Melody Wilding (00:01.774)
Are you drowning in office politics? Feel like you’re stuck under what you believe is toxic leadership? Are you having trouble motivating your team? Or are you watching your productivity take a nosedive because there is constant infighting and gossip. If you have ever thought there has got to be a better way to approach work, then you are not alone. And today’s guest is here to throw you a lifeline.

I am so excited to welcome Mo Carrick to the podcast today. Mo has transformed cultures of some of the biggest names in the business. Nike, Amazon, Nintendo, Reddit, the list goes on and on. And she has done that by doing something that is actually pretty radical, which is putting humanity back into work. And her work focuses on helping people understand the seven needs that people have at work.

Which is exactly what we are going to talk about today. And she also teaches a lot on the fundamental pillars of innovative, inclusive workplace cultures, which I think we can all agree we would love more of. And Mo’s work, her research and tools are the result of more than 1 .5 million data points gathered across thousands of leaders and workplaces. So whether you are someone who is a frustrated employee who wants a workplace that doesn’t drain your soul, or you are a leader trying to unite what you feel like is a fractured team and culture, then today’s episode is for you. So Mo, welcome. I am so honored to have you here.

Moe Carrick (01:43.246)
Gosh, thank you so much, Melody. It’s so honored to be here. I love your intro, both to me and to the podcast. I’m not sure I can claim credit for transforming Amazon’s culture, but I make a difference where I can, where I’m invited.

Melody Wilding (01:59.251)
A huge mark, a huge mark, especially for the companies that are open to it. And I’m, sure that sort of like willingness we’ll get into today, but I want to start out at the beginning with your story because this is really interesting work.

And I know you have a background in organizational development, which actually we’ve known each other for a little while. And I actually didn’t know that until I was reading your bio and preparing for this podcast today. So I would love to hear a little bit more about what it means to have a background in organizational development. Many people who are listening might not be familiar with that. And then after that, I want to hear more about how you got into this work and this type of consulting in particular.

Moe Carrick (02:42.928)
Hmm.

Thank you so much. For someone like me, as my gray hair is evidence, going back to the beginning is going way back, right? I’ve been talking lately to my kids. I have three adult children and they’re all in their 20s and 30s and they’re all embarking on their careers and they’re really curious. How do you end up getting to where you are? And it’s such a series of happy accidents. So for anyone out there who is listening, who’s like, I’m not sure what I want to do or be,

can say that neither was I, know, neither was I. So I’ll start with your first question around like what is OD or what is organizational development and here’s how I think of it. I think of it as the study of people in systems, you know, basically it’s a behavioral science like other behavioral sciences including a lot of therapeutic behavioral sciences and it but it really focuses very much on how is it that we function, behave, and do things together.

in a systemic context. I was just talking about this with my chief of staff who’s currently enrolled in a master’s program in OD and we were asking, I said to him out loud, I said, like, are we still doing OD? Like, is that really what we’re doing?

The practice of OD is really an intervention practice at its best, right? It’s being able to look at a system just like you would a family system and say, like, what might be the opportunity here to maximize the effectiveness of the people that are working together? And so all of our solutions are bespoke solutions. Although we have programs, we’re not offering usually a recipe.

Moe Carrick (04:15.748)
for someone to follow because every system is unique, which is one of things that I love about this study of organizational development. back to your second question of like, how did I get here? These happy accidents. I really, in some ways, I don’t know how I got here other than that I got really lucky. I started my career, my educational experience was that I was an English major. I love fiction. I love to read fiction. I dreamed of writing

fiction. I’ve never written fiction. I’ve written three nonfiction books, but I’ve never written fiction. I probably never will. But I thought I was going to be like a scoop, you know, like a reporter. And I also was when I was in college, I was an outdoor educator. So I worked for a program at my university that took people out into the wilderness. I had grown up spending a lot of time in the wilderness with my dad, who was an expert fly fisherman. And I basically after graduation worked both in student personnel,

I worked as a resident assistant and a resident director in college campuses, but I also worked in the wilderness based education space. And in that space, I became a therapist as well as an instructor. So I worked for an organization called Outward Bound. I worked for the National Actual Leadership School. And I worked with, you know, back in the, this was in the eighties to date myself, but we were on the front edge of really applying.

wilderness -based therapies to, in particular, young people with the disease of addiction. Many of them were dual diagnosis. And so I cut my teeth on group work in a therapeutic context, but in the wilderness, in the mountains, rivers, and valleys of mostly North America. And I loved that work. Like, it was really good work. I loved the wilderness side of it. I also loved the work with kids and their families, but…

as often happens in careers, I burned out. I burned out. And I was enrolled in social work school. So I had applied. I’d been doing this work for about five years. I was going to go get my MSW, actually in Boston. I lived on the East Coast. And a friend of mine was studying organizational development. And she was like, you should come to school with me, you know, and just check it out one day. And I did. I had coincidental to that, I had led a couple of wilderness experiences with corporate groups. I had the privilege of working one that I remember was I

Moe Carrick (06:36.322)
I got to do a four day like wilderness experience with Union Carbide. I know you remember, probably before you were even born Melody, but Union Carbide had a devastating accident. They had a train wreck where noxious gas was released in a town and hundreds of people died. And the executive team who had been on station largely during that accident was the group that I got to be kind of a.

