CEO Perspective: Balancing Results & People
What does it take to drive results without driving people into the ground? Former CEO Alan Whitman joins us to share how he led with empathy, built trust across the org, and still delivered big. Alan's known for being a progressive leader. But what we we're interested in is how he was able to balance business results (he 3X'd the firm during his tenure) with the people stuff (he was voted #1 Advisory CEO on Glassdoor).
We cover the big stuff: WTH do CEOs actually do? How DID he balance results and people? What's critical for CEOs to nail? This conversation is a rare look inside the mind of a people-first exec who believes that culture and performance aren’t in conflict—they’re connected.
Your Work Friends Podcast: CEO POV - Balancing Results & People with Alan Whitman
What does it take to drive results without driving people into the ground? Former CEO Alan Whitman joins us to share how he led with empathy, built trust across the org, and still delivered big. Alan's known for being a progressive leader. But what we we're interested in is how he was able to balance business results (he 3X'd the firm during his tenure) with the people stuff (he was voted #1 Advisory CEO on Glassdoor).
We cover the big stuff: WTH do CEOs actually do? How DID he balance results and people? What's critical for CEOs to nail? This conversation is a rare look inside the mind of a people-first exec who believes that culture and performance aren’t in conflict—they’re connected.
Speaker 1: 0:02
When I was early on in public accounting, you always knew the people that were going to be successful because they were pukers.
Speaker 2: 0:09
Huh what.
Speaker 1: 0:12
Like grow up in a trash can before. No, what's a puker? A puker is somebody that feels like they're going to puke when something goes wrong. They care.
Speaker 4: 0:36
Well, guys, welcome to your Work Friends. We're your two HR friends, I'm Francesca and I'm Mel, and we have no filter, but we're getting you through all this work shit. And today, mel, what are we talking about?
Speaker 3: 0:48
We are kicking off a brand new series called Visionary Executives. There are a lot of cool leaders out there that are doing really interesting work and bringing people in business together in a way that everyone wins, and we wanted to start a series that started to highlight those folks and talk about the things they're doing and what you can take away from that, either as an employee or as an executive yourself.
Speaker 4: 1:16
Yeah, there's nothing like talking to people that are at the tippy top of the seats and making these big decisions, so we're excited to kick off this series with Alan Whitman.
Speaker 4: 1:25
Alan Whitman was a chairman and chief executive officer at Baker Telly US, which is a top 10 CPA firm, and the reason why Alan's a really interesting person to talk to is threefold. One Alan was the CEO of a top 10 accounting firm and if anybody is familiar with accounting, you know how volatile that industry is, not only from a business side, but also from a people side. People just really don't want to go into accounting as much as they used to, so it's a sticky situation. The other thing is during his tenure, he 3x to the business, which is huge, and at the same time, was able to have a number one employee satisfaction and CEO approval rating from Glassdoor of the top 20 advisory firms. So here's a guy that is in a volatile industry, 3x his business and also had the people saying we love this guy. So we wanted to talk about how the hell did he do that? How the heck did he balance people and results, and he did it in a pretty interesting way.
Speaker 3: 2:22
Absolutely, and you don't want to miss this episode. So here's Alan Whitman.
Speaker 2: 2:42
Hey Alan, how are you today?
Speaker 1: 2:43
I am fantastic, great to be here.
Speaker 2: 2:46
Where are we finding you Today?
Speaker 1: 2:48
I'm in Atlanta and it's a sunny, warm day in Atlanta. A little cool in the mornings but nice and warm in the afternoons.
Speaker 2: 2:55
So I'm not anywhere where it's snowing, which is great, kim my wife says that it's snowing back in Michigan, so I'm glad to be here. Yeah, I heard a friend was up in Ann Arbor at University of Michigan, so I'm glad to be here. Yeah, I just I heard a friend was up in Ann Arbor at University of Michigan and said it was snowing. So I'm like, yeah, that doesn't sound fun. So it sounds like you're well located.
Speaker 1: 3:10
I am, and I'm going to Florida tomorrow night.
Speaker 2: 3:12
Yeah, but you're a native of Michigan, right Since 1996.
Speaker 1: 3:16
Yeah, I grew up in New York and Cincinnati. I lived in Detroit as an adult but since 96, I met my wife there and my kids are from there, so I'm from there.
Speaker 2: 3:23
Yeah, you are. You are a Michigan.
Speaker 1: 3:26
I'm not a U of M fan unless I'm with my wife or my mother-in-law. I'm still a Cincinnati Reds fan and Indiana Hoosier fan, although the Lions were a lot of fun to watch this year.
Speaker 2: 3:37
Oh my gosh, I loved how Eminem totally got behind it. A big fan I am. I lived quite a long time in Columbus, ohio, which is home of the Ohio State University.
Speaker 2: 3:48
Understand the not liking the blue. I went to liberal arts college, so I don't have any skin in this game Anywho. Anywho, alan, we're here today. I'm excited to talk with you. I want to talk about the role of a CEO. It's not very common for us to be able to talk to leaders that have led global billion-dollar organizations and we want to know all about it and what it's like. What does it feel like? What do you do? What does your dailiness look like? Are you the type that gets up at 4 am on the Peloton? That's the vision everybody has, right. So that's what we want to uncover with you today is what is the world of the CEO? And, probably more importantly, is what do you think the world of the CEO? And, probably more importantly, is what do you think the world of the CEO should look like as we're going into the future? So we have a few questions we want to go through with you today. How does that sound?
Speaker 1: 4:30
All right, let's roll, I'm ready.
Speaker 3: 4:32
We'd love to hear more about your journey to CEO. How did that happen? Tell us about it.
Speaker 1: 4:37
Yeah, as both of you know, I'm a public accounting brat. I grew up in the big eight, 6, 5, 4. Went to a few smaller firms Tax guy by background and really never had the plan. I never had the professional life plan. I just always trusted that things would work out. And when I joined Virchow Kraus which is the firm that became Baker Tilly just by a names change, I had a great opportunity to lead this thing called International services and I had no idea what it was about, really had no idea what it was about, and my predecessor had no idea. His idea was it's yours if you want it. I said what is it? He goes I don't know, you'll figure it out.
Speaker 3: 5:17
And.
Speaker 1: 5:18
I did. We figured it out Before that I had just. I had great mentors, and so I wouldn't be where I am or wouldn't have had the opportunities without great people looking after me and helping me. And look again, it was. There was no plan to be the CEO of Baker Tilly. The plan was to do great work, build great relationships, build trust with the people I work with and have a lot of fun doing it.
Speaker 1: 5:40
I'm not a guy that's built on a lot of structure. I'm not a rules-based guy. I'm more of a principles-based guy and I do like to wing it and I have trust that it's going to work out. It's not that I have so much trust in my abilities that I'm going to just crush everything. I just have trust in the system that if I do the right things, everything will work out. Some would say that I'm oblivious to the outside world. I don't know, but that's how I was.
Speaker 1: 6:06
And I remember I was in a bus heading to a partner retreat and we knew we were going through a succession plan process and a former partner of mine leaned over and said, hey, you should put your name in to be the next CEO. And I laughed. I'm from a small practice, I'm new to the firm. And she said listen, everybody trusts you. You're not here to build your own practice. You were here to help everybody, including her me, as she said. And I think you'd be a viable candidate because the partners trust you, that you're here for them and for us in total, rather than trying to pad your own performance or your own book of business, et cetera. And so I said all right, I'll put my name in that.
Speaker 1: 6:46
And one thing led to another a lot of testing, a lot of interviews, et cetera. And I still remember the day I walked out of the last interview. I remember that day. And then I remember the next day when I got the call and I found myself as the next CEO of Baker Tilly and it was like wait, what just happened? And then I could talk to you about the journey as the CEO. I think the ability to visualize the future of what would we build the organization to. I'm not so sure I knew how to do it yet, but I certainly knew what I wanted to build and what the foundational principles of my candidacy. And they took a chance and I think it paid off. We did remarkable things. We everybody did remarkable things in that eight-year run.
Speaker 3: 7:36
Yeah, yeah, it sounds like there's definitely that light bulb moment. It wasn't about you establishing a practice. It was about switching what your role is completely. What exactly is the role of a CEO?
Speaker 1: 7:48
What's the role of a CEO? I think, above all, the role of a CEO is to enable the team to do more than they think they can do and to do things they're not even aware of doing. So pulling them together for a common cause and achieving twofold, threefold, fivefold, x-fold the amount of outcomes and deliverables and performance and accomplishments compared to what they think is possible. You both know that I don't ask binary questions. Can we do this, can we do that? I ask the question. What will it take? And so it opens the mind to the art of the possible. And so, above all, there's all sorts of different things strategy and acquisitions and communications, client connections, et cetera. Those are the how, the what, in my mind, is innate pulling people together for a common cause, a vision, a mission, and engaging them to believe they can do more than they thought they could. Engaging them to believe they can do more than they thought they could and, in turn, providing that pathway and the ingredients to do just that.
Speaker 3: 8:50
I love that You're bringing that visionary role to folks. You're making them feel like they're a part of something larger and you're also really building up their confidence in a space where they thought they might not be able to do it, which is really exciting.
Speaker 1: 9:03
Confidence in a space where they thought they might not be able to do it, which is really exciting. A successful CEO is somebody that enables people to have a little bit of blind faith. If he or she thinks I can do it, or he or she is totally committed to this, let's go. Let's go on the journey that she or he is describing. In my opinion, the most successful CEOs are the ones that can paint the picture of tomorrow when maybe not everybody understands even what today's all about. They come on that journey with you and they have blind faith that I trust him or her and all right, I'm going to follow, or I'm going to ride shotgun, which is even better, or I'm going to lead, which is even better.
Speaker 2: 9:47
It's interesting. You talk about vision. Marcus Buckingham wrote the One Thing you Need to Know, which is what differentiates good from great leaders, is the ability to paint a vision and get people behind it. So much of that is on trust and the compelling nature of the vision, the doable nature of the vision, where it has a little bit of I don't know if we can do this, but I think we can. You talked about trust. What makes you so good at trust? Like, how do you get people to trust you? How have you gotten people to trust you?
Speaker 1: 10:17
Look part of it is what have you done prior to becoming the CEO or the leader?
Speaker 1: 10:23
Yeah fair done prior to becoming the CEO or the leader? Yeah, fair, do you have credibility? That's the first and the second in many facets, francesca, it's being able to tell a compelling story, to not wither in the face of adversity. And if you have adversity, how do you deal with it? Don't go too high, Don't go too low, don't get too excited, don't get too down. Don't get too excited, don't get too down. Building a compelling narrative. Look, words matter, the story matters, and so having a great right-hand person to help you take your crazy ideas and organize them and build them into a compelling vision that's believable, even if it's crazy.
Speaker 1: 11:13
You separate yourself from reality a little bit and you dream. And so, look, communication is a crucial skill of any senior leader, a CEO being able to communicate. And that's with words, with emotion, with heart, eye to eye, being relatable, not demanding things, but working together on things. And look, I always thought that I was Alan, who happened to be the CEO. That's how I communicated. I'm just Alan. Yes, I'm the CEO. Yes, I probably have more experience than you.
Speaker 1: 11:47
You know, our family's a big fan of the movie Ratatouille. Our kids grew up watching it. It's a great flick about anybody can cook. Guess what? Anybody can be a CEO. Now, there's got to be some things that happen in your career, but it's not out of the realm of possibility, and so I was just Alan. I am Alan and it happens to be the CEO. I was on a personal level with people while at the same time, being their boss, or their boss's boss, or the steward of the organization, and so being willing to be relatable and being a person first. Yeah, you get the job, of course, things you do, but you're still a person.
Speaker 3: 12:24
Yeah, like that the job, of course, things you do, but you're still a person. Yeah, like that approachability piece, vulnerability as a leader. You weren't the Wizard of Oz hiding in your tower and that probably made a huge difference. How do you think the role of a CEO is going to shift in five years, 10 years, with how business is changing? Like what might be different in this role in the future years, 10 years with?
Speaker 1: 12:45
how business is changing, like what might be different in this role in the future. Just think about technology and automation and how much is going to be accomplished artificially. The stakeholder groups have never been as numerous as they are now. There's so much influence on business from the social part of humankind that the stakeholder groups have become numerous and, frankly, as I was the CEO, I was always concerned that there's going to be another stakeholder that came up on Monday or Tuesday, but we had to consider that stakeholder and so, look, business has never been as fast as it is. If Friedman wrote, the world is flat, you can use that title to describe a lot of things in today's day. Right, everything is flat, nothing is compartmentalized, everything is blending and bleeding into the other. So that's a really hard thing. I think CEOs are going to have to continue upping their game in what to communicate, when to communicate and how to communicate.
Speaker 3: 13:47
Do you see organizations moving to being increasingly more transparent? As much as they can be, of course, but do you see a change happening there?
Speaker 1: 13:57
I think there's already been a change Now. I think that, done poorly, it can blow up in your face. Yeah, right, we've seen that recently in some very poor communications about some very sensitive subjects. And, yeah, I do think that people expect more transparency. But it is interesting. Is it transparency or is it inclusion? That's the that's a big question, right? Is it transparency that you got to know everything because you can't know everything, right? Or is it better said inclusion in a lot more of the how the sausage is made or how decisions are made, et cetera? Look, you can't include everybody in decisions. I wrote about a recent post I put up on LinkedIn. You can't. So you've got to find a way to make people feel like they're part of the subject, they're part of the decision making process or the project, so they feel like, as much as they can, they're engaged. I think that is a big expectation of people today.
Speaker 2: 15:04
You talk about the power of communication. I'll tell you look at what's happening. We're still looking for Kate Middleton with the idea, Honestly which, by the way, went down a massive rabbit hole with that. But it really goes to prove that when you have poor communication and or no communication at all from an entity or a leadership position, people will make up their own narratives, and you don't want that as an organization, right? You want them to be clear.
Speaker 1: 15:31
You just wonder. You're like, who in the world is advising them?
Speaker 2: 15:36
A thousand percent.
Speaker 1: 15:38
And you know that they've got advice, whether it's legal advice or Tom's advice or PR advice. But I remember something just happened recently the university presidents when they went before Congress. I remember I was listening to that and I felt so bad for them just because of the situation they were in. That's got nothing to do with what I believe in, so we'll leave that aside. And I remember calling my good friend saying who the heck's advising them? Even I know that whatever they were communicating was done poorly. So you just wonder how are things being missed so wild?
Speaker 2: 16:12
Yeah, joking aside, we're seeing it front and center, which, by the way, will be a Harvard business case tomorrow because it's just awful.
Speaker 2: 16:20
I have a theory that when the queen mum died, the whole place just went downhill. That's just my whole thing. But you see it there. You see it happening in businesses and companies too, right, especially as some of these corporations are moving through things like mass layoffs or less than desirable business results, and some of the tone in which employees are feeling the conversation is changing internally and externally is really nailing communication. Well, and, by the way, we know how to do this. It's always just so fascinating, to your very good point, when you're like who the hell's advising them? Because they're biffing it, and they're biffing it really hard.
Speaker 1: 16:55
I've got a saying listen, you're not going to like this and it's okay not to like it. I give you permission because some of these things that I'm about to tell you I don't like Knowledge butchered in.
Speaker 3: 17:05
I don't like Knowledge is a turd in the room.
Speaker 1: 17:06
I'm asking you, you don't have to like it. I'm asking you to respect it. Yep, and what I find is if you give somebody the permission to not like something, it doesn't make them like it. It just kind of deflates their balloon because the emotion it's like he's not going to fight me, he's not going to argue with me, he's not going to engage in that. No, I'm okay with you not liking it. There's a lot of stuff that people won't like and there's a lot of stuff that I guarantee the CEOs themselves don't like. There were decisions.
Speaker 1: 17:32
I had to make, or I made, or I agreed with or endorsed that I didn't like, no question about it.
Speaker 2: 17:38
And they had to be made and I respected them and I asked the people to respect them. You're framing that as you're not going to like this, but this is where we're going to have to go. Takes it in a direction of what do we do now? Let's get into solution mode, or how do we collectively handle the situation, as opposed to getting into the emotions of it, which can be time consuming, and listen. I think everyone has to go into their hidey hole of emotions and do all that shit, but the reality is we need to move, and that's a nice way to frame it.
Speaker 1: 18:12
The reality is, the decision has to be made because it's not going to go away just because we don't like it. Right, let's get on with it.
Speaker 2: 18:18
Yeah, productive about it yeah. You talked about communication being a really critical piece for a CEO. That, to me, is someone who is really looking out for people and wanting to have a conversation around people. But you're also running a business, and you're running a global, multi-billion dollar business and you need to get business results. How do you, as a CEO, balance the need for wanting to put your people and your business results on an equal playing field? How do you do that?
Speaker 1: 18:50
Yeah, you spend a lot of time thinking about it. You spend a lot of for wanting to put your people and your business results on an equal playing field. How do you do that? Yeah, you spend a lot of time thinking about it. You spend a lot of time debating and designing and redesigning. I had a wonderful professional coach who was a little bit of a therapist. I would say. I don't know if she would want me to say that, but she did act that way because, getting through these conundrums is hard.
Speaker 1: 19:15
You know what it needs to be, you just need to figure out how to get there. Look, I know people didn't like some of the decisions I made and I'm sure some of the people said he's not a people person. Look what he did here in the instant on the micro and I tried to use both and versus but for either or a lot. I can be the people person and I can make those hard decisions and trying to get people that were the but of the hard decisions to realize that it's in the best interest of everybody. Here's an example.
Speaker 1: 19:52
I was reading Reed Hastings' book no Rules Great book.
Speaker 1: 19:57
He reminded me in the book that you need to be transparent and you need to really get to the people and if somebody is not right for the organization, make the decision and move on.
Speaker 1: 20:07
And it reminded me of a decision that I put off for five years and I look back and said, gosh, darn it. I wasted five years of this person's professional life because I was trying to be too nice, I was weighted too much to I need to do what's right by the people when in reality doing what's right for the person was to be honest with the person five years ago, and as much as we think that we're not nice to people when we make hard people decisions, you may actually be being nice, being genuine, helping them out. So it's not a binary you either are or you aren't. There's a middle ground there. So, look, I thought a lot about how to reimagine the organization, knowing that people would have to move out of their current role because the organization had passed them by and we needed to redeploy people. And that is a really hard thing to do, probably one of the hardest things, because there is emotion involved.
Speaker 2: 21:10
Et cetera, relationships, everything, all these people yeah.
Speaker 1: 21:13
And was I good at it? I don't know if I was good at it. I think that the organization's success would probably conclude that, yes, we got it right more than we got it wrong, much more than we got it wrong. But I wouldn't suggest that I captured the flag on that one. It's a constant struggle. You mentioned all hands or the live cast that I love those just adored those. I love the time with everybody because I was just again just let's be myself and that did empower me. Frankly, it did build trust and it was just so much fun that we could just be people and we're all in it together, and titles weren't part of those events there are a lot of organizations that talk about.
Speaker 2: 22:16
They're either people first or they're very people-centric. They're there for their people. You've obviously sat at the well, at the tippy tappy of the table where you're making decisions financial decisions, strategic decisions around investments in people. And I'm curious if we could flip this, because you know what this takes from an insider perspective, working with boards, working with the C-suite running an organization. I'm Jane Doe of ABC Company. How do I know? What are the tells that my company really walks the walk on being people-centric?
Speaker 1: 22:50
Features is not being people-centric, actions is being people-centric. I remember talking about development plans and I came up with the analogy of if you buy an outfit off the rack, okay, but it doesn't fit well, it doesn't hang well, you may have to have it tailored, but if you buy a bespoke or a tailored suit, it feels really good and you're on the top of your game. I was reminded at one point hey, alan, in today's day nobody gets tailored suits anymore, so your analogy doesn't make any sense. I'm like okay, got it, okay, fair. But the point I was trying to make was people-centric organizations have to come to the people rather than say we're going to get pet insurance or we're going to give you the 25 healthcare membership. Those are all features.
Speaker 1: 23:51
What if you put dollars to direct one-on-one development programs, coaches, how are you helping me? Or how are we helping you, francesca, at this company, become a better person and professional? You, it's not going up to a buffet and you get to choose what you pick. No, you're going to pick off the menu and you're going to actually pick the meal you want and it's going to be made to order for you. There's plenty of buffet style development and learning and development platforms, etc. How do we build something that is bespoke, tailored and it's not 100% of it? 80% can be buffet style and the last 20 is really focused on the person. And look, we do that for executive coaches. That's a bespoke program, sure do. Why are we doing it through the organization? If I had a coach when I was a senior, I'd have been a much better professional.
Speaker 2: 24:49
Why don't organizations do that?
Speaker 1: 24:52
Well, I think it's a pretty progressive platform. I think it's a pathway that requires a lot of confidence and trust. It's expensive, it's expensive yeah. And I think that I don't know. I'm going to say this and I'm going to get ridiculed for it. I wonder if people work to the mean Like do you get the?
Speaker 2: 25:13
degrees, Alan. Is that what you're trying to say?
Speaker 1: 25:15
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I, Francesca. It's a great question. I don't know why people would say it's impossible. Why do this? Why not? We can't do it. What would it take to do it? What would it take to put a program like that in place?
Speaker 2: 25:35
It's a doable. I think I agree with everything you're saying. It is a trust, it's a vision, to your very good point A lot of times because people haven't seen it. They're typically a long game. They're not something that you can turn in a quarter and see results a lot of times, but those are the things that are so meaningful.
Speaker 2: 25:52
And this is what I really struggle with is when we're doing these like quarter by quarter, needing to see results, needing to see results, how can people fight for the long tail stuff, the break the mold stuff that really truly changes and shifts industries?
Speaker 1: 26:14
I was just working with my colleague on an article about intentionality and my belief now in coaching or in tailored development programs. We all hear professional athletes have coaches. Yes, and you can see the difference. Because they're higher up on the leaderboard, they win more tournaments, they can shoot a better percentage. Whatever it is On the professional setting, as you said, francesca, it's the long game.
Speaker 1: 26:41
I don't know if you can associate a win or this to the coaching. Maybe you can, but it's less direct, it's less cause and effect. The coach helps the golfer putt better, so on Sundays they make more putts, they win the tournament. Versus building somebody as a professional. I can tell you from experience the people that I've engaged in coaching and I've pushed to coach are much better as people and professionals, much more aware than they would have been or they were prior to. So I think most think that's for the athletes, because there's a grade right, you win, you lose, you move up. I think we can learn a lot from sports or from other professions. And so, look, I think it's massively expensive. But you know what? So are all the campuses up in the Silicon Valley, the open campuses. Those things are massively expensive.
Speaker 2: 27:40
Yeah, real estate's not cheap.
Speaker 1: 27:41
Right, and so is it all making people better professionals or is it allowing them to work in a better environment? Now, some would say working in a better environment will make you more productive. Okay, I'm not going to argue that I don't know the data on that. What if you took all that money and you put it back in developing Mel and Francesca to be better people, more spatially aware?
Speaker 2: 28:06
Less smart ass. There's a lot of benefits here.
Speaker 1: 28:11
I don't like that. I like that part of you, so I would not put that in the program.
Speaker 3: 28:15
That's your sassiness, I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: 28:18
I couldn't agree with you more, alan I've always believed in coaching and to both of your points that you don't necessarily see ROI in the first quarter, the second quarter, it just becomes part of your organization's culture that everyone gets a performance coach. All the people stuff is where the problems happen at the leadership level, starting at managers and above. So if you're addressing that when someone's first coming out into their career, it's going to get them light years ahead of other people who don't have that. So when they're at a manager level, you're not trying to suddenly jam down their throats milestone programs to make up for all of the care and attention that they haven't yet received.
Speaker 3: 29:00
Beautifully said, we've talked a lot about things that make people feel valued and respected, empowered in the workplace. You talked about inclusive practices, transparency, as much as you can have that, but make it really. It's like acknowledging their emotions, speaking to them human to human level. What are other things that CEOs can do or leaders can do to foster an environment where people really feel valued, respected, like they have belonging and meaningful work?
Speaker 1: 29:33
Certainly accolades and awards and the at a gal, at a boy comments. Yeah, to me the thing that got people really jazzed was the idea that they could connect with the CEO one-on-one, the idea that they knew the CEO was looking out for them and was looking to put them in different places, move them around, cared about their career. They felt part of the ingredients that were going to make the strategy reality. And once you get them bought in, they're bought in. As hard as it is to get them into the, into the room, if you do it right, it's equally as hard to get them out of the room and to have them turn away. Now, if you're a jerk and you're really not trustworthy, of course you can ruin a second, but I I had some colleagues that were just so sold on it because we activated their need for belonging and being part of the solution. I had people coming up to me and it wasn't to brag, it was. They would come up to me and tell me about all this stuff we're doing and how this is working and that is working, et cetera. It had nothing to do with their performance, they just wanted to share it. That's when you know they're in, they're so far. In Fine, you go tell the people about this. This is awesome. I don't need to be the conveyor of the good news.
Speaker 1: 30:50
You mentioned culture, francesca. I'm a big believer that culture should change. It's a living organism. It should not be the same today as it was yesterday. It should continue improving. It can deteriorate, but if you're doing everything right, it will continue to change. You Build new cultures over time. It's just critical for leadership to empower, to push more. Sit beside people and watch them.
Speaker 1: 31:22
I remember when I called a client service partner and I said hey, we want you to come lead this practice, because she was stuck in a practice. She was doing great, she was a partner, she was doing great. But I saw something in her, just like my predecessor saw in me. I called this person, said we want you to lead this and she said you realize I'm an audit partner. I have no idea about that.
Speaker 1: 31:50
I said you don't need to know about the technical aspects. We've got plenty of people that know the technical aspects. I need you to lead it and I have every confidence and will be right there with you to lead it. And she's like, okay, I really don't know what I'm going to do, but okay, and she's crushed it. There's dozens of examples where I would go into the system One because I like to shake it up, I like to get people rustled up to go do other things, but then I brought them out and boom, they became people that they never even thought they'd have the chance to become. It's a big thing of culture, trust, empowerment, and that's where people get really engaged with wow that's really cool.
Speaker 3: 32:37
He is for the people and someone believing in them. A big common red thread throughout all of your stories is not just the trust people have had in you, but your belief in them really empowered them to do it. You're advising and coaching a lot of CEOs now, but if it's a new CEO, they've never done it before. In the position you were in many moons ago, like how am I going to do advising and coaching a lot of CEOs now, but if it's a new CEO, they've never done it before. In the position you were in many moons ago, like how am I going to do this, knowing what you know now? What would you advise them to do right away in this space to establish a?
