Embracing Change: Loneliness and Community in Workplaces

Explore the dynamic future of work with Brian Milner and Heather McGowan as they discuss the essential shifts in mindset and culture needed to thrive in the augmented era.

Overview

In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian Milner interviews Heather McGowan, a renowned future of work strategist, about the rapidly changing landscape of work in the augmented era.

Heather emphasizes the importance of adaptation, empathy, and human connection in response to technological, societal, and cultural shifts. They discuss the pervasive issue of loneliness in the workplace and the critical role of leaders in fostering a culture of trust, agency, and high expectations to drive performance and productivity.

Heather also shares insights on finding personal purpose and intrinsic motivation to excel in the future of work. This conversation provides valuable strategies for individuals and leaders to navigate the evolving work environment successfully.

References and resources mentioned in the show:

Heather McGowan
Heather’s Website
The Adaptation Advantage by Heather McGowan & Chris Shipley
The Empathy Advantage by Heather McGowan & Chris Shipley
The UpSwing by Robert Putnam
Agile Training for Teams & Leaders
Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast
Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule
Join the Agile Mentors Community

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This episode’s presenters are:

Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.

Heather McGowan is a leading strategist and keynote speaker on the Future of Work, known for transforming mindsets and organizations with her insights on continuous learning, leadership, and culture. Her groundbreaking approach has empowered employees, enhanced leaders' effectiveness through empathy, and driven businesses to achieve their goals in a rapidly evolving market.

Auto-generated Transcript:

Brian (00:00)
Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back with you for another episode of the Agile Mentors podcast. I'm with you as always, Brian Milner. And today we have someone I'm very, very excited to have on. She was the keynote speaker that kicked off our Scrum Gathering in New Orleans this year. It's Ms. Heather McGowan. So welcome in, Heather.

Heather (00:20)
Hey there, thanks so much for having

Brian (00:23)
I'm so excited to have Heather in. If you're not familiar with Heather's work, she has, think, the best job title I think I've ever heard. She is the future of work strategist. And like I said, that's awesome. I love that. But beyond that, there's a lot that I could say about Heather to introduce her to you. But I'll give you a couple of things just so you kind of understand the perspective of her coming home. First, She was named one of the top 50 female futurists by Forbes. So let that sink in. She also has two incredible books out there. One called The Adaptation Advantage. has more than two books, two recent books. The Adaptation Advantage, Let Go, Learn Fast, and Thrive in the Future of Work. That's one. And her latest one that just came out recently, it's called The Empathy Advantage. leading the empowered workforce. And I'm very, excited to have her on because her talk at the Scrum Gathering really captured my imagination. And I think everyone's imagination there. so let's just dive in, Heather. Let's talk about this whole concept of the future of work. And I think one of the ways you started in the presentation, I think, was really important to try to understand where we are on the timeline of the work. the way we have progressed through ways of working. So where are we? Where would you put us on the timeline?

Heather (01:57)
Yeah, so first of all, the title, Future Work Strategist, was not something I applied for. It's a title.

Brian (02:03)
Really? Because I want to fill out that job application.

Heather (02:07)
It's a title I created because I felt like there was a need for many of us to be working in looking at the future work, which is something that will never be done. It often gets conflated with being about where we work or DEI issues, but really it is about those things. But for me, it's about leadership, it's about workforce, it's about learning, it's about adaptation, it's about purpose. It's about adapting right now pretty rapid changes that are not only technological, but societal and cultural and demographic and generational. And we're wrestling with just a lot of change at once. one of the things I say to folks is sometimes I think that the majority of what we're going to be doing in the near term is helping each other adapt. Because we're to have to adapt at a clip we've never had to adapt to before. Prior generations had maybe one paradigm shifting change in a generation. Now we might have three or four.

Brian (03:02)
Yeah.

