[00:00:16] Jason S Bradshaw: Meanwhile, the myth persists that no one wants to work anymore when the truth is far more powerful and quite frankly, far more useful. Today's guest cuts through all the noise. Joe Mul is a Hall of Fame speaker, employee commitment expert and author of the award-winning book Employee Reality. He spent nearly two decades helping leaders create workplaces where commitment grows, performance rises, and people stay workplaces, employees actually recommend to their friends.

[00:01:02] Jason S Bradshaw: So if you lead people, even one person, this episode will reshape how you think about the experience your team has every day and what the experience unlocks for your customers. This is Chats with Jason and I'm your host, Jason S. Bradshaw. Joe, I'm thrilled to have you on the show.

[00:01:18] Joe Mull: I'm delighted to be with you. Thank

[00:01:21] Jason S Bradshaw: Fantastic. So let's start right where so many leaders are struggling. Why are people really leaving and what does it take to build a place they wanna stay?

[00:01:35] Joe Mull: I, I actually do this a lot in, in workshops or in keynotes, how, ask the room, think of somebody that you know who has changed jobs in recent years. And you tell me why are people leaving? And as you can imagine, Jason, we get lots of different answers. We get people who say. Well, I left for more money or I left for more flexibility, or I left because I had a bad boss, or I wanted a less toxic workplace, or I wanted more fulfilling work.

[00:02:16] Joe Mull: All of those different answers are about quality of life. I want to earn more so I can have a better quality of life. Some people are looking for an upgrade in commute or an upgrade in the kind of work that they're doing, but across the board, all of those answers are about people looking for an.

[00:02:57] Jason S Bradshaw: Mm. I love that framing [00:03:00] about, uh, upgrading the quality of life. I've always looked at it as people are leaving because the promise of the job, the promise of the workplace wasn't delivered on. But I love that reframing, that it's actually about upgrading the quality of life, however, that looks for everyone.

[00:03:25] Joe Mull: Yeah, people generally do a great job when they believe they have a great job, but we don't help leaders understand or engineer the conditions that lead people to think that way.

[00:03:54] Joe Mull: This is, this is sort of a failure, a, a, a societal failure for what we have not given leaders [00:04:00] in terms of the knowledge and the insight that they need to have. But at the end of the day, if I look around in my workplace and say, this is a great job. I'm much less likely to leave and I'm far more likely to part with effort on behalf of the company.

[00:04:32] Joe Mull: And we married that together with a bunch of social science research around the psychology of motivation at work. And with a bunch of data in labor markets across the, across the globe about why people were moving around or not. And what we found is that a great job really comes down to winning in three areas of the employee experience.

[00:05:13] Joe Mull: So we can break those down a little bit more if you'd like to, Jason. But, you know, if, if your listeners only remember one sentence from my time with you, that's the one sentence I would want them to remember. Commitment appears when employees are in their ideal job doing meaningful work for a great boss.

[00:05:34] Joe Mull: Usually they're about six one. They've got brown hair. No, I'm just kidding. Um, anyone who has led people in the workplace for a long time or even just a short amount of time knows that there are a lot of things you've gotta get right. For someone to point to you and say, boy, I've got a great boss.

[00:06:13] Joe Mull: Because she is capable, because she's operating with the, the right orientation of interests. That is a, a kind of, uh. Center ingredient to the employee experience. Am I trusted and do I trust the person in charge with overseeing my work? That coaching piece is a very specific kind of interaction that takes place between the person that's responsible for overseeing my work and me.

[00:07:05] Joe Mull: What do you think is the next best step? If I weren't here, what would you do? What does your gut tell you? And I'm treating them in that moment as capable. I'm not playing. Gotcha. Right? Those coaching conversations are a kind of secret sauce in employee commitment. And then that third part of this great boss factor, Jason, is that advocacy factor, right?

[00:07:49] Joe Mull: That's what an advocate does. So a great boss is someone who is a coach, who is an advocate and who trusts.

[00:08:14] Jason S Bradshaw: And I said, well, I don't trust you. So nothing we talk about is going to change the outcome. Yes. And, and I had some of the founders even reach out and say, oh, you know, surely there's a way we can work this out. Well, no, no, because that trust is so important. I, I definitely, uh, I share that because I definitely know how that impacted how I showed up in the workspace.

