Mein heutiger Gast ist John Stepper. Er ist aus New York zu uns nach Hamburg gekommen und erzählt uns von seiner Methode namens Working out Loud. Viele kennen den Begriff bereits. Dahinter verbirgt sich eine Methodik, die Menschen miteinander verbindet. Er nennt das connectiveness und es geht um Themen, wie Kollaboration und Wissensaustausch am Arbeitsplatz. John hat sich die Zeit genommen, uns genau zu erklären, was sich dahinter verbirgt und auch einen Einblick gegeben, darin wie er die Zukunft der Arbeit sieht. Die Folge ist auf Englisch und ich wünsche ganz viel Spaß beim Zuhören.
For a better Working Life der NWX Podcast. Wir interviewen Menschen, die die Arbeitswelt neu denken und diejenigen, die sie jeden Tag gestalten. Wir liefern Zahlen, Studien und Insights zu dem, was wir Arbeit nennen. Heute: The interview. John, John Stepper, I'm so glad to have you on our podcast. Thanks for taking the time. It's a great honor to have you with us. Oh, I really appreciate it. I love being back here in Hamburg and here in your beautiful headquarters.
Yeah. And once you showed up, the sun started to shine. I do want to take credit for that. From New York City, I brought with me some five days of sparkling weather. I've heard it's always like this in Hamburg, actually.
Well, not quite. You should definitely come more frequently when you brought the weather. John, what started with a blog post really became a movement, really. So can you explain to our listeners a little bit about working out loud? How it started, what you did, why you find it so fascinating, and what's the state of working out loud at the moment?
Ten years later, I'm still it feels more like a beginning than a celebration of 10 years. It started from a place of I worked in a big company with all of its ups and downs. Yes. And I was looking for. I just felt that there was something more, more that I could contribute to the place, more that the place could offer to me. But I didn't know quite how to do that because often at work it depends on who your boss is, what the budget cuts look like, external forces, are there tariffs today at 3:00 or not, that kind of thing. And what I was looking for for myself, which was that first blog post, was is there a way that I could have a bit more control, that I could establish connections with other people in the company who cared about what I cared about or had things that could help me so that I could kind of craft my job into something that went beyond the job description, but where I added more value and I got more value. And that became a method, a method for networking, a method for becoming more visible, shaping your reputation, called working out loud.
And over the last decade, that has evolved into not just one method, but a whole family where people could experience in a psychologically safe circle, a small group, a sense of self-efficacy, a sense of self-determination at work while they build trusted relationships with colleagues, with other people. And those two things I'm sure we'll talk about over the next set of questions is missing today because very often work and life can feel like something that's being done to you.
Marc-Sven Kopka Yes. John Stepper And the sense of, of isolation or at least disconnection has also increased. And those two things are not how human beings thrive. So these methods have become more than just networking. They've become a way for people to experience conditions where they can thrive even amidst all the change and uncertainty.
Marc-Sven Kopka Yeah. And the term working out became pretty popular in Germany in the last couple of years and it was very, very popular, I think before COVID and Covid started to change things a little bit. John Stepper Covid changed a few things.
Marc-Sven Kopka Yes, quite. Quite a few things. And before that I had the impression that is pretty much about self fulfillment, about being happy at work. Do what you love, love what you do. Kind of. Kind of that. While in the last couple of years it feels more like, as you said, self efficacy and probably company success also involved how to be more successful, connected, at the same time, have a safe environment. Has that changed a little bit?
John Stepper It has, I'd say in the early days, people saw it as maybe a little countercultural, like, oh, this is my chance to be me and to live my purpose kind of thing. Nothing wrong with that, by the way. So that's great. And it attracted a certain kind of fervor. This is a way to take control from the machine, so to speak. I think that's great, but that's not what I was going for. And the reason is I wanted to reach people in the workplace because that's where people spend most of their time. That's where budgets are, to fund people so they could work on their development. They get paid while they do it. So I knew that I could reach and change more people if my methods were work friendly. The methods that we have now are team collaboration, working out loud. For leaders, it's for female empowerment and diversity groups, it's for onboarding common sense use cases in the workplace where you don't have to get permission from your boss to follow your dream. It's related to your job. There are obvious benefits for a company and that's a shift that's changed. So it's maybe less movement like and more pro business, but in a way we are still getting those benefits.