Speaker 1: 33:02
good culture. Trust your gut as much as numbers don't lie. Numbers aren't the only thing that you should be focusing on. Be willing to take a chance. We know who good people are. We always say that she has the it, and if the square peg doesn't have to fit in the square hole exactly, which is my example a minute ago this may sound a little crass. You can teach technical skills. You really can't teach the it. You can teach technical skills. You really can't teach the it. You can polish the it, you can bring the it out, but you can't really teach it.
Speaker 3: 33:38
Yeah.
Speaker 1: 33:39
And when you see somebody that has it, give them a chance.
Speaker 3: 33:43
Yeah, what is it the X?
Speaker 2: 33:44
factor. Is it X factor? Is that what we're talking about?
Speaker 1: 33:46
Yeah, the X factor, yeah yeah, when I was early on in public outing, you always knew the people that were going to be successful because they were pukers.
Speaker 2: 33:57
Huh, what, okay?
Speaker 1: 33:58
Like grow up in a trash can before. No, what's a puker? A puker is somebody that feels like they're going to puke when something goes wrong. Goes wrong, they care and your belly gets all tied up and some people probably do puke. I don't know, but is the person a puker or not? The person that's a puker, I'm going to work with that person because that person cares and gets it Part of the X factor, versus the person that just hey, okay, we'll try again tomorrow.
Speaker 2: 34:27
When you think about the people that have the X factor are the people that care enough to get nervous enough to get anxious. And yet earlier in this conversation we were talking about why don't organizations do this in macro right, in terms of caring about their people? It's because they're going towards the mean. It's because they're operating as in C's get degrees as opposed to getting the pit in their stomach and really caring. It's an interesting hilarity there. The puker story absolutely is staying in. We talked about this earlier. Like speed of business, we're in an election year. Ai, inflation, stagnation, boards, you name it. The amount of stuff and the amount of stakeholders that any CEO in any organization has to deal with is nuts, honestly. It's evolved massively, it's way more than it used to be, and it's only going to get more complex. I am curious about what are the hardest parts of this job. When you think about sitting in that seat, does the puking stay? This is what I'm wondering. Did you ever hurl as a CEO? That's what I really want to know.
Speaker 1: 35:41
Did I ever hurl as a CEO?
Speaker 2: 35:42
No, and I'm not even going to say I curled up in a ball and sucked my thumb. I've done that, maybe not as a CEO. Anyway, I had a ball and sucked my thumb.
Speaker 1: 35:50
I've done that, maybe not as a CEO. I didn't. Anyway, I had a lot of sleepless nights.
Speaker 3: 35:53
Yeah.
Speaker 1: 35:54
I had a lot of waking up at 2.30 in the morning with junk driving in my head or I'm not performing, I'm not performing. Look, I talked to my coach about this. I'm a big believer.
Speaker 1: 36:05
Everybody's got imposter syndrome no matter how successful we are, we all have it. I have it sure, okay, I admit it. And so I had a lot of waking up at two o'clock in the morning and never go back to sleep, and that was part of the job, because my head was swirling. I had a lot of puking experiences, not literally, but where I was all balled up in my gut because I had such a dilemma or I had such a challenge. One was when COVID came about right, plenty right. Others were when earnings were not where they needed to be, and what are we going to do with compensation and bonuses for everybody? There's all sorts of making.
Speaker 1: 36:44
One of the biggest moves I had to make, which was a personnel move. It took me four months to figure out how to do it. I remember exactly when I figured it out. I was on a plane from Detroit to Asia. Kim was sleeping next to me in the little pod and it just over Washington, where you live, francesca, and I figured it out, but it took me a long time. So, yeah, I had a lot of knots in my gut over the course of the year. Okay, I have gray hair. You can see I have gray hair.
Speaker 3: 37:07
Now I didn't have gray hair when we met. Think of presidents.
Speaker 1: 37:12
To your question, francesca people and the relationships that ensue, that will never go away. That's really hard Because, at the end of the day, no matter what business you're in, there are people in the business. It's a huge part of every ceo's routine anticipating what's next, not missing something. He always fretted that I was going to see a headline on the front page of whatever or an email, that something happened and I totally blew it. I just wasn't paying attention.
Speaker 1: 37:46
I wasn't worried about delivering good service because we had great people at the organization. I wasn't worried about delivering good service because we had great people at the organization. I wasn't worried about executing the strategy of the firm. Once we got everybody to a place where they believed in the strategy, which took about two years, once everybody was on the train, I didn't worry about that. I knew people, knew how to run the business and knew how to do what we needed to do. It's everything else. It's the ability for me to keep elevating my game in the firm's game. It was not missing something. It's not seeing around a corner and the people aspect of things, because every decision affects people, no matter what it is. It affects people, yeah, and so that was a huge part of it.
Speaker 2: 38:34
It's interesting to hear you talk about that, because we talk to employees leaders all week, every week Mel and I do and it's very similar to what we hear from them around their own craft, their own work. I was thinking when you get to a C-level, there's one of two things that happen. If it's me, I'm probably just puking my guts, which is totally fine. I love the fact that you still hold that level of care and that level of curiosity. There's this other, where there's this perception, too, that some CEOs are like have you heard this? That a lot of them are like pathological. Have you heard this? That a lot of them are like pathological.
Speaker 2: 39:10
Have you heard this? Yeah, yeah, you roll in these circles. Do you find that more people are pathological or they're more in the care? What's the split? Are we talking like 20, 80? What's going on here?
Speaker 1: 39:20
Oh, I think there are a lot of CEOs that are misjudged.
Speaker 2: 39:25
Oh interesting, Tell me more.
Speaker 1: 39:27
And look, I'm misjudged too. I've got a hard outer shell, no question about it. And if you don't know me, a lot of people think I'm a jerk. When you get to know me, you realize I'm really not a jerk, yeah, and I'm going to get things done. Look, you've got to be pretty confident, even if you have imposter syndrome. You've got to be pretty confident, pretty bold, to lead an organization and lead a journey. You got to be pretty bold and you got to be pretty tough. Now I do know there's plenty of people that are crazy.
Speaker 2: 39:58
Yeah, at all levels in the organization.
Speaker 1: 40:00
To be fair, believe me, I've met some of them, so it's yeah, but I think there are more that are caring than people give credit to.
Speaker 2: 40:08
I like that, I like it?
Speaker 1: 40:10
I really do. There's a CEO in the CPA profession there's a couple of them One that's got a bad rap and personal friends with him, and he's the nicest guy in the world and he gets a bad rap. And I can see why, because it was out of shell, but he's as caring as they come. And so the old adage okay, does the media do that to you, or is it real? I don't want to throw the media under the bus. People come up with their own stories.
Speaker 2: 40:37
Yeah, people come up with their own narratives. It does go back to. One of the keys here is to be a great communicator. Fair enough, and not that you need to be like happy joy all the time, but communication. This is one of the reasons.
Speaker 3: 40:49
You're in such a unique position too, I think, as a CEO, because every day you're in a position where you have to prove yourself to so many different people, day in, day out, over and over and not that others don't need to do that in their positions and I do think that there is a little bit of a uniqueness in that role where it's like the pressure of that has to be intense yeah, look more than anything.
Speaker 1: 41:15
All the eyes are on you right.
Speaker 1: 41:17
I remember when I became a partner I was told look, every, all the eyes are on you as a partner. Yeah, but it's not 6,000 person organization but in a hundred person team or whatever. I'll give you a story. I remember I was late to a meeting. I ran in and my coach was there. She was observing a lot of meetings for team effectiveness. I wanted her there to help me with the team effectiveness of the senior leaders of the organization Very helpful.
Speaker 1: 41:47
And so I run in and I want to get the meeting started. And so I go get a plate, want to get the meeting started. And so I go get a plate to lunch and I'm standing up eating and she's watching me and she pulled me aside before and she says what are you doing? I'm like what do you mean? I'm eating. She goes think about what you look like. They're all looking at you and even if they're not there, they're seeing you way out of control. And so again, in that little instant, you realize, holy moly, I might have gone backwards a little bit. And to your point, yeah, you are being looked at and even if you're not being looked at, you should not act like an idiot. And at that point, I was acting like a knucklehead. Slow down, sit down, eat. One, two more minutes isn't going to kill us. It was a good lesson.
Speaker 2: 42:31
There's this concept of shadow of a leader, and when you're at the top, all of your shadow casts over here, and even if it does something as simple as eating in front of people and giving the perception of we're not even going to spend time to sit down and eat, that's all stuff you have to consider and it's all part of the gig, right, and I don't know if people get that. Oh yeah, you've got a persona. I have no question about it. Mel and I were talking about this on the pod the other day. There is no one on the face of this planet that has led through what we're about to go through no one. And there's no playbook. I'm quite sure when you became a CEO, someone didn't say Alan, here's the CEO 101 book, number one and number two. You're in a context that has never existed before To me. There's a little bit of no one knows what the hell the answer is. There is no answer necessarily. It's just what are the choice points and how are you going to move through it?
Speaker 1: 43:27
So I'm advising a firm that has grown very quickly, that's exciting.
Speaker 1: 43:32
Yeah, it's wonderful. And the CEO brought me in to talk to the board and one of the comments he made is he did what we want to do. He led a firm and then he admitted to his board. He goes I've never run a company this big and I've never run a company that's bigger than this. Now he has, and so one. I gave him a lot of credit for realizing that he doesn't have all the answers and he's willing to take input. He doesn't follow my advice all the time but and he listens but to your point he's never run a company like this. And it's interesting. There's this concept. I don't know where I saw this be like this and it's interesting. There's this concept. I don't know where I saw this, but gradually. Then suddenly, gradually they grew. Suddenly they're a half a billion dollar firm. Gradually they're going to be a billion dollar firm. And if you're not focused on what's happening gradually, you won't be prepared for suddenly.
Speaker 2: 44:24
You talked earlier that you live by a set of principles, and when I think about companies that are in hyper growth, leaders that are in unprecedented times, how important are a core set of principles in leading oh, I think they're critical One, because it will demonstrate consistency to your stakeholders.
Speaker 1: 44:47
If you communicate appropriately, it will be the foundation to everything you do, because they'll know the type of person you are.
Speaker 3: 44:55
Yeah.
Speaker 1: 44:56
And it won't be just haphazard, it'll tie everything together. So I think it's critical.
Speaker 2: 45:01
Yeah, yeah, I've been thinking about that too, just like when I look at some of the best leaders and the best strat and the best comms, like there's this undercurrent of principles that run through it and you can even make mistakes, you can make, you can biff, you can eat in front of your C-suite, right. There's like from small, something like that very small to. We made an investment in this company and it was a stinker. Oh, move on. You know what I'm saying. There's a lot of forgiveness or elasticity in the culture when you do that.
Speaker 1: 45:34
Look, if your stakeholders know your principles, know what you stand for, whatever you want to say it, they'll understand the reasoning and they'll understand that these decisions were made with the right principles in mind or at the core. And again, not everything goes perfectly, but at least they'll understand why the decision was made, or how it was made, or what was made upon, etc.
Speaker 2: 45:59
Yeah, and that's inclusion to your point yeah.
Speaker 3: 46:19
All right, Wow rapid round. Well, this was meant to be fun, Alan, hopefully. Okay. Is it lonely at the top?
Speaker 1: 46:27
Doesn't have to be.
Speaker 2: 46:29
Good answer. Family Feud Good answer.
Speaker 1: 46:31
I think, look, you need to surround yourself with a lot of people, and they don't have to be people that work for you. You can't tell things to everybody, and if you surround yourself with the right people, have the right advisor, even internally. No, it's not lonely at the top. I wasn't lonely.
Speaker 3: 46:51
You have your community.
Speaker 1: 46:53
I really wasn't. I thought I was very connected to a lot of people and I engaged them as I could, but no, I wasn't lonely.
Speaker 2: 47:00
Can I ask a question? Did you have someone that would say, Ellen, that's nuts or no, you're absolutely wrong.
Speaker 1: 47:06
Oh, yeah, yeah, more than one. Some I gave permission to do that and some I didn't, or some did it before. They asked for forgiveness. Yeah, and I wanted that. I don't have all the answers. So, yeah, I wanted people to say, hold on Really, but now I push back. It would push back. What would it take? Why not?
Speaker 3: 47:30
They keep you honest and help you out by your blind spots. Yeah, yeah, would you recommend that your kid become a CEO?
Speaker 1: 47:39
I would recommend that my kids figure out what they wanted to do every day. Yeah, and I won't tell them to shy away from being a CEO if the opportunity presents itself. And I won't tell them to shy away from being a CEO if the opportunity presents itself. But the only way you're going to become a CEO, unless you start your own company, is if you're really good at doing what you want to do, because it takes head and heart and don't shy away from it. I didn't like me, I didn't plan for it and it's very rewarding and complicated and pukey and you know all these things.
Speaker 3: 48:13
Okay, Hot topic item CEO compensation. And not every CEO is paid $30 million a year, but this is a hot topic in the news these days. Do you think CEOs should be paid as much as they are?
Speaker 1: 48:30
All right. So I'm going to apologize to my mother because she told me don't answer a question with a question, so I'm going to play around here. If you're going to ask should CEOs be paid what they are paid, then should athletes, should movie stars should? Where does it stop? Now to your specific question. Yeah, I do think they should be paid a lot of money because look at what they're overseeing, Look at what they're stewarding, Look at the effect that they have and the multiplier effect that they have, whether it be for careers, whether it be for the public product or services. That doesn't happen by chance and if you think about skilled athletes, their careers are, on average, much shorter. They're taking a huge risk. In my profession, you take a huge risk when you become a senior leader because you give up your binky, your comfort, you give up a book of business.
Speaker 3: 49:28
Yes, if they're performing, they're performing they're making such the effect that commands a significant top level. I'm going to move, then, to layoffs, because I think there's a connection here to your point. You mentioned that if they're performing they should get that layoff. What's the best way for CEOs to show accountability during a layoff?
Speaker 1: 49:49
Layoffs are caused by a number of different things. They could be caused by a company not performing, bad strategy, bad execution. They could be caused by a pandemic. When I was leading the firm, we didn't do layoffs for a few years and I took the most significant cut in pay because I didn't want to take layoffs. I didn't want to execute layoffs. I didn't think it was the right thing to do in light of what was going on. So I don't think it's a one size fits all answer. Having said that, I would think that performance pay would be adjusted in situations where workforce had to be reduced because of an environment. I don't know if that happens all the time, yet I would think that would be. There would be an and to that. There were layoffs and senior leadership didn't make the money that they made the year before.
Speaker 2: 50:46
It's so interesting because you see this in the news where layoffs are happening, earnings are through the roof. Some of that might have been through efficiencies with layoffs, and a lot of these C-suite executives are like crickets we take accountability but they don't tell you how, and so they may be taking these cuts. But again, going back to the red thread throughout this whole conversation that you keep coming back to, alan, which I think is amazing is communication agreed.
Speaker 1: 51:19
I I think that there should be more communication around that. I think that there should be some how to the what of accountability. How are you going to take accountability?
Speaker 2: 51:30
No.
Speaker 1: 51:31
I'm convinced that if people were more communicative around that you don't need to give exact numbers, but you can give directional comments Right, there wouldn't be a withdrawal from the trust bank. Yeah, yeah, look at times, layoffs or rifts or whatever you want to call it. It's a necessity because of the business. I realize the employees are, the team members, are integral to the business, and this might be one of those things that you're not going to like. The business is a persona, as a being itself, too.
Speaker 2: 52:04
Yes, yes, corporations are, yes, they are. Yes, yes, corporations are, yes, they are.
Speaker 1: 52:07
And unfortunately people get caught in the squeeze. So the only way to at least make it understood, not agreed with or not liked or respected is, yeah, better communication.
Speaker 3: 52:30
Even you taking the pay cut before having to pull that lever to try to do everything you absolutely can goes a long way with employees when they see that or hear that. Is there a CEO?
Speaker 1: 52:35
that you admire and, if so, why. You know there's a couple of people I admire. They're both males, so I apologize for that. I think Ed Bastian at Delta has been fascinating. I fly Delta all the time. I love their customer service. I love what they stand for. I love his messaging. He seems to be a CEO of the people. I do think he came out of the public accounting world, which is pretty cool. I also like Jamie Dimon.
Speaker 2: 53:00
JP Morgan.
Speaker 1: 53:01
Yeah, I'm not anything like Jamie Dimon, other than there's some similarities. He says it the way it is. He's very matter of fact, he's very you're not going to like this, and that's some of the principles that I live by, so that's where I'll stop the comparison. I think he's great. I think he's just a real, true person and I've heard he's a real person outside the ropes. He's just a dude that happens to be the CEO of JP Morgan and he's crushed it. He's just done so well. There's so many others. As an addendum to this question, I love reading books by leaders, not leadership books, necessarily, books by leaders. I want to know their story. I said read Hastings' no Rules and David Cody and the book by Imbolt, and there's just so many books that I've read because I want to know their journey. I want to know how they did it and the stories are fantastic and I learned from them, and so the idea of passing it along through a book is wonderful. But those two I admire quite a bit. I really enjoy watching them.
Speaker 3: 54:04
What's the best leadership advice you've ever read?
Speaker 1: 54:07
I don't know if this is leadership advice or not. There's a book it's called Extreme Ownership.
Speaker 2: 54:13
Yeah, yeah, jocko.
Speaker 1: 54:15
Jocko Willick and in there. There's a lot of great stuff, but the one that I find myself using a lot in my coaching and helping teams and leaders get their shit together is discipline equals freedom. People think that discipline or structure ruins entrepreneurial spirit or it ruins. No, if you're disciplined in what you do and you set the plan and you execute it, it does allow you to have some freedom on the edges. So let's build that plan as opposed to just being all over the place, and it does allow you to have some freedom. So I like that From my point of view, just as my advice is read the books by the people that came before you. So read books by leaders that have been in the seat. It's amazing how much you learn. I was never a big reader as a kid by now. I can't stop.
Speaker 2: 55:11
I love reading it's so nourishing, right it is it is alan, it was awesome to talk with you today. Thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for being here, friend.
Speaker 1: 55:30
My pleasure. This is a great venue. I wish y'all luck in the world and I'm really humbled by you asking me to join you.
Speaker 4: 55:43
Thanks so much for joining us today, mel. We're back with new headlines next week. Yeah, yeah, we are All right. In the meantime, hit us up on TikTok, instagram, linkedin and YouTube at yourworkfriendspod and Mel. What else can they do?
Speaker 3: 55:56
Email us at friend@yourworkfriends.com. Send us a message, folks. We do reply.
Speaker 4: 56:03
We do reply. All right, Bye friends, Bye friends, Bye friends.
Belonging at Work
Fitting in fails…
Shrinking yourself to fit in is out. Standing in your truth is in. We spoke with belonging expert, and author of Braving the Workplace, Dr. Beth Kaplan to talk about why the old advice to “just fit in” is outdated—and honestly, damaging. We get into identity, inclusion, and how to stop molding yourself to a culture that was never built for you in the first place. Because real belonging doesn’t ask you to disappear—it asks you to show up.
Your Work Friends Podcast: Belonging at Work with Dr. Beth Kaplan
Fitting in fails…
Shrinking yourself to fit in is out. Standing in your truth is in. We spoke with belonging expert, and author of Braving the Workplace, Dr. Beth Kaplan to talk about why the old advice to “just fit in” is outdated—and honestly, damaging. We get into identity, inclusion, and how to stop molding yourself to a culture that was never built for you in the first place. Because real belonging doesn’t ask you to disappear—it asks you to show up.
Speaker 1: 0:00
What does belonging mean to you personally in three words Don't sacrifice yourself.
Speaker 2: 0:07
Oh shit, that's good, that's good, it's good, it's good hey friend.
Speaker 3: 0:24
Hey, mel, how are you? I'm good, how are you doing? Hey, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good.
Speaker 2: 0:31
Yeah, a couple of months ago Enzo figured out that when you whisper to Alexa, she whispers back. Well, this weekend we found out that if you ask Alexa to fart, she does and she has.
Speaker 1: 0:48
Yes, she has a whole canon of various farts, that she will fart on demand for you, which is incredible. And now I know what to teach my six-year-old nephew when I visit Florida in a few months.
Speaker 3: 0:55
You're welcome. I give you that gift. I give you that gift.
Speaker 2: 0:58
I appreciate it. Yeah, that was my Saturday. How was your weekend?
Speaker 3: 1:02
It was lovely. Thank you, it was so nice and sunny. Here I'm just enjoying spring, but I'm in the thick of wanting to throw everything out of my house. I just get in that mood of get a dumpster, let's throw it all out.
Speaker 2: 1:15
Yeah, that always feels good when you do that.
Speaker 3: 1:18
And then, four months later, you're like wait, where the hell is that? Where did that sweater go? Where did that sweater go? Well, friends, we're so excited because we're launching our episode with Dr Beth Kaplan, who is a global expert in belonging, and she is on a mission to improve belonging in the workplace in general in the world, and she joined us to talk about it. Francesca, what did you think about this episode?
Speaker 2: 1:44
Yeah, there were a lot of pieces of this episode that felt very personal, like I have felt what she had been talking about and I've also felt when I haven't.
Speaker 1: 1:55
I also felt just validated and really appreciated gaining some new insights and tools that I can take with me to help my own feeling of belonging but help other feelings of belonging as well.
Speaker 2: 2:08
Yeah, she was so good and gracious about offering small but really impactful things that everybody can do, whether you're an employee, a manager or, honestly, you're leading a company. Yeah so it doesn't have to be big, Doesn't it? Small things big difference Small things.
Speaker 1: 2:23
Yeah, it's Well everyone here's Dr Beth Kaplan.
Speaker 1: 2:46
Friends, we are super excited to have with us today Dr Beth Kaplan. Beth helps companies create a culture of belonging. She's also interested in how workplace trauma impacts our well-being and our future of work, and she's been recognized as a world-leading expert on belonging by the University of Pennsylvania and she's collaborating with them to develop a groundbreaking tool to measure belonging. She is currently the global head of leader development and enablement at Dassault Systems. Lastly, she is an author and her book Braving the Workplace will be coming out soon.
Speaker 1: 3:21
Beth, so lovely to have you here with us at your work. Friends, welcome. Thank you so much. It's great to be with you. Yeah, tell us what is belonging. How do you define belonging? So, belonging is the innate desire to be part of something larger than ourselves, without sacrificing who we are. So often I get the question of what's more important, the first part of that second sentence or the second, and they're both equally as important, right? So we've all had this overwhelming desire to be social, to be part of something, but if it comes at the cost of who we are, it's not real belonging. I felt that. I think I felt that before, francesca. Have you felt that before?
Speaker 2: 4:01
Yeah, I literally just got chills when you said that, even though I like I've heard you say that before, beth. But then when you said it again, I'm like, oh shit, that's so true. Yes, I felt it.
Speaker 1: 4:12
Yeah, the opposite of belonging is really fitting in trying to change who you are for other people. Yeah, and it never feels good when you try to force that. Ever, never. Why does this matter so much in life? It clearly matters, I think. What did they say? Community is actually more important than exercise in terms of life expectancy, right. Why does it matter so much in the workplace specifically? So it matters for so many reasons and the true reality of this one is that it extends beyond the workplace. We work so much more than any other generation.
Speaker 1: 4:45
You could debate that in history, when people used to have to hunt for their food maybe a little bit different, but at the same time, the reality in this one is that when you're happier, you're more productive. When you're able to connect with the world and feel like you can be yourself in any situation, you're going to feel that way. It gives you coping mechanisms. The serotonin alone is so healthy for us. When we don't have that, or where we feel isolated or excluded or any of the things, or like we're giving up a part of ourselves, it has very negative real-world consequences for us, for our mental, our physical, sociological well-being. Now, at the same time, it also takes a toll on everything in the workplace, from retention to all of the different measurements that you can come up with around satisfaction, but it's a real bottom line killer. When people feel like they don't belong, they either stay and they're unproductive which costs companies money, or they leave abruptly, which really kills your recruiting, and then, at the same time, when they're not productive, you lose business. You lose everything there. So the reality is that it hits all parts of the spectrum. You're obviously extremely passionate about this work.
Speaker 1: 5:56
What got you started? I think it's been with me all along. I think most of us would say that, right, a lot of people will come to me and say that everyone feels like a belonging researcher or everyone feels like a belonging storyteller because it's really rooted in our DNA. Right, it's part of everything we do. So I'm no different and for me, I had an experience in the workplace that really prompted me to evaluate how I look at myself. Was I being true to myself, and if I felt like I belonged or not? I'll keep it real.
Speaker 1: 6:26
The eventual realization was no. I didn't feel like I was being any of those things to myself, but instead of backing out and leaving, I doubled down. I made things so much harder for myself. So the second I figured that someone didn't like me who happened to be my boss at the time. It really hurt physically, right. So I think at the time it was way pre-pandemic and it was a stage where people weren't talking about things like this no loud quitting on LinkedIn, right. Or there was no quiet quitting where you could do what you had to do just to get the job done at the end of the day. So for me, I really wanted those gold stars from a boss who was never going to give them and I put myself in such harm's way that I was contemplating suicide.
Speaker 3: 7:11
That's true.
Speaker 1: 7:12
And when I told said manager, he ignored me. Wow yeah. So that was a trigger for me to get out. And not everyone's as lucky. You're not able just to pick up and leave when you want to, because there's this little thing called livelihood. Our jobs support us. So for me, I was able to make the decision that I need to leave, and it took me a good I would say eight months to a year to actually go. Yeah, I get it. What is that saying you can't win over people who are committed to misunderstanding you or not accepting you? And especially, I can only speak for myself as a perpetual people pleaser, a recovering people pleaser. It's natural, it's human nature to want to win people over when you feel like, oh, this person doesn't like me, why not, and what can I do about it?
Speaker 2: 7:57
And sometimes there's nothing you can do about it, but it does really impact you Absolutely.
Speaker 1: 8:02
And the sad part there's so many sad parts. The saddest part was I was trying desperately to win someone over who I didn't really respect. Yeah, I wouldn't take advice from him. Why was I taking criticism? Yeah, and it forced me to really look at myself. Look outside of the workplace. I was working 60 to 80 hours a week. I was losing friendships outside of work because people gave up trying to get together with me. I was doing things that were harmful, losing sleep. Hair was falling out. I was gaining weight and it was only until he ignored me, formally ignored my cries for help, that I knew I needed to leave.
