The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:23 - 00:00:40:01
Kevin Eikenberry
Love. This is a word that comes to mind when talking about work. Well maybe not. But have you ever said how much you love a product or have loved a boss? If so, you realize that how we think about this four letter word is complicated. And yet we know it is a powerful force. That's why we're talking about it today, about what love is and why designing it into your work and workplaces is a powerful way to change your results.

00:00:40:03 - 00:01:05:18
Kevin Eikenberry
Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we are helping organizations and their leaders grow and lead more effectively and make a bigger difference across their teams, organizations, communities, and the world. If this is you, if you want to lead better and help leaders in your organization do the same, please accept my gift of an action guide summarizing the key individual and organizational next steps from our 2025 episodes.

00:01:05:20 - 00:01:28:07
Kevin Eikenberry
Just go to a remarkable podcast.com/action guide. One word action guide. If you're listening to this podcast, you may not know that we do these live live stream them long before they make the podcast. So if you want to find out when those are happening and how you can get involved, just join our two. One of our two groups where you can find that out either on Facebook or LinkedIn.

00:01:28:12 - 00:01:53:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Just go to remarkable podcast.com/facebook or remarkable podcast.com/linked in. And with that I'm going to bring in my guest. I'll get him here and then I'll introduce him and we will dive in. His name is Marcus Buckingham. I'm betting if you're listening to this podcast you've heard of him before. For over 25 years, Marcus has been the world's leading researcher on strengths, engagement and human performance.

00:01:53:11 - 00:02:26:09
Kevin Eikenberry
He began his career at Gallup and was the co-creator with Donald O. Clifton of Strengthsfinder. He is a New York Times bestselling author or coauthor of many books, including First Break All the Rules, Now Discover Your Strengths and Stand Out 2.0, and also Nine Lives about Work and Love, plus work. He has two Harvard Business reviews, most circulated industry changing cover articles, and has been the subject of in-depth, in-depth profiles on The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA today, Forbes, fortune.

00:02:26:09 - 00:02:42:13
Kevin Eikenberry
You get the idea. He's even been on Oprah. Today we're talking about his newest book, which as of this live conversation is not even out yet. It's called Design Love and How to Unleash the Most Powerful Force in Business. Marcus, welcome.

00:02:42:15 - 00:02:47:12
Marcus Buckingham
Thanks for having me, Kevin. That's, quite the introduction. Happy. Happy to be here. I called.

00:02:47:12 - 00:03:07:05
Kevin Eikenberry
Your mom and said, tell me what I should say. No, I'm just kidding. Listen, I'm so glad that you're here, and I enjoyed the book, and I'm happy for us to have this conversation. So you've written a bunch of stuff, and you just told me before we started. You've been thinking about this topic for three years. So why this book?

00:03:07:07 - 00:03:34:12
Marcus Buckingham
Well, I'm a data geek by training and by disposition. And, when you look at the outcomes that we all want as leaders, when you look at extreme positive outcomes in terms of productivity, resilience, loyalty from a people, or when you look at repeat visits or advocacy, word of mouth from our customers and you look at the extreme positive versions of that, and you ask yourself, well, how did how did we get those outcomes?

00:03:34:14 - 00:03:58:19
Marcus Buckingham
You just make two discoveries, one of which I pushed against, you know, shame on me. But I pushed against it for 20 years. You make two discoveries. The first is if you want to drive those outcomes, most lead is knee jerk reaction is to try to be directive in order to get those outcomes. So as a as a leader, you might set goals and give feedback and try to drive performance in that way or with your customers.

00:03:58:19 - 00:04:21:07
Marcus Buckingham
You set pricing or you define the products, features and benefits and loyalty programs, and then those directive methods work temporarily. But if you want to know what sustainably drives those outcomes, what do you have to go upstream? Experiences drive behaviors drive outcomes. So if you want sustainable reproductive outcomes, you've got to become expert at designing extremely positive experiences.

00:04:21:07 - 00:04:39:01
Marcus Buckingham
Experiences live inside the person and that's what drives their behavior to change. And that's what drives their outcomes to change. So what that means for leaders is you're an experience maker. It's not like you are one or not. It's like you are one. The question is whether you're a skilled one or not. So that's the first big discoveries.

00:04:39:03 - 00:04:58:04
Marcus Buckingham
If you're a leader, you're an experience maker. If you don't quite know what I mean by that. That's why I wrote the book, because it's like experience making is a skill you can have experience, intelligence or not. But if you don't have much of it, we can help you have more of it. And then the second big discovery, frankly, is if you unpack those experiences come in the word people use to describe them.

