--- title: "Insights From The Science Of Happiness And Positive Emotions" episode: 7 date: 2020-06-13 guest: "Nic Marks" canonical: https://inclusionbites.co.uk/podcast/7-insights-from-the-science-of-happiness-and-positive-emotions audio: https://cdn.seech.uk/podcast/episodes/ibs-007/audio.mp3 --- # Insights From The Science Of Happiness And Positive Emotions Joanne Lockwood speaks with statistician and trained therapist Nic Marks about what the science of happiness can tell us, and how positive emotions and wellbeing can be understood and measured. They discuss how happiness can mean different things (contentment versus joy), how population statistics can hide individual stories, and how biases and fast/slow thinking shape our judgments of other people. The conversation also reflects on the mental strain created by sustained negative news, COVID-era uncertainty, and how resilience shows up as people absorb setbacks and partially recover over time. Nic shares insights from Friday Pulse data on shifts in employee morale during lockdown, why experiences differ across groups, and what leaders can do in practice when teams are remote—especially checking in with people, creating space for human connection, and recognising that different life circumstances affect wellbeing at work. ## Chapters - 00:00 — Statistician specialising in happiness and well-being insights. - 05:53 — Meditating Buddhist monks defy statistical brain norms. - 07:41 — Fast brain is emotional, makes quick judgements. - 10:30 — Negative bias in news affects mental health. - 14:53 — Some may be affected, but not me. - 16:44 — Potential increase in mental health problems and inequalities. - 22:48 — Resilience: bouncing back and absorbing life's shocks. - 25:36 — Institutions quickly moved remote, causing stress. - 29:28 — Experienced entrepreneur adjusting to remote work. - 31:20 — Adjusting lifestyle, less focus on city living. - 36:59 — Study found locals happier despite common assumptions. - 38:44 — Daily voluntary half-hour chitchat, important but variable. - 42:05 — Generosity vs. self-interest: a new norm. - 46:57 — A leader grapples with difficult decisions. - 49:18 — Exciting guests lined up, be inspired, feedback. ## Key takeaways - The free services offered by Friday Pulse to improve team morale for organisations with up to 1000 employees. - The psychological impact of the pandemic on different demographics, from young people to parents. - Strategies for fostering genuine human connection and well-being in the workplace. - The importance of embracing new ways of working and the potential long-term shift towards remote work. - Insights into the varying happiness levels across different regions and age groups in Britain. - The role of leadership styles and their emotional impact during a crisis. - The expected rise in mental health issues and the uneven distribution of the pandemic's financial and emotional effects. ## FAQs ### Who is Nick Marks and what is his expertise? Nick Marks is the founder of Friday Pulse, a company dedicated to measuring and improving team morale. He is also a statistician, trained therapist, and renowned TED speaker, specialising in happiness, well-being, and the dynamics of team morale through statistical analysis. ### What is the main focus of Friday Pulse, and how are they assisting during the current crisis? Friday Pulse aims to improve team morale by measuring happiness within organisations. During the current crisis, they are offering their services for free to organisations with up to 1000 people, helping them navigate the challenges posed by the pandemic. ### How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the world of work? The pandemic has drastically affected the world of work by accelerating the acceptance of remote working and prompting organisations to re-evaluate the necessity of physical office spaces. There's a significant stress on HR departments and an overall shift towards collaboration and empathy in the workplace. ### What long-term changes in work dynamics are expected due to the pandemic? Permanent changes such as increased remote working, reduced reliance on office spaces, and a stronger focus on the mental well-being of employees are expected to last beyond the pandemic. ### How important is genuine human connection during challenging times, according to Nick Marks? Nick Marks emphasises the importance of genuine human connection, starting with simply asking "how are you?". Offering time to others for meaningful conversations can significantly improve well-being and foster a sense of connection and empathy. ### What are some unique challenges faced by organisations during the pandemic? Organisations face challenges like maintaining employee morale remotely, the stress on HR departments to manage transitions, and the emotional burden of making tough, compassionate decisions during unprecedented times. ## Transcript Joanne Lockwood: Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I am your host for the Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I will be interviewing a number of amazing people and simply having a conversation around the subject of inclusion, belonging and generally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive in. If you would like to join me in the future, then please do drop me a line to jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. You'll be able to catch up with all of the episodes and shows on itunes and Spotify and of course, the usual places. So plug in your headphones, grab a decaf and let's get going. Today is episode seven with the title of Insights from the Science of Happiness and Positive Emotions. And I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome my guest today, Nic Marks. And I met Nic randomly on LinkedIn, like you do. I think he was stalking me one day and we came across and we chatted. And now Nic is now on the podcast. Brilliant. So Nic is a statistician, a trained therapist and a ted speaker. A ted speaker. Gather. No, X. We're in the presence of royalty. Brene Brown's best friend, I'm sure, so well. And he's also the founder of the Friday Pulse and specialise in improving team morale and measuring it. So I asked Nic to describe his superpower and he said seeing the patterns between things and communicating simply without being simplistic. So, hello, Nic, welcome to the show. So, tell me more, what are insights from the Science of Happiness and positive emotions? Nic Marks: Hi, Jo. So, yeah, I'm a statistician and I have, over the years, started to specialise in happiness and well being. I started off doing quality of life and I am a trained therapist. My mother was a family therapist, so I got quite interested in therapy when I was young. And although I was a statistician, I kind of end up with this mix between hard statistical skills and soft analytical ones, which probably makes it more interesting. And what are the insights from? I mean, there's so many