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