00:04:58:04 - 00:05:24:11
Marcus Buckingham
If you're looking at extreme positive experiences of customers or employees, the word people naturally reach for is love. They'll say, I love working on that team. I love that movie. I love that leader. I love that company, I love, I love, I love, I love, and initially it looks like it's a careless exaggeration of the words like or something, but actually it it's a spontaneous top of mind reaching for a particular word to describe an extreme positive.

00:05:24:13 - 00:05:55:17
Marcus Buckingham
And for me, I kept hearing it and I kept changing it. As a slightly uptight, skeptical British researcher, I kept changing the word to to engagement or passion or joy or satisfaction or even strengths, because those words are more palatable to a business audience. But that's not actually what people say. What people say is love. And so in the end, you go, oh, love's the most powerful driver of all productive human behavior.

00:05:55:19 - 00:06:05:16
Marcus Buckingham
Love is. And if we as leaders can't even talk about it, then we can't talk about the most powerful driver of anything good that happens in business. That's weird. It's the money.

00:06:05:16 - 00:06:08:10
Kevin Eikenberry
We certainly can't create it if we can't talk about it.

00:06:08:10 - 00:06:24:00
Marcus Buckingham
Exactly. So that's why I wrote the book. Was learning. You know what, Marcus? It's time to just shut up and listen to what people are actually saying. As a researcher, that's what you should do anyway. They're saying love. What do they mean by that? Because it drives their behavior. What do they mean by that? And that's where the book came from going okay.

00:06:24:00 - 00:06:41:20
Marcus Buckingham
Come on. In a loveless world, in an increasingly loveless world, how do you design love into things? Because it doesn't mean just soft. It's not a coating. Love's an ingredient. You can design it in or you can design it out. And obviously the best leaders know how to design it in.

00:06:41:22 - 00:07:00:03
Kevin Eikenberry
100%. One of the things you talk about in the book, I was trying to find, a place that as you're chatting, a little bit about it, but you talked about, this idea of what I'm going to call the law of the fives. I don't think that's what you actually called it. But it's the idea that there's.

00:07:00:05 - 00:07:13:09
Kevin Eikenberry
We often, we often don't think about the real extremes, or we try to lump stuff together. Kind of like what you were just saying. Talk a little bit more about that, because I think it's it's the extension. It's the data extension of what you just said. Yeah.

00:07:13:11 - 00:07:40:09
Marcus Buckingham
So for those of your listeners who are really into data, I think you'll you'll get this. We think that the relationship between experiences and outcomes is linear. So we think that if you've got a scale of 1 to 5 defining an experience, we think that if you move a two to a three, like a a below average experience to average or an average experience to above average, like a three to a four, you get the same amount of performance increase.

00:07:40:09 - 00:07:55:02
Marcus Buckingham
So outcomes increase. And if there's an awful lot more experiences that are in the twos and the threes or the threes in the fours, it just makes sense to ignore the fives and try to move everything a little bit to the right. You take the grumpy employees and make them a little less grumpy. You get the kind of grumpy upset customers and make them a little less upset.

00:07:55:04 - 00:08:11:22
Marcus Buckingham
That just seems so sensible. You move the two to the threes and actually we combine the fours in the fives. Kevin and we call that percent favorable or top two box. And and we think that our whole strategy should be move the two of the threes in the threes to the four fives. But unfortunately the data doesn't support that at all.

00:08:11:22 - 00:08:32:13
Marcus Buckingham
The relationship between our experiences and outcomes is actually what's called curvilinear, which means it's a hockey stick curve. Practically. That means if you move a to experience for your customers to a three, you don't get any behavior change at all. If you have a three experience of your employees to a four, they were they were average and now their experience is slightly above average.

00:08:32:18 - 00:08:55:07
Marcus Buckingham
Okay, that doesn't drive any of their behavior at all. It doesn't drive. Productivity doesn't drive. Loyalty doesn't drive. Advocacy. When you think about a scale of 1 to 5 fives, the only if you move somebody from a four to a five, it is only then that you can start predicting what their behavior is going to be. So when push comes to shove, you force the threes, not fives 4 to 3, 3 to 2, twos and ones.

00:08:55:11 - 00:09:21:05
Marcus Buckingham
When it comes to the data, the world's really binary. There's fives and everything else on your scale you should see is not a five. So we should never use top to box ever again because you're lumping things that are completely, categorically different. We should never use Net Promoter Score. Net Promoter Score is fundamentally built on the idea of linearity, as though, moving a four to a five or a five to a six is the same thing as moving a nine to a ten.

00:09:21:05 - 00:09:47:21
Marcus Buckingham
It isn't. Whenever we've got a scale of experiences, fives or tens or whatever, the extreme of your scale is drives behavior. Everything else doesn't. And that for leaders, remember, the job of a leader is one. You get one job as a leader. Change behavior. You're trying to change people's behavior with its customers are employees. Well, if you're in the business of behavior change, you've got to know what the driver of behavior changes.

