for details, but consider this your personal invitation to join Tim and me as well as many other people, on Thursday, October 16 in Minneapolis. Make your travel plan. Sign up now. Make it make it happen. Folks, here we go. Tim Houlihan 19:33 We can't wait to see you, and until then, keep finding your groove. Kurt Nelson 19:36 All right. So question for you. Mark in the book, you highlight how belonging is the greatest driver. I think that the greatest driver of employee well being. So when you when you talk about that, what are some of the really actionable ways, if I'm a leader in an organization, that I can foster a sense. Of belonging. You already talked about the, you know, just at the end of the week, asking people, I think that's more about them. But how do you foster that sense of belonging? Mark Crowley 20:08 Well, let me first emphasize how important that discovery is, because it, you know, in the book, there's all sorts of you know, statistics that indicate that most people would never guess that belonging is the greatest driver of well being, or that it matters at all, you know, right, so. So what we're really saying here is that when people feel that they can be themselves, and this goes beyond psychological safety, it's like, I'm Mark Crowley, and I'm working on a team of people that that like Mark Crowley and respect Mark Crowley and want to hear Mark Crowley's ideas and also accept his peccadillos, right? I don't generally like striped shirts, but he's got one on, and I'm okay. I mean, it's and Jan Emmanuel deneve, who's at Oxford University, who's done a lot of this research. He's actually shown, you know, the old adage that people don't quit companies. They quit quit bosses. What he's shown is that people actually quit because they don't feel they belong so the team. So, you know, one of the things that that I learned early in my career, you know, prior to writing books and so forth, I had a 25 year career in financial services and in the teams that I managed, the emphasis was, if you want to be on this team, if you want to work for me, the expectation is that you're going to be a cooperative, collaborative member, that we're not here To compete with one another. We're here to ensure everyone succeeds. And so if that doesn't appeal to you, if you want to be the star, go somewhere else, because we have you can be a star, but still be collaborative and cooperative. So I think that's really the best recommendation that I can give your audience, which is to foster deep a sense of teamwork, like you are here to have each other's back. So if somebody botches something, which we all do, right, the first reaction is to go, you know, well, Mark was the one who got the ball on that. You know, I told him two weeks ago to get to that instead of that, it's you come to mark and go, Okay, this didn't go out well and whatever, for whatever reason. How do we solve this? Let me help you. That is a deep sense of belonging. So now I know that you know that if Kurt I work for you, that instead of you coming to me and going, what the hell happened here? And you know you're going to pay for this, and all the things that I'm already fearing are going to happen because I botched it, that it becomes a how do we rebound? And you see this in sports all the time, people, somebody makes a bad pass, or a pitcher gets off to a bad start, the team doesn't go out to the pitcher and go, What the hell are you doing? Man, you've walked the first three guys right? Like, but that's how we treat it in business. We're so quick to, you know, just be armed people and judge people. Kurt Nelson 23:04 So yeah, that was my, my follow up question to that was, we see that and we appreciate it when it comes to coaches and teams and various different things, and yet, when we and Tim and I both have done consulting with a number of different leaders in different organizations, we don't see that so much. We see it as like, Oh no, we're looking for the star players. We're going to reward the star and forget the team. As long as we got our couple guys that are hitting it out of the ballpark, we're fine. So where is that disconnect from your perspective? Where do you see that? Why does that come into play? Mark Crowley 23:39 It's a great question, and in my first book, I actually wrote that, you know, when we watch coaches and players in any sport that we want them playing with heart, you know, we love it when we see a coach come up and hug their players or, you know, pat them on the head, kind of a thing where you can just see that they're not, there's Like, sort of a paternal or maternal pride for that, you know, and like a joy in the seeing somebody else succeed, right? So we love heart in, we love heart in the arts, and we love heart in, you know, sports, but don't bring that anywhere near business. And I think it goes back to traditional leadership theory, which says, pay people as little as possible, squeeze as much out of them as possible. It goes back to the industrial air, you know, the Industrial Revolution. And so the idea has always been, we just pass on these ideas from generation to generation that people don't want to work. You're going to have to, you know, keep, keep them under your thumb. You know, if they're out of your sight, they're not working all these, all this mythology, and, you know, so I think it's, it's just a belief system that says that we have to oppress people in order to get them to perform, that we need