Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Dan Schawbel Teaches the Art of Talent Stacking | Career | YAPClassic

Episode Date: November 30, 2022

Building your talent stack can give you a significant competitive advantage and accelerate your career! You don't need to be one of the best at something in order to succeed, because with talent stacking you can layer on skills - at various degrees of expertise - and use them together to stand out. This week, Hala’s talking to Dan Schawbel, a researcher and the author of 3 bestselling career books: Back to Human, Promote Yourself, and Me 2.0. Dan also hosts the 5 Questions with Dan Schawbel podcast, where he interviews some of the most successful humans in the world like Richard Branson, Condoleezza Rice, Gary Vaynerchuk, and more. In this episode, you’ll learn how Dan used talent stacking in the HR space to get ahead, why technology is breeding the loneliness epidemic, and why work-life balance is just a myth. You’ll also learn about Dan’s childhood and some of the difficulties he faced in school. Additionally, Dan will dive into the value of continuous learning and turning your pain into power.  Topics Include:  -Value of experience  - Dan’s introduction to the research profession  - How research has shaped Dan’s identity  - Dan’s struggles with bullying and anxiety as a child  - How Dan used his pain to fuel greatness - Dan’s experience working at EMC - Why you should align yourself with brands  - Creating your own career  - Building a personal brand  - Why you should never stop learning new skills  - Dan’s unique stack of skills  - And other topics… Dan Schawbel is a researcher, career expert, keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. He has led over 60 research studies, surveying over 3 million people in 26 countries. Dan has partnered with brands like Oracle, WeWork, and American Express. His writing has appeared in notable publications like TIME, The Economist, Forbes, and Harvard Business Review. His highly-rated online leadership and management courses have over 155,000 students and he has spoken at conferences such as The New York Times Dealbook Conference and Bloomberg’s Business of Equality Summit.  Resources Mentioned: Dan’s Podcast, 5 Questions: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/5-questions-with-dan-schawbel/id1401344839  Dan’s Website: https://danschawbel.com/  Dan’s Books: https://danschawbel.com/books/  Dan’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danschawbel/  Dan’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danschawbel/?hl=en Dan’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/danschawbel/  Dan’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzZPYhfF7HoLTUJoXUHHHvA  Sponsored By:  Omaha Steaks - Visit OmahaSteaks.com use promo code YAP at checkout to get that EXTRA $30 OFF your order. Shopify - Sign up for a free trial at shopify.com/profiting The Jordan Harbinger Show - Check out jordanharbinger.com/start for some episode recommendations Lightstream - Go to lightstream.com/yap and apply now to get a special interest rate discount and save even more More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com   Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review - ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala Learn more about YAP Media Agency Services - yapmedia.io/ Join Hala's LinkedIn Masterclass - yapmedia.io/course 

What's up? Yeah, fam! Today we're going back in time and we're resurfacing my epic interview with Dan Schwabell, New York Times bestselling author, workplace researcher, career expert, and keynote speaker. In this classic episode, you're going to learn how to build your talent stack so you can gain a significant competitive advantage and accelerate your career. skill stacking is something I always talk about and I strongly believe in because you don't need to be the best at something in order to succeed. With talent stacking, you can layer on skills at various degrees of expertise and then use them together to stand out and win big. In today's world, the more dynamic and adaptable you are, the better. Tune into this episode to learn how Dan used talent stacking in the HR space to get ahead, how technology is breeding what he calls the loneliness epidemic, and why Dan believes work-life balance is just a myth. Although this episode was recorded pre-pandemic, it seems more pertinent than ever.

Before we get started, I did want to ask our loyal listeners to take a moment and drop us a five-star review on Apple. We recently hit top 10 in the business category in the U.S., candidate, and UK, on Apple, which is an amazing feat. Help us keep top of the charts by subscribing to Apple if you haven't yet and by leaving us an honest written review. All right, let's dig in right into the main course and join my Yap Classic with career expert, Dan Schwabell. Welcome to Young and Profiting podcast. So happy to be here with you, Hala. So to introduce you to my listeners, you are a millennial, Gen Y, and feature work expert. You might be the youngest bestselling author I've ever interviewed. You have three bestselling books to be exact. You have your own podcast.

and you've interviewed some of the world's most successful people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Warren Buffett, Will I Am, just to name a few. You've written thousands of articles for Forbes, Time, HBR, and more, and you've won several accolades for all the things you've achieved at such a young age, such as Forbes Magazines 30 under 30 and Business Insiders 40 under 40. Is there any big accomplishments you want to mention that I may have missed? I think the biggest accomplishment from the work I've done over the past seven years is 51 research studies surveying over 1.3 million people in 25 countries. I think that to me is a big accomplishment because I didn't really have a research background before 2012.

I got like a B in marketing research in college. And so I had to figure all that out. and over the course of doing all this research, I've been able to link different findings together to come up with larger conclusions. And the art of doing has been my greatest compass to figuring out what I do next and what I take action on. So I think that when people try and figure out, you know, what do they want to do for their career, what they're passionate about, the art of actually doing something or many things will help guide you. Yes.

Right? And so I think that just doing one research project, I didn't know I would enjoy it, but then I really enjoyed it. So I said, okay, I'm going to make a career out of it. And the first several studies I did, I didn't even get paid for. And now this has become, you know, the thing I get paid the most for. And the thing I enjoy the most. I like the speaking.