00:09:47:23 - 00:10:13:11
Marcus Buckingham
And moving three to fours doesn't do it. Moving eights to nines doesn't do it. You've got to somehow create experiences where people go five. That's what drives their behavior. Sorry, I know the bar's high, but the data is the data is the data. If you are not holding yourself accountable to what you just called the law of fives, if you're not curious about the fives, you'll never drive sustainably productive behavior from customers or employees.

00:10:13:13 - 00:10:15:14
Marcus Buckingham
That's a wake up call.

00:10:15:16 - 00:10:39:19
Kevin Eikenberry
So you talk. I think the core of the book, is about, maybe the core. One of the cause of the book are what you call the five feelings of love, because we have this complicated thinking about this word. And so now we're going to use it in the workplace because it's the driver of behavior change. We need to talk about the the feelings that it is or that or the types of it if you would.

00:10:39:23 - 00:10:46:09
Kevin Eikenberry
So let's talk about those briefly. Yeah. And go from there and you call them the five feelings of love. Marcus.

00:10:46:10 - 00:11:08:05
Marcus Buckingham
Yeah. Well, so if you look at the fives, whether it's customers or employees and you just ask yourself, how did they get there? They're saying, I love that. I love that team. I love that movie I love. So the first thing you have to ask yourself is, gosh, first of all, what do they mean by love? Because we use it in all these different contexts.

00:11:08:10 - 00:11:40:09
Marcus Buckingham
I love those socks. I love my mom. Can it can it possibly mean the same thing? And yet it does drive behavior. So also there's obviously as many different definitions of the word love as there are people alive. There must be something common about it because it drives behavior. When you really push on it. What you find, Kevin, is that the we reach for that word when we encounter an experience, whether it's a pair of socks, whether it's a leader where we feel that we can flourish.

00:11:40:11 - 00:11:58:17
Marcus Buckingham
So love is like as it's like a synonym for the feeling of being more fully yourself. Over time, we humans go through life wrapped up, armor plated like an armadillo because the world's scary. But inside we know we've got something inside of us that wants to come out. We want a life in which we can express the uniqueness of us in some way, shape or form.

00:11:58:20 - 00:12:17:16
Marcus Buckingham
So any experience, no matter how trivial, like a pair of socks on, how meaningful, like a mentor, where we get to take off one of those plates of armor and we get to express something a little bit, could be the smallest thing, but where we get to express some part of ourselves, that plate of armor comes off and we, the word we reach for to describe that is love.

00:12:17:17 - 00:12:35:14
Marcus Buckingham
Because we we want to have a world in which we don't go through it. Or that as an armadillo, we want to express get to 95 years old on the porch. And we're thinking, you know what? I lived? I lived a life where I got a chance to express me. Humans. Humans love that. And we reach for experiences like that.

00:12:35:15 - 00:12:54:04
Marcus Buckingham
So if you if you back up, what you're trying to do as a leader is build experiences for customers and employees where they can do that. It could be in the smallest ways or the most significant ways, but you're getting people a chance to to take the armor off. Well, if you if you reverse engineer that, you bump into five feelings.

00:12:54:06 - 00:13:22:03
Marcus Buckingham
You don't bump into chaos. You bump into five distinct feelings. It's almost like you build love one feeling at a time and you can't hurry it. Sorry, Phil Collins or whoever the original. You can't hurry love, right? The first feeling is control, which sounds odd, but it's not control over other people, it's control over self. So the first feeling you want people are having an experiences and they're asking themselves, what is this world and how does it work.

00:13:22:04 - 00:13:44:02
Marcus Buckingham
So anything you can do like even, you know, Chick-Fil-A going, we're closed on Sunday. That is a loving thing to do because it gives people clarity about the world that they're entering into. Southwest Airlines in the past saying there is no seat assignment. You just get a letter and a number. That's it. That's some people may hate that, by the way, but it's clear it gives you control over the world you're moving into.

00:13:44:04 - 00:14:15:06
Marcus Buckingham
So first feeling is control. Second feeling is harmony where basically the person is going, does this experience know what I'm feeling? And does it care when we feel as though an experience somehow is communicating that it knows what we're feeling in because we lean in when it doesn't feel that it feels jarring. We found nurses who gave painless injections, and we kept looking at what did they doing to give people a sense that their their pain is less, is it is it the injection technique?

00:14:15:06 - 00:14:32:04
Marcus Buckingham
Is it that tone of voice, turns out, is nothing to do with that. It was. They all said the same thing right before they put the needle in. They all said, this is going to hurt a little bit. I'll try to make it hurt as little as I can. And somehow in just saying what you're feeling as a patient, you end up sharing the pain somehow.