facilitator with as a guide in the wilderness. And I was just blown away by the impact of the work available to these leaders, both in terms of surviving a trauma, a real drama, but also figuring out how to lead through this. And so I was sort of crying when my friends had come with me to school. I was like, yeah, I wonder what is this OD thing? I certainly have had fun when I’ve worked with some corporate groups. And I just fell in love with the work after joining

her for the day. I was like this seems really interesting. It’s like therapy but it’s not. It doesn’t have that clinical basis, that family of origin basis. So I switched my degree program and I enrolled in the same program that she was in and that kind of began a big big shift. I was working at the time I was a full -time working in

and student professionals working in an inpatient treatment center, also doing adjunct wilderness work. And when I graduated from school, I really felt like I needed to get into a business setting. So that was the next job. After that was to begin working in a business setting. And then that’s been the story since. I worked internally in corporate America back in the day when cell phones were analog.

That’s how long I’ve been doing this work. the first, I worked for what was then McCaugh Cellular, who became Cellular One when they were getting bought by AT &T. But I remember when they took us on an employee orientation tour in a bus, they let us talk on the phone in downtown Seattle.

Moe Carrick (08:37.392)
And I remember calling my dad. My phone was like this big. I was like, hi dad, I’m talking to you from downtown Seattle. He was like, no way, you’re not plugged into the wall. That’s how old I am. But that was one of my first corporate jobs. And after many years of internal, I went out on my own in 2001.

Melody Wilding (09:21.478)
Yeah. my gosh. What, what a incredible story. And now it’s like hindsight is 2020 because you can see so many of the threads of your strengths and the things you love came together to into this business. so many things I want to say, because I didn’t realize you, you had a background in social work, my backgrounds in social work. And what I’ve always said to people is, is people will ask me, well, how did you get into the work?

you’re doing today and all my life I wanted to be a therapist. And for me, when I made the connection between the fact that we spend 70, maybe 80 % of our lives and our time at work and with the people we work with, yet no one is talking about how those relational, how those psychological, emotional, mental dynamics show up in the workplace. Like you were saying, there’s systems just like any other. And so my

You know, my micro macro social work heart was very happy to hear that. and I think you say somewhere on your website, like at the end of the day, we need to understand people, how they think, how they’re motivated. If you want to be, whether you are leading and managing people or, mean, we all have to work with different stakeholders and up and down and across our chain of command. need to understand some of these dynamics or you’re just going to be pummeled.

Moe Carrick (10:23.77)
Why?

Melody Wilding (10:48.526)
by them. So that was one thing. And also your point about happy accidents in your career, think is so apropos right now where things are changing so quickly. It’s hard to think even two, three years in the future, let alone like five or 10 about what you want to do. And what struck me about your story is like, you always followed the next breadcrumb.

Moe Carrick (10:48.804)
Yeah. Hold on.

Melody Wilding (11:15.622)
And it was sort of like, once you take the next step, the path revealed itself to you. And it sounded like you were following your curiosities rather than boxing yourself sort of rigidly into a plan and path. Yeah.

Moe Carrick (11:29.411)
Yes!

Absolutely, and you know it’s really interesting that you say that when when Kemi Dunaway and I, shoot, Kemi was my co -author and is a dear friend of my first book which is called Fit Matters, How to Love Your Job, and in our research one of the things that we discovered and that book came out in 2017 so it’s it’s been out a while but the research base you know still stands is that entering workers even back then were predicted to have by many pundits you know not just two or three career changes in their lives but 12 to 14 and career changes not

job changes, which is unfathomable for baby boomers, for example, who would tend to come to one job and stay there, you for their whole lives. And we’re seeing that even escalate even more now in the post -COVID reality that we’re dealing with. And I also would just underline what you said. I say it often this way, like we spend more time at work in the course of a full -time career than we do any other singular activity. And so if we’re not thriving there, we’re not thriving.

which means we’re also not thriving at home in community, which impacts the entire world. So tending to our wellbeing and the wellbeing of our people, if we are a leader or an owner of a business, is really critical for me to overall global thriving. And life is just too short to be miserable at work.

Melody Wilding (12:48.462)
That is, that’s a, that’s a tweetable or an Xable, guess now that’s what we call it. before we get into, really want to hear about those seven emotional and mental needs that people have at work. But before we get into that, you were mentioning you started your business in 2001. Is that right? Okay. So now it’s you’re coming up on 24 to 24, 25 years.

Moe Carrick (12:53.212)
Right,

Moe Carrick (12:59.948)
and

Melody Wilding (13:15.486)
What are some of the biggest things you have noticed that have changed about how people approach workplace culture, talk about workplace culture from then to now?

Moe Carrick (13:27.768)
Yeah, that’s a great question. There’s a couple of trends that I’m tracking and paying a lot of attention to that I think answer your question. And a lot of them have really sped up post -COVID.

So we’re in a really interesting time right now. And the way I say it in my third book, When Work Is Good, is that I felt, personally, I felt like a canary in the coal mine for a long time. Singing from the rooftops to anyone who would listen. This work matters. And it wasn’t only me, of course. Lots of other writers, thinkers, and consultants and coaches have been saying the same thing I’ve been saying for years, but it’s been drowned out by kind of the engine of

and of capitalism in particular in terms of the human dynamic. It’s often relegated to being the soft stuff, you know, as if it doesn’t matter to the bottom line. And I think that’s a fundamental change that I’m feeling right now. I feel like I’m no longer the canary in the coal mine. not the only one saying these things. It’s being connected. We have really good data. COVID -19 gave us some really good data with good studies from people like the cells, from our own search in general, from Deloitte.

of good data, including my own, that says like this work of people thriving at work matters. So that’s one big change. I think another big change is that we have consistently four, sometimes five generations at work right now. As baby boomers have gotten older and have not vacated.