I like the books and everything. But the core of what I do has become the research. And I think that that's the thing I'm most proud of. And it's a thing that has. made me reflect the most on that question that everyone asks is how do I find my passion? And it really comes down to action. It's experience. You learn through experience and no book is going to help you get there. Actually doing one thing or many things and having these experiences and connecting with people, that's what's going to put you in the right direction.

And there's no replacing experience. You can't buy experience. You can't replace experience. There's no trading of experience. You get the experience. And then that helps you decide what to do next. Totally. I'm totally on the same page and I definitely have some questions on experience and talent stacking that I want to get into. And I think that your background on research is what makes you such a compelling author. A lot of authors, you know, they kind of compile things from other people. But as I was reading your latest book, I realized that like, wow, he does a lot of his own research and it makes your book that much more powerful. So I'm sure That's why you've accomplished so much and so little time.

Yeah, I'll tell you about the research. This is really interesting. I got really into research originally in my early 20s because I was blogging. I was really into blogging in 2006, 2007, and I was putting out career advice, right? And I felt like I could help people who are my age or younger get internships, learn how to network, get a job after they graduated, because I had those experiences and I learned a creative way of building my personal brand. back then or self-marketing as a way to stand out.

You know, I'd bring a CD portfolio to a job interview and that would make me stand out. So little things like that really helped me. And yet I got so much criticism because there's a lot of ageism for both people who are older and people who are younger. And so people are like, oh, who are you to talk about all of these ways to achieve career success? You're so young.

You don't know anything. You haven't experienced anything. And so that's when I said, okay, what do I? do and I started citing third party research because I wasn't doing my own research at that point. And I looked and viewed research as a shield against ageism. And then in 2012, as I had the opportunity to do proprietary research with another company, and that was my entry into realizing, okay, not only is this research helpful for me, but now I can, you know, I compare it to being an archaeologist, I can find the next dinosaur bone.

So, like, in a sense, what I've done over the past seven years with proprietary research that I've led is I've been finding a lot of dinosaur bones, right? So it's even more exciting to me. So I was very early into the burnout crisis. Yep. So over a year ago, I put out a study with a company called Kronos, and we discovered that there's a huge burnout crisis globally. And that's been a really big deal. I mean, when I wrote an article about it, Bernie Sanders shared it, and it was a few millions of times. I was very early into the four-day work week trend.

And as people are finding out now, like with Microsoft Japan testing a four-day work week and increasing productivity of their workforce and that being a huge in the media, all of them, or at least the biggest outlets, cited the research study I did over a year ago. Right? So doing my own research has given me a way of standing out, differentiating, you know, figuring out what the trends are, and then that ends up leading to books, presentations, and everything else. So the research I see is the core because it orchestrates everything else that I do. Yeah. So interesting and such a unique career path. So how old are you exactly

now? 36. Cool. So still super, super young, so much that you've accomplished. Let's take it all the way back to your childhood. When I was doing your research, you know, at Young and Profiting, I have a whole research team and we tend to study our guests. I think, out that you were bullied a lot growing up. You've told stories about teachers locking you in a closet. Your peers used to put you in a locker. You were known as a poorly behaved child. He used to always get in trouble. And in the past, you've said, no one comes out of nowhere. You only see their success, not their struggle. So I don't think anybody would have guessed that you would turn out to be this incredible adult that you are. You've got such a great image, reputation. So tell us about

the struggle that you had before all the success. What was it like growing up for you? Yeah, I mean, when I was in kindergarten and even first and second grade, I was in trouble every day. And sometimes when someone says that you think, oh, you must be exaggerating. But literally, like, I remember being on the principal's bench every single day. I was just sitting there. There was no cell phones. I wasn't, I couldn't play games on the principal's bench back then. And I remember the principal had a three-legged goat. So that's like a very fond memory. because what principle has a three-legged going? It's just so random.

So I was always in trouble. It wasn't because I was a bad person. It was because, you know, I had anxiety issues. No one called it anxiety back then. And I just could not control myself. So it was all over the place. And that's how you get in trouble, especially back then. And, you know, created confusion, right?

Like one group of people were like, oh, he's weak because he can't control himself. So we'll pick on him. And the other group kind of feared me and wouldn't let me. me, you know, go over their kids' house, they go over their house because I was always in trouble. So like in terms of perception, it really, really hurt me back then. And then I saw help and my mom orchestrated this when I was in, I believe it was third grade. And that really, really helped me. That therapy really got me out of it. But yeah, always picked on. And I was really bullied for, in the sense, I've always been bullied, right? I've had cyberbullying

for the past many years. But back then, you know, there wasn't cyberbullying. And I had to, as you said, I was, you know, in middle school, I was put in a locker. My teacher put me in a closet in elementary school, like things that, you know, you tell people in their shock with, especially current generations. I mean, for teachers to do anything like that, they would never fly. But honestly, my parents' generation, they would slap and spank. students in school. So I think in a sense, we've come a long way. But yeah, it was it was sort of an

interesting childhood where I was somewhat privileged. My family wasn't struggling to make ends meet, but psychologically I was in pain, not knowing that I was in pain. And then people not seeing that. They're just seeing my behavior. You know, there's something about mental health where it's like the silent killer. Totally. And so how did you take these negative experiences and use, them to kind of fuel yourself and propel yourself into something great. I think it was a great motivator, right? You know, if people beat down your self-esteem for so many years, you just need to find an outlet to reclaim the self-esteem.