00:14:32:06 - 00:14:56:07
Marcus Buckingham
Whenever we bump into an experience where you show me, you know what I'm feeling, wherever you might want to move me to, you got to meet me before you can move me. So, harmony. That's harmony. The third feeling is significance. At some point in the experience, we want the experience to say, I know what your story is and I'll change something because of it.

00:14:56:09 - 00:15:11:10
Marcus Buckingham
So the whole it depends ness of the experience. I know what your story is and this is what kind of changes the result of it. I want you to start with that. I don't want you to start with individualization. I want you to start with rules. I like rules and control. A good part of love, actually, as every parent knows.

00:15:11:12 - 00:15:29:00
Marcus Buckingham
But at some point I'm going to want to feel significant. That means you got to figure out what my story is and that you care about it. The fourth feeling is warmth of others. We humans hate experiences where we feel isolated, so we are always in any experience. At some point in the experience, looking around, going, who's with me?

00:15:29:03 - 00:15:53:19
Marcus Buckingham
And how can they help? Who's with me? How can they help? There's so many opportunities that companies have to maximize that, and we don't. I own a Jeep and Jeeps got this happening organically and Jeep because they don't really take love seriously. Have done nothing with it. I get ducks all over my jeep. I've got a Wrangler and and at some point some Canadian lady decided that she was going to she was having a bad day.

00:15:53:19 - 00:16:04:08
Marcus Buckingham
So she put a duck, a rubber duck on another, the hood of another wrangler with a little note on it saying there's sunshine around the corner. And it for those of you with jeeps, you'll know what I'm talking about. Here it goes.

00:16:04:08 - 00:16:08:16
Kevin Eikenberry
To pay attention to people. When you're driving on the road and you see jeeps, they got ducks across the dash.

00:16:08:16 - 00:16:27:23
Marcus Buckingham
I know. And does Jeep do anything with that? No. It's crazy to me that they've got this naturally organic warmth of others and no one's no one's maximizing it. The last feeling is growth. Love is a forward facing emotion. If you love someone you know they're never done. They're always in a state of they're going to have to wake up tomorrow and face the world again.

00:16:28:02 - 00:17:01:00
Marcus Buckingham
So what people want in an experiences is how will you help me be a little more capable tomorrow? So if you can imagine as a leader, you've got a sequence of five feelings control, harmony, significance, warmth of others, growth. That's a blueprint for getting people to that place of fives. That's a blueprint for getting people to go. I love that if you can look at each of those five feelings sequentially and it is a sequence given, you can't start with growth because the arm is still on each one of those feelings is like one plate of armor coming off.

00:17:01:02 - 00:17:14:15
Marcus Buckingham
And so the whole book really is about, well, how do the best leaders or the best companies design for each of those five feelings? Not easy, but it's very hard if you're not even trying.

00:17:14:17 - 00:17:36:03
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah. And the statement that you just made, you can't start with growth. I think there are organizations that try to start with growth, right? They want to develop their leaders. They want develop their teams. And they kind of go there and you've just described one of the reasons why so much of those investments don't go so well.

00:17:36:05 - 00:17:38:15
Kevin Eikenberry
I'm not the only reason, but it's one of the reasons.

00:17:38:15 - 00:17:55:23
Marcus Buckingham
Yeah. I mean, one of the stories I tell in the book is I was I also was asked to give a speech at a, at a very high end spa. So I was like, oh, I don't know. I'll go there. And I think it was Canyon Ranch in Austin, and there was a whole load of people at that spa that didn't look like everybody else.

00:17:55:23 - 00:18:13:00
Marcus Buckingham
They were all about 27, 28, 29. They didn't know each other. They weren't with their families. They weren't with their spouses. They were by themselves. But and they were they just seemed out of place because it's like so in the end, my curiosity got the better of me and I was like, hey, where are you all from? Why don't you know each other?

00:18:13:00 - 00:18:34:11
Marcus Buckingham
But anyway, it turns out they were all from, I won't mention the name of the firm, but they were all from a professional services firm and the person said, we we get told when we're hired that if we stay for three years or until we make senior manager, once we do, we get given a prize. And the prize is to pick any canyon ranch in the country and go and spend three days at the Canyon Ranch.

00:18:34:11 - 00:18:51:17
Marcus Buckingham
And if we stay for three years, we get this prize. And I was like, that's cool. That's that's great. Does it does it work? And they went, yeah, of course it works. That's why I'm here. And and I'm like, oh, that's so great. So what happens now that now that you're now that you've gone, he goes, well now we're free to go.

00:18:51:19 - 00:19:09:20
Marcus Buckingham
I'm like what? He goes, now we're free to leave. We've been held hostage by this growth thing that we're doing for this. But now that we're done with that, we're gone. So this pool of professionals that for professional services, I mean, it's fine, but they've spent all this time and energy and money to get people to stay for three years.

