S8E6: Exploring Engagement with Scott Gould

Join us as we explore the role of authentic connection, debunk myths surrounding networking, and navigate resistance. In today’s episode, Dr. Kristin Malek and Scott Gould examine engagement, focusing on its necessity for relationships. The discussion also touches on leveraging social platforms for community engagement and experimenting with three-way connections for event success.

Defining Engagement (1:55)
Engagement in Events (4:02)
The Rule of 3 (6:14)
Engagement in Large Events (10:45)
Combating Resistance (11:40)
Fostering Community (14:13)
Lifelong Engagement and Measuring Success (16:40)

Connect with Scott Gould:
LinkedIn.com/in/ScottGould
ScottGould.com
The Shape of Engagement

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Transcript

Speaker
Welcome to the Experience University Podcast, where we aim to educate, inspire, and empower individuals who wish to design transformational experiences. Now, your host, Dr. Kristin Malek.

Dr. K
All right, welcome back everybody to Experience University podcast: Season Eight, all things interviews. And we are also recording video this season. So we have all of our videos up on YouTube, which has been a fun experience figuring all of that out. Today, I have my dear friend Scott Gould, who is a coach. He's a consultant. He's a speaker. I think of him as literally everything engagement, and that's the focus of our episode today: all things engagement. But what makes Scott so cool is he thinks about engagement at a universal level. So not just those activities in the events that you're thinking about. So, Scott, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

Scott
Kristin, thank you very much for inviting me.

Dr. K
Yes, I'm so excited. And if you're watching the video, Scott's in Europe, and he's got this beautiful afternoon sun and perfect lighting. And it is 6 a.m. here, and anybody who knows me is like, “Kristin got up at 6 a.m.” Scott is so worth it.

Scott
I gotta confess, I would struggle to wake up at that time for anyone apart from my kids. So bless you.

Dr. K
Yeah, it's going to be an absolutely incredible episode. So Scott, start us off. Everybody on this podcast has a different idea of engagement. They've all got their preconceived notions in their brain. They all have their definitions. So can you just start with the simple basics just define engagement, so we all go through this podcast with you with that foundation.

Scott
Yeah, great. And that's a really good question. What on earth is engagement? I like to explain engagement as quite simply engagement recognizes there's you and there's me. Imagine you've got two hands, right? And on video, you can see it. There's you and there's me, and as long as we remain separate, we're unengaged. Nothing wrong with that. There are 7 billion people in the world, 8 billion. But when you and me become we, and your hands mesh together and that sense of we transcends you and me, then we are engaged. And so engagement is togetherness, disengaged or unengaged as separate; engagement is togetherness. And the reason why we want to be together is quite simply, we are better together.

That's simply why we want to engage because humans are a very symbiotic species. We rely on each other for pretty much everything. I cannot create the clothes I'm wearing. I can't create the food I eat and everything. And so when we are we, we are stronger and we are better, goes a bit further because then you go, “Well, how are we together?” And quite simply we are together in one of three ways: head, which is cognitively, you and I are engaged. We both understand each other. We have each other's attention and you can think of marketing; there's a lot about head engagement. We then got a hands engagement, which is physically being engaged in an activity, and this is often when people say engaged, that's what they mean, being active in something like a student active in doing an exercising class. And then the final form of engagement is not head or hands, but it's heart. And that is to do with actually, I'm engaged at something in a sense of I have a bond with it, and it's part of who I am, and so you can think of maybe a brand or a family member or your sports team, and you have an affiliation with them even when you're not doing the activity. So engagement is togetherness in head, hands, and heart.

Dr. K
I absolutely love that. I remember we've talked about this so much before during COVID and since the pandemic when I'd be working with these clients and they would say, "Kristin, let's go through the event flow," and they'd say, "Oh no, we need some engagement here. Let's throw in the activity or this participatory thing." And I would take your book, The Shape of Engagement, and you don't want to hit them upside the head; you want to deliver it anonymously. It's their mailbox and tell them they need to read it. But I absolutely love that.

Scott
Well, I think your point there is really sound, which is think of a student in the classroom. You're the teacher and you go, “I really need some engagement here to get them to participate because they're not participating.” But that doesn't mean that they're not listening. And I was very fortunate at the beginning of the pandemic, I got to watch a couple of videos by some really great speakers and they were talking about the effects of the pandemic. And so it was good learning, but these were two-hour videos and I was riveted the whole way through, and there were no engagement activities in terms of the hands engagement, but my head was massively engaged, and I still remember things that they talked about, and I've used those concepts. So it's important to distinguish when we say engagement, what type of engagement do we mean? I think you're really right there. And just because we don't have activities doesn't mean people aren't necessarily engaged though activities can enrich engagement, no doubt.