John Stepper If I'm working on myself, somebody called it a Trojan horse, Prince of Bina Kluge in that it's wrapped in business clothing, but underneath, you're working on how you relate to others, how you relate to yourselves, how you relate to the work you do. And you still get that kind of fulfillment from connection and control. Marc-Sven Kopka So self fulfillment and business success are not contradictory.
John Stepper Exactly. Right, right. And again, you know, we talked before the podcast about some stats about just how many people do not feel emotionally connected to their company, especially in this country. Yeah. And, you know, coming from the States, it's not different. There's a high level of cynicism we call the click workers, but that doesn't mean any one particular job, it's almost anybody feels that, hey, I could be gone tomorrow or the company could get rid of me tomorrow. And so I'm just not going to invest much into this relationship. And that might be true at the company, but what I try to offer is, but here's a way you can build relationships with other people that would make you care. And all the Gallup surveys about, if you've got a best friend at work, all of these positive things happen. It's that kind of thing. If you've been in a circle or two at your workplace and you're exchanging with other people over a period of 8, 10, 12 weeks, there's a level of trust and connection that makes you lean in at work, that makes you care more. Maybe not about the machine per se, but...
John Stepper But you do it. You go beyond just the job because there are people there you care about, and that helps you and helps all the people around you. Marc-Sven Kopka John, for those not familiar with the method and what you explained, you said there is a movement or there is a method. Rather, how would you explain in a few sentences the idea of working out loud? How do you connect those people you're talking about? And how do you improve efficacy at work, for example?
John Stepper Right. So all the methods share the same kind of format. You're in a small group, usually three, four, five people. You have an individual goal that you choose, although that goal is typically within a frame or context of some time of some kind. So if you're a factory worker, your goal may be, hey, when was I at my best at work? How can I have more good days? If you're in a leadership program, it's a very different kind of goal. But small group, a personal, individual goal. You choose a structured curriculum so you don't just get together for a chat. There's a. And maybe this is why the Germans love working out loud in particular, there's a structure, a method. There's a method every week, a set of exercises and structured discussions. So you're actually practicing. I am not teaching you how to have more good days. I am not teaching you how to be a leader. What we're doing is guiding you through a set of exercises and discussions, how you can exchange that amongst yourself and take steps week by week. And finally you're doing that over time. So it's not the two day workshop that you like, but forget—it's experiential learning with feedback along the way.
John Stepper And so by the end you've changed habits, you've built skills, you've built relationships, particularly in your circle and beyond. And maybe you've changed your mindset about how you relate to work or to yourself or to the people around you. Marc-Sven Kopka And can I as an individual participate at such a program? Or is it rather companies that are booking programs for their executives?
John Stepper In the beginning, in the beginning I just published something on the Internet and said just go ahead. And that worked up to a point. It tended to attract, like you said, a certain kind of person with certain kinds of goals. We focused more on corporate now so we could access the workplace. But just downstairs today they're closing a female empowerment program. It's in German, I'm going to butcher it, but here it goes. Frauenstarken. And you have to laugh at my pronunciation. Thank you. Frauenstrucken. And Frauenstrucken started in 2019. Maybe 6,000 women have been through it. There's about 450 in the latest round and it's a public program so people sign up. It's very inexpensive. There's a free option. It's led by Katerina Krentz of a company now called Connecting Humans. She used to work at Bosch. We've been friends for a decade. Yes, there are public options. I'm building one for men now which is different from female empowerment. It's more how do men navigate what it means to be a good man in what's a very different society from the one I grew up in. Again, doesn't teach you how to be a man, but it gives men a space where they can work that out together with other guys and self efficacy and connection.
John Stepper And if you look at the health data for men, the lack of those two things leads to greater suicide, drug abuse, incarceration, so on. Marc-Sven Kopka You already mentioned that it might be the case that in Germany it's particularly. I mean Germany's. John Stepper I love the Germans.
