Speaker 1It's not about how many times you can get hit, right? I've failed countless times. I've almost gone broke. I was there.
Speaker 2And they're jacking off, they're mucking around. That ruins it for everyone. A third of all people are lonely and males were some of the highest figures in that report. We're taught to push through the pain. You don't learn anything from success. It's when times are tough. That's when you learn things and that's when you can adapt. Have a great story to tell.
Speaker 1Today on the Never Not Building podcast, I'm joined by someone who has built an extraordinary career out of helping people perform at their best, both in business and in life. Jay Pottinger is the general manager and co-leads EQ Minds alongside his wife, Chelsea. He's a postgraduate in neuroscience and mental health and a speaker and coach trusted by some of the world's biggest brands from Woolworths and NAB to eBay and Estee Lauder. Before this, Jay's journey took him from professional sport into a 15-year corporate career at Westpac and Deutsche Bank. And now into a role where he combines science, psychology and lived experience to teach teams how to focus, thrive and find real satisfaction in their work and lives. He's also a husband, father and someone who deeply understands the pressure of modern life and what it really takes to sustain high performance without burning out. Jay, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 2Thanks so much for taking time out of your very busy diary. So pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1I'm not that busy.
Speaker 2Big team would suggest otherwise.
Speaker 1Jay. To start off, I know you had a pretty traumatic experience, a pretty bad setback in 2013 with a back injury. What was the turning point where you realized the battle was more mental than physical?
Speaker 2Yeah, it was no doubt. It was a very challenging time in my life. So just as a bit of back backstory from my back was that I played basketball for a lot of time, had some back injuries towards the end of the career, sort of finished up the career. And then I don't know, it's about, 15 years ago, 13 years ago, deadlifting in a gym, blew out the back and then spent about two years of my life in and out of hospitals, hanging out with a lot of surgeons, having a lot of operations and procedures, seeing every person known to man. And when you're lying on your back or your front for basically two years of your life, it becomes more of a mental challenge than a physical challenge. So you spend a lot of time on the internet trying to find every type of solution, that exists and it does become a mental game. And I'm really lucky. I don't have, I don't think I have the genetics to go into depression, but if I did, there's no doubt I would have been in depression during that period because it was very, very challenging time in my life. My back might have been busted, but it was really my mind and my mood that was completely broken.
Speaker 1So you've obviously gone through a very, very hard hardship, a lot of mental challenges. Is there any sort of daily habits, or frameworks are you created that you still use today that helped you through that very challenging time? -
Speaker 2Oh yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, whilst it was a challenging time, I must admit it's probably been the best thing that, you know, it's ever happened to me besides the birth of my beautiful daughter and my wife, because it completely changed the trajectory of my life. I went down a rabbit hole trying to understand mindfulness, neuroscience, I was very lucky I was accepted into a clinical trial at Neuroscience Australia. And from that, you know, complete change of direction of life, it's led me to have this wonderful opportunity that now I get to go out and speak to all these incredible companies about the power of mindfulness and neuroscience. So whilst it was a bad thing, it's definitely changed my habits in a very positive way. And because of that, there's lots of different things I do from a mindfulness perspective and a neuroscience perspective every single day. As soon as I wake up, you know, there's new habits that are in place and I would have never got there if it wasn't for this injury, which was a bad thing. -
Speaker 1Hindsight's a crazy thing, right? -
Speaker 2Hindsight's everything, right? We look back and go, oh, if I knew that, I would have completely changed, but that's what makes life so good, right? -
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, when we look back at anything in our lives, nothing goes in a straight line. But what, why would it be so exciting if everything went in a straight line? That's like the story of everyone's life. It sounds like where you've gone, it's created who you are. -
Speaker 2Yeah, absolutely. It's through the hardships that you learn, you change. You know, you don't learn anything from success. That's when you learn things and that's when you can adapt and, you know, have a great story to tell. -
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely. So when we talk about, you know, sport, we're taught to push through the pain. How do you recognize the line between healthy resilience and burnout in business when we're collaborating against sport and business and what sort of you're teaching people from that angle? -