00:19:09:22 - 00:19:35:13
Marcus Buckingham
So they try to make people have feel a feeling of growth. But because they hadn't done the first four feelings intentionally, they were now all these people were now, quote unquote, free to leave. They haven't built an experience where people when I flip in love working here, instead they've done something mechanistic and functional and given people a growth prize, as though that was the way to get people to be sustainably productive.

00:19:35:13 - 00:19:57:13
Marcus Buckingham
Well, love doesn't work that way. Love doesn't work backwards. You got to start with control, not growth. It's like banks that try to teach you financial literacy, but they haven't done anything to attend to. Your need for control. How many significant swarms of others. And so it just it bounces off of this those I call this in the book Experience intelligence.

00:19:57:15 - 00:20:22:06
Marcus Buckingham
There is an intelligence that the best leaders have for experience design. And what I just described there, the the professional services firm is a jolly good firm, but it's experientially unintelligent to do something, to get people to feel a feeling of growth when you haven't done the stuff that's foundational to that. It means in the end, you don't change the behavior you're trying to change, which in this case is getting people to stay well.

00:20:22:06 - 00:20:43:12
Kevin Eikenberry
And as you were telling that story, the word they kept coming to my mind was the at the end. And I'm, I mean, I'm guessing a bit from the way you told the story is that those people at the spa, it the whole thing felt hollow. That's the word that I kept hearing in my head was hollow, which is a far cry from anything that we would consider love.

00:20:43:14 - 00:21:08:05
Marcus Buckingham
Yes. And if it's such a great word, it if you think about companies that have done this really well, and I am not suggesting The Walt Disney Company does everything perfectly. But if you can imagine a situation where at some point somebody says, we want our characters to hug the children and there's some general counsel somewhere who goes, we're not we're not getting adults to hug kids.

00:21:08:07 - 00:21:29:04
Marcus Buckingham
But of course, in the end, well, Disney goes, no, no, no, no, we're going to hug the kids. What is the loving way to tell all of our cast members how to hug a kid? And out comes from that very serious thought process about, well, how do you do that? You think about control and harmony. And they just marinated in those first two feelings.

00:21:29:04 - 00:21:45:22
Marcus Buckingham
How do we give the kid the feeling of control, and how do we meet the kid exactly where they're at? So the whole experience feels loving. If we're not careful, the whole thing will feel hollow. And so they come up in the end. With some of your listeners may know this the Disney hugging rule, which is what they teach all the cast members.

00:21:45:22 - 00:22:13:22
Marcus Buckingham
And it's simple. It's you don't stop hugging until the kid stops hugging. And that's the hugging rule. It gives the kid the feeling of control and it meets the kid exactly emotionally, harmoniously, where they're at. It's a beautifully simple execution that fits perfectly with those first two feelings. Contrast that with what Mike Nichols right now is doing at Starbucks, where he's come in in the past at Starbucks, the the, the baristas used to write your name right on the cup and some little word.

00:22:13:22 - 00:22:35:00
Marcus Buckingham
And because it was hard. Yeah, exactly. And it was organic. It was a bit like the ducking. It was because Howard Schultz had created a world to that first feeling of control. He called it the third place. And we're in love with this third place. And that's what we're all about. And you, the the customer. You were given a feeling of control as you walked into that world.

00:22:35:00 - 00:23:02:08
Marcus Buckingham
You knew what to expect, and the words on the cup were kind of a little organic manifestation of that third, place. Well, now they Mike's come in fresh from Chipotle or where he was before Taco Bell and said directly to all the baristas, thou shalt now write words on a cup. And it's directive, it's functional. It's to use your word.

00:23:02:08 - 00:23:26:14
Marcus Buckingham
It's hollow because it doesn't start with like as a, as a customer. You're like, I don't know why I'm getting this. Didn't used to get this. Now all of a sudden I'm getting this, I got I got a cup the other day, Kevin, where they just written words on a cup. They'd written the words on a cup because it was a passive aggressive, hollow, mechanistic, standard operating procedure.

00:23:26:16 - 00:23:48:23
Marcus Buckingham
It was experientially unintelligent. And of course, in the end, what you know, you might go, well, so what? Well, I'm sorry, the thing that Disney does leads to more love. And the thing that Starbucks does leads to less love. And if you want to think intelligently about business outcomes as a leader, you'll take love seriously because it drives productive human behavior, in this case, customers.

00:23:49:01 - 00:24:09:22
Marcus Buckingham
It's like, this isn't sweet. Love an apple pie? It's like, that's why I called the book. Love is the most powerful force in business. You better have a strategy for it. Yeah, unleash the most powerful force in business. And it gets really big. Two foot level stuff. Kevin. It's like, here's a Disney hugging rule which has the love designed in.