to kind of obliterate before we're able to do this. Tim Houlihan 24:55 You brought up the Industrial Revolution. This is, this is something that has plagued. To me for a long time is, why is it that we're holding on to these myths from almost 200 years ago? You know, that it's just kind of ridiculous that with all of the the work that's been done since Peter Drucker, you know, like in the 1950s and 60s, it seems like management could have evolved so much in that time with the work that Gallup has done with there's so much great research to support getting behind the idea of emotionally supporting your employees, and yet it's really, really slow to take off. Mark Crowley 25:34 Nobody knows that more than I do in terms of, you know, my first book came out in 2011 and, you know, I paid somebody I had, I came out of corporate world and and had a great career, successful career, but I had no platform. And so I was recommended to pay $10,000 to a woman to help me build my platform. And so instead of building, helping me identify how to build a platform. She she goes, Look, I read your book. I read some articles you've written. She goes, I just have one recommendation. That's what you're going to get for your 10 grand. Here is this recommendation. And I go. She goes, you're not going to like get you're going to want Plan B. But I really want I go, I go, just give it to me straight and and I you can edit this out, but this is literally what she said. She goes, you're going to fucking fail if you continue to use the expression lead from the heart. And I said, Did you catch that check? She was telling me in 2011 was that you're going to be met with so much resistance because we are so offended by the idea of caring about people supporting people, it's like it's a transactional thing. You're going to get pay you do your job if you don't do it. Well, we got somebody sitting in the other room waiting to take your chair, and that's how we've always believed and so but I also think there's another element of this that I would like to blame, and that is the routine expectation that companies have to report earnings on a quarterly basis. So CEOs are always under the gun to hit numbers, and so it's hard to argue that an investment in people is going to pay off in the quarter. So you just keep deferring it. And if you're a one month into the quarter and you're not hitting your goals, then it's like, everybody gets in a room and they go, what are we going to do? And it's like, manage with fear, manage intimidation. Tell these people they're going to lose their job if they don't. This is we just and it's Groundhog Day, so we just continue this over and over and over. Kurt Nelson 27:41 Yeah. And in the book, you mentioned that caring for employees is not and I'm quote, using air quotes here, soft leadership, right? And, and I think there's part of what you're just saying is that there is this myth of, if I'm not tough on my my employees, or not even tough doesn't necessarily be there, but if I care about my employees, that it and you talk about loving your employees, that that's soft and that somehow means I'm not a good manager. And so what can how can we a overcome that, that dis that belief that people have around that, and then, so how do we demonstrate that as a leader. Mark Crowley 28:20 Well. So here's something really cool, and it's in, it's in, it's in the power of employee well being. But it happens to be research from where Tim lives, so Barbara Fredrickson at the University of Chapel of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. So we're having this conversation, and she she is really one of like two or three people that confirmed this idea that we're not rational. There's others. Antonio Damasio wrote an incredible book called Descartes error. Descartes famously saying, I think, therefore I am, and he's wrong, right? But building out from that. Barbara Fredrickson is somebody who basically said that we are hardwired as human beings to thrive on positive emotions, and that we actually need a disproportionate ratio of at least four to one positive emotion experiences in our day. And this is true of all relationships, including marriages, couples. But basically that means that if we thrive on positive emotions, then we as leaders, should be intentional in giving people the experiences that translate into the positive emotion. So I call that paying people with emotional currency, it's not pay that's going to do it. It's not giving somebody another $100 that's going to translate into somebody being truly inspired at work. It's going to be whether or not that need for fit, for emotional need. You know, emotional experience, positive emotions, occurs on a regular basis. So when you're appreciating people, and you're making people feel safe, and you're you're giving people opportunities to grow, and you're promoting people from your own team, and you you have rituals together, and you have a deep connection, people will marinate in positive emotions. Let me just finish this one piece though, to the issue that Kurt raised about loving your people. Yeah. Barbara Fredrickson said to me that what she has figured out is that any experience of positive emotions, interest, love, awe, joy, any of them, hope, they're all individually an experience of love. So when I say, Love your people. I'm not saying, Hey, I love you man, you know, or coming up, right? It's I'm saying love people, because that's what we need