And for all of my 20s, it was the need for validation. So a lot of that recognition that you have talked about is because of this need and desire to get recognition to validate me as a person in order to prove other people wrong. And a lot of people fall into this, right? A lot of people who have come out being bullied. I mean, they become very big success stories because they're trying to find a way to prove to themselves that they're worthy. Yeah. And so I had to go through all of my 20s to do that. And so once I stepped into my 30s, I kind of moved away from that. Like, if I don't win another award anymore. Like I'm more detached from a lot of those things now, which has been much healthier.

But I needed all of my 20s to counter my whole childhood. That's how much bullying I put up with. I needed a decade of my life to counter it. And you only realize that now, right? Like it's taken me years to reflect. I didn't even come to the conclusion that I suffered from anxiety, even though it might have been obvious more than like a year and a half ago. Yeah. And it just goes to show how something negative can actually turn into a positive and you can use, you know, any struggle that you've been through to kind of push you to accomplish things. I mean, I'm the same way. I always do my best when I have something to prove. When I'm trying to prove to someone else that I can do something, all my successes come off the heels of rejection many

times. So I could totally relate. Let's talk about your career journey. You started out at EMC, which is a computer company, correct? Yeah, storage services, solutions. Yeah, and they own VMware. Dell owns them now. They bought them for billions of dollars several years ago. So big company when I was working for them, it was about 42,000 employees globally. Yes. So tell us about this experience at your first job, because I think you played it quite uniquely. Yeah, I mean, getting the job was very unique. I interviewed with 15 people for three positions over eight months. And during the last set of interviews, this guy, I think his name is David, we sat down, he looked at my resume, his eyes glanced down, and they stopped at Reebok. And this was

like a big defining moment for me because I had gotten almost no experience at Reebok. I mean, I was an intern at Reebok where I got course credit, zero dollars, and Adidas bought them that summer. I reported to a director. Originally, I was a manager, but he moved to a different group. And I didn't learn anything. I didn't really do anything, to be honest. And yet, his eyes looked at Reebok and disregarded the great experiences I had at other companies. And to me, that moment said, wow, brands are important.

I need to care about brands. I need to align myself with brands. And brands has to be a huge part of my future. That was huge for me. And so a lot of what you've seen over the course of my career has focused on. on brands. Every sentence of my bio, anytime I make a decision of who to partner with, everything revolves around brands. Brands are important. They matter. Brands open doors, right? And through associating yourself with brands, you become more credible. For instance, here's the logic. If you don't

know me, you might not want to partner or do business with me or hire me, but if you see that I'm aligned to a brand you recognize through that brand association, you're more likely to want to connect with me and trust me. And so basically, I think a career or a business is built on the elimination of risk, right? So if you see brands on my resume, I have now eliminated perceived risk in your eyes. So you're more likely to take a chance on me, right? So your goal is how do I eliminate as much risk from people working with me throughout my career as possible? So I'm more likely to get opportunities because that's really what all of this comes down to. If you want to start a business eliminate risk by generating revenue, getting customers, having a partnership with

the brand that people are familiar with. You're more likely to get an investment. You're more likely to grow once you have that because you've eliminated risks. So I think that a lot of people are talking about growth and everything else. But I think, and what I believe to my whole career, is the most successful careers and businesses are built by eliminating as much risk as possible. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers.

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and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed, is all you need. Happy New Year, Yap, gang. I just love the unique energy of the new year. It's all about fresh starts. And fresh starts not only feel possible, but also feel encouraged. And if you've been thinking about starting a business, this is your sign. There's no better time than right now. 2026 can be the year that you build something that is truly yours, the year where you take control over your career.

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Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today. at Shopify.com slash profiting. Go to Shopify.com slash profiting. That's Shopify.com slash profiting. Yeah, fam, hear your first. This new year was Shopify by your side. That's super, super interesting. You mentioned a lot of really fascinating things.

Something that you've said in the past is that you should create your own career instead of letting your company do it for you. So tell us about how you navigated your career within that company and the things you did to stand out at EMC. Okay. Well, the first thing I did to stand out in my first role at the company in the marketing department was the head of marketing said everyone needs to create their own marketing plans.

So I had created marketing plans before I started work at the company. I did it for Lycos. I did it for a small promotional company around where I lived. And I said, okay, I'm going to do everyone's marketing plan. And like, marketing needs a lot of work, right? I think it was like 30 to 50 pages per plan and per group. And I just did everyone's marketing plan. And in the moment I knew this was going to contribute value and be a good thing and I enjoyed doing it, really what I was doing was creating job security and a stronger network and support system in the company.

You're not going to fire the cheap employee that's doing all this additional work and making people's lives better within your department. Like that person's protected. that person, you know, as long as the teammates are nice people, is going to be protected and it's supported within the organization. So I look back and I was like, that was really smart. The other thing I did as part of the first job, into the second job at the company, was I became a Six Sigma Greenbelt. Now, the reason why this was a strategic move is because GE created Six Sigma was the first company to adopt it. And EMC was like, okay, we like what GE is doing, we're going to adopt it as well. We're going to teach courses on being a green belt, black belt.