Dr. K
Absolutely. I always tell people, I say, “Have you ever binge-watched anything on Netflix or Amazon Prime or whatnot” because you can sit there and six hours can go by and you are so deeply connected with what you're hearing and the story and the arc and you're not doing activities with your hands, right?

Scott
Totally. You are not doing a virtual poll. There's no slider, there's no break-up rooms. Let's just be honest, all of us as people who've worked in events, and I come from an events background, we all know that often we try to get participatory exercises to cover up for the fact that sometimes the content might not be mentally capturing or engaging, right? We all know what it's like when you have a speaker that's so good. People are just like, "I don't want to pause, I just wanna listen." So there's room for both. I think that would be the point.

Dr. K
Absolutely. You have such an interesting background. You've done business events, you've done church events, you've done all different kinds of events, and they're all uniquely different in their own ways. So one thing that you're a master of is you design for social experiences. I'm wondering if you could kind of talk through what that means, how that might be a little bit different and what you do to make those successful. Because I think that's something the event industry has started to recognize all the newsletters and all the blogs and all the LinkedIn influencers are all saying we go to events for networking, we go to events for the social experience, we go to events for connection. How do we design for that? And I'm like, “Scott!”

Scott
Oh, well, I appreciate that. I think anyone knows it. I think what's fascinating about engagement is there is this myth that we engage differently at work than we do at home. And that is not true. We use the same parts of our brain. There's not a home part of our brain and a work part of our brain and a customer part of our brain. So the reason why I study engagement at a universal level is because engagement is the same psychologically for engaging employees as it is engaging customers as it is engaging a community or event attendees or someone on a date, what have you or your children, which are some of the hardest.

When it comes to events, we all know that if you go out with some friends for a drink, it's lovely when there's a small group of you, we love it. The great thing about a small group is it takes the pressure off the intensity of 1 to 1 conversations means that you are able in a group to discuss things and then you keep on talking about them afterwards. Maybe you have a WhatsApp group where the conversation continues. You mentioned, Kristin, that one of the reasons why you've been waking up early is 'cause you're doing an exercise group with a number of different people. I think the mistake that events make is they don't design for social connection or if they do, they tend to only design for 1 to 1 connection.

So we saw this in the pandemic. All of a sudden we could use Hopin or Swap Card or anything to do 1 to 1 networking with individuals at an online event. It's a really good idea, but that's the problem. When you connect 1 to 1, it only takes one person to not do the follow-up. And the connection is over. If you have three people connecting, and we can think of this as let's say, the rule of three, you actually increase the notes, you lessen the intensity of the conversation because actually you've now got three people. In fact, if one person knows the two others, they act as an in-betweener. And then in terms of staying in touch, you're more likely to stay in touch with a group of three than you are just a 1 to 1 connection because you've now got a sense of accountability. So I think events could really do with designing groups of three or groups of four. We have 1 to 1 occasionally and we have small groups in terms of 20 people in a room for a breakout session or a workshop. But we don't create these smaller groups, and I think it's a massive, massive shame. Even just think how often do you go to an event and you see stragglers standing by themselves. How many events do you know that actually have staff that have been allocated just to introduce people to each other and network them?

Dr. K
I'm nodding my head, and then I'm like,” Oh, on the audio podcast, you can’t hear that,” but on the video you can.

Scott
Yeah, I could see that was a really solemn shaking of your head. We just don't do it. Some people might just be uncomfortable with me sharing this, but I was a church minister and one of the ways that I grew my church, not just in numerical size, but in social maturity was I emphasized three and four-way connections. So if somebody was new and they came to church, my assumption was by coming, they'd given me permission to say hello, they're interested. And then what I did was I'd go and greet them. I also made a contract with the congregation.

