The Productivity Addiction Killing Your Team & Business

[00:00:00] Amanda Slavin: I wanted to talk the entire time in the class and it was very hard for me to sit still. Every single report card, it was that Amanda talks too much. Just wanted to talk to the teacher and wanted to have a conversation about the topic.

[00:00:10] Kevin Rice: When did you first realize that engagement, not productivity, was the point?

[00:00:15] Amanda Slavin: I opened a textbook. I remember seeing these seven levels of engagement. And I said this. This is groundbreaking information.

If we understand engagement, we could understand learning.

And if we can actually change the way that we measure engagement, we can change the way that we measure learning.

[00:00:32] Kevin Rice: Punishments, rewards. How effective is that, in your opinion?

[00:00:35] Amanda Slavin: I say to my kids, there’s consequences. I often let them decide the consequence based on what they’ve done. I think, how do I keep them at a higher level of engagement, which is to actually include them? Include them as a participant.

[00:00:47] Kevin Rice: My son was working on Legos. I told him, we have five minutes left till bedtime. Pulled out my phone. I started checking my email. Then I told him, it’s time for bed. He had a meltdown. Energetically. He knew I was disconnected from him. I wasn’t engaged with him.

[00:01:01] Amanda Slavin: You were at a three. You were distracted, which caused him, who was at a six. He was inspired to set goals, to build with you, to connect. He dropped to a three. People think that disengagement is the opposite of engagement. But the opposite of engagement is apathy. And then it’s this journey of what’s standing in the way of connection.

[00:01:18] Kevin Rice: Welcome to CEOs and ABCs. Real stories from execs who lead at work and show up at home. Career moves, parenting wins and failures, sales and everything in between. I’m your host, Kevin Rice. Here’s today’s episode. Welcome back to CEOs and ABCs. My guest today is Amanda Slavin, an educator turned consultant whose life work is engagement. She earned her master’s in education, opened restaurants during the recession, and spent a decade building a consultancy that taught leaders and brands. Think Google, Coca Cola and Nestle, how to apply the seven levels of engagement. Along the way, she codified a framework that moves people beyond compliance into meaning and impact and. And wrote a book to share it more widely. What makes Amanda’s story resonate is the human side. She’s a parent of young kids who chooses presence over perfection, invites collaboration on consequences and models repair and respect at home. Today we’ll talk about why engagement isn’t binary. How incentives create shortcuts and traps, spotting quiet quitting before it turns to apathy and practical ways leaders and parents can build a culture of Connection.

Welcome back to CEOs and ABCs. My guest today is Amanda Slavin. Amanda, thank you so much for being here.

[00:02:26] Amanda Slavin: Thank you for having me.

[00:02:28] Kevin Rice: Amazing. So you’ve called engagement your life’s work, spanning a master’s in education, over a decade of leading consultancy, and now with a book on the topic. When did you first realize that engagement, not necessarily productivity, was the point?

[00:02:44] Amanda Slavin: Hmm. Yeah, that’s a question that’s bizarrely never been asked to me. And I’ve been on many a podcast talking about engagement. So you’re already getting at a high level of engagement. I love it. When I was a kid, I wanted to talk all the entire time in the class. And it was very hard for me to sit still and, and just wait, you know, share the answer. I actually wasn’t even wanting to talk to the kids next to me. I just wanted to talk to the teacher. And I always, always kind of knew the answer. I wanted to have a conversation about the topic. And I was, I was always getting in trouble for that. And every single report card was that Amanda talks too much. And my, my teachers really loved me because I was always wanting to have conversations about the bringing other students into it. And I really cared about school, but at the same time they were really frustrated by me because I was constantly disrupting them, taking them out of their flow. They didn’t know what to do with me. And so when I became a teacher, and also I was a camp counselor for years before I became a teacher. But when I became a teacher and started studying really the pedagogy and what it meant to learn and understand the importance of obviously attention, I started to really uncover what was getting in the way of learning.

And I was in so many different learning environments. I was in traditional learning environments, I was in non traditional learning environments like nature based learning. I was in really, really underserved, very underfunded areas, very wealthy areas right next to each other, middle school, high school, elementary school, I had to be in all of them. And I just saw this through line of kids that were not engaged, kids that were not passionate about what they were doing, like me. I was just like not in the right place, in the right way. I wasn’t engaged in the right way or not wanting to learn.

And so when I opened a textbook for my, for my thesis, for my thesis during my master’s year, I remember seeing this taxonomy, these seven levels of engagement, and something in me, I don’t know what it was. And I said to the colleagues that I was writing the Paper that I said this. This is groundbreaking information.

If we understand engagement, we could understand learning. And if we can actually change the way that we measure engagement, we could change the way that we measure learning. It was just like a moment, but many moments, maybe of my own personal life and my own personal observation.

[00:04:48] Kevin Rice: Yeah. And how did that realization or moment or accumulation of moments kind of inform your career choices or actually even how does it inform your parenting choices today?