Speaker 2: 8:39
I'm so sorry that happened to you. I just think it's really beautiful to see someone turning something that is so painful into something that is so powerful what you're doing to this work so thank you for that. I'm sure there are thousands of people that have felt very similar to you in terms of feeling like they didn't belong, that they were trying to assimilate into clipper culture, assimilate into the way a leader needed them to act to only not have that be reciprocated. You've been doing this work and studying this work, so you took that situation and then you went super deep in this. Yes, like a leading expert on belonging, I am wondering if we can talk about what are some of those common barriers or challenges people face in the workplace as it relates to belonging. What is that? What is that looking like for a lot of people?
Speaker 1: 9:28
I think it looks very different across the board. Right, there's a lot of diversity conversations that go around this, so when I comment, it's probably going to be a little more main sweeping. It'll hit everyone. I think one of the biggest barriers that we have is this internal talk track that we have. Right, there's this story we tell ourselves, and it's not always a realistic story. When we feel bad about ourselves, we beat ourselves up pretty badly. I think that's a really common barrier that I hear from people.
Speaker 1: 9:56
A lot of times the blame that you have is shifted onto you, from you, because you don't know where else to take it. Back in the day, I always say that back in the day it was HR, you'd go to HR. But the definition of HR has shifted, so when people have problems in the workplace they don't know where to go. You would logically think your manager, but that's not always a possibility, right? If we think about it, there are unequal playing fields. You and your managers are not equal. That's a reality. So speaking truth to power is really hard, and I think we're at a tipping point where people have been speaking truth to power and we haven't seen it go very well. So I think one of the biggest barriers are our leaders in the workplace and getting them acclimated to what it looks like. When we talk about trauma-informed workplace, so the trauma-informed workplace is really where you see things in the workplace that affect your mental and your physical health. We talk a lot about psychological safety, right? So when we don't feel safe in our environment and we're witnessing things that we need to either make just or justify on the company's behalf, that can become trauma-informed. For us is just one example, really. But who are about that? So a few things, not to disparage managers completely, but here's the reality. Have either of you ever had a manager that doubled as a psychologist? No, probably not. That's common, but from the pandemic and on, I believe that managers are being asked to take on way more, including the mental stability and health of their employees. Yeah, there's a lot of check-ins and things that managers are not able to control.
Speaker 1: 11:35
People come into the workplace with a lot of different backgrounds. Some come in and they are happy, healthy, raring and ready to go, and others unfortunately have to fake it till they get there. That's why concepts like family in the workplace are really hard. How many of you have heard anyone in the workplace ever say, oh, but we're like a family, oh, that's a red flag. It's a red flag because here's the reality. You can't fire your family. I would love to fire some of my family members. That's just not what happens. And most families are dysfunctional. Most are dysfunctional.
Speaker 1: 12:09
But when you equate family in the workplace to your personal life, who, which role do you think your boss plays in that? Right? A mom and dad? Yeah, very so. People really pay a lot of stock in that. Where some are like, no, I get it Clearly, that's not my familial ties. Others put a big point of this is me, this is who I am, and their identities start to get taken over by the workplace. So it's not I'm Beth, the mom of two. It is I'm Beth and I work at this company and this is my job.
Speaker 2: 12:41
It's been interesting watching as people are getting laid off. Yes, it's been interesting watching as people are getting laid off and they're getting laid off from companies that they have been with for five, 10, 15 plus years. And one of the things that when Mel and I talk to folks because we're on calls all the time with people when they get laid off, it is a grieving process A lot of times a deep grieving process because they did associate and identify so hard not only with the title that they had but with the company.
Speaker 2: 13:14
Because, I will argue that I think a lot of companies have positioned themselves as. You're part of this brand, you're part of this culture, you're lucky to be here, right, when you think about the safety net of your family. If your family were to disown you, you'd feel very similarly, and so I think there's this grief around, quite honestly, having that be ripped from you. And if you felt a deep sense of belonging and then all of a sudden you got laid off too, that does excuse my French. It feels like a huge mindfuck for a lot of people. Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 1: 13:47
And for a long time that was very taboo to talk about.
Speaker 1: 13:50
It's just the reality. Trauma is trauma. You don't need to be in the fields fighting to experience PTSD. There's a lot of different ways it occurs. Workplace PTSD is a very real thing, so a lot of the people I coach and I talk to are very anxious to talk to me about it because they believe that their trauma is not as important as other forms of trauma. Trauma can really be as small as a sadness you experience and as large as something physically happening to you in the workplace. That spectrum is just so huge.
Speaker 1: 14:24
I have one person that I talked to recently who had a real hard time identifying the first time that they experienced trauma, and what we were able to bring it back to was their five-year anniversary Came and went and no one recognized it. At the same time, everyone else on that team got recognized. No, that wasn't trauma. They experienced A lot of sadness that led them into this really unproductive zone where they unfortunately, they started to put up with more that came their way. You would think it might be the opposite, but they really just were trying again to get those gold stars from their manager who they thought didn't care about them.
Speaker 1: 15:03
And what could I have done wrong? In reality, that's something the manager probably forgot. It's sad, right. Maybe the workday alert didn't go off, who knows? And that's just one of the examples. And that was a spiral that kept going and going and then the trauma really occurred when they were out of sync with their manager. And then topics of resilience came up and instead of digging into the deep roots of what was going on in the workplace, resilience was dumped on the employee base. You need to put up with these things right.
Speaker 2: 15:35
but I find this interesting too, because when I think about belonging, it was like diversity and inclusion, then it was diversity, equity, inclusion, and then it was diversity, equity, inclusion and belongings. Yes, and a lot of the examples you've been giving are right around an employee and their manager, or an employee to employee. Yet sometimes in organizations it seems like we're putting belonging at this corporate level. Yes, there's a distance, there's a distance, and I'm curious about your thoughts on belonging in these big corporate initiatives versus belonging the way we do.
Speaker 1: 16:10
So I can break it into two things. One, yeah, belonging is not all or nothing. That's a really big common misconception. You can belong to part of something and not the whole. You may feel like you belong to the company and your team but not to your manager. Or you may feel like you belong to that manager and your team but not the company. You could swap it in and out, and that's why I think ERGs are especially fantastic and troublesome at the same time, because you feel fantastic usually in those groups and they are highly beneficial for you to really be able to identify and connect with people. However, that being said, when they don't connect back to the corporate initiative or the company doesn't do anything about the struggles of these ERGs, that's a problem, right, People have a harsher or a more thwarted sense of belonging, which means a lack of belonging. Another is that belonging is not DEI, and that's probably one of the biggest.
Speaker 1: 17:06
You asked me before I might change my answer. Dei is a barrier at times to belonging because when you ask people what belonging is in the corporate world, they now say D, E and I, and they're all very important topics. They're just very different. But I would challenge you to go to any corporate report out there that says report on DEIB, anything that has a belonging. And if you can find me one metric on belonging, I'd be very surprised. It's just not the same. They're sisters, not twins at times. How are they?
Speaker 2: 17:35
measuring it? What are the typical? Sorry, I should know this and I don't.
Speaker 1: 17:39
No, it's very hard to measure belonging, so that's why I'm working with the University of Pennsylvania to create a tool around that. But no, belonging is seen as something subjective and until we're able to make it more objective, it is very difficult, unlike diversity, which is typically done through representation, but I would challenge that. I love the topic of diversity, but I really am into diversity of thought and mind. I think it's incredibly important when we're talking about representation as well, so it's very different in that sense.
Speaker 2: 18:09
Yeah, there's a lot of work to be done there right. A lot of amazing work has been done and the journey continues, absolutely, I hope it doesn't stop you too, beth.
Speaker 1: 18:18
I'd it doesn't stop you too, beth. I'd love to hear more about the work that you're doing with the University of Pennsylvania, the tool that you are working on with them, sure. So a lot of the work I do is around how we construct our sense of belonging, understanding what the roots of that are, whether it's personality or it's how you make decisions. And when I was doing my dissertation, my goodness, a few years back, one of the things we determined is that people make decisions one of three ways for themselves, for the company or for a combination of both. So, as you can guess, the healthiest combination is when you have everything at once. So most people with a true sense of belonging have that combination. When we do it just for the company, it's typically what we call sacrificial belonging. Right, we have to give something up for it. We all know the sacrifices in the workplace the ones that miss their PTO to better the company, or the ones that are missing games to produce those reports. So the other thing is, if it's just for you, there's a few different ways you look at that, but it's not always the right way to do things. So what I've done with the University of Pennsylvania is we've developed a tool that looks to see how people make their decisions around belonging, and so what we're doing is really taking a look and working with different companies to see how the reports are coming out, if it's predicting people's propensity to leave companies or if it's predicting their propensity to thrive, based on the way they construct their sense of belonging. It's really interesting. What have you learned so far with the companies that you've worked with? Were there any ah-ha's that you were like, oh, that was unexpected, or anything that just reinforced what you thought? We've learned a couple of different things. A lot of the time it's not actually been what's through the tool, but it's really through the interview process about the societal norms of the company. So personality makes a very big difference. If you are a company that builds itself upon extroverts and you are an introvert in the company, it's going to be a lot harder for you to progress. Likewise, if you're in an introverted company with introverted leaders and you are an extrovert, it's also going to feel like you are just square round. It doesn't work that way. So I think what we've learned is that companies need to pay attention to what type of employees they have and making sure that everyone can survive and thrive.
Speaker 1: 20:57
Francesca, and I talk about this often that in the workplace, the responsibility of a lot of these things are on the individual, the team and the organization. So I'd love to cover all three from your perspective and the work that you've done. Yeah, from an organization standpoint, what are some steps that organizations can take to create that culture of belonging where people are thriving? There's a lot of ways I can answer this. I think one of the things they need to do is look at their policies. That's the first thing. They need to make it a more equitable playing field.
Speaker 1: 21:27
I think that most of us can agree that belonging is typically an authenticity measured against a very specific type of worker in the workplace. It's usually white male, that's the best way to describe it. The other thing I would say, on top of policies, is making sure that you do not have a culture of imposed belonging right so everyone belongs here. That's not the case and it makes people feel really bad.
Speaker 1: 21:51
There's this concept of duck syndrome. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but no, please tell us more. So think about a little duck floating along the river. You probably met like a brisk pace. In reality, that duck is working hard to paddle its legs to look that calm and easy. And a lot of the times the workplace imposing belonging or saying everyone should feel this way because we make everyone feel included or like they should have a sense of belonging makes people feel really uneasy about themselves and when that happens it produces the sense of belonging, uncertainty, right, I don't know if it's me or the company, and let's just say you are with people that are not being honest around you or worse, you've got the corporate cheerleaders. You're not necessarily going to be like hey, francesca, I know you go to every happy hour, but do you feel like you sometimes don't belong here? So I think that's one of the things that we do in the workplace as a corporation that needs to be reconsidered.
Speaker 2: 22:48
I tell you I've probably been listening to way too much Taylor Swift lately, but there is definitely this sense of betrayal sometimes, or even companies misrepresenting themselves and they're like, oh, everyone belongs here. We're such a fun culture when you look at literally the marketing of how some of these companies present themselves. Yes, and the expectation people have right, that dissonance when people don't experience it or they feel like they have the duck syndrome. It's got to be exhausting for people.
Speaker 1: 23:16
It is exhausting. And that's not to say that companies shouldn't promote a sense of belonging. But not everyone belongs here. Yeah, I think it's a culture we have. Yeah, it's like being more authentic, even in their own advertising to say we strive to foster that environment and consistently work towards achieving it, which acknowledges that it doesn't exist 100% of the time. It's a constant effort. I think that's more authentic than what some of the messaging is usually Absolutely.
Speaker 1: 23:47
And you had mentioned the fact that what should companies and the corporate level do, maybe versus teams? Yes, I'm a corporation that's looking to foster a stronger sense of belonging. I'm going to invest a belonging at the team level or the org level because, especially these bigger companies, that's where belonging is really taken out and brought into daylight, because the corporate vision and values they always get a little altered as you go down right. Different leaders live those values differently. Organizations reflect that. So taking a look at what my organization looks like and trying to create the best possible culture, the healthiest possible culture, that's what companies can do is really acknowledge and give that autonomy to their leaders at the org level, and then that also makes it a safer space for leaders at the team level to be able to do that as well. What can leaders do in terms of creating those moments, really checking in with their people around, how they're feeling in the workplace? What are some? Something someone can implement tomorrow, right, and just start doing if they're not doing anything today? So one of my favorite things to tell leaders is to really start to know their people. That doesn't mean you know where they live and what their backyard looks like, but it means knowing what's important to them. And one of the best, easiest things that any leaders out there listening can do is they can ask their employees what they liked about their last manager and what they didn't like, because that's really important I'm pretty sure we're talking about current managers, past manager and what they didn't like, because that's really important. I'm pretty sure we're talking about current managers.
Speaker 1: 25:22
The reality is we all take our past managers with us, typically up to three. So that means your favorite manager you take them with you. Your least favorite manager you take them with you and you are measuring that current leader that you're with against those great and not so great leaders. So if you're out there and you're a leader, you're going to want to say what did you like that they did. What didn't you like? And you're going to learn so much this year I asked my team those questions. I usually update it because not everyone feels the same after a year or remembers it the same. But I had said what do you like that your last leader did?
Speaker 1: 25:56
And someone had said they kept consistent meetings so they didn't move my one-on-ones, and that made me feel really good because it gave me anxiety every time I had to reschedule and I was guilty. I was one of those people that moved them around, so I stopped doing that. And another thing that someone said that they didn't like was being praised publicly. Accepting that kudos was hard for them in public, but they really did appreciate it in a one-on-one setting when you were giving very specific feedback of what they did. Well, those are just two tips that are really helpful. At least I find I love to hear it just checking in what are your needs specifically and really personalizing it versus kind of spreading it like peanut butter as if it works for everybody, just because you think that's the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: 26:42
Absolutely. It makes me think of that lawsuit that someone had when their birthday was recognized in the workplace but they didn't want their birthday recognized, and I think that's a perfect example. I know there was a lot of jokes that came with that lawsuit, but I was like that's so valid though. That's taking care of people and understanding what they do and don't want and paying attention to that Absolutely. What's interesting about that story with the employee that didn't want a public praise? He happens to be very publicly admired, so I just assumed that this is something he was comfortable with, and he was not, and ever since we changed the way we give him feedback and praise, the whole relationship has been so much more positive.
Speaker 2: 27:24
Yeah, I love the idea of the ghost, the blasted past that we all bring, because that's so freaking true. It's so true and that question of what did you love and what didn't you like is so informative because it's so personal and it's so emotional for people too.
Speaker 1: 27:44
So emotional. I actually talked to almost all of my past managers and so it's also just a good idea to keep in touch and sometimes keep it real. He likes to tell me when maybe sometimes I'm being a little more dramatic because she's got really great frame of reference for it. Sometimes I'm being a little more dramatic because she's got really great frame of reference for it. So you know, it's not a bad idea. It doesn't mean that you have to be best friends with your bosses. Obviously, your work friends' podcasts would tell you you're not going to be best friends with everyone, and nor should you. Yeah, yeah, I think getting to know your employees is super, super important. And knowing how they are as a unit if I haven't said that already, but understanding what your package deal looks like, that's really important. Knowing my boss, knowing why I stop work at 5.30 every day and then why I may go back on it 10, is important to me. I don't want to be seen as a workaholic, but at the same time, it's my comfort level and I also don't want to miss the time while my kids are awake. I dug out it should be completely acceptable and it is, but it's probably because we had that conversation and that transparency really goes both ways. I love that.
Speaker 1: 28:47
I love to talk about employees, because leaders are in there with their people. It gets into one-on-ones and then a team level, but they're not always in all of the stuff happening with the individual employees that kind of peer-to-peer interaction and what goes on there. And sometimes for folks, leaders are a huge impact to their experience and their day-to-day, but so are their colleagues right, and sometimes those peer-to-peer relationships can really make or break that sense of belonging as well. What can individuals do to foster belonging in the workplace? So I would say boundaries are a fantastic place to start, because boundaries are two things that we can control. We can't control other people how they react to our boundaries and we can't set boundaries for others. So I always like to say that communication is kindness in this regard, and allowing people to understand you a little bit better than they may by understanding what your boundaries are and why you hold firm to them, also gives them insight into your values and what's important to you. What can someone do when they're really struggling with feeling that sense of belonging, either on their team? What can they do if they're really struggling to find that?
Speaker 1: 30:06
My first piece of advice I give everyone is to understand if the situation is real or if it's a story they're telling themselves. Our internal narrative is extremely powerful. It is and unfortunately it's usually less positive that we want it to be. I really wish that we were having a conversation where we're talking about someone that had just so much faith in themselves and that they were talking about their narrative. Oh, my goodness, I just kicked butt on that demo, or that's typically not what happens, and there's a lot of anxiety and uncertainty. So I usually tell people, aside from looking at the story we're telling ourselves and making sure that it's realistic, it's also maybe doing a gut check, but against your own mantras in life. So for me, I can share the story that I will typically over-index on things. So I try to hold myself accountable to doing what someone's asked me to do and sometimes nothing more, which is really hard for me. And if I'm really not sure about that, I might go to a peer and say did you hear it? The same way, I heard this request.
Speaker 1: 31:09
Sometimes that makes a breeding ground to open up a little differently with people and it also cuts the drama down, because you don't want to just have that friend that you commiserate with at work and that's real easy to get into that trap. If you have another person, it's the drama triangle, so it just keeps going and going. We want to make sure that when we pick co-workers that become our friends in the office, that it's people we can trust and that you typically want to limit any of the difficult conversation within that person that you trust. Personally, I love to be friends with everyone, but when it comes to people that I really will bank on, I usually maybe pick one person that maybe knows a little bit more drama about me than others yeah, someone who can also help you check yourself if needed. Right and honest yeah, is that true? Just asking, is that really true? That's right. I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1: 32:07
There's a huge push in workplaces around bringing your authentic self. How can folks balance that need for individuality with their desire to fit in so they can be authentically them and bring and maintain that individuality while also feeling that sense of belonging? So I think the first step in doing that is understanding your values and what's important to you. So when you make decisions, you're indexing against them. Let's just say you notice bad behavior in the room.
Speaker 1: 32:33
You have Black colleagues that are not being heard, and diversity is a huge value to you, equity is a big value to you, and amplification If that's something that is going to keep you up at night, you need to speak up. I mean, let me just say that to me that is a huge value, so to me that is inherently doing the right thing. But, that being said, if that's going to happen just because other people are not amplifying their voices, it is part of my value system that I would need to be the one that stands up and says Mel just said that I really, or I love how Mel just told us that we are going to use the vending machine on the fourth floor?
Speaker 1: 33:12
I don't know, I have no good examples. This often happens to women right In meetings, where you need to step in and say that was a great point made by so-and-so. Yeah, that's right. And so I think understanding what your values are and I don't like the negative metaphors but understanding what a hill we're dying on is for us and what's not Not everything has to be a battle, right, so there are a lot of us that have the sense of justice in us and understanding what battles we should be fighting, and not If it's going to keep you up at night and it's going to eat at your soul because you've just betrayed yourself.
Speaker 1: 33:46
It's worth speaking up. Yeah, If not, one of the tricks I do is I typically hold three coins in my pocket and when I'm in a meeting, I make sure not to spend all three at once and not to speak more than that, because it's going to be really hard for me to tailor back. And so giving yourself strategies when you know you may be in a tough situation really key in the workplace. Yeah, I like that, and the three coins in your pocket is a nice reminder for folks. That's a very simple tactic to use.
Speaker 1: 34:16
It's also sensory, if you think about it. Yeah, I like that. I am wondering about different ways of working. Obviously, covid really blew up how we work, which is fantastic in so many ways, and now you have returned to office and people who are in the office and you have these hybrid working environments, and some are still 100% remote. Would you approach ways to foster belonging differently, based on the modality of how people are working? So COVID was terrible, but one of the things we got out of it is this ability to see people beyond the screen, and I think that's really important. I've always been a remote employee, so I knew I was to people. I was just sitting in this box here and then, when COVID happened, everyone was put in that position and I think it made people reevaluate where people work from and the fact that it didn't really matter. I will tell you that there is this concept of place belongingness, and place belongingness really sits with the fact that if it feels like home, it can be linked to a place. I've never been in a corporate headquarters where it's felt like home. No one serves me coffee, so no baristas at my house. That would be lovely, like sometimes it happens in the workplace and that's a luxury.
Speaker 1: 35:34
I think that people have a misconception that you need to be in an office to feel a sense of belonging, and I don't believe that's accurate and the research tells us it's not true. What does the research say about that? Because you hear all of these big organizations. A huge part of their argument for return to office is it's going to foster belonging. We've lost belonging and it feels like that's such a false narrative. What does the research say? The research says that unless it feels like home, it doesn't necessarily need to be placed belongingness. That being said, do I love to get together with my colleagues? I do, I'm one of those people that does, but that is because I'm an ambivert that leads towards the extrovert side. So I get so much energy from other people. Yeah, doers, but they just they get their stimulus from other places and that's okay. So while I do believe that people build a great sense of community while they're in the office I do it doesn't necessarily have to be done that way. And I'll tell you, almost all of my team and my organization that I manage is remote. We get along fantastic. We don't always agree, we love disagreeing, we love the debate, but it doesn't break our sense of belonging to be remote. I do think there are certain jobs where that collaboration in person is important, right, but I just happen to be in a space where it's not as firm and we believe that working from the office could also mean you're at a client or other places where you are set up and need to have those interactions, but, no, it does not give you a stronger sense of longing to be in an office.
Speaker 1: 37:17
We have, I think, what? Four, now maybe five generations in the workplace, which impacts so many things. We talk about individualization in their needs and that personalization. How do generational differences and especially in the time we're in now, like? How does that impact belonging in the workplace? So we have a lot of generations at once, as you mentioned, right, you've got the boomers, who really will challenge less when it comes to management and authority, because your job and your boss are sacred in a sense, and you've got the Gen Xers, who are still a little more likely to please I'm a Gen Xer, but at the same time, we'll take far less to get it done and we're not necessarily the purpose-driven generation that is currently in the work, coming up in the workplace where they've been taught that they can bring their authentic selves to work and they should bold people to standards that are different than maybe the millennials that came before them, that a little bit more different change in the way that we work. So I think all of those generations together learn from one another.
Speaker 1: 38:27
I think in the beginning it felt a little problematic, but I think it's forcing people out of their comfort zone, which helps everyone grow just a lot differently than we have in the past.
Speaker 1: 38:37
I would go as far as to say that the next generation will be probably Generation T, which is all around transition and how we deal with the world and look at it differently. So I honestly think all of this is bringing phenomenal diversity of thought that didn't exist necessarily before. I couldn't agree more. It just seems like it's a really good conversation that seems to be happening among everybody about how to make work better together Absolutely, and these were things we weren't talking about. So it is very interesting. We're also getting into different things that we didn't before when it comes to these generations. Like, we have grandparents now in the workplace and if you think about it before, people would retire early than they do now. So you didn't have that frame of reference, you have people working longer than they ever have and these shifts in generation and family responsibility are really shaping a different way that we look at the workplace.
Speaker 2: 39:33
I'm personally completely for it. Outside of like humans being humans, there's no reason why we shouldn't have been striving for a very deep sense of belonging all along. It's exciting to see this evolve, especially over the last, I'd say, five years, where it's been a big part of this discussion. I do want to talk about where is this going, but before I ask you that and I really appreciate having your insights in this because you're so researched on it, You're a practitioner of this I feel like you're the best person to ask this question and I'm going to ask you to give a grade Grade scale A, B, C, D, F, right Corporate America how well do organizations in corporate America foster belonging?
Speaker 1: 40:16
In America B minus.
Speaker 2: 40:21
B minus. Rationale for the great. Rationale for the great.
Speaker 1: 40:25
Because a B is positive but depending on how you look at it, some people think it's really negative in this cultural perfectionism that we have and others are completely satisfied by it. I thought about dropping it down, but the C being average, I think I still think it's a bit above average because the awareness layer is there. I don't talk to people and have to talk about why belonging is important anymore If you're just accusing to people about what it is and how we got to where we are with it. So I'd say solid.
Speaker 2: 40:58
B minus.
Speaker 1: 40:59
I like that answer.
Speaker 2: 41:00
I like that answer. I feel like most employees would answer that too.
Speaker 1: 41:04
I'd agree. I usually think that people are going to answer lower and they don't. I think a lot of it also is because people are nervous to tell the truth. They are, yeah, nervously trying to get back to their employer.
Speaker 2: 41:16
I also am wondering, because there's such a morphing of our values towards work too, I wonder if people are taking the pressure off of organizations to be everything to them. Now I'm looking at this more transactually, or I'm looking at this as a Mel. I'm sorry, I'm going to use this analogy again. I'm not looking at you as someone I want to marry. I'm looking at you as someone I want to have a good time with tonight.
Speaker 1: 41:37
So it's like the pressure's off a little bit, my hope is because people realize they don't have to get their sense of belonging from work. Yeah, so we have this concept of dissimilated belonging, where you don't necessarily need to be a cultural ambassador. Some people just want to do their jobs and go home. Yeah, that has to be okay. We have to make that okay and I think this new generation does that, yeah, in a sense for us. So I want to say that's becoming a bit more mainstream, that people don't need to get their satisfaction and their purpose from work. Yeah, that's the generation I think that we'll see come in as well. It's so healthy, that's such a new healthy outlook. We'll see come in as well. It's so healthy, that's such a new healthy outlook.
Speaker 1: 42:13
Because we're all Gen X on this call, you know, like that was a transition I think we probably all made over time. But it's nice to see that people are not moving away from putting their whole identity into the work Absolutely. And then there's these companies that are shifting their values to be really about the work they're doing and not necessarily the destinations for belonging, which is huge. The company I work for, I have to say I'm proud because we really do look at powering smarter treatments for patients, and so, if you really break that down, that's a phenomenal aspiration and we really work very hard to it and we really work very hard to it. You would never say in our values that we have to feel a certain way or do a certain thing or act the way to get there, and for us that takes a lot of pressure off of things, absolutely.
Speaker 3: 43:01
Yeah.
Speaker 2: 43:02
I also think it's an accurate representation. Yeah, this is my thing. Can we get back to accurate representation? I'm not judging you on what you're saying you are. What I'm asking you to do is be honest about who you are so you give an accurate representation. That's my play. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. All right, so this is exciting. Mel and I were talking about this the other day, because I don't know about you, beth, but you feel the energy shifting, especially this year around work around speed. This year around work around speed, around change, around everything. And belonging has made wonderful progress in terms of educating people about value, what it is, and I'm curious about, when we look at the next five years, how do you see the concept of belonging evolve? How do you see the needs for employees and organizations evolve? What does the next five years of this work look like?