And Six Sigma is about process improvement. And they teach you a formulatic way of doing that. And so I raised my hand, like, because EMC wanted every department to have green belts and black belts. So I was like, okay, I'll be a green belt at 20, I don't know, three years old. And it was a tough process, a lot of training. And I actually did a black belt project for my green belt. So a black belt project is something that happens more cross-functionally. it's much more complex and time-consuming.

And I didn't even know. It just kind of blew up to be a bigger project. And through that project, I was able to connect with people outside my groove, form stronger relationships, and represent the team and department better. Even though I was the youngest person in the department, now I was fulfilling something that the company wanted and made the senior director of marketing look good as a result. So that was another smart thing.

And then the smartest thing I did without really knowing, the implications was outside of work on nights and weekends, I spent, God knows how many, like, let's say at least 50 hours outside of a 50-hour full-time job on building my personal brand. Back then, I called it self-marketing. So 12 blog posts a week, you know, posting on social networks, just really getting myself out there. And then Fast Company profiled me six months in and EMC got wind of it and hired me to be the first solo. social media person in the company's history and one of the first ever truly corporate social media people back in 2007.

Wow. And then basically that was all inspired by an article written by Tom Peters 10 years before called The Brand Called You, which is the reason why Fast Company magazine exists today. It was on the cover of The Brain Called You. And in that article, a lot of people were empowered by reading the article. It was one part of it that really called out to me that I thought was fascinating was it said something like, you know, you have to be the chief marketing officer for the brain called you, build me ink. And then it went on to say the smartest people within an organization would create

their own unique roles. And what happened to me intentionally, unintentionally was I was able to create my own unique role. I literally wrote a job description as a 23 or 24 year old within a fortune tour in a company. So I was able to do that. And when that happened, I felt like I fulfilled my destiny. And I was so inspired by those events occurring that that's what influenced me to write Me Too Point out, which is my first book that came out on April 2009. Very cool. These are awesome, awesome tips for anybody looking to climb the corporate ladder. I especially love your point about building a personal brand on the side. When you're in a corporate company, if you have social media weight of any sort, it really helps. Like, for example,

I'm probably the most popular person in my whole company on LinkedIn. And all the executives know me because of it. And it really helps you stand out and helps you become an expert in another way. And people look to you towards like digital advice and things like that. There's a big drawback, though. And this is one of the things I didn't anticipate when I had this role. So I was managing at EMC, EMC on Facebook, all the original social accounts. But at the same time, what I would do is I would schedule.

tweets, for instance, on my personal account throughout the day because I wanted to maintain a presence, even though I couldn't really use my personal account at work. But the problem was other employees. Perspective, yeah. Other employees said, oh my God, why is Dan tweeting all this amount? He should be doing work. And so there was a level of jealousy because I had this prominent role within the company, even though I was young. And people were trying to sabotage me internally. Yes. I faced that at first. And then I think people realize that there's things called automation, there's things called interns, and it died down. But I agree, it can be a challenge. And you definitely have to have a company that has a forward thinking culture and is supportive. So let's go back to what you had mentioned in the beginning of our

conversation about all the experiences that you've had. You say a career is no longer a race up the ladder. It's a collection of experiences. And those who have experienced the most have a competitive advantage compared to those who remain stagnant. So how often do you think that we should be changing up our careers? Well, people have three to six careers in their lifetime and about 12 jobs between 18 and 45 years old. So either you force the change or change happens to you. It's forced down your throat, right? So I think that you need to make a decision. Do you keep doing what you're doing? Or do you make changes in how you do your work or who you serve or the skill set, you have. And I think that now more than ever before, the lifespan of a learned skill is like

four to five years. So more regularly, we have to continue to learn an upscale and and practice lifelong learning. Right. And I think that if you shut yourself off to learning something new or or hearing someone's ideas and thoughts or reading, you're making a huge mistake. And, you know, I've done a lot of work on upskilling over the past few years, on artificial intelligence and all these things. And what everything is telling me is being more human on a year to year basis is going to be more valuable than hard skills. Because hard skills will continue to be automated, thus driving the demand for the soft skills to be able to communicate and function as people. So the answer to artificial intelligence is humanity. And there's no question that humans are going

to be working with humans and humans are going to be working with robots in the future. And so understanding artificial intelligence, understanding all these new technologies is valuable because you're going to have to man them, right? You're going to have to work together with the machines. Yep. But the machines are going to be doing the stuff, the technical work that you used to do. And so it will free you up time to do things that are high impact and those things are re-driven by your soft slash human skills. So that's my big conclusion. And to go even further than that, my biggest conclusion of the year is that the same.

technology that has isolated younger generations hurting their soft skills is driving the demand for those same soft skills by automating hard slash technical skills at the same time right so if you're more isolated growing up because you're always using this technology you're not even leaving your home you'd rather text than actually have a face-to-face conversation that's hurting your soft skills Thus, you're not prepared for the future where it's only going to be about soft skills. And I made that conclusion through tons of researches. I did a whole article on LinkedIn about it. And I think that's a big concern.