[00:08:43] Joe Mull: Um, and you can probably agree too, that these factors. Take, they can take some time to build, to earn between a, a leader and the person reporting to them. But they can be damaged in moments.

[00:09:06] Jason S Bradshaw: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, absolutely. I think, I think we could spend a lot of time on this, but we will move on.

[00:09:21] Jason S Bradshaw: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:32] Joe Mull: Yeah, we've heard that, right? I, I, if, if anyone listening to this is guilty of having said the phrase, no one wants to work anymore, please raise your hand.

[00:09:58] Joe Mull: Did you know that that [00:10:00] phrase, no one wants to work, has shown up in North American newspapers every single year going back 120 years. There's actually a researcher who is based in Canada who found this, uh, and, and we included it in, in the research in the book. This is the single most persistent generational trope in human history.

[00:10:43] Joe Mull: Uh, we believe. I call this in the book The Myth of Lazy. We believe that young people coming into the workplace have, uh, defects, have character defects. And this is actually a, a societal pattern that has a really cool name in sociology there, it it's been known [00:11:00] as the illusion of moral decline. Isn't that the greatest name you've ever heard for a sociological pattern?

[00:11:23] Joe Mull: It's patience and mentoring. And when you think about how work has evolved in a lot of places over the years, we are getting asked to do more and more and more. We're getting less time away from work. We see pay scales that haven't moved in years, and so what ends up happening is people look around and they're saying, I am living to work.

[00:12:05] Joe Mull: If I'm a young person entering the workforce, and I'm not getting the patients and mentoring I need to be successful, I'm outta here. I'm gonna go make a change. Hmm.

[00:12:18] Jason S Bradshaw: the, uh, the adage that, you know, mo everyone's on their mobile phones and not paying attention to each other, and then you go to the, the photo of everyone sitting on the train reading their newspapers, not talking to each other.

[00:12:54] Jason S Bradshaw: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:05] Jason S Bradshaw: You get a job and you keep that job for life. Mm-hmm. You show up, you keep the boss happy, you do what it takes. Where it's not that today's generation doesn't want to turn up and keep the boss happy, do a great job. They want respect in that process. Mm-hmm. They, they want it to be a genuine two way exchange and not just a one way conversation.

[00:13:30] Joe Mull: I don't, I only, I not only think that that's true, I know that it's true based on patterns and research that we've seen among people who study these generational differences in the workplace. We know that the priorities that a younger generation has.

[00:14:09] Joe Mull: It was there right before the pandemic. Then the pandemic hit and just took an already exhausted workforce and broke it. And we know that's true in other countries as well. We know that's true across industries. And as young people have come up through educational systems and watched their parents and had conversations, think about the advice that we've given to the young people in our own lives.

[00:14:49] Joe Mull: Don't be miserable boy, if you end up with a bad boss, don't stay. A bad boss can wreck your life. You know, bad bosses are a dime a dozen. Go work someplace that you're respected. [00:15:00] Well, guess what? They listened and so they're demanding things in the workplace. Now that the rest of us. Maybe it took a few years for us to look around and say, no, no, no.

[00:15:13] Jason S Bradshaw: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It makes, it makes a lot of sense to me. Now, you've, you've talked about, uh, in your work that shifting from fixing people to fixing work. What does that shift actually look like for a leader?

[00:15:33] Joe Mull: If we know that people are making choices about employment that are based on quality of life, if we know that burnout and overwork and being underpaid are the primary drivers of people either checking out at work or moving on to some other place. Then we have to take ownership for the conditions that we are creating that lead to that when we say no one wants to work anymore, we are blaming people and we're saying that it's a [00:16:00] character defect when the truth is we need to turn the mirror inward and we need to understand what about how we work and when we work and where we work, and what we expect from work needs to change in order for people to decide that this place would be the very best place for me to be a blank.

[00:16:35] Joe Mull: We we're not blaming people for a character defect that isn't really the driver of this. Another way to think about this, Jason is. When I hear leaders say there's a staffing shortage, I will challenge them to say, is it really a staffing shortage or is it a great job shortage? Because if you're creating a workplace that.