Speaker 1: 43:55
What I hope it looks like, I should say, is that it is a place where people don't have to sacrifice who they are to be themselves. I think part of braving the workplace is being yourself every day in a world that tells you to be something else. So I'm hoping that the workplace in five years is more representative of your towns and the people on the streets. That's a really aspirational goal I have for the workplace, and I also hope that people can understand themselves a little better and don't feel as pressured to be all of the things all of the shoulds, the coulds and woods that the rest of the world would like us to be.
Speaker 2: 44:33
I love that I love that you talked about how leaders can create a sense of belonging. I'm curious about making teams more representative of our work environment. They're more representatives of the way that our towns look like. Is there anything that you would have that a manager could do, a leader could do, to say I really want to make sure that I can start to achieve that now.
Speaker 1: 44:53
I think it's looking at your team and the diversity on your team. Are people in your meetings nodding their heads or are they arguing comfortably with you? Are they debating? Do they speak up or are they just laughing at your corny jokes? I think that's the things I listen to at least. I think it's important to really be able to be in a team that communicates dissent.
Speaker 3: 45:17
Yeah.
Speaker 1: 45:17
I think it's also important to share experiences with one another. You're not going to share everything, and nor is it appropriate to share everything in the workplace, but there's certain life moments that we all have, and being able to comfortably speak to them at the appropriate level of detail is really important, and I think that's why people feel such a pull to go back to the office, because you do those things without thinking about them. We always talk around about the water cooler and talking about the latest episode of whatever you watch, but it goes deeper than that. It really does. It's a little harder to hide your emotions in an office yeah, absolutely, it's not very acceptable, and that's it really does. It's a little harder to hide your emotions in an office yeah, absolutely, very acceptable. And that's what people miss. I think they miss that sense of camaraderie, and we don't necessarily need to be a person for that. We just need to understand how to break down barriers that are preventing us from doing that.
Speaker 3: 46:04
Yeah, love it, love it.
Speaker 2: 46:31
Rapid round.
Speaker 1: 46:32
Yes, we're going to do rapid round. I promise this is painless, okay, and it's just possible. It's meant to be fun. Some of our best conversation happens here and the goal is to answer pretty quickly, like your very first thought that comes to mind. And if you want to expound upon it, absolutely you can, so we'll leave that up to you. And if you want to expound upon it, absolutely you can, so we'll leave that up to you. Sound good, perfect, okay. What is the best belonging initiative you've seen so far? The best belonging initiatives I've seen so far is through Brene Brown, who talks about braving the wilderness and the ability to be yourself and the comfort and bravery to be yourself. What does belonging mean to you personally in three words Don't sacrifice yourself.
Speaker 3: 47:23
Oh shit.
Speaker 2: 47:23
That's good, it's good, it's good. I see merch, beth. I see a lot of merch happening.
Speaker 1: 47:30
What are the top three factors that make a community and we see work as another kind of community feel inclusive? Inclusive is what other people allow for you to be, versus belonging is what you decide for yourself, okay. So if I'm talking about inclusive, I would say it's transparency, I would say it's care, and care is a really big spectrum, right? Care is thoughtfulness and it's also speaking your name in a room of opportunity. And care can also be boundaries, and maybe I would go with boundaries, now that we're talking about that as well. I think inclusive, having that level of boundaries, promotes all the things we just spoke about. And with that and that, because that was inclusiveness, now flip it with belonging. So what are the top three factors that make a community feel like others belong? Individuality, like others belong, individuality I'm going to go with care, because we know care is the number one influence that a manager can do to make their employees feel like they belong. And trust I like it. Okay, trusting ourselves and trusting others yeah, the trusting. Trusting yourself first, of course, so important, but it's also trusting others too, in that everyone starts with positive intent. That's right.
Speaker 1: 48:55
Yeah, if you could recommend one book, movie, article on this topic of belonging for someone, something that's deeply resonated with you and you're like I need you to see that, read that, listen to that. What would you recommend to someone today? It's a really tough one. Bell Hooks has a lot of phenomenal topics around belonging. Maya Angelou is probably my idol when it comes to this conversation, because she presented belonging in the best, truest way. Belonging to nothing and everything at the same time is just magical. When you can be that free to belong to nothing, you belong to everything. So I'm going to go with bell hooks and Maya Angelou. I love it. That's really powerful. When you belong to nothing, you belong to everything. That's right. If you could have every company do just one thing differently tomorrow, what would that be? Get to know their employees and what matters to them. How about?
Speaker 2: 50:02
leaders the same and individuals be.
Speaker 1: 50:11
If I could have one wand and I would wave it around, it would be for people to be kinder to themselves.
Speaker 1: 50:15
It really would be.
Speaker 1: 50:16
I think we put a lot of harsh, in harsh words, harsh feelings out there.
Speaker 1: 50:22
A lot of it just creates this crazy level of uncertainty and anxiety and then, a lot of the times, the exclusive nature of that is isolating and stressful, and that's a lot of the times we keep it to ourselves until it just boils over and you either explode or, unfortunately, all of the physical ramifications come into play, because we know that this becomes physically painful when we feel like we have a thwarted sense of belonging and it's unfortunate that belonging is an antecedent to suicide. When we feel like we have a thwarted sense of belonging and it's unfortunate that belonging is an antecedent to suicide. When we feel like the world is better off without us or we find that we don't believe we're making a difference for ourselves and others. So I would love to see people be kinder to themselves overall. I think that's such a really good message. I'll share my best friend if I'm like down on myself, which I think we're all guilty of it trying to get better at it, but it's the first.
Speaker 1: 51:17
Of course, you're your own worst critic. My best friend will say hey, don't talk about my friend like that. We just stop. So it's just little things like when you're talking about yourself, be like hey, don't talk about you like that. I think it's good. I think that Thank you so much for this and for your authenticity and for sharing all of this good research with us and tips with us on how to have better belonging at work, and we cannot wait to read your book when it comes out soon. Thank you, and thank you for the phenomenal work you're doing on this podcast. I bet you people tune in and they just love it because you both seem like you're friends with the podcast guests. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: 52:07
Thanks so much for joining us today. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends.
Mindful Leadership
Emails flying. Deadlines looming. Your Slack is a war zone. But what if you could lead through it without burning out? Aurora Myers and Carissa Ricci are here to help! We’re talking mindful leadership—the real kind. No fluffy mantras or toxic positivity—just practical ways to stay grounded, focused, and human when everything around you feels like a mess.
This compelling episode dives into the essence of mindful leadership in the workplace. Our guests share their journey and expertise on integrating mindfulness and mental health practices into corporate culture, emphasizing the significance of showing up as your full self at work. By embracing self-awareness, leaders can harness their best selves, fostering healthier and more effective team dynamics.
Your Work Friends Podcast: Mindful Leadership with Aurora Myers and Carissa Ricci
Emails flying. Deadlines looming. Your Slack is a war zone. But what if you could lead through it without burning out? Aurora Myers and Carissa Ricci are here to help! We’re talking mindful leadership—the real kind. No fluffy mantras or toxic positivity—just practical ways to stay grounded, focused, and human when everything around you feels like a mess.
This compelling episode dives into the essence of mindful leadership in the workplace. Our guests share their journey and expertise on integrating mindfulness and mental health practices into corporate culture, emphasizing the significance of showing up as your full self at work. By embracing self-awareness, leaders can harness their best selves, fostering healthier and more effective team dynamics.
Speaker 1: 0:00
And what I wish somebody would have told me is just sit your butt down and just feel and just practice, because you are in your body and you know it's best for you.
Speaker 2: 0:09
Boom. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 4: 0:11
I'm going to put like five exclamation points after that.
Speaker 2: 0:36
Friends. Mel and I talk to a lot of people every week and really uncover what's happening with them at work. On the same token, what was really interesting is when we look at our analytics around, what people search for when they're searching our pod or when they find our pod, it's all around the same type of themes, right, mel? It's like how do I get through this work? Schmutz.
Speaker 3: 0:53
Yeah, it's. My day is hard. I'm dealing with politics, I'm dealing with changes, I'm dealing with tough team situations, project situations. How do I get through it?
Speaker 2: 1:05
Yeah, it's how do I get through it? How do I get through today, now, this minute, this stress? And so Mel and I called up Chris Arici and Aurora Myers. They are experts in what's called mindful leadership, and if you don't know what mindful leadership is, it's really about understanding ourselves and our own nervous systems and our physiological reactions to stress, because when you have stress, whether or not you recognize it, you're having a reaction physically, mentally, emotionally. We have them, and what mindful leadership is trying to do is allow you to understand your own operating model so you can use that data to inform how you want to show up and then show up in a really beautiful way, because when you understand how you show up and react to stress, you're going to be a better version of yourself.
Speaker 3: 1:54
I couldn't agree more, and I feel like in this episode, carissa and Aurora gave so many tangible and tactical tips that you can take with you every single day Stuff you can implement in the next five minutes.
Speaker 2: 2:09
Listen, chris and Aura do this as their life's work. They have a company called Ignite where they're uncovering and helping people ignite their own mindful leadership style, but with us they really shared. What do I do in the minutes in the small movements today? What do I do as an employee? What do I do in the minutes in the small movements today? What do I do as an employee? What do I do as a leader? And then, how do I really work to establish a better understanding of my own operating model? Well, with that here, it is our conversation with Carissa and Aurora about mindful leadership. Friends, we're so stoked to have you first of all, just like being around both of you, so much a good energy and a good juju. But what I'm going to talk about your backgrounds? Um, obviously both of you have deep mindful leadership practices and you also have really interesting backgrounds in terms of how you got here. So I'm wondering if you could start by telling us what's your journey to where you are today.
Speaker 1: 3:16
I started getting into the mindfulness and yoga space when I was 17 years old and it's been incredibly helpful for my mental health, and I saw a need to infuse all of this good stuff movement in your body, working with all of the messy thoughts in your brain in corporate culture, in a place where I feel like all of that stuff is not either prevalent or taken seriously, and so I wanted to take what I had learned and bring it to a place where people could use it the most to de-stress and feel better and really invest in themselves over time, and that's what inspired me to get into all of this Right environment to do it too. What about you?
Speaker 2: 3:54
Carissa.
Speaker 4: 3:55
Yeah, for me, I bounced around from the academic environments corporate environments. I would say the bulk of my experience has been in corporate and I have seen examples of really amazing and incredible leadership and not so stellar leadership and everything in between and those environments where you feel like you're allowed to bring your humanity to work versus those where you feel like you have to check part of yourself at the door. And I think seeing all of those different examples of what it looks like on a team when you're engaging with different types of leaders really intrigued me. And what does that look like from a health standpoint and mental health awareness is something that has been really important to me and mental health in the workplace and what does it look like to be able to show up to work and feel like you can bring your full self? So for me, getting to this place has been wanting to bring some of those healthier practices to teams across the corporate environment where we can make the workplace feel better for people.
Speaker 3: 4:54
I would love to hear from you both how do you define mindful leadership?
Speaker 1: 4:58
It's such a nuanced but fascinating topic.
Speaker 1: 5:02
The way that I like to think about it is we all have these operating instructions for ourselves that help us figure out what triggers our stress response cycle and how we can show up to be the best version of ourselves in as many situations as possible, both personally and professionally. And the goal of mindful leadership is to figure out what are our personal operating instructions. How does that show up in these professional settings? When we're in community, when we're in conversation and relationship with others, how can we use that data to inform the way we show up? And then, on the flip side, how can we work with other people who have different operating instructions and meet them with empathy and curiosity and kindness, when we're all coming at a situation from different perspectives and whatnot? So it's really like understanding ourselves and our own nervous systems and our physiological reactions to stress. So that way, when we're in those conversations that feel messy or we don't quite know the answers to them, we can feel a little bit more grounded and less pulled or pushed from this place of internal stress.
Speaker 3: 6:06
Why do you think this is so critical in the workplace?
Speaker 4: 6:09
Aurora and I often talk about, like it starts with us as the leader and if I can't hold space for my stuff, how can I hold space for that of other people?
Speaker 4: 6:18
So, as Aurora was talking about those operating instructions and the physiology of it, moving from a place where it's less reactive and more intentional is really, really important, because we are in a high stress environment Most of the time. We are being pulled in a million different directions and how can I tap into what's happening within myself? So there's, there has to be that willingness there to first open yourself up to okay, I'm going to explore this and then, secondly, raising that awareness of oh, this is the physiological response that happens when I'm triggered and this is how I can move forward with that. One of the reasons why it's so important is that, in those moments where you would traditionally be more reactive, it gives you an opportunity to pause and rethink the way that you approach things and can have a really incredible impact on your teams If they start to see you showing up in a different way and you coming from a more grounded place, a more centered place, a place of authenticity. You're role modeling that for your team.
Speaker 3: 7:17
Yeah, I think that's really important and we've seen the shift. I've personally seen a shift over the last 20 years on leaders being more introspective before showing up for their teams and spending a little more time there. Why do you think this is so important right now? Why is this so important for the future of work?
Speaker 1: 7:36
In my experience of working with teams is that so often there's this interest in mindfulness and mindful leadership, but sometimes it can happen in these vacuums within certain groups of leaders and then they don't have the tools and resources to take that and carry that forward to their teams. So that's one of the things that we've also recognized that we would like to change about. The future of work is not just sitting down at the beginning of a team meeting for five minutes and breathing and feeling really good and then going eight hours straight and just like not being able to maintain any information because you're just so tired and exhausted, but really infusing it as much as possible into the spaces where people need it most and giving the leaders the tools that they need to help their team do the same their team do the same.
Speaker 3: 8:26
That makes sense. It's interesting because when you first start to hear something like mindful leadership in certain workplaces that some people feel, oh, this is too woo-woo, is this too touchy-feely, what does that exactly mean? But it's clear from what you're saying this is really for everyone, right? So this?
Speaker 4: 8:40
is for everybody, whether or not you actually lead in the formal sense that, oh, I have direct reports in the system, so I'm a leader. That's not what we're saying here. We're saying that you are showing up as a leader. You're showing up as a leader in your communities, with your friends, with the people in your life. There are all of these different facets in which you show up as a leader and, yes, one of the lenses is if you lead people at work. But really, this mindful leadership practice and idea can be infused throughout your life, no matter what your work life looks like.
Speaker 3: 9:09
Yeah, I think it's such an important call out to say leadership does not equal a title. It shows up in so many different ways, so I just love the work you're doing.
Speaker 2: 9:18
And Mel, to your good point too. I know a lot of folks might feel like, oh, is mindful leadership, woo-woo. But quite honestly, there's a lot of benefit for someone really understanding their operating model, right, their operating system, to understand how they're going to react, how they're going to react in stressful situations, how they're going to react when they're excited, how they're going to react in front of their teams. Like to really be able to check themselves, because I think we've all worked for someone where you're like man, you need some therapy, like we've all right, probably not, probably not.
Speaker 4: 9:50
Oh, 100% Right.
Speaker 2: 9:52
Or you're like in a conference room with someone where they're just they're going in fuego or they're really reacting so poorly and the impact for the team, the impact for the work, is slowing it down, it's making people feel really disengaged, and that all costs time, that all costs money, and so I think this idea of really starting to understand you, your operating system, and then how you can take that and show up as your best self through mindful leadership, is rad. When we talked earlier, one of the things you were talking about is this doesn't have to be these big leaps of things, right. This is something that can start small, small things. And I'm curious how can someone really start small in mindful leadership, start small in understanding their operating system? Let's start with employees. How can employees start to pull into a practice of mindful leadership?
Speaker 1: 10:43
When we do talk about mindfulness, it can feel disconnected from our real life experiences and the stressors that are going on.
Speaker 1: 10:50
Sometimes we assume, in order to feel good, I need to go off to a 10 day meditation retreat, or I need to quit my job or I need to change my life in some way. But the purpose of these practices is truly to learn how to do it in the middle of the messiness, and so I think one of the best things that someone can do in the middle of a work context is figure out what works best for them to regulate their nervous system. And that can look like anything. For some people it could look like breathing. For others it could look like finding some movement. For somebody like myself who doesn't like sitting still, sometimes I need like a hardcore workout before I feel relaxed and then I can do breath work. It's truly figuring out what helps you feel more calm so you can recognize what that operating model is telling you, so you can get out of fight or flight and show up to that situation from a place that's more grounded. That's probably my number one tip Regulate your nervous system.
Speaker 2: 11:43
It's so funny Whenever I get really up in my anxiety I feel it in my gums, like I can feel it in my neck and in my gums, and I have learned to do a box breathing, just to like one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, and that calms me down because it is it's. I need something now that's not a Xanax, because we can't take those during the workday, so like yeah.
Speaker 1: 12:04
And that is so huge is like noticing where it is showing up in your body. A lot of times people are like I'm stressed, but they can't quite tell where they feel that. Do you have a stomach ache? Are your shoulders lifting up? And that's a lot of that mind body connection that we teach in yoga and mindful movement. That is really helpful.
Speaker 4: 12:22
Yeah, I would piggyback onto that and say that I have noticed that when I do notice, even just the noticing in and of itself, like oh, my chest is tight or oh, my throat feels it just the noticing, it can actually help relieve some of that tension. Which is the irony of it is that even in the noticing it can help release some of those places of tension. The other thing that I would add, as far as a small thing, once you get that physiological response and I'm going to quote Ted Lasso, quoting Walt Whitman here, but the be curious and not judgmental, yeah, Be aware I'm a Ted fan.
Speaker 4: 12:55
It might come up again later, I don't know, but there's this line that he quotes by Walt Whitman be curious, not judgmental. And I feel like so often we do that outward right, we share that curiosity with other people, but do we do that with ourselves? So I feel like that. For my own personal mindfulness journey has been one of the biggest hurdles to jump over is when I feel or notice that tension in my body, I go right to judgment Like, oh, Chrissy, you're anxious again, why is your body doing this? And so the other small habits that I've gotten into the practice of is recognizing when that happens and going oh, you're in judgment, You're judging yourself for being X, Y, Z.
Speaker 4: 13:34
How do you move into curiosity and go oh, what is your body trying to tell you right now, as opposed to body, why are you doing this to me right now? That's another little, little mindset shift and tweak that you can make when you find yourself in those moments is being kind and compassionate to yourself, which is really difficult. I don't know anyone else, but like that self-flagellation of like, oh my gosh, I'm having another moment where my body's freaking out and I'm feeling anxious and I'm and shifting from that to well, why is that happening. Let me dig under the surface and ask some compassionate questions about why that might be happening with me right now.
Speaker 2: 14:07
Yeah, I think so much of the time there's this archetype of leadership that is still very, very prevalent that we all have to show up and be Shackleton and have no emotions about things. Right, You're cool, calm and collected all the time. Personally, when I felt like holy shit, I'm flipping out right now, Like I am full on flipping out, I think all of us have had moments where we're angry, we're anxious, we're frightened at work or there's something happening For me. I feel like I should be able to handle this. Why is my body reacting this way? I should be able to just brush it off. So, on top of feeling it, I feel shame, honestly, because I'm not Shackleton, but what I hear you saying, Chris, is don't shame, just notice it. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4: 14:49
And understanding that initial judgment is normal. It happens. It's that initial knee-jerk reaction to when that, and again going back to the small wins, is reducing the amount of time between when you notice you're judging yourself and then shifting into curiosity instead. So really celebrate those wins, even if it feels like, well, I went right to judgment again and then, guess what, you're still in judgment. So it's like trying to get more quickly from the oh, I'm judging myself to let me get curious about this and implement the things that they do know, like box breathing or other things to regulate what's happening.
Speaker 2: 15:21
Yeah, what about managers? Again, I'm looking for those small wins. I'm leading a team, I am trying to shorten that time between judgment and curiosity and really notice when I'm having those triggers for myself and at the same time I'm leading a team. And are there different moves that I can make or pull into as a manager?
Speaker 4: 15:43
One of the most powerful things you can do is really just be transparent with your team and say, hey, this is something I'm working on.
Speaker 4: 15:50
And again this goes back to there has to be a willingness to be vulnerable and there has to be a willingness to to show up to your team and say this is what I'm working on and ask them for feedback on how things are feeling within their team, really source that information from them Like, how is this feeling? Know that I'm working on these things and then open up the conversation, because even just talking about some of this stuff is going to be new for teams and I think it not only will help your team feel like they're allowed to talk about it, but they'll feel empowered when they see you role modeling. That to say, hey, like I don't have this figured out, this is something I'm working on. Maybe this is something we can work on together as a team. So opening that door can help people feel like they're a part of the process. It can help build that psychological safety to be able to have some of those conversations on how you want to move forward as a mindful team with a mindful leader.
Speaker 1: 16:46
I could not have said that better myself. Literally perfect thing I could add on to that is the accountability piece when you're receiving feedback, being open to that and creating the space, like you said, for your team to feel safe in providing you feedback. One of the things that I do because I know personally I'm always afraid of feedback is I'll try to beat my insecurity to the punch and ask for it first. So if you can create that environment and say this is something that I'm working on in my personal mindfulness practice, it's something that I want to bring to the team, but I'm not quite there yet. Can you let me know if I'm falling short? Can you let me know if I can do better? And just creating that connection, like Carissa said, I think is huge and different and not normal, as I'm thinking about the interactions that you have with your team.
Speaker 4: 17:31
One of the other ways that managers can show up in that space is allowing for silence. And going back to what we were talking about with holding space for other people. Specifically, in this instance, if you're having a one-on-one conversation with a team member and you are in a conversation where maybe your team member brings up something that is uncomfortable or does make you feel or does trigger you, that's an opportunity for you as a leader, as a manager, to tap into some of those practices that you have around. How am I going to show up and self-manage what's happening with me while also being able to hold space for another human who is in this moment? Because, as humans, we're designed to run from discomfort, we don't like sitting in the muck of things, and so how do we, as leaders and managers, sit in that space with another human and do that? Because that is an incredible gift to be able to give someone else. How do we lean into those moments where it's like, ooh, this is sticky, this is uncomfortable, this isn't normal for me, and I think one of the most powerful things I've ever had anyone say to me was when I was going through a really difficult time and I now use this with other people that I care about in my life where they said, I can't fix it for you, I can't take away what you're going through, but I can sit with you in it, and I remember feeling so relieved.
Speaker 4: 18:41
I've had other people who said, oh, don't cry, we'll figure it out, or they're trying to put the bandaid on it for me and I just needed to be in that moment, and so there is such relief when you're on the receiving end of that. I will just sit with you in it. And that ability to be able to hold that space and that discomfort with someone else is so powerful and can create such a deep and meaningful connection. So I would say, as a manager, that's one of the things that is most important to work on. It's difficult to sit in silence sometimes. I'm a highly empathic person. I want to help, I want to fix, so that's a lot of self-management that happens in those moments.
Speaker 2: 19:17
It seems like it's a good opportunity for that curiosity too. Mel and I joke about this. We don't know if it's like a trauma response or not, but we will be the first one with the really ill-timed joke when things get uncomfortable. You know it's not appropriate. You know, yeah, things make us uncomfortable, but it's interesting. There have been many times when I've been leading teams where you're having a conversation. It's uncomfortable. It might be uncomfortable because they're sharing feedback about me that makes me feel uncomfortable, like I failed them or something it might be that they're sharing something really deeply personal and it's outside the bounds of work.
Speaker 2: 19:56
Maybe it's inside the bounds of work but it's getting mucky to your point. And when we have these initial reactions which might feel like failure or feel like discomfort, to pull into that curiosity and be like, okay, you're feeling this, francesca, don't tell the joke or francesca, don't make it right, be here and be okay with the silence of things, because I love that idea of giving someone the gift of your time, your ears and your silence it reminded me of way, way, way back when I first graduated from college and I was going into teaching and so I got my teaching credentials and in one of the classes the professor said after you ask a question, wait six seconds before you say anything else.
Speaker 4: 20:35
And I thought, oh, six seconds, it's not a big deal. And then they said we're going to set the timer for six seconds. We're all going to sit here in silence. So you know what that feels like, and they did that and you could literally feel it was like people's skin is like skin crawlingly, like just, it was so uncomfortable. We got to seconds four, five and six and it was so interesting to me how, in my mind, I was like, oh, six seconds isn't that big of a deal. But especially when you're in a conversation that feels emotionally charged or it has some depth to it, that silence can feel really heavy. So, being able to embrace it instead of run from it and sit in it, I've been amazed at what comes out in the silence.
Speaker 3: 21:14
We do a 10 second rule in facilitation with the same thing and it's a good break Once you get used to it.
Speaker 4: 21:20
Those first few times are a little they're awkward, a little intense they are yeah.
Speaker 2: 21:26
And they are. I will always be like okay, I'm giving the obligatory 10 seconds now because that's the way I manage.
Speaker 4: 21:34
By the way, I love this. I love that you shared that you have this urge to tell inappropriate jokes. It's bad, it's so hard it's.
Speaker 2: 21:41
So I'm like oh God and it's my, it's so hard it's so I'm like oh god, and it's. My husband does this too and I realize it's a way to ease the tension, it's a way to bring levity and sometimes I'm wondering is that for me? I'm trying to do it for the group, but I'm trying to do it for me too, because I get uncomfortable with the silence.
Speaker 4: 22:02
A hundred percent. Yeah, there's this moment of am I doing it to ease my discomfort or am I doing it to ease theirs?
Speaker 1: 22:25
you know point in time where we decide am I going to tell the joke or am I going to try to sit with this discomfort? One of the phrases that I find really helpful in my personal practice comes from Brene Brown, but it's this phrase of the story I'm telling myself is and if we can get curious and lean into like wait, what is going on in my mind? Am I feeling incompetent? Am I feeling awkward or insecure? What's going on internally and how is that going to impact what I say or do is a huge part of the practice, and probably one of the hardest parts is when you're doing it in real time, versus when you're sitting and feeling great and there's no messy conversation in front of you. You're just relaxing.
Speaker 2: 22:59
Yeah, yeah. Is it valuable to do like a post-mortem on that? Let's say, I completely biffed the conversation and I was just Jerry Seinfeld-ing it through the whole thing. Is there value in being like, wow, I really just did that and why did I do that? Or do you feel like the real value is stopping yourself in the muck?