as human beings to thrive. So the argument that I would make is it, if you help people thrive, isn't it natural and understandable that they would perform optimally, then to put them into fear and intimidation and keep them under stress and wondering whether they're going to have a job or they're in the next round of layoffs, all these things that we do which put people into negative emotions. So I hope that answers it. Kurt Nelson 31:15 Sorry, it does. Thank you. No, that was fantastic. So what? Tim Houlihan 31:19 And at the same time, like, like, there's still, we still need to maintain a sense of accountability. We've got high performance standards. We've got this, this quick turn. You know, every everything runs on a quarterly basis in the corporate world, how do we marry up this idea mark of of loving the employees and giving them all this support and feedback, and you talk about autonomy in the book, as well as being so important, how do we marry that with accountability and high performance? Mark Crowley 31:51 So it's a great question, because I'm sure your audience is like, Okay, you do all this caring and caring, and then at the end of the month, nobody does anything, and Kurt Nelson 32:02 everybody will be fired in three months. Yeah, Mark Crowley 32:04 right. So it may help people listening to us to know that in my I manage sales people most of my career in all kinds of different responsibilities and different levels and so forth, but principally they were responsible for driving sales performance. And every team I ever managed thrived. Every team I ever managed when there was a competitor, if you will, if there were other people like me managing teams of businesses that there were equivalent, our teams consistently outperformed them. And so I was very demanding. Like, if you ask people you know that used to work for me, and go, What's one word to you that you would use to describe Mark Crowley's leadership? They'd go demanding, like most people, go hard, and it's like, no, it's, it's not. It was, it was demanding. But what I used to tell my people was that we used to set the bar so much higher than everybody else did. I mean, we we raised the bar and just said we're aiming so much higher than everybody else in terms of our performance. Now, you have to link rewards to do this. Otherwise it's you're taking advantage of people, right? But in the sense that people understood that we were trying to do great things. I reminded them, nobody is getting the support that you're getting. You're working. You come into a meeting and somebody just had some exceptional accomplishment, you're in the room not just congratulating them and being jealous of them, but hearing what they did to do it, so you can take that idea and go do it yourself. So we're going to we're going to reinforce everybody's growth and success that way. Imagine coming into a meeting where you're feeling like every you know there were like 35 people in these meetings, and knowing that they're all your friends, they're all here to support you. They're, you're you're celebrating the team more than we're celebrating the individual. And it just, it just became this wonderful experience for people to work really hard. So you can be demanding as long as you're supporting people. The problem is, is that what we tend to be is demanding without supporting people. And people burn out, and they're like, I can't, I can't do this anymore. All you do is want, want, want, so you've got to give back if you're going to set high expectations. Kurt Nelson 34:29 Thank you. There's a couple of different pieces I want to touch on. One, just from what you were just saying, you talk about this idea of the team, and building up the team and focusing in on that. And you wrote, the great benefit of Team rituals is that they help develop a deep sense of camaraderie and togetherness, as if everyone's in on a secret, leading ordinary events to grow into meaningful shared experience, the kind of experiences that are cornerstone of human and therefore employee well being. So how do you how, if I'm a leader, how. Can rituals and team building actually transform my culture? How do I tip it that scale? Mark Crowley 35:05 This there's something I mean, I emphasize rituals, and there's a great book, and I can't remember his name, but he's a professor at Yale who wrote a book on ritual that just really, really confirmed what I already knew to be true. So given so the direct answer is, I'm recommending to everyone listening who manages a team to institutionalize recognition. So what we tend to do is we go, Hey Tim, good job today, and then the next day I don't say Tim, congratulations on something else you did. Because, like, Well, Tim knows I did. You know, I like Right, Tim Houlihan 35:42 right? Already Check, check the box, right? Mark Crowley 35:45 Tim's killing it and doing all the things that I want him to do, but that one thank you. Should you know last you for a couple of weeks, that's our belief. So what I did was at the end of every month. So let's, let's just, I'm gonna just simplify it. Let's just say there are five things that we needed to pay attention to every month, right? Those are the big goals. So we would bring everyone together. The very first thing we would do at the meeting is we would have the reports on those five goals. And I had 3034, this, you know, retail bank branches where you go get mortgages and consumer loans and investments and checking