Melody Wilding (15:00.344)
Thank

Moe Carrick (15:00.484)
They’re not leaving, not like they used to. And I’m on the edge of Baby Boomer and Gen X. I’m probably more Baby Boomer than I am Gen X.

And then we have the alphas, as they’re calling them now, and the generations, these are in the workforce, that are entering the workforce, which gives us a lot of different mindsets about work itself that I think has changed since 2001. And then I would say the third trend, well, there’s really four. The third that really shows up often for me is what I would call 24 -7 access. I mentioned I joked about my cell phone being as big as my

you know, my device. And, and back when I started in the workplace, we were not connected all the time. We had pagers, right? I used to always accidentally drop mine in the toilet, you know, but we weren’t, we didn’t have, we had blackberries, you know, back on the day, but we weren’t connected 24 seven. In fact, I wrote my graduate thesis on a typewriter. Imagine, you know? And so that’s a big difference now because we have these supercomputers that we carry in our pocket, which means that our connection to work is

Melody Wilding (15:51.014)
Thank you.

Mm.

Moe Carrick (16:09.346)
on 24 -7 and it changes how we think, it changes how well we are, there’s some deleterious consequences, there’s also some really good things about it. And then I would say the last one has to be of course the advent of remote work. know, flexibility has been a key currency, a need expressed by employees for

really decades, if not centuries. But now in the post -COVID reality, we find ourselves in a situation where remote work is no longer like a nice to have. It’s a force de jour that every employer and employee is needing to deal with. And it has some wonderful upsides to it. It also has some hard downsides to it in terms of culture. So, I mean, there’s more trends. There’s diversity, equity and belonging in the post -George Floyd area. Like there’s lots of other things, those are

some of the things that I’m seeing are really impacting how we work, where we work, who we work with, and what work means to us.

Melody Wilding (17:10.956)
Yeah. Yeah. And to your point, all of those trends speak to the fact that it’s work is less compartmentalized, right? It’s, it’s less like we have these binary set selves where I go into the office. I’m this one person I switch off and I become this other person. They’re so integrated now and take up so much more brain space for us and emotional bandwidth than ever before. And I think that leads us very nicely into this idea of these seven.

Moe Carrick (17:17.295)
you

Melody Wilding (17:39.37)
psychological and emotional needs people have at work. So I would love to understand. Hopefully we will have time today to break down all of them. But where does this come from and what does this have to do with workplace culture?

Moe Carrick (17:58.03)
Yeah, yeah. Well, let me, I’ll try to be as succinct as I can and just like wave the white flag if I’m like waxing on, because I just geek out on all this stuff, right? But I don’t want to bore your audience. Where they came from is that when Cammie and I were writing our first book, let me tell you how that book came to be. Cammie was a client. She was the SVP of Sales and Marketing at Nintendo of North America.

company I was fortunate to work with for many years as the Wii was taking off, which is when they went from $2 million to $8 billion in revenue. A very exciting time to work with that organization, worked with the president at that time, Reggie Fils -Aime. And Cammie was recruited into Nintendo from Yahoo. It was a big job for her, and she felt it would probably be her career capper. She was moving her family from California to the Seattle area. And I had been coaching Reggie and the executive

team at that time when Cami joined and it was predicted by all of us that it would just be a huge win and it wasn’t. Cami lasted two years and she ended up leaving Nintendo because she was merely misfit in that system. And in our coaching work I talked with her and we used to joke about you know someday we should write a book about this because it all looked so good that this was the place for you and you’re so talented and Nintendo’s on the rise why didn’t it work out?

You know, why didn’t it work out? And many years later, she had been working as the CMO for a really interesting company called KidZania. And then she left KidZania and was in between looking for her next thing. And she called and said, hey, it’s time to write that book. And I was like, all right, I’ll make time. You know, let’s do it. So we began to figure out what it was we wanted to write about. And what we really wanted to write about was sort of what happened to Cami and what happens to people when they are misfit at work. And I’m not talking about fitting in. I’m talking about you.

you join a company and then you find out it’s not right for you. Which, have you ever had that happen, Melanie? Yeah.

Melody Wilding (19:54.894)
100%, whether it’s, whether it’s personality wise with the people, whether it’s literally the structure and the layout of the office or just the pace of work, the nature of the work. There’s so many different levels to fit as well. Yeah.

Moe Carrick (20:09.326)
Yes, totally. Yeah, and I think we all have had that experience and those experiences are really informative in terms of saying, gosh, you know, now I know more. I know I have another notch in my belt around where I thrive. So we really wanted to push at that. So we launched our research and began to prep for our book proposals and finding a publisher and all that. And the whole process took about two years. And what the research really pointed to was the seven needs that we have before.

we really were able to, through interviews, primarily qualitative interviews, as well as some other empirical research that we pulled from, to unpack more deeply what is it that drives us to go to work in the first place and what keeps us there.

what keeps us there, and in particular, looking through that lens of under what conditions do we thrive. And we came up with the seven needs that we have of work. Now, a little side note that I’ll share with you, because I’m sure your audience will be interested, and I’m sure you’re familiar, Melody, have you spent much time following the work of our current surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy?