insights from happiness and positive emotions, but most people tend to start by asking, what is happiness and is it different for different people? And in one way it's the same for us, and in other ways it's different in that happiness can be both thought of as an emotion. So I feel happy now, and also a thought I am happy with. And so there's a tension between how people use the word, so some people use it to mean contentment and quietness, and some people mean enthusiasm and joy. So the brilliant thing about the word happiness is that people can sort of project onto it lots of different things, and I kind of like that from an interpersonal perspective. But then when you get into how you measure it, you start getting more technical. So there's a lot of insights for them. But basically my work is about how the people live better lives. So when you talk about inclusion, belonging and creating better lives, that's kind of what I do. And I try and bring my statistical skills to that. Joanne Lockwood: Okay, I've always come from this inclusion concept about avoiding stereotypes, avoiding grouping people and creating in groups and out groups. But I guess statisticians, you're trying to use data to create groups of people. So how do you see the individual within that statistics rather than seeing people as a lump? Nic Marks: It's very interesting. So you can use statistics in different ways, but mainly statistics, even the word comes from states, so it came from population surveys. That's the root of the word. And so, yes, was generally looking at populations, but not always. You're often looking to identify subpopulations and groups within that. And there's one, you see patterns sometimes you see patterns where all humans move in the same direction, and some patterns you see where different groups of people act differently. So you do start to see that, and there's a different analysis that you can do for that that starts identifying those. And there's some ways that when you're doing population statistics, the averages are very disappointing because you miss that variance. And actually all of us know in our own lives that people are different, and yet we're the same. There's two things going on. There's something generically about being human and then there's the variability within it. And actually stats is really quite good at identifying both of those things. So we can see if you're tracking people through time, you see some people becoming happier, some people becoming less happier, some people bouncing back, some people staying going know, you can see all of those patterns in it. And there is a lot of individual stories in there. I mean, a very classic one is that when population researchers look at happiness compared to age, you find that the least happy age is 42, which I'm sure Douglas Adams would be delighted with that that was the answer to it. But that's roughly where it comes, early 40s. But of course there's many very happy 42 year olds and there's very many unhappy 60 year olds, and there's unhappy 20 year olds. So the means always hide a lot of stories. And I think that's one of the things you have to be careful about with statistics is that you don't hide that individual variability. Yeah, because we look at this bowel Joanne Lockwood: curve of normality, aren't we? This midpoint, and I suppose you got your upper percentiles and lower percentiles. What is normal? It's such a waffle thin part because everyone's normality is different, isn't it? It must be really hard to try and find typical human A or typical human B from a statistical point of view. You could probably plot it that I'm average height, maybe, but not average breadth. So many different factors around human makeup and opinions. Nic Marks: We often talk in statistics about bell curve and we've talked about standard deviations. And one of my favourite stories about that is that they took these Buddhist monks and they were looking at brain scans of them, and they got them to meditate, and they were looking at these brain scans, and they were four standard deviations away from the mean of what other people's brain scans, which means it's entirely impossible they existed. But all ten of the Buddhist monks were similar. And what that basically meant, they started to realise, was that you can change the shape of your brain by your behaviour and your meditation. So the fact they'd done 20 years of meditation had actually created different patterns in their brain than we'd seen in a normal American, particularly population, before. And that wasn't that they were forced standard deviation, it's just that they had not met people like them before. Sometimes, statistically, you box things in too much and you have to watch out for that. So when we talk about things like Joanne Lockwood: bias and stereotyping and all these sort of things we do as humans for our own safety and protection, what you're saying basically, is the brain is learning a lot of this stuff and the plasticity of the brain. Society evolves based on your environment. Is that what you're trying to say here? Nic Marks: Yes, we're definitely able to shape the plasticity of our brain. I mean, it happens with brain injuries, which you can sue people, and it happens with diseases such as Alzheimer's and dementia, but you can see it also with mindfulness and meditation that actually people start improving and how calm you are. I mean, I'm not a neuroscientist, so I just read some neuroscience. It's not my speciality. But if you ask about biases, then that's actually something different, really, because we have these two big systems. I don't know if you know Daniel Kahneman's work. Have you ever read his book? It's called thinking fast and thinking. Oh, yes, yeah. Fast Joanne Lockwood: brain slow, yeah, yes. And the fast brain is very Nic Marks: emotional. It's looking for immediate signals, it's intuitive, it's biassed. And a typical way of thinking about it is that we have a very strong signal when we meet someone for new, we make a judgement about them straight away. And basically, from an evolutionary perspective, it's friend or foe. Should I approach this person? Should I avoid them? That's the most basic thing. And of course, if somebody looks like you, if somebody feels like they come from your tribe, they're a friend. And if they're different, they look different. Different colour, skin, different type of person, different accent, then they feel more like a foe. If you look at friendship groups, for example, you find that people have very strong friendship networks with the people that they grew up with because they've learned that friendship thing. Very strong friends with someone, the same accent. If you meet someone from your hometown later in life with an accent that's the same, you have an immediate trust. Even though it could just be a. Bad person, as a good person for someone, but you instinctively feel it and so there's all those