Heather (03:03)
So in terms of where we are, we had the agricultural era and the industrial era and the information era. Well, we're now in the augmented era. So we're dealing with technology consuming tasks that we do at a faster and faster clip. And a lot of people kind of catastrophize it about technology taking away jobs. We're the only species that would invent things to make ourselves irrelevant. that's how what people, but it doesn't make any sense. What we're really doing is inventing technologies that augment our potential. And it requires us to not only learn and adapt and think about differently about who we are, which is what the adaptation advantage was really about, but how do we relate to each other? How do we get the best out of each other? And that's really what the empathy advantage was about. So we're in the augmented era. Technology is going to continue to come at a faster and faster clip. But it's more important for us to think about how we learn and adapt and how we lean into our uniquely human skills. Because... The technology can provide the answers, but it's up to us to find the questions.

Brian (04:04)
That's awesome. Yeah. I think that's such an excellent point that, you know, just trying to think about the fact that, yes, in previous generations, there may have been one paradigm shifting kind of change that comes through a lifetime in the way that we work. But in our lifetimes, we've dealt with the Internet coming on board and we've dealt with multiple revolutions since then, mobile and AI. And these things happen. it's such a greater clip that it really does shift even even things like COVID changing, a lot of places working from home previously was always in the office. It seems like change is the constant now and that change is kind of the thing that we need to get good at is being adaptive and able to change. Why do you feel like, I'm just kind of curious of your opinion on this, why do feel like we're so resistant as humans to just change in general?

Heather (05:00)
I think we have a fear of obsolescence. then in times like right now, I delve into this sometimes in some of my talks, is we're going through some pretty significant division and polarization. It's really acute in the US, but it's happening all over the world. You look at the elections in France and the UK recently. I think it's important to understand how that happened because a lot of people think that's just social media. And technology did come into play, but if you look back in the US anyway in the 70s and 80s, that's when we started to see a real erosion in our social fabric. We started having fewer people over for dinner and being part of fewer fewer clubs, talking to our neighbors less. So we got more and more isolated. And then we had a loneliness epidemic that's been around for at least a decade or so, which, and when you're lonely, your amygdala, the kind of reptilian part of your brain goes into overdrive. So you go into fight or flight mode. So you have a lot of change, isolation, fight or flight mode, and then you throw in social media that kind of catastrophizes things. And we're all in this us versus them mode. And we've stopped seeing, hearing each other. And one of my messages in almost all my talks is we have so much more in common than we have in difference. They show lots of studies from it. So if we just could start talking to each other again, we may not vote for the same candidate. We don't vote for the same teams, but we both love the sport. And that's what we need to get back to is understanding how much we have in common because so much of the work we're going to be doing, especially when technology comes in, is communication, collaboration, exploration. And all of those things require us to relate to each other because you're going to see something that I don't see. And if I only hired people who think like me, it would be tragic because I wouldn't see the entirety of the opportunity. So if you want to really drive profitable growth in your company, you want those diversities of inputs and you want to set a culture that has people see and hear each other so you can see optimally the opportunity space. And because that's what we're going to be doing. It's most of the work we're going be doing.

Brian (06:55)
Yeah, yeah, this is a fascinating fact to me because I, one of the things I start in your presentation is just this idea about loneliness. And I absolutely agree. You know, there's, I think we all can kind of recognize that even though we've tried to create these social media companies that to try to, you know, get a, gain a stronger sense of connection in some ways it's driven the opposite of this sort of loneliness factor. But I'm curious from from some sort of a sociological perspective, that has, it seems, transferred into our workplace. And I know one of your stats there was about how we feel more lonely at work. And I'm just curious, what do you think is driving that, the kind of sense of loneliness that we have while at

Heather (07:48)
Yeah, know, some folks will point that to being about where we work. That's not my area of expertise. There plenty of people who look at where we work. That may be a factor for some folks if you're working remotely and you don't see other people, certainly a factor. But what I think what's really happening is we've outsized what work is in our lives. So community used to consist of social interactions, religious affiliations. clubs and groups we belong to, all of those kind of, if you think of them as circles, because everything's visual to me, all those circles shrank and work became bigger. So now part of it's generational change, but more and more people are looking for work to provide their purpose, work to provide most of their relationships, work to fill these. So it's a little bit in terms of how we're interacting with each other that's causing the loneliness, but it's also an outsize expectation we have around work. So now it becomes table stakes for a lot of organizations for work to be my self -expression, work to be my sense of purpose, work to be where I think about my values. And it wasn't like that a few decades ago.