accounts. I had 34 of those that I was managing. So all those managers came in once a month, and the first thing we would do is we would have the reports. And so the attitude for most managers is that, okay, let's say out of those 3420 of them hit one of the goals. Let's just the goal number one. Okay, 20s, that's, I don't have time to be thanking all 20 so let's just thank the top three, right? That's the attitude, congratulations to the top three. But the other, the other 21 I forget my numbers here, but the other ones that hit the goal are like, I hit the goal. Like, why am I not getting any love, right? And so my belief is, if you have you know, 3030 people working for you, and 27 of them meet the goal. You have to thank all 27 so what I did was I started at number 27 and said, Congratulations. The manager of the Encinitas branch was at 101% and everybody would congratulate and we would work our way up. And by the way, they got this goes to the issue of rituals Kurt, which is, you know, they loved hearing everybody getting recognition, because they knew they were going to themselves, right? But what I added to it, on a whim, they just had this incredible month, and so we I used to go to the grocery store, like at 630 in the morning, and I would get orange juice and bagels and coffee cake and, you know, and fruits, and I would set up the meeting. I'd make coffee and have agenda. I had an assistant, but I did all this myself. I had the meeting already, so when they came in, coffee's ready, food's there, all that. But while I'm in the grocery store, I see this, like, display and, you know, those, those the bags of candy that have, like, individual Milky Ways, or, you know, to your bars or something, they were on sale. So I just impulsively picked, I go, Okay, let's just say, five goals, 30 branches. So I bought, like, you know, 150 bags of these candies. It was sort of ridiculous. What happened was, so now I go, Okay, the first, let's, let's get to mortgage lending. We'll just pick that one. And the first branch that met their goal was Encinitas at 101% so congratulations, Joe briarton and I took the candy and tossed it to Jill, yeah. And the first reaction was, oh, you know, what are you doing? You know? And by, by the end of the meeting, people are like, snagging them like, you know, look at me, and they're piling the candy bags in front of them. Like, you know, you see what's going on here, right? You know, I get this currency. Oh, right, yes, you know. And so I'm, I'm watching this in real time, and I'm like, Oh man, I'm gonna have to pay retail for this candy going for doing this so for the next three years. So you come in, if you met one of those five goals, you got bags of candy. Well, what ended up happening was they didn't want to come to a meeting and not get candy. I had a manager tell me that she in the first meeting, she got no candy. She met none of the important goals. She went back and had a meeting with her team. Imagine this bank branch, all the employees and explaining that I went to a meeting with my boss and he gave us candy and we didn't candy, and they said, You will never go to another meeting and not come back with candy. Kurt Nelson 39:57 So Mark did. Mark Crowley 40:00 It was magnificent. I mean, just magnificent. Kurt Nelson 40:03 Yeah, I was just going to say, did you actually increase the weight of the branches of all of the people because all the candy that you gave out from, yeah, I'm sure HR is sitting there going, you know, our insurance premiums have just gone up. There you go. Oh, it's a great it's a great story. Mark Crowley 40:21 And other other implication of this that I didn't understand, I didn't see, I just threw out Jill bryerton, who passed away a couple years ago, but Joe called me the next day after that first meeting. And she goes, I want to tell you something really cool that happened. She goes, they she went back with like, five bags of these candies, and she put them in the break room, you know, where people don't have lunch and stuff, and she just put them on the table. And so people were coming in, and they were like, Where'd the candy come from? And she said, Well, Mark Crowley, you know, our regional manager gave them to us. And they were like, Mark Crowley knows what we do here, you know, like he's got this, like he can be and she's like, Yeah, and this is, like, his way of thanking us. So she said, all day long, people were going and grabbing a Milky Way or, you know, and and saying, Thanks, Mark. But they're like, so it wasn't just for the manager, it was the whole team was the beneficiary. I'm like, Okay, I cannot stop this. I've got to do this forever Kurt Nelson 41:25 and love that part of it, because it's not just the manager who is actually getting rewarded for this. It is the team members. Because I'm sure that most of those managers just didn't hoard that and have it in their own office, and that's all they were eating. They shared it with their branches. They shared it with the people. So now it's not just my name getting named in a meeting. It is the team is actually seeing the benefit of all the hard work we're doing to achieve these five goals. And yeah, it's a Milky Way. It's not a big deal, but it means so much more than just a Milky Way. Mark Crowley 41:58 Exactly. Yeah, go buy the bag of candy and go here, you know, you didn't win this month. But here's they were like, I don't want that. Like, you know, I want it from that