biases going on all the time. And so that's just part of our speedy response, because if we had to assess everybody from route one every time, it would take too long and we wouldn't get anywhere completely. Joanne Lockwood: It's a very good way of putting it and explaining it, isn't it? Some of the challenges we face when we try and explain biases to people, where they root. And I often find that when we talk about bias, it always seems a negative thing. We actually have positive biases. We can actually favour people as well as discriminate or outgroup people. So it can work both ways, can't it? Yeah, well, I mean, I think it is that Nic Marks: sorting it's a sort of Harry Potter sorting algorithm, isn't people, some people into gryffindor, some whatever. You're putting people in boxes because we can't deal with the whole person, so we categorise and we stick them there. And that is useful, but it's not a holistic approach. And of course you can't pay attention to everybody that you meet. You just be overloaded too much information. Yeah, you have to. Philtre Joanne Lockwood: we're recording this right in the middle of the new norm, this unprecedented times, whatever adjective we want to describe our current situation in. But the reality is that the world's changed for a lot of people in various ways. I mean, myself and many people we probably know. So as a statistician, you must be looking at the news, looking at the figures that come out of government, the graphs they're producing. Is that kind of like a busmat holiday for you? Is that kind of things that you really love? Or is it shouting at the telly, going, come on, these stats are telling a lie. How do you see the stats that are coming out? Well, it's interesting. I mean, Nic Marks: talking about bias, there's something called a negativity bias in psychology, which is we pay attention to negative news and negative signals. And the reason why, again, evolutionary reason, is that threats can kill us and you only die once. So we pay a lot more attention to anything that could possibly kill us, because life is long and death comes once, whereas positive things happening are not so interesting to us because they keep coming along. So we don't report very much on weddings and things like that. We report on deaths, we report on bad stuff. And so what is going on is that there is such an overload of bad news at the moment that it's actually very difficult for us to process. So if you want to look after your own mental health, then one of the first things you should be doing is listening to less news, because it's outside of your locus of control, most of this. And so you're taking negative signals that you can't really act on. So, of course there are things we can act on. And actually, I think Britain is doing an extraordinary is actually people are really taken on board the message that we need to stay at home and protect the NHS and save lives. It's like duck and cover of the old, isn't it? We all Joanne Lockwood: know we've got to climb under the dining room table to save ourselves from the nuclear bomb. We're now, as you say, stay at home, protect the engine. No one's ever going to forget that. It's kind of Nic Marks: but it's like also what's really happening is that death rates have doubled, and that's really bad for those people that have died and for their families. Some of those people, maybe two thirds, were probably likely to die in the next six months. Twelve months, anyway. They had multiple conditions. Some are absolutely new deaths and that's absolutely tragic. But what that means is that pretty much the shape of the curve of people's deaths is roughly the same as our normal risk of dying. It means that basically most of us have got twice the chance of dying this year than we did. If we get COVID if we don't get COVID, I'm not quite sure if it's coronavirus, we get or COVID, but if we don't get the virus, then we're our normal probability. But if we get it, we've got twice the chance of dying than we would have done. Well, I'm 55 year old male and my chances of death this year about 0.8%, so they probably increased about 1.6% this year. That still means 98.4% chance of survival this year, so I don't feel too bad about it. But it's putting it in perspective, I think, is quite hard for a lot of people. And of course, the government wants to get us to comply, quite rightly. And so there's a lot of emphasis on the deaths to help us sort of do it. So it's an interesting trade. There's a statistician looking at it, I understand the statistics. I said it very early on to people in my team that actually this looks like a pandemic. I said that right back in February, and it could spread very wide, but that's actually always been humanity's lots. I think we've got a little bit complacent that, you know, we're sort of superheroes and we're never going to get it. To quote Joanne Lockwood: in the early stages, I was expecting this kind of new world to be more visible and obvious. You look out the window and we haven't got alien creatures running down the street, fighting and attacking people, demolishing stuff like you see in the movies. We haven't got this dark sun appears or this big hovering spacecraft, so people are looking around going, the world looks the same to me. Nothing's really changed, so it's really confusing. In the apocalypse, we're supposed to see all this stuff. We've got this Hollywood bias going on, haven't we? We know what a pandemic is supposed to feel like, riots and burning and looting and Will Smith running around shooting zombies or kind of we haven't got any of that thing to be scared of. We've almost got an unknown enemy, haven't we? Is that part of the problem people are feeling? It is. I think, actually, in some ways, Nic Marks: we've been primed for the apocalypse, haven't actually. This is something that goes way back, earlier than recent movies. It goes right back to the New Testament and Revelations. Four horses of the apocalypse. And the idea that the world will come to the end of the world is not coming to an end. We've got a nasty disease and it's killing people that shouldn't be dying, but it's not going to wipe out humanity. The plague took out a third of the UK population. At the worst, this is going to take out 1% of the population. But of course, that's still tragic and I'm not against the lockdown or anything like that, but it is unlikely to affect me personally and so therefore I shouldn't get too anxious in the senses. I'm trying to say something which is about our mental health and about our attitude towards this, and I think for most of us, the likely thing is that we get away with it and there'd be a vaccine, but of course, for some it isn't. And my mum's 85 and of course I worry about her, but she is safely locked down with my sister, so she's probably fine. She definitely should avoid getting it because she's actually relatively healthy. 