Speaker 2Yeah, it's a great question and a really good sort of comparison because I look back and I played a sport quite a long time ago. And so it was pretty primitive back then, the understanding and the knowledge we had about things, but even still back then, it was more advanced than in the corporate world these days. And whilst the corporate world is changing, I think we've still got a long way to go. And I'll give you an example of that is, when you think about athletes, when you're thinking about the best in the world, they understand that recovery is almost more important than the performance on the court, because if you don't have the recovery, you can't go out and perform well on the court. And yet in the corporate world, we sort of tell our staff, "Okay, I want you to show up to work. I want you to do your best at your job. And then we don't care about what you do otherwise." So they might be going out, partying on the weekend or eating bad food on the weekend. Lots of them aren't sleeping because they're working so much. And then they arrive at work and we go, "Hey, it's time to be a hundred percent. There's no chance that's ever going to happen." Be a bit like, you know, who's your favorite sports team? - We'll call it Arsenal. - Arsenal, right? So you're a very successful guy. You decide that you're going to buy Arsenal. And so you walk in first day on the job and you say, "Guys, I've got some new policies. I don't care what you do on the weekend. I don't care what you do off the pitch. You just go and do what you do off the pitch." You just go and do whatever. I only care about how you perform on the pitch. That's never going to work, right? That's going to be the worst thing ever. You guys are going to have the most unsuccessful year you've ever had. And yet, that's what a lot of people do in the corporate space. -
Speaker 1It's funny you say that because I remember a friend of mine saying they treat their company or their employees like a high-performance sports team. -
Speaker 2I think that's an amazing way to be and I wish more companies did that. But I don't perceive that many companies are doing that. -
Speaker 1It's so funny. It's so funny you say that because now, sorry, my mind's going a million miles an hour. Because as technology has developed, especially with whoops and stuff like that, with sport, it's created people to hit new records, to break more world records, to be faster, to swim quicker, whatever it might be, but it hasn't really correlated over to the business side of things, right? Do you think that's something that should be much more top of mind for employees right
Speaker 2now? - Well, obviously, I think it should be top of mind. For sure. That's exactly what we do as a business, is go in and speak to companies about how they can treat their staff like they're high-performance athletes so that they can perform at their best but also feel at their best as well, not only in the workplace but at home. And I think you're absolutely right. The acceleration that we've seen in athletics around performance management, how we track things, how they perform on and off, their recovery, all of that stuff, it's all so important. We've seen a slow burn in the corporate world and it hasn't kept pace, not even close, but there has been some changes and we are starting to see some owners, some executives starting to treat their teams like high-performance athletes, which is fantastic, but I think that's the exception rather than the rule. -
Speaker 1Yeah. I think more people are talking about it now. It's becoming such a much bigger thing. -
Speaker 2Oh, absolutely. There's more information. There's obviously social media people that are bringing. I mean, we're only just discussing creatine now. Everyone's taking creatine now. And what's really been the driver, all the data, all the research has been out there for a long time, but a few people, a few prominent people in social media have really brought it to light, which is awesome because that means more people are talking about it, more people are taking it. -
Speaker 1So you represented Australia at a very young age in basketball? -
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. That was a long time ago. - Long time ago? -
Speaker 1Yeah, a long time ago. - Is there anything you took from that that passed on to performance and mental resilience in business and even in life? -
Speaker 2Oh, absolutely. I mean, it completely shaped the person that I've become. And as a father, I would love my daughter to go into some form of team sport in order to learn all of these amazing skills that I think really set you up for your future. Whether it be how do you interact with other people? How do you build connection? How do you deal with conflict? So that's on the teamwork side. And then from a personal perspective, how do you build good habits? How do you make sure you take care of yourself, not only on the pitch, but off the pitch? All this stuff we've been talking about. I think when you play sport at a young level, and there's other ways you can do it as well, but it gives you this baseline that you can then apply those skills into the real world. And I think one of the big things that, you know, potentially a lot of people are missing at the moment is around resilience, because sport teaches you how to learn. It teaches you how to lose. It teaches you how to get knocked over. stay knocked over to get up and give it another try and as you you know we were speaking about earlier we learn from when we make mistakes we learn from when we fail and sport gives you plenty of those opportunities because there was a lot of teams I didn't make that's for sure it's not
Speaker 1about how many times you can get hit right so Jay just in regards to COVID and the epidemic have you noticed there has been a significant change with the younger generation and the sort of their mental health and resilience at the
Speaker 2moment I think we're going to start seeing you know maybe trauma is the wrong word for it but we've seen kids especially in a very significant developmental age as part of their development they had this huge thing come about and potentially they didn't have the the skills to be able to to manage that properly just that pure disconnection takes away from a time when they should have been building up their skill sets in a whole variety of things talking to people learning how to engage with people that was taken away from them I even think about you know speaking to some friends of ours who had a a kid that was you know at university and they just lost that entire period of time when I reflect back on my university time and thought wow I mean most of my best friends are from my university days and not only that it was some of the most fun times in my entire life they've just had that wiped away taken away from them and they couldn't control that at all so then we're throwing them back into society and saying you know what I'm going to do I'm going to do this I'm going to do this I'm going to do this I'm going to do this I'm going to do this I'm going to do this hey I know you've lost a significant portion of your life your development good luck and see how you go I think there's going to be a lot that comes out of that over and it's going to take time to obviously see it through and I'm sure there's business leaders who are already seeing the impact of that so yeah I think it's going to be hugely yeah
