Transcript for Smiley Poswolsky Interview on the Beyond Speaking Podcast

Smiley: So the biggest thing, you know, and people often say, like, your job is not going to be replaced by AI. It's going to be replaced by someone that understands how to use AI. And I actually think it's different. I think your job isn't going to be replaced by AI. It's going to be replaced by another person who understands how to connect with human beings in a world of AI, in the age of AI, that has the time, the intention, the energy to build a culture of human connection when AI is part of how we work and how we live. 

 

Intro: Welcome to the Beyond Speaking podcast from Premier Speakers Bureau, featuring in-depth conversations with the world's most in-demand keynote speaker.

 

Brian: I'm Brian Lord, your host of the Beyond Speaking Podcast, president of Premier Speakers Bureau. And our guest today is Adam Smiley Poswolsky, who is an internationally renowned keynote speaker, workplace belonging expert. So we'll get into belonging. That's a big word here. And bestselling author of three books, including those translated into multiple languages all over the world. Those include Friendship and the Age of Loneliness, Smiley spoke about workplace belonging and the future of work at a lot of top companies, Apple, Google, the US Navy, and more. So, Smiley, thank you so much for coming on and being part of the Beyond Speaking podcast.

 

Smiley: Thanks so much for having me, Brian. It is wonderful to be with you today.

 

Brian: Yeah. Now you have the name Smiley, which we'll get into, but you do have the cool voice going on. So when he comes to your event, it'll be even cooler. But right now he's got a Vegas voice right now. What type of audience were you speaking to in Vegas? Just so they know that you are because whenever you go to Vegas, it may not be because of an event. So what type of group were you speaking to and what was the issue? You don't have to tell the name of the company, but I'm curious to know what are the fresh things that you're being asked to speak on.

 

Smiley: Yeah, this was a group of retirement planners and this is one of their biggest events of the year. And we were talking about belonging in the future of work, why it's important, why a lot of people are feeling disconnected now and how we can make our employees and our teams feel a greater sense of connection, team engagement, which of course is important for our clients and retaining our clients as well.

 

Brian: I'm curious, I like to “red team" things occasionally. So red team is like if there's things you're trying to accomplish, but red team is like, what are the things other people are trying to get you to not accomplish? If you were to do it, I'm sure you've talked about belonging a whole lot of times. If a company were to set themselves up to be the least belonging focused company that they could be, how would you make your company the least belonging focused?

 

Smiley: No one has ever asked me that, Brian. It's actually an interesting question. Yeah. I mean, I think we'd start by understanding why people are disconnected and we would do that. But we would basically have no places for people to actually talk about what's going on in their lives or what's going on in work in an honest way. We would have zero flexibility. We would have no vulnerability. People would not feel safe to take risks or be vulnerable in front of each other. They would never try new things. Instead of wanting to involve and transform their culture, they would say we're just going to do things the way we've done, even if they're not working, even if they don't meet the demands of the moment, whether it's hybrid or AI or multi-generational workforce. and they would kind of lose and and no longer be a category leader in their industry. 

 

And frankly, I think that on a big picture level, they just wouldn't lead with care. They would lead with ego, they would lead with ignorance, and they would lead with a kind of way that says we don't actually have to look out for our people and the communities that we serve. People forget that businesses, yes, make money, but they also must support their people. They also must support the communities that they serve. And I think that in a very distracted, overwhelmed world, people often forget that. But the businesses that remember that are the ones that thrive.

 

Brian: Okay, so let's flip that around. So you have this way. What are some of the best ways that you've seen for companies just taking those first few steps of taking care of their people?

 

Smiley: Yeah, I think the big piece is to remember that this doesn't happen overnight, but that we really have to create an environment where people can be themselves at work, where they can have friends at work. Employees who have a best friend at work are seven times more engaged at their jobs. If you do not have a close friend, there is only a one in 12 chance that you will be engaged with your job, according to Gallup.

 

And this is important because currently about 50% of Americans are lonely. 40% don't trust their coworkers. So we create those spaces for people to have those conversations, where people have shared goals with their colleagues, a sense of mission and vision and purpose. Like they know their role. You know your mission of the organization, but also how your own role and what you do every day and your own personal purpose connects to that.