Melody Wilding (21:13.299)
Not as much as I should, but I know he’s been very proactive with mental health, especially in the workplace. I think there was a, was there a report that came out last year or the year before?

Moe Carrick (21:24.4)
came out at the end of 2022 and the report was a delight for me because so he’s produced a few seminal reports. He’s got a new one out on the impact of social media on young people. It’s resulted in a bill at Congress to put warning labels for people under the age of 16. On social, he has one that came out in 2024 about…

the loneliness epidemic and what that means to us as a nation and as a world. But the one that really caught my attention was the Surgeon General’s report on workplace well -being and mental health. And one of the reasons is that in that report they reveal five basic needs for thriving at work.

And those five coincide 100 % with our seven. We just group a couple, which I’ll go through in a minute. But for me, that was extremely validating. Now, he didn’t call us and ask permission like, hey, could we use your seven things? But for me, it’s another data set pointing to the same insights. And so we know that as human beings, we are hardwired to bring certain needs to work. And I ask this question of client groups all the time. Why do you work?

And most people jokingly say, well, of course for the money. Because we do live in a society, in a capitalist society here in the global west where we do trade time for money. And that is one of our basic needs of work. And that’s to provide for ourselves and our family. The interesting one about that one is that it’s the only one that has a position because it can often stay in first place unless two conditions are met. And those two conditions, what our research points to are these. One is that we feel paid fairly.

compared to others like us. And the other is that we can meet our basic needs. Now this really flared during COVID -19. And we started having a lot of myth and innuendo about the fact that people didn’t wanna work because they were getting federal aid, which wasn’t true. The great resignation was caused by toxic workplaces, not by people not wanting to work. But financial…

Moe Carrick (23:28.398)
gain is a motivation. The interesting one about meeting our basic needs, our renumeration, is that if those two things are met, it falls in priority. Sometimes it even rolls off altogether. If we feel paid fairly and we can meet our basic needs, it becomes much less important, which is why I often say to employers, if you’re throwing money at a problem, such as employee engagement, and it’s not working, that’s why.

you’re probably paying fairly and people are able to meet their basic needs and there’s something else afoot, which happens all the time. I’m sure you’ve seen it, you know. So that’s one. Closely connected to that one is a need we have of work, which is to contribute. And this is to contribute to something that matters to someone. Now in the search and generals report, they call those two combined things mattering.

And know, Maslow had this on his hierarchy of basic needs, which is around being a contributing member of society and having…

Moe Carrick (24:33.45)
Meaning in what we do Victor Frankel talks about it in man’s quest men search for meaning So this need comes up for us at work and it’s a huge part of our identity Now people often misunderstand me when I say that and they say is that you know? All the young people want to work for social and environmental mission organizations Yeah, that’s that could be true, but it’s not only that you know if I can find value in what I’m doing whether I’m making widgets or I’m serving food or I’m drawing blood or I’m

solving climate change, I’m going to be much more engaged at work. And let me just pause for minute, Melody. I’m curious, are you finding the definition of employee engagement right now? How do you define employee engagement?

Melody Wilding (25:19.934)
It’s, really interesting. I’m going to take that a little bit of a different direction. was writing down as you were talking, some notes here because what you were saying exactly tracks with my research as well. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but I’ve been working on this new book about managing up, because when in my coaching with clients, after my first book, trust yourself came out, which is, you know, about confidence and basically getting out of your own way at work.

Moe Carrick (25:38.041)
Yes!

Melody Wilding (25:49.23)
The next question was, okay, well, how do I deal with the other people who are in the, authority around me and influence them? And I did a series of over 30 interviews for the book about why, why do you think managing up as important? Why is it something you want to do or a skill you want to improve? And I thought for sure that even despite all of the knowledge I have in this area, I thought for sure people were going to say, well, I want a promotion.

I want a higher salary. You know, I want a better title and I want to be able to work remotely. And it was the exact opposite of that. I would say out of the 30 people I interviewed, maybe two or three said that, which great. The rest of them said, I want to make an impact. And to them, these weren’t people who, you know, are working for Greenpeace. These are people who are, you know,

program managers or communication specialists at run of the mill companies. But to them, impact and contribution meant when I lay my head on the pillow at night, I want to feel like my work mattered. Whether it was creating a new process or bringing some people together who were in conflict over something, they wanted to feel like their work.

Moe Carrick (27:03.13)
Yes.

Melody Wilding (27:13.132)
made a difference and again, not in a sort of bleeding heart kind of way, which is great if your work does that. But for most of us, we don’t have that, but it was just, it was, it was moving something forward and having the recognition that that made a difference and moved the business forward or their team forward. And so it was exactly like you were saying, people needed to feel that sense of mastery and agency over their work.

Moe Carrick (27:17.656)
I… Totally.

Melody Wilding (27:42.508)
And that was what led to the greatest sense of satisfaction.

Moe Carrick (27:46.67)
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. love that your research too is confirming this. and you’re reminding me as you talk, I was thinking about one of the first jobs I had when I was young. I moved one summer, I moved to a different town to be near my boyfriend, and I worked as a janitor in a hospital. Boring job, but it got out at two.