Speaker 1personally that's something that I've that I've struggled with right is that like if I'm developing these younger managers that never had too much experience well a lot of their working time was in that three four year period how do I teach them without teaching them in person on how to do it it's it's become a challenging it's honestly it's become a challenging thing obviously globalization has gotten a little bit better but just teaching the younger generation that that never probably even never manage people to then go ahead and deal with the difficult conversations in person on on zoom on google meets or whatever it might be it's just it's becoming a lot more
Speaker 2challenging everything's more challenging we were at a conference last year in the states and they said that 49% of young people don't want to make a phone call they prefer to communicate over a text message how are you going to have a difficult conversation over a text message right that's very challenging to communicate all the different things because communication is not about just the words right it's about this it's about the interaction it's about the look that you can see the energy that you're picking up you're taking all of that away from people very very challenging times so uh I'm sure you as a business owner it uh it presents some massive challenges it does it
Speaker 1absolutely does um okay so let's talk about mental health and performance so a lot of people go for this moment uh even even me I'm not perfect but just talking about sustainable habits is there a difference of what you you see the people that are sticking to the sustainable habits every single day and people that don't is there a is there like a direct correlation of something that you you can see from certain people that actually push through you just
Speaker 2think about compound interest put money in the bank compound interest it adds up and it's like that from a health perspective as well you do lots of little habits every single day that are positive it's going to turn into a huge benefit at the end of the day whereas if you're jumping in and out you just don't get that consistent build up and I think you would have some much different outcomes as opposed to those people that are doing the little things right every
Speaker 1single day yep I have a question for you and it was going back to what we're talking about when I moved overseas and it was very challenging being by myself and stuff like that but do you believe that especially for for a male you can define a male's happiness based on their routine every day
Speaker 2oh great question it depends what's in that routine so I think we're in a especially for males we're in a loneliness epidemic I don't know if you saw the the state of the nation report that came out back in 2023 it was like a third of all people are lonely and males young males especially were some of the highest figures in that report so when it comes to routines and young males certain young males can get very stuck on their routines which is great from a health perspective as long as you're bringing in social routines as well so that you're not so rigid that you don't allow those connections to build with other people because routines get out of the way you know I know some young people they're fantastic but they're so stuck in their routine it's like have you been catching up with friends oh no I gotta go to the gym every day this you know this time and that interacts with me having a coffee with someone else so if those routines are so rigid that they're not allowing for flexibility to actually build other people into their life I think long term that can have some negative consequences I agree
Speaker 1um okay so let's talk about neuroscience and how it can better workplace performance yeah so I mean
Speaker 2neuroscience is a broad hugely broad term but how our brain functions absolutely impacts the way that leaders can lead not only lead others but lead themselves as well and so I think there's more and more knowledge that's been brought about in this space that we can all use to improve our performance it's really interesting right the brain's about what two percent of our body weight and yet it consumes twenty percent of our energy but how much of our time are we actually spending on making sure that we're investing in our brain so that our performance improves our mental health improves our connections improve probably not twenty percent of that time probably a lot less so I think as more and more knowledge becomes mainstream we're gonna look at different ways that we can maximize our brain to become better leaders to be come better performers to be better in the corporate workplace wherever it may be so there's a lot that we can lean on from that especially when it comes to stress and you know our executive function all that stuff do
Speaker 1you think what we tell ourselves limits our ability as well
Speaker 2a hundred percent yes uh the stories that we tell ourselves largely determine where we will end up I think um there's lots to that in that I mean we'll just take a simple example um you I saw you driving this morning you got a lovely car very nice car so when you were purchasing that car um did you start thinking about that car all the time when you start seeing it everywhere
Speaker 1yes yeah in short yes yeah everyone's everyone's cool has this car