If anyone new comes, could we all just make sure that we greet them? Can at least two people say hello to a newcomer. So one or two people would say hello; I'd say hello very often. We'd end up in a small conversation. That person now in the week had three people with whom they could reconnect with. Rather than the normal experience many will have when visiting a church, as no one talks to you or one person might talk to you. This isn't just church though. This is any event. How many events have you been to where you didn't know anyone? Everyone goes into their normal groups, and no one is helping you connect and all you end up doing is speaking to one or two individuals on a 1 to 1 basis. It doesn't stick. We need three-way connection. That for me is a massive thing, and the psychology points to this, we love to engage in activities when actually we can do it with other people. If you think about it, hands engagement works best when we hold hands with other people. We love to engage in small little groups like that. That for me is a big thing.

Dr. K
Yeah, absolutely. I can already hear people's brains working with a, “but Scott, what about a large event? But Scott, what if people don't want to connect? What if people don't want to be engaged? What if you have that resistant person who you have to deal with or work with, whether in a small meeting or in a large event, they don't want to be engaged.” So what would you say to those people who are sitting there with all these thoughts going on in their head right now?

Scott
To the first one about a large event, any large community is made up of small communities. The myth of one large community does not exist. There is not a community of 600; there are communities that together make up 600. They're all crisscrossing, and it's a mess. So that's the first of all thing to think is everything comes down to these small little groups. Actually, it's in small little groups that we actually have the ability to engage more effectively. So you mentioned here about resistance. I mean, first of all, actually, have you noticed that when someone's resistant, often we seek mediation. Right away, the act of a third person being something often acts as a buffer that can help. Let's say somebody doesn't want to come and talk to you 'cause it's a one-on-one. But if somebody went up to them and held their hand and invited them into the group, they might actually be far more likely to engage.

But let's take it further. Let's say somebody is actually very resistant. Let's say we're not talking about an event now, in terms of a conference, let's say we're talking about a company event, and somebody is really resistant to some of the change that's being suggested or something like that. Many people might know in psychology, this is known as reactance. Reactance is what happens when someone sells you something, and you just don't wanna even hear it. Reactance comes from generally, the literature seems to indicate that we have reactance or resistance to things that we perceive will take away our agency. So generally the way to engage somebody that doesn't want to engage isn't by trying harder or forcing harder. It's actually by going softer and lowering their threat response. We normally know the idea of fight and fight and freeze and fawn. Often those things are activated 'cause people perceive that we are gonna steal something from them and they're not safe. So often the way to engage with people is to go soft, is to go really gentle. Have you ever seen somebody argue somebody else into agreement? Yeah.

Dr. K
My arguing is silent with my daughter. I'll get quiet. I'll just look at her and she'll be like, “Oh no, momm’s  serious” because she's getting quieter. Yeah.

Scott
Yeah! One of my favorite sayings is nobody's ever insulted into changing their mind. So generally, the way that we do it psychologically is if you're meeting someone who is resistant, the first thing you do is you emphasize connection. So you try to just demonstrate you and I, we both believe in the same thing here and you might say that explicitly or might be implicitly like, "Hey, you and I are both fans of this team," or something like that or "Hey, how was your family?" You just build a bit of commonality that generally creates positive emotion. There's a theory called the broaden and build theory by Barbara Fredrickson. She found that when people experience positive emotions in the moment, it broadens their thought action repertoire like literally, it reduces their fight or flight response, which narrows the mind and instead it makes them feel like they're safe. And when you feel safe, you see more possibility.

That's why people don't innovate when they're stressed, you just go into survival mode, which is very narrow. So by creating commonality, you create some positive emotion. And then I normally find that if you do have someone who’s resistant, state your intention, 'cause often they assume that you want to take away their liberty. And actually your intention is, for instance, "I know this is this change program. You might not like it, Fred. I understand that maybe you perceive this, I really hope you realize this actually isn't about changing your work, that is safe” or it might be, “Kristin, and I know you're a bit nervous about talking to these people, just so you're aware, everyone here actually is probably just as scared as you are," or something like that.

So what we do is we just show that the intention is not to harm and then that helps lower their threat response. I found this the other day, I was in one of my clients is a big supermarket, and it was in one of their depots, and I met a manager who's quite resistant, quite resistant to some of the changes they want to put into place. And so what I did was I just spent five minutes. This is the first time I met them, I just spent five minutes hearing about their work. They showed me around their workspace. Where I could, I identified. I said, "Oh, I've worked with a forklift truck manufacturer that did some similar stuff to what you're doing in the depot here." And then he used a word. I noticed the word and I said, "Oh, that, that's a cool word. Isn't that come from that TV show?"