Marc-Sven Kopka Yeah, they like the Methods and the methodic method, methodological, whatever, the systematic approach. And is it. I mean, is Germany particularly. I mean, is it a country where Working Out Loud is particularly popular? I mean, you're based in New York.
John Stepper It is. Right. So how did that happen? Yeah, the story I tell myself is that I mentioned this woman, Katerina Krentz, back in 2015. She's the one who read this blog post I had written about what I was thinking of doing. She was the first one to try it in a company, which was Bosch. I mean, heroically, like her boss said, no, like, we don't have time for this. She did it anyway. She wound up reaching 10,000 people plus at Bosch. Marc-Sven Kopka Amazing.
John Stepper Which is a hell of a lot. It's a village. And then she told her friends. So Siemens, Daimler, BMW, all of them. Eventually Continental used some version of Working Out Loud at some point. Marc-Sven Kopka Pretty big companies.
John Stepper Yeah. Now, you know, they didn't all participate in circles, but it found its way into all of these places. And now the programs that we're working on are less new work perhaps, which I know is big in Germany and parts of Europe and more global. We've got a leadership program. We just finished with Michael Trautmann, who I know you have a relationship with. He's my friend. He's awesome. Marc-Sven Kopka Best regards to Michael Trautmann.
John Stepper Hi, Michael. And we're thinking of a new product for CliftonStrengths, which is a, you know, universal product. How would you bring your strengths to life? You've taken the test. 35 million people took that test. But how do you bring it to life? How do you bring it to everyday practice? One of our methods could help.
Marc-Sven Kopka How would you say a leader of a team? Leadership is changed after your program. Is there some sort of, I don't know, prototypical change? Is there something you could explain?
John Stepper Yeah, I could tell you that the change we go for is three things. Maybe one, that the leader themselves feels the sense of self efficacy, that, oh, I can become the kind of leader I want. I'm not limited to what I'm seeing around me. Kind of either my bosses or the other folks here up the org chart. But I have this sense of control, this ability to develop into a kind of leader that's right for me. That's one. Two, that they're not alone. At least when I was managing director, Deutsche Bank, you faked it because you couldn't dare expose a weakness. And you pretended that you were the smartest guy in the room. And the people around you who worked for you also pretending everybody's most kind of right. So now you can realize, no, no. Yes. Work can be a competitive place sometimes depending on the culture. But at least in this circle, I can experience this very human giving and receiving. And these other people have my back. And the third thing I think is that they're not limited to what they see around them. I think that's why bad management practices persist for so long, is because even I used to think when young people would join a company that things would change.
John Stepper But what happens? The opposite happens. The company changes them. They get assimilated. They look around, they see what's safe to do, and they keep doing that. The circle gives them a chance to experiment with different kinds of management practices, kind of really exchange the best of what their peers are doing or not doing, open their minds a little bit. And I think if you. If you have that sense of self, efficacy, connection, openness to new management practices, that's what they would get, and they'll just be a more effective, but also more empathetic boss.
Marc-Sven Kopka If I may, I would probably ask a couple of personal questions because I'm always interested in the person behind the program, behind the principal, you know, who are you? Were you brought up in New York? John Stepper You already said I'm a New Yorker. I grew up in the Bronx, New York that you may have seen in the TV and various crime shows. Marc-Sven Kopka Seventies, I suppose. John Stepper Yeah. Not a good place to be, huh?
Marc-Sven Kopka That was quite a different time, I suppose, from today. John Stepper It was dirty and dangerous. Yeah. It's not the New York that we all love now, but. Yeah, right. Marc-Sven Kopka And what were your dreams? What did you want to be?
John Stepper When you grow up really are going way back. Okay, dream number one, I'd be a paleontologist, which is a fancy word for saying I would dig up dinosaur bones. Right. But as I got older, and this does relate to working out loud, actually, as I got older, I thought I'd be a psychologist. I loved that, even in high school. And then I wound up studying computer science at Columbia. Why I say it relates to working out loud is that I had no idea what people could be. What did I know? I knew the people around me who largely didn't go to college, so that didn't help me. And then you just see what you see. As Daniel Kahneman says, what you see is all there is. So I thought, well, gee, there's only like five different jobs you could be. I'll pick one of those. I didn't have nearly the network, the diverse set of connections that could expose me to other possibilities.