Speaker 2right yeah so when you are purchasing a car there's a thing called the reticular activating system it's a network of neurons in our brain and basically what that does is it starts filtering out information that we want to allow in and filtering out information that we want to block off so when it comes to purchasing a car you say oh I really like that brand new car looks awesome and you start seeing that car everywhere that's the reticular activating system and that actually works for goal setting and visualization as well because if you're always telling yourself hey I'm going to achieve this your brain starts looking for ways that I'm actually going to go and achieve this but if you're waking up every morning and you're looking at negative news or you're thinking about the stress in the world your brain starts saying hey I want to start looking for stress I want to start looking for negativity I'm going to be so focused on this thing and this story becomes all bad rather than going hey I want to spend time on positive things on things that are going to further my success that are going to make me better whatever it may be so stories yes absolutely our own personal stories are huge so is
Speaker 1does then that go back to the workplace of like your staff being around happier people and getting everyone else on the same page I'm assuming we're moving towards that
Speaker 2very much important we all know we've had a leader that's miserable and micromanages us and he's always negative how's that play on your culture of your business it's it's toxic you've got to get rid of that stuff whereas you have someone that's inspirational big smile on their face always engaging with everyone very different very different understood
Speaker 1I had a conversation my business partner yesterday and he said oh like we're getting these small wins I'm like excellent I'm very happy and he goes you know I'm not going to do that I'm not going to do that I'm not going to do that I'm not going to do that I'm not going to do that we just need to hang around more winners winners just generally win what do you think contributes to that to the winning continuing winning mentality yeah my
Speaker 2question is are they winning more often or are they trying more often maybe they're even failing more often but you've got to try you got to fail in order to win and entrepreneurs they're a different breed my wife's an entrepreneur she has a very different brain makeup than me and she has this self-belief that I'm going to give things a crack now people only see you know you go on social media you you see the big win you don't see the 50 fails along that went along with that win but you keep trying you keep learning from what you're doing and you end up with a win and that's the one that you bank and I think entrepreneurs do a much better job of having that self-belief building that self-efficacy by failing that, oh, actually, if I do this once, and it didn't work but I can think back to that time that it did work oh I'll lean on that and that's going to help me progress to the next one so that's
Speaker 1most business owners that I know just try it's like it's crazy right it's like oh it didn't work cool did you keep trying I personally if I even when I speak to my staff I will never forgive someone who just didn't give something a crack I will forgive someone and me and my marketing team we've had some serious conversations conversations recently and I'm not upset that something went wrong I will always be there if they tried a million times and it didn't work but if they don't try I don't like you know what I mean I don't like lazy people oh I didn't lose weight oh I didn't achieve anything would did you keep going did you you know did you learn from the mistakes you're making and change and for me even from a business owner perspective it's like I've failed countless times I've almost gone broke and that's not just a a conversation of like I almost went broke I was there you know what I mean like and so but I've learned from that how do you teach staff from that perspective how do you teach leaders teach that to staff is there ways they can best communicate is there certain strategies or tactics they can use for for their team to get them into that winning
Speaker 2mentality yeah they're they're able to get them into that winning mentality yeah there is a lot to that something that uh I think a podcast probably won't do it justice because there's so much that goes into that so much backstory that goes into that but are there things that we can do to build self-efficacy to build resilience 100 absolutely there is part of our brain called the anterior cingulate cortex and unfortunately in today's modern society we are doing a very very good job of weakening that part of the brain so that part of the brain's super important and I think it's really important for resilience and motivation and lots of the things that we are doing in modern society like constantly being on social media and scrolling or never doing hard things or not trying things is weakening that part of the brain whereas when you actually go out and do hard things you fail at things you push through barriers that's actually strengthening that part of the brain so that we can be more resilient it's like this muscle in our brain to be more resilient and we can train our brains to be more resilient by doing those things that are hard jay never
Speaker 110 questions and let me know um what your thoughts are on them if you lean from 0 to 10 it's just way off the scale very curious to hear some of these answers so back to this meditation or workout well
Speaker 2I'm going to choose a workout that's my personal preference I think you know I love those endorphins that you get from a workout so I'm going to go work out on
Speaker 1awesome um and thank you for the journals by the way for the team I appreciate but next question journal or having a call with friends
Speaker 2having a call with friends we are in a loneliness epidemic at the moment and connection is one of the key things to your happiness and your well-being I think connection is hugely under um underestimated the power that it has so definitely connection awesome I
Speaker 1wouldn't know we talked about this before and they probably go hand in hand but having a good night's sleep or having a