85 year old. I was trying to work out the stats on it because that's what I do and she has a 15% chance of dying anyway this year. That's up to 30, but that's age appropriate and that's what it is. As you're talking about this double the Joanne Lockwood: chance of dying this year, statistically, through this, COVID my brain is now going off on a tangent, thinking, well, my risk factors from other things have gone down. So I'm not travelling, I'm not crossing the road, I'm not doing other dangerous things that humans do where I could get randomly killed by another event. So I'm doing less of those dangerous things or risky things and more at risk from COVID So there's got to be an amalgamation of those figures to say, well, actually, my risk profile will go down because of this, but go up because of this. Or are you saying it's double overall? I mean, there must be a Nic Marks: sophisticated calculus you could do. So, yes, accidents on the road have gone down, but possibly accidents at home have gone up, possibly domestic violence has gone up. We don't know about suicide rates. Joanne Lockwood: We. Do know about suicide, that a lack of hope is Nic Marks: very difficult in suicide, and I think there must be some people that feel very hemmed in and helpless at the moment, stuck in a difficult relationship, stuck alone, stuck at home, made unemployed or feeling like there's nothing to work. And if they were already on the borderline, suicide. I don't know what the stats are there, but I would imagine that we'll have a spike in severe mental health problems and suicide. I imagine we'll have some post traumatic stress that comes out of this for people that have got difficult situations and we'll see what's called post traumatic growth for some people. This isn't going to be evenly distributed about how people respond to it, but many, many people, if you're sort of middle class and you've got financial security and emotional security, are going, wow, maybe I should travel less, maybe I should quieten down. They're going to get quite mindful experiences of that. But of course, again, that's likely to be what we call the social gradient, where the people that are already secure are going to have better experiences and the ones that are already insecure financially, emotionally, physically, are likely to have worse. So there's likely to be some increases inequalities of experience, I would think. Yeah, I've heard people saying, well, we're not all in the Joanne Lockwood: same boat, but we're on the same river in different boats, so we're on a similar journey but having different experiences. Some of us have got lovely boats with outboards and sun decks and some of us are on a raft with a paddle experience. So yeah, completely, it's a variability of lived experience. I also think there's a lot of people who have acquired problems through it. So I'm thinking about people who were previously well off, had great jobs, or owned their own business, or had a security of income commission. Now they're finding that they're now in a position where they're financially struggling that they've never been in before. So there's a great levelling for some people. As you said, there's a whole group of people who are secure, happy, they're just getting bored at home. There's a whole load of people that have lost significant part of what they believed was their life and they must be really struggling right now, I guess. Yeah, I think there are Nic Marks: whole sectors that have shut down. And there'd been people that I read something on some news website of the guy said, I haven't even opened my coffee shop and I've gone bust. And he must have worked towards that passion to do something in his own control and worked out where he was renting and then he's gone bust before he's even opened his doors. And so I think there's going to be all sorts of personal, real challenges. And I've got a lot of friends that have been furloughed. I've got one of my kids has been furloughed, actually, to be honest, he's dead happy with being furloughed because he's trying to pick up a new skill and do web design or whatever like that. And he's getting paid. I've got 80% of my pay and he's quite happy. But other people, that's not a happy experience at all and it's a very insecure experience. I think this is great and I see it in my team. I have a team of twelve and the ones with young children are preschool are starting to struggle after six, seven weeks into lockdown when we're recording this, and it's a cumulative effect going on for them. The first three, four weeks we all had a shock, but we sort of bounced back and then I think that that's where quite a lot of people are at this very moment. Joanne Lockwood: There's this initial kind of panic, worry, anxiety, and then there's something to focus on. Now we're into this tailing off into sort of this set in reality. Is that what you're saying? There's no end date. There's nothing to look forward to. There's no light at the tunnel. Whatever analogy we want to use. Nic Marks: Someone said the light of the tunnel is a train coming towards you. I think that's some expression from the Vietnam War or something. But I'm a statistician, so I do look at data. And actually, Friday pulse my business. What we do is we ask employees how their week has been. How have you felt at work this week? Are you very unhappy? Through to very happy and the idea is to pick up that good bad signal a bit like the friendFO signal it's like is it going well? My work is it not? So we've got clients across the world, but the US, the UK mainly, some other places. I've never ever had a pattern in my data across all of our clients before, because clients do different things, they've got different challenges setbacks going on at different times. We get a very small seasonal effect where the summer is slightly happier than the other times because we're mainly northern hemisphere. We have got some hemisphere clients, but mainly but you've got a massive drop middle of March across every one of our clients. So we have an index from zero to 100. Most of our clients run along on average about 70. We obviously have some clients of 50, some 80, but that's where they're going along. And the whole average just dropped down to 45 in the middle of the week. And now we're back to 60, 65, but we're not back to 70, 72 where they were. There's been some bounce back, but there's absolutely a gap from where they were. And our clients are clients that are very already very interested in their employee well being, otherwise they wouldn't be using us. So they've no doubt got better experiences going on than many out there, and they've got this huge gap. And that, as a statistical story is very interesting because basically that's resilience in action, which is that you're seeing people's weekly experience. They have a setback, how do they come back? And what we're seeing, we're seeing a partial comeback but not a full comeback at the moment. Joanne