Yeah, that is really interesting. We'll definitely get into technology and isolation and how those interplay. I want to mention just really quick, I want to talk about talent stacking. So a lot of the writing that I read in your latest book, Back to Human, reminded me of something that Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams discussed in episode number 38. And he talks about talent stacking where you basically just like take different skills from your various experiences and you can merge them into something new. So for him, he was like a decent drawer, a good writer and had enterprise corporate experience. And then he just merged those

skills together and became like, you know, the most famous cartoonist in the world. So I want to know what do you think your talent stack is? Like what skills did you put together to become, you know, the best selling author that you are. You're very smart to ask this question. In fact, when you mentioned it earlier, I'm like, I hope she brings this up again because the biggest difference between how I view myself and my career when I was younger versus now is that back in the day when I was focused on personal branding, my conclusion was you have to be the best of what you do for a specific audience, right? Take a niche and own it. That was how I thought I had built my career. Yet now, in hindsight, what I actually did was create a talent stack.

I was successful. I stood out because of a lot of different skills that when combined gave me differentiation in a competitive advantage. And so I think it's this combination of marketing research, communication, through writing, through presentations, et cetera, with branding, with social media skills,

with the ability to network. All of this combined has made me very, very unique in the marketplace. and what I did was I took a skill or a set of skills that were scarce in HR and brought them to HR. So a lot of the skills I have are very common in the marketing world, but not common in the HR world. So I could have, and I had a choice to stay in the marketing world. I could have been, you know, some sort of marketing guru or worked as a CMO at a company. but because I took those skills and brought them into HR, I had a skill set that was very rare in

HR, so I was able to stand out and grow faster. See, I just think this is such an important lesson. Everybody thinks they have to be the best at everything. And it's a common theme that I'm just realizing as I interview all these super smart, successful people. They're not the best at what they do. They're really good at multiple things. They merge it together and create their own lane and become very successful.

And I saw that in you. so that's why I won't think I'm the best at anything I do. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think you're great at what you do. But I'm not the best at what I do. It's the collection of all those skills together. Exactly. Serving an industry where those skills collectively are rare that has made me stand out and shine.

Exactly. Yeah. All right. Cool. So in your latest book, Back to Human, if we want to just stick on skills for a moment, the third chapter of your book is called Practice Shared Learning. And you explain the greatest challenge for professional. professionals today is staying relevant, like we just discussed. The average relevancy of a learned

skill is just five years these days. So it's obviously clear that we need to continually upscale. Could you just explain to us what this shared learning concept is? Yeah, this ended up being the most popular chapter in the book, even though I think it's the most simple one to understand. It's like, we are better together is really what it comes down to. And so the idea is that in order to keep up with all the changes that are happening more and more frequently in our industry, in our economy, in our world. We have to rely on each other and learn and develop through conversations and supporting each other if we want to succeed and stay relevant in our jobs. And so the biggest challenge is staying relevant because things are moving fast.

Technology doesn't care about our feelings. The economy doesn't care about our feelings, but we care about our feelings. And so we need to take ownership and realize that since there's so much information being published on such a regular basis. We have to rely on each other to be arbiters of our own industries and professions. So for instance, if you're on a team with four other people, you only have so much time to be able to read or to have the right skills of things that you need to know in that instance or in that year or five years. But the people around you are also trying to achieve something similar. So if you help each other, if you practice this whole thing of when I learn

I share. That's the mantra in the chapter. Then you can all rise up. You can stay relevant together. And, you know, just talking to a lot of my friends, it is really about the peer network. I mean, the people who are most going to serve you, the people who are around your age, who have similar goals, even if they leave your team or organization, those are really the people that you will count on, hopefully, in the future. And I think, especially in today's world, there's only like 3.5 degrees of separation. Facebook did a whole study on this and so the world is really small and you want to establish good relationships. And one of the easiest ways to establish relationships is just by sharing an article. Literally like I keep in touch with some of the more successful people

by just thinking of them when I read an article and sharing the article with them. Right? So like I'll give you an example. I'll read an article in the New York Times about, you know, people's technology habits and I'll share it with Cal Newport because Cal and I both wrote, articles that are similar and different about our overuse and misuse of technology. And he's going at it from a minimalistic approach, whereas I'm more of a, you know, use technology as a driver to human relationships approach, but it's similar. So I'm, I know he's into that topic because he wrote a book on it, right? And so I think that it's these small little acts of sharing that add up, that keep you in touch

with people, and then that build the relationships. You know, relationships are built on trust. but they're also built on giving and sharing without asking for things. So if you start sharing, if you're a leader within an organization and you're just sharing and trying to help your team, you're starting to create a culture where it's okay to share. You know, the leaders of the past were the hoarders of information. The more information you knew that other people didn't, the more powerful you would become. Now that's not the case.