Speaker 2fantastic workout I would say sleep is the elixir of life the greatest performance enhancer known to man is sleep so let's go sleep but if you have bad sleep then definitely make sure you do your exercise because it can offset some of the negative consequences that come from a bad night's sleep it's just hard doing a good
Speaker 1workout if you haven't
Speaker 2slept it's hard to push through build that resilience build that do hard
Speaker 1things um a mindset book or a
Speaker 2great podcast I'm not big on mindset and personal development books I usually use podcasts for self-development so I'm definitely going to go with podcasts in that and I spend a lot of time in the car so it's a it's a great way to consume information yeah
Speaker 1you shouldn't read while you drive right
Speaker 2that would be a challenge that
Speaker 1would be a massive challenge um push through when the times are getting tough or simply take a break oh
Speaker 2depends I think lots of people are pushing themselves to burn out because of the pandemic and I think that's a great way to consume information they're not having times of recovery and yet there's probably people on the other end of the spectrum that just need to uh keep on pushing push push push they need to push more push more stop recovering yeah you know what push in the right ways like don't spend time scrolling on social media get out there and do some stuff that's actually good for you I actually read
Speaker 1an article this is the problem right is that every time you turn on the tv or go on social media you you find something silly but it said testosterone in males decreases by 77% for people that are frequent runners and I'm like so people are going to read this and be like well
Speaker 2I'm just going to sit on the couch is that in marathon runners or someone that's uh got adrenal burnout that probably I think we'd have to look at that study in a bit of detail because uh certainly if you're getting in the weight room the the testosterone is going to go up super
Speaker 1important true okay this is an interesting one especially with a lot of the education sources that have come out recently have you a great mentor or learning on your own
Speaker 2I have a mentor I have a wonderful mentor he is a fantastic guy and he helps me a lot but you've got to always be learning on your own as well but yeah everyone should have
Speaker 1a mentor so should you
Speaker 2prioritize mental or physical fitness first well the beautiful thing is is most of the things you do that are really good for your body are good for your brain as well so that's one thing that I've really found in my studies in neuroscience is it's awesome because all of these things that I was doing to make sure I looked good physically very vain as a young fellow actually have a really positive impact on your brain so it's
Speaker 1it's a great thing yeah absolutely um meditation I know meditation has probably become a little bit more prominent in the last few years for a lot of different people you know how do how do leaders utilize it how does it move from like a soft skill to being recognized as a performance tool and is that something that you'd like to push on leaders to enforce not necessarily enforce but to motivate more staff to to meditate more often
Speaker 299% of people 99% of people making that number up I've tried meditation they thought oh I've got all these thoughts in my brain it's not working for me and I don't really understand the benefits just enough to think yeah this is definitely worth pushing it through that pain so meditation I go in and out of it where I have times where I'm you know full into meditation and then other times where I'm not so maybe I don't fully understand the benefits either the intrinsic motivation to do it every single day whereas my wife she does it every single day religiously because she has a real intrinsic motivation because she knows it improves her mental health and she's had her struggles with mental health and so therefore that intrinsic motivation is strong enough to make sure she's doing it every day now would I push it on to leaders I would definitely not push it on to leaders but it is so important to have that super beneficial however it is not going to be immediate um risk like you're not going to get an immediate result right it's going to take time if you look at the studies there was you know the landmark study around eight weeks of mindful mindfulness-based stress reduction of meditation twice a day showed there were some incredible benefits so functional benefits they did this with an MRI they showed that the connection between your amygdala so your emotional part of your brain and the prefrontal cortex your executive function that actually strengthened so that means if you're a leader and you've been meditating you're going to be less reactive based on those results there were other things showing that the structures of the brain changed so the prefrontal cortex structure changed as well so it got stronger so again that means your executive function your decision making your attention is better that's pretty good for a leader that's all important stuff and then finally uh using diffusion technology for MRI they actually found that the white matter in your brain so think of the white matter is your super highway the connections between all the different parts of your brain that got stronger as well so your brain is working more efficiently again pretty important stuff for a leader so are there benefits that are going to help leaders and their benefits they're going to help everyone yes absolutely you're going to get there but it's going to take some time for you to
Speaker 1get there so it sounds like more you're training your brain as a muscle exactly in that case to get the the longevity of the result
Speaker 2absolutely it's like you're taking your brain to the gym by meditating now there's other ways you can do that as well thankfully lots of the things that we do physically is improving our brain so you know you're a fit guy you obviously take care of yourself all of those positive things that you're doing for your physical health which might have been because i want to you know maybe you want to look good with your shirt off but you're not going to be able to do that so you're going to but that's also improving your brain as well so there's lots of positive benefits that are coming