Marc-Sven Kopka And so that was pre social networks also true, right?
John Stepper That's right. That's right. And so back in as early as 2008 or 10, when I first started working on this and social networks came into the fore, we said, ah, here's a way that you could take somebody like me, that I could take someone like me and they wouldn't be limited to just what happened to be around them, but they could have some more control, self-determination, so they could find those other people that might give them access to opportunities or possibilities or learning that could change their life. And indeed that's what happened.
Marc-Sven Kopka When we're talking now about stuff like personal growth, connectivity, not being alone, being connected, stuff like that, that still sounds to me quite, and I don't mean it in a negative way, idealistic, because that's how you want to be and to live. And everybody's striving to get there at the same time. At least here in Germany, we're experiencing a terrible economic situation at the moment. We're in the middle of a recession, the longest that we've ever had after World War II, which is quite depressing. And companies are now looking more for numbers and costs and not so much on connectivity and self-fulfillment. Has that mess—has working out loud an answer to that?
John Stepper I think so. First, I get it, right. When you're laying off people, that might not be the best time to introduce the happiness program. I totally get that.
John Stepper Yeah. Now having said that, and back to this Trojan horse from my friend Spina Kluge is okay, you know, fine. How much turnover do you have at your factory, at your hospital? And if I can give you a program that in four hours reduces that number because employees are having more good days or having more friends at work, then that will save you. Or if in your leadership program, I'm giving you a sense of connectivity that increases cooperation and collaboration across divisions. What's that worth? Particularly when they're already investing in some of these things already. So things like leadership programs, which is a new one again with Michael Chapman. Yes. They may be laying off. They're still flying people to Mallorca. They're still having the—because they know that it's worth it to develop a certain set of people. What I'm allowing them to do, and in our case with Michael, we're allowing them to do, is to do that in a way that's both continuous and sustainable and also scalable because they're peer to peer instead of having a one on one coaching. So I think my answer to you is it addresses needs they have in a way that could be more cost efficient than traditional training or traditional coaching.
Marc-Sven Kopka I would probably also argue that we are not machines and if very simply put, and in a time of remote work and more or less every company I'm familiar with in Germany at least has their remote work policy. So people used to meet each other in the office and what happened there was culture, corporate culture, you identified with the people and you had a team feeling and now you hardly meet people or it's by chance and not regularly. So many people find it quite comfortable to be working from home and so they are not really connected with their colleagues anymore and with the company anymore. So what then happens, I would say is that you feel less part of the team, that you're more inclined to just do what you're told, do your job and no extra mile, no idea that you know, that is being sparked by coffee chat that we have by chance. So the only connection that people are having sort of is internal communications which used to be, which used to be very top down, the board informs the company. Whereas I would say now you have to think about different types of communicating that is more, that can convey culture, that is more bottom up.
Marc-Sven Kopka Otherwise you become as you said, some kind of a click worker. John Stepper Yeah. Marc-Sven Kopka And probably this can also, I mean a long question, it's not really question, but my perspective. John Stepper I'm with you for the ride, don't worry.
Marc-Sven Kopka And, and so I would argue that all the sort of left brain qualities, you know, being structured, number focused, probably less, less empathy, something like that is becoming less important or we are lacking the other side more, let's put it that way, because of that development.
John Stepper Right. And some companies do see that. I'm working right now—we're in the middle of developing a program for a German company and they said, you know what? We've used working out loud, we get it, we love it, we'd like to have it without the visibility part. We really just want to focus on human relations. And so we're developing an eight week program. We called it the Human Advantage. And they said, look, the robots are coming, we've got AI, we've got other technology and other kinds of changes. We want to have people experience the advantage they have if they invest in relationships at work. We give them—I wouldn't call it training. We'll give them practical experience in building trusted relationships with other people in what it's like to have a psychologically safe space at work. That human advantage will then leak out into, like you said, everyday tasks of hey, I'm going to pick up the phone and go that extra mile. I'm much more willing to cooperate. Almost anything these people do in this company relies on other people. And so if they've got the skills to build trust and relatedness quickly with others, they'll get more things done.