Lockwood: This is kind of that buzzword of probably 510, 15 years ago, that bounce back ability, or what we called it, isn't it? This resilience, tenacity stiff up, a little British sort of stoicism, whatever you want to call it, this ability to take challenges and bounce back through them, if you like, isn't it? Well, when a psychologist, my Nic Marks: understanding resilience. I'm not an expert in resilience, but well, I think of it that statistically, but there's different ways you can think about so you can think about being a bouncy ball and a hard wall, and the ball comes and hits the wall, the wall stays absolutely solid, so it is resilience and the ball comes back. The way the ball deals with it is it absorbs the shock and then moves away. So there's two types of resilience. There's the firm sort of resistant resilience, and then there's the absorption one. And I think that what we're seeing is the absorption one working with people, they've absorbed the shock, they're coming back, they're putting a brave face on it and then they're finding, well, remote working isn't as easy as being with other people. There's some loss with that, there's some gains, there's some losses. It depends on how they can set up their home office. Mine is in the corner of my bedroom because we've got two teens in the house. And when I used to work at home, I did often work at home on a Friday, they were a university or school, and I'd sit on the kitchen table and be quite happy now. Well, I'm quite happy, actually, but I'm in my corner of my bedroom. I've got pushed to the corner, but there's different experiences. One of my team, she works from downstairs, but when she wants to take a call, she has to go up to her bedroom. She hasn't got a proper desk, her back's aching after five weeks, and her young child doesn't understand she's got a three year old, doesn't understand what's going on. So there's so many different strains, and some of them are cumulative, some of them are starting to build up now and to really get under people's skin. So it's hard. It's hard for some people, Joanne Lockwood: yeah. I try and talk about this. Almost. Imagine when you first left home all those many years ago. And you move into your first home. Or you live on your own. You move into your bed sit wherever you did. And the first couple of weeks you live on baked beans, on toast or the odd jacket potato. You think. And then one day you wake up and go, actually, this is life, this is how it's going to be. Now that reality kicks in, that I can't keep just in that basic survival mode. I've got to move into my new business as usual, my new life as usual mode. And that's where I think we've had this holiday. We can all go on holiday for two or three weeks. We can all live in that sort of like, hiatus of normality, and then the brain suddenly goes, Hang on a minute. I've now got to do this for a long time. This is not going to get fixed quickly. We're now talking about June, we're now talking about July, some people talk about September, now we talk about maybe it going until next year. People think, well, actually, I've now got to adjust in a more permanent way. And maybe this is maybe what I'm picking up on what you're saying is now we're getting to this. We've gone through our denial or our stages of grief or whatever it may be. We're now having to move into acceptance and accept our lot. And maybe we're not quite so happy with that as we thought we might be. Or anxiety levels are kicking back in because we're now missing something. Yeah, it's been some nice writing, Nic Marks: hasn't it, on the stages of grief and how that's going on and I think that there is some of that. I think in the work situation, I don't think we're anything near like a new normal. I think there's been absolutely larger institutions have had to move remote instantly. I mean, I remember beginning of March hearing that one of the accountancy firms was going to have everyone work from home on Tuesday to see how their systems were and I thought, well, that's a bit dramatic and then two weeks later we're all working from home. So they had it absolutely right that they were testing their systems and the next week we were starting thinking about it. But anyway but it's been very hard for them and people didn't get into HR and into people departments to furlough people, to make them redundant, to be their mental health advisor, because effectively so many people are really stressed and who are they going to turn to? They're going to turn to HR. So I think organisations are still very stressed and heard someone make a nice analogy. He said it's like there's a road accident. And the first thing that happens is that the passers by and whatever, just try and stick something to stop the bleeding. And then the second one is the paramedics arrive and they start just keeping then you have to get to hospital. And then when you're in hospital, you have to transfer to hospital. Then you have to be in hospital and get the experts and whatever. And then eventually you go home and there's still some recovering. Where are we? I think some people are still on the way to hospital, some are at hospital. Joanne Lockwood: Triage at best, coping with now kind of thing, isn't it? Yeah, so I think we've got quite a long way Nic Marks: and I also don't think the world will ever be the same. The world of work won't be the same. The world won't be the same. Joanne Lockwood: Is that a good. Thing, do you think I've got a. Helicopter going over me? Nic Marks: Can you hear it? Your helicopter taking to the Joanne Lockwood: next Ted Talk? No, it's not me Nic Marks: that's working from. Home pickup, isn't it? No, they're still at work, isn't it? What was the question again? You said the world will never be the same again so I'm saying Joanne Lockwood: and in your opinion, is that a good thing? What do we want to keep from this? What's our learning experience we're going to get out of this that we want to hang on to? I think the Nic Marks: world of work is never going to be quite the same again, isn't it? Because I think that all sorts of people have tasted homeworking and they're like some of that, and they're not like and there's the bit we're missing, which is the human contact. So, for example, for me, I run a small team of twelve people. I don't suppose that we'll have an office again. I think maybe we're into room one or two days a week and we'll meet together and then work the home the rest of the time. I think that might happen. I think a lot of organisations will look at I mean, the cost of a know, running a desk in London is very expensive, so they look at it and go, well, can we reduce the cost of that? So I think that's going to be a big difference other people will have slightly rediscovered how to be quieter because we do rush around a lot but as I say again, it's uneven, isn't it? Because some people are going to my youngest is 21, he's the most depressed