Brian (08:49)
Yeah. Yeah, that's, I just, I love that point. think you're absolutely hitting the nail on the head with that. And, and, know, just so everyone listening doesn't, doesn't misinterpret this in any way, you know, we're not, we're not saying in any way that those other kinds of organizations like churches or community groups or anything are bad or that you shouldn't see community and those kinds of things. It's just that our society has sort of moved away from those as being the foundational, places where we get community and you're I absolutely agree. is, work has sort of filled that. Sort of analogous, I think, to the way that police have become the front line of our mental health,

Heather (09:27)
Mental health, yeah, exactly. Exactly, and that's not fair to the police and they're not prepared to do that and, you know, we suffer. I think the point with work is that that is where we are. So if you're leading an organization today, that is a reality. I hope that changes. I'm a big fan of Robert Putnam. He wrote Bullying Alone in the late 90s and he pointed out the sort of phrase we're having in ourselves, of fabric. He had another book that came out in, I think it was 2020 or 2021, in the middle of pandemic where he... which was called the upswing, where he says we go through these kind of, you you think about it like a pendulum, we go through periods of high collectivism, you know, the kind of the eye to the we. And we're at the highest, you know, the lowest level of the we and the highest level of the eye in terms of being isolated and all that we do. And we're primed to go back into a we phase. So I'll be interested to see what forms of community start to emerge because we're primed to have that happen. Soon, like I notice is a, live most of the time in Florida, part of the time in Massachusetts. It's a restaurant I go to in Florida. And I was like, why do we love that restaurant so much? I do like the food. It's very good. But it has a situation that an empty seat is is a, is anywhere you could sit. So if I come in by myself or with one other person, they would sit me at the table with one other person or two or 300 people. It's community seating. So you end up sitting with people that you don't know having conversations. It's kind of like a forced community. It's fantastic.

Brian (10:53)
Yeah, that's awesome. I love that. I mean, I will say, you know, the introvert part of me is like, I don't want to sit down. Right. Yeah. I identify with that. Yeah. Awesome. Well, so if we have this problem, right, we're dealing with, with a fear of change. We're dealing with a work in place that is lonelier than it's ever been. And we were dealing with a population that's seeking belongings, sinking.

Heather (10:59)
I'm an introvert too, but when I'm forced, it's good for me.

Brian (11:23)
connection and community while at work. I think you're right that that has a profound impact on the way we work even. And I know you talked a little bit about just kind of the main drivers of productivity, the main drivers of being successful. And I think that this is maybe counterintuitive to what some people think. Help us, talk us through that a little bit about what you found as far as what really drives productivity.