Marc-Sven Kopka Well, personal relationship, in my opinion, becomes more and more important because of this development, because we're lacking it more and more. So this is a great—
John Stepper And all that you said about it changing in the workplace. Yes. It's also changing outside, like the rates of participation in organized sports, churches, clubs, all down. And so this level of disconnection isn't limited to the workplace. But man, people are not designed for this. And so we're not thriving. And at least in our country, that leads to drug abuse that's off the charts or depression in young kids. I mean, on and on. And I view this, you know, working out loud isn't going to fix, could put a dent in it. It could at least give you a space. And I see this with the frauenstrucking program where women are like, man, I love my circle and I don't want it to end. So today's a closing event, but they've organized their monthly meetings. They fly to a city or they take the train so they can meet each other in person for the first time because they're hungry for that connection and they don't want to give it up. And you know, when's the last training program where you had a reunion with your class in project management or whatever it is. So that's what I want to give people, is that feeling as well as skills that they could use to reach their goals every day.
Marc-Sven Kopka I used to have a trend scout, a futurologist on this very program, Sabine Rock, and she actually explained that the rise of AI, artificial intelligence—some people are afraid it will take over the world and will definitely take over the world of work. And there is this aspect at it. But her point was that actually the more the machines do the structured work, you know, the number focused work, the work where we hired people—exactly with this kind of skill—schizophrenically, the human factor becomes more and more important. That I like to call it the renaissance of the human factor probably. How do you see that development?
John Stepper I certainly wouldn't argue with a futurologist. I agree with that basic premise that okay, there's going to be a huge sucking sound of jobs going away. They won't just be the number crunching jobs. So I saw something just the other day that the top use case currently is for therapy. A bunch of reasons for that, but all sorts of jobs are at least under threat. Okay, that's depressing. I think how our tools could help or how I would like to help is two ways. One is that sense of connection that we kept talking about. So your circle or your set of trusted relationships is kind of like a lifeboat in a sea of change. That's very human. In addition, though, particularly with the original networking method, it's like, well, what am I going to do next? And if you think you're going to get a job by hitting a button and submitting your piece of paper to some algorithm, like, lots of luck. I think that ship sailed and it's impossible. So the networking that we've heard about since we were kids, how important it is, is more important than ever. Your ability to show who you are in a certain way, to build trust, to be likable, to cultivate relationships with people is more important than ever.
John Stepper So I agree with her on that point. It's just I think it's not nice to have as an individual. Even if your company doesn't want to give you this training as an individual, I think you need that sense of support and social connection and you need this ability to build a network and navigate the sea of possibilities. Because I don't think anyone's going to do it for you.
Marc-Sven Kopka Probably not. And this kind of network that you're describing is not a network solely within the company. No, quite the opposite.
John Stepper Right. By all means, we—and we customize all of our methods and so some companies want to focus more internally. But you mentioned innovation before the call. Where do good ideas come from? Well, it's probably not just in your Monday staff meeting. Right. We want you to be out there like knowing what people do and what— Marc-Sven Kopka That's the benefit of it.
John Stepper That's the benefit. And so for sure, your ability to build links, to build connections across divisions, across countries, across companies, that makes you eminently more valuable than someone who sits at their desk or in front of a Zoom call and does their job.
Marc-Sven Kopka John, I'm glad we're connected now. Thanks for taking the time and for your amazing insights and for explaining everything to our listeners. Great that you're here. Thanks for taking the time again and have a safe trip home to New York. New, not new work. John Stepper New York. Marc-Sven Kopka You're going home tonight?
John Stepper I'm going home tonight. Right. I love New York. It's gritty, it's overstimulating, and yet it's my hometown. But I will be back. I hope to be back in November. And if I do, I'll make a special trip here. Marc-Sven Kopka Yes, please do. And bring some. John Stepper I will do. Pleasure. Thanks so much. Thank you.