And he was like, “Yeah, it does.” And I just built commonality. I said, “Oh, well, you know, what do you think about these changes? My understanding is they're not really about change.” Actually, it's just that. And he was like, “Well, maybe it is,” and I was just able to overcome that conversation just to lower that threat response and then we were able to have a better conversation.

Dr. K
Yeah. Oh my gosh. No, that's so good. That's so good. Our guest last week was head of community, and that's one thing that we're doing a lot, the conversations we're talking a lot about in events right now is… do we have a director of networking? What are the ROI metrics on networking? If events are to bring connection and people together, how do you measure that? How do you justify those costs, et cetera, et cetera. I had some pretty strong opinions on this coming from the perspective of someone who has a strong community that I have not brought together or monetized, but I do have strong followership.

Someone kind of put me in my place and was like, “Well, how do you know that you have a strong community? You haven't brought them together?? And I talk about this a little bit on last week's podcast. But I just said, “I'll show you. I know I have a strong community.” So I started a Facebook group. I just sent 20 or 30 messages out. And I said, “Hey, I started this Facebook group, feel free to add it or add your friends, just to 20 or 30 people. And within three days, it's at 105 or 110. I posted two questions. The very first question within 24 hours, I had 68 responses on it. The question was, “How do I best market to you to sell your product?” And they all just laid it out for me. They were like,”This is how you market to me.” And the second one was like, “Cool! Now pretend it's not a product, right? Or don't pretend right? It's not a product because a lot of your last answers were products. How do I sell information to you?” And within 24 hours, I had over 50 comments already.

So I know communities. I'm so, so there. But event professionals, in my personal opinion, Kristin Malek's personal opinion, we're asking kind of the wrong questions because we're trying to treat events as a one off. We're trying to measure the ROI of the one off. And so I had Chris on the podcast last week talking about your event really builds you into a larger community, a year-long community, a lifetime community and you measure your metrics on that. What are your thoughts on that in terms of engagement? What are your thoughts in terms of engagement with an event? A one off versus a larger lifetime? Right?

Scott
Yeah, this isn't a new conversation and people have been thinking about this for a long time. I think one of the issues is when you come at it from an event manager perspective, you think an event perspective, when you come at it from a community manager perspective, you think about events as tools for community. So part of it is just which way around are you coming? If you're a publisher, and you look at this immediately, a publisher thinks about content. I have a friend who runs a community, and he's a publisher, and it's just so heavy about content because that's his mindset, and there's nothing wrong with that. First of all, it's just recognizing, look how you come at this will be based on your background.

And I think that's okay. Maybe there's just a chance for us to learn some new skills here. And you can see here, I, even now, am using that reactant trick. Right. I'm lowering the threat response. I would suggest that events are best seen as stepping stones along a path or stairs on a staircase and asking what's the ROI of that single stair on a staircase is a bit of an erroneous question. Really? It's what's the ROI of the staircase?

The staircase doesn't really work without that stair. So it's important, but also that stair only exists because of the wider staircase. When you think of events as one-offs, you go two-thirds of the way through engagement, you engage the head 'cause you've needed to market to get them there. You engage the hands 'cause they're there, but you don't engage the heart in terms of an ongoing relationship, and it's just a waste, and then a year goes by and you've got to invite everybody back again. So you've got to engage the head again. It would have been so much easier if you'd been engaging in the heart during that time, and now you are ready to engage the head again to invite them to the event in order to engage the hands to have them at the event.

So I think one of the first things to do is just to see that any event is part of a stepping stone. It's part of a journey. Sometimes an event stands out as being a moment, but very often they're just all part of your journey. That means that you then need to start thinking about, “Okay, where am I taking them from and to? What would come afterwards?? One simple way is literally after an event, if you've been having those little three-way connections, how would you help those keep going? Could you have a thing where you just literally measure at the event? We asked you to connect in three-way groups? We asked you to make a note of it after the event. Have you stayed in touch with those people? And in fact, that could even be a point of value.

Literally, then your marketing could be at our event of people that report it. 70% stay in touch with people after the event. This is now a figure that you can talk about, but no one measures that because it just takes a bit of time to do it, doesn't it? Another would be noticing how many people post about your content in a way that tags others. That would be another one, just measuring how many posts are individual and how many are tagged? How many have multiple tags? Again, you're now noticing the networking effect as opposed to just the content effect or the 1 to 1 interaction. One very powerful way to do this is to think about asking people to become involved in volunteering in some way. That often demonstrates that they had a really good time and they'd like to come back. Another one can be literally asking, “Would you like to invite a friend?” and just measuring how many people who register have been invited by a friend? So there's some really simple things here that you can do that I think we just don't do 'cause it takes a bit of work and we're not used to it.