[00:05:00] Amanda Slavin: So I wanted to be a teacher because I love kids. And I just said I was a camp counselor for a really long time. I think actually a camp counselor is probably going to be more of the role of a teacher in the next 10 to 20 years because of AI, but we’ll talk about that later in terms of people that just really love kids, not who are subject area experts, but when I got into the classroom, I was with this incredible teacher. She had been there for 30 years. She was one of the best teachers I had ever really witnessed. And she just was constantly defending her choices to the school board and to parents. And she was doing nothing wrong. She just. They were always asking her questions. And I realized that actually being a teacher was very little to do with the kids and a lot to do with being able to manage and deal with bureaucracy, build curriculum. You were doing a lot of groundwork from the bottom up in terms of, again, building that curriculum, building lessons, constant getting everything ready. You have to be very organized and structured, and then you have to be very compliant and a little bit not complacent, but you have to be able to deal with bureaucracy. Which just does not describe my personality. As I just told you how frustrating it was for me to be in the classroom on the other side as a kid. So when I saw that, I just. I said to myself, I’m going to resent. I’m going to resent the kids. And I’m doing this for kids. So I can’t just be in this system. And if I want to change the system, I have to get out of it first in order to be able to make a difference. I knew that. I knew I had to kind of prove myself.

So in terms of understanding engagement, I knew that I needed to be passionate. I need to be at the higher level of engagement for my own career, my own life, my own sense of self.

With kids, it’s a little bit different because I guess it’s actually quite similar, because with your kids, you can’t control them. When you think you can control your kids, I mean, they’ll teach you very quickly. It’s not about control. It’s really about respect. And it’s about creating a relationship with your kids for when you’re asking them to do something, you’re not demanding it. And the biggest thing that I say to my kids, when my kids are in any way disrespectful for me, speak to me in a way that’s, you know, unkind or raise their voice at me. They’re five and three. They’re literally babies. But I will always say to them, I don’t speak like that to you. I don’t raise my voice to you. I treat you with respect and consideration, and you will do the same to me. And that’s a relationship, and that is a much higher level. And. And again, sometimes you have to use the incentives. I know the level. So I’m like, they’re not listening. They’re distracted. I need to get them to focus. So what do I need to do? Remove the distractions and do something simple like call to action. I know they’re not doing that. I need to use an incentive like fives, but it’s exhausting. All day long, I have these levels in my head every moment. And sometimes it’s actually a good thing with parenting, where you’re just like, I’m gonna just sit on the ground and play with these kids, and today they don’t have to clean up. Like, that’s also okay.

[00:07:38] Kevin Rice: Yeah, absolutely. There’s so much I want to dig in here with you, but before we do, maybe you could start with kind of a high level overview of the seven levels of engagement. Because I know once you started your company, you’ve worked with brands like Google and Coca Cola and Nestle to implement this into organization organizations. What are the seven levels and what distinguishes each level?

[00:07:59] Amanda Slavin: When it comes to the levels of engagement, it’s really unique because the behaviors never change. But what’s interesting is the way that you then assign actions or behaviors associated with each levels does change. So, for example, I just gave an example of, like, a kid being level three, frustrated engaged. That could look very different than an employee being frustrated engaged or a customer being frustrated engaged. And so the amazing thing about the levels of engagement is that engagement is not binary. It’s not disengage and engage. People think that it’s just easy to go from, oh, I’m not interested to oh, I’m obsessed with what’s going on here. That’s not how it works. That’s the first thing. The second thing about it is that it’s not. I’M kind of engaged at a four and I’m very engaged at a seven. Each level is specific and nuanced. So the bottom levels are what stand in the way of engagement. They’re pitfalls. They’re really again, what, what’s keeping you from being engaged? And I mean this is like I do this in my sleep. Level one is disengage, avoiding a ridle. Level two is unsystematic, engage. You’re confused, you’re confused by the mess. You don’t really know what’s going on. And level three is frustrated, engaged. You want to engage or distract as I mentioned, that is what keeps you from being engaged. And actually with Gallup, you know, 87% of employees are disengaged. It’s active disengagement. It’s what it looks like when someone is kind of really trying to connect but something standing in the right. And then we have the middle levels. And again this is with kids. It’s just I’ve, I’ve worked with teachers all over the world and, and I always say to teachers, how much time do you spend and if you’re a parent, you know this trying to get your kid to just not be distracted. Just like just not be distracted. Just do the most simple. Just listen, just sit.

[00:09:31] Kevin Rice: Like sit at dinner and eat dinner without getting up 20 times to run around.

[00:09:35] Amanda Slavin: Exactly, exactly. Like just anything. Like go to the bathroom, brush your teeth. Like just do the thing that I said to you. So all day long teachers are like, you know, they have all these things that they like. They do the claps and they do the, you know, all these fun things like oh, come and listen. They do all these sing songy things to get the whole class to listen because they’re trying to get the whole, all of these kids to listen at the same time. So that’s going. The whole point of the framework is to go, to keep going up a level or to go as high as you can and then stay at the highest level. So 4 is structure dependent, engagement, doing what’s asked. This is when you’re not distracted anymore but you’re just going to do the bare minimum because someone is asking you enough. It’s kind of like okay, I’ll do it because it’s simple. Like sometimes my daughter’s like okay because she’s like fine, you won mom, it’s not that big of a deal. And then five, which is what parents really know and we know that it also, it just, it always bites us is that it’s self regulated interest when you’re doing something for something else for an extrinsic motivation. So it’s something that excites you, a reward. So we know when we’re like, you can watch the iPad like in the moment we got it. But then after when we have to take that iPad away, it is level three all the way. They fall real quick. And what we want for our kids, what we want for our team members, what we want for our customers is he hires them. Levels of engagement level 6 critical engagement when you’re inspired to set goals to make a difference. When your kid just says of course I want to clean up the room. Like my kids do this thing where my nails, they like went to get my nail fixed with me. And when I want to open something like don’t, don’t do that mommy, your nail’s going to break. Can I do it? That’s when you’re inspired. Set goes to make difference. And finally literate thinking. When your values and beliefs align, when it becomes a part of you like a job that you’ve loved more than anything in the world or a brand that just speaks to you. Or again with the relationship with your kids. Those rare, those rare but beautiful moments where you just feel so deeply connected to them, where you’re so present with them and they’re so present with you and you don’t need. It’s that flow feeling, it’s that true love feeling.

