Presence: Presence starts with positive leadership

04/24/24 • 38 min

1 Listener

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

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

Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/eatsleepworkrepeat.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

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.

For me presence is related to flow

Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/eatsleepworkrepeat.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

“Workers watch your feet, not your lips” - changing culture at scale

To receive the newsletter and the forthcoming Presence project sign-up here

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

Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/eatsleepworkrepeat.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

Presence: our rituals show what matters to us

This episode is part of the Presence project: Presence: Fixing culture starts with your calendar, not your office

Kursat Ozenc is a product designer who he teaches at Stanford university, He teaches on the subject that we can all learn from which is the idea that culture can be designed. The specific tool he uses to design culture is the creation of workplace rituals.

Kursat's Substack newsletter

Kursat's first book is here and the second, on virtual meetings is here.

The reading list for Kursat's course is here

Kursat’s book includes the suggestions that: ‘The rituals in our life show what we care about’. Critically then creating rituals demonstrate what our culture values.

Kursat gives five use cases for rituals:

For change
Creativity
Performance
Conflict
Community

If you like this episode you'll also like the episode that accompanies it - which goes into depth about specific rituals that companies have used. Listen to that episode here.

A full transcript of the episode is at the website.

Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/eatsleepworkrepeat.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.