Speaker 1: 23:17
So Carissa mentioned, the more we practice and the more we do this, the quicker we get at recognizing what's going on in the moment. So I like to think of it as this bell curve, where at the very beginning you have the stimulus so say it's silent and that causes anxiety, and then you have a very short amount of time where you get to decide what your response is, and then maybe your reaction is to tell the joke, and then we watch as whatever happens happens. The more we practice mindfulness, the quicker we are going to understand in the moment when the thing is happening. Oh, it's happening. Like how do I want to choose my response this time? But most often what happens is that we realize it afterwards. Like you said, the postmortem check-in is great because then we can think oh okay, I want to do something different next time. Both are good. It's just harder to do in the moment if we're not practicing in the container of quiet or doing that post work of understanding how we showed up in the situation.
Speaker 2: 24:31
We talked about the small stuff. What if people want to really establish a practice of mindful leadership where they're living with this intention, at work and at home, their laser focused on knowing how their operating system works and how they can show up in the most constructive way? How do people get into establishing a deeper, mindful leadership practice.
Speaker 4: 24:51
This kind of harkens back to what we were talking about earlier noticing where the tension is in my body For me and establishing a longer term practice. That's been the most effective way, that the most effective entry point for me is noticing what's happening physiologically with me, because it's easier for me than going straight to like what am I feeling right now? So I noticed, oh, my body's feeling weird. Okay, what is that telling me? There's something happening here, and so then I can get into more of the. Oh. Now I'm going to pull on those techniques that I like box breathing or four, seven, eight breathing, or I'm going to lay on my stomach because that helps, like pressure on your stomach helps downregulate your nervous system.
Speaker 4: 25:27
There are things that I've learned from Aurora Thank you, aurora over the years that have helped me. I'm like, okay, this might look funny, but I'm going to lay on my stomach in my office for five minutes. There are things that I've implemented that have helped me when I noticed that getting into curiosity, using those things that I know work for me and then becoming more consistent with them as I can. Everyone's different, everyone's going to have a different entry point, a different way of doing it that's going to work for them. Really, it's about finding what works for you. Again, back to curiosity. What does work for you as you look at your life and your past, as you try to establish new habits or new ways of being? What's most effective? What works for one person isn't always going to work for the other, but for me that's been the most effective way.
Speaker 1: 26:14
I see two definitions of mindfulness One, which is the classic definition from Jon Kabat-Zinn, where he says it's paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally Lots of hard things to do all at once combined.
Speaker 1: 26:27
And then the other one that I'm familiar with is to do anything artfully and with intention, is to be mindful, and so, like Carissa said, everyone's entry point can be different and I think part of the mindset piece around that is. A lot of times we look at mindfulness or meditation and think well, I can't sit still or like my back hurts or my legs hurt when I cross my legs, so I'm not a good meditator. I don't like to do yoga because I'm not flexible. Maybe you like going on a walk or eating lunch without looking at your phone, or playing with your kid. It could be so many different ways that you could create that sense of grounding and calm in your body. It doesn't have to look like anything specific or make sense to anybody else, and staying committed to that and exploring what feels good and playing around with different practices and not worrying about whether or not you're doing anything right or wrong is probably the best thing you can do in the long run to commit to something long-term.
Speaker 2: 27:22
Yeah, I love this concept of figuring out what's really going to enable you to strengthen your ability to connect with other people. For those folks that have never really entered into yoga or don't even know what we're talking about when we're talking about box breathing, what do you all typically recommend people start with or try?
Speaker 1: 27:39
Any type of movement in your body that feels good, anything that helps you feel more open and relaxed and stretched out or alive or energized, whatever you're going for. That's one bucket. And then what Carissa talked about is the opposite of that is stillness. Movement is one thing, stillness another. That could be sitting, that could be lying down, it could be moving very slowly on a walk, it could be listening to a guided meditation, lots of different things, but those are the two ways in which I would attack complicated spheres.
Speaker 4: 28:12
I love, aurora, what you said about it doesn't have to look a certain way, Because when I very first started years and years ago, I did feel like I had to be sitting on a pillow like that and I had to meditate like 60 minutes a day.
Speaker 4: 28:21
It was just so unattainable. But then I started to realize that any moment where I'm fully present is a mindful moment. It could be I'm eating lunch and instead of scrolling through my phone or being distracted by all sorts of thoughts, like I'm paying attention to how the food tastes, what the texture of the food is, I'm actually enjoying and being present. When I'm in a conversation with someone, I'm fully there, phone is away, I'm not focused on anything other than that person. When I started to do that, I realized how much of my life I wasn't fully present. So mindfulness can happen in a split second and just enjoying the smells, sights, sounds. The conversation of the person that's in front of you doesn't have to be like Aurora says, doesn't have to be sitting on a pillow in a certain position with your mind completely blank.
Speaker 2: 29:04
That's, that's. Yeah, that's kind of impossible. I'm like I've never, ever, never.
Speaker 1: 29:11
If you know how to do that, let me know, but I don't know how to do that.
Speaker 2: 29:14
Exactly. It's funny, especially during COVID Chrissy. You and I met during the pandemic and I'll tell you that's where I really started pay attention to what's my body feeling and how am I reacting to it, and what I've realized over the last few years, to the very good point, around movement and stillness and looking at those two dichotomies. When I have anxiety or when I'm angry, I have to go for a walk, I have to walk my dog and I'm walking down the street and that helps me. But when I'm incredibly nervous or I even feel fear, I have to be still.
Speaker 2: 29:51
That's been a lot of years trying to suss out like what do you need? Based on what your body is telling you, I know when I need stillness. I know when I need walking. It is not good for me, when I'm fearful for me, to do activity that will actually exacerbate it for me. So it's been interesting figuring that out. I don't think I ever put the two and two together until you said stillness and movement, but I'm realizing I do that For folks that want to read up more about this, go into this a little bit more deeply what resources have you felt are really good?
Speaker 1: 30:19
So here's the thing because I've been teaching for so many years and I see so many students and I myself have gone through the experience of starting off thinking I needed to do it a certain way in order to get it right and be perfect.
Speaker 1: 30:32
The one thing I ask people to do is just trust their own bodies and practice in their own way and see what that feels like Like.
Speaker 1: 30:41
You can ask me questions about alignment and all this other stuff, but I really try to emphasize that the all of that is secondary to your own experience, and the priority of the practice is awareness of sensation, awareness of what's going on in the body and the mind and how the mind reacts to what's going on in the body. Learning to sit in stillness and discomfort and the way the shape looks is not that important, and so I don't necessarily point people to like a book or a video, because I used to ask those questions who do I read? What classes do I take? And what I wish somebody would have told me is just sit your butt down and just feel and just practice, because you are in your body and you know it's best for you, and I want people to feel empowered to teach themselves as much as possible, instead of feeling like I need somebody else to tell me how to do it Right.
Speaker 2: 31:38
Boom. Yeah, I love that, I love that.
Speaker 4: 31:41
Yeah, I'm going to put like five exclamation points after that. Whatever you're feeling, five exclamation points after that.
Speaker 2: 31:47
Whatever you're feeling, there's no value on that. You're just feeling it right. But being honest with your honest, I guess, or being able to recognize that and understand how you need to personalize for yourself, is huge.
Speaker 1: 32:00
Yeah, it's all trial and error. There isn't a book or a. If there was one, I would have figured it out by now. But I think it just takes time and just your own practice and experience. That means the most.
Speaker 1: 32:13
I use this phrase of balance between effort and ease and only you can decide and figure out where that is.
Speaker 1: 32:20
So, for instance, if you're pushing yourself into a pose or a movement that feels tight, pushing yourself into a pose or a movement that feels tight or you feel uncomfortable in it, is that discomfort or is that pain? I don't know, because I don't have the experience of sensation in your body. So you get to figure that out and then you get to choose. Am I going to move into it? Is that going to serve me and create space in my body more today by shifting into this discomfort? Or is it actually more productive to back off, which feels like I'm not doing as much and it feels less productive? And then all these stories come up. I should be doing X, y, z, and that's really the whole point of the mindful movement practice is to teach us how our minds are reacting to a specific stimulus, so that way, when we step off of our mats. We notice that pattern more often in the middle of a conversation that's heated of our mats.
Speaker 2: 33:07
We notice that pattern more often in the middle of a conversation that's heated. You know what I'm doing in my head while you're. I'm like stillness, movement, the ease, discomfort I'm like. Is there like a X Y axis here I'm trying to plot?
Speaker 4: 33:16
I'm like I'm like oh, my God, francesca stop.
Speaker 2: 33:25
You know I'm a visual learner too, friend, but I'm like this is fascinating.
Speaker 3: 33:28
I love all of this advice and the personalization behind it, because it feels so much more attainable. That leads me to the typical challenges you both see when you're trying to share this with others, or what you've heard comes up for others, and I know we spoke earlier about one of those challenges for individuals, for example, is the ability to have self-compassion instead of beating themselves up. What other typical challenges do you see people having when trying to practice mindful leadership and how do they overcome it?
Speaker 4: 33:58
One of the questions that I think is often asked is this going to be worth it? Especially when we are in a results driven like my values tied to my productivity that type of culture. It can be difficult for people to understand that when you slow down and you take the time to dig into this stuff, this actually can accelerate a lot of other things that you're trying to accelerate much more easily than the way that you're trying to push this rock up a hill.
Speaker 1: 34:25
It's such a long game and the results are both personal and they're also communal, and some of them are more immediate, like downregulation of the nervous system, and some of them are much more long-term. Like we got through this project without wanting to. Like we got along while we were doing this. Like this project, that was really difficult. The other aspect that we were talking about the awkwardness of not knowing how to bring this forward to teams. Let's say, somebody has been using the Headspace app for a year and they're really into mindfulness and meditation and they want to bring it to their team, but they're not quite sure.
Speaker 1: 34:57
Well, I'm not a teacher. Like I barely know this stuff. I still struggle with it. How are people going to think of me or perceive me if I try to introduce this? Or are they going to think it's weird? There are all these questions and there aren't a lot of resources around supporting leaders and letting them know that the journey of mindful leadership doesn't really have a playbook. There is no guidebook right now, and that's what Carissa and I are trying to figure out how to share with people. You get to create your own path for yourself and your team. It doesn't have to look like anything that you've ever seen before. It can be something totally different than any work environment you've ever had and giving people that permission to come up with it for themselves. So I think there's that fear and insecurity of I love this, but what do I do?
Speaker 3: 35:39
with it. I love that. The concept though similar to individual personalization. When you're doing this with your team, you're creating that playbook together and what works for the team. It's all about personalization throughout Carissa. You had mentioned that statement where's the ROI, when am I going to see results? Et cetera. How do you answer that when that question comes up within organizations?
Speaker 4: 36:01
There is data to back up that a human-centric work design actually does lower the amount of employee fatigue, it increases their likelihood to stay and it increases productivity. There is science behind this. There is data behind this. I think it's that mindset shift of saying woo, woo, or is this actually going to move the needle for my team and so for teams that get hung up on that part, coming in with the science behind and the data behind why this is important can be really helpful in helping them shift course and at least give it a try. What's the harm in trying it for a little bit and then see what happens? Our philosophy give it a go, see what happens, what's the worst that could happen?
Speaker 1: 36:41
And it doesn't have to be an entire overhaul of the complete system. It could be those little changes and just testing things out.
Speaker 3: 36:47
Test and learn.
Speaker 2: 36:48
I'm a fan, you know what's interesting is, when we do a lot of executive development in organizations, their training and development budget. A large chunk of it, let me just say this, is on executive development. It's getting very personalized development opportunities to, I'd say, the top 100 people in your organization. And one of the biggest things that we work on are the things that set people back. It's the things that they haven't checked in their operating system, that they need to in order to be more empathic, more effective, a better team leader, and if people can get into this practice earlier, they're not going to have such a hurdle if they get up into those upper echelons, because this is the stuff that can really hold people back a lot of times if they haven't checked themselves and their reactions to things.
Speaker 4: 37:36
We've all seen the laundry list of leadership skills and competencies and they are important, right? You need to be able to communicate vision and purpose, you need to be able to think strategically and all of that vision and purpose, you need to be able to think strategically, and all of that. And if you don't have those deeply human skills, that ability to lead from a mindful place, then you're limiting yourself so significantly.
Speaker 2: 37:54
I think about the way a lot of organizations run. They have things like pulse surveys or engagement scores, right, we have things like manager development, training and capabilities. These practices are things that can be surveyed for, assessed. They could be written into trainings where we're teaching people how to do this. This is absolutely something that could be operationalized within the way organizations currently operate.
Speaker 4: 38:22
Yeah, when we think about specifically manager development and we think about the conversation guides that we put out for managers in different scenarios and those are great and how do we take those to the next level, like, here's some questions that you can ask and ways that you can be curious, but then also, what does it look like like we talked about earlier to hold space for those more difficult conversations? How do you show up in those moments? Are we preparing our leaders to do that? So I think there are ways to infuse that into development programs and prepare leaders to be able to show up in those moments in the ways that we would hope that they would.
Speaker 3: 38:52
One of the best meetings I ever attended was somebody who held an afternoon meeting. That was going to be two hours after everyone was coming off of half a day of other back-to-back meetings and they started it with a simple breathing exercise for everyone to level set, let go of everything that they've done. And it changed the attitudes in that call, where people were more present, they contributed more and they were willing to participate. It was normal, it didn't feel weird and it was great.
Speaker 4: 39:23
We've all been in those meetings too, where you come in and it's oh, icebreaker, tell us one interesting thing about you. And everyone rolls their eyes and it's like, oh my gosh, there are different ways. So I love that, mel, that you're talking about different ways to open meetings, because are other things you can do as well to create that transparency, whether it's, you know, just sharing, hey, this is the reality that we're in. Let's just be real about where we're at. There's this realness in humanity that I feel like is lost sometimes, and there's a way that I've seen meetings opened that have been tell us one challenge and one win from this last week, and it doesn't have to be work-related and just being able to share openly, as opposed to tell us one interesting thing about yourself, but in a non-threatening way.
Speaker 4: 40:02
People can share as much as they want. They have the ability to set those boundaries. But there's also we're opening the door to humanity a little bit by saying let's check in and see how you're doing. And, by the way, like when we were in the pandemic, I was leading this one meeting and I kicked it off by like hey, by the way, I know the whole world's on fire out there and so let's not pretend that it's not, let's just acknowledge that, and you could see shoulders come down and people like, oh, thank goodness we're acknowledging this as opposed to just coming into this meeting and getting right to it and let's get after the goals. So there are lots of little ways that we can show up and make it easier to bring our full selves to work.
Speaker 3: 40:36
I will say the best icebreaker I ever heard was what's the least interesting thing about you. So it took the pressure off of the most interesting thing, it's like, I like peanut butter and fluff sandwiches. Who the hell cares?
Speaker 2: 41:05
Is everyone ready for rapid round? Yeah, yeah, okay. So, friends, with all of our guests, we like to do the thing called rapid round. It's meant to be fun, ask you a few questions, provide some short answers, but I will tell you, this is where we typically get some of our best conversations as well. So if we want to go a little bit deeper, we can. Are you ready to play rapid round? I'm ready. Ready to go a little bit deeper? We can. Are you ready to play Rapid Round? I'm ready. Ready to go? Okay, who is a leader you really admire?
Speaker 1: 41:33
my yoga teacher I met when I was 17 years old. I walked into his studio, met him for the first time and he is just absolutely incredible because less than a month later, I emailed about 30 different studios asking for a work tree partnership, because I was 17 at the time, I didn't have a job and I couldn't afford $25 yoga classes in San Francisco. And so he said yes, he'd only met me that one time. He gave me the keys to his studio and said come clean whenever you can take whatever classes you want, and literally this one person changed the entire course of my life and trajectory of my life. Because of him, I am where I am today and I am talking to you all and sharing my passion for movement and mindfulness, and it's all his fault.
Speaker 2: 42:13
Yeah, I love it. I love it. We're grateful for him, then that's awesome.
Speaker 4: 42:19
For me. I've had a few in my life, so it was hard to pick one, but I can share the attributes of those leaders with you, because I think they all shared a common thing, and that was that it's exactly what we've been talking about. They made me feel like a human first. They made me feel empowered to bring my whole self to work. They made me feel like I was valued for more than what I could just produce, and inspired me and believed in me beyond what I felt like I could do. I mean, I feel like that's. The other thing is that they were always so, so great at seeing that potential in me when I didn't see it in myself, and allowing me the freedom to try things, and they held space for me. It's like what we were talking about they held space.
Speaker 2: 43:03
Yeah, it's funny. We were just talking to Alan Whitman, who is the CEO, and he was talking about being able to see the X factor in people and put them in different positions and that idea that somebody believing in you is such a big deal for folks. So I love the connectivity to that in mindful leadership we talked about. So much of mindful leadership is happening in the muck and so I want to give some muck scenarios and see how would you handle this from a mindful leadership perspective. Is there a mindful way to handle office drama?
Speaker 4: 43:38
drama. That falls into two different buckets for me. One is there's the run of the mill office drama, right, which is the we all know what that is. And there's that level where it hits like that toxicity though, where it's like, okay, this is a very unhealthy place to be. We'll go with the extreme.
Speaker 4: 43:49
First, if we're in that really highly toxic work environment from a mindful place, some of those coping mechanisms and skills and things that we've talked about there are others in addition that can be used, but those can help you manage through that and so you can get yourself into a healthier place. So I think about all those ways that you can physiologically balance yourself and also get some perspective. Right, okay, this is happening. How do I emotionally detach a bit and keep myself where I need to be? And then, when you have the run of the mill office drama similar thing you might not be trying to get yourself necessarily out of the situation, like you would be in a more toxic environment, but again, leaning on those skills, the breathing techniques, the different things to help keep your body healthier, safer, during that.
Speaker 4: 44:31
And there's also a level of tapping into that curiosity again. Right, that, okay, what is actually happening here? How am I feeling about what's happening here? What's going on? And then I am leading people and I'm in that scenario. How do I navigate those difficult conversations? Because some leaders, when they encounter office drama, will be like, well, okay, they'll figure it out or I'm gonna let that just unfold or happen. But I think if you're leading from a more mindful place, you are going to be leaning into those uncomfortable conversations. You are going to be self-regulating and working through some of that to try and figure out how to get your team to a healthier place.
Speaker 2: 45:05
That's tough too, because sometimes, as a leader, you don't want to deal with it. But being able to notice when you're realizing, oh, you're getting into a cadence, as opposed to leaning in where you really need to lean in and regulate. Yeah, that makes sense. I'll tell you, we're having an uptick in people getting yelled at at work.
Speaker 4: 45:28
And I'm curious is it a different answer for how you would handle getting yelled at From the perspective of, like I'm the person being yelled at. Yeah, like it's a?
Speaker 2: 45:33
really emotionally charged situation and you are getting yelled at. Yes.
Speaker 4: 45:43
Yeah Well, I think for me, if I was to put myself in that scenario, I would absolutely be paying attention to what's going on in my body. I know I would be having a reaction in my body for sure. There's also a place where you can detach a little bit and realize and recognize oh, this is probably not about me. What else is going on here For me? I will get sucked into that. I'm highly empathic. I'm going to be like, oh my God, I am a horrible person. What have I done that has made them want to yell at me?
Speaker 4: 46:07
But to get to a place where you can realize, okay, this is probably not about me, how do I regulate in the moment, like breathing, and then because potentially that could become an unsafe situation, like if we're talking verbally abusive how do I then remove myself from the situation and say what statement am I going to use to say, okay, I hear you, I see that you're upset. I need to remove myself from the situation right now and go regulate myself. You take care of whatever you need to take care of. And then, if it gets to that place of toxic behavior, abusive behavior, get to a place where you're grounded and then do that post-mortem look at what happened, what level is that, and then what action do I need to take?
Speaker 1: 46:47
Yeah.
Speaker 2: 46:48
I love the idea of taking these mindful leadership principles and noticing how are you feeling, and giving yourself and everybody does have the permission to detach and remove yourself from those situations too. A lot of times, that's probably the healthiest outcome for both parties. If someone is yelling at you at work, they're not regulated period, so it's probably best for everybody to go to their corners and chill for a little bit. Okay, well, one of the things that we were curious about is how do you define success? And maybe we can take this from two ways. How do you define success in terms of your practice with mindful leadership? And then does that answer change in terms of how you define success in life?
Speaker 1: 47:25
For me, it's the same and related to what I said earlier about figuring out what works best for you.
Speaker 1: 47:31
A lot of what I've been trying to do over the years is figure out how to undo these external definitions of success and all of these rules that I've internalized about who I am supposed to be or how I am supposed to show up, versus what's actually going on and what I feel, and understanding that the gap between who I am now and who I would like to be in the future is not a character flaw or some kind of thing I need to fix about myself in order to become more worthy or deserving.
Speaker 1: 48:02
I am worthy now in all of the success that I have accumulated and the things that I would like to do with my life. And that is a struggle to remember that and feel that because, like Carissa said, I'm also always moving and wanting to do and serve and create, and when I am not doing or serving or creating, I feel not productive. And so a big part of success to me is figuring out how to undo those thoughts inside and then sink more into stillness and less less doing and more being, and finding gratitude for what I do have right in front of me versus seeking constantly.
Speaker 2: 48:45
Yeah, that's tough. That's just as tough as the blank space in your head, I think. I think that's changes too, like what you really really really want at 25 is very different than what you really really want at 45. Right, like, different than what you really really want at 45, right Like it's it's, it's a that's tough.
Speaker 4: 49:00
I had a similar experience to Aurora, where, when you're younger, you have these ideas about what success looks like and what you want to attain or be or do, and so I feel like these last five years in particular have been about undoing that, and that is a lot of rewriting narratives and expectations and programming of what you feel like you should be, or who you feel like you should be and what you shouldn't you be going for that beach house and the fancy car and all of those ideas of success that have been shown to us from a young age. It's been about unbecoming and then stepping into becoming who I want to be, and for me it is deep connections with other human beings. It gives me so much energy Doing work like this with Aurora. That makes me feel like I'm actually helping to bring healing to the world, bring joy to the world, help people have a space that feels safe to explore what's real for them. That brings me so much joy and energy.
Speaker 4: 49:56
And then I have a big chunk of my identity, too is around exploring and curiosity and wanting to travel. I want to craft a life for myself that I feel like is authentic to me, where I can do those things where I can connect with humans, I can do meaningful work and I can have adventures, explore the world, meet new people, have new experiences. And I think ties in to the way that I practice mindfulness, which is letting go of all of the expectations that I've carried for myself for so long and allowing myself to explore new things and try new things and find what works for me, regardless of if it works for anybody else, and being okay with that.
Speaker 2: 50:35
Last one Do you have a life philosophy, like in one sentence Mine is do the thing that scares you the most.
Speaker 1: 50:42
Keep pushing out of your comfort zone and doing the things that allow you to grow and become the best version of yourself. So you're leaning into that discomfort huh, oh, like literally, if it's uncomfortable, I raise my hand and I'll go do it, no matter how uncomfortable it is. Yeah, that's my thing. I'm like yes, sign me up. If I'm scared of it, I'm in.
Speaker 4: 51:04
You're my hero. Aurora, like that is. That is pretty awesome. Mine actually. Funnily enough, it came from years ago. I was taking a yoga class from Aurora and she asked us to set an intention for the practice and I have carried this forward and this is my life philosophy it's be here now. It's a good one.
Speaker 1: 51:28
I love that. I didn't know that oh, really aww are we all having a moment?
Speaker 2: 51:35
I feel like Mel and I are witnessing.
Speaker 3: 51:36
I'm going to cry.
Speaker 2: 51:37
It's so nice it's so nice, Are we all having a moment? I feel like Mel and I are witnessing so nice. Friends, what's next for you? What's? What's the rest of the year looking like in terms of taking your, your practice forward and to the people?
Speaker 4: 51:51
We are going to be offering some workshops where people can join us and virtual workshops on all sorts of different topics around mindful leadership, so that people can come check it out. Whether you've dabbled in mindfulness practices before or not, whether you're just curious, we're going to offer some sessions for you to come and check out and then later in the year we will be offering a retreat all about mindful leadership and finding your unique mindful leadership style. Ooh, in person. I'm very excited about In person. That was going to be in person, yes.
Speaker 2: 52:26
Ooh, where are we doing this? Paducah, kentucky, do we have it?
Speaker 1: 52:31
Oregon, so it's great for anyone who's local and it's a beautiful property, it's a working regenerative farm and it's just this place where you go and I don't know if you've ever been somewhere where you immediately feel a sense of calm and ease and everything just feels like. But for some reason this place has that vibe and it's so relaxing and we want to create a space where people can practice these things and feel good in their bodies and have time to relax and de-stress, but also learn about these practices in community and not feel like they have to figure it out on their own.
Speaker 2: 53:09
Carissa, thank you so much for joining us today. It was really a pleasure and a delight.
Speaker 1: 53:14
Thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 2: 53:16
Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks so much for joining us today. Subscribe. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends.
Workplace Cult of Disruption
Change is worshipped in the workplace…
But at what cost? From reorgs to reinvention, disruption has become the workplace religion. For the past 10 years, organizations have not only been incented and are, seemingly addicted to change and disrupting their companies. Mergers, acquisitions, new leadership teams, new technologies, new strategies, new, new, new. How do we get to this place where it really feels like we're all working constantly in a cult of disruption?
Ashley Goodall helps us unpack how we got here, why it’s exhausting everyone, and what leaders should be doing instead to create meaningful progress. Spoiler: there’s a better way.
Your Work Friends Podcast: The Problem with Change with Ashley Goodall
Change is worshipped in the workplace…
But at what cost? From reorgs to reinvention, disruption has become the workplace religion. For the past 10 years, organizations have not only been incented and are, seemingly addicted to change and disrupting their companies. Mergers, acquisitions, new leadership teams, new technologies, new strategies, new, new, new. How do we get to this place where it really feels like we're all working constantly in a cult of disruption?
Ashley Goodall helps us unpack how we got here, why it’s exhausting everyone, and what leaders should be doing instead to create meaningful progress. Spoiler: there’s a better way.
Speaker 1: 0:00
A sensible, healthy, capitalist, profit-maximizing organization will ask itself the question how can we help our employees do their best work first?
Speaker 2: 0:27
Hello friend.
Speaker 3: 0:29
Well, it's June. It's June in 2024. It is.
Speaker 2: 0:33
It's happening?