sounding I've heard him. I've not seen him for eight weeks because he's at his mum's. I'm divorced, well, I'm remarried, but he was at Lockdown, his mum's, because his university shut. And this is not about a comment on his mum at all, it's a comment that he's missing his friends. His life was around sport, it was around university studies, it was around his friends and that whole structure of life's gone and asking a 21 year old to motivate themselves is difficult. Joanne Lockwood: I completely accept that I'm similar age to you, 55. I've run my own business or been a director of a business for 30 odd years, so I've always been a very self starting, self motivating sort of person and I've worked probably on my own from home for the last three or four years anyway, so for me, my complication is my lack of business. All the clients I was dealing with has kind of tailed off, so I have passive income coming in and my wife has been furloughed, so I've never worked from home with other people before. Apart from having no income and working with somebody else, my life hasn't really changed a phenomenal amount. I'm sat in the same chair, doing the same thing, I just spend a lot more of it in front of a camera than driving to London every day. And I'm getting far more done, I'm having far more conversations and getting far more engagement now remotely, because everyone's now receptive to this way of communicating. So I don't think I want to be going to London every day again. Maybe I've got to think about conferences and speaking gigs and how those virtual conferences work, whether the audience still wants to sit in a chair all day for 8 hours and have all a conference, or whether we do little bite size snippets, 20 minutes here, hour here, more curated content, more tailored content, I don't know. Or maybe the audience is going to be more YouTube savvy and consume asynchronously in future, who knows? But yeah, I've kind of decided that I can't take my old business, my old momentum, and convert it. I've got to almost say to myself, step back. If I was starting from scratch today, how would I do things differently? That's kind of the approach I'm taking. And that, I think, is going to be a more sustainable approach for me and not for everybody, but I think for me. But yeah, it's interesting that there are still some people who are just waiting and biding their time for things to go back again, aren't they? But they're not going Nic Marks: to go back quickly anyway. Some sort of social distancing for a you know, I had a split life where I lived partly here, I'm in Dorset and partly in London because I got remarried relatively recently and Zoe already lived here, so we sort of moved here. But I still have my business in London, so I used to be between the two. I'm not missing London at all, apart from seeing friends in restaurants. And actually I've lost a bit of weight because I'm not eating out twice or three times a week and buying sandwiches at lunch. I've not lost weight because I'm trying it's just a little bit's come off, not very much and not nearly enough, but I'm not sure I want to do that again. In fact, we were having a conversation just last night. How much could we live off? We could live off a lot less money than we I don't know, but I'm not saying I want to earn less, but I'm just saying that I think a lot of people must be having those conversations. But of course I'm speaking from privilege in that I have earned money in life and I don't have a large mortgage and I don't have dependence at home. And so it's very different for me than other people. And other people, quite understandably, really want to get back to their lives, want to get back to their things. And I think the young people, that falls quite heavily on I think that, as I say, preschool are really difficult for the parents, but I think the student age, it's very hard for them. Missing their friends, coming back to Joanne Lockwood: your science of happiness and you touched briefly on what your organisation does in terms of employee engagement. I suppose we call that as a high level sort of thing, staff well being, feeling the pulse of the organisation, hence the name of your organisation. Do you have any drill down heat maps by categories of people, or is it a very high level? I mean, could you say when you talked about this happiness quotient, you've defined we're now way down. Is that all sorts of people? Is it by age group, by background, or can we tell anything more about it? So not particularly from this very recent data. I Nic Marks: haven't done any analysis like that on it, but from population studies I've done about happiness in populations and happiness at work, yeah, there were differences definitely between different groups of people. So if we look in the workplace, then we can find that people that do professions where there's more human contact are happier. So if you're in creative industries or caring or something like that, you're happier than you'd expect for your income. Whereas people that are in very detailed jobs, such as lawyers and finance and whatever like that, they're less happy than you expect for their income. And I'm saying that you expect for their income because obviously income has an impact. It's ridiculous to say money doesn't buy you happiness, money certainly protects you from misery, doesn't necessarily bring total joy, but that's actually part of the game of it. So we do see differences between we see differences between age groups, we see differences between different size companies. People are happier in smaller companies as a general rule, and that's mainly driven by autonomy, that they have more autonomy and more able to shape their work. They can see the impact of their work. So we can definitely see these patterns in the data in Britain. If we look at the happiness of the population, which would you think is the most and least happy region in Britain? What would be your guess? Well, I Joanne Lockwood: suppose typically a year ago I would have said the north would have been the least happy in some of those working class mining type communities of old would probably be the least happy traditionally, but they probably have a greater sense of community, they probably have a greater sense of team spirit in those environments. So I would say probably the big cities of the south are probably the least happy. They're not used to having talking to each other and talking to the neighbours. I'd say some of the older communities are probably stronger. I don't know. Have I missed the mark there? No, you've Nic Marks: got it pretty good, actually, and it's very rare that people get it right. But London is the least happy and we know actually, density of population actually makes people more stressed. And we also know that inequalities do and in London you really experience the inequalities, so you're fine if you've got money in London, if you haven't got money in