 

And most importantly, you have your voice be heard, right? You feel supported in your daily work, you feel connected to your coworkers, you feel seen for how you contribute. You feel like you can ask for help, especially when you're struggling or things aren't going well. If someone's sick in your family, you can get that time off to take your daughter to the doctor or go visit your mom at the hospital. 

 

And that we also are creating opportunities for people to try new things. We're also always asking, how do we, how might we discover others in a new light? Right? I think I know Brian, I know everything about him, but I want to see him do something for the first time. Right? That's why I think companies that have incredible events and experiences for their offsites, their all hands, their conferences are including opportunities, experiences where, like, I've never seen Brian do karaoke, or I've never seen him talk about a time he made a mistake at a Premiere and what he learned from it. But when he does that, it shows the rest of me, I can get up and do karaoke and kind of look silly and make a fool of myself. Or I can talk about my mistakes, my doubts, where I've gone wrong, things I want to be better at, things I want you to hold me accountable for. And it creates that culture of vulnerability and trust and psychological safety that allows other people to take risks, be vulnerable, and show up and do their best work.

 

Brian: So is it a thing with leaders that they have to go first? Because I know I've been a premiere, I've only worked at two companies in, you know, 30 years or whatever. And so for me, I kind of know this, but I've noticed other people coming in that there are certain things they have to get over, places where they came where there wasn't a lot of trust. What are some of those ways that you can build other than karaoke that you can kind of build trust into a workplace?

 

Smiley: Yeah, I think it's important that we don't always talk about work. Right. We take that five minutes and people like, Smiley, we don't have five minutes. Okay, one minute at the start of a meeting for people to have that personal check-in. Is anything coming up for you? How was your weekend? Is anything on your mind? And people say, Well, Smiley, like, what if I don't want to share? Like, I'm just here to get my job done. I don't want to talk about my personal life at work. Cool. That person could just say, skip, pass. I'm good. No thanks. Not today.

 

But they don't get to create the culture where other people don't get to share. Cause I think that that's really important. And we're having conversations about what's coming up for people, right? I'm really big on practical tips. That's one of the biggest things and in my keynotes is I want people to have a roadmap, a practical tool, things they can implement right away, creating an “about me” doc. Right. Here “I'm Brian. This is when I do my best work. I'm a morning person, I'm an evening person, I'm an introvert, I'm an extrovert. I work well just by myself with one other person, maybe with two people, but not with six people. You know, Tuesdays at two o'clock, I got to pick up my daughter from soccer practice, but you know, I might miss that call, but I'll be on the next call and I always get my work done,” that type of thing. And it's not that we're meeting the demands of every single employee all the time. It's that we're having the conversations. We're seeking to understand what they need to do their best. We're open to those conversations. I think that that's the big piece, it is what we have in those types of cultures.

 

Brian: Yeah. And I'm curious. I know you mentioned roles, everyone knowing their roles. Where do you define those roles? Is it somebody like HR who tells you this as you're coming in? Or or is it something that builds into that? Because I know that sometimes there’s confusion about who, maybe not who does what in a broader sense. You're in accounting, you're in sales, but who does what within those roles?

 

Smiley: It's not just when I, you know, when I think of a role, I don't think of someone's JD, PD position description, the bullets on their job description as much as their purpose, you know, their unique strengths, their unique skill sets, why they're there. Like their “why.” Why are you here? What is it that you want to get out of this role? And understanding for some of our young people, it might be like this is a springboard to the next thing. That's okay. Like obviously we can't have them leave in three months, right? Yeah. But it might be two or three years, and that's okay if we know what they're gonna contribute and we're gonna help them figure out their role. Maybe it's not in accounting, but it's in HR within our own company, and we can help them get there. And so I think it's less of, everyone has to have a clear sense of what they're responsible for and what they're being paid for. It's a job, after all, right?

 

But I think more importantly, especially kind of in the current paradigm of the future of work and this overwhelmed, distracted workforce is that people know how their personal why, you know, their personal goals, their unique gifts, the impact they want to have on the world, what community means to them, what caring for others means to them, how that shows up in the work. And again, not to say that we can solve all of those things, but that we know and we celebrate people for who they are. And what we have a sense of that accountant's gifts or what impact means to them, or where they see themselves in one year, in five years and 10 years. And we do our best to help them get there.