I rode my bike to work together at six, I got out at two. But that job was informative in a lot of ways. And one of the things that happened to me in that job was that about halfway through the summer, a patient whose room I had cleaned died, but she was in the hospital for gallbladder surgery.

She shouldn’t have died. And my boss, whose name I think was Pierre, so long time ago, asked me and my other housekeeper on the floor to meet and he explained to us why she died. And he said that she contracted an infection at the hospital and that it was our job to use the chemicals that we had in our buckets in the right order to really ensure that no one suffered a billet -taining disease. And that was a lightning.

moment for me because this boring summer job to live near my boyfriend all of a sudden became like, my gosh, I could make a difference between whether someone’s mother or sister, daughter or friend comes home from the hospital for a routine procedure. And you know, Melody, I’ve never forgotten that.

When I or a beloved has been in the hospital, I notice the housekeeping staff. I’m like, thank you for what you’re doing, because hospitals are dangerous places. They’re full of bacteria. And so that’s a good example to me of that contribution, even in a job that doesn’t look outwardly like it would have that. And we all knit that story together in our own way.

Moe Carrick (29:28.182)
So awesome, I can’t wait to see your new book by the way. All right, so we’ve got meeting our basic needs, we’ve got our need to contribute. The next two I’m going to combine as well because these were combined in the Surgeon General’s report, which are connected to both connection and community. The way we describe the connection or the community part is around feeling seen and known.

Work is one of the places our identity forms the most post our school years. And being seen and known means someone knows us, like our name, a little bit of our story, and they’re expecting us. They know us as a unique person. I remember one of my kids, my youngest, in high school got their first job as a dishwasher in a restaurant. And they were struggling. They had a lot of anxiety. They were struggling to get to school on time, really bright.

kid but struggling but they never were late for work. They got there every day on time and I said it seems like you really love this job you know what’s going on and she said to me it’s not so much the job I’m washing dishes but mom they’re expecting me. That’s about feeling seen and known. Now of course I was like well your teachers are expecting you too but you know it’s different and we all have that need. It ties into our need.

Melody Wilding (30:33.974)
No.

Moe Carrick (30:41.324)
validation, our need for appreciation, feelings seen and known. And then the next one is around our basic need for human connection. Now Dr. Brene Brown, who I’m a fan of her work, one of the things she says so powerfully is that we are hard -wired for connection as human beings, as social animals. And because of what you and I were talking about earlier, we bring that need for connection right into the workplace.

And Maslow, in my opinion, had this one a little wrong in his hierarchy because he called it love and belonging and he put it like midway up on the pyramid. But modern researchers, including myself, have bumped it down. Our need to feel connected, our need for love and belonging is as important to us as food, water, shelter, safety and security. As important to us. In other words, if we don’t feel connected, we die. That’s a problem.

And we bring that need right to work. And it’s not only in the U .S. The United Kingdom, for example, admitted a new member of parliament in 2018. The title of that job is the Minister of Loneliness. And their sole responsibility is to reduce isolation and disconnection, especially in rural areas and amongst their elderly. And of course, now we’re seeing many years later, the loneliness epidemic hitting all of us. So connection and community is a huge reason we work.

I’ll go through the next three kind of quickly, to feel supported in taking risks. This is about what Dr. Murty talks about in the Surgeon General’s report, protection from harm. Being able to work in safety to bring our

effort to something that matters and to feel like we can be supported in taking the risks that are inherent in that duty, both physical safety and also of course psychological safety, knowing that we can say hard things, we can do hard things, and we’ll be supported by our employer and our colleagues in a way that doesn’t guarantee that we’ll be okay but gives us higher odds at being able to be safe. Next up is our opportunity for growth, which is our need to learn.

Moe Carrick (32:47.504)
And Maslow got that one right, right? Self -actualization is at top of the pyramid. We want to learn our whole lives long. My father -in -law was the founder of the Folklife Festival at the Smithsonian. He was a musician and he died during COVID in his 80s. But when he was 82, he wrote a play.

and he never written a play before. He did a document, he consulted a documentary about black jazz musicians in his town. Like this is an example for me of someone who’s learning all the way to the end and we bring that need to learn at work. In fact, younger generations I think today are often misunderstood.

as being overly ambitious. say, you know, baby boomers say these young people, want to be promoted before they have the experience. That’s not what I’m seeing. What I’m seeing is that the digital age means that they learn a lot faster than us and they want to keep learning and they want to learn faster than we did. And I get that. I understand.

So then the last one, which is one that I think has become increasingly important even in my lifetime, is one I hear you speaking about often in your work as well around resilience, is what we call making our lives work. This is about work -life harmony. It’s about flexibility, it’s about balance, it’s about having the ability to do the other things in my life besides work that matter, whether it’s playing the tuba,

caring for my elderly parents, caring for my children, pursuing a hobby. We need to make our lives work and that need has become increasingly important in my lifetime. I don’t think my parents, for example, as members of what we sometimes call the veterans generation necessarily were thinking about making their lives work. They kind of just were more of a mindset of you go to work, you you do the hard thing. Although they too

Moe Carrick (34:38.476)
had lives that they needed to make work even in the context of their life. So that one’s become extremely important as well. So that there you have it. The seven translated into the five from the Surgeon General report.