Speaker 1from that gotcha gotcha okay so let's talk about some of the leadership with some of the teams you work with um you work with some very very high profile companies um iag estee lauder western sydney university to name a few um what patterns are you seeing now you know in some of the mindset challenge the challenges that leaders and teams are facing today and is that have you seen it changing recently - Yeah,
Speaker 2it's definitely, there's been a slight shift shift, although the themes have been very similar for a time. Obviously COVID was anomaly and that completely threw everything up in arms and complete changes. So stress was such a big thing, but the theme that came out of that was change. So how do you manage change? And that has absolutely flowed on in the corporate world. You know, you're a business owner. The pace of change is like never before. And now that we have AI overlapped over the top, it's just accelerating. Like the differences that we've had just from three months ago to now is incredible. And so all these businesses are going through massive fundamental shifts in how they operate their business. So what is your staff's ability? What is your leader's ability to actually manage that change? Because people don't like uncertainty. Our brains like simplicity. They like habits. They like constant routines. So then you throw all this change on top of it and it's an easy way for people to become overwhelmed and very stressed. And so there's, I think there's lots of tools that we can use to help people manage that stress better and manage that change that's going on
Speaker 1better. It's one of those things where like even creating a safe environment for my staff, I'm trying to tell them, look, AI is not going to replace your role, but if you don't use it, it can potentially replace your role. Is there a way that leaders can create a safe space to let their staff know that it's not going down their path? Obviously there's no guarantees because they're trying to become more productive and more profitable. Is there a way that leaders can create a safe space to let their staff know that they're trying to become more profitable as a business? But it's still a scary moment for team members.
Speaker 2Yeah. I mean, is there that safe space? I don't know. Like I think we all need to be watching it and utilizing it and learning how to use it because I don't know if that safe base exists anymore. Like, you know, we had a staff member leave and so do we replace that person and take on another salary or do we create 15 different AI? that can do 80, 95% of their work, we took that path. It means there's a little bit that's been missed out, but you know, a lot of it's being done. So I think it's, it's an interesting time. It's an interesting time and people need to be more aware of it, especially if you're a, for all of us, how are we contributing value to the company? You know, you're a business owner, you got to be looking at your staff saying, are you contributing value to my, to my company? And I think as staff, we don't do that enough. We don't go, oh, actually I'm here to contribute to this. I'm pulling a salary. So am I contributing more than my salary? Whatever that multiple is. And something that I don't think a lot of people spend enough time thinking about.
Speaker 1So here's the thing, right? Who do you think is going to be most affected, affected by it? Do you think it's going to be the, because obviously you can look at it from two different perspectives. You've got the older generation who don't use, it as much, especially in my appearance that probably wouldn't even know how to use it, but you've got the older generation that don't use it, but then you've got the younger generation who are not talented enough or educated enough or have enough managerial experience to do it. But they're the ones using, they're the ones using the tools, quick, smart. Who's going to be most affected by it? Do you think it's going to be the younger generation or do you think it's just going to be the older generation who are going to struggle to, to, to, to get work? Because obviously it's still a very challenging time. Yeah, good question.
Speaker 2I haven't given a lot of thought. I think the answer is everyone's going to be affected by it. And those people that are sort of retirees that are sort of just turning a blind eye to it, maybe they can scrape through depending on how long they've got. But if you're a young person, you've got to be looking at ways that you can start contributing value, adding value to business, because there's some big changes coming. And I think if you put your head in the sand, it's not going to be a good outcome for you. And obviously mental,
Speaker 1mental health is still a massive thing, especially for a lot of the younger generation coming through. Is there a way that you can create, or is there a way that you teach leaders to create a safe space to talk about mental health or to develop their mental health?
Speaker 2Yeah, I think a big part of that, and you know, we can talk about psychological safety and different ways that we can create psychological safety in a workplace. But I think the best thing leaders can do is to invest in themselves. Because, you know, yourself, right? Like if you're an advocate for something, you become an advocate for that thing. So if you understand the benefits, if you're practicing it, you are far more likely to then sympathize with those people that might be going through mental health or that are taking, you know, spending the time taking care of their wellbeing because you understand the benefits from it. And therefore you are more than likely going to create safe spaces because you actually believe in that course. And so educating leaders, helping people find out some of the benefits themselves, I think can be a great way to create that safety so that then it starts, you know, that top down approach starts flowing through.