guy, you know. I want it from him. Tim Houlihan 42:11 Well, in the spirit of cool ideas, if there's one piece of advice that you could give to a new manager, Mark Crowley 42:17 what would that be? Just broadly, like, you know, in the context, Tim Houlihan 42:22 yeah, well, I mean, we're talking about employee engagement. We're talking about getting, getting the teams engaged. Mark Crowley 42:29 You know, the the I'm I'm have to be careful, but I'm working, I'm working with a company, and they've made some management changes at the top, and what I'm seeing is the very first instinct is to go in and go not the right person. We got to make a change here. We got to change the way we're doing things. And we think we're being productive, and we think our bosses who gave us these management jobs are going to be really proud of us, because we went in, you know, we turn things around, and we shape this place up, that kind of a thing, and, and I actually think that is the worst thing you can do, and that the two things that I would do would be to get to know people deeply, like, what's your story like? You know, what brought you here? What's your background, what's your life experience, to the extent that people will share, how can I help you? What's what's going on in your personal life that I might be able to help you with? You know, I have an elderly parent, you know, and every Friday I promise to bring him dinner, and if I could leave early on Fridays to get there and feed them that would make a difference. Just knowing that and making that kind of a sure, you know. And you don't even have to go well, if you're gonna leave 15 minutes early, you need to come in 15 minutes, you know. If you're gonna You don't, you don't need to negotiate that, because that takes the giving away, right? But it's, it's, it's understanding that people are human, and if you can make some slight accommodations, like they have a they have a child that they want to take to school, so come in later and stay later. Nothing wrong with that, right? If you can do those kinds of things. But the idea is to demonstrate to people, I want to know who you are. I want to know everything about you. What do you want out of this job? What do you how do you like to be appreciated? Where do you want to go in five years? You want my job? You want to stay put? What do you want to learn so that you can manage people on an individual basis, and people feel that my new boss really got knows me and cares about me, and the other is, is that I want to get the lay of the land here. We're succeeding in some places and we're not succeeding in others. If you were me, what would you do? What's the first thing you'd fix? So now, now you're getting their feet. So instead of just coming in and going, okay, that we're not doing this anymore, even if you know you're right. Right? You know what I mean? Even if it's so blatantly obvious that we're just going to end this, it's so much better to go look, I came in, got to know everyone. I have a good sense of this team. And I asked you all, what would you do if you were me? And the consistent answers were this, this and this. And so I'm taking those that advice, your advice, and I'm going to go implement this. So now they're like, he listened to us, right? That's that's powerful, right? As opposed to, you hear all this, you don't give them any credit. You go, I've made these three changes, and the guy's going, but I told you to do that. You know you're not, right? So if I was a new manager, and be humble. Tim Houlihan 45:48 Kurt, may I you may I'm here at behavioral grooves headquarters. Mark, we often talk about music. Kurt Nelson 45:58 That's funny. Wait, when did headquarters move to North Carolina from Minnesota? Tim Houlihan 46:02 It's always been in North Carolina since I moved here. Mark, we're not so much interested in what's on your playlist as much as if you were on a desert island and you you had a listening device with you, but it would only store two musical artists catalogs. Which two artists would you take with you? Mark Crowley 46:24 Van Morrison, no, no question, yeah, and I would narrow it down to George Harrison, but I would broadly say the Beatles would be the two that I would take. Tim Houlihan 46:38 Then you get George Harrison along with, right? Yeah, Courtney and Lennon and Van Gogh and, yeah, that's Mark Crowley 46:45 a good call. Those of you The two Tim Houlihan 46:47 are, I'm, you know, Crowley, from what I understand is an Irish heritage name, right? Are you playing to Van Morrison? Because you have some connectivity to the Emerald Isle, Mark Crowley 46:59 but my wife is a Casey and so that's Irish too. And apparently, you know, we're from the same area in Ireland, but we both sort of think that we have a cellular connection to Van Morrison. I've seen him in concert 15 times. Oh, wow, and all over America. And fact, I want to go to, they just had the British Open last week, and it was in Belfast, and I thought, I gotta go. And I gotta go see Van Morrison. I want to play those golf courses. See that territory. I've never been to Ireland. Oh, there's something, you know, funny, funny story, not funny. But when I whenever I speak, the last thing that I do before I walk out the room, you know, if I'm in a hotel or, you know, if I'm wherever I am, where I'm walking, going now to the venue, even if it's in the venue, the last two things I do is I listen to, did you get healed by Van Morrison, and