Hi, TED podcast listeners.
It's Elise Hugh here from TED Talks Daily.
Thanks for making our podcast part of your routine.
We really appreciate it and we want to make your favorite TED podcasts even better.
We put together a quick survey and we'd love to hear from you.
It only takes a few minutes but it helps us shape our shows and get to know you, our listeners, way better.
Head to the episode description to find the link.
Thank you again for listening and for taking the time to help our shows.
This show is sponsored by TeamViewer.
What does the term digital workplace mean to you?
In today's world of AI, robotics, and AR, it's much more than an office full of people on computers.
It can be anywhere from a factory floor, to the top of a crane, to the cockpit of an F1 car.
Wherever your digital workplace may be, TeamViewer's mission is to make work work better.
How? By securely connecting your people with the data, expertise, and insights they need in real time, to make work more efficient.
By automating and streamlining IT and OT support to fix problems before they happen, to make work more productive.
And by bringing all the possibilities of a secure and flexible digital workplace to all your people, everywhere, to make work more innovative.
So, discover how TeamViewer can make work, work better wherever it happens across your business.
Learn more at teamviewer .com slash work better.
This episode is brought to you by Human Intelligence from WorkHuman.
Here's a good question for HR leaders.
In the two years since AI went mainstream, how much has it actually empowered you to improve employee engagement?
How about well -being or cultural transformation?
Well, good news. HR just changed for good with the introduction of human intelligence.
By combining AI with the data from their top rated employee recognition platform, human intelligence unlocks insights and capabilities that redefine talent management, cultural transformation and employee engagement.
Human intelligence can answer questions like what are our talent or skills gaps?
Or how do we build engagement?
It also helps coach employees on what good peer -to -peer recognition looks like turning every good job into better engagement, retention, and well -being, and it helps surface stories that illustrate your organization's culture at its best. In short, it's how today's leading companies are turning AI into a force for learn about Human Intelligence at workhuman .com.
This episode is sponsored by monday .com.
Let's face it, WorkToday moves fast, but monday .com is here to help with their work management product, which enables you to reach your full potential.
It's built for more than just marketing teams, it connects entire organizations to gain full visibility, make better decisions and bridge the gap between strategy and execution.
The platform gives you real -time insights into campaigns, content and projects so you can see what's working, shift gears when needed and make data -backed decisions without the guesswork.
You'll go from being reactive to strategic.
Plus, with built -in AI capabilities, Monday Work Management helps your team work smarter, not harder.
Maximize your marketing impact with the first work product you and your team will love to use.
Visit us at monday .com to learn more.
Here's an opportunity to be honest with you.
On paper and on this podcast you'd assume I love change.
I talk a big game about it, and to be clear, I do act on it.
I've made plenty of big changes throughout my professional and personal life that have really scared me.
Shifting career tracks, leaving and starting important relationships, getting into podcasting, but it hasn't always been pretty.
I wouldn't say I love the actual day -to -day experience of change, and I don't fault people who are resistant to it.
Change is hard, it's scary, and we don't have to pretend like it isn't to embrace its more liberating side effects.
I'm Madupa Akinola, this is TED Business, a podcast from TED.
Our speaker today is change leader Christy Elmer.
Her research is specifically centered on understanding what motivates people to change, and how we can get more comfortable with it.
Then, after the talk, we'll discuss how her studies can be an entry point into a larger conversation with your colleagues about making new moves together.
But first a quick break.
This show is sponsored by Range Rover Sport, it isn't what you say, it's how you say it.
To truly make an impact, you need to set an example, take the lead, and adapt to whatever comes your way.
And when you're that driven, you drive an equally determined vehicle, the Range Rover Sport.
Blending power, poise, and performance, like you, it was designed to make an impact.
The vehicle combines dynamic sporting personality, elegance and agility to deliver a truly instinctive drive.
Defining true modern luxury, it includes the latest innovations in comfort and convenience, with features like the Cabin Air Purification System, alongside active noise cancellation for all new levels of quality, comfort, and control.
A force inside -and -out, the Range Rover Sport was created with a choice of powerful engines, including a plug -in hybrid with an estimated range of 53 miles.
Build your Range Rover Sport at RangeRover .com slash U .S. slash Sport.
This episode is sponsored by Bordeaux and Burgundy.
In B2B marketing, there's a battle for visibility.
Everyone is racing for attention.
To secure long -term demand, businesses need to make a lasting impression.