Heather (11:58)
Sure, so just to give you a little background on me that relates to this point. So I spent the last, prior to when I started speaking full time, which is about 10 years ago, I spent 10 to 15 years working on the corporate side, industrial design, product design, design strategy, so new innovation stuff. And every organization I went into, I felt people really weren't equipped. to propositionally think. They could reiterate on the existing solutions. If they had a product, they could make another version of that product, but they couldn't jump entirely to a white space and think of something where we didn't have a contextual reference. And then I found myself working in higher ed because I had a mentor who became president of university and he said, I want to create a new college focused on innovation. And I think you understand it better than anybody else. So I built a new college focused on innovation. From those two sides, I saw the supply and the demand side of talent. And what I saw happening, and this is what kind of led to my speaking career, is we're not preparing people to do the kind of work we need people to do. We're hiring people based on past skills and experience degrees. We've now like edged all the way up to skills -based hiring. But what that really is, is hiring somebody who can demonstrate that they can do something you need them to do. What happens when they get there three or four months later and you need them to do something that's never been done before? So we need to prepare more people to do work that's never been done before. And how do you do that? I think you look more at behaviors. And then how do you activate those behaviors? So what you look for in people is some level of skill, but also behaviors that will tell you what they'll do when they don't know what to do. And that is basically what culture is. Culture is collective behaviors. So that's how you screen for people. And then how do you set the conditions to activate those behaviors? What we've done in the past is hire the skills and exert some hustle culture. And that's going to rev the engine of productivity. We did that until we hit burnout and we're still hitting burnout and we're still hitting burnout and unhappiness and disengagement. So we went from hustle culture to going, we need more engagement. we need shared purpose. we need psychological safety. Well, what's behind all of that is we need humans who feel seen and heard. Somebody cares about me. I trust my leader. You set those conditions to people who have agency and they'll activate those behaviors for which you hired them. And so they have some of the skills you need. They're going to have to acquire so many more because you don't know the work they're going to be doing. So we got to focus on what I say is culture and then people who want to build their capacity.

Brian (14:29)
Yeah, yeah, I love that point. And I think you're absolutely right. I'm kind of so we've been building towards skill based kind of hiring instead of behavior based hiring. And we should be looking more at building people who have the right behaviors to learn and grow and change and adapt. So I'm kind of curious your take on this, because I know that in the past few years, especially, I don't know if you've seen this, think I've noticed this in multiple sections, but there seems to have been sort of this segment of management that has returned a little bit, kind of tried to turn the clock back and gone back to a little bit of Taylorism and kind of the idea of, you you need to push and drive your employees to work harder. And I even see that in some job postings and things about how, you know, there's sort of a rise more traditional project management, is really more based on pushing and driving than enabling. I'm just curious, what's your take? Why do you think that's resurfaced?

Heather (15:41)
I think we got a lot of fatigue coming out of COVID. I remember us doing the sort of the press tour and everything for the Empty Advantage last spring. one, I was talking to a group of CEOs and they said to me, you know what, we're just tired of caring. And because they were being honest with me. And I said, well, explain to what you mean. And they said, well, I get it. We have to be empathetic and we have to feel bad for people and expect less of them. And I said, there's compassion and you should have that instances. And there's empathy and they are not the same thing. When I'm talking about empathy, it's about understanding the people that you're hiring and what motivates them so you can help them become what I call self -propelled. Because you cannot get people to learn and adapt at the speed, scale and scope we're gonna need through just extrinsic pressure. And there's a return to that right now. I think it's some COVID fatigue of just, you know, exhausted because people did have to care a lot for their people. But you know what, we had higher levels We had higher levels of engagement. had higher levels of productivity at the height of the pandemic because we were caring. And that was a little care fatigue. so the care fatigue hits a little economic uncertainty. We've been waiting for a recession. Inflation's been sticky. It's harder to run your business tomorrow than it was yesterday. Again, all those things. But a return to kind of the beatings will continue until the morale improves has never worked. But there is certainly a push to try that now. And I get But you're not going to get the performance out of people that way. just don't believe it. A very small percentage of people that works on most of us work best when we feel like we can trust our boss. We have agency. We have high expectations. I mean, all the studies that I've seen, the best jobs people had with the highest level of performance were when they challenged themselves, they had respect, they had autonomy, and they had agency.