[00:11:24] Kevin Rice: And those are the levels you mentioned. Extrinsic motivations. I think that’s what where most parents they operate punishments, rewards.

How effective is that in your opinion? Does it actually create connection or does it actually help frame up behavior that you want to instill in your children? Cuz I’ve seen a lot on both sides of the argument about using punishments and rewards in parenting.

[00:11:50] Amanda Slavin: Yeah, it’s not the way I like to do things. I mean based on the levels of engagement, I say to my kids there’s consequences. So when my kids do something and I, and I really have to understand what happened before the consequences decided and I often let them decide the consequence based on what they’ve done.

So if it’s something that they know is wrong and they have still done it, then there’s a consequence. But at the end of the day for me to punish them, it’s something that kids tend to.

[00:12:18] Kevin Rice: How would you like what’s, what’s the difference between a consequence or just a difference in your mind between a consequence and a punishment?

[00:12:26] Amanda Slavin: Well, it’s the communication around it. So I actually say to My kids. A consequence could be a good or a bad thing. It’s not, it’s actually like neutral. You do something and there’s a reaction, a response to what you’ve done. And so a consequence could also be you just feel really bad and you just have to sit with those feelings and think about what you’ve done. Or a consequence could be that you have to, you know, talk to your sister and have a, a conversation with her. It’s, it’s, I work with them to come up with a consequence. A consequence can be no books. Like they don’t get books that night. That is quote unquote, a punishment. But it’s in collaboration with them. So instead of, again, just thinking about how do I prevent a lower level of engagement, how do I prevent them being a distraction or not listening because they’re confused or, or being disengaged, like not listening to me.

Instead I think, how do I keep them at a higher level of engagement, which is to actually include them, include them as a participant in them, as people, and actually say, what do you think is something that is equal to what you’ve done? And sometimes my son is like, no books. After he’s done something that I’m like, that’s a no. I’m like, no. We need a bigger consequence based on that action because you knew it was wrong and this is why. So that’s on the quote unquote punishment side. I think that the grown up deciding how to punish a child doesn’t teach the child the lesson on why it was wrong in the first place. And it doesn’t allow for the child to make a different decision the next time. And that’s actually what we’re trying to do when we’re punishing the child. We’re not just wanting to, you know, we want them to learn and grow and not do it again. So punishing them doesn’t actually allow for that to happen. Teaching them does. That’s the punish side. The reward side’s different.

[00:14:05] Kevin Rice: I mean that, that’s what the word discipline means. Disciple to teach. I’ve gone from being very authoritarian drill sergeant daddy to very passive. And I’ve tried to find my middle ground.

And I’ve, I’ve worked with parenting coaches on both ends of the spectrum. And ultimately what I found is it comes back to connection. So I’ll give you an example. I shared this. The other day, my son was working on Legos. I was sitting next to him. We weren’t actually even talking. I told him, we have five minutes Left till bedtime. And I pulled out my phone. I started checking my email. There was like, literally nothing there that was important for me to check, but it was just a pattern that I’d fallen into for years, and I fell back into it. He spent five minutes building on his own. We didn’t even talk. And then I told him, it’s time for bed. He had a meltdown just like, of epic proportions, 0 to 10.

And it took me a minute one to get curious about it and understand, like, what’s happening for you right now. So you kind of mentioned that earlier, is understand what happened before, because I didn’t experience it the same way he did. But what I finally got him to say was, you wasted my time. You were on your phone.

Now the situation would have even changed. Like, if I had not pulled out my phone from a outsider looking in, it wouldn’t have looked any different. But energetically, he knew I was disconnected from him. I wasn’t engaged with him. And so I had to accept that.

I withdrew my engagement, even if it was just kind of an energetic connection, and apologize, repair, give him five minutes back. We spent five minutes building, and at the end of that five minutes, he had no problem going straight to bed. No complaints, no problems. Went right down, super easy. And it really came back to connection and engagement.

[00:15:51] Amanda Slavin: You were at a three. You actually, that’s the.

[00:15:53] Kevin Rice: Bring us back to the levels.

[00:15:55] Amanda Slavin: Well, I didn’t ever actually think of it through the perspective of this, but, you know, the levels of engagement are a relationship. It’s connection of kind of where you fall within. So you were out of three, you were distracted, you wanted to engage, but you were distracted. You took out your phone, which caused him, who was at a six, He. He was inspired to set goals, make a difference with you, to build with you, to connect. He dropped to a three. So when you tried to get him to do what he just needed to do on his own, which is to get ready to go to bed, which is lots of steps to get to him to go to a six, from a three to a six. He was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Now I’m distracted. Now you need to make sure that I have connection with you. A lot of times my daughter was playing with this bracelet. She, like, I gave her this bracelet. She started playing with it. She started, like, throwing it all around. And, you know, she. I heard, you know, my. My partner talking to her, and he was really upset with her. He’s like, you need to give it to me, whatever. And I come upstairs and she’s literally hiding. She’s hiding in the couch, like, with a pillow over her head. And I said, addie, you are a good kid. You’re still three. I shouldn’t have given you the bracelet. I understand that you’re still learning. I said, you’re. You’re a very good kid. You don’t have to be embarrassed by this. You’re okay. And she immediately stopped crying, and she hugged me, and she took the pillow off.