 

Brian: Yeah. How do people what's the best way to deal with being overwhelmed?

 

Smiley: Yeah, so not easy. And anyone that tells you that it's easy, I think is lying. I mean, a stat I often share is that the average employee right now switches between applications 1100 times a day, sends and receives 125 business emails per day, checks their inbox up to 400 times a day, and checks email or Teams every six minutes. So I'm not sure how it's possible to get any actual real work done when that's the case. But more importantly, it's all about, do we have time to even do we have time to connect when that's the case? So I always say that it's all about building human connection into what's already on the calendar. So people are like, we're distracted. We don't have time for this. I'll look at my calendar. You can look at your calendar today. How might I build in connection to those things that are already on the calendar? I don't want to add things. 

 

So my biggest answer to your question is I don't want to, if anything, I want to take things off of the calendar, but I want to add moments of connection into what's already on the calendar. So oftentimes companies will have onboarding, right? And they spend a lot of their onboardings or their training going through content, right? And that's really important. Obviously, we have compliance. We have to get through the PDFs, the slide decks, but the most important thing that happens at onboarding at training is not did we get through every single bullet point or all 68 slides? Like we can send out the deck. What's most important is did people have time to connect? Did they have time to meet somebody new? Did they have time to make a new friend? Could they turn to someone else and be like, I don't really understand what's happening here? And the other person's like, Me neither. Let's be friends. Or like, I don't really understand what he's talking about. Me neither, let's be friends.

 

That's the biggest thing. So that we take a little bit of a step away from the screen, a step away from all the things we have to do, and we focus on connection. And the other thing I think, especially for leaders, is to see those and hear those statistics and just think like, okay, I can't solve this, I'm gonna be busy, right? Right. That's part of me. I think there's a stat that the average CEO of a Fortune 500 company now has about 25 minutes of free time during their day. Right? So what I would say to that is how might I connect deeper with one person today? Whether that's asking that person about their family, about their wife, about their husband, about their kids, making eye contact, being like, let's go get coffee, you know, let's have lunch today, whatever that is, sending someone a little appreciation that they don't normally do.

 

Brian: What is that one thing I can do to connect deeper with someone today in this age of distraction? And how do you connect? I know you talk about the difference between you know, kind of building this within both in-house and virtual. How do you build that differently in those sorts of different realms?

 

Smiley: Yeah, this is a big thing. You know, I think that oftentimes people will assume that connection happens in person and then it doesn't happen virtually. The key, I believe, is that we have to design for human connection wherever people are. and that includes the office, that includes hybrid, that includes remote. Cause what often happens is people will say, like, okay, you gotta be in Wednesday, right? Wednesday is our in-person day. And then you get all these people who are leaving the breakfast table with their kids in the morning, right? They're like, my God, I gotta put on pants. Like, my God, I have to take off my sweatpants and put on pants. They get in the car, they sit in traffic for 35 minutes, right? Or they get on the bus or the subway. They finally get to their desk, and their boss who called the meeting is not there. And their colleagues, everyone else that at the office is in wall-to-wall Zoom meetings all day long with their noise-canceling headphones on.

 

And they're like, why did I just sit in traffic for 35 minutes? Why did I not have an extra half an hour with my daughter this morning to have breakfast? Yeah. And so it's not like connection just happens at the office. The water cooler moments, if you think about it, those have to be intentional. You have to be like, I'm gonna go to the water cooler. I want to talk to someone, I'm gonna ask them a question. I'm gonna start this meeting with a prompt. Like, I'm gonna actually try to get to know my colleagues or my clients.

 

So we have to design for human connection wherever people are. Obviously, it's harder in a virtual context. I like to say that hybrid requires much more intention, more touch points. And I think we need to be increasingly super, super intentional about when we do bring people together. So when we have those in-person trainings, those all hands, those conferences, those sales kickoffs, that is mostly all about human connection. And then and then the virtual kind of fills that in.