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So let's talk about fulfillment. I know you wrote a whole chapter about it in your book, and you're kind of alluding to it now. Tell us about why fulfillment is so important when you're trying to drive employee engagement. Yeah, fulfillment looks at the full picture. It's actually the word that's getting tossed around a lot more in organizations now because it's whole, right? It's personal and professional. And since our personal and professional lives are so intertwined, I believe in work-life integration, we have to think of, fulfillment across the board. And we spend a third of our lives working, a third of our lives not

working in a third of our lives sleeping. So if we have a bad experience at work, it's going to hurt our personal lives. If we, our personal lives are a disaster, that's going to affect our work. And that's why, you know, I believe that people want to bring their full selves into the workplace. They don't want to be John or Diane, the worker. And then John or Diane, the parent. They just want to be them. And that's why it's important for a leader. leaders to understand what makes people fulfilled, be fulfilled themselves, and then inspire the best in other people while serving their needs. And that will only become more important because it's really about this whole holistic view of someone's employee experience in life. Yeah. You know,

and you want them to go home after a work day and say all these great things about their job and their manager and their company, right? Again, it's all about storytelling. The reason why, you know, a lot of things happen in our society and why people make decisions is for the story. You know, I believe that even some people who sell their companies or accept a job, some of it is for the story. I just got a job at Google. That story is interesting to people. It's captivating, right? It's so true. Like for you, you know, working at Disney. You just have to say Disney Plus and people are immediately interested. Yeah. Right? You don't even have to say what you do. You could be an intern there and they're interested anyways,

because of curiosity because of what the brand means. And again, that goes back to where I was saying about how important and powerful branding is. Yeah. But I think that the storytelling aspect of our work lives is very powerful. And you want to support and lead a culture where people are telling positive stories about it because that is a recruiting tool. That's a retention tool. And it's just a right thing to do.

Yeah. It's so eye-opening. You never think of it in terms of stories, but when you say it, it's so true. We literally find fulfillment in the fact that people respect the brand that we work for, and it does make a good story. I love that. Let's talk about work-life integration. You briefly mentioned it. From my understanding, you believe that work-life balance is a myth now that the days of unplugging while your home are over. And you argue that work-life integration is a more appropriate concept as companies expect you to work for. from home and things like that, or work off hours, I should say. So could you tell us more about this work life integration concept and perhaps provide some tips on how we can facilitate a better work life integration in our days?

Flexibility is probably the biggest or one of the biggest words and employee benefits that has been talked about since I started my whole career. And it all started when I was working at EMC and I interviewed. I interviewed the head of HR for a podcast. So this is a long time ago. It wasn't called a podcast back then for a video snippet or whatnot. And he said something that still sticks with me. He said, if we expect our workforce to do work outside of the office, then we have to accept

and also accept that they're doing personal things at work. And that stuck with me. I'm like, huh, there's no nine to five work day then. It's just, you're kind of just doing work. Right? And it's more integrated. And then I interviewed Richard Brainson three years ago. And I asked him about this. And he said something like, you know, if you have a lot of friends outside of work, you should have an equal amount of friends at work. If you have a lot of flexibility outside of work, you should have the most, the same amount of flexibility at work. And so basically there's no difference between work at the office or outside the office. It's just work. And, you know, we've noticed we've kind of gone to this whole nine to five workday paradigm to, you know, more flexible work week and work-life integration is part of this. And the solution that I posed in the book is to really come to terms with what matters to you and what are your priorities.

So for instance, choose three goals you have in a certain week personally and professionally. And then look at your calendar and make sure you're putting in time for all of those six goals. Or just blending your personal and professional life together such that, let's say every Monday, morning, you meet with a new friend for coffee. But then between Monday and Tuesday, you have to accomplish one work call. And then your calendar should reflect the goals you have in a given week, right? So everyone says, I live and die by my calendar. If it's not on my calendar, it doesn't exist. And as a result, we need to inject more of our personal lives in our calendar. Yeah. Because then it fully reflects who we are and what we prioritize in our life. And so it really is that

simple. It is, you know, like, for instance, in my calendar. You know, I have all these different events I want to go to. They're in my calendar. Some are personal events. Some are professional events. Others are meeting people for coffee or dinner or doing certain projects with certain deadlines. So it's really owning your calendar and making sure it reflects everything. It makes you completely fulfilled. Yeah. And it's on you to do that. You know, you can't outsource that. You have to, you know, make sure that it, reflects who you are as a person and as a worker. Yeah, totally. And I think that with work, you know, if you're at a forward thinking company, as long as you get your work done and you're able to prioritize well and fit everything in,

you can, for example, I'm here doing this interview on my lunch hour, but I plan to stay at the office till 7 p.m. tonight, you know? So it's like it's a balance and knowing how to accomplish all your key goals, in my opinion. Let's talk about the subtitle of your book. I thought it was really interesting. The book is called Back to Human. The subtitle is How Great Leaders Create Connection in the Age of Isolation. And I know this is a really hot topic, isolation at work.

Many workers today feel isolated from their colleagues, their organizations, and their leaders. So can you shed some light about the loneliness epidemic that we're facing in the workplace and what you believe to be the root causes of that? Yeah, I think we live in a very low. only society now, you know, people are spending a lot of time on their phone. And the more time you spend on your phone, the less time you're spending, looking, or talking to a person, you know, in real life or through a phone call. So it appears that we're more connected, right, that you can reach out to people in different countries that you couldn't have 20 years ago. But at the same time,

because we're not getting the human interaction we so crave and desire, we feel more isolated. And, And even in New York City, you could be around so many people, but no one at the same time because people are physically there, but not mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. And loneliness is pretty deadly, right? It's not something that people are open to talk about, yet it affects people at an alarming rate, especially men. And that's what we found. And if you think about today's world of work, it's more decentralized than ever before.