Speaker 3: 0:34
Do you guys go to the beach? Yes, we do go to the beach, so we live about an hour and a half two hours from the beach when you drive there. I swear to God, this is where they film all the car commercials because you can get on some really nice like serpentining switchbacky roads. They're all tree lined. You just imagine the Porsche commercial with the back tire kicking up leaves and that kind of stuff. It's a beautiful, beautiful drive and you live on the beach.
Speaker 2: 1:01
Well, I wish I lived on it live five like five minutes away. We just got our beach pass. I like to go early in the morning when no one's there, so I'll typically be there early and then I stay until noon and head out when all the people show up. Do you have an umbrella and stuff? If I stay there past noon, if it's going to be a full day thing, I have one of those tents that you, you. It has like a little window in the back and you see like I'll hang my legs out, but I am too Casper, the friendly ghost, to be out in that sun. I got melasma so bad one year. It looked like I had dirt on my forehead. What'd?
Speaker 3: 1:39
you do to get that off Like you're like right now? Yeah, Just eventually eventually rubbed off.
Speaker 2: 1:45
It just looked like I had a straight up patch of dirt on my forehead, like ash.
Speaker 3: 1:49
Wednesday was all here in the name of the father and the son. Yeah, oh, that's really funny, thank you.
Speaker 2: 1:57
Thank god for chemicals we are here because we met with leadership expert, consultant and author of several books, but the latest book, the Problem with Change, ashley Goodall.
Speaker 3: 2:11
He's held executive positions at Deloitte and at Cisco, heading up people organizations. Full disclosure Mel and I have both worked with Ashley in the past when our paths all crossed at Deloitte. What Ashley is really wonderful at is thinking about how humans can thrive in the workplace. And in order to do that, what do they need, mel? Stability, stability. I'll tell you, mel. When I read this book, I had two very distinct feelings. One was just total delight because the way the case was written around what work feels like right now was so absurd and so fucking accurate, at the same time that I was laughing through half of the book because I'm like, right, it was so relatable I'm thinking, yeah, man, I could have written these stories too, because this is a hundred percent the experience.
Speaker 3: 3:02
Yeah, especially in the last 10 years. You and I were talking like it doesn't feel like it's always been this way, but the last 10 years it's just gotten more and more and more.
Speaker 2: 3:11
Yeah, and change for change's sake not necessarily meaningful change, and it can feel that way sometimes that it's not meaningful, it's just to do it.
Speaker 3: 3:21
The other very distinct emotion I got was a massive sense of urgency, which is one of the reasons why we wanted to have Ashley on the pod, because it really does feel and the data is in that organizations are not only incented to disrupt and incented to change, ie, bring in mergers, re-strategize, reorg, bring new leaders in. Not only are they incented to do that, but they're almost addicted to it. How do we get to this place where it really feels like we're all working constantly in a cult of disruption? Because that all has a massive human toll, that all has a massive negative impact on companies' bottom line, and so we wanted to bring Ashley in to talk about this. And then what the hell do we do about it?
Speaker 2: 4:10
Yeah, Well, with that. Where's Ashley?
Speaker 3: 4:30
Ashley, welcome to the pod. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1: 4:34
It's lovely to be here with you both.
Speaker 3: 4:36
Nice to see you. It's been a while. It's been a while.
Speaker 1: 4:40
I think it must be on the cusp of double-digit years, but we're all basically the same people we were.
Speaker 3: 4:46
A thousand percent. Maybe a little wiser, wiser Maybe.
Speaker 1: 4:52
A little calmer. Yeah, certainly smarter. We're definitely smarter than we were.
Speaker 3: 4:57
And we went through the plague. There's that.
Speaker 1: 4:59
Okay, and that's true. Yes, that's true, yeah, so yay, for the last 10 years.
Speaker 3: 5:03
Yeah, we're going to talk about cheat. One of the things that really struck me with this book was this life in the blender. While I was reading it, I was just like this has been my last 10 years of work, where here comes a merger and acquisition. We're going to re-strategize something. Oh, by the way, now we're going to switch up the leadership team. Oh hi, here's the management consulting firm coming in and they're in the era of the CHRO or they're in the era of the CEO, and now they're going to put their stamp on it. This was something that was like every 10 years, and then it was every five years, and now it's every two to three years, and there are some companies that it's almost every year. They're re-strategizing and it's just so much change that it makes it impossible to feel like you can get anything done, and there's like this massive human toll on it too. One of the things you talk about with the life in the blender is this idea that change doesn't equal improvement.
Speaker 1: 5:58
There's an experiment that I don't write about in the book, involving rats and pellets, so we should probably chat about rats and pellets for a quick. I'll do it, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: 6:06
And I haven't looked it up recently, but I know how it goes. So it goes like this you put a rat in a cage and there's a little lever or, as I say where I come from, a lever, and if the rat presses the lever or the lever, it gets a pellet of food sometimes and other times it doesn't. And so you can do this nice control condition and you can see how often does the rat press the lever if every time it presses it gets food, how often does it press it if it never gets food? And how often does it press it if it never gets food? And how often does it press it if it sometimes gets food. And the result is that the rat that always gets food doesn't press the lever very much because it just presses it when it's hungry and then goes off and has a rat nap somewhere. The rat that never gets food gives up really quickly because rats aren't stupid. The rat that sometimes gets food presses the lever like a maniac because it's like the spontaneous, the occasional reward drives this crazy behavior.
Speaker 1: 7:13
And in a way, listening to your narrative of we used to do change a little bit and now we've done it more, and then we've done it more. It's like we've only got one damn lever at work. It worked a couple of times a few years ago. Has anyone else got any ideas? I don't know. Let's press it again, shall we? It didn't work that time. Let's press it again. It still didn't work. And the rest of us now the rat metaphor fails a little bit are on the other end of the lever somewhere.
Speaker 1: 7:41
I think this idea of constant change, reinvention, transformation, disruption has become the only idea about how to run a company, which doesn't mean it never works. I think there's plenty of evidence that we've gone past the point where it's helping, certainly to the extent that we're doing it today. The irony of all of this is the godfather of disruption, if you like, is Clayton Christensen, who writes a book in 1997 called the Innovator's Dilemma, where he says the young upstarts companies will eat the lunch of the old, established companies because they have a different series of economic constraints and they have many more degrees of freedom, and so they can innovate and innovate, and innovate and innovate. And all of a sudden they go from a crappy product at a ridiculous price point with new customers to customers who suddenly flip from the established players to them because all of a sudden the price point got a little bit better. They got a minimum set of features and everyone can see the upside and hallelujah.
Speaker 1: 8:44
So if you're a big company, be really worried because the upstarts are going to going to take your business away. And everyone goes oh yes, kodak, yes, blockbuster, and you recite the litany of names, of which there are like there aren't 20, but anyway, um, but then you, if you actually read that book all the way to the end, you discover what his prescription is. And his prescription is if you're a big company, you're worried about being disrupted. What you should do is you take a small group of people, separate them from the company, either spin them out or make them a special product team, put them in a different place, wall them off. Give them a guaranteed budget. Give them a guaranteed budget. Give them a very clear mission. Keep a tight group of people. Don't change direction for a while, leave them alone and they will do the innovating for you. And what's that? That stability?
Speaker 3: 9:35
that's stability on both ends.
Speaker 1: 9:37
It's a stability in the legacy corp and in the incubator the innovators dilemma, said differently, is how can we create more stability at work? But no one has ever, to my knowledge, said that's what that book is about. It's actually a book about stability and you know we turn it into catchphrases and it's disrupt everything and disrupt yourself and fail fast and move fast and break things and all of a sudden all hell breaks loose. And here we are having a detailed conversation about how miserable change is at work. I don't think anyone ever intended that we get to this point, but I think we're massively in it now and I think we've got to come up with some different things.
Speaker 2: 10:15
This has a serious impact. This life in the blender is throwing so much around and if businesses are in this hamster wheel of every year you're making a change and you don't have the time or the runway to see the impact of that change and whether it's working before you change it again. So now it's this vicious cycle of the blender. Does it become critical that organizations start to create psychologically safe environments where people can say, hey, this is not a good idea. Do you think the C-suite is open to that? Or boardrooms are open to that?
Speaker 1: 10:49
So I wrote the book, partly out of the sneaking suspicion that C-suites were not aware of all of this. We need to raise our awareness of all of this stuff. Psychological safety is an interesting one. It's a real thing. It's very clear in the literature. That's a thing.
Speaker 1: 11:09
In our discussion of some of the other sort of psychological impacts of change, we can lose sight of the connection between the environment of work and the performance of humans, and it's too easy for people to go you know what. Suck it up. It's called work for a reason. We haven't created these institutions to make you lot happy. You don't get to feel good every day, you don't get to have your mental health and your psychological safety and all of these things, because this is the school of hard knocks. So I think the most important thing to do the whole time is to go listen. You could choose to create a healthy, supportive environment, because that's a good thing to do and you're a human too. But if that argument doesn't get you there, these things are what lead to performance or non-performance.
Speaker 1: 12:03
It is a silly way to run a company to subject it to life in the blender, to constant change, because what you're doing is removing the ability of your people to solve things for you or massively, ironically to innovate. Innovation doesn't come from change, it comes from stability. It comes from a predictable set of relationships and environments and rituals and rhythms that allow people to go all right. I don't have to worry about a whole bunch of stuff. I can focus my time and attention and creativity on a well-understood problem without having to worry that in three weeks' time, I'll have a new boss and I've got to explain what I'm doing to them, and then, three weeks after that, I'll have some other thing and some other thing, and some other thing and some other thing.
Speaker 1: 12:49
So the prescription for all of this is, for sure, change less, have a higher bar on all of this stuff. Understand that we are playing with fire here. Understand that the fire is not people's upset but people's performance. Understand you're dealing with that. And then, sure, we've got to change once in a while. But people have got to learn what stability looks like at work, what the inoculation is against change. And we've got to be very deliberate at creating stability at work, because as soon as you say that to anybody, as soon as you say, how about some stability? The people who are humans go. Oh yeah, that sounds really nice.
Speaker 2: 13:38
Relief right your shoulders drop.
Speaker 1: 13:42
I think that's the world people are imagining, where they say you know what? I believe in change. They're imagining a world where change comes, improvement comes from stability. That's what we're actually all trying to reach for.
Speaker 3: 13:56
Out of curiosity, when you talk to leaders that are sitting at a C-level and you're talking about this case for stability right, the problem with change the case for stability right, the problem would change the case for stability, what is?
Speaker 1: 14:07
their reaction. The ones I talk to, feel the tension between the pressure to change and the need to look after people. I haven't run into many people who would name it stability. So I think what I took away and again, I interviewed people up and down organizations for the book there are people who see quite clearly in executive positions the downside of change. We just haven't given them words and techniques for the counterforce thing. But the folks I spoke to, or the folks I speak to, are not going oh goodness me, I've got to turn down change and dial up stability. They're saying I've got to turn down change. And then what? And is there a way we need to teach leaders, we need to tell stories that the stuff that we all want in the changey change actually comes from the stability. And the stuff that we want in the changey change is performance. Innovation actually comes from stability more often.
Speaker 1: 15:21
It is not to do the jobs for them or tell them how to do their jobs or decide for them how their jobs are best to be done, or tell them how to do their jobs or decide for them how their jobs are best to be done. It is to pin back your ears and listen and look and offer and support and help. And again, the role of an organization is to support its employees in doing their best work, which doesn't start with ignoring the employees and deciding what best work looks like. It starts with paying attention to the employees and how best work happens and where it comes from and back to stability. It leads you to teams. It leads you to ritual. It leads you to helping build people's competence. It leads you to a whole bunch of stuff. But you don't follow the path to any of those things if you don't first understand that a sensible, healthy, capitalist, profit-maximizing organization will ask itself the question how can we help our employees do their best work?
Speaker 3: 16:24
first, Work first. So much of this I am wondering is this on the capability of leaders. When I think about the people that are making the decisions about the change, the transformation, in my experience a lot of those people have MBB firms in their ears telling them this is what your competition's doing, this is what the market's doing. They have pressures from various stakeholders the stock market, the board. You have to keep up. You have to keep up. Some of the reason why we're here is because leaders have the lack of capability to lead.
Speaker 1: 17:06
We can offer a couple of candidate explanations. Right, one is that leaders are living in an ecosystem that demands this stuff and the ecosystem you've named, I think, many of the bits of it. There is a stock market and, by the way, the stock market isn't a person, but the people who analyze the stock market are people, and they've learned that shareholder value is the most important thing. Then there are the people who tell the CEOs what to do, and they're the activist investors and the consultants and the investment bankers, by the way, and they've been brought up in all of this and you keep going down the chain to who are all the decision makers and what are the unwritten truths or, in many cases, the written scale quotes truths of this world, and a lot of it is. We have to maximize shareholder value, even though we can't measure it over any sort of decent time frame or human time frame. At any rate, you run into the sort of idea that you have to take dramatic action, and if you're not taking dramatic action, somebody else will and your competitors will. So there's a lot of reinforcement of a set of ideas and not a lot of people standing up and going hang on a second.
Speaker 1: 18:31
But the alternate concept of work might be run an organization so that its employees can offer their best and reason up from that, up and out from that idea. Up and out from that idea, and that's not crazy in terms of looking after the interests of owners or the interests of customers or the interests of God, help us employees. But that's not the place we live today. We live in a place where there are certain accepted truths about how you run a company and you get to look after the employee stuff until you feel it conflicts with the set of accepted truths, at which point you snap back into the set of accepted truths and you do the layoff and you do the restructuring and you do the spinoff and you do the spin-in, the spin in, and in between them you say words like people are our greatest asset, and everybody rolls their eyes and they put up with it because apparently not many people can think of a different way of doing all of this. But yeah, there is an ecosystem component to all of this, I think.
Speaker 3: 19:40
My concern with that is when that ecosystem is running on quarters like we need to see improvement. We need to see impact financially within the next three months. That's the way almost every organization is living right now. I've seen so many organizations do this as of late. They're needing to make an impact. One of the lever levers is absolutely change and another one is dump the people, get rid of these people. How do you think most organizations view people, view their employees?
Speaker 1: 20:15
I think that many leaders are actually sincerely torn because they can see enough of the ecosystem and they can see enough of the humans and they know that the layoff isn't a wonderful thing to do. And they probably know in the back of their minds that if you do the layoff and the market doesn't like it, that will be the wrong outcome. But if you do the layoff and the market likes it for a couple of days, that will be the right outcome. And they probably also know at the same time that's not the leader they set out to be when they were more junior. I think if you give leaders the benefit of the doubt, you can imagine a leader sincerely and honestly conflicted about all of this. My point would be, to the extent that's true, could you choose option B once in a while? Could you actually choose the people once in a while, or could we have a conversation about starting with the people once in a while, as opposed to the needs of the machine must always drive what we do, because we can't stop the machine, because it's something, sooner or later you go. The machine is us. Come on, folks, we can decide to stop the machine. One way to stop the machine is to take your company private. For goodness sakes, it was Francesca.
Speaker 1: 21:54
You and I have a history at Deloitte, and Deloitte does not worry about what's going on this quarter with nearly the intensity that public companies do, and so Deloitte, in a way, has a different attitude, and private companies have a different attitude to their investors which, by the way, is weird because they're more intimate with their investors, because most of the investors are the partners who are walking up and down the corridors every day. So it's like the private company world has a closer relationship with its owners, which allows them to be long-term thinkers Isn't that strange? Which allows them to be long-term thinkers, isn't that strange? And that the public company world has a much more arm's length relationship with many of its investors at least, which forces them to do short-term things. It's because there isn't a relationship there. It does strike me that when you change the context in which leaders are asked to make decisions, then they can tilt more towards people. I remember one of the things I was most impressed by in my time at Deloitte was what Deloitte did in the Great Recession.
Speaker 3: 23:02
I know that I use this story. Yeah, tell the story, because this is that you tell the story. You tell the story. We'll see if we're telling the same story. It'd be funny.
Speaker 1: 23:11
Fabulous, there were two great stories, yeah yeah, so mine is that deloitte said look, there are some storm clouds on the horizon. So what we would do if we were to do the usual thing would be fire a whole bunch of people and try and weather the storm and then, probably in a couple of years, we'll hire them back again. But that's silly, isn't it? Because we're going to upturn a whole bunch of lives and already things are pretty bad because it's 2008. And we know what was going on in 2008. And so we'll upturn a bunch of lives and then we'll have a whole bunch of hiring costs that we don't need. So we're going to go.
Speaker 1: 23:48
The quote, the phrase I always remember was we're going to go long on people and we're going to carry those extra costs and we're going to take it out of the partners pockets, and the partners will support this, and the partners did support this. And we are going to put people first so that when the storm passes we are more strongly positioned to face into the future. And it worked, and it was just massively sensible. And it shouldn't be the only example I can think of that in the last quarter century. That's the thing that really upsets me.
Speaker 1: 24:26
I'm sure there are other examples that I haven't come across yet, but that's a terrifyingly rare thing for a company to do, and I think if a public company did that today, they would be in all sorts of trouble because the ecosystem would go you people are crazy and the activist investor would show up and go. I'm going to have a proxy fight with you guys now, because you shouldn't be allowed to run this company and the institutional investors would go. You just sank the stock price, so blah blah, blah, blah blah. Was that your story?
Speaker 3: 24:54
No, it wasn't my story. But during the same amount of time and I might be getting these wrong right, big fish stories periodically might have embellished, but during the same time.
Speaker 1: 25:06
Did you say big fish as a verb?
Speaker 3: 25:08
I did. That works, I know, there you go Big fish. Okay, so 2008,. Right, so they went long on people. Another way I remember them going long on people was deciding to build Deloitte University, oh yeah, so not only are we going to go long on people by holding our people and keeping them, but we're also asking for a capital call of the partners, and if you don't know what that is, hey, partners, I need everyone to cough up I'm making this up $100,000 to build a corporate university which, by the way, this was not something that people were doing, because we want this to be this cultural hub to invest in people. As a evidence, proof point of going along on people, again, while everyone was cutting, they went long, and the thing that I think about, though, is that was 2008. It was a recent example.
Speaker 1: 25:59
Our listeners need to write in.
Speaker 3: 26:01
Yes.
Speaker 1: 26:03
Goodness me gosh, how old do I sound. Write in on an envelope, put a stamp on it. Goodness me gosh, how old do I sound. Write in on an envelope, put a stamp on it and send it to us at PO Box, goodness knows what. There are quite a few firms that have gone private recently because they want to exit the quarter-by-quarter ecosystem, the activist-investor ecosystem. There are probably other examples out there of having greater freedom as a private organization. But the answer to all of this can't be go private. It can't be. If you're a large company, that means you've got to find hundreds of billions of dollars. The answer to all of this has got to be have better companies. Yes, people have better companies. How are we going to do that?
Speaker 3: 26:42
Yeah, or going back to every once in a while not even all the time, but every once in a while going along on your people, like making that courageous decision potentially to go along or getting good at the difference between change and improvement.
Speaker 1: 26:56
Everyone's interested in improvement. That's fine. That's actually what the activist people want and the consultants want and the investment bankers want and the analysts want. They actually want improvement, but we've just lost the ability to distinguish between change and improvement. So every change looks like a good change and off we go. How can we make things better?
Speaker 1: 27:29
You have to start with the recognition that change and improvement aren't the same thing. I think people at work know that and most people know a half-baked idea fairly quickly when they see it coming baked idea fairly quickly when they see it coming. And it is career suicide to raise your hand more than a couple of times. So the serious point here is we cannot say in organizations tell us if this is a bad idea, because we've created again a power structure and ecosystem where it's hard for people to tell you. If you're a leader, you've got to get curious and you've got to get skeptical about all of this stuff and you have to think much harder about whether I am in change creating. As you mentioned a moment ago, mel learned helplessness. So people have such a lack of control that all they feel like doing is phoning it in every day, or you're creating anxiety, control that all they feel like doing is phoning it in every day, or you're creating anxiety, or you're upsetting teams, or you're disturbing people's sense of place or meaning or any of those things. But we have to teach leaders, they have to be the ones doing this, and we have to explain what no one has ever explained to them before that this stuff ain't always a good thing and it has some very serious psychological consequences. And if you're in the business of improving an organization, then very serious psychological consequences are things that generally you want to avoid. We need to train leaders massively more intensively and massively differently than we do it today, because we've all seen this Most leadership training in organizations is a sort of afterthought and we very often give people the job of a leader before we train them to do the job of a leader.
Speaker 1: 29:15
And you don't do this for surgeons or for pilots or for anyone who's got somebody else's life in their hands, or for any job where it's really important to be good at it, but somehow we do it for leaders as though, yeah, the leader thing. Look, you were the best of the people at doing the follower job. So we gave you the leader job and the trainings in six months, and meanwhile, here are some articles all about change and disruption. You'll enjoy them Off, you go, good luck. And then what's the person? Do they look around and go? What are all the other leaders doing? They're doing reorgs. They're doing disruption oh dear, I'd better do that as well. And we again perpetuate a cycle of leadership capabilities you were asking Francesca a little while ago about. Is this about leadership capability? I think for sure. It's about leadership training, it's about leadership selection, it's about leadership support. It's about the leadership infrastructure and ecosystem of our organizations in a very significant way.
Speaker 3: 30:15
If I could add one to it and I'd be curious about your reaction to this the cohesion of the leadership team as well. I've seen senior leadership teams where the loudest voice in the room gets the win, and if you can't dissent, or if you can't at least understand how to work together as a leadership team, I don't think your organization has a chance. When you look at leadership teams that don't have a healthy cohesion or a healthy dissent ability, your organization is pretty screwed.
Speaker 1: 30:42
And what does that team therefore lack? It lacks a sense of belonging, it lacks a sense of place, it lacks a sense of meaning, it lacks a sense of certainty, it lacks a sense of predictability, it lacks a sense of control. It is a failing team because the place where all of the things that we're talking about either thrive or wither is on a team. And, yeah, if the top team doesn't experience stability, doesn't know how to foster its own stability, then, yeah, good luck everybody else.
Speaker 2: 31:16
It's interesting, especially if stability is the name of the game, right? One of the use cases is around the onboarding of leaders. When you think about a leader's first 90 days either a new in an organization or just new in their role there is this expectation that they've changed something, that they've innovated on something. Do we start there? Is that the lowest denominator to say stop having this expectation for new leaders?
Speaker 1: 31:41
It is part of the ecosystem thing as well, isn't it? Because we teach people to come in and make change in the first 90 days. Therefore, change is the thing that leaders do. Therefore, new leaders must come and make change. It would be a lovely and fascinating exercise to say to a leader all right, in your first 90 days, I want you to discover everything that's working and elevate those things and explain to everybody why.
Speaker 1: 32:10
Those are examples of the sorts of things you, as a leader, want to build in an organization and just completely flip the script. If you flipped it that way, you would be building massive stability for people, which goes here's who we are eternally. Here's how we do our work eternally. Here's what we value eternally. Here's who we seek to serve eternally. We're going to keep all of those, honor those, elevate those, preserve those, and over here, x and Y. We need to find a better way of doing these things. Can you help? For me at least, that's a very psychologically healthy way of beginning a narrative that feels like an improvement narrative, not a change narrative. Now, this whole conversation is about a hell of a lot more than the narrative, but it is interesting to just try on a few words for size and see how they make you feel as a leader or as an employee, and to see if we've actually put the emphasis on the wrong syllable when it comes to all. Things change and we should emphasize some stability too.
Speaker 1: 33:47
So Mel and I like to do this thing with our guests called rapid round, ideally quick short answers.
Speaker 3: 33:50
However, if you met me, I know I understand, I get it, I get. But this is the thing, this if we need to go off, we need to go off on the scenic route. That's the point. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine. All right, are you ready to play ash Ashley?
Speaker 1: 34:00
The medium quick, medium rapid round. Yes, I am.
Speaker 2: 34:04
We're not willing to take a stand on anything. Hopefully this is a fun one for you. In your book you mentioned the word disrupt. Gets folks extra bonus biz dude points which crack me up. What buzzwords would you like to see die off already?
Speaker 1: 34:24
you like to see die off already. Strategic, which is not considered a buzzword, but is affixed to the front of far too many things to make them sound better than they are and to paper over a lot of very lazy thinking. So you just have to call it an asset. It's not a strategic asset. You have to call it an investment, not a strategic investment, and we can save a few syllables from the world.
Speaker 2: 34:43
I appreciate it. Let's simplify. What new buzzwords are on the horizon that you're like? Let's stop this immediately, before this catches on.
Speaker 1: 34:53
AI is getting.
Speaker 2: 34:54
Oh.
Speaker 1: 34:54
Jesus up to everything.
Speaker 2: 34:56
Truly.
Speaker 1: 34:57
And some things that are AI, which is a thing, but plenty of things that aren't AI and that are actually just math or an algorithm, but it's AI, this and AI, this and AI, this and AI is the new blockchain, because a few years ago it was we'll do this on the blockchain and this on the blockchain and this on the blockchain and this on the blockchain, and sooner or later, you just want to go shut up and sooner or later, you just want to go shut up. Ai is terrifying, I think for me certainly, because it seems to remove humans from a lot of necessarily human interactions, and you've got to ask yourself where does that point to? But I don't think we help by affixing AI on the front of things that aren't AI-like.
Speaker 3: 35:38
All right. What would you like to see CEOs do more of? Lesson how about less of? What would you like to see them do? Less of?
Speaker 1: 35:53
Change for the sake of change. By the way, can I go back now? I'm going to go back to my prior answer Listen. There is an art to listen I don't just mean be conversationally savvy. Create the systems and structures to understand the experience of work on the front lines and then pay attention to that so that there is like an infrastructure that needs to happen yeah, but listening to occur I love that answer.
Speaker 3: 36:14
There's a very deep schism a lot of times between the front line and leadership and, quite honestly, we have all the tools Qualtrics, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah to do that efficiently. It's just listen to it and maybe do something with it. Would be nice too.
Speaker 1: 36:28
But you have to make it a priority and you have to realize that the things that people tell you are not the whole story.
Speaker 3: 36:33
Fair. Yeah, All right. Same question for CHROs, our chief HR officers. A lot of times they are in the ear of the CEO and the people voice sometimes, but what would you like to see them do more of?
Speaker 1: 36:56
I wrote a chapter about it in the book Advocate for Employees. And again, that's a hard thing because of the business decisions we want to make and not necessarily come up to the C-suite and go. You shouldn't do this because this will create uncertainty, anxiety, unbelonging displacement, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah. You shouldn't do it. But I would like to see CHROs feel the necessity of doing that more. And, by the way, to give another answer to one of the prior quickfire questions, which is now a slow fire question, I'd like to see CEOs demand that of their heads of HR more. I'd like to see more CEOs go. You know what we actually do, really need to change the balance on the people stuff. And so, head of hr, that's on you, and if you come and tell me we've got the balance wrong, I'm gonna listen to you yes or no?