That's where Bordeaux and Burgundy comes in.
Partnering with the world's best tech companies, they are the creative strategic minds behind Find your next paid advertising and content marketing idea.
Struggling to justify your return on ad spend or commit to consistent content delivery?
Bordeaux & Burgundy offers an end -to -end solution that aligns with your business' goals.
They prefer to outsmart your competition instead of outspending them.
And here's something special just for our listener.
When you visit BordeauxandBurgundy .com, book a meeting with Alfie Dawson, the founder of Bordeaux and Burgundy, and quote TED3.
You'll receive three pieces of short form content for free.
No commitment required.
Terms may apply. That's BordeauxandBurgundy .com, quote TED3 when you book your meeting, or request a free marketing audit.
And now Christy Elmer takes the TED stage.
When I was 24 years old, I heard something that changed the trajectory of my career and my life.
I had just started working for an airline that declared bankruptcy.
This was a historic company with a rich history of giving the gift of flight to millions.
But we knew that saving the company would mean making many hard choices, including layoffs.
It was devastating for people to think about letting go of friends and colleagues, many that had spent decades serving this company.
To help us with this very difficult task, a company was brought in to coach us.
I will never forget what the facilitator said.
He asked, what if for everyone that is laid off, it is actually a good thing?
I was shocked. How could being laid off be a good thing for anyone?
I know if I lost my paycheck, I would be concerned about how I was going to pay my rent, the many other bills I had, worried about health insurance and paying for basics like groceries.
And what would it mean for my career and my future?
So how could being laid off be a good thing for anybody?
But I kept my mind open just long enough to hear the research. He shared that he had tracked employees that had been laid off over time and saw that in in most cases it was actually a blessing in disguise.
People were forced out of a career rut.
With support with severance packages, recommendations and support from their networks, these laid -off employees went on to challenge themselves to do something different.
They started new jobs that gave them opportunities that accelerated their career path.
They actually went on to start new businesses, learn new skills and go back to college.
So in that moment, it became a guiding belief for me, for my career and my life that change is always a good thing.
Even if forced upon you, if you're curious and patient enough, you will find the good in it.
So now whenever a major change happens to me, even if negative or forced upon me, I take the time and ask myself, what if this is happening for me?
Today, I am a transformation leader and executive.
I have helped many companies, small and large, around the globe through transformation and change.
Many of these companies you would recognize.
Delivering billions of value while improving the employee experience, I've worked with a global manufacturer to reskill their entire organization, I've worked with a mining company that was three months from closing their doors to being profitable again.
And through the COVID -19 pandemic, I've worked with one of the most impacted industries, grocery stores.
So I've seen a lot of change.
And what I do know is that in today's world, the only constant is change.
Change is not going away, and in fact, it is getting harder and more frequent.
Lucky for me, I love to change.
I actually seek it out.
But for many, they hate change, And in fact, most people hate change.
It is true that we are biologically wired to hate change.
Our brains are designed to avoid uncertainty and avoid threat.
The instant you feel threatened, your amygdala begins to release stress hormones of cortisol and adrenaline.
This happens instantaneously and unconsciously.
So imagine you're walking in the woods and you see a bear.
What does your brain tell you to do?
Scary animal, run. But the reality is that is just the stress hormones talking.
What you need to do is tap into the rational side of your brain and realize the next best step is to actually stay still.
This chemical cocktail is happening to you regardless if you're staring at a bear in the woods or your CEO has just announced a merger.
Change feels bad. This is one of the reasons why 75 percent of corporate transformations fail.
Think about the last time you experienced a change.
Did people respond with excitement and open -mindedness?
Or did they immediately start listing out all the things that would go wrong?
Saying things like, change never works.
This will fail. Or, one of my favorites, if we wait this out long enough, it will go away.
It doesn't matter how good your change management strategy is if the humans you're working with are consciously or unconsciously working against you.
That's what they're wired to do.
So change management at its core is actually about helping people overcome that natural wiring to hate change and tap into their intellectual potential to advance the change.
So the question is, in a world of constant change, how can we get more people to hate change less, maybe even get excited about it?
The answer is to humanize it.
After all, it is humans that will activate the change.
We have to think about the human element across any dimension of a change or a transformation, and there are many ways to do that.
But here are two of my favorites.
Any time you're beginning a change journey, sit down and write down your personal change story and have your teams do it too.
This is the why you are motivated to change and why you're committed to seeing it through.