People are working from all different areas. And that's a good thing. People love flexibility. I call it the light side of flexibility. The light side of flexibility is the promise through technology that you can work when, where, and how you want. But back to human reveals the dark side. The dark side is that if you work remote, you're lonelier, you feel more isolated.

And the big finding was that if you work remote, you're much less likely to say you want a long-term career with your company. So it impacts team and organizational commitment. If you don't see and hear from someone for a long enough period of time, you're checked out. and you move on. So it's interesting how it's like this duality. It's like it's very beneficial. It's actually when I interviewed 100 top young leaders for the book, they call it a double-edged sort, right? On one hand, it's given us incredible benefits. But at the other hand, it's been you know, pretty harmful without us even realizing how harmful it is. And the technology companies are purposely, you know, creating these devices and these applications with addiction in mind.

It's their business model. We're the product. And we don't realize. it, right? Because we're addicted. And so it's fascinating because we kind of need to use technology for email and to message people in order to conduct business or, you know, a lot of what you've done to build your personal brand on LinkedIn. Like if you didn't use a phone, if you didn't have a computer, like you wouldn't be able to compete on that level. But at the same time, you could fall into this trap of always using it. And thus, your human needs are not met because of that. So even if it accelerates your career inside, you're going to feel very empty and that it'll hurt your whole life, which will then affect your ability to create good work. Yeah. So talk to us about some of the stats when it comes to loneliness. I want my listeners to really understand how big of a problem this is and maybe even perhaps the cost of loneliness.

Yeah. I mean, in America, Sigmund did a study of 20,000 adults and found that half are lonely and 40% lack meaningful relationships. In the UK, 9 million people are lonely. 200,000 adults haven't spoken or close for a relative in the past month. They actually have a minister of loneliness, Mims Davies, to try and solve the problem. So it's huge there. America is not doing, you know, as good of a job, but we should because it's such a big problem here. And it costs the U.S. about $7 billion a year, right? Because it's really a productivity hit.

Yeah. If you're feeling lonely, your productivity is going to sink. You're going to take more sick days. And then that affects the organization's bottom line, and thus it affects the whole economy. Yeah. So you just mentioned that sometimes we abuse technology. Technology can make us feel isolated. Can you talk about the misuse of technology in the workplace? I heard you mentioned before that one face-to-face conversation is more successful and effective than 34 back-and-forth emails. That was like outrageous to me. Do you have any other examples of the misuse of? technology. Yeah, so we tap, touch, or swipe our phone over 2,600 times a day. We look at our phone

every 12 minutes. We set an average of five texts during a meeting. So we're always using it and overusing it and misusing it. And like what you just said, it's like, is this really effective? And the research says no. The research says that if we're constantly using it, our message isn't getting across. Like if you have to send 34 emails back and forth and it's not as successful as a face-to-face conversation that shows you that the emails are actually not effective because you have to send so many emails to get the same result as one conversation. So I think that you see all these leaders and their teams in meetings looking at their cell phones. This is very common.

And if you're not present, then you're not showing respect to people who are speaking during a meeting. You're distracted. Meaning is a longer. And you just don't have the same outcome as teams. that are not using technology during meetings are attentive, are brainstorming, have a clear goal, and therefore we'll get a better result because they're maybe spending last time, but that time they're fully functional, they're attentive, they're paying attention, and they're working together to get to know each other better and to solve problems.

Yeah, I can totally relate to that. I don't know how many meetings I've been in where, you know, everybody's doing other work, not paying attention, and at multiple companies that I've been at. It's just so interesting. What are some of the ways where we can kind of assess how digitally distracted we are? There's an assessment in the book, but I think overall a lot of it has to do with just being honest with yourself, right? Like the more self-awareness you have, the more you think about applications to the different tools you're using and how to be smarter about when and how you're using them, I think that can be really effective.

And what I try and preach in the book, which is a little bit different than what other people are, is use technology as a bridge to human connection. Don't let it be a barrier between you and the relationships you want to craft and develop. So I think it can be very powerful. You know, I've interviewed Brian Grazer who wrote face-to-face. He's like a Hollywood superstar director. And he basically said, use technology to discover people and learn about them so that you can forge deeper connections with the right people in person.

Yeah. And I so believe that. I think it's almost obvious, but it needs to be said. And for me, you know, in this book, it's like, okay, well, let's use technology to get on the same page to share brief updates with the team and to keep in touch between meetings, between phone calls, between off-sights. And I think that can be really effective. But if you are replacing human interaction completely with technology, you've got a problem and that's going to end up really hurting you. And I do fear that the over-reliance we have on technology is going to pose a problem. a bigger threat to our health and to empathy.

And if empathy declines because of technology overuse, because you have more empathy if you physically see somebody than if you were to text them, that's going to lead to bigger societal issues, including more crime. Yeah. So what I talk about in the book has a very corporate context, but the implications are widespread. Totally. So let's move on to productivity. how do you feel about multitasking and perfectionalism?