Brian (17:33)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely agree. It just, it fascinated me when I saw that kind of return and rear its ugly head again and think, and my thought was, we've tried this, you know, like this is, it's not that this hasn't been tested and tried, we've run this experiment and it failed and we've progressed into this new era. And I think sometimes there's a leadership kind of misunderstanding that we're just trying to be nice. Like people just want us to be nice. And it's just about being kind of more friendly and kind. And that's what all these management consultants want us to be. there's a purpose behind it. It's because it works. It's not because it just makes you a better person, though it does. But it actually is better for your business to do

Heather (18:21)
Yeah, I think what happened is we had such a long stretch of Taylorism that we presume that that is the model that works. had four years of caring and we had good performance. And that gets sort of conflated with where we work, which I think is a completely separate thing. I think we've got to return to, not return to, we've got to go forward and to say, what did we learn in those four years? What are the things that really worked? How did we really better performance out of people. Because at the end of the day, it's what you're to do. It's why you run your organization. We are in a capitalist society. You're going to run your organization getting the highest level of performance. Highest level of performance and productivity is getting the highest level of performance out of your people. Highest level of performance out of your people comes when you trust them, they have agency, you hire for the right behaviors, you set the right conditions, and you encourage them to do things they never thought they could do. And that's what comes out of all the studies.

Brian (19:11)
Yeah. Yeah. And I know you, you, you drawn kind of this, this really interesting connection, I think between performance and, and mental health and sort of the idea of, you know, that we, again, building on what we've said, right? If our organizations are where we're seeking community and we're feeling lonely, then that this does impact how we work. so it shouldn't be that far of a leap for people to understand how, Hey, if, if, our work environments are damaging people's mental health, that directly impacts performance.

Heather (19:47)
Yeah, and you just look at the studies like, know, the companies that are ranked best places to work, they're ranked best places to work by the employees, because the employees are happy there. And you know what? Their performance is something like 16 % higher than the companies that are on the list. So it's pretty clear. You're getting the performance when people are happy, not you're going to get the performance. You're going to be happy when you get the performance. It's the other way around. We're looking at it backwards.

Brian (20:12)
Yeah, I agree. And one of the stats that jumped out at me in your presentation was this stat about how big of a role your direct manager or leader has on your mental health, just in general and overall in life. So tell us a little bit about

Heather (20:32)
Yeah, there were three different studies I think I cited in the piece you're talking about. First, the employer has a greater influence on your mental health than your spouse, partner, or therapist if you have one.

Brian (20:46)
That's so, I just got a full stop there. Like that is so amazing to me. Your boss has more impact on your mental health than your spouse. That just blows my mind, sorry.

Heather (20:57)
And the greatest source of stress in your life is your job. And then there was another study, which I thought was fascinating, and it was looking at lower paid workers generally not highly educated. The relationship, this was a longitudinal study, and it was only like four or 500 people, but they looked at your relationship with your direct supervisor. If your direct supervisor treated you with respect, gave you agency, gave you autonomy, you trusted them, you went home and raised your children such that they had higher levels of economic, social, and financial success. So not only is your boss influencing your life, you're influencing the next generation and thereby the next workforce. So there's a lot more we should be doing preparing these leaders for having this what is now an awesome responsibility. It's a really profound responsibility. And it's because I think work has become so outsized in our lives. And it's going to be. It's going to continue to be.

Brian (21:58)
Yeah. Yeah. So no pressure, leaders, right? I mean, no pressure on the fact that not only are you concerned with your business and your employees, but the future generation of workers. Right.

Heather (22:09)
And we need to help those leaders. We need to help them put on a gas mask before they try to help anybody else.

Brian (22:14)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So, you know, we're in this, first of all, I think this is this huge dichotomy of, you know, as we said, we're in the age of people feeling lonely at work. While when we look at our process kind of evolution, we're in a teaming phase of process. We value, especially here, you know, an Agilist and people who practice Scrum. We're all about teamwork. It's all about working together as a team. So I'm curious, kind of your take on that. Why do you feel like we still have this sense of loneliness, even though we're trying to move more and more of our process towards being collaborative and team -based?