Speaker 3: 37:53
do you believe most hr organizations are working in benefit of their people?
Speaker 1: 37:57
I think they're missing a few things, like if you look at the way HR is structured. It's structured to support business leaders. Mainly it's structured around business priorities. I've spent countless hours sitting in HR off sites where HR says, all right, as good citizens of life in the blender, we're going to change our strategy. What should the new strategy be? And someone around the table goes we should start with the business strategy and then we should figure out the people implications of the business strategy and that will tell us the HR strategy won't hit. That's an incomplete answer. Yes, it is, because the other part is what do the humans need? And the humans don't need the business strategy. The humans need the conditions of human performance. So those are things we could bring those into the conversation. We could bring those into the strategy.
Speaker 1: 38:45
I would love a stability governance organization in a company. What would stability governance look like? You can imagine HR playing that role. It doesn't at the moment. How do we train leaders, how do we listen and how do we deploy ourselves so that we understand the experience on the front lines? Because, again, most of the time you have to be a business of a certain size to get one HR person who has then massively run off their feet trying to keep up with the leaders charging around doing the business strategy stuff. Their feet trying to keep up with the leaders charging around doing the business strategy stuff. We've got to figure out a way of rethinking that so that we expand HR's portfolio to include the conditions of human performance, because, goodness me, those should live somewhere in our organizational construct.
Speaker 3: 39:34
Yeah, and right now it's like learning and development. Sometimes it's looking at the talent management team and being like aren't you doing that? Are you doing that? Because I'm not doing that, that's not my domain, so it doesn't feel like it's something that is its own entity and needs to be its own entity.
Speaker 1: 39:46
And there's a little bit more to continue my very long answer to this now.
Speaker 1: 39:50
Not at all quick fire. This is the slow fire round that. When HR talks about performance, we get very quickly to performance management and skills and all the things that we can capture in spreadsheets and that the software gives us. But if you go and talk to people on the front lines about what are the ingredients of performance, they go a leader who talks to me in language I understand, a sense of predictability and a set of relationships on my team and there is no line item budget in HR for those things. So the definition of performance needs to be agreed and understood, because HR doesn't actually map to those things. Hr maps to things that you hand money to vendors for, and those things are good organizational administration things, but if you think that those are the same as performance things, then you have a very strange idea of what performance looks like.
Speaker 3: 40:55
Ashley, thanks so much for joining us today. It was a pleasure seeing you and chatting.
Speaker 1: 41:00
Lovely, lovely to catch up, and let's do this again soon.
Speaker 3: 41:03
Thanks so much for joining us today. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends, Thanks Fred.
The Human Debt of Tech at Work
Humans aren’t just resources…
But we’ve been treating them like they are. We sat down with Duena Blomstrom, author and Human Debt expert, to unpack what happens when companies prioritize speed, systems, and output over emotional wellbeing—and how to fix it. If your workplace is running on burnout, blurred boundaries, and broken trust, this conversation is the reset you didn’t know you needed.
Your Work Friends Podcast: Human Debt with Duena Blomstrom
Humans aren’t just resources…
But we’ve been treating them like they are. We sat down with Duena Blomstrom, author and Human Debt expert, to unpack what happens when companies prioritize speed, systems, and output over emotional wellbeing—and how to fix it. If your workplace is running on burnout, blurred boundaries, and broken trust, this conversation is the reset you didn’t know you needed.
Speaker 1: 0:00
I'm wondering if you can explain it to our listeners like a five-year-old. What is human debt?
Speaker 2: 0:07
To five-year-olds it would be difficult because they would have to assume that the enterprise is an honest place where good things should have happened. So I can't do that, but I can explain it to a 35-year-old.
Speaker 1: 0:19
Let's do it, let's do it, let's do it. What's going on, mel, hey, hey, how's it going?
Speaker 3: 0:39
It's good. It's good. I cannot believe we are almost a month away from fall.
Speaker 1: 0:45
I know we are 40 days left of summer, though Plenty of time. Did you get your beach day in? Not a day.
Speaker 3: 0:53
I did get two hours, but Robbie and I are planning a trip to Block Island, which, for those of you who don't know, is off the coast of Rhode Island. It's gorgeous, and that will be our beach day, hopefully at the end of this month. How about you? Very nice, very nice.
Speaker 1: 1:09
We are taking a trip up to Mount Rainier, which, yeah, I don't know if anyone else does this. We've lived in Portland for about four years now and I looked at a map the other day and was like wow, mount St Helens is like an hour and a half away, never been. Was like wow, mount.
Speaker 1: 1:24
St Helens is like an hour and a half away. Never been right. Mount Rainier, super close like these, beautiful, you know experiences and we're just like we want to go to JCrew this weekend. So like, yeah, we are. So we rented like a cool cabin. The Airbnb market around Mountain Towns is just stunning. I mean funny. Also, you can you can rent someone's trailer, you can rent a yurt, you can rent, you know, a cabin that looks like it's totally set up to be instagrammable, that kind of stuff I've always wanted to stay in a yurt.
Speaker 3: 1:54
I don't know what it is, I'm like same such a fun tent I'm not a camping person.
Speaker 1: 2:00
I love to hike and be outdoors and I want to be in a room with a whack, yeah a yurt is the nice middle ground.
Speaker 3: 2:06
It's like a nice middle ground between a tent and a house.
Speaker 1: 2:10
Yeah, yeah. Do you think you could just buy a yurt on Amazon? You could buy anything on Amazon.
Speaker 3: 2:15
I know, like Timu, I've not ordered anything from Timu, have you?
Speaker 1: 2:19
No, but I really want to just to see what comes. I do too.
Speaker 3: 2:23
You know what it makes me wonder. I have the funniest story when my niece was going through this donut obsession for like ever, as you do, as you do, and I saw this donut chair on Amazon and I thought it was like a person-sized donut chair and then she got it for her birthday and it was a chair for her cell phone. So I imagine this shopping experience at Timo is kind of like me not paying attention to the dimensions of her donut chair.
Speaker 1: 2:51
That's why I want it. That's why I want it. Like, did you just spend $150 on a thing for yourself?
Speaker 3: 2:55
Yeah, it was like the dumbest thing ever, yeah, oh that's funny, god, I love shit like that. Yeah, I'm a big fan.
Speaker 1: 3:02
Mystery packages, mystery packages. Aren't you a big fan of, like the mystery bags, like $5, what's in the bag. It could be anything Like such a sucker for that Huge.
Speaker 3: 3:12
Where do people get those? You know like those mail bins, like unclaimed mail, and then they just buy an entire pallet.
Speaker 1: 3:25
I want to in on a palette with you Nordstrom returns, amazon returns. What do you get? What are you going to get? Yeah, oh, we got to do this. Yeah, when we make our first million, we'll get a palette.
Speaker 3: 3:31
We'll do a live unboxing.
Speaker 1: 3:35
It's irregular jeans. We have 45 packs of irregular jeans. These are our dreams $501 sunglasses. Yes, oh God, I love every minute of it. Well, no, we talked to someone super duper cool this summer.
Speaker 3: 3:53
Oh, yes, duena, I love her. Yeah, yeah, tell us about Duena doing things that don't take care of their people and their employees. And her whole discussion was on how to recognize if you have human debt. Every organization, just like tech debt, has human debt, and she was addressing ways that you can recognize it and ways that you can address it. It's a really interesting concept that we need to start talking about more. And she's done a million other things. She has a podcast called Mero Spicy at Work Tech, not People is a book that she's written. She's a keynote speaker. She's just an overall powerhouse.
Speaker 1: 4:52
Talk about a renaissance woman that's out there just doing good.
Speaker 3: 4:55
Yeah.
Speaker 1: 4:56
And has done good too. Right, human debt is one of those things where, if you don't know the term, when you have her explain what it is, what happened to me is like oh, I have felt this, I know exactly what this is, when you feel like the reciprocity and the relationship with your organization is off balance massively. I loved talking about what it looks like and feels like with her, but also, and probably most importantly, what can we do about it as organizations and, most importantly, as individuals? Because it starts with us one-on-one.
Speaker 3: 5:30
One-on-one we're humans at the end of the day, we're humans. I'm only human. Sorry for the woo-woo everyone. That's who we are. I love everything about this. She's just fantastic. So we hope that you get a lot out of this episode, folks, and let us know what you think. Here's to one-off Welcome friends.
Speaker 3: 6:14
We are super excited to welcome Dwayna Blomstrom. She is the author of Emotional Banking, people Before Tech, the Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age and an upcoming book called Tech-Led Culture. She is also an international keynote speaker, the co-founder of Tech-Led Culture People, not Tech companies that are really offering a human work platform, providing a framework to usher in a new tech-led culture of humanity in the workplace. She is one of the top voices on LinkedIn. She has an amazing newsletter that I follow the Future of Agile, as well as Chasing Psychological Safety. She's also a podcaster, like us. She's the co-host of NeuroSpicy at Work, which I'm excited to listen to.
Speaker 3: 6:58
The Secret Society of Human Work Advocates the People in Tech podcast, tech-led Culture and, married to Tech Duenna, that's a lot. So we just want to say wow, you've accomplished quite a great deal in influencing the working world in general in a very positive way. I love that you're calling out how we need to prioritize humanity in the workplace. Tell us, how did you get started in this space? What really inspired you to get started in this space?
Speaker 2: 7:29
Oh, only that. Let's see, that's an easy one to start with. We should have started with the harder ones. I don't think I've had any kind of inspiration. I didn't want to get started in this space at all. I don't know really many people that woke up going. I shall be in this space. So I think, like all of us, I just happened into it. I happened to see what looked to me like vast injustices and I had to do something about them.
Speaker 2: 7:56
I don't think I ever chose anything and I don't know if I might ask you what is this path we're talking about? What exactly have I chosen? Because if you ask me, none of the things have really been the ones that I've necessarily went after, but the things that have happened to me. I hear this a lot from other people that are AUADHD and have worked in the business world. I feel like careers have never been designed. We just fell where we fell and then we put all of our passion into something, learned all of the things, possibly got bored with that particular topic and moved on to the next.
Speaker 2: 8:32
Industry Happened to me a couple of times. I would say I started in psychology, obviously, but then I very quickly moved into business and did kind of technology and got excited when the internet boomed, when the financial technology side of things boomed, and learned everything there was to learn about it. But then the more I I put my head into it, the more I realized these are bigger human issues and I had to get my head out of the small holes. I was so pleased tinkering in, like every other autistic person that I have employed in my life not everybody else and yeah, I didn't choose anything. It's become a vocation, more than a day-to-day nine-to-five.
Speaker 3: 9:15
Yeah, that makes sense. I can totally relate. Francesca and I often talk about how we fell into our roles and then you just become the expert while you're doing it and quickly get bored and move on to the next. What's the next thing? So that makes total sense to me.
Speaker 2: 9:30
No one I don't believe wakes up at five and goes. I desperately want to be the uh back-end developer of apis. It's not a life-saving. It's very hard to attach the meaning to it, but we find other things at work that do that and I don't think there's anyone in the workplace that's not hundred thousand percent burning for something.
Speaker 1: 9:54
It's an interesting. People feel that. They feel that either that line between I'm not passionate about my work, but I'm doing this for the money and I'm doing this to bring home a paycheck, or they're burning out or they're feeling all of the impacts of the way that organizations are set up. And one of the concepts you talk about is human debt, and I love that. I'm wondering if you can explain it to our listeners like a five-year-old. What is human debt?
Speaker 2: 10:24
like a five-year-old. What is human debt To five-year-olds? It would be difficult because they would have to assume that the enterprise is an honest place where good things should have happened. So I can't do that, but I can explain it to a 35-year-old.
Speaker 2: 10:37
Let's do it, let's do it and there's probably different explanations to a 25-year-old, a 35-year-old, a 55-year-old and so on, but for everyone we should have done right. As employers, we should have done a set of things. As organizations, we should have come to the table in a certain fashion when we offer whatever it is that we offer in this contract of work, and those things haven't happened. So I'll expand in a second. It's every time that the organization hasn't done the things that they should have done and by those taking care of their employees in monetary and emotional fashion. So, for instance, all the things that most organizations will tell you they have but they don't really have. All of your failed dni programs. All of your stages of leadership with no explanation. All of the times when they should have been respectful to the conversation and the communication and never happened. All of the times when we promised our people a promotion and then we forgot, as if it never really was going to materialize anyways. All of the times when we presided over unpleasant and bullish behaviors, because think of a wrong in the workplace and think how it has never been addressed and think that will become your debt as an organization, because the more of these instances that you have as an organization where you have failed your people. Most of these are not going to be recorded anywhere, but they will exist in something like the, and I never thought about it until right now, but it's almost the antithesis of culture. It's an anti-culture vessel in the back of everyone's mind going. These motherfuckers have effed other people up. It may not have been me, but it has happened here. You know.
Speaker 2: 12:35
What happens is you then sit on an organization that has a debt and you can decide to pay it off and start treating your people better, figure out what they hate you for and when, and then make them love you again, or you can decide to ignore it, which is the case for a vast majority of most enterprises today. You can pretend it's not a problem. You can better your retention programs instead or put more money in position. I don't know what else we're doing than that, if I'm honest. So if you as an organization decide to not pay off this human debt, what happens eventually is that you become unviable. I believe that they will not be around. I'm not saying we should never get debt, right? If I'm talking to particularly your listeners must be Americans. You're fine with that. Question is when do we start paying this off?
Speaker 1: 13:23
Yeah, it was super fair. When I was growing up, my parents always talked about this idea of reciprocity and relationships. Right, Even on a one-to-one level. You are going to have moments where you're going to withdraw from the emotional bank account and you're going to have moments where you're going to have to deposit in the emotional bank account, and sometimes it's going to be uneven, but ideally, in the long arc, you have a balanced bank account. And this is one of these concepts where I feel like this happens on an individual level To your very good point. It happens on an organizational level and you feel it. You feel it, that's right.
Speaker 2: 13:57
Yeah, everyone knows it Exactly that I'm saying and what you said, that when you said you feel it. We know what we're all about, everyone knows. And it's that email we didn't answer. It's that person. We told them to have themselves in a corner because they weren't their fault, it was the bloody system or whatever. It's that time when we didn't keep a promise. It's that time when we didn't help a friend or we let them fall on a sword, becoming debts that you carry. As a human, workplace should care about those bits, because I'm not a different human, but outside of that, we're not entities that exist. Why would the workplace as well that claims it has regulated method in which it will not, if you over, do that to you is my question. So I'm on a work path with human debt in general, but the one at work is just shameful if you ask me I am curious about, on an organizational level, what are they supposed to do?
Speaker 2: 14:56
Fair question. It's massive. What is anyone supposed to do?
Speaker 1: 14:59
I don't know. Yeah, be cooler, be a nicer person. I don't know. Don't be a dick.
Speaker 2: 15:04
I'm a dick. That is the answer. But regulating against dickery is not the answer. Making people genuinely not biddicks is probably the answer. And if they genuinely wanted to do something, then there would be no employee that wasn't through a level of Communist Party from 1955, re-education camps of what the bloody hell an emotion is, because that's the level we need to get our leadership through before we will be able to engage with this very new generation that speaks emotions like that.
Speaker 2: 15:37
And if you are in a leadership position or you are engaged in teamwork and you haven't had it that to me doesn't recommend you to exist in the workplace at all, because what they're using, and what we're all using, is this lack of education to say I don't quite know, we don't quite engage like that at work. So, in between the armor of professionalism and this insanity of I don't know much about emotions I'm not a psychologist how am I supposed to engage any better? What happens is we cannot communicate and we cannot collaborate at work and we sure as fuck cannot lead anybody. That's the problem we have. If you're losing money anywhere the workplace you're losing on the fuckers you're keeping who are lying. You don't have emotions. If we're going to keep them. We can't just flush these people out.
Speaker 2: 16:22
I remember starting in the business world and everyone telling me to not worry in banking. We don't need to change all the systems In time, we'll just replace them with the people and everything. Come on, these guys only have one more board meeting. The amount of times I heard that you'd be surprised. That's not the way to be doing life. I am not supposed to wait anyone out to die because it's uncomfortable for me to speak about real things.
Speaker 1: 16:46
We hear it all the time, though All the time. He's not going anywhere. Blah, blah, blah, Like it happens all the time.
Speaker 2: 16:53
But people are using it as excuses.
Speaker 3: 16:56
Yeah, they absolutely are.
Speaker 1: 16:57
What's fascinating about this, though, is that, when you look at all of the research about great leadership, great team dynamics, innovation, engagement, it harkens on those things that people are emotionally intelligent, that they do make space for things like psychological safety, like that they understand their own limitations, and all of those things make for great performance, but it also means that you need to get your own shit together. Do you understand how you operate? Do you understand where your pitfalls are? Do you understand how you need to flex for your team? And vice versa? I think our leaders in organizations that grew up with my joke is, they grew up with this like Shackleton view of leadership, which is I'm strong, I have no emotions, I'm going to just push my way through, as opposed to really thinking about what works to lead people through what we're going through, what we're about to go through.
Speaker 2: 17:52
And.
Speaker 1: 17:52
I know Mel's probably so sick of hearing me say this, but there is not a person on the planet that has led through what we're going through and what we're about to go through. When you think about the speed of business, when you think about AI the amount of wars happening cultural and on the ground. When you think about AI, the amount of wars happening cultural and on the ground it's too much for a lot of people and to deny your humanity in that versus to lean into it, is not the right move.
Speaker 2: 18:15
But we have done it in the workplace for the last X amount of years. We need such a blank slate reset. You asked me earlier what needs to happen. What needs to happen is everyone needs to shut down, come back with a new plan. That's what needs to happen.
Speaker 3: 18:29
In addition to blowing up the workplace, people need to blow up the concept of what work means in their life. Right, there's a reset that needs to happen on a personal level as well as the organizational level.
Speaker 2: 18:43
You hit the nail on the head Disconnect between what work can and is and should be. It's not even a genuine, open conversation. Big concepts are up in the air. Who am I? What is work? What is the point of me as a human? What if your worth as a human is never about how much money you make?
Speaker 2: 19:01
What if we start remunerating people on being emotionally intelligent or remunerating people on being kind intelligent or remunerating people on being kind or taking up someone else's work for a second instead, because we haven't taught them the right things, in particular men, the same men that we are upset at.
Speaker 2: 19:17
How very dare they be a shithead and whatever shit. We put them there and we said all you need to do is tell me what to do and then I will execute on it. And no, that isn't, isn't the ask? The ask is that you check yourself, that you sit with being uncomfortable, that you understand your emotions, that you communicate efficiently, that you care about me. Those are the asks. With that said, there are companies out there, there are enterprises out there, there are combinations of people out there and groups that have gathered in a way that allow them to see each other, that allow them to get psychological safety to be real teams to go real fast, and those are the people that will get us out of the workplace if we don't want to also match them, not AI or anybody else. So literally, being a human is the only USB we're going to be asked to bring.
Speaker 3: 20:07
Yeah, we don't have anything if we don't have our humanity. We just talked about AI, and one thing we do know is that maintaining our humanity and bringing our full human selves is going to be more important than anything. So you talk a lot about tech debt. What is tech debt?
Speaker 2: 20:34
That's easier when you write code, when you're heart of heart as a programmer. That you could have potentially written it a little bit better is the only way to put it. You could have tested it more or you could have double checked something. But what has been prized in the software development world has always been speed of delivery. So the first answer you get off of Google is the one you get in. I'm joking, it's not quite that easy, but it takes a little bit more than that to be a programmer, but not a whole lot more, let me tell you.
Speaker 2: 21:01
That said, it's a natural thing to incur technical debt as you write, because if you write code fast, some of it won't work, some of it will get old, some of it will need a rewrite. What happens when you have a lot of this code that's not brilliant accumulating, is that you have to do a full rewrite of your code base, and anyone in technology knows that's the kiss of death for any CTO or any team attempting to exist. So you don't want to get to a place where you have to throw away everything you've written. When it comes to tech debt, it comes to bite you and your system stops working if you don't start fixing it. So the same way that they're supposed to be going back and fixing bits and pieces of that tech debt where it will make sense, so that the entire thing doesn't crash, that is how I'm saying we should be doing it in terms of human debt in the enterprise and let's start in the emotional intelligence, because it is an emergency. I I was desperately afraid of this in the ending of all my books. If we are to take a leaflet from the tech industry, we'll have to change culture everywhere else, because in the tech industry, by hook or by crook, we've invented this crap called agile, and this crap called agile means many things to many people, but what it essentially means is that you have some autonomy and you have some goodwill. That's what it means, and when you have those two things, you do things with other people. That's literally all that it means.
Speaker 2: 22:20
And because you cannot make technology as an individual contributor anymore, they have had to produce the thing. Let me tell you where else it didn't wasn't needed. Everywhere else, because the workplace is still made of a hundred billion individual contributors. So in the technology side, if you don't collaborate, you don't end up with any code. If you don't do the pair programming. You don't have the thing that's being paired properly On the other side. If your workplace is horrible and your workmate is an asshole, you still do it. You still show up to not take any blame for anything and to be the hero and to deliver the project. We have workplaces that are carried by millions of desperate, adulting individual contributors. The workplace doesn't exist. The workplace and the business place is a lie. We don't have that. We just have some conventions that we are happy to avail ourselves of for different reasons. So those are the ones we need to get to, because they are not something to be proud of to leave the next generation.
Speaker 2: 23:24
You feel it in the ether, what we hear from folks who are still in corporate, consistently it's just like I know that the people that are blessed and still in and for a long while it was they're going to be out, weren't they? But now I'm telling you that the out is out. These people are the outliners now, the people that are convinced that what existed come back. The same exact structure, the same exact. The same exact structure, the same exact conversation, the same exact fears of being authentic. No one's going to notice I don't quite understand anything. No one's going to notice I'm not quite engaging humanly properly. That's not happening anymore and I am genuinely worried for anyone who thinks we're wrong and we'll all calm down.
Speaker 3: 24:03
It won't. It feels like it's just going to amp up. I'd love to hear, especially with all this talk of AI. I'm wondering what your point of view is on how employers and employees, during this change, can get ahead of the human debt side of things. What can they do? Because we know the tech change is here and increasing. How can they get ahead of that human debt when it does start?
Speaker 2: 24:26
happening. I want to believe that, as society, we'll be at the place that we can go. Not everybody needs to show up to work, and not everyone needs to have a nine to five job. Everyone else can go read or make paintings. There is no need for jobs to be created. We don't need to fear AI. If AI shows up and AI takes all our jobs, that's brilliant. Then we all can lazy about. That's not going to, unfortunately, happen in our lifetime. It would be nice, it would be great, but not going to happen. So what will happen is, though no one will be employable if you don't bring yourself to work every day.
Speaker 2: 25:05
I remember when I was in college, I wrote a thesis on always being on, and I was like, so proud of myself. All you need to do is always being on, and I was like, so proud of myself. All you need to do is always be on, and then you'll be so focused and so in flow. Everything will be fine, literally. I remember my professor going God, this is not. This is not going to work. You're going to have to go back to the drawing board because you're describing ADHD. Can you go back home and calm down? But so I'm not saying that everyone's going to like me, right, not everyone can be on, but you're like don't mask a hundred percent, you can't mask forever exactly that.
Speaker 2: 25:40
Yeah, so when we say mask, we mean in the workplace in particular. When we say it in in a private fashion, we just mean that those of us that are not neurotypical spend our entire lives attempting to be like the neurotypicals. Possibly, if you ask me, we should just ask for the neurotypicals to try more to be like us. But that's just me. But we do that. We attempt to pretend we are neurotypical.
Speaker 2: 26:05
But that happens at work as well, when people mask their true emotion and they employ a process called impression management, which is essentially attempting to appear in a certain fashion in front of your peers. But when you do that, you are not authentic, you are not genuinely giving your opinion. You are are attempting to control the narrative in a fashion that will not help a team function, so it's not a desirable behavior. When you're attempting to create a team dynamic, it's really not a desirable behavior in any fashion other than when people want to wear pink. It's the only impression management I'm fine with is for pretty. Anything else is not for pretty and it's for hiding. Should not exist either in personal or workplaces, simply because it makes our lives harder and it makes other people suffer.
Speaker 3: 26:58
Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I'm so happy to hear the discussions had started around bringing your authentic self to work and workplaces trying to really create spaces where that's okay. No one's getting it 100%, but the fact that some workplaces are even trying to do that and foster that is so incredibly important.
Speaker 2: 27:22
So it's good to see, I say this a lot the organizations that do have psychological safety are not the organizations that are chasing it. They're the organizations that have built it to begin with and then have guarded it. Guarding it is an everyday work. Let's be honest. The work that is needed of humans at work is the same work that's needed of us every day, with our spouses, with our children, with our parents, with our friends. The same work. Be honest, be kind, be always putting yourself into somebody else's shoes. Same way. Does anyone want to do it, even at home? No, we're equals to our own family. Why would we extend that kind of kindness to strangers at work? So, the more that the world implodes, the more that we are afraid we're dying, the more that we are in defense mode, the less psychological, the less a team, the less a workplace the less there's any point to this conversation.
Speaker 1: 28:19
I think about this a lot. I've been on a journey the last several months around how do I want to reimagine my life and how I live my life? One of the North Stars is am I doing this out of love and to be a better version of myself for other people, for myself? Or am I doing this out of ego? And this idea of this constant pull of? Is this out of love or is this out of ego? And sometimes you want to do things out of ego. I get that. But for the most part I'm trying really hard to have a very simple vision of do it out of love, even if it doesn't make sense, even if it's not good for my career. It's out of love Because at this point I don't know what else to do, and as I'm listening to you when I'm feeling like, is that kind of the mantra that we all need to be? Not that I, that's all.
Speaker 2: 29:00
That's all. That's all and it's. They should have started with what you started and they should end with what you're ending now, which is what when you started, you explained you there's reciprocity in there's a rupture and repair and there's a reciprocity, and when you fuck people up, you then have to come back up and put more in that. That's how you do repair. You put more that coin from bloody dr phil's jar, if no one knows any other reference, you would remember dr phil's love jar, if nothing else. Or some people might remember vick's from the Orange County Housewives they all had the love jar like that. Have a fucking love jar and stop taking shit out of it instead of putting crap into it, because you'll fuck up your life and your work life.