Dr. K
Yeah. No, I would completely agree. Wow, so good. So good. You and Chris and Chris episode together. They're just so beautiful together, and I think they're going to be top hits on the season for sure.

Scott
Can I add one more thing on to that? Which I just remembered, I had the privilege of being on a panel with Hugh Forrest, who's the chief programming officer of South by Southwest and I've stayed in touch. You know, that's what I do. I stay in touch. And one of the things that he talked to me about was how it's South by Southwest any year is 50% returning, 50% new. I think that's just a really great stat to bear in mind. You do need new people or else, you go from a community to being a clique, and you don't necessarily want people to return every year. Sometimes you want them to take some time out. But that doesn't mean they're not part of the community just because they didn't participate in terms of the hands engagement doesn't mean the heart engagement isn't there.

That's a really important thing is community doesn't mean that they are full on sold out. It could just mean that they are happy to follow you as many of these people were that you were in this little Facebook group you've created now they've engaged, but they won't engage in that way forever and we shouldn't need it to be forever. People grow up, kids need to leave home, right? So I think there's a sense of freshness that we also need to consider.

Dr. K
Absolutely, I love that. And I can think of several events that it's like I make an intentional choice to visit every three years, not every single year because not enough changes in the year to year, but I still want to stay in touch. I love that. OK. Before we go into our last question, which is always what's one key takeaway. How can people get in touch with you? They're like Scott, I love all of your content. If they're not following you on LinkedIn with your permission, I'd love to definitely post your LinkedIn because you post excellent content on your LinkedIn. But how do you want them to engage with you further?

Scott
Yeah, LinkedIn. I love having conversations with people on LinkedIn. So I don't post here with three top tips. So occasionally I generally I'm asking questions and I'm curious what people think. LinkedIn.com/in/ScottGould or just Scott Gould. You can search for me, Scott Gould. My website is ScottGould.com. My book is called The Shape of Engagement and it's available on Amazon or where books are sold.

Dr. K
Awesome. And I will make sure all of those are posted below in the show notes for people to click through. Definitely. OK. What's one key takeaway? Keep in mind this podcast, event planners, event designers, students that are interested in events, experiences, experienced designers, marketers, all the people. What's your one key takeaway that you're like if you get nothing else from this podcast, which they got a lot, this is the one thing.

Scott
The rule of three thread people together.  On the video, you can see it here, you know, it's like a triangle and you're constantly threading the connections of people together. I think that to me is so powerful. Try not just having coffee with one person, try inviting two people for coffee. See how that performs against an average 1 to 1 coffee. Try not having a networking meeting with one person. Try to just see, give it a week and see how you get on. I think you'll be surprised by the benefit.

Dr. K
I love that. I've got some one on ones scheduled for next week. Maybe I'll make those threes and then I'll report back because that would be, that would be a fun experiment.

Scott
Yeah, what have you got to lose?

Dr. K
I know. Right. Oh gosh, Scott. Thank you so much for being on the podcast for being on a video for giving me a beautiful reason to wake up and log on to Zoom, and you can see my lighting is changing throughout the whole thing as it is, as the sun is rising.

Scott
Well, the sun's quite nice here. I trust it's even nicer for you and gets around to your side of the world.

Dr. K
It will. But actually today, I'm running an event all day from, from 8 a.m. our time till 6 p.m. I should talk about this in a future podcast because I just marketed this event for the very first time, 14 days ago. So two weeks and I have over 200 people coming and so over 70 of those are in person and then over 150 online, and I just did the very first advertisement for it 14 days ago. So talking about lead times, getting shorter and shorter- here I am.

Scott
So I want to say I didn't get an invite to that. So I don't know if anyone else is listening and they're feeling a little bit peeved, but I'm feeling slightly put out here. What a great turnout. Good luck with that. And I hope that you enjoy spreading people together a little bit more today.

Dr. K
Definitely for sure. So thank you again so much, Scott and for all of our wonderful listeners, I will catch you on the next episode. Stay tuned.

Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Experience University podcast. Stay tuned for our next episode.