My sweet lord by by George, George, oh my gosh, that's my ritual. And like, but, but by the time I'm done, I'm so ready to go, because those two songs have such a deep impact on me. So it's great. Tim Houlihan 48:19 That is so cool. I love that. Fantastic. Yeah. Mark Crowley, thanks so much for being a guest on behavioral grooves today. We love this conversation. We really wonderful. Mark Crowley 48:29 So thank you very much. You made this very fun and very interesting. Kurt Nelson 48:39 Welcome to our grooving session where Tim and I share ideas on what we learned from our discussion with Mark, have a free flowing conversation and groove on whatever else comes into our well being brains. Tim Houlihan 48:51 God, if we were only well being all the time, actually, I guess most of the time, pretty good well being, Kurt Nelson 48:57 well being so I I was, actually, this was a fun interview. I was, I was not sure it was going to be, and I thought it ended up being a pretty fun interview. There you Tim Houlihan 49:09 go. I would agree. I would agree. Mark is a really bright guy, and it's really great to have good conversations with really bright people. So that always ranks up there with me. So, so where would you like to start? Kurt Nelson 49:24 Well, I thought it was really interesting, you know, the idea that was brought up that, you know, the traditional wisdom is that people don't quit companies. They quit their bosses. Tim Houlihan 49:34 And that's well known, well, well observed, generally accepted, right? Kurt Nelson 49:39 And there's truth in that, right? There is, there is truth we've we're doing work on, you know, the groove effect, and kind of doing some research on what gets people in their groove and out of their groove. And it's part of what we're finding, right? That bosses are really vital. This is Tim Houlihan 49:59 like this. Study of groovology, basically, I like Kurt Nelson 50:04 groovology. We should rename our thing to groovology. How about that? Tim Houlihan 50:10 That's groovology, right? Yeah. There we go. Kurt Nelson 50:14 But I think what Mark is kind of saying is look that we might have some of this backwards, right? Tim Houlihan 50:19 Yeah, yeah, that this idea is, it's might be more about belonging than it is just the boss, right? That sense of community or, or, I mean, this is, we're connecting this to Robert Cialdini work, right? Yeah, liking and feeling like we're on the same team, social proof, social norms, when I feel like I'm being heard, when I feel like I'm a part of the team, that's a really powerful motivator. It's a really powerful engagement tool, to make me feel like I'm willing to go the extra mile, because I'm part of something, Kurt Nelson 50:57 right? I mean, and again, we look back at traditional beliefs, where, all right, traditional economics says, hey, if I pay somebody more, they're going to be more motivated. And we know that that's not how we're wired and we've that's the work that we do every single day. Is, yeah, money's important, and more money does drive behaviors, and it does do certain things, but people are craving other things as well. And this is going back to the candy, right? The tossing of the candy, right? It wasn't, it wasn't payment, no, it wasn't like, Oh, this is a $5 bag of candy here, here you go, and it would not have had the same impact if it would have been, hey, here's a $10 bill. You know, twice what the candy cost. Unknown Speaker 51:49 Yes, Kurt Nelson 51:50 yes, right. It was, it was proof. It was proof that someone noticed their achievement. And the currency wasn't the candy, it wasn't the chocolate, it was the currency. Was acknowledgement. Tim Houlihan 52:03 I love that. It reminds me of work done on why, or just sort of the general behavioral science question of why you remove the the price tag from a bottle of wine when you're going to some friend's house for dinner. Now you don't want to announce that you're a cheap ass and you only spent $7 on that bottle of wine. You just want them to know that you thought enough about it to stop at the liquor store on the way over to the party to get a bottle of wine for them to say thank you so you guys, the fact that they're hosting you Kurt Nelson 52:38 so you shouldn't get the two BOTTLE CHUCK, Tim Houlihan 52:41 $2.02 Buck chuck to Kurt Nelson 52:44 chuck, right? Because that's well known that it's only a few doubt you can tear that price tag off and it doesn't matter, right? But you could get the $3 Charlie, and it would be fine, Tim Houlihan 52:56 well, but Okay, so, so Kurt, why does it work? Why? Why does throwing a bag of candy work better than giving someone $10 that might be worth twice as much as the actual because they could go out and buy whatever they want. They could go and buy, buy the buy a bigger bag of candy if they wanted to. So what? Kurt Nelson 53:18 What I loved about this was it was going to the branch managers, and then the branch managers brought that can is more candy than they were going to eat, right? Yeah. And so it wasn't like a gift, like, Oh, I get a chocolate Snickers bar. And Yum, thank you. It was that they brought it back. And when they brought it back, what happened? It gets distributed. It gets distributed. They share it with their team. It builds this, like, Hey everybody, it's, it's the it's the candy at the, you know, the and everybody congregates around. It's like, when you have a party, where do people show up? They show up in the