Heather (22:58)
I think we forgot to know how to connect to each other. And we can't get it all from work, but since we're looking to get so much of it from work, we need to figure it out there. I mean, how many, you know, they found these studies that, you know, you're happier at work if you have a best friend at work. It used to be that people met their spouse or partner through church work, or I can't remember the third one. Now it's mostly online. So even though we're in work, we're not. forming our social circles around work as much anymore. And it's not really, because this started long before the pandemic, so it's not just that we're working remotely and that's why our social circles aren't happening there. I think we forgot how to connect with each other. We forgot to say, how are you and mean it, instead of just waiting for fine. We forgot to have conversations that had something other than to do than what we're doing. We just forgot how to be human and have meaningful connections. And I think when you start having conversations with people about that, like I was just in Prague last month for a talk, and there was another speaker. And we connected beforehand, we sort of knew each other, and his talk was on human connection, my talk was on the future work as human, because all my talks are bespoke to the audience and what they need. And so we coordinated our two talks. And then while I was there, in his talk, he talked about how both of his parents died suddenly, within like three months of each other. And it was a really impactful part of his talk and an impactful part of the most important conversations you have in his life, in your life, et cetera. And then when I was in Prague, I got a call that said my father was dying and I had to leave. And I messaged him. And now we message each other every single day to check in with each other. It was a catalyst for a human connection you don't normally have when you share a stage with someone for five minutes. But I'm noticing more and more that people are trying to do They're trying to make more meaningful and lasting connections that are, you know, we talk about speaking, but really we talk about how are you? What are you going through? How's your breathing going today? What do you have on store for the weekend? And I've done that with a number of speakers who've become close friends. And I think more and more folks need to be, feel comfortable just reaching out and doing that and having a real connection with folks that doesn't have to do with a product that's due or a deadline or a financial goal or what have you, but has to do with. What we all want is humans, which is ultimately connection.

Brian (25:14)
Yeah, boy, I can't agree more. Well, we're getting towards the end of our time. before we wrap, one thing I wanted to ask is, we have listeners here that are leaders. We have listeners that are involved in Scrum teams. We may have some Scrum masters and product owners that are listening. And they're hearing this, probably agreeing a lot with what they're hearing from you. So my question for you then is if you were to talk to that group, if there were some advice you could give them, tips you could give them to better prepare them for the future of work, for where we're headed, what kind of advice would you give people currently working on Teams?

Heather (26:02)
I think the most important thing to figure out, and some people take a lifetime doing it, some people are born doing it, is what do you really care about? What kind of impact do you want to have on the world? How do you like to work? What kind of problems do you like to work on or find or frame? Where do you like to work in the process? Because more self -awareness you have about what really drives you, because that's really your fuel source, the better you're going to be in whatever you do. We tend to tell people, funnel people into careers based on what they're told they're good at, or more likely what they're told they're not good instead of focusing on what gives them energy. Because if we're going to have to learn and adapt, and we are, then we ought to be learning adapting around something we're intrinsically motivated to do.

Brian (26:46)
That's awesome. Yeah, I agree. It sounds very close to, you know, Simon Sinek's kind of find your why basis there of just, you know, that being so important in what drives us. So couldn't agree more. That's that's awesome. Well, I want to be respectful of your time and our listeners time. So, Heather, I can't thank you enough. Every time I hear you talk, I feel like I've taken another leap and have more stuff to go research and and study based off of it. So.

Heather (26:53)
Sure.

Brian (27:15)
Thank you so much for taking some time here to talk with us on the podcast.

Heather (27:19)
Thank you. And I just want to close with one thing because I'm a belligerent optimist. So we have some hard problems ahead of us. We've got division, we've got technology, et cetera. But we have done more in one human lifetime to improve the human condition than all of human history. We've more people out of poverty. We've almost solved literacy. We've connected the globe. It's time for us, in the words of JFK, take longer strides and do hard things. We are up to and we are more than capable of this. So I'm really optimistic about the future that's ahead of us. I think we just have to face some of our challenges. So thank you very much for having me.

Brian (27:53)
Amen, amen. All right. Thanks so much, Heather. I appreciate you coming on.

Heather (27:58)
Thanks a lot for having me. Take care.