Multitasking doesn't exist. What's really happening is your brain is moving back and forth from one task to the other, and it's making you less effective. So it's better to single task. It's better to come up with the five things you need to do today and then do one at a time instead of bounce back and forth, right? So that's why for my books, I do all the research first before I start writing it. Right? Instead of, you know, doing some research, then writing and then research and then writing, like that to me is ineffective. I'd rather do all the research first. And I do that with my articles too. I do it with everything, actually. So podcast, I need to do the interviews first before I do the intros and everything else. Same. And so I think that one thing at a time makes more sense. Otherwise, you're going to make more mistakes. Totally agree. So your team did some research on how to optimize productivity, such as the time of day.

that we're most productive, the day of week, how often we should break and things like that. Could you share some of that data with our listeners? Oh, yes. I was very excited to include this as part of the book because this is on average. So it's not like, you know, you could be a better nighttime work than a morning person, right? But for the most part, on average, we're most productive between 10 in the morning and noon. Tuesday, we are most productive because Monday we're really catching up on things that might have happened on Friday's Saturday and Sunday. We need to get about eight hours of sleep a night. And that's been a huge

struggle for me recently over the past year. Ever since I was in Canada at one of my events and I woke up at four in the morning. It threw me off for over a year. And it's been trying to recover. I know. It's interesting. I'm definitely a morning person now. And then breaks are important. You know, I think that people don't give themselves enough breaks when they really do need them because we can't focus on work for five hours straight. It's just impossible. So I think breaks are healthy, they're important. And once we come back from the break, we're more effective.

They don't need to be long breaks. You just need a little bit of a rest. And I think that with exercise and eating healthy and the combination of being thoughtful about how you're spending your time using technology versus not using technology, I think this can help you have a more effective day because you can't talk about productivity without talking about health and how you spend your time. Totally.

And I think that if you're healthier, it's easy to be productive. You can be productive for longer. And it's easier to go to sleep because you've kind of worn yourself out throughout the day. Yeah. And just to share some of these data points with my listeners, I thought it was so interesting. The time of the day that we're most productive is between 10 a.m. and noon. The day of the week where most productive is Tuesday. The optimal amount of sleep, which I've discussed many times on this show, is between seven and nine hours a night.

The optimal number of work breaks is one every 52 minutes. The optimal length of a break is 17 minutes, and you should get at least 150 minutes of exercise every week. So I thought this is so interesting, and I'm going to try to see if I can incorporate some of these data points to help me be more productive. Something else that you mentioned early on in our interview is the fact that you were, an early trendsetter in the data around a four-day work week. And I want to get your perspective on if you think that to be productive, you need to work eight hours a day. Like, what do you think is the optimal amount of time that somebody should work during their day? It's going to be different for everyone. So I think that every organization needs flexibility and every worker should demand

flexibility. But I think that it's going to be custom per situation. So what you're you need from flexibility is going to be different than what I need. So like if somebody has kids, they might need flexible schedules, but they might not need to work from home, remote. Whereas somebody else who's maybe older might want to work in the office five days a week for 40 hours total. Whereas, you know, for someone else, they would just rather work from home five days a week. So it depends on the person, their work preferences, styles, what they're comfortable with, their responsibilities, family situation, there's a lot of factors. And so I think in the future, my hope is that flexibility is customized per person. Yeah. Because we're just all different and we're in different

phases of life, right? So flexibility for me now is going to be different than in five years. But everyone needs flexibility. And if we demand people to work really hard and stay with our companies, then we have to give flexibility in return. I think that flexibility will continue to become as common as any other employee benefit, like healthcare coverage and learning and development. That makes complete sense. And so I think that in terms of all companies having a four-day work week or having some sort of confined work day, it's a political issue. That's my conclusion. It's a political issue. Like the Labor Party in the UK are fighting for a four-day work week. If that were to pass,

then all companies would have to have it and it would constrain the amount of hours per week. In America, I don't see it happening unless a politician changes that. Yeah. That's what it took to get a 40-hour work week. Yeah. I could never see that passing in America. There you go. So then it won't.

But it is a bigger issue than just a corporate issue, and only a handful of companies around the world have tested a four-day work week. So it's not widespread. It's in the public consciousness because of the amount of media attention that they have gotten. I did a study on the four-day work week with Kronos last year, and we asked the The number one question was, if pay remain constant, how many days a week would you work? And the number one answer was four-day work week. And the other thing that was fascinating about that question was only 4% said zero.

Wow. So people want to work. They just don't want to work five days a week. Yeah. That would be amazing if we could get that changed. Yeah. And it reminds me of this article I read about the oldest living man. He's a 121-year-old Mexican guy.

and he was interviewed about what he most misses. And of course he said relationships. That's always in the one or two. But actually even more than relationships, it was work. He missed working like he used to. And to me, that pairs up very nicely with the fact that people want to work in our survey, right? Like even if there's universal basic income, people want to work. Yeah.

I mean, it goes back to purpose and fulfillment. Dignity, identity, all of that. Yeah. Okay, so we're running up on time and I close out my show with this question. What is your secret to profiting in life? Doing work I find meaningful around people who have similar goals and values. Doing work that gets me excited to wake up every morning, ready to contribute to the world and continue on my path, surrounding myself with people who inspire me, who support me

and have similar goals so that I don't feel like I'm alone and following that path. Very cool. And where can our listeners go to learn more about you and everything that you do? You can go to Dan Shaabelle.com. So it's D-A-N-S-C-H-A-W-B-E-L.com. The podcast is five questions with Dan Shaabell. The book is Back to Human. Awesome. And I'll link all of that in our show notes. Dan, this was such a great conversation. You are a guru when it comes to workplace trends. And I had a lot of fun talking about it with you. So thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me.