kitchen with the food, right? It's like, we like that. There's, there's an institutionalization of this gathering of people different pieces. And I think that is the piece. It's this. It's acknowledgement of the bonding that goes on with this. It's the connections that people have. It is it becomes a ritual. It becomes this kind of look forward to aspect of it. And I think there's that's powerful. I think there's other ways of achieving that. I think that it's not so. What I don't want listeners is just get bags of candy and give them to your bosses, right? That's not what we're talking about here. And I think there's actually probably even more powerful ways of being able to do this. You know that we could that, that people could Tim Houlihan 54:43 incorporate. Are you thinking just give people more cash? Yeah, exactly. Kurt Nelson 54:50 You have not listened. You're not Tim Houlihan 54:51 listening to, I know, not listening, right? It's, it is. This is an opportunity, though, to take a good, good, golden nine. Plug it and turn it into something for your organization that could be in the form of a variety of rec of non cash rewards and yes, and then recognition, which are which have proven to be very powerful at engaging your teams and actually building the Supreme Court, helping build this sense of belonging, if you do it in the right way, if you would apply it in a way that is meaningful, relevant to the culture and the objectives that the company wants to achieve. This can be non monetary rewards. Can be very powerful stuff. Kurt Nelson 55:32 So I worked with a large pharmaceutical many years ago, and one of the things that we did, and again, we had to fight for this within the organization, because they were going, why would we do this? We created a top managers guild, right? Yeah. So we called it a guild very specifically. We brought in this idea of, you know, the the medieval guilds, where you learn and you're, you're a select group that brings us in, and basically that was their recognition for managers and people are going well, you know? And we brought them into home office, and we had them basically spend two days. We gave them a really nice dinner. But home office was located in an industrial town that wasn't like, you're not going to everybody's like, so we were, we had pushback. People are going, they're gonna, they're gonna want to go to Hawaii, they're gonna want to do all these things and have this vacation. And then we, we talked to them, we talked them out of that, because we said, what we're doing is we're creating this community, and this community is based upon, it's, it's recognizing their achievement. Not only is it recognizing their achievement, it is putting them in connection with the senior leadership within the team that was part of what we were doing, creating this guild that had special access. So we had special meetings where we talked about we had, they got previews of things like new products like that. Nobody else had, right? So there were new products being in development. Well, they just talked to the board about those, and then they came and talked to this group, right? It was like they were on level with the board and the knowledge that they had, they had aspects of they had special projects. We made them work on special projects. And again, people are going, nobody's going to want to and they're going, No these are special projects that are being sponsored by the President, and it was one of the best programs, and highest rated programs that they did because we were tapping into that communal that team achievement, that all those different pieces. Tim Houlihan 57:50 Yeah, I think it's a great example of using in group, out group, in a really positive way, in contrast to that when Steve Jobs was developing the Mac and he set up a big tent in the middle of the Apple campus and raised the Jolly Roger over it to say, we're the pirates, and only only the people who had access to the Mac Team credentials could get into the tent. That created a lot of animosity with the rest of the company, like we're all bright, hard working, dedicated engineers, designers and promoters. Why wouldn't we get access to that? But in your case, with your pharmaceutical client, you built it on skill and achievement, Kurt Nelson 58:39 and so skill and achievement, and next year, you could be part of this guild. The Guild was not something that you earned once and then were in in it for life, right? You had to, you had to re earn it, and you had the opportunity. So it was a, it's a classic incentive, but the reward was, was tapping into these other pieces, which is, again, the power of behavioral science in organizations. Isn't just, you know, for marketing or advertising, it is under understanding how people interact with each other, what drives their motivations and various different pieces. And so I think it's really fascinating that part. Tim Houlihan 59:23 So I also I love that story. Thank you for sharing that. I also want to emphasize this idea that this sense of belonging enhances our relationships with other people. If we feel like we're in the same group, then we're more likely to sort of overcome each other's shortcomings, you know, a simple mistake. Oh, you know, I flubbed up. Sorry about that. The other people in that group, if I have this sense of belonging, are more willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. Kurt Nelson 59:58 Yeah, they'll accept your