Knowing your why and revisiting it often through the change will help you overcome that natural wiring to hate change.
The problem is when most leaders think about change and talk about change, they talk about the success metrics of improving shareholder value or the stock price, or how people will make a lot of money and big bonuses from it.
But that is not what motivates most people.
I founded the Behavioral Science Lab at BCG to better understand what drives human behavior, and one thing we know is there are five primary motivators to why people are motivated to change.
Personal achievement, customers, teams, community, and financial outcomes.
You will resonate with all five to some varying degree, but one will matter more to you.
See if you can spot yourself in these five.
Personal achievement.
If you're motivated by personal achievement, you love career milestones.
Bigger promotions, bigger titles, getting on that exclusive project.
If you are motivated by customers, you want to see your products and services out in the real world and hear from people on how to make them better so that you can improve things for them.
If you're motivated by teams, you care about the people you work with a lot.
You think about the environment in which teaming occurs.
I could give you a big bonus check and in six months, if you hate the team you're working with, you'll probably leave. Alternatively, if you love the team you're working with, I might find you at 2 AM working in the trenches with them if that's what they needed.
If you're motivated by community, you need to know that the place that you are spending time with is really working to make the world a better place.
Think about the corporate programs around cancer awareness or jobs programs or food drives.
People that care about really advancing the community as a primary motivator need to know the company is focused on that.
Financial outcomes is pretty simple.
How many dollar signs are on the other side of this change?
Did one of those resonate with you more?
If I asked a hundred people the same question, what motivates you, and gave them these five categories, they would be pretty evenly split in their response, which means if leaders are talking about financial outcomes and personal achievement like bonuses, they are leaving 60 people unmotivated and uninspired to change.
That's why when I lead change, I ask everyone to write their personal change story, but then talk about the success metrics on all five of those dimensions.
For example, when working with a mining company, one leader shared how he had grown up in extreme poverty.
He was horrified to see how many wasted resources and lost value there was at the company.
He shared how if the transformation was successful, the company would ultimately be able to get more investment from shareholders, that's financial.
And with that additional investment, they could purchase new equipment which would make them more productive, allowing them to keep prices low, that's customers.
And with improved profits, they would be able to invest in wages, personal achievement, and most importantly to him, be able to invest more in the company's reduced poverty campaign.
community. Plus, in a better operating company, teams would have more time to spend together on learning and development.
When he finished his story, he was crying, as were many others in the room.
It was in that moment that the transformation went from being about delivering dollars to being a mission to being the best operating company possible to improve outcomes for everyone.
This was a transformation that everyone could see themselves in.
And what's interesting is once you know what motivates somebody, you can use that throughout the process to remind them why they're motivated to change and fight that biological wiring.
For example, email segmentation and AI automation has made it incredibly easy to send varying communications to different people.
So someone who's motivated by Teams and someone that's motivated by financials can get different communications that hit on their primary motivators.
If it's true that people are motivated by different things, it is also true that they have different capacity.
This leads me to my second tip.
Most organizations manage change through activity heat maps and assume that people have the same capacity.
The problem with this is you might have one team member that has six tasks assigned to them, and they could easily take on eight, while another is experiencing a divorce at home, and the most they can handle is three.
To action my second tip, measure cognitive load and adjust accordingly.
Cognitive load consists of two variables, confidence and capacity.
Capacity is simple.
Do you have the time, energy and resources you need to complete a task?
Confidence is, do you believe in your ability to complete that task?
So how do we measure this?
We ask people with a simple survey how they are feeling.
excited, tired, proud, anxious, and so on.
Then we ask them a simple question around cognitive load.
We ask questions like, cognitive load, questions about capacity.
A simple question about capacity looks like, how effectively can you juggle your roles both at home and at work?
Then we ask a question about confidence.
In facing a difficult task, how certain are you that you can finish that task?
When teams finish this five -minute simple survey, we have a better understanding of their cognitive load and it can adjust things.
For someone that is thriving, we can give them a new opportunity and really challenge and help them develop.
For someone that is struggling, we can reduce the workload or offer up a unique intervention.
This is where my two tips come together.
For someone that is struggling, we can take a moment and remind them of the why they are excited to change.
And if they're struggling with confidence, we can boost it with a trusted leader sending a thoughtful note.
It is these interventions that allow us to help people move through the change and fight that biological wiring to resist change.