00:24:10:00 - 00:24:22:03
Marcus Buckingham
And here's a Starbucks words on a cup rule, which has love designed out. And these things are massively different in terms of their business outcomes.

00:24:22:05 - 00:24:47:04
Kevin Eikenberry
There's so much that we could get into. We were talking with Marcus Buckingham, the author of the new book Design Love in How to Unleash the Most Powerful Force in Business. And we can't get to all that's here. But I'm really glad, Marcus, that as we were just chatting, you made it clear to those who are now going to want to go buy a book that this isn't this is thinking about both designing love into the experiences inside the organization, but also outside of the organization.

00:24:47:04 - 00:25:07:04
Kevin Eikenberry
And we don't have time to dive into either one of those much more. But there's one other thing I really wanted to get to, because you talk about it in the book and it's almost obligatory, in 2026, if you're having a podcast, you're talking about business, you're talking about leadership, that somehow you ought to talk about AI and you talk about it in the book.

00:25:07:06 - 00:25:22:16
Kevin Eikenberry
And you talk about the connection or how connection can be between love and AI. So let's just take a minute or two on that before we start to wrap up, because I think it's important, and it's one of the many things that people are struggling with so much right now, which is why the book is so important.

00:25:22:17 - 00:25:40:00
Marcus Buckingham
Well, yeah. I mean, if you think about an experience continuum on the far left, you've got like exploitative experiences that nobody wants on the far right, you've got experiences that people love which drive their behavior. And so any system or any initiative that you bring into your company or your team, you've got to ask yourself a simple question.

00:25:40:05 - 00:26:02:03
Marcus Buckingham
Does it move the experience more to the right, or does it move it more to the left? Are you designing more loving with this, or are you designing more love out and AI is a super interesting one because you can see examples of where it's it's clearly bringing more love in. Like when I think about AI, this part of AI I love it makes me smart.

00:26:02:03 - 00:26:20:09
Marcus Buckingham
It saves me time. It gives me an opportunity to find connections that I wouldn't otherwise find. I love it the way I could love any inanimate thing that enables me to express a bit of myself. I love it the same way I love it. A pair of socks. I mean, it's it's like it enables me to flourish in some way so I can love it.

00:26:20:09 - 00:26:42:12
Marcus Buckingham
So in that context, I think it clearly can move us to the right if we're not careful, though we haven't asked the other side of that question, which is, well, I can love it. Can it love me? So, for example, if you bring an AI process into your customer service experience, have you moved? Love the love bar. If you want to the left or to the right, have you designed more like they're not designed it out?

00:26:42:14 - 00:27:02:20
Marcus Buckingham
And the question there for us is when we bump into an AI bot that is very smart and knows a lot about a lot of things, is it going to create an experience for me where I go? Five is it not? Not 1 to 3 I mean, clearly we've all had experiences with the customer service reps where they're really grumpy and they sludgy ass and the whole thing's awful.

00:27:03:01 - 00:27:32:04
Marcus Buckingham
So maybe an AI is better than that for sure. Gets us to a three. But can I actually make us more likely to go? I love that on the surface, we need to be careful because I doesn't know experiences. I isn't an experience maker. AI doesn't know what the word flourishing is. It never can and never will. AGI will never, ever have a I understand what the word shame means or fear or anxiety.

00:27:32:04 - 00:27:54:00
Marcus Buckingham
All the stuff that we humans feel that we bond over. I will never feel that. And we need to be careful with AI that we don't over claim that it can create fives, it can create know it, reduce ones. But in terms of experience creation, we just need to be clear that there are some things that it doesn't do very well and it never will.

00:27:54:00 - 00:27:58:22
Marcus Buckingham
It's like a B player, maybe a C player. We just need to be careful and.

00:27:59:03 - 00:28:03:02
Kevin Eikenberry
We design that into the process. Don't make it the process.

00:28:03:04 - 00:28:21:03
Marcus Buckingham
Yes, exactly. We can have it be so that you can love it because it helps you do things, but if we if if it becomes the way in which we engage through that experience, then it actually is trying to do something it's not designed to do. Now, look, you could take those five feelings. And in the book, that's what I say.

00:28:21:05 - 00:28:57:05
Marcus Buckingham
An AI is simply an optimization engine. You can optimize AI for anything, for any outcome. Well, one of the things that we currently do not optimize it for is those five feelings. We don't optimize it for love. We haven't designed it to create control, harmony, significance, warmth of others, growth. If we did, if we really thought through, okay, well, how would you design it so that the questions it asked you and the guidance it provided you was sequenced in a way that fit with us humans, then we are more likely to have I be an on ramp to a loving experience.