No parent is not going to be blamed. Our kids are all going to go to some form of therapy and blame us for something like, we’re not perfect. We’re humans. I say that to my kids all the time. I say, I am a human. I’m going to make mistakes. And I’m still growing and I’m still changing. But it is our job to look at our kids in those moments and be like, what’s going on here? Because their regulation systems depend on ours until they’re 25.

So if we’re distracted and we’re avoidant and we’re detached, and then we’re like, okay, now go to sleep. They’re like, excuse me, what was I doing here? No, I’m not gonna go to sleep. Why would I listen to you? That’s not okay. But instead, they don’t say it like that. They’re like, I don’t want to. Which is, by the way, how most adults feel. But we just don’t do it. We just swallow it and we’re like, okay.

[00:17:52] Kevin Rice: Our brains are a little bit more developed at that point, which is why, you know, we look at these and there’s all these parallels, but at the same time, like, we treat our teams, our co workers, very differently than we treat our children.

Hi, Kevin here. If you’re enjoying this conversation and you know someone else who’s working to grow in their career while staying present at home, I’d really love it if you could share this episode with them. It’s one of the best ways you can help us and help more leaders build their careers in a way that they’re proud of without missing the moments that matter most.

That makes me think of, like, how this topic translates in a, like, workplace environment, specifically around incentives. So if you’re training a team member that they will get incremental incentives for performing well, then sooner or later, they might not take on extra responsibilities or perform at their highest level until there’s an incentive given to them. So, like, how do you think about engagement incentives? Because with. With parenting, I. I think, like, the Cheat code is connection and play. And then the incentives, like you said, used sparingly, but with work, like, how do you translate this whole framework and concept?

[00:18:57] Amanda Slavin: Yeah, I actually think the reason why I said cheat code is because it’s this. It’s. It’s a lot easier than connections where it’s, It’s a shortcut, where.

[00:19:05] Kevin Rice: For shortcut to compliance.

[00:19:07] Amanda Slavin: Exactly. And I think that’s also for work. And I think, you know what, when it comes to these higher levels of engagement, level 6 and 7 come from intrinsic motivation. And there’s a. Daniel Pink talks a lot about how extrinsic motivation. You do not have creativity or collaboration or connection from extrinsic motivation. That’s not where it comes from. So getting that jump is quite hard. That being said, if you create the right conditions, if you create the right culture, if you have real values that you’re living by, if people are coming to work because there’s something in it for them outside of just the paycheck, and those incentives are a part of the overall vision. So the whole framework and methodology, it starts with you identify what is your own seventh level, what is the thing that you represent in the world? And we have something, it’s called catalyst statement. So it’s this idea of what’s a statement that could catalyze others to be active participants in helping you create kind of your own reality. And so when it comes to the seventh level and this catalyst statement, it’s this idea of what do you believe in? What do you stand for? What do you care about if you don’t have that? And even as a parent, by the way, if your kids don’t know what you stand for, what you believe and what you care about as a company, if your employees have no connection to what you stand for, what you believe and what you care about, then it’s transactional, whether it’s any relationship. And so they’re going to just keep doing what they’re doing, which is more, more, more, more, more, give me more. And that’s how you’re going to get more from me. But if it’s a trusted environment where they’re passionate about the work, they care about the other people that they’re working with, they care about the customer. Again, it’s a culture that’s been designed in order for growth, and also they feel like they’re seen as a person, then it’s not ever going to be just about the incentives. The incentives are the. The bare minimum of why that person is showing up every day. That’s the first thing I’ll say. And the second thing I’ll say is every person has their own incentives. And when you actually start to learn what those incentives are for each individual, you could have time off every day to pick up your kids from school, or maybe it is extra vacation days, or maybe it is an extra paid. And you actually learn about the individual, you care about the individual and then you support and support by those incentives. It’s still a part of a larger strategy that’s getting them to be going to those higher levels of engagement and that’s staying at 5. That’s the biggest problem we have in employee engagement. And I also even think in parenting, you talk about connection, repair, play, all of those things. Take time, take energy, take effort, take presence. We are not present, we’re not present in our work. We’re not present as parents. So we want things to be fast, productive at all costs. And that is what employee engagement is about. Be the most productive version of you. Not be inspired and ignited and activated and participatory and care and make a difference. No, you be productive. Same thing with kids.

Do what I say do. Just go to sleep, just get. Brush your teeth, just get out the door, listen, be compliant. And that is just, to me, so sad. And that is not the way that I think that we should treat human beings.

[00:22:02] Kevin Rice: Yeah. So first of all, Daniel Pink’s book Drive was like foundational for me. That was a huge eye opener as I was kind of growing as a leader in my career, understanding just intrinsic motivations versus extrinsic motivations at that point. It was how I apply it to career. But yeah, you’re right, it really applies to our children as well. I think connection, belonging, attunement, the intention you bring to that relationship is what creates more adjusted and nurtured family dynamics.

[00:22:30] Amanda Slavin: Yeah.

[00:22:33] Kevin Rice: How can, how can a leader use the seven levels to evaluate a relationship with a team member who maybe isn’t performing their best?