There is so much good that can come from change when done right, and doing change right starts with the simple recognition that humans will lead the change, us messy, complicated humans with our differing motivations, insecurities, and full lives.
But by humanizing change, we can help people through understanding their why, and we can help them manage their cognitive load.
This will allow them to keep fighting against that resistance and thinking change is bad.
And maybe see the positive that can come both professionally and personally from change.
Because there is good in every change, you just have to find it.
Thank you. by Earnin.
In those moments where money isn't moving as fast as your dreams are, Earnin provides the financial momentum you need to keep moving forward. Earnin is an app that gives you access to your pay as you work.
Any money you access is automatically repaid from your next paycheck.
Download Earnin today, spelled E -A -R -N -I -N, in the Google Play or Apple App Store.
When you download the Earnin app type in Ted Business under podcast when you sign up, Ted Business under podcasts.
Earnin is a financial technology company not a bank.
Cash -outs are based on your available earnings.
Standard cash -outs take one to two business days with no mandatory fees, option to expedite your transfer for a fee, tips are voluntary and don't affect the service.
See the cash -out user agreement for details, Service is not available in all states.
As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early.
Your business is always on your mind, so when it comes to hiring, you need a partner who works as hard as you do.
That's where LinkedIn Jobs comes in.
When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in.
LinkedIn makes it easy to post your jobs for free, share it with your networks, and get qualified candidates all in one place.
Posting a job is quick, and their new feature even helps you write the job description.
You can post for free or promote your job for three times more qualified applicants.
With LinkedIn, you can feel confident you're getting top talent.
Post your job for free at linkedin .com slash Ted Business.
That's linkedin .com slash Ted Business to post your job for free.
Terms and conditions apply.
Start shopping at thrivemarket .com slash podcast for 30 % off your first order and a free gift. That was Christy Elmer talking at TED at BCG.
I appreciate the typology Christy has created to help us understand what motivates us.
Out of her five primary motivators, personal achievement, customers, teams, community, and financial outcomes, I relate most to the personal achievement category.
Nothing motivates me more on a daily basis than crossing things off my to -do list. It just feels incredible.
But this question of motivators isn't something we have to contemplate on our own.
Maybe it would be useful to bring this rubric into discussions with your colleagues, your manager, or the people who report to It could be helpful to understand how your motivations as a collective might differ, and how each person experiences change differently.
After all, though we may feel its effects most acutely on an individual level, change is often a team sport, and not one we should feel afraid of.
That's it for today.
TED Business is part of the TED Audio Collective.
This episode was produced by Hannah Kingsley -Mah, edited by Alejandra Salazar, and fact checked by Julia Dickerson.
Special thanks to Maria La Face, Farrah DeGrange, Daniela Valerezo, Tansika Sangmanivong, and Roxanne Hilash.
I'm Madupa Akinola, thanks for listening.
Imagine a toilet so striking it inspired a couture dress.
That's right, Kohler's Veil Smart Toilet in Honed Black actually inspired fashion designer Laura Kim to create a stunning black chiffon dress that debuted on the runway at New York Fashion Week.
The Veil Smart Toilet, with its curved design, deep, rich, textural color, touchscreen controls, and customizable cleansing features can transform your routine into something extraordinary.
That's the power of design.
Design changes everything.
Vail's smart toilet in honed black only from Kohler.
Discover the Vail smart toilet and go behind the scenes of Kohler's partnership with creative director Laura Kim at Kohler .com.
Think advertising on TikTok isn't for your business?
Think again. We've generated over 100 ,000 leads which has converted into over 40 ,000 sales for our pet insurance policies.
My name is Trey Pharaoh, I am the CEO of Spot Pet Insurance.
TikTok's smart plus AI powered automation takes the guesswork out of targeting, bidding and optimizing creative.
If I can advertise on TikTok, you can too.
Drive more leads and scale your business today only on TikTok.
Head over to get started at tiktok .com slash tiktok ads.
If you're anything like us, you love attention.
And my favorite way to get all eyes on me is with next level, shiny, glossy hair.
Which is why we're so excited to tell y 'all about the new LaMeler gloss collection from the girlies at Tresemme.
And gigglers we've got you too because Tresemme partnered with us to bring you 1 -800 -GLOSS a special bonus episode of Giggly Squad where Hannah and I give advice on all things hair and giving gloss.
Check out the episode and grab the LaMelier gloss collection today because I'm officially declaring this spring gloss season!