 

Brian: Yeah. No, that's great. And that is one of those things that is the intentionality of it. Like it can't just accidentally happen. There's no virtual water cooler that you're gonna run into somebody. And saying that, what are some of your positive stories? I know you work at all these different companies. What are some of the positive stories you've heard about when people have been able to connect well virtually?

 

Smiley: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is like when I've heard these stories of what people do well, it's that they figure out what works for that team. Yeah. So for some people, it's like having that Slack thread where it's like appreciations and they're constantly throwing it in Slack. Some people are like, I don't really like to do that, but they do a lot more one-on-ones. Right. So they're like, I have one-on-ones with my direct reports. I skip level one-on-ones with people that don't even report to me so that I get a sense of what's happening.

 

I've heard one thing that I love is onboarding buddies, right? You're assigning that onboarding buddy or an onboarding cohort. Yeah. obviously, hopefully with people that are not just in the same department. So they're already getting to know a few faces throughout the entire organization. Yeah, it can be incredibly intimidating. I think also if you put our from an empathy standpoint, if we put ourselves in the shoes of a young person, right? It's hard for anyone to start a new job remotely. Like that's just weird and hard.

 

But imagine if you're like 24, 25, 26, it's your first job out of school. You've never even been in an office before and you've never met your manager. You don't know how a sales meeting is done. You don't know how these people are used to spending most of their day, let's be honest, on a phone. And then they start a new job remotely. So I see that the organizations that are doing the most are being really intentional about that, giving that person who's new three to four people within the first week that they can turn to to ask questions, if they're struggling, that they have this mentor immediately built in. 

 

Another thing that I think works a lot that really well is intergenerational co-collaboration and intergenerational co-leadership. This is where you're pairing early talent with someone that has a lot more experience. So let's say we're pairing that green person that's really new and has a lot of ideas, right? They're like 25 and they're like, “Yeah, you know, I should probably be SVP.” It's like you've been here for three and a half weeks. You probably shouldn't, you know, or “I should get a raise.” It's like it's your third week. You're not getting a raise. But they've got a lot of good ideas, right? And they're really hungry and they're purpose driven. You get that person to co-lead a project with someone that has 20, 30 more years of industry experience. Because you're going to get that young person to be like, whoa, there's a lot I don't understand. It's like, no, you don't. You're 25 years old. But you're also going to get the person that has decades more experience putting themselves in the shoes of that young person being like, wow, they represent the future of our organization. They also represent the future of our customer, of our client. I should probably understand how they see the world and how they think.

 

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. And that is good. I know you also talk about how Gen Z is shaping workplace culture because a lot of these people, you think about it, there's no pre-COVID backgrounds. You're talking about not just this, the virtual, but there's no pre-COVID background there to build on or we're going back to it. Well, they're not going back to it. This is the only reality that they have in the corporate sense.

 

Smiley: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think Gen Z is really changing things, especially also on, you know, the sense of thriving at work. This is something like we kind of didn't talk about that, you know. It used to be like you expected your job to just provide professional growth, right? New skills, mentorship, a kind of a title, promotion. You kind of work your way up the career ladder. Increasingly young people, in a world of increasing volatility and uncertainty are looking for some kind of personal growth as well. This sense of how to be an adult, how to navigate the world. and people often say to me, like, well, Smiley, like these young people, like they want me to be their mother at work or their father or like I'm not your mother, like I pay you, like I'm your boss, I'm not your therapist. And I understand that. I understand where that sentiment is coming from. 

 

But if or when that person comes to us with like their entire life story or what they did that weekend or the four Tinder dates they went on or whatever, and instead of just rolling our eyes and walking out the door, we take a deep breath and we say, What's on your mind? Tell me more. How can I support you? Have you listened to this podcast? Have you read this book? You know, when I was your age, this was really helpful. You should really talk to Cindy in HR. She's a great person to talk to, or you actually should talk to this person that doesn't even work at our company, but I think they'd be an interesting role model or someone for you to chat with. That person is probably going to do incredible work. And it's just a different way of seeing the world and things happening so quickly for them.

 

Brian: Yeah. And speaking of the changes in our worlds, obviously AI is a huge topic. It's jokingly like every third request is AI before that. So how is AI affecting company culture for the good and the bad?