[00:22:41] Amanda Slavin: I have worked with a lot of employers. Let’s. I’ll use one example of.

We’ve built out tools and products that actually assess engagement within workplaces. Right. So there’s actually ways to be able to assess that. But that’s not what I’m going to talk about. I’m talking about it more from the perspective of a human to a human. So I worked with someone who is the former CMO of a Fortune 100 company and it was like middle Covid when people were going back to the office. But there was no real reason for Them to.

And I told him the idea of like getting them to come back, you needed to make the incentives more because they didn’t want to have to come to the office for what reason to then just be on zoom calls all day, like it absolutely made no sense.

So he said, well, what do I do? Because a lot of these young people are not seeing the implications that not going into an office and not networking are going to have on their careers, especially in a huge corporate environment with thousands, thousands and thousands of employees. So for him, it was not just one person. Right. There was a specific problem, which is that employees were probably between two and three, two, unsystematically engaged. They were confused on why they even had to be in the office in the first place and what they should do there. And three, they maybe wanted to go to the office, but they had to find childcare and it wasn’t enough to actually get them there.

So I was saying like the, the pain and the gain, right? Like if they were going to have to get childcare and drive far away. And it was a different mentality. And I said to him, he was the CMO again, super powerful, very unavailable. I said, sit in the middle of the office. Do not sit in your office. Do not have a closed door. Sit in the middle of the office in an open space. Do not have any meetings once a week. And tell everyone if they come to the office, you will be available. You’ll just be available. You’re available one day a week, no meetings. And you’re going to be able to talk to them, hang out with them, get to know them, et cetera. You’re going to take it from really this incentive of okay, come to the office for snacks. Because that’s what we thought, right? Like, okay, have a, you could have a ping pong table.

Yeah. To no, inspire them. Inspire them for their career, for what they want, for maybe just to get to know you, to network. So he did it and he said it was, it was a huge game changer. And obviously my brain works in the levels, so it’s easy for me to be like, okay, this is what’s going on and this is how to be able to change it. Change it. But really, if you look at a person, I mean, to me the bottom levels are the most exciting because they’re nuanced. Right. It’s either you’re avoiding your idol because it’s not the right tools or the right place or the right space. You’re confused or you’re distracted. So it’s the how, okay, what’s going on here? And the. Where. It’s the what? Like, maybe there’s something going on. And then really it’s this journey of what’s standing in the way of connection. So if it’s your employee is not being productive or not providing outputs or whatever it may be, think about just where they fall within that. What is. And then what is the behavior associated with that? And then the next part of the process is to ask questions.

We always jump to go to a goal. Okay, my kid is doing this. And now the next step is, is this for me, When I was talking to him, I asked a lot of questions to him on what was going on, why did he want people in the office? That’s how I found out that these young people not being able to network, I was like, why does it matter if people are in the office? Who cares? Like, what’s. What’s in it for them? All these things. I asked a lot of questions, and then I came up with a strategy. When an employer or manager or a leader or a parent is looking at their kid and they’re like, I think that they might be, like, really confused right now by what I’m asking them, or I think they might be really distracted because they had too much sugar. Ask questions to them and to yourself. You know, just what you did. I think it might be that. I was on my phone, hey, what’s going on? You. Seems like you’re really overwhelmed. Seems like you need some control right now. It seems like you want connection. What’s happening? Then come up with the goal. But those bottom three levels are pretty amazing because you could just very easily start to see that It’s. And it’s also. You stop blaming them. You’re just like, okay, they might just be really confused and have no idea what their role is or what they’re supposed to do today or who to go to for something. And. And then the questions and then the goals.

[00:26:28] Kevin Rice: Yeah. So we hear a lot about quiet quitting. Like, where would somebody who is like, quote, unquote, quiet quit their job? Fall in the engagement spectrum.

[00:26:38] Amanda Slavin: Yeah.

So people think that disengagement is the opposite of engagement, but it’s one of the seven levels. So the opposite of engagement is apathy.

And once you lose a person, once you stop acknowledging that they exist and you stop treating them like a human being, there’s. There’s all this research that shows that the relationship to a manager creates more stress and strain than a relationship with, like, a bad marriage. Like, it’s because you’re with them all of. Yeah, because you’re with them them all of the time. And so when it comes to this idea of quiet quitting, I was giving a talk and I met this woman and she said, I’ve been at this company for almost 20 years and I feel like I’m at the seventh level and they just don’t see me. They just don’t. They don’t even know that I’m at the seventh level. They don’t care that I, that I’m so passionate. I do all this work. That that’s the type of person that quiet quits. Because what happens is when you stop feeling seen, you get very quickly to below one, which is apathy. I think what we need to think about with quiet quitting is we need to think about how we reach people before they get to the point of quiet quitting, how we actually see the signs before they become apathetic. So disengagement isn’t quite quitting. Right. It might just look like that they’re not necessarily doing the work that you need them to do that day and being curious and asking them questions and wanting to connect with them and saying, hey, what’s going on here? And what can we do about this? This is not something that we tend to do as human beings. We keep things in, we get angry, we blame them and we say, well, they should just be doing their job. I pay them. But at the end of the day, that’s not what’s not going to get the best out of them. It’s not going to be the best thing for you as a leader. So in those moments.

No, and it’s also, it’s also. This sounds like so trite, but like, it’s also so boring.

We are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Why do we want to work with people that we don’t care about? It doesn’t make any sense to me.