London, you really see people living their life with money and it's in your face a lot of the time. Whereas I'm not saying rural poverty is easy, but you actually don't feel as bad in rural communities. So as a general, rural people are happier than urban people. But the most happy region in Britain is actually Northern Ireland, really. And yeah, and it's rural. It's quite rural. They're actually very positive, the Irish, almost unrealistically sometimes, and also recent experience of the Troubles. So actually feeling like life is better than it. So Northern Ireland actually turns out to be the happiest, which is a big surprise, actually, was to me when I. First saw a lot that I would say I'm Joanne Lockwood: guessing. Educated guessing, I suppose, or uneducated guessing is around the community, around the tribe, around this, pulling together shared experiences, the feeling that you've got something to depend on. Whereas in the cities, you're all distant from each other, you're separated from your communities, from your family, you're not with people anymore in these smaller communities, you've got that. You're Nic Marks: totally on the money. I think it's about 2002 was my first study of well being, and it was actually in Nottingham of all places, and it was a study with young people in Nottingham, and I was working for the city council and they had this hypothesis that people who've moved into Nottingham were more entrepreneurial, more ambitious. So we put a question in about whether you were born in Nottingham or not. And to their surprise, the people born in Nottingham that lived in Nottingham were happier, but it's community, they've got their family, their extended family around it to you, the sense of belonging. They have a strong sense of belonging in the city and that was part of their happiness and it was exactly the opposite of what they thought. They thought everyone in Nottingham is in a rut, whatever, and all these new people are coming in and it was the opposite. So you said Joanne Lockwood: earlier that you have staff and you've gone to this remote working or disparate working, decentralised working, whatever analogy you want to use. So what have you learned as a leader, as such, that maybe you didn't realise you had to learn and that you could maybe advise other leaders who are listening to think, well, how do I lead my staff through this? Nic Marks: So, as the founder and leader of the organisation, part of me is about setting vision, so we had to rethink some of the vision stuff. But partly, I don't mean this in a political way, partly I'm a cheerleader, I'm actually encouraging people. And I think that more of my job has become about that, is checking in on people. I'm sure like lots of people, we have a zoom call every morning at 09:00 A.m. Joanne Lockwood: To begin with. He said, everyone come on it, and actually people can choose to Nic Marks: come on it or not but I'm on it every day, I'm available at nine and we chitchat mainly what's happened? What's the weather? What do you watch on TV? How are your kids? What's this? And we literally do just a bit of human chitchat. And so that's gone from just happening in the office in between things into like half an hour of our day every day. And for the ones that are in their flats on their in London, which is a couple of three of my know, I think it's an important part of their day. And for others who've got young children, it might not be. So actually we're starting making it voluntary because they've got so much going on. They just see that as losing a precious half hour of their work. So that's the variability of experience there. But it is checking in with everybody more and it is going how are you? And then when they say fine, you go, no. How are you really just going that second one and asking what's underneath? You know, if you don't see anyone, we use slack. If you don't see anyone for bit I do just tend to go in, ask how they are. So I think I'm doing much more of that and I think that's probably very particular to the circumstances, but I think it's very necessary. That's a good point, what you Joanne Lockwood: made there about the how are you? And asking it twice because I've spoken to a lot of people and people often remark how are you? Used to be this polite thing. We used to say how are you? I'm fine. How are you? I'm fine. Then you get on with stuff how are you now? Lasts half an hour and that's an important half an hour. And I think people I mentioned Brene Brown earlier, but using this vulnerability, being able to share what is really going on in your life is a really powerful thing. And I think a lot more people are finding they need to be able to share and they need some empathy. They want someone to actually understand how bad or struggle they've got. They want to be offload. Sometimes I think that how are you? Conversation is really important for someone to feel valued and again, that belonging in their work tribe, if you like. Yeah, because it's very Nic Marks: disruptive to us all. I mean, we live in a close in a village, and most of the people are retired and are close, as it happens. And I walk out. I go for a walk every day. And there's people there that I've never really seen before. And if they're in front garden, I'll just say, how are you? And 20 minutes. 30 minutes. They'll tell you what they did in the war? Almost. It's like I did, honestly had a conversation with a guy down the road, and we started talking because he was 80 something. We started talking about the war. And I just think trapped inside, it's very hard for people, particularly the over 70s or the vulnerable ones. I think it's nice to ask people, but you got time. I've often actually said that the currency of happiness and well being is time and how much time. And I think in this time, offering our time to people. My wife goes and visits a friend of hers who's much older and isolated, and Elizabeth bites in her porch and Zoe sits at least three or four metres away, brings a thermos of coffee, and they just talk and they were friends before, but Elizabeth is absolutely stuck at home and I think Zoe goes around every other day. I think it's a lifeline for Elizabeth. Joanne Lockwood: That they certainly detected. And I hate to divide the population to two, but there are people who are generous, they're giving, they're empathic, they show empathy, they care for how somebody else is. And there are people who are more reserved, they're more worried about themselves, and they're less interested in the lives of others. And so I think we're seeing that in businesses as well, some big corporates, the way they react to people, the way people have created polarised opinions. And now is the time to pull together and be collaborative and form our new tribe than it is to be individual, self serving and profit focus. I'm seeing a lot of these conversations now with people who want to come together for big hug and support