 

Smiley: Yeah, I think I think on the big the the big thing that I like to say about AI is that the majority of people, I the stats I've seen is 70% of employees don't have time in their day to learn the AI skills that would help them do their job more efficiently in the first place. So the biggest thing, you know, and people often say like your job is not going to be replaced by AI. It's going to be replaced by someone that understands how to use AI. And I actually think it's different. I think your job isn't going to be replaced by AI. It's going to be replaced by another person who understands how to connect with human beings in a world of AI, in the age of AI, that has the time, the intention, the energy to build the culture of human connection when AI is part of how we work and how we live. Like that, technology is a fact. It is not going away. It's only going to become more accelerated, more exponential in its impact on our day-to-day work and our day-to-day lives, frankly. 

 

The key is that we create the time and space to understand it, to learn those new skills, to question our doubts and share our doubts around privacy or security, right? Security is a huge issue for a lot of companies when it comes to AI, compliance, but also for people to have time to connect so that they actually know how these tools can make them do their work better, and when they have doubts and questions to be able to voice them and not feel like those aren't going to be accepted, right?

 

Brian: Yeah. And that is one of those things. I mean it is so much change. It is looking at it in a different way, not just AI, but around it as well. So I do have the last question here. Well, not like I don't know. We may have a couple here, but in terms of Smiley, I'm curious to know where that came from. That's not your given name.

 

Smiley: No, my given name is Adam. Okay. My mom would, she would have you believe. Yes. My my given name is Adam. But yes, the nickname Smiley comes from over 25 years ago now. I was first week of high school, freshman year. I wanted to play a sport.

 

I think, you know, people are maybe listening to this on the audio. They can't see me. but trust me, I'm not that big of a dude. So football wasn't gonna happen. I went to a very big public high school, over 2,000 kids. Hockey, definitely not gonna happen. Soccer, also not gonna happen because our soccer team was the best team in the state. So I went for one of the only sports left. And those of you listening can maybe guess. It was cross country.

 

I didn't even know what the sport was. I assumed it was skiing, but it's but it's actually running, right? You just go run three miles or five miles or 10 miles on the weekend. So a couple of weeks into practice, we're doing a hill workout, which is exactly what it sounds like. You're just running up and down a hill over and over again. So I'm outside kind of running, enjoying myself, like New England fall weather. I'm like, this is great. I'm playing a sport. I'm getting exercise. And my coach is this hard-nosed Boston guy, and he just starts screaming at me.

 

What are you doing, smiling kid? Stop smiling, stop puking, stop smiling, kid, stop puking, stop puking. So after that, the team nicknamed me Smiley. I was the slowest kid on the team. I never placed at any of our races, but I was like our cheerleader. I got us pumped up before every single race in the huddle. and I ended up running cross-country and then indoor and outdoor track all 12 seasons, all four years, and I became captain my senior year. Except I was still the slowest kid on the team. but I had a role to play and I mattered and I belonged. And that was my very first experience of feeling belonging, right? The sense that every single person on the team has a role to play. They've mattered, they belong. Whether you know, you’re in the C suite, executive, a manager that's been there for 13 years, or you've been there for three and a half weeks, or you're the slowest kid on the team, you matter, you belong. And the problem is that most people wake up every day and they go to work every day and they come home every day and they don't feel that basic sense of belonging. And that's really what I see as my goal with my practice, my speaking, my business is to give people the tools to create more belonging for themselves and the people around them. And most importantly, I think, Brian, the communities and people that we serve. because so many people right now are really struggling.

 

Brian: Yeah. That's great. Well, Smiley, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story of belonging, how you got Smiley, AI, culture, everything else, and bring it here. And for those watching and listening, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review. You can check out Smiley on premierspeakers.com. And Smiley, once again, thank you so much for coming on and being part of the Beyond Speaking podcast.

 

Smiley: Thanks, Brian. It was a pleasure. Thanks to you and the entire Premiere Team. 

 

Outro: Thank you for joining us for the Beyond Speaking podcast. To learn more about today's guest, visit premierespeakers.com/speakers/smiley-poswolsky. Make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen.