Dr Nathan Jones - Mood.AI

Speaker A: At uh, Rubber Band, we empower each other through positivity, kindness and practical advice. Join a community of thousands of peers who understand the unique challenges you face. Rubber Band company Agnostic, Low ego, high empathy.

Speaker B: Always supportive. Welcome to the Rubber Band Podcast, the show where we connect people across the recruitment industry, share their unique stories and spotlight the technology shaping the way we work. I'm your host for today, Martin Hill, and I'm really looking forward to taking you through this episode. At Rubber Band, we believe recruitment is more than transactions. It's about community, innovation and the people behind the placements. Across this series, we'll unpack the journeys of recruiters, entrepreneurs and tech founders, learning what drives them and how they're shaping the future of work. Before we begin, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land in which we meet today, pay my respects to elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening today. Nathan's career is unique, blending two decades of experience as a corporate presenter and voice artist with cutting edge research into human emotion. Through Mood AI and the Mood Institute, he's helping organizations reimagine how they measure, manage and improve wellbeing in the workplace. Welcome to. Thanks for, thanks for chatting today, Martin.

Speaker A: So good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Speaker B: It's been a long time coming, but I've been following sort of your work and your sort of LinkedIn posts and your content quite heavily and I think there's a fair, you know, a fairly strong place for that in the recruitment industry, especially with that, um, sort of reliance on wellbeing and environmental factors and mental factors that can sort of influence behavior on site. So yeah, definitely interested to find out more about your journey and how it all came to be.

Speaker A: So good. Look forward to diving in. Let's do it.

Speaker B: So, um, for those that are sort of listening in, can you tell us a little bit about your early career and what sort of ultimately led you into that sort of well being and psychology space?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think uh, this is probably like most people that go through the whole psych journey and maybe some of your listeners can relate that, uh, it's kind of what they sometimes call in academia, me search rather than research. You know, it's research that you do, but it's kind of because of yourself. And I just found I've reached a point where I'm like, oh my God. Like I'd gone on uh, really my whole life and career working in more entertainment and media. I was a voiceover artist for the longest time working for TV and radio, I was making music and producing and doing all this creative stuff. But I think I just didn't really stop to examine some of what I was experiencing in my own life. Right. I think we, I think we have a way of suppressing our emotions and we can really go our whole life not looking at, uh, what makes us tick, what makes us, us. And so I had a bit of a moment. I was living in New York at the time. Just some of my professional life was beginning to show some cracks. I wasn't really getting as much work and some relationships were showing their cracks and it really drove me into therapy for myself. And I come from a really conservative, uh, religious background. My father was a minister and I'm gay. So that didn't really go super well with my conservative father. So there's all this stuff that I had to work through and process. And when I was in therapy I'm like, you know what? Like here we're talking about the real stuff. We're talking about how we feel, how we show up, how we behave, our tendencies, what makes us show up not just at work, but every day in our own lives. And they got me really thinking, maybe this is a space I want to explore. So jumped into the first psych degree and then did a second, ended a third, my PhD. And that's really just taken me to this place now where I'm really just passionate about measuring, understanding and really just tracking our day to day feelings and how we can use that data. Data to make better decisions at work and beyond.

Speaker B: Yeah. Great. And uh, founding as uh, a wellbeing startup while you're doing a Ph.D. sounds pretty intense. What was some of the biggest challenges at the time that you faced doing that? I can imagine there's a lot of spinning plates involved.

Speaker A: Yeah, so many spinning plates. It's. Yeah. I, uh, mean it's kind of ironic really doing a wellbeing startup and also doing a PhD on emotions while you're having an emotional meltdown. So but through that you can kind of say, well I guess I've tested it and I think sometimes with emotion. Right. It's a great academic construct. And more and more there's great research that can measure this. And obviously the platform I'm building seeks to do that as well, to measure or make sense of this data. But emotion I think has to be lived. Right. I don't know whether you've ever been to like emotional intelligence workshops as well, which I do lead some of. And I think there's a point where we can talk about, okay, the amygdala does this in response to this, and the brain and the prefrontal cortex and how it shuts down. Like, it's all fascinating, and I love it. I'm here for it. And yet emotion, for me, we learn it when we feel it. Right. I mean, I can talk to you, uh, all about anxiety as an, uh, academic concept, but until we have the bottom of our business fall out from beneath us, or until we go through those moments, it's really hard to put those principles into practice. So I am grateful for the PhD and the chaos that it was, because I think it really helped me even more so understand what it means to go through crisis, to border on burnout, and to come out the other side.

Speaker B: Yep. And it would have tested that in practice as well, going through, uh, burnouts and burning the candle at both ends, both building the platform and studying at the same time. Yeah, it's definitely a good test for the platform.

Speaker A: Yeah. Thanks, Martin.

Speaker B: It kind of was. Yeah. And having. Having done some of that emotional intelligence training before in the past, it's, um. It's pretty funny when you get that sort of wheel presented to you with this list of emotions and then the secondary wheel and the third wheel, you know, putting labels and names on them. You know, for me, having done that the first time I looked at it and went, I just knew. Happy, sad, angry. I didn't know all these little weird nuance ones. And then the more specific. So, you know, when you really look into it, there's a lot more technical aspect to really understanding how you're doing, as opposed to just good, bad. Thumbs up, thumbs down, neutral. Totally.

Speaker A: Actually, it's called sometimes this kind of happy, angry, sad. It's sometimes called the mad sad glad triad. I think coined that one, the mad sad triad. And often when we're asked, how do you feel? Which is obviously a very simple question, but it's a really tricky one to answer, we, uh, sometimes just default to one of those three, which isn't such a bad thing. But I like to think of them as almost like the building blocks of emotion. And a lot of my research was actually around the links between emotion and color, which sounds super random, but it kind of all ties into some of the stuff I've been working on. But, you know, sometimes we can go into, I guess, the red zone and feel that mad energy. Right. Or we can drift into the blue zone and feel that sad energy, or drift into the green zone and feel that glad energy. But I guess the analogy I really love between color and emotion, like feeling all the feels, is that um, when you look at um, I mean we're talking on a computer right now, if you look at the monitor that's bringing all of these colors to life, it's really the rgb, right? The red and the blue and the green. It's like any TV or digital device. We've got the RGB channels. And I think that's a really beautiful analogy for emotion. You know, we've got the mad, the red, we've got the glad, the green, we've got the sad, the blue. But together they make up this beautiful spectrum. So that when you're looking at these feeling wheels and you're just like, you've got these big clusters, like that's a really great start. But what researchers call this practice is emotional granularity. When we get granular on what that emotion is. So is it mad or is it a cross between mad and sad, which is more of a magenta maybe that's more. I'm um, feeling upset or confused or triggered. Like how do we find that full granularity in our emotions? And, and the great thing about this is that it's often been said before that you've got to name it to tame it. And when we're able to put a label on that emotion, when we're able to get emotional granularity, we actually get to process it, own it and then deal with it, make the next best step. Rather than doing what I did for a long time in my life, suppressing the emotion, not naming it, and wandering around wondering why our uh, lives are kind of blowing up in front of us.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great way to put it. I like the RGB analogy as well. That's fantastic. I'm going to use that from now on. And uh, you've got quite an interesting background you touched on earlier before. So from presenting and being commercial voiceover artists, how did that sort of lean into, um, your sort of approach both in sort of founding your startup and um, your day to day communications?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean it's such a weird job in a lot of ways. Um, weird how I even fell into it just being a radio announcer on community radio and getting a call from Mitsubishi and they're like, we want you to be our national voice and falling into this weird world where you walk into studios and they pay you to, to read things off pieces of paper. So really strange in itself. And it's a great party trick. Now when I talk with my academic friends and we're talking about past careers, and they realize that I'm the guy that used to say the burgers are better at Hungry Jack's every time they watch tv. And yeah, it's a weird, uh, a weird sub career. But what it did teach me is that when you are walking into these studios, you don't really know much about the brand or the campaign or much at all. But you get handed a piece of paper with words on them, and you've got to inject emotion into these words to try to shift behavior, to try to elicit a certain response. And strangely enough, after doing that for 15 years and working with a whole lot of clients that are so diverse and broad, you kind of have this skill emerge where it's like, okay, I get to use communication as a way to obviously sell things, but also as a way to attune to people. Right. And to notice the way that, uh, my words land. To notice the way that I can use color and phrasing and pace to actually shift the message. So that was really, uh, an interesting precursor for my fascination with emotional intelligence and behavior by, by knowing that we get to use things like our voice, our behavior, our. Even the words we choose to enact, change and to make a difference.

Speaker B: Yeah, great. That's ah, fantastic. And with Mood AI building the platform, where did the idea come from initially? And what sort of problem were you initially sort of setting out to solve?

Speaker A: Yeah, for me, I think it's that real big question that we're talking about of like, how do you feel? Right, the big juicy question. And I think in some of my times of like, searching and understanding myself, I'm um, like, man, how. How do I feel? How do I label this? Uh, you know, how do I move beyond the, the mad and the sad and the glad and find that. Find that emotional granularity? So a lot of my thinking was, man, it would be great to have an app that I could really, you know, use some really simple cues to track and understand and monitor how I feel. And then AI happened. Right. And I think we're all using ChatGPT as our therapist, if we don't still. Now, we were at one point, or at least tried it on for science. It's the number one use for ChatGPT globally at the moment.

Speaker B: I, uh, saw those stats recently. It's quite interesting to see the usage cases for, uh, ChatGPT just even from being a sounding board. It's fascinating.

Speaker A: So interesting, and I think it's a great sounding board Too. Right. If we can use artificial intelligence to help, uh, grow our emotional intelligence, I think that's magnificent. So a lot of that thinking was kind of going into the product. But I think the real thing that bought Mood AI to life was beginning to do some of my work with organizations, have a consultancy training organization called the Mood Institute. And I've been just doing a lot of emotional intelligence workshops and training with various orgs. And I just began to see that the organizations that thrive and are, uh, doing really well tend to have a high level of what we now know as psychological safety. Right. They have a sense where they can show up in their workplace and they can be seen and they can be heard and they can be understood for the very one they are. And I think that really resonated with me because growing up in my household, in my family, with my lovely and yet very troubled in ways parents, they didn't see me or hear me or understand me in the way that I needed to be. And I think there's a lot of. There's a lot of parallels between dysfunctional families and dysfunctional workplaces. Those workplaces that don't truly hear, see, and understand their employees don't create a, uh, psychologically safe space for people to show up. And that affects productivity and that affects retention, and it affects all the things that we really want to measure and do well at. But this link between psychological safety and being a workplace of choice became more and more clear to me. And so what we do with Mood AI is not just have the personal elements of, like, checking in and tracking your stress and your energy and having cool gifts and music and things that are just sticky that keep people coming back. But we also have this element where we can actually see how everyone anonymously. You can never track it to certain individuals, but you can see how the organization as a whole is faring on all these psychological safety principles. So that's just really been my journey of, like, wow, I want to know how I feel. But also, how do we keep these great behaviors happening in the workplace so that we can use them almost as a badge of honor and say, I'm not just talking the talk, I'm walking the walk. And we're being an employee, an employer of choice.

Speaker B: Yep. And here's the data to back it up, which is great.

Speaker A: That's right. Right. Rather than just saying, I think it's something. We had a workshop and we had a few people come up. Something is a little more robust. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: Yeah. And you touched on it briefly just now. What Does a daily motion check in look like in practice and why is it different from the traditional employee engagement survey?

Speaker A: Yeah, great question. I mean nothing wrong with a traditional survey. I think just the problem we've found, and this has just been talking with clients is that and wonder whether your listeners would agree and find this in their day to day. But when you do uh, an engagement survey, whether it's quarterly, which is actually more than probably most people do, or whether it's annually, which is seems to be a little bit more aligned with the norm, it's really hard to get people to fill it out at first. And then when you do, I think there are always concerns around anonymity. So that can affect how the questions are answered. Like if people know that it's anonymous, they uh, they might give very honest answers. But then you don't know where to action. Those changes in the organization, you're just left with a lot of unhappy people. Or if it's not anonymous, people don't really give the right data. They don't respond very well. And then when you do finally get that data in, it just takes a while to action. It's not super transparent. People aren't super sure what's uh, being actioned and what's working. And it's just a slow process. So I guess what we're really trying to do with these check ins with mood is it takes less than a minute. You just select your color zone. How do I feel? Am I red or green or blue or any of the 12 mood zone colors we have with the understanding that there's no such thing as a bad zone, there's no such thing as a bad emotion, there's no such thing as a bad color. Right. They just exist. We're just labeling it and naming it, getting that emotional granularity. Step one and then step two we just say how's work? Couple of tags just to really kind of give a bit of an understanding of how things are going. And then the third question is a psychological safety question that's taken from an empirically validated survey. But it's a question that's based on the tags and based on the mood. So it's almost like a hyper customized, hyper focused survey that's only one question every day. But over time we see all of those questions contribute to the categories. And you've got all these moving scores in your psych safety dashboard that everybody can see. And it's kind of like, it's kind of like checking stocks on your phone. You're checking the well, being of the organization, it's changing every day. And that way you can kind of action things very quickly, you know, how did our. Are you okay? Day wellbeing, morning tea go? Uh, how are people feeling before and after that? Are we, are we meeting some of these things with the initiatives we're doing? And, and you can get that real rapid feedback and have a more of a, uh, uh, I guess a proactive approach to mental health rather than reactive, waiting for people to reach burnout, to reach the stage where they need to call, you know, really severe support lines. You're actually on the front foot and noticing these things really rapidly and really quickly. And hopefully it's enjoyable for people to do. They don't hate it.

Speaker B: Yeah, great. Rather than being a snapshot in time, you're getting that live data that you can sort of act on and look at and just have that wellbeing check in, which I think is great.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's right, Martin. Yeah.

Speaker B: And from a recruitment and HR perspective, do you see moodai being used, um, by those agencies and employers directly at the moment?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's, um, absolutely the end goal. I think we're finding more and more that, uh, certainly HR is our core demo we have. Obviously, people and culture are really passionate about this stuff, and to be able to give metrics and data to support the things that they absolutely know are going on, they're like, they've got that sixth sense. But to be able to support that and get insights and recommendations is certainly a great thing. We're also hearing from people that are a little bit more in compliance, uh, to take all of these new psychological safety laws and demonstrate that they're being taken seriously. Mood AI does that. But then even more so, we're seeing more and more that Mood AI isn't really an EAP in the sense that we do in our chat. When you kind of have a conversation with Mood, it does actually link you out to existing EAP in your organization. So it's customized for the, for the company. So if you are feeling a certain way, it's like, oh, maybe you need to reach out to this person in hr, or maybe you need to, uh, speak to this EAP offering. But I think, uh, it's really interesting to see this not so much as an eap, but more of an evp. Right. The employee value proposition, where you're saying to people, uh, even in the recruitment process, we're an organization that actually does put a money where our mouth is. We have a transparent dashboard where everybody can See how people are feeling at any given time. And we know we're never going to be 100%, but we're people that care enough in our workplace to actually give you the chance to express how you feel at any time, to see how it affects the overall mix and to know that we're listening in real time and that we're not just saying, we're not just box ticking. We actually care about your role and your place in our organization. So really positioning it as something, you know, kind of like, kind of see EAP as the fire extinguisher and kind of EVP is kind of the billboard, right? It's like we're an organization that values this. We're kind of halfway in between. But I do see that that EVP element as being something that particularly recruitment can use as a bit of a badge of honor. You know, we do mood AI and we're proud of it.

Speaker B: Yeah, great. And building on that, what role do you think leaders and recruiters have to play in shaping workplace wellbeing just beyond that compliance and tick box exercise?

Speaker A: M. Oh, uh, so much, I think, I mean, I guess the, the broad answer from a professional point of view is making sure that, uh, there is that psychological safety to be able to have that space for people to say, hey, any other questions, you can reach me here. Even, you know, whether it's recruitment and onboarding people, like how, how closely we listening to their customer journey, you know, with their onboarding, like how. How closely are we having that empathic listening? See how it landed for them so we can improve our processes and procedures moving forward. Like that really is emotional intelligence. But, uh, I also would say that aside from the professional, just the personal element of having space for ourselves to check in with ourselves and obviously with others, our, ah, friends and trusted ones, it really does change the way we show up in the workplace. I mentioned earlier that, you know, suppressing my emotions my whole life. I look back on some of the things I did in those years and it's like I was drunk emotionally, right? Just drunk on my emotions and trying to suppress things because it was too troubling. Right. And it kind of comes out sideways when we do that. We can never really suppress emotions. We'll start writing a passive aggressive email to Margaret because we haven't dealt with something or named something in ourselves or we'll kind of act out in some way in a meeting trying to flex and, you know, show we're better than someone else because we haven't done that work in ourselves. So I think really just this kind of work of emotional intelligence and self awareness. When we do that, when we take time, whether it's to journal or use mood AI or do these, um, do these activities of getting that real psychological hygiene, mental hygiene, we show up as different people. We show up as people that are more compassionate, more attuned, and people that have the capacity to see and hear and understand those we're working with every day. So I think across the board, not just professionally, but just from an internal point of view, we become better humans that live better lives when we take time to really ask that question, how do I feel every day and use that data to navigate our lives.

Speaker B: Fantastic. And so topical. Just after just following Are you okay? Day as well. I think it's, it's great.

Speaker A: Yeah. And um, amazing initiative. So. Yeah, always nice to get that conversation going.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And looking ahead for the future of work and wellbeing, what. What do you see shaping the way businesses approach wellbeing over the next five years?

Speaker A: So looking ahead, it's a huge thing, right? I think there's such an opportunity with obviously the big buzzword that everyone's already probably sick of, but AI, Artificial intelligence. I'm almost seeing conferences now. They're starting to tone down. I think the last couple of years, every conference session is AI in the workplace. AI is the future. I think we've had an AI overload, but, um, it still is just such a game changer, right? Like, it's so huge. So I don't really see wellbeing harnessing it to its best extent just yet. Because as people, I mean, this research is as old as humanity really. But we're just not very good at knowing what's best for us. Right. We can sign up even. Like, we all know it's great to exercise and eat healthy, but it doesn't change those habits. Sometimes knowing it is one thing, but the actions are really tricky. And I'm so intrigued to see how both in workplace platforms and also in our own lives, how we use AI to actually understand how we feel emotionally and maybe even predict how we feel emotionally. So, you know, you usually feel a little bit, you know, down in the dumps on Thursday afternoon, but only when the weather is less than 15 degrees and usually only in this location. And checking your calendar feed, it's usually after you have this meeting as well. So, like, how do we use AI to make predictions and understandings about us that's grounded in privacy first and foremost, but then also just helps us see things that we Otherwise wouldn't catch and almost kind of giving us these prompts and nudges before it's too late, before we burn out, before we reach places where, you know, where we're a little too far gone. How, how do we have that proactive responsiveness every day rather than having the reactive way that we tend to have as humans? We wait till it's too late and we stumble and we freak out. I just think there's a really cool scope for both at work and at home. How, how does AI almost help us have a second brain, a second emotional brain to make better decisions and to just be better people?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think you're on the point there at ChatGPT just being able to interpret and understand and help explain the real mundane data, uh, that you just overlook every, every day. But the, the AI will look at it and see a pattern and go, well, like you said, on this particular day, these particular factors seem to be influencing, uh, say your mood. Um, and here's some suggestions on, you know, drawing upon studies and data and things globally, what could be done to improve that outcome and mood and little steps that could be taken by the individual to try and change that over time and track that over time. So I think there's a lot of power behind having that processing power in place and leveraging all the data and studies that are fed into the AI that exists. So I think it is a game changer. Even just from a recruitment perspective. AI just makes us more efficient and those that are using it, well, being able to do more of the things that we're hired to do, which is great.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Hey, never going to like so much, replace, you know, us as people. Well, let's hope not. Let's hope our, you know, humanity has a, you know, some legs in it yet. But, um, but it really does, you know, turbocharge what you do. Right. Supercharges it and gives us, you know, a little bit more of a superpower to do our job, hopefully even better. I'm a little bit of a AI optimist, cautiously optimistic, but with all of the terrifying things that this tech can bring, I do think there are incredible opportunities for us just to be better people. And yeah, such a cool thing to lean into and see where it goes.

Speaker B: Absolutely. It's been quite an interesting journey just to see just from ChatGPT1 to now, version 5, just the leaps and bounds in just that knowledge and processing piece.

Speaker A: Amazing, isn't it? Yeah. And just getting better and better every day, which is equal parts terrifying and exciting.

Speaker B: Yeah, so ChatGPT will be an interesting version, I think. Oh my God.

Speaker A: Probably be, uh, washing my dishes by that point, so.

Speaker B: And if you could give one piece of advice to recruiters and leaders about supporting the emotional well being of their teams, what would that be?

Speaker A: Oh, uh, I just think the big power phrase is, and this will kind of bring us full circle, but it's how do you feel right after an interview? How did you feel about that interview? How do you feel about the job at the moment? How are you feeling today? Like, how do you feel for me is so gold because I mean, we did just have are you okay? Day. And that's a great question too, but it is a, uh, it is a closed question, right? It's kind of like, are you okay? Yes, no. Whereas how do you feel? Is an open question. And I think how do you feel? Rather than having a black and white answer like yes and no, how do you feel? Leads to a, a full color answer, right? Uses the mad, the sad, the glad, and the whole emotional spectrum. We leave it open for someone to really say, okay, how do I feel? And how can I get some emotional granularity, label it and give you the answer I need. Rather than having that expectation of it's okay, and that's the preferred thing, you're actually opening that up to have that psychological safety to let someone, whether it's at work or at home or, you know, a client, to be able to give them the autonomy to share vulnerably or to whatever degree they feel comfortable sharing how they're feeling and to deepen relationships. I think how do you feel? Is the most powerful question we can ask and that we can use in our lives. And I would challenge you as a listener. Who are you going to ask that to next? And are you willing to see and hear and understand them in their response?

Speaker B: Absolutely. Great advice. And I think probably one additional thing to add is just being able to have that emotional, uh, toolkit or the resources available, available to be able to draw upon, you know, support for those answers that might not be positive. I think I made a post on this sort of last week for are you okay? Day just around, you know, what do you do if someone does come back and say, I'm not great. A lot of the time they're so used to just asking the question, thinking nothing of it. But having the tools available, being able to address that behavior or point them in the right direction and provide that support goes so far.

Speaker A: Absolutely. We've got to have those tools and there's such a big difference between people and organizations that have the big. They call it yellow washing sometimes. Right. Having the big. You know, we've got the balloons and the cupcakes, but when it comes down to it, it's performative. Like, where's your infrastructure? Where's your back end to actually support that? And I guess that's what we're trying to do with Mood AI. Give organizations the back end so that when things aren't okay, there's actually channels and tools to use, rather than it being just the, uh, the big box tick that really doesn't carry the actionable component.

Speaker B: Amazing. And for those that are listening, what's the best way to get in contact with you or to access the Mood AI platform and get involved?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. We m. We are so lucky that our company name is our URL. So if you head to Mood AI in your browser, you go straight to our website. Yeah, I'm always around like, uh, we're not the biggest company at the moment. So I'll probably respond to your email and I'll probably invite you to jump on a call for a bit of a virtual coffee. But Also I'm on LinkedIn under Dr. Nathan Jones. I post all sorts of things there, most of them very unserious, but I'd love to connect you there and hear more about what you're working on.

Speaker B: Fantastic. And thanks so much for joining us on the Rubber Band podcast today. It's been fascinating to hear how you're combining the research technology and your lived experience to create sort of more human workplaces. And for those listening, you can connect with Nathan directly as mentioned on LinkedIn, or visit Mood AI to learn more about the platform. If you or someone you know would like to come onto the show to talk about your recruitment journey, explore new technology, or simply have a good recruitment chin wag, I'd love to hear from you. You can reach out to me directly on LinkedIn just by searching for Martin J. Hill. Until next time, thanks for listening.