Melody Wilding (34:47.082)
All

Melody Wilding (34:51.158)
Okay. So, so let’s just review those again. I’m going to, yeah, this is a little quiz for me to see how much I was paying attention. have reneumer, renumeration or compensation. Correct.

Moe Carrick (34:56.622)
Yes.

Moe Carrick (35:01.838)
Yep, which we call just meeting your basic needs. Yep.

Melody Wilding (35:04.802)
meeting your basic needs. now I’m already forgetting the second one. To contribute, connection and community.

Moe Carrick (35:09.452)
You’re good to contribute. Yep. Yep.

Melody Wilding (35:16.984)
Help me out to make our lives work.

Moe Carrick (35:17.274)
to make our lives work.

I didn’t say that in the right order, to feel supported taking risks and to learn.

Melody Wilding (35:24.044)
risks and to learn, thank you. And what I love about these five or seven, however you wanna break it up, maybe five’s little easier for everyone to remember, is that it can serve as a quick assessment on either side, whether you are an employee and you’re trying to assess, is this a good fit for me, a good environment for me?

Moe Carrick (35:33.188)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Melody Wilding (35:47.904)
Even if you took those five and ranked yourself on a scale of one to five, how much do I have this here versus not? You could get a rough sketch of where you stand, or if you’re a leader, understanding where, how would I evaluate where my team and the culture I’m creating falls? So I really love that. It can serve. It’s not just, it’s not just information. It’s great to know these things, but it’s what you do with it. That counts.

Moe Carrick (35:59.994)
Yes.

Moe Carrick (36:15.458)
Absolutely, and I would offer even to your listeners, I’m happy to share this in the show notes, we have two tools that we offer for free, they’re downloadable. One is a checklist, which does just that. It goes through the needs and if you’re evaluating a job or you’re in a new job, it helps you to assess like where am I at right now with that need being met. And the other is something we call the stay conversation, which is another type of checklist, but it’s more for the manager around how can I talk to my employee who I want to retain to help ensure that they stay.

So I’m happy to offer those for free. Now the other thing that I want to mention that’s important I think around these needs of work is that they are temporally sensitive. Meaning that they’re there they change over the course of our lives. So like we were talking earlier about my career and early in my career I worked as a wilderness guide. When I was a wilderness guide I made the highest I ever made in that role was $42 a day.

day. And that was 24 -7 work for four to six weeks at a time in the wilderness with no phone. Now I mean you know I look back I’m like what was I thinking right but that’s what we did back in the day and there are some people that still do that work for a low wage today. My new eating, my basic needs was lower at that time. I lived out of my car. I wanted to be in the wilderness. I had a tent. Like I had what I needed. Now that’s not true for me today.

That need has changed. And I think it’s really helpful for employees, but also for employers to remember that the needs of our employees change over time as family circumstances change. And because of that, we’re always making trade -offs. We’re always making trade -offs. I remember when I was a young mother, I worked as a consultant for another company and it required a lot of travel. I was traveling.

I counted one year, it was like 250 days, and at that time I had two young children. It was rough. It was rough. And it took me out of sync with my values around being a good parent, but at the same time I loved that work. And it was really important work. I loved my boss, she was a tremendous mentor to me. So I was willing to make that trade -off early on when the kids were really little. Over time,

Moe Carrick (38:32.364)
I began to be less willing to make that trade off and I dropped down to part time and then eventually I left that to start my own business actually over several other jobs over time. And as my need to make my life work, know, shifted, I had a third child right before I started the business. And so I think that it’s helpful to remember that the needs change over time and that they’re also uniquely personal. What you need of your work might be very different than what I need.

And so as a manager or a boss, it’s really incumbent on me to be very, very curious about your needs so that I can, you know, I can’t promise you I can meet all your needs from work, but I’m not going to be able to retain you unless I’m willing to try.

Melody Wilding (39:17.95)
Yeah. And they were my, one of my favorite coaching questions to ask people when they are spinning in any type of decision, but especially these types of career decisions where there’s no one right answer. My favorite question to ask is what are you trying to optimize for in this season of your life? Cause as you said, compensation may be more important in one phase. I can remember I asked one client this question a couple of months ago.

Moe Carrick (39:35.182)
Yes.

Melody Wilding (39:44.168)
And she actually has a young child. And to my surprise, she said, actually learning. want to, I want to be optimizing for growth right now. And that was very clarifying to her in terms of what she was going to be advocating for herself for and how she was going to navigate her relationships and situation at work. So very helpful context to understand these needs and their prominence change.

Moe Carrick (39:52.688)
No.

Moe Carrick (40:07.16)
Yes, yes.

Melody Wilding (40:13.802)
over time.

Moe Carrick (40:14.234)
Totally and to say to your to be it for her to be able to say to yourself, you know, and so therefore I can Handle not having you know, maybe my my peer relationships aren’t as rich as I would like I don’t I don’t feel that connected to my colleagues right now in this job But it’s worth it because they’re really investing in my development and I’m learning so much But that may not last forever and that other need for connection may rise for her later in her career And I think that gives us such a wonderful

piece of sort of ease and grace to be able to say this is right for now.

Melody Wilding (40:48.898)
Yeah. As you said, trade -offs trade -offs is the, is the key there. so Mo, what are some practical things? A lot of people listening are, do have managerial positions or are in leadership positions. If they’re hearing this, what are some of the things they can do to either meet or support some of these, psychological and emotional needs? Because thankfully we have a very

Moe Carrick (40:49.562)
for me.