So just care, care and ask questions and try to see the signs before they drop from one, which is not quite quitting, to apathy, which is when they’re, when they really feel like they’re not seen anymore.

[00:28:49] Kevin Rice: Yeah. Is there any way to salvage somebody who has gone all the way off the. Off the levels into apathy?

[00:28:55] Amanda Slavin: You know, when I met Tony Hsieh, who was my business partner for a really long time, and he passed away a few years ago, and he was such a prolific corporate culture and customer service person, I met him for the first time and I went up to him, he had done a book reading for the staff of a conference that I was producing. That’s how I met him. And I said to him, what if there’s an employee that is just really not wanting to be at the company anymore and really frustrated by the company? And what do you do? How do you change that employee’s perspective and how do you help them become engaged? And he said, why would you keep them there? And you know, for him, one of the famous things he did is he would pay people once they did the interview, he would pay them to leave if they didn’t want to, if they didn’t want the job. And for him it was all about, is this a culture fit? And so I think if you’ve already created a culture that has someone feeling, you know, you’ve not checked in with them, you’ve not been able to connect with them, you’ve not created a space where they feel like they’re a part of something bigger than themselves, like this is more than just a paycheck. By that time you’re going to spend so much more. Now I will talk from like an employer perspective. I’m not just a human to human perspective. So much time and money trying to get that person to be engaged versus just being like, okay, it’s time. And I also think that when it comes to not letting people go, that’s also a problem. So I call that expired milk syndrome. I feel like it’s this idea that, you know, when there’s milk in the fridge, you just assume that the person that like bought the milk is gonna take it, throw it out if it’s expired. And if you, if you just don’t look at the expiration date, you start drinking. And then everyone gets sick just because they’re drinking this expired milk. And when the leader does not fire the person that is apathetic and quiet quitting and actively disengaged and trying to kind of create, also create drama and create. Sometimes they create things because they’re so frustrated and angry again, maybe rightfully so, maybe not, then everyone’s going to get sick around you. So it is the leader’s job to say before this person is going to quiet quit, maybe I should acknowledge that the person is disengaged. I can’t. I’ve tried to engage them, I’ve done everything I can and I should let them go because they’re making other people disengaged.

[00:31:04] Kevin Rice: Yeah, they’re going to poison the well. I mean, I’ve had that experience multiple times in my career where I had to let go people who weren’t actually apathetic or quite quitting, they were performing, but they had negative, kind of toxic traits that were bringing into the workforce.

And it was difficult to make that decision.

But after I did, I had multiple employees like, thank me for that, that leadership decision to let them go. Now it took me longer than I probably should have to get there because I really liked the metrics that those people were putting up, but it wasn’t the right thing for the overall culture of the company.

[00:31:39] Amanda Slavin: Yeah, and again, that’s where those higher levels of engagement come in. If the company is something that’s bigger than you and you’re protecting and preserving the values of that organization, then those individuals have to align. Again, the levels of engagement are not like you’re at a four, it’s like you’re at a four with this, with this job, with this company, with this content, with your child. So in that case, it’s.

Is the individual actually at a higher level of engagement based on what the company stands for, what the company believes in? And that’s culture fit. Is the individual’s values aligned with the company’s values. That’s how we can actually create a structure around. When we say company culture, it sounds.

[00:32:15] Kevin Rice: Like the advice is really, if it’s a valued employee, don’t let them get to the point where they are disengaged. So how do you identify somebody who’s kind of sliding down the slope, slope slowly before they get to that point?

[00:32:28] Amanda Slavin: Well, it’s, it, it all does go back to culture. So the first thing I would say is actually create an environment and an organization where people know what those values are and how those values are measurable, how those values are aligned with behaviors. You know, that’s the other problem that I think that people have with values and culture is that it’s not measurable. So these levels of engagement can actually take. What are we, what do we believe? And how are we actually measuring success against those behaviors, against those experiences? How are we programming people and technology in order to be able to do that? So first of all, it’s that because you don’t know if someone is actually sliding because we don’t even, we’re not clear on where the organization’s success is outside of metrics. We’re not like, okay, an organization’s success is the amount of relationships that my employee builds with other employees in the organization that is not work related. I’m making something up, completely insane. But like based on friendships. So maybe the value is like, we care about relationships. Like, relationships are the number one priority for us. And then a metric is, this individual is making friends or going on a coffee or doing something with people outside of their traditional groups. That is a measurable behavior associated with culture. It’s not a metric associated with productivity.

So then if we have that, we’re programming the. The again, the behaviors based on the actual culture, then we know when a person is sliding down. And maybe they’re sliding down because they’re confused, because they’re like, why am I doing this? And why is this important? And what is this value? What does this mean? Maybe they’re distracted because they’re like, I’m an introvert and I don’t want. Like, I don’t want to do this. This is uncomfortable for me. Or maybe again, they’re distracted because they’re not a culture fit where they’re like, I don’t like this because I don’t believe this. I don’t want to do this. In which you need to be curious based on the values that you believe in. But if you don’t even know your values, they’re just slipping or they’re sliding based on the way that we currently define success, which is productivity. And that’s not, again, actually, what’s creating the quiet quitting. It’s not lack of productivity. It’s a lack of a cultural connection.

[00:34:43] Kevin Rice: So that’s a great example of how to create the culture that prevents people sliding down the scale.

In my most productive period of my career, I was completely disengaged from myself. I had so much pressure, so much stress.

I was. It was the beginning of COVID I was a single parent. Our company was growing. It. It doubled in headcount that year.

And we were starting to think about acquisitions, so we were meeting with bankers. I had just more pressure and stress than I’d ever had, both inside and outside the office. And my survival mechanism was to totally disconnect from myself, because if I didn’t feel the stress, then I could be productive. And we were growing. We were hitting all of our metrics. But what I, like, later realized was, like, when you are totally disconnected from yourself, there’s a lot of negative consequences. It’s really hard to be connected with other people, with your children.

If you’re not experiencing the lows of stress, you’re also not experiencing the highs of success. Like when we sold our company, I didn’t really get to feel into the joy of that.

It was this huge, monumental event.

But because I had spent two years if not longer really suppressing my emotions.

I wasn’t able to really, like, celebrate it.

[00:36:02] Amanda Slavin: That is, you know, it’s interesting, right, because. Yeah, being disengaged from ourself is a whole other, whole other interview, which I’m happy to do. But this idea of higher engagement leads to higher achievement. So it’s not that engagement is not measured by productivity. It’s that level 4 and 5 of the levels of engagement is measured by productivity.

But that’s not how I, I think of that. As I say, like in the book, it’s this idea of you think you’ve climbed Everest, but you’re still at base Camp. Like, that’s not the summit. And so I want.

[00:36:36] Kevin Rice: Yeah, so like false peak is kind of how I describe it.

[00:36:39] Amanda Slavin: Yeah. So I want more out of life and relationships than just productivity, than just comments, likes, follows, than just like going back and forth, going back and forth. Productive at all costs. I have seen the impact of what it looks like when you are at a level six or seven and you create an environment that inspires people to take care of themselves and to be a part of something that’s bigger than them and to care about what they’re a part of. For more than just productivity, you were probably seen. And in a traditional work environment, you would have been engaged. That’s how people would have seen you. You would have been very, very engaged. And that is the other problem that we have with engagement when it comes to work. And I also think in education and I with our kids, that we do think of engagement as productive, as outputs. You’ve done well on a test, you’ve made them money, you’ve gotten the, you’ve had the acquisition, you’ve done whatever it may be, you are productive, you are engaged.

But that is not what makes us feel alive. And that is not what is a sense of self. And it’s not a sense of purpose. It’s not what we want to teach our kids. We don’t want to teach our kids.

[00:37:45] Kevin Rice: Fulfilling.

[00:37:46] Amanda Slavin: It’s not fulfilling. It’s, it’s. And by the way, for meeting some of the most successful people in the world and from seeing the, you know, the toll that just more and more and more and more and more success has on people, it’s never enough.

And once you’ve had one of the sales or you see, it’s never going to be enough. It’s always, five is never going to be enough. So that’s what happened to you, right, is that you just were like, okay, this is. You get There you get to the top of the mountain, you’re like, this is it it. Because you don’t even remember that all of this exists for you. And I do think that as. As companies, we actually can create environments that make people think differently about their lives and let them leave the company, take what they’ve learned from that experience, and bring it the rest of the world. It’s not about them being with you forever, just being, like a productivity machine forever. It’s about them learning, being inspired, and being an active participant in their own life and shaping the world around them.

[00:38:44] Kevin Rice: Yeah, we’ve talked actually quite a bit about the seven levels of engagement as applied to leadership and career.

How do you apply that to parenting and family and connection with your kids?

[00:38:55] Amanda Slavin: So, again, it’s an unfortunate thing that these levels are in my head all of the time because I’m constantly thinking about where people fall and what to do. So I try not to do that as much.

[00:39:04] Kevin Rice: Yes, I’ve done the same thing. Like, my. My entire parenting flight philosophy has been informed from my business career. Like, I couldn’t figure out how to become a parent because the jargon, the lingo, like, the language I used was just so corporate. I had to actually take corporate frameworks and very specifically translate them for my parenting. That was the only way I could do it. So when I think about connection, you know, I took a flywheel, and I had to actually write it out and create it. And it’s called the spark flywheel.

[00:39:38] Amanda Slavin: And.

[00:39:38] Kevin Rice: And it starts with safety and then attunement, and then presence and then rituals and celebration. And I have to think about that all the time as to how to create connection with my kids. Or I look at, like, maturity models and apply that to how I think about, like, my emotional maturity and my nervous system regulation as a parent. So I love the framework.

[00:39:58] Amanda Slavin: So that’s awesome. That’s amazing. I think. I think, you know, it’s.

It is a good way to think about it, because I do think that parenting does not come naturally to everyone. I think even, you know, my partner and I have. We’ve had a lot of conversations about this because I study this. I’m in this. I’ve been a part of it. It’s my whole life. It’s just. And for me, I just get kids. Like, a friend of mine was telling me a story about her daughter and her husband, and they were talking about how the daughter kind of was having a fit about a cookie, and it was like, where they got married. It was a story just about, like, how the daughter was throwing a fit in public.

And I was like, oh, well, you know, it was where you got. It was where you got married. So she didn’t feel like she had a place and it wasn’t hers, and she felt like she wasn’t special, so she needed to take control of. They were like, yes, that. That’s exactly. That’s exactly it. So with the levels of engagement, for me, they’re kind of like in the background.

When I think about kids, I think about presence and I think about that kids, they’re like, naturally at the seventh level with life. They just like, are so. Especially when they’re young, they’re just so eager and so curious and they’re so passionate, and they.

And they just want to learn about everything and ask a million questions. And parents are so tired. You know, your kid asks you like, the 30th question, like, mommy, can you. Can you?

And it’s like, I don’t know if I could answer this 30th question. But in that moment, if. If you do, or if you also are able to again communicate from these higher levels of engagement, like, the same thing with the punishment, like, not. Not settle for just this transactional relationship with your kids. Not be at a lower level of engagement when you’re around them. Not be at a 3 yourself. Not be at a 1 if they ask you to play or if they ask you to do something. Not you be at a 1. Not avoiding your idol. Not be like, no, I can’t do that, or, why don’t you go watch tv or why don’t you? Like, that’s. They say with tv, it’s one of the worst things that you could do. It’s not about not watching tv. It’s about replacing quality time. When a child asks you to do something meaningful to then give them the tv. And so that’s, again, that’s. That’s a level three behavior. And so it’s really, again, about. About presence and connection and being curious and meeting them where they are. And most of the time, they’re at a high level of engagement. And then if you’ve done that when they don’t listen because they will not listen, you keep them.

You try as much as you can. This is like, this is actually my real secret. You keep them as much as you can at a high level of engagement by being playful and fun and creative. And if they’re. If they’re tired or you’ve not given them and you’re tired, you do everything in your power to keep the, you keep the four. You keep you, you do not drop the four. You keep structure dependent engagement. You do not drop the call to actions. Now we’re doing this, now we’re doing that. Now you keep it because it feels like a game. It’s not even about exchanging motivation. You’re just doing the four to prevent the three to prevent the distractions. The biggest thing as a parent is if once you let one distraction happen, you know, at bedtime, it’s like, like all bets are off. And to then try to get them from three to a higher level of engagement, what you’re going to have to do is you’re going to have to sit with them, get them to again have that same presence, same connection, kind of make it fun again and bring them to that higher because they naturally are in these higher levels of engagement and keep them feeling like it’s fun. I mean even doing things with you should be fun. If it feel like a chore, they’re not going to do it it. So the 4, 5, the 4 is like making it fun and making it very quick. And you’re trying to prevent those threes but you’re trying to stay. Which is why again, being such a self aware parent is so exhausting. You’re trying to stay at these higher levels of engagement with your kids most of the time. And if you’re exhausted, you’re admitting it and you’re, and you’re acknowledging it and you’re communicating it to them, which is still presence. And then you’re sitting with them and you’re saying, listen, I’m so tired. You’re just going to watch the TV and I’m going to sit next to you and I’m going to read my book or I’m going to do my breath work. I’m exhausted, you’re exhausted. This is what we’re gonna do today. But you’re acknowledging it first so it doesn’t feel like you are pushing them to a three. You’re pushing them to be distracted.

[00:44:03] Kevin Rice: Yeah, I, I think play is just a huge unlock. And I agree though, like sometimes I’m just exhausted and I don’t have it in me. But if I can just bring myself to. For example, again I’ll just use bedtime. Transitions are hard for my kids. So say it’s bedtime, we’re doing something fun. They really don’t want to go. Go. I can just get creative and maybe it’s convincing them to do a bear crawl with me down the hallway or a crab walk down the hallway.

[00:44:29] Amanda Slavin: Exactly.

[00:44:30] Kevin Rice: Making some sort of fun way out of it. That transition gets a lot easier, but it’s hard to.

[00:44:36] Amanda Slavin: You’re inspiring them to set goals, to make a difference. It’s something fun and creative and it’s not an extrinsic motivation. It’s getting them to get out of their own heads.

But yes, again, it’s exhausting. But it’s the acknowledgement of if you were to even say to your son, it’s the presence and the accountability, hey, I’m going to be on my phone. I’m really tired. For five minutes you do Lego on your own, then we’ll do. But we aren’t present.

You did it. You said what you said. You just went on the phone because you were like, I’m done. And I done it too. Like I am. You just like you’re zombie out. You’re like, I’m so. I’m so done.

That lack of accountability will drop our kids to lower levels of engagement, which is what we’re talking about with work as well. I mean, it’s about accountability, self awareness. These levels of engagement are about self awareness as well. What can I do to improve this dynamic? If every single person on earth said what can I do to improve this dynamic? We would be in a much better place and we wouldn’t have over functioning people like me trying to improve every dynamic while everyone else was like, well, you’re going to improve the dynamic, Amanda. So I think I’ll just hang out and sit here.

Doesn’t really work.

[00:45:44] Kevin Rice: Amanda, I could go down like so many more paths with you. I would love to have a follow up episode sometime.

I didn’t even get a chance to talk to you about the future of education and AI and your book. Like there are so many topics that we were going to talk about, but I really appreciate just the wealth of knowledge, the sheer amount of passion that you’ve put into the subject and the courage that you have to live your work at home. I think you showed us that the true opposite of engagement is apathy and that incentives might buy compliance, but real connection builds commitment.

And that presence and accountability and repair is what raises the level of teams and kids to higher levels. I really appreciated your stories and how you model respect with your five and three year old. It really brought the framework to life. So I just want to say thank you for joining today. This was a really special episode.

[00:46:36] Amanda Slavin: Thank you.

[00:46:36] Kevin Rice: If you’re enjoying this conversation, make sure to hit subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes. CEOs and ABCs is all about helping you grow in your career and show up at home. We’ve got many more amazing guests coming up, so tap, follow, and stay tuned.