[00:17:12] Joe Mull: Yes, there are. There are remote places, there are rural places, there are roles that have certain levels of education, uh, attached to them that make them maybe a little harder to fill. So I'm not dismissing that. But if you're in an industry where you treat people well and you create an environment where the work is meaningful, it doesn't have to be so hard.

[00:17:59] Jason S Bradshaw: [00:18:00] right?

[00:18:00] Jason S Bradshaw: Uh,

[00:18:28] Jason S Bradshaw: Seems so foreign for, for many to even start to have that internal dialogue. W what are you seeing in that regard?

[00:18:50] Joe Mull: You've gotta come in and you don't earn anything for a while and you've gotta hustle and work 60, 80 hours a week and you've gotta pay your dues and then you earn the right [00:19:00] to ask for better treatment and. I understand why some people think that way, but how well did that work for you and your effort and your motivation and your commitment when you were a young person?

[00:19:29] Joe Mull: I don't have the power to create more flexible workplace policies. And that might be true, but where are your spheres of influence? Around these ideas of ideal job and meaningful work and great boss, what can you control? And for the things that you can't control, where can you become an advocate for your people?

[00:20:11] Jason S Bradshaw: Hmm. Yeah.

[00:20:13] Jason S Bradshaw: and going back to what we touched on earlier, that's part of the leader's job to advocate, right? Mm-hmm. It's, it's, we're not saying that every leader has the power to change everything, but every leader does have the ability to advocate for what's right and. I certainly believe that your people, the people that work for you, can, can truly tell when a leader is advocating for them.

[00:20:36] Jason S Bradshaw: You know, un unless you're the owner of the business, Mo most people will, will give you more credit for advocating than, uh, even if you don't get the end result that you're looking for. Uh, I'm wondering what, what. Other than advocacy, uh, what one behavior leaders can adopt today that will help activate commitment on their, with their teams.

[00:21:23] Joe Mull: Which is where somebody decides they're leaving an organization. So before they head out, let's, let's. Do an interview and they're absurd. I I, there are a colossal waste of time and resources like, okay, you've, you've decided to move on. You have no investment here whatsoever. Now's a great time to ask you what you think we should do differently.

[00:21:59] Joe Mull: [00:22:00] Right? If you could, uh, rework or rewire some aspect of what you do, what, what are the biggest challenges you face every day that you wish you could cut down on a little bit? What one thing, if we changed it about how we work here, would make your life easier? If we do those kinds of interviews, have that kind of dialogue, is there something that you'd be interested in learning more about?

[00:22:36] Joe Mull: First of all, it signals to those folks that you care about these things and that you're not just treating them as a commodity to be leveraged, but it also sets up the opportunity for the leader to to take action. And to, to tweak around the edges wherever they can, how people work and what they do to better understand what that person needs to be at their best every day.

[00:23:14] Jason S Bradshaw: Yeah, what a great concept. Actually asking people that are with you, uh, about why they're still there and what's, what, what it would take to even enhance the environment. You know, I was, uh, as you were talking about those exit interviews, uh, the one thing that I, they, Remi that reminded me of was. So many organizations do exit interviews and then do nothing with the information.

[00:24:05] Jason S Bradshaw: Uh, definitely, definitely Those stay interviews I think are a great thing that listeners should take away with them. And for me, it. It's different to the conversation many leaders have. Right. So you've, most organization leaders will have a performance review with their team members at least once a year.

[00:24:23] Jason S Bradshaw: That's not a stay interview. That's a KPI discussion. Mm-hmm. You are, you are talking about something really different, and I think it's quite powerful. I'd encourage everyone listening if you take nothing away from today's, uh, episode to, to embrace this concept of a stay interview and really. Lean into what's keeping your employees today, but what they're looking for, uh, that if delivered will, you know, cement their commitment to your organization.

[00:24:50] Jason S Bradshaw: and

[00:24:52] Jason S Bradshaw: Go ahead. Ahead, Joe.

[00:25:11] Joe Mull: And if you can create the conditions on that scorecard that lead people to think, I've got a great job that lead people to wanna be a part of what you're doing. Every metric you care about in your organization is gonna go up and, and retention's gonna improve, turnover's gonna decline. Customer experience is gonna include, gonna improve productivity, reputation, revenue, all of it.