Melody Wilding (41:17.11)
a lot of kind -hearted, very caring folks listening who are like, want my people to stick around. I want them to have a great relation, a great experience rather at work. What are some things they can do?

Moe Carrick (41:31.736)
Yeah, I think one is to recognize that every human is a special snowflake. Right? We are. We are unique.

And we don’t have any way of knowing our uniqueness unless our boss is really curious about who we are, what makes us tick. And I mean curious in all the ways that matter. Obviously we’ve got some demographic dynamics that are helpful. What’s my story? Where do I come from? You you started this podcast asking me a little bit about that, which helps me feel really seen, you know? And so I think for people that are leaders and managers, it’s important to be very curious about that particular human.

right? And then be really tuning in to those needs. I think the second thing that we need to do as leaders is to be able to be rigorously clear with what the terms are of this particular job so that the employee isn’t set up for disappointment.

So for example, remember one example I remember is I had a woman working for me. This was many years ago. She ran kind of our back office stuff. And at that time we had a number of consultants working out of the office. But the reality is we were never there. And I was a young leader still in my practice, in my own practice at that time as a CEO. And I, I, I respected her greatly and she did really good work for us. But after about a year in, she wasn’t thriving. She wasn’t really loving the job. She told me she was looking and I was crushed because I was like,

I really want to retain you. You’re so good. And one of the things she shared with me in that conversation was I’m lonely. You are all out of the office all the time and you do your best to connect with me. And she was speaking specifically to me. She said, I know you try to connect with me every week, but sometimes we go four weeks without a connection. And I was like, are you kidding me? And I looked at my calendar and she was spot on. Now in my case, I didn’t Proact soon enough.

Moe Carrick (43:31.47)
I didn’t know she had that need. It would have been easy for me to come up with some structures, some ways that she could have more connection with me and with the other consultants that she was supporting to meet some of that need. Now, ultimately she may have left for her own reasons, but we could have done better without having to contort our business. So I think that that’s important for people leaders to be able to recognize is that we want to be really curious, but we don’t want to over promise that.

which we cannot deliver, which is where leaders, think especially empathetic leaders, sometimes run into trouble. You know, like somebody I was talking to, I was coaching someone the other day who works in financial services and she was feeling really badly because her team was very overwhelmed with the volume of work and I said is that

temporary or is that real?” And she said, no, we’re in financial services. We’re working in a hedge fund. That’s how it is here. It’s how it’s always been for me. And I said, are you going to be able to change that? And she said, no. So I’m like, okay, then you’re not, you don’t need to be, pardon my vulgarity here, Melody, but you don’t need to be a poop umbrella that protects your employees from the realities of the industry that they’ve chosen.

your best deal is to be able to be clear with them about what it is and what it isn’t so that they can decide if they’re willing to make that trade -off, for example, with work volume or if that’s not what they’re interested in right now. Because I think sometimes good leaders, good people leaders overindex on protecting their employees from the harder parts of the space that they’re in and I don’t think that’s helpful.

Melody Wilding (45:12.246)
Yeah, I see this all the time too, where I talk to clients who will say, I, I feel like I have to be the air cover for my team from senior leadership, from all the stuff that’s coming down. So they absorb it themselves, but then their team gets frustrated and disengaged because they’re not getting learning opportunities because the leader is not delegating or they feel like they don’t know where they stand or how they are contributing because that person is

is trying to be that shield, but it inadvertently does the exact opposite of what they want. So yes, I see that all the time.

Moe Carrick (45:48.644)
Well, totally. Yes. When I was, I mentioned that I wanted to be a journalist and I wrote for the school paper when I was an undergrad. I was a good writer. I am a good writer. And, right before graduation, he sat me down and he said, I want to talk to you about your career choice. And I was like, what do mean? But I’m going to, I’m going to write for the New York times. And he’s like, no, you’re not. And I said, what? I was devastated. And he said, you are terrible at deadlines.

Like, and you cannot be a reporter and be terrible at deadlines. That’s just, it’s not going to work. So either you’re going to have to figure that out or you’re probably not going to be successful as a reporter. And you know, I had efforted for four years to figure out the deadline thing. And I, I was realistic enough with myself to be, he’s absolutely right. I’m going to have to somehow, I mean, I still have to work on deadlines today, but I probably would not have been successful as a reporter.

you know and I appreciated that truth like this industry requires strict adherence to deadlines and you can’t you can’t negotiate the scoop it’s news yeah

Melody Wilding (46:48.379)
That’s great. That’s great. Mo, we are actually coming to the end of our time today and thank you so much because you’ve shared so much fantastic wisdom. Again, whether you’re on the employee side, you are on the leadership and management side. There’s one other topic I wanted to get into quickly. And this is something I know you’ve been talking a lot about recently and that a lot of people have been interested in, which is how do you deal with things like infighting, gossip,

Rumors within your team because I have a few leaders that deal with this actively where people on the team are trying to Undercut one another throw each other under the bus How what do you recommend when leaders come to you and they say this is something they’re dealing with?