00:28:57:05 - 00:29:28:16
Marcus Buckingham
I would still say, Kevin, that it can't be the full deliver of that loving experience, because it doesn't know from love, and love is the most powerful driver of anything productive that we humans do. Any leads? It doesn't understand that that that just shows that they don't understand that. It's not that it's not true. So A.I. needs to be carefully thought about in terms of the limit and the extent of what it's fit for purpose, regardless of AGI, if that ever were to come about, it's still never going to have the quintessence of empathy for those five feelings.

00:29:28:18 - 00:29:51:11
Marcus Buckingham
It could be designed for those, but it can't be the full deliver of those ever. And we all, as intelligent business business leaders, we need to know how to unpack that so we don't end up putting AI processes in place, which frankly, design love out. Our investors don't want us to do that because that reduces the value of the business.

00:29:51:11 - 00:29:55:14
Marcus Buckingham
Yeah, that's sorry, but that's stupid. Don't do.

00:29:55:14 - 00:30:18:13
Kevin Eikenberry
That. So Marcus is, Other than buying the book, what would be one thing that you would, you know, you're in the ear literally right now of leaders, right? At different levels in organizations. What's what's one thing that you would urge them to do first?

00:30:18:15 - 00:30:40:00
Marcus Buckingham
I think the there's so many things that one can do at the 10,000ft level and a two foot level, like the Disney hugging role is at the two foot level. It's just a simple mechanism for how do you design love into an interaction. Okay, at the 10,000ft level, it's hey Delta Airlines, do you really want to change your frequent flier program so that it rewards people using your credit card versus rewards people from flying?

00:30:40:01 - 00:30:59:20
Marcus Buckingham
Do you really want to do that strategically? So it sort of hits a little levels. But the first thing, this is what Peter Drucker always used to say, right. What are you going to do differently on Monday? So even if you don't read the book, what should you do differently on Monday? You should ask yourself two questions every single Monday.

00:30:59:22 - 00:31:17:21
Marcus Buckingham
Will whatever we're doing this week get more customers to love our company? And was it whatever we're doing? Will it get more people to love working here? Love the company, love working here? Our company is more valuable. Our team is more effective. People are more productive. When I answer those questions intelligently. Not everything I'm doing will drive both of those.

00:31:17:23 - 00:31:40:02
Marcus Buckingham
But if you don't use those as your primary lens through which you decide on what to do, you are driving the value of your team, your business, your leadership, reputation, everything you're driving it down. The best leaders are incredibly intelligent designers of experiences people love. There's just no simple way to say I in, and that's why they're so good at driving.

00:31:40:02 - 00:32:01:01
Marcus Buckingham
Sustained behavior change what we see a lot of. I, one of the people I profiled in the book is Josh tomorrow, and I profiled Josh tomorrow before he became the chairman of Disney. This is while he was still, you know, in a lower position where he was doing great work, but he wasn't yet anointed by the board. I am so gratified, actually, that the board, because they had a number of different candidates they could have picked.

00:32:01:07 - 00:32:42:11
Marcus Buckingham
Josh happens to have a ton of experience intelligence, some of which I describe in the book and is a totally different leader than some of the machismo chest thumper, voices and actions that currently pass for leadership. And the fact that Disney went, wait a minute, we're going to promote someone who is deeply, experientially intelligent of the two foot level at the 50,000ft level, who can redesign a ride for $40 million in a way that it's experientially intelligent and can somehow create a relationship with customers, which gets them to feel super bonded with you, even though you're 47 levels higher in the hierarchy and he can do everything in between.

00:32:42:11 - 00:33:02:18
Marcus Buckingham
I'm not saying he's perfect, but he's got a lot of experience intelligence, which I play out in the book. I'm so happy that a board like Disney went well. Of all these different other leaders, we're going to pick this one because I think today's world, the data would show we are incredibly distrustful, more than in the last eight years of measuring this.

00:33:02:22 - 00:33:30:20
Marcus Buckingham
We don't trust big business, big media, big pharma, big government. With less than 15% of us trust any one of those institutions I just mentioned. We're living in a trustless, loveless world, and some of that is a clearly a function of the way that we have allowed leaders to lead. And what I hope this book does is it takes a stand for the Josh Demirors of the world going, no, no, no, there's a way more intelligent way to lead.

00:33:30:22 - 00:33:52:23
Marcus Buckingham
And the way you do it is you engage intelligently with that word love, because that's how humans drive sustainable, productive human behavior. If you're interested in sustainably productive human behavior, you should be interested in what Josh is interested in. And those two questions more customers love us tomorrow. More people love working in tomorrow. They should be the filter through which you decide how to do anything.

00:33:53:01 - 00:33:54:16
Marcus Buckingham
As a leader.

00:33:54:18 - 00:34:13:09
Kevin Eikenberry
And I'll just say this when we do that, I said at the start of the show, this show is about helping make, leaders help make the world a better place, fundamentally, and doing what we've just described, what you just described does that it also happens to create competitive advantage, because most what.