[00:25:54] Joe Mull: That ideal job, meaningful work, great boss. But the truth is that at different [00:26:00] stages of our lives, those things carry different levels of importance. And so everybody's internal psychological scorecard has sort of got different ratios to it, right? When I was young and first starting out and entering the workforce.

[00:26:33] Joe Mull: Be so that I can get my kids off the bus two days a week because of my wife's work schedule. So that doesn't mean those other things aren't important to me, but maybe at this moment in my career, they're not as important to me because of my life circumstances. And the exit interview is the vehicle we, excuse me, the stay interview is the vehicle that we can use to understand at a deeper level what is most important to each person that will ultimately lead them to feel like I've got a great job.[00:27:00]

[00:27:26] Jason S Bradshaw: Deliver that retention that we've, we've been looking at. But one thing we haven't talked about is giving feedback. You know, I hear quite a lot from leaders, oh, it's so hard to find people. They don't want to give bad feedback, uh, because it might mean that the person leaves. So how can a great leader.

[00:27:47] Joe Mull: Yeah. There's actually, uh, some emerging research on this in recent years that I think is really exciting. I sort of nerd out on this stuff a little bit. Um, one of the things that we found in recent years is that [00:28:00] people are far more responsive to feedback when it speaks to our potential.

[00:28:24] Joe Mull: And so here's what that sounds like. You know, if I sat down across from you, Jason, and I said, Hey. I, I, I've noticed that when you interact with, um, let's pretend we were working in a, a doctor's office and, um, I felt like I needed you to be a little bit more obviously warm and friendly to people when they came into the clinic.

[00:29:00] Joe Mull: Um. So I would first describe the behavior that I want the person to use. I wouldn't say I need you to be nicer at the front desk. What I would say is, when somebody approaches the front desk, I want you to turn your body away from your computer, make direct eye contact with that person, put a. Big obvious smile on your face, say Good morning.

[00:29:47] Jason S Bradshaw: Hmm. It makes a lot of sense, and I think it comes down to that framing. You're not, you're not attacking them. You are, you are helping them step into their potential. What, what, what a great, great lesson for us all. Now, it wouldn't be a [00:30:00] conversation in. Uh, late 2025 without the mention of the two wonderful letters, A and I.

[00:30:07] Jason S Bradshaw: I'm wondering how, uh, in the age of AI hybrid work and, and really evolving expectations from team members, what, what is it that we haven't spoken about? Hmm. That, uh, it takes to be a great boss today?

[00:30:29] Joe Mull: You probably have some people on your team who are afraid because AI is disruptive and it's a tool maybe that I'm not comfortable with and I don't know how to use it yet, or it's coming for my job. And so as any new technology enters the workplace, we need to create an environment where people don't feel threatened to start to experiment with it.

[00:31:14] Joe Mull: Maybe I don't have to work 50 hours a week anymore if I am using some of these tools and they're able to increase my productivity. That's a, that's a beautiful way to use some of these tools in the workplace. Uh, what I hope leaders are recognizing though, is that if we only use AI tools to remove the entry level layer of work, then where will the next level of workers come from?

[00:32:03] Jason S Bradshaw: Yeah, I love it. And great reminder that AI doesn't have to, uh, doesn't have to be that disruptor that, uh, replaces people or that's the intent of it. It can actually create a, a more effective workplace that allows our people to focus on, uh, higher value tasks and really, uh, drives a, a better experience for them all round.

[00:32:27] Joe Mull: My absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.

[00:32:33] Joe Mull: Well, thank you for asking. Um, my website is joe mul.com. It's my name. Um, the book employee is available wherever you want, wherever you get books, wherever you like to read your books.

[00:32:57] Jason S Bradshaw: Fantastic. We'll be sure to have those links and [00:33:00] more in the comments section. Joe, you've given leaders something incredibly rare today, and I thank you for that.

[00:33:27] Jason S Bradshaw: Listeners, if you want more of Joe's work, make sure you do pick up a copy of Employee Reality. It's a fantastic book. I cannot recommend it high enough. And of course, as Joe mentioned, explore Boss Hero School and listen to the Boss. Better Now, podcast consistently ranked among one of the top management shows in the world.