quirks. They'll. Well, the you know, like I do with you, you know, and you do with me, but, but you'll also to that degree, we were less likely to have the fundamental attribution error, right? We're more likely Cialdini sense of unity, that we actually like that person better. We will trust what they say more. There's a number of benefits of that belonging that are really important. And I think one of the things is that people can do, particularly leaders can do, is to get to know their team members, their peers more deeply? Yeah, right. I've heard and I think, and I don't have good research on this, but I but I think the organizational world and younger generations aren't having those in depth best friends at work, as much as we used to, right? I think there that was a thing where your friend group, part of your friend group, that you did things outside of work, were with your work friends and doing those things, and you got to know them on a much more intimate, intimate, not being sexual, but just on a more, deeper, deeper level with them. Unknown Speaker 1:01:27 And that's important, right? Tim Houlihan 1:01:30 Well, yeah, well, certainly the the pandemic fractured the way that we think about working with other people. It. There's been teams working remotely for years and years and years, right? This is not it was certainly not new when we got to the pandemic, but it impacted more people, and I think that that could have changed this idea of, how do we get to know somebody if I never see them in the office, I if I don't have sort of just hang time with them, or that incidental, we're at the water cooler kind of thing together. So I get that that it's more difficult, but it could be solved by leaders having just more compassionate curiosity about their team members. Kurt Nelson 1:02:10 Yeah, good. Kwami Christian quote coming back in that compassionate curiosity, which is applied to so many different things. I think it's I think it's true. I think there's an aspect of, obviously, hybrid and remote work adding to this, I think there's just a difference to in generations, in how they interact and various different things. And so this is one that I think there needs to be more research on at some point. Is, is, is, how? How do you build those connections inside of an organization that are meaningful, that give you a sense of belonging at that deep level? Tim Houlihan 1:02:53 So, yeah, anything else you want to cover before we wrap up Kurt Nelson 1:02:58 just how awesome you are. But other than that, no, go ahead. We're at time. So Tim Houlihan 1:03:12 we want to let everybody know, if you haven't heard already, that we are having a major celebration coming up in Minneapolis, Minnesota on October 16, 2025 it is our eighth anniversary, celebrating our 500th episode. Big celebration party. We want everybody to be there. Yeah, wherever you are in the world, come, yeah, Kurt Nelson 1:03:32 take it. Hop on a plane, grab a grab a train. You know, get in your car. Tim Houlihan 1:03:36 Hit it's a live in person event only, so you got to be there, Kurt Nelson 1:03:40 live in person in Minneapolis. We're gonna have Professor Nick Epley from the University of Chicago there. We are gonna have a conversation with him, and he has talked to us about doing some crazy experiment that'd be fun. There you go. You and I are gonna share some antidotes, some, yeah, stories, some lessons learned. Some, what? What else Tim Houlihan 1:04:08 I think Lessons Learned would be enough, actually, but 500 episodes we've observed a thing or two, we've got some thoughts about sort of what makes applied behavioral science work. So, yeah, we'll be talking about that. And if you can't, if you just think, oh, man, I just can't afford to fly all the way to the United States, you know, then take another flight to Minneapolis, St Paul, and then take the train to Malcolm yards, where the event is, and then get a hotel. And all the expenses involved in that, I have an alternative. You could subscribe to our sub stack, which is only $5 a month. That would be a super easy way to do that. It's not exactly Kurt Nelson 1:04:54 super simple. People should do it, and they should. They should opt in for the $5 month. Right? Tim Houlihan 1:05:00 Yeah, that one, yeah, I think so, yeah, yeah. Kurt Nelson 1:05:03 That's, that's the best, that's the best version of our sub stack that you should get anyway, you know. And if you can't even do that, if that's too much, you could definitely just leave us a review. How about that? That's that doesn't if you like it, if you like us, you think that this is worthwhile. It's a great way for other people. It's just that, it's that acknowledgement, it's that sense of you can get a sense of belonging by providing a five star review for us and others. Could feel like, Hey, this is a group I want to belong to and be with Tim Houlihan 1:05:41 and even Okay, so let's take it down one more notch. If writing a few words is too much, just do the rating. Just click four or five stars, whatever it is, just however many stars you think it's up to you. Yeah, it's not a report card, which is, it's just something that we would love for you to do. Yeah, okay, Kurt Nelson 1:06:03 so with that, we hope you have enjoyed this episode. We hope that you are able to take some of Mark's ideas that we talked about in this episode and use them this week as you go out and find your groove. You you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai