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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. The latest monthly jobs report from the Labor Department came out this morning. It's always the first Friday of each new month, and despite the Omicron surge at the beginning of this year when cases reached 800,000 people per day in this country, employers in the US added around 467,000 jobs in January. More than tripling expectations which were set by economists at around 125,000. A lot of people thought there might even be a loss of jobs last month because of Omicron.

The unemployment rate ticked up a little bit, just one-tenth of 1% to exactly four. The number of people staying home from work or home to work nearly doubled in January from about 3 million in December to 6 million in January due to positive test results or childcare disruptions, and yet the New York Times reports the wage growth was "super fast". Hourly wages on average saw an increase of almost 6% compared to this time last year. Perhaps equally perplexing and impressive, there has been a huge revision to the November and December jobs reports that added more than 700,000 more jobs than they originally thought.

They always do these revised numbers a few months out. We've talked about the great resignation on the show from the employee perspective. People leaving their pre-pandemic careers for better pay and better work culture, or they have some savings and they're fed up with their jobs. Now we turn to managers and bosses. What has this moment of job growth and wage growth felt like for you if you are an employer of any kind? 212-433-WNYC. Many employers have retention problems right now, retaining the staff that exists.

How are you retaining staff? Any employers, business owners, managers who are listening right now, 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. What does it feel like when your employees leave if they're employees you don't want to leave? How are you navigating this time with new hires seemingly have an advantage over the hirers more than in recent past years, 212-433-WNYC. Managers, employers this one's for you if you're out there, maybe they're all working. 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Joining me now to take some of your calls and offer some advice is Zoe Chance, Senior Lecturer at the Yale School of Management and author Influence Is Your Superpower: The Science of Winning Hearts, Sparking Change, and Making Good Things Happen. Professor Chase, welcome to WNYC. Thank you so much for joining us.

Zoe Chance: I'm thrilled to meet you, Brian. It's funny you call me Professor Chase. Because Zoe Chase is on NPR so often, and I get e-mails from people congratulating me on her work.

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Brian Lehrer: It's Chance.

Zoe Chance: It's Zoe Chance. Yes, nice to meet you.

Brian Lehrer: Right. I fell right into that because you're right. I'm just so used to seeing that name. Zoe Chance, ladies and gentlemen is our guest, not NPR Zoe Chase. At first glance, what's your takeaway from the January jobs report.

Zoe Chance: Well, I guess it depends whether you think of yourself as an employee or a manager, and if you're a manager, you're probably both. On the employee side, it's great news. You have lots of opportunities since 95% of us are considering new opportunities right now, that includes managers. If you're looking with fear at the people who might be leaving you, this isn't great news at all. We have a lot more open jobs than we have had job seekers. It's exciting, and it's also scary, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: You write about deep listening in your book and how it can lead to employees feeling more fulfilled in their work. Some people might hear that and say, I don't want to deep listening. I want a raise. I want better working conditions. I want paid family leave. Talk about deep listening and where you think it actually comes in.

Zoe Chance: You know what, do you mind if we just start on the money part?

Brian Lehrer: Sure.

Zoe Chance: Because I agree with those people who feel that way, that deep listening empathy is tremendously important and it's not a substitute for money. It's not a substitute for getting a living wage. As a manager, you are probably not responsible for income policy pay policy in your organization, but you probably do have the power to help people on your team who work for you. Just overall, they are likely to get a 5% raise if they leave your organization rather than stay there, and you are likely to wait until they ask you for money.

The people who are asking you for money, it's not evenly distributed, it's not random. Gender and social-economic status has a lot to do with who comes and asks you for money. What you can do proactively first, before we go into the deep interpersonal stuff, is get your people the money that you can. That's just table stakes here.

Brian Lehrer: Deep listening is one of the behavioral things. Another interesting way that you put it for me in the book is that you challenge managers to change the way they see their role. You ask what if you were the host rather than the boss? For someone whose official job title is host, I think I have a little a bit of an idea of what that means, but what does it mean? You wrote the book.

Zoe Chance: Sure, and I would love to ask you because you are the host, but I'll share my perspective. This came from a day that Danny Meyer, the restaurateur came to Yale School of Management, and he suggested to all of us there you are all in the hospitality business. He asked us to reflect on what that would look like. At first, I thought he was just talking to the students. I was wondering for them, and then I realized if I were in the hospitality business thinking of myself as a host instead of a teacher, that could transform my work and it has.

It transforms the way I interact with the people that I teach and I lead and who I'm the boss of my TAs, instead of trying to implement a very rigid system of procedures and tight rules around a community that we're trying to build engagement, judgment, rewards, and punishments, carrots, and sticks. Also, me being the star I didn't know a lot of ego involvement, me being the boss of things. When you're the host you're not the star, they're the star. You let go of so much judgment and perfectionism for yourself, and for the people you're leading or serving, your employees or your customers.

One of many, many changes I made, a huge one was I've stopped taking attendance in class, not just stopped grading it, but I've stopped taking attendance because I want students to come because they want to be there. You can't require somebody to go to a party. They come in, we're playing music, TAs and I show up early, we're smiling, we're greeting them. We're making small talk and they're so happy to be there [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Those students will still have to do the work to pass your course, and the employees will still have to show up at their jobs, right?

Zoe Chance: This is a big question about showing up at their jobs. This is partly why I brought it up. They have to get the work done. Students have to get the work done. Employees have to get the work done, but is it required that we have to have face time? It's a very big question that employees are asking right now. I've had since I made this transition in my class, 95% of students show up every day anyway, and they're so happy to be there. The lead economist of LinkedIn is saying that at least on their platform pre-pandemic, 1 in 67 jobs was remote and now 1 in 7 jobs is remote.

Employees have been asking for a long time do I need to be here the number of hours that I'm required to be here? Now we're asking, do I need to be here at all? People have been more productive after the lockdown than before the lockdown. I think there's a lot of evidence that we need to be more flexible.

Brian Lehrer: Let's hear some listener's stories and experiences. Cora in Somos, New York. You're on WNYC. Hello, Cora.

Cora: Hello.

Zoe Chance: Hi, Cora.

Cora: Hi, guys. Long-time listener. First-time caller. I own a dog walking and pet sitting company up in Westchester. I'm seeing a lot of changes in employment and the types of people that are applying to the jobs. Oftentimes dog walkers and pet sitters are a transitional position for people which can be hard for me. I have changed a little bit about how I do things. I've set everybody up independent contractors they can pick and choose the jobs that they want to do. I'm not sending anyone anywhere. They don't want to be.

I'm just trying to keep attitudes as positive as possible. I think giving my staff a lot of that autonomy has kept them a lot happier. They're a lot more willing to pick up new jobs when they think they have that-- or when they know they have that freedom.

Brian Lehrer: Cora, thank you very much for starting us off there and Mark in East Windsor. You're on WNYC. Hi Mark.

Mark: Good morning, Brian, and good morning to your guest as well. I manage a large apartment complex out here in East Windsor, New Jersey. We have about 56 buildings, 814 units. All our employees have had to be here throughout COVID. We're finding it a real challenge to find qualified full-time and temp workers to fill positions that we need, either through people who have left to take better opportunities or sometimes older employees who have left because of health issues related to COVID.

We find it a real challenge with-- we're bracketed by two large Amazon complexes. We find a lot of our landscaping temps are taking warehouse positions that pay better money, pay better hours, even offering bonuses. It's been a real challenge to fill some of these positions. I've had to become much more flexible as a manager.

Brian Lehrer: Give me an example of that new flexibility that you've had to show.

Mark: For instance, I've had to become more empathetic to staff in our morning meeting. The stresses that they're feeling, whether inflation, higher prices, COVID, the weather, it's been a real challenge. Basically, we'll try things like taking some more time in the meetings just to speak with employees, listen to their concerns. I've made it a point to be much more flexible about paid time-off for people who need to take time during the day to attend to needs for kids who can't be in school because of something related to COVID, those kinds of things.

I make it a point every now and then to just bring in coffee and donuts. Try to lift people's spirits and keep morale up and also, assure them that we are looking to fill these positions because we really have put a strain on the staff because we've been understaffed for quite some time.

Brian Lehrer: Have you also had to increase pay and benefits compared to before the pandemic?

Mark: We have for some individuals who are key employees particularly for landscaping who have walked in and said, "Hey, I found a job." We've had to very quickly turn around and match that offer and beat it to keep them here. To really let them know we need them and we want them. There are some positions where individuals have left, maybe to find a better opportunity, where we've had to move very fast to offer them money to stay, and an incentive to stay. We've also had to increase the base that we're offering for temps in order just to get candidates to come in the door and interview.

Brian Lehrer: Mark, thank you very much. Very candid and revealing phone call. Let's do one more before we get a response from our guest. Dee in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi Dee.

Dee: Hi. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. How are you? I see you're a management coach.

Dee: I'm good, thank you. Yes. I am a management coach as well as being a prior executive. I was a Chief Strategy Officer. What I'm seeing with a lot of my clients is the pushback to trying to run to be a manager, as opposed to being a leader and understanding that to the point that was made earlier, you truly have to listen to what your workforce is asking for. This push that we had, the pendulum that swung in the 1990s, early 2000s, the managing and getting work done and not having the respect for the boundaries of personal time, family time that was needed for your employees, that's now coming back to bite us.

For people to truly be able to survive, for organizations to be able to survive, we have to start training our managers again, how to lead. Following the philosophy of the best leaders are the ones that get out of the way and let people think, "I'm the one that took care of all of this. I got it done and I didn't have to sit and be underneath of a manager for it to be done."

Brian Lehrer: That has been part of management training. I think I know for decades now, does it apply in a new and different way in the pandemic year?

Dee: Well, I think it's come back because partially what's been going on is that we have done a great job of putting it into the training manuals, but a very poor job of actually implementing it. It's one thing to check off the tick box and say, "Yes, that's how we're going to do it." It's a totally different thing when we don't have it done. We're not following up to ensure what's being done. When we're doing, we're getting feedback from our employees that are saying, "We're missing this."

We're still not stopping and saying, "How do we handle it?" This is where I give kudos to a lot of my clients because they come in and they realize that there's something that is going on. There's a gap between what we say that we're going to do and how we're going to do it. They're realizing, "As the person who's leading this organization, I need to understand more about what it takes to be a leader of people and not just a manager of the work that's being done by the individuals doing the work."

Brian Lehrer: Dee, thank you very much for your call. A few more minutes with Yale University School of Management. Lecture, Professor Zoe Chance who is also author of Influence Is Your Superpower: The Science of Winning Hearts, Sparking Change, and Making Good Things Happen. As we talk about the problem that so many companies are having right now with retaining employees and Professor Chance, what'd you hear from that set of callers that might be illuminating, or that made you want to say, "Oh, I want to comment on that"?

Professor Zoe Chance: I appreciate the candor just like you said, Brian. What we're hearing here is, so many managers right now are striving to be better managers and we're striving to figure out how. Most people don't know that according to McKinsey, at least who should be experts, 90% of bosses are bad bosses. That probably includes you, listeners. It definitely includes me. This is something for us to work on. In my own research, what I've found is that when I ask-- I've asked hundreds of people to describe their worst boss, and it comes down to two factors generally.

About a 1/3 of that is being incompetent, which is hard to fix. 2/3 is being disrespectful, which is much easier to fix. I'd like to give everyone one very specific tool to work on this, to increase psychological safety and employee engagement. Employee engagement is one of the biggest factors determining retention. This tool is something I call the magic question. It's very simple and it's just the question, what would take? For example, can I share a story here Brian? Do we have time?

Brian Lehrer: Please.

Professor Zoe Chance: In a medical device company called Guidant where I interned as an MBA student, they had a great problem, which was that demand was outstripping supply. They needed to ask employees to work over-time in doing three shifts, including over Thanksgiving and Christmas. Money is table stakes, of course, you have to pay them. You shouldn't threaten them. Ginger Graham, who is leading this company asks employees, "What would it take for you to be happy to put in the extra time?"

Just like managers now can ask your employees, "What would it take for you to be happy to stay here?" You might find something surprising. She found when she asked that question, they said, "We take the bus and the buses don't run at night we'll need cab fare. We're hungry. We like pizza and we're stressed about wrapping our Christmas presents, so it would really help if you would hire a Christmas present wrapper." She does all of these things. Employees come in, they do the extra time, production hits records.

Everyone gets-- I think it was a 30% bonus and the employees are happy to stay there. They're engaged and excited to keep doing the work the following year. You can ask your employees, what would it take for you to be happy to stay here? I also encourage you, managers and leaders, to ask that question of yourself. Take care of your own needs so that you have the bandwidth and the stamina to be taking care of your employees.

Brian Lehrer: With the job market expanding per the January job numbers. Now today, with employees with more choices and more power in the marketplace than they've had in the past, interesting conversation with you on the phones and with Zoe Chance, Senior Lecturer at the Yale School of Management and again, author of the book called Influence Is Your Superpower. Professor Chance, Thank you so much for joining us.

Professor Zoe Chance: Thank you so much, Brian.

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