00:34:13:10 - 00:34:36:02
Marcus Buckingham
I think that's a huge it's a huge point there Kevin Love is your unfair competitive advantage. There are other short term mechanistic ways for you to drive profitability for sure. And these days, many leaders are using AI as their excuse for slashing and cutting their workforces in order to drive a short term margin or a short term Wall Street goal, which is okay.

00:34:36:02 - 00:34:53:01
Marcus Buckingham
That will always happen, and they'll be companies that forever do that. But if your company wants to be different, and by different, I mean if it wants to build love in the hearts of your customers and your employees, then you can design it in. And if you do design it in, which is not easy, but it's incredibly productive.

00:34:53:01 - 00:35:17:02
Marcus Buckingham
If you do design it in, then as you say, Kevin, you'll have a sustainable competitive advantage because it will live in the hearts of tens of thousands of people. That's what changes their behavior. And if you're doing that every day a little bit, every day and a lot over time, you end up building a company that feels incredibly different from the perspective of the two constituencies that matter most your customers and your employees.

00:35:17:04 - 00:35:18:19
Marcus Buckingham
Oh that's magic.

00:35:18:21 - 00:35:26:22
Kevin Eikenberry
Yep. So, Marcus, before we go, a question I ask every one of my guests is, what are you reading these days?

00:35:27:00 - 00:35:56:02
Marcus Buckingham
So there's a the inspiration for this book actually came from. Well, it came from a lot of data and research. But the inspiration of the book was by a chap called Theodore Zeldin. The book is called An Intimate History of Humanity. And for those of you who like books that, unpacking the Human Condition, Theodore Zeldin. Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity, it's exactly the what it describes.

00:35:56:02 - 00:36:27:13
Marcus Buckingham
Mostly when you read history, it's like, and I love the book sapiens, for example, or the book guns, Germs and Steel. These are big swath books of how history plays out in the broadest, biggest terms, which are great. An Intimate History of Humanity is all about the tiniest details of the human condition, and how those details have changed in terms of how we think about relationships or how we think about love, or how we think about sex, or how we think about food.

00:36:27:15 - 00:36:45:12
Marcus Buckingham
And so if you're not interested in any of that, do not read this book, but An Intimate History of Humanity is this really detailed, two foot level discussion of the human condition. And and for me, it's it's one of the best books I've ever read. And I always go back and keep reading it.

00:36:45:14 - 00:37:00:05
Kevin Eikenberry
We'll have a link to that in the show notes, as well as the link to Design Love in Marcus's new book. Where do you want to point people, Marcus? Where do you want to if you want to be connected with you, like where do you want to point them in any way, shape or form?

00:37:00:07 - 00:37:24:20
Marcus Buckingham
Well, for those of you that are listening now, go to Design Love Income. Because we've given we've been in concert with Harvard Business Review, we've created a discovery series that you get, for free with your preorder. So it's a ten part series, ten minutes per episode of the discoveries that led to this book. So design love income, if you're listening on the podcast.

00:37:24:22 - 00:37:47:19
Marcus Buckingham
I started a company called Love That, which is simply about how do you actually build your experience intelligence as a leader. And so that if you if you're really interested in this and building this competency, the kind of capability that the Disney board so enjoys tomorrow, then please go to love that.com. And you'll see it's just love that.com.

00:37:47:21 - 00:37:56:18
Marcus Buckingham
And you'll see what I'm trying to do beyond the book to create, a way for you to build that capability in your life as a leader.

00:37:56:20 - 00:38:14:20
Kevin Eikenberry
We'll have links to both of those in the show notes as well. Not to be a big surprise, I'm sure, but make sure you go check that out. Before you finish, before we go, though, I have a question for all of you who are watching or listening. It's the question I ask you every single episode. It's simply this.

00:38:14:20 - 00:38:33:08
Kevin Eikenberry
Now what? What action will you take? And, Marcus mentioned this a bit ago. You could ask those two questions. Well, what will we what will we do this week that will make customers love us more? What will we do this week that will make our team love working here more? He said it better than I did, but that's basically it.

00:38:33:10 - 00:38:50:21
Kevin Eikenberry
But there's 100 other things that you may have taken from this. It's not my job to tell you what that should be. It's my job to encourage you to ask that question for yourself. And then to take action on your answer. Thanks for being here, Marcus. Thank you so much for being here.

00:38:50:23 - 00:38:53:12
Marcus Buckingham
It's my pleasure, Kevin, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity.

00:38:53:18 - 00:39:07:17
Kevin Eikenberry
It's my pleasure. And so, everybody, I hope you found this useful. If you did, make sure you hit the subscribe button wherever you're watching, listening so you don't miss any future episodes because we'll be back next week with another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.