Moe Carrick (47:34.296)
Yeah, such a toxic behavior, right? It is such a toxic behavior. So I would offer two things in the short time that we have. One is it is helpful to me to remember that gossip, triangulation, and rumors are symptoms of real problems. They are symptoms of real problems. So for me, it’s similar if you take, you know, a medical model. If I have a headache,

something’s causing that headache. I don’t usually have a headache. So to treat the headache, I can take an aspirin and treat the headache temporarily, but if I’m getting recurrent headaches, I need to look at why. Why am I getting headaches? Do I have migraines? Do I have a hormonal issue? Is stress a factor?

The same is true for gossip, rumors, and triangulation. If you’re seeing that in your team, something’s going on and you’ve got to figure out what the symptom is. But it’s a good sign, it’s a good symptom to say there’s something happening. Usually what’s happening is a truth that has not been able to be aired.

So usually what’s causing the gossip and the rumor is an emotion. This is where emotional intelligence comes in. It’s either insecurity, it’s jealousy, it’s anger and frustration, it’s fear that I can’t tell my boss the truth. There’s something happening that is leaking out, is how I like to think of it, in gossip, rumor, and triangulation, which is an indirect or passive aggressive way to deal with a hard thing. But it’s a symptom that’s worth paying attention to.

recognize that then we can we can apply the antidote to those behaviors which is team health which is team health that is born by building trust vulnerability based trust with the team so that we take our problems to one another instead of talking badly about each other and that’s not that easy the way I think of it melody is we think of team health as being like a

Moe Carrick (49:29.688)
like a bicycle wheel where you have the hub, let’s say the leader of the team, then you have the spokes, the members, and oftentimes we focus managerial competency a lot on the spoke of the wheel. But what I’m talking about here is the rim, because without the rim, the wheel just flops around. And that’s about a leader making sure to invest in the team having relationships with one another.

that are based on vulnerability -based trust, which allows them to navigate conflicts so that I can say the hard thing to you, we can hold accountability with one another, which really drops the need for that symptom of gossip, triangulation, and remembering. The last thing I would say is for people who are listening, one of the best ways we interrupt that behavior is by not playing the game. We don’t do it ourselves. Now, this is hard.

This is hard. And I remember one time a few years ago, I was in a conversation with one of my staff and I started complaining about another member of my staff. And we have team agreements in my company, which are a really good strategy for every team. And one of the employee I was talking with put his hand up like this and said, no, I want to interrupt you because I’m feeling like you’re violating one of our team agreements. You’re talking badly about blank and I’m uncomfortable.

That was, again, painful moment for me. Like, my gosh, I’m the CEO and I just violated our agreements, but he was absolutely right. I had an issue with that employee and I hadn’t told them. So when I leak out information in that way to another employee, all it creates for them is anxiety. What do I say about them when they’re not around?

Melody Wilding (51:04.546)
Mm

Moe Carrick (51:05.156)
right? So I had to really catch myself. Now why was I doing that? Well, was born out of my own frustration, my tendency to avoid hard conversation with a colleague, all the same things that all of us face. But it’s really important as leaders that we walk that talk and we do not play with gossip, rumor and triangulation.

Melody Wilding (51:25.702)
Yeah, I’m a big advocate. I’m always saying you teach people how to treat you. And, if you are complaining and gossiping about other people, you are teaching them that that’s acceptable here. That’s how we operate, which is not, what you want.

Moe Carrick (51:43.78)
Which means of course, doesn’t it, that we have to develop our own competence and our own emotional fluency to talk about hard things, doesn’t it? Which I know you focus a lot on and so do we. And it’s not that easy, but it’s critical skill in the workplace.

Melody Wilding (51:59.246)
It is so true that, I’ve been thinking about this more and more that the more, the higher you get and the deeper you get into your career, this may sound obvious, but technical skills become so much less important. And the emotional and relational skills are really the thing you need to work on. Yeah. 100%. Yes.

Moe Carrick (52:16.772)
Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Yes, that’s what we are. Say it on the same songbook there. Absolutely. And it’s all hands on deck to learn that because we’re not learning that in medical school, MBA school, engineering school, and most other schools. We’re actually really not learning it. I hope someday we will.

Melody Wilding (52:33.506)
Yes, amazing Mo, thank you so much for this. So many great takeaways and lessons and wisdom here. Where can people find you and connect with you?

Moe Carrick (52:44.182)
Absolutely. Thank you for the conversation, Melody. We could go on forever. And I love supporting the work you’re doing. And it’s just been an honor and a really fun conversation. So best way to find the work about Momentum is at our website, which is just www .momentum .com. It is the funny spelling because of my name. It’s -O -E -E -N -T -U which is how they spell Momentum in Australia, I recently learned. And there are a bunch of free resources on there, including our People and Culture Pulse Check, which is a great way to get a sense of how your team is doing. And then we do monthly rounds.

tables, the one this Friday, which is probably going to be too late by the time the podcast runs, but it’s on building community, a that is a healthy community. And so I love for people to check those out when they come up monthly on topics that might be relevant.

Melody Wilding (53:27.97)
Fantastic, and you run these round tables regularly.

Moe Carrick (53:30.99)
We do. and also LinkedIn. I’m on Instagram too, but LinkedIn just under my name is the best way to follow and track. And I’d love to engage with your listeners on LinkedIn as well at MoCarrick.

Melody Wilding (53:40.96)
Excellent, Mo, thank you so much. We’ll make sure all of those links are in the show notes and thank you again for being here.

Moe Carrick (53:46.82)
Thank you, Melody. Appreciate it.