Speaker 1So one thing that I've always struggled with, especially for staff trying to keep them on the longer term play, you know, I've sat there and I'm like, okay, I can give them more money every year. Sure. I can try and keep them engaged by giving them education or, whatever it might be. Is there one thing that I can do to improve the longevity of my staff in the longer term? Especially now, like with the amount of changes that we're making in our business, you know, we've got the step challenges, we've got the Pilates, we've got all these events we're trying to team lunches with events we're trying to do together. But I have a feeling a lot of that stuff is very short sighted. Is there a way I can keep my, or something you've seen with, with you working with such high performance teams? Something they do to keep their staff in the longer term, especially with how many people were trying to move jobs quickly for more money and all that other type of stuff right now?
Speaker 2Yeah. So there's definitely lots of things that go into that. I think you look back to how they look at things. You say, well, how do you attract people? It's usually money. How do you keep people? It's with the culture. And how do you build resilience and people that actually want to be on that journey with you over the long term? And that's by purpose. So making sure that you're employing people that are aligned with your company purpose, with your purpose as a person, because like-minded individuals are attracted to like-minded individuals. But, you know, we've got a tiny little company and we, if you ask anyone in our staff, what's the purpose of our company, they all know it. And they've all had their own, you know, issues with mental health. So they're very invested. They've all got, their own intrinsic motivation. But our job is to educate and empower people. That's the mission of our company. It's our purpose. And everyone is on that journey. And that's built this resilience in our team to keep going when we have setbacks, when times are tough. And I think that is something that we can all do as leaders and something that when I look back 10 years ago, when I was a corporate leader, I didn't do a very good job of this. I didn't make sure that everyone on the bus understood why they're on the bus and what we were actually doing. And I think that's something that we can do a better job of.
Speaker 1It's funny you say that because when I first started out in digital marketing, I worked for a competitor of ours. And the leader was really, really good at getting the team and motivating the staff together as a group of individuals. He did really, really well. As soon as you got distracted, like I want to become a billionaire, I want to start 400 other companies, everyone left. And that's something I'll never forget is that even when I moved overseas and I had a lot of my team members in Australia, I felt like the culture was shifting a little bit, which is one of the big reasons why I came back. It was just being present. It was being present with the staff. It was showing up, doing the same thing day in day out, but also being there. And especially a few years ago, I wasn't as involved as I am now. But I am seeing that camaraderie come back together, which is going to lead me to my next point, which whether it's a taboo topic or not, is work from home. I'm a big advocate of working from the office. I didn't like being by myself in COVID. I didn't like sitting at home. I actually just happened to renovate my office during COVID and so I could be there every day. What are your thoughts on it? Is there a certain time period that you should say, whether it's two days, three days, four days, five days? I know the data is pretty fresh, especially for mental health and productivity, but what have you seen and what do you recommend?
Speaker 2It's a really interesting one and everyone has their own perspectives on this. And it's a huge challenge that we hear about a lot in the corporate space, whether it's a big business or small business. And some people have very specific demands that they want everyone in the company there every single day. And then other companies are much more fluid and flexible about it. I'll tell you a bit of a story. It was a big real estate company that we were working with and they did a big staff survey around employee wellbeing and connection, all that kind of stuff. And the results came back and there were three things identified by the young staff that were missing. Personal growth, professional growth, and they didn't feel connected to their teammates. And yet what their number one thing was, was that they wanted to work from home. Now, this is just a complete contradiction because if you just simply came to the office and worked in the office, and I'm not saying five days a week, but three days or four days, then all of those other three things are into line pretty quickly because you're going to have opportunities to mentor with people you're going to learn more therefore you're going to be in a better position to be promoted you're going to be connected to your colleagues and yet people don't want to come to the office so i definitely think there needs to be people in the office whether that's three four five days i'm probably lean towards the the sort of four days but the problem that business owners have and that managers have is that you always have to set policies to your lowest common denominator so if you've got people working from home that one day a week and they're jacking off they're mucking around that ruins it for everyone which is a real shame because it shouldn't be a standard it should be an extra you should have to earn that ability to work from home and show that when you're working from home you're actually contributing that you're doing your deep work that you you know your outputs you know higher if not higher than when you're in the office but unfortunately lots of people you know once people worked from home if you take something away that whole loss aversion comes in and people you know you give them something it's like if you start giving food to your employees every single day of the week and then you take it away for one day it's like whoa whoa what's going on it's like well no other businesses give you food and yet it's been taken away now it's a big thing so i think it should be a privilege rather than a standard
Speaker 1i promised i didn't pay him to say that although the marketing team here they're happy i'm glad i see them every day um what do you think is do you do you think that certain people are better working from home and when they're not working from home because me personally i can't do it i've tried i've tried to get more done everyone's like oh i get more done working home i've looked at the stats you don't it's not really the case but anyway um do you think some people are the benefit worker you got the introvert extrovert all that type of stuff um do you think different people adapt to it a little bit you know in different ways
Speaker 2yeah absolutely i think and this is generalizations but i think your high performers you know assuming that they they actually like to work from home you put them working from home they're still going to be high performers doesn't matter where they work they're always going to be high performance winners win winners win yeah but then there's a big percentage of the the cohort that you send them from home and yeah productivity is probably going to come off a little bit but you know it'll still be okay and then you've got that bottom 10 20 whatever it is you give them that freedom to work from home and uh they ain't gonna do anything for you so yeah it absolutely depends on the person i i personally have no issues working from home have a home office you know it's great no distractions when the kids are at school it's on but there's no doubt that i lose time right because as soon as my daughter walks in the door that's gonna it's over it's over right it's about understanding too hey you know how long do you have what are the different things if there's a baby in the house all that type of stuff like people say oh yeah it doesn't distract me come on let's get realistic um so again it depends on the individual circumstances
Speaker 1yeah i've seen uh or heard of staff working from the beach and i have my my own opinions on that
Speaker 2but i there is i live in jeringong and it is so interesting that you know as soon as that surfs up all of a sudden an influx of people down from sydney and they got their laptops and they're sitting in the car park and you're like yeah i don't really know if this is your most productive day great um okay
Speaker 1just before we finish up even for me as a business owner looking at you know when i when i look at spending when i look at spending money i spend a dollar i get two back i spend two i go for whatever it might be i think a lot of business owners especially a lot of the older business owners struggle with understanding that they need to invest in their staff's mental health and leadership how could you explain they measure that roi when it comes to motivating the staff leading so a lot of the stuff that you do obviously eventually it's going to lead to a monetary benefit for the for the for the team and the company but is there a way that you can explain to companies and leaders out there how investing in your staff's mental health and investing in the quality daily habits that they do every day financial benefit in the
Speaker 2long run yeah so there is two different things we'll we'll sort of discuss here number one there's been reports done so pwc released a report they changed seven metrics around mental health so good mental health and they looked at the return on those uh seven inputs and it was 2.30 for every one dollar invested and that was just from uh sick days presenteeism and compensation claims so that was it it didn't even look at the productivity increases that existed from your staff because they felt better they performed better so that's the first thing so it's been shown that if you invest a dollar you're going to get 2.30 return at a baseline the second part of this is you're a business leader you think about when you've had a great night's sleep and you've been eating well and you arrive at the office how do you feel yeah amazing amazing how's your productivity that day incredible incredible okay now we switch over to the next part of the and you think about you've had a terrible night's sleep maybe you had a few drinks the night before you haven't been eating well maybe you had a burger the night before and some chips and then you come to work the next day how's your productivity that day yeah it's a mess and there's so much going on there from the perspective of your brain the functional ability of your brain after a poor night's sleep just mris have shown that goes out the window so that's horrible you're going to feel bad you're going to perform better you're going to have a bad night's sleep and you're going to feel bad there's going to be less connectivity between your amygdala and your prefrontal cortex therefore you're going to be more emotional you're going to be more responsive you're going to say things you didn't mean to say and then on top of that you also have all of these hormones that have been thrown out of whack because you've had bad sleep so you're going to start making poor food choices your cortisol your stress hormones going to be all out of whack there's so much that's going on from a brain and a body perspective simply by not taking care of your brain so investing in your mental health investing in your well-being is one of the best things companies can do they're
Speaker 1great okay jay thank you amazing conversation i've learned a lot and i really appreciate your time um hopefully there's a lot of people out there that that learn how important the mental side of things is is affects everything everything in your life so thank you so much and i i appreciate your time
Speaker 2yeah thank you it's been a pleasure chatting with
Speaker 1you so thanks so much that's it for today's conversation with jay pottinger what i love is how he's taken experience from sport corporate life and neuroscience and distilled them into the tools that any of us can use to perform better feel better and build stronger businesses without sacrificing our well-being if you want to go deeper make sure you follow eq minds on instagram at eq minds and check out this incredible work jay and his wife chelsea are doing to help teams and leaders thrive jay thanks again for joining me and to everyone listening keep building keep learning and i'll see you on the next episode of never not building Thank you.
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