each other. I think when you talk about the new norm, I think we're going to see a lot more people wanting to collaborate and work together on things than being protectionist and sort of defensive about themselves. Yeah, Nic Marks: I think you can always split populations into two. I'm quite happy you need to worry about that with me. Just drive a bus straight through in Joanne Lockwood: the middle of the population and stereotype everybody. Yeah. Nothing I like better than a Nic Marks: 10 variable. You're this or you this. Of course, life is much more messy than that, but there's spectrums of things and there's continuums, but the ones that are more selfish are probably there's personality, circumstance, reasons why they might not have grown up in generous, loving families. You just don't know why these people are like that, of course. And so there's things about that, but the business world can be quite brutal and quite difficult sometimes. And I think that we've seen it actually the best place we see it is with world leaders, isn't it? People revert to know the difference between Trump and I can't remember how you say her name, the New Zealand jacinda. I mean, she's just mean. Boris has had an interesting journey and actually he comes across as quite genuine with his know. I don't mind saying I've never voted Tory in my life, but in some ways I had some respect for him about how he was dealing with he's very straightforward. I mean, Trump is a different thing altogether. I mean, I don't understand how anyone can even make up that character, let alone President. But he's gone instinctively to divide. That's what he does. He divides people, he gets authoritarian, he thinks he knows everything. I mean, it's extraordinary watching it out. And so I think that in all our businesses, we've got our Trumps, we've got our what's her name, the New. Zealand woman again, I think jacinda, Joanne Lockwood: isn't it? Anyway, and hopefully you work Nic Marks: for someone like Jacinda rather than someone like Trump. But if you work for Trump, they're going to be even more difficult because they're stressed. I mean, actually, he is acting out of stress. I mean, you can look at him as a distressed little boy acting out with his toys. It's just a bit of a shame. He's supposed to be President of one of the largest countries in the world, but psychologically, he's an interesting character. Joanne Lockwood: Yes, it's interesting, as you say, I suppose he grew his business not having anyone recording all his conversations and caring about every tweet, and now everyone's amplifying, he thinks out loud without a philtre and just comes straight out of his mouth. I think he's never been used to someone actually recording it. He's always been able to bully someone into that's not what I said. And they used to go, okay, it's not what you said, these aren't the droids you're looking for. And now people are going, no, actually, that is what you said, and actually, that is what you said. And, no, that wasn't sarcasm, no, that wasn't wit, that wasn't you being funny. That is actually what you said. And he's not used to having that kind of real detailed scrutiny. And I think I agree, however you vote, Boris is doing a job and he's doing it with his heart and his soul. And I think there's a lot of emotion and passion there, not self serving interests. I think he genuinely cares about himself, the world, the country, the economy. He's desperately upset about the deaths and the struggles people are going through. And that comes across in the briefings. I think most of the people who stand on the podium on an afternoon around four or 05:00, all will have that same responsibility. The burden of the world is on their shoulders. And that must be a real they didn't sign up for this a year ago, this wasn't on the roadmap. And now everybody's kind of realising that their business plan for the future, the country plan for the future, is not what they thought it was going to be. And it's a real shock, I guess, for everyone. It is. It's an interesting Nic Marks: expression of leadership. And I actually quite like seeing him grapple with his libertarian self that he didn't want to shut everything down. And so you really knew that he took it with a heavy heart to lock know and actually, I think possibly we lost two, three weeks. And there's other things that almost certainly wasn't great decision making early on, but you sort of felt here was a man struggling with something which was a very difficult decision, and he sort of wanted to sort of find a way a bit more like Sweden have done. And it was, yeah, it's interesting, and I'm sure in our businesses that's going on, I think some people will have been really compassionate in the way that they've had to furlong and make some people redundant or cut wages, and some will have been just brutal and they'd just been displaying their yeah, interesting times. Yeah. Well, many thanks, Nic. Joanne Lockwood: We had a really great conversation there. I'm sure everyone listening will agree there's much to ponder on and take some inspiration. So how can people get in touch with you if they want to find out more? Yeah, so my company is Nic Marks: called Friday Pulse and you can just Google Fridaypulse. Fridaypulse.com we measure and improve team morale. We're actually free to use during the crisis for any organisation, up to 1000 people. So if you're interested in finding out more, you can look on the website. I myself am on LinkedIn, very actively. That's how I found you. I didn't stalk you. I sent you one message saying, I'm on LinkedIn. Nic Marks. Nic is without a K. NicMarks.org, again, without a K is my website. I put up an article most weeks. I do miss some weeks, but most weeks I put up an article on there. So that's really where you can find me. I am vaguely on Twitter on I am Nic Marks. I'm not good with Twitter, so that's. Nic without a K, but Marks with. A K. It is exactly that, yeah. Brilliant. Okay, that's fantastic. Joanne Lockwood: Well, I'm sure people will get in contact and find out more. I mean, the offer of the server or the Pulse for up to a thousand people during this time, it's a very generous offer. I'm sure that people want to take that up. So thank you to all the listeners. Big thanks for listening and tuning in. So please do subscribe to keep updated on future episodes of the Inclusion Bytes podcast. That's B-I-T-E-S bites. And please tell your friends and colleagues, I've got a number of exciting guests lined up that I'm sure you'll be inspired by over the next weeks and months. And also, remember, if you'd like to be a guest on the show, then please do let me know. I would welcome any comments, feedback you may have to jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. Tell me about how we can improve future shows or tell me topics you'd like me to cover. So, my name is Joanne Lockwood and it's been a pleasure to be your host for this podcast.