Speaker 2: 29:42
I think it's the easiest advice, but we all know that it reduces all the way to don't be a dick, the method to not be a dick, I think, and to minimize those instances when you go for the ego instead of the love. I don't know if it's any good, but it's an intense daily pressure. I will tell you that these days I just have to go. What do I think is the right thing to do? What do I genuinely believe is the right thing to do and, like you say, you won't always do it. Sometimes you'll be like, fuck, the right thing to do. I've been doing the right thing continuously. My significant statement is the right thing to do.
Speaker 3: 30:17
Okay, go fuck it up, but some days and most days you would have tried, and it's a handful of questions, some are yet. They can be yes or no, but the hope is it's your. Whatever your immediate reaction is to this question or your immediate answer, I will tell you that you're giving palpitations to people who are AUADHD.
Speaker 2: 30:55
No, I'm joking, I'll be fine.
Speaker 3: 30:56
I'm sorry, I'm joking, I'll be 100% fine, I'm curious now Go ahead In terms of human debt, because you've seen examples of who's really fucking it up and who's doing it really well. Who do you feel is getting this right?
Speaker 2: 31:15
It's getting it right. Google started by doing it right. That's why they came up with the idea. They sort of found it at the same time that Amy has repopularized it. It's not something that Amy Edmondson has come up with, it's not something that Google has come up with, but psychological safety will forever be intrinsically connected to Google. That doesn't make Google a psychologically safe company today, necessarily. They have pockets of amazingness and pockets of absolute shit, like everyone else, but, with that said, they are an absolute good company to look at.
Speaker 2: 31:44
The second example I have and it's surprising to most people is fucking Amazon, and it's Amazon corporate. It's Amazon corporate working practices. Let's put it that way. I look at what they're doing in terms of collaboration internally, where we make software, and it's insanely smart. It's probably the only place where you have good acknowledgement of the fact that work doesn't happen like we thought it does. A famous example is the fact that they use written memos that they all bloody read first before the conversation starts. So we all have the same bloody context Very, very basic.
Speaker 2: 32:22
And then, lastly, and most interestingly so, somewhere around March, jeff Bezos came out after eight billion years where we thought he died or something. He was busy being in love. Some of us used to be back in the day, and so he came back saying we are doing no structured meetings anymore. I'm sorry, what we know when we show up, we know what we show up for. And then I remind everyone that they have to do mind wandering, which, yes, I can just see all the wondering which, yes, I can just see all the um, various developers going oh my god, now what mind wandering. They want my feelings to wander somewhere as well.
Speaker 2: 33:01
So completely get it why. It's woohoo for some people, but it's a hundred percent the truth. You only come in to get an answer when you've had five minutes of mind wandering, and what most work meetings manage to do, which is insane, is attempt to fit a little bit of mind wandering in the. And what most work meetings manage to do, which is insane, is attempt to fit a little bit of mind-wandering in the middle of an insane work meeting. And because he doesn't have an exact end time, it allows people to actually be creative and try to apply themselves to a problem. These are execs at Amazon, so maybe we get people treated like execs at Amazon and then we let their minds wander. How about that?
Speaker 3: 33:34
Can companies afford to ignore this human debt?
Speaker 2: 33:39
Companies are non-existent. There is a real of a concept organizations and companies are just as serious as Santa Claus has been saying this for 10,000 years. They cannot afford it, but they don't care because they can't care or afford or do anything. They don't exist as a thing. I I keep saying this to the child anytime he gets up in arms about corporations there isn't this thing. This thing doesn't exist. The thing you're upset against does not exist. There's no five people that have sat down and decided this and are gonna do this.
Speaker 2: 34:10
Things happen in the business world in virtue of inertia and in virtue of the taxation episode. We're in a movie that's not being ran by a company. So no, they can't afford it, but they don't care that they can't afford it, and more and more companies are going to drop off and the ones that won't. At the end of the day, we all know which we started talking about. The bloat companies are practically an extended social service. These days. They know they've not audited which of their teams is doing anything after a certain size right? Big organizations know that they are half paying the state by keeping these people that are useless. It's an insane model. Hopefully we'll walk away from it one day. If we don't't, they will simply stop being viable. I think when they are up against companies that are doing whatever they can to do better yeah, this is more moving to a personal side of things.
Speaker 3: 35:06
What are you reading and or listening to right now that you're really excited about?
Speaker 2: 35:12
I I'm really excited about brushing up on my Spanish, which has been a lot better than I thought it was. I am surprised every day when one of my team doesn't know something and I'm like that means X and they're like, can you stop just flaunting your Spanish? So I do need to learn some proper grammar. So that's what I'm reading continuously. I'm trying to catch up on Spanish. Proper grammar. So that's what I'm reading continuously.
Speaker 2: 35:34
I'm trying to catch up on spanish and, if I'm also honest, I'm reading the most I can about the effect of being a leader and a neurodivergent leader in the workplace who has teenagers and children who are alphabet mafia.
Speaker 2: 35:51
It's a really important bit that I think we have completely neglected. We've just started a new podcast called tears of dopamine, and it's literally just us talking to other parents of trans and gay kids who have had to themselves go through major and horrendous things. I can't begin to tell you and I won't because I let them tell their story Most of them will have their voices covered because they have exact jobs that they are desperate to keep, but some of them have been willing to give us their courage and use their voice and their professional standards. So you'll hear professional standing. So you'll hear of a few names, but the rest of us, the rest of us that have these kids that we are just trying to keep alive and happy, and have never talked to each other about it, shame on us, and shame on us for not opening the conversation from here on. So we have to start working on it. Let us know if you need any.
Speaker 3: 36:49
I love that. It's so important to have that community just to start the conversation and to support one another through it. What are you most excited about for this next year?
Speaker 2: 37:15
about and I'm not taking that in any trivial fashion after having been acquiring some ptsd last year and after having seen my child go through horrible things, it's a big deal for us and we've worked really hard at re-establishing our mental stability, like I say, and our therapist would be very proud if we could just uh, be happy for a minute.
Speaker 3: 37:31
Yeah, yeah, it's important. We appreciate you and all the work you're doing Duana.
Speaker 2: 37:36
Thank you so much, you guys. It's been an amazing opportunity. You guys Both beautiful, beautiful humans and souls Really appreciate you. I don't know if you're a hugger, but I'm hugging you.
Speaker 1: 37:44
I'm so excited.
Speaker 2: 37:45
I can't wait to actually genuinely hug you guys, because I cannot wait to hug you.
Speaker 1: 37:50
Truly, I I cannot wait to play a game. I look forward to it. I will look forward to it. Thanks so much for joining us today. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends.
The Talent Fueled Enterprise
You can build high-performing teams and create a workplace people actually want to be part of. Just ask Mike Ohata—Fortune 15 talent leader, author of The Talent-Fueled Enterprise, and the guy talent insiders call a badass. In this episode, Mike shares how to lead with care and results, why psychological safety drives performance, and how to stop treating people like capital.
From the future of AI to why simplicity beats scale, we unpack what soulful leadership looks like in today’s world—and why it’s not just possible, but essential. If you’re ready to fuel your org with both head and heart, this one’s for you.
Your Work Friends Podcast: The Talent Fueled Enterprise with Mike Ohata
You can build high-performing teams and create a workplace people actually want to be part of. Just ask Mike Ohata—Fortune 15 talent leader, author of The Talent-Fueled Enterprise, and the guy talent insiders call a badass. In this episode, Mike shares how to lead with care and results, why psychological safety drives performance, and how to stop treating people like capital.
From the future of AI to why simplicity beats scale, we unpack what soulful leadership looks like in today’s world—and why it’s not just possible, but essential. If you’re ready to fuel your org with both head and heart, this one’s for you.
Speaker 1: 0:00
It just takes a dimension of courage. And I remember one CEO kept saying the most simplistic message. He goes if we get our culture right, the rest will come. We'll win in the marketplace, we'll win clients, we'll sell bigger projects. And you could feel it. He knew in his soul what the values were. He knew in his spirit what he was after and what he saw. And you go like, yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2: 0:28
What's going on, Mel?
Speaker 3: 1:00
Not much. I feel super energized. I belong to this community, through Culture First, that hosts co-working days in the city. I just love it so much. Not to speak for you, but like me, we kind of thrive on like hive togetherness of collaborating and brainstorming. So I just get a lot of energy out of just leaving my house and sitting in a space with other people who are getting shit done and then being able to connect and ask questions. So it felt good today I did that in the city. What about you? Nice?
Speaker 2: 1:14
And by the city you mean New.
Speaker 3: 1:16
York, I mean New York. Yeah, yeah, sorry everyone.
Speaker 2: 1:18
Yeah, I got to say I don't think I have prepared myself as a parent around sports. I did not grow up playing sports Like we were in like ceramics camp and dance and piano. That's what I did. I didn't really play sports, yeah. But my son is super into sports. My husband played soccer in college. Like they're into sports. I was not prepared for the amount of practices and such like. Just for soccer, just for soccer. And he's in first grade. They have practices on Monday, games on Saturday and then this weekend there was a jamboree like a fundraiser.
Speaker 2: 1:56
I'm like this is three days three days, three days out of the week, dedicated to soccer wait until he gets into middle school and high school.
Speaker 3: 2:06
That'd be five days a week, and then you'll have a pasta dinner to raise money. I was not prepared. Oh, I know what to get you now as a gift I have lawn chairs, I do have not a lawn, not a lawn chair, not a lawn chair like one of those pop-up tents.
Speaker 2: 2:19
What do we do? What do you hell?
Speaker 3: 2:20
yeah, the pop-up tent for outside, so. So when it starts raining, you could just zip yourself in.
Speaker 2: 2:26
It has a little window Like a little drive-thru window Like what here's your snacks. Yeah, it has a little window that you can look through, you're nice and cozy. Throw Clif Bars out of it. Yes, please get me that. That's funny, that's funny Okay. That's funny, that's funny Okay.
Speaker 3: 2:41
Oh man, yeah, you're going to be busy, yeah.
Speaker 2: 2:44
Well, we had a pretty rad discussion with Mike Ohata, didn't we?
Speaker 3: 3:02
We did. Yeah, yeah, mike Ohata joined us. He's a talent executive and strategic advisor. He's worked for organizations like Microsoft and KPMG and he's the author of the Talent-Fueled Enterprise. We read the book. It was awesome, and then we got to talk to him about it.
Speaker 2: 3:11
And we think there's a lot of good knowledge nuggets for folks to take away from this conversation. The book is written and geared towards. If you're the head of HR, the head of learning and development, if you're a CEO, right, it's looking at strategically what do you want to do to make sure that your enterprise is really garnering the full potential of everybody that works there? Right? Listen, if you are in those roles, it's a must read, absolutely, but that's not really why we wanted to have Mike on. It feels like there's this conversation happening in the ether, especially around anything HR or people related that it's very polarized.
Speaker 3: 3:40
Oh, it is right now. I read something yesterday around you're not strategic. If you're a bleeding heart HR person, take some issue with these types of comments, because I think something that you and I talk about often, and something that Mike emphasized, was this need for balance, the balance of caring for people and your bottom line and how you can bring those two things together in a really effective way.
Speaker 2: 4:09
Where work and where goodness really gets done is in trying to find the common ground, is in trying to figure out what is the balance between to your very good points, profit and being really good to your people, or really understanding how you can maximize the potential of your people, and we highly recommend Mike's book With us. He walked through how can anybody, whether you're a manager, a leader of an organization, really fuel your organization with not only talent but with soul as well, and gave some really really practical advice, and it was just a fun conversation.
Speaker 3: 4:43
And, side note, there's a lot of great movie quotes and tiebacks in this book, but this is a great conversation and with that, here's Mike Ohata. Mike, we are so excited to have you with your work, friends, today, and you've written the talent-fueled enterprise, which is focusing on how businesses can thrive by really focusing in on their talent, and we'd love to start off with what inspires you to write this book having me.
Speaker 1: 5:25
I'm really excited and I'm looking forward to our conversation. I've had the fortune in coming out of professional services and the firm I work is. There's this age where you time out and you're asked to retire. In that, just this notion of being able to be liberated from your organization, the stepping back, stepping away, getting out of the organization, has allowed to really share all the things that you'd like to work on. But you don't always have the opportunity to work on and also just get up all those kind of pent up feelings and thoughts around what could have been, could be and why can't we get to them in your careers.
Speaker 1: 5:56
It's really hard sometimes to get things done because we're constrained in these systems and these are of these organizations. The other part of the inspiration it sounds super corny, but it really is the people you work with right. It's the employees in our particular firm and the partners as well. But the people are really inspiring because, at the end of the day, they are the potential right and they are the engine of the organization. And you got to step back and go. I love that we do the work that we do in HR and talent and learning, because we love the people and we want to see what we can do for them and see what they become.
Speaker 3: 6:30
So that was my starting point on how I got inspired love of people and the value of them in the workplace, and how we can make it better. Why is talent such a crucial element in a company's success? Can you explain it to our listeners, like they're five? Why?
Speaker 1: 6:52
is that the case? Talent is just one of those words we use to talk about the people in our businesses, in our organizations, and it is the word of the day. It's become a little bit of the slogan of the day too, but it also shows the recognition that people really do matter for businesses. The broader question, though, that really comes up from that is so what do you do about it? We're talking about talent because we're trying to find a better way to talk about employees, about employees. There is this kind of deep felt in our values and so forth and our feelings that people really do matter Really. They are the heart and soul of the organization, but then the organization keeps churning on doing what it's always done, and so I think it's really important for all of us to understand is that, collectively, we're all here at this place around really needing to understand how to think about talent differently?
Speaker 1: 7:46
And the other thought that goes through my mind and why it's so important, is for the last 23 plus years we've had this notion around talent as a scarce thing. We have this mindset of scarcity and we talk about the war for talent all the time. There's a lot of relevance to those models around like looking at sort of high potential, high performance, et cetera, but it's an incomplete view, and so the challenge that I've kept coming across is that if we're all looking for the same people, the same resource, the same talent, that just doesn't compute, because we're surrounded by all these people and you know this story right Like we've hired the best people and then you wind forward and go, we can't find the right talent. And I'm just how does that even work? What happened along the way? It really begins to speak to this condition around, this philosophy or this point of view that says there's only a handful of good people out there, and I'm just like that's not really a way to live, it's not a sustainable way to live.
Speaker 3: 8:39
And so, in this current framework around you know leaders talking about talent and it's super important for us to realize is that there's a vast wealth of potential in the organization. That starts with understanding all employees and creating sort of opportunities for all of us. I like the shift in the mindset right, Because every employee that you hire, you hired them because you believed that they have this high potential. So where does that change? There's a real opportunity here to support them and their continued growth and potential.
Speaker 1: 9:09
Absolutely.
Speaker 3: 9:10
In the book there was a theme that really resonated with me throughout. You mentioned that the talent strategy mindset that inherently values the human and the concept of I see you is super important. How can leaders and orgs show their talent, that they truly see them?
Speaker 1: 9:28
That's tough. I say it's tough because it's really easy to say do this and do that, but it's really kind of a set of practices that we all pick up every day. It's the simple things from around. You spend time regularly with your teams, with your people. You stop to say hello. It doesn't have to be super formal, but do you actually have a way, a practice, to understand what do people really want to get out of work? What do they want to get out of the job? What do they really desire a year from now, two years from now? Is it the model of performance that drives the business outcomes that drives those questions, or is it a real interest and curiosity in the manager or leader that's going to say I just want to know what's going on, but a lot of it's just connecting and building community.
Speaker 3: 10:12
Yeah, it makes me think of the real need to build psychological safety. So if a senior leader is asking what you're up to, the initial response isn't oh, am I in trouble? But more of they're coming from a place of curiosity.
Speaker 1: 10:24
Yeah, yeah. Isn't that a telling statement when people say, well, am I in trouble? Because they feel like they're not safe or they may be at risk.
Speaker 3: 10:32
Yeah, you also talk about how orgs often refer to employees as resources and the workforce as human capital, which is ultimately dehumanizing right, because it's not seeing people for who they are as humans. What changes would you recommend orgs make in regards to how they refer to their talent to bring back that humanity in the workplace?
Speaker 1: 10:57
Yeah, in general, there's nothing really wrong with the words right and selves. They're just words, and they're just words. Come and go. Really, what's going on here from a theory perspective, is just around. People are watching all day long what leaders are doing. They're watching all day long what the practices, the lived experience of the organization is, and so I think what's really important is you can use words like workforce or human capital, but really the fundamental thing is, what do people see you do? So like, for example, the really common one in which is tough and there's no easy solution or answer around this.
Speaker 1: 11:31
We have this need for a business outcome, but we're not making our plan, and I think I've heard you folks talk about this and then but you're, so what do you do when you have too many people? So the typical thing that often happens is we downsize the workforce or we right-size it, so to speak. Right, and we go through that riffing process. And I love the story that you folks talked about on taking that long view, that long game with people, that behavior and set of actions around. Taking that long view communicates so much to the organization on how you think about people and where they matter, so much to the organization on how you think about people and where they matter.
Speaker 1: 12:08
Now, at the end of the day, people get it. If we're run, like during the great recession, if we're not making it like we've got to make a choice here, but the point there is just in like how transparently clear about it. Leaders often spend so much time getting all spun up over the right words and they lost the opportunity to connect with people and I've had so many employees over the years. Someone was like I want to appreciate it. You just tell me how it is. It doesn't have to be pretty, but at least I don't have to guess what you actually need.
Speaker 1: 12:33
And I think that's what's at stake here. Now, the flip side of it, since we're HR professionals, is that there's this whole kind of HR label thing that we have to go through to make sure we say the right things. I think you can still do that. You just can't get too spun up with ourselves.
Speaker 3: 12:48
A couple of our other guests in line, I think, with this collective thinking of it's okay to be transparent. Even if you're following all the compliance, you can still connect on a human to human level. One of our guests had mentioned, for example, his approach was hey, you're not going to like this, I absolutely don't like it, and it's okay to acknowledge like for lack of a better word, so I apologize the turd in the room, so let's acknowledge it together and get through it together, but to your good point, making sure we're continuing to connect on a humanity level that these are people.
Speaker 1: 13:23
Yeah, One of the stories I remember is that I did have to reduce the number of people, and there's one particular team that got impacted and I just broke down crying, talking to them. The director like called me up after just said but I really appreciate it, but you also got to do your job and it was really just an amazing moment where you know she and the team appreciated the humanity, but you got a job to do, so Get on with it too. Back to the balance, right.
Speaker 2: 13:48
You know, it strikes me, though, the idea of being seen. You talk about people being developed holistically as well, but when we look at HR, I don't think it's set up to do that. We're set up to do more of the compliance, more of the block and tackle. When you look at the amount of funding HR teams get, it's such a small percentage of the overall funding of the organization. It's not a knock on HR leaders at all, because I think HR leaders have the best intentions. They're trying to do the best they can with what they have. There's a lot going on, yeah, and part of me wonders and I'd love to get your take on it in order to really set up or operationalize being seen, holistic development, looking at talent differently, do we have to secede from the union Meaning compliance goes over here to legal and then talent becomes a different beast in and of itself, almost like the human team or the product innovation team? We need to separate in order to really do this, or can we still go the way we're going?
Speaker 1: 14:51
Yeah, we have like this classic mindset around either or right, we have the compliance engine, all the process-based kind of work we're like the people shoveling coal in the coal fuel engine or train and we're just heads down, we just got to keep this thing moving. We're doing that work all day long and then we think, or it'd be really great if we could be focused on the people, and the reality is they're all integrated right. So then it's a matter of how you do the process work, and that's really easy to say conceptually or theoretically, but it really is. It's around how do you combine the two? So, for example, we know empathy is one of those kind of capabilities that bring the two together right. Authenticity, transparency, and when you think about those, we're all talking about those human kind of attributes that actually make us who we are. And that's the heart of it, because people get the engine part of it. There is compliance stuff that happened. There are processes we have to run. It's just that whether or not we still feel like the processes have a soul in it.
Speaker 1: 15:50
So, for example, this is one thing in one of my past jobs is I remember writing just said you know what, like it'd be really great to get transparency around what the corporation has budgeted for bonuses, because you say it's zero to 15%, but we budget it for six, right? So we're here and I'm giving a performance review and the person got 7% and they feel like they're a failure because it's not 15. 7% compared to 6% is actually pretty decent looking right In a scheme of things, I said. And then I'm talking to a professional, an employee, that's looking for $2,000 and because they're going to build a cedar deck in their backyard and they just want to buy the materials but they're going to do the labor and that money means a lot to the individual, but we don't have a way to talk about what the sort of the constraints of the system say.
Speaker 1: 16:42
Wind forward, that organization actually started saying, like here's what we think your bonus is going to be based on, what we can plan for, and you're up or down from that. Now everybody goes oh, I can live with that, but that's a place where you have the constraints of the process and the system. That needs the rigor of the financial model that's, allocating a set amount of resources and a transparency approach that allows people to then understand. Now I have a better idea of where I match up right now. Different conversation. Whether or not they like the evaluation or the assessment, that takes a lot of stress out of it and takes a lot of anxiety out of the process.
Speaker 2: 17:19
I love what you said about the soul. We have to put soul back into some of these processes Benefits, comps, conversation, even layoffs. Right, you can have soul, you can see people in those. When you see this done really well, how do the leaders or the organizations really truly view their people?
Speaker 1: 17:39
So what I generally see in organizations is that most leaders have a good concept of what they're after in terms of goodness.
Speaker 1: 17:49
They have the right concepts in place, so the messaging is right, but what they don't realize is that they themselves, the organizations, the functions, are stuck in the system of the organization and they haven't figured out how to disrupt that sort of state or to change that slowly over time.
Speaker 1: 18:05
So then we're in this place of messaging over here Because it sounds really great, but operating over here all day long, and that's the part when you look at it saying, hey, we love people, you got to go right. That's the kind of stuff that creates that dissonance in the organization. So what really has to happen is we have to talk about what the constraints are. We have to talk about what we're trying to balance out in the organization, and I think that's where I think again, our professors, our employees, they get it, they understand it, they appreciate things really, really deeply. The other kind of funny thing I think about if it really created connection and community, you would know what people feel like they need to be seen and to be understood, versus kind of stalking on fishbowl to see what kind of throwing shades going on. I do think organizations understand it at some level and they have great mechanisms, councils and so forth, pulse surveys and all that. But again, are we enamored with the process and the activity or do we really want to know what's going on?
Speaker 2: 19:06
The older I get, I will tell you. I think so much comes down to fundamentals like basics 25 years ago or something. Somebody wrote that book, everything I Needed to Know. I Learned in Kindergarten and it's this just idea of, yes, connect with people, talk to people, ask them what they need, ask them what they want. A lot of times people get really fearful of doing that because they don't know if someone's going to ask them for something they can't give or they don't know how to be perfect in that dialogue or conversation. But all they really need to do is start with care. People feel that when you start with care I get that from you, mike that you give care, energy, you give very big care, thank you. I want to talk about this idea of developing people holistically, especially when we're talking about AI. Mel and I were just talking about Klarna, for example, who they're going to lay off. What was that, mel? Like 85% of their business.
Speaker 3: 20:19
They just laid off a bunch of folks, got down to half their workforce and I believe they're hoping to get down further within the next year.
Speaker 2: 20:26
Yes, there's two energies that are happening in the world. I'm getting very woo-woo, forgive me, but right, there's this one energy of scarcity. Oh my gosh, ai is going to take jobs. We're going to start seeing a lot of organizations making big moves around completely replace humans with AI, and then you even wrote about this in the book too. Then we're looking at people who want to augment. What does that look like when this AI conversation is happening, where we can look at it as scarcity or we can look at it as augmentation? If I'm a Jane Doe employee, what does it look like in an AI world to be developed holistically?
Speaker 1: 21:03
Yeah. So there's a couple of things. One is, when it comes to AI in particular, I get the sense that a lot of business leaders feel like there's one really good question to ask around how do we adopt AI? And I think that's a question. I think it's not even the best question. I think it's a starting question and I think the exercise that we all need to take is what are the next 5, 10, 17 questions to ask around AI and the implications for the organization.
Speaker 1: 21:37
When I think about it and I step back, we've been surrounded by computer technology, computing technology, innovation for a long time. We keep talking about the speed and the disruption for decades now, and there's a point that says we're not really talking about anything new here. So what's really going on here? So the part of it says to me we should get over it in some way and then start thinking what is the intersection of AI and humans? That's one of the really key questions.
Speaker 1: 22:04
Holistically, it's going to be really around coming back again to these fundamentalists around what does it mean to actually see the employee as a person? And I actually think the answer for that really depends on the organization. That it is because different organizations are doing different things right and there's different kinds of labor and different kinds of work, and holistically might mean that we need to do things that are fun. That celebration is actually a really key part of our culture, so we may do that. Other things may be. I need the latest science, I need the latest technical knowledge and I need you to help me to get there, because that's super valuable to me as the profession that I'm in.
Speaker 3: 22:42
That's one of it.
Speaker 1: 22:42
There's a number of levers that we can use to think about seeing people holistically, but one of them is going to come down to is what are we trying to achieve with our people? And just having clarity about that. You don't have to be all things to all people, but having clarity about what we're trying to accomplish, I think, is super, super important. For example, if we think that it's really important to have a really great hiring process, let's say, focus on skills, understand really what skills you need and what the skills are in the marketplace. If you really think it's important for your organization to train and to develop those skills, then train them. If you think that retaining people is important to the organization and you want your people to understand that, then create some kind of mobility, not because you have to react to their need, but because it's really important to be thoughtful around how they're engaged across the whole organization.
Speaker 1: 23:33
The other thing in convincing people holistically is we often start off with the most basic set of needs. So where do we go when we want to make sure that you know your value? We start off with benefits and compensation, right, and you take math instead of hierarchy of needs. We're talking about things that address our abilities to make sure we have health care, that we can buy food, that we can buy shelter, rent an apartment, buy a home, and then we understand but miss sort of those kind of self-actualization things.
Speaker 1: 24:03
The things that people desire more and this gets back to the holistic thing is that people want to develop. They want to grow on some level, and that's beyond just training, because training is about skills. But there's this other appetite or other need, so to develop, they want to grow on some level, and that's beyond just training, because training is about skills, but there's this other appetite or other need, so to speak, that actually goes beyond that. And that's where I think the opportunity is to see people holistically is really understand well, what are you after Beyond kind of the work gig you got and the pay you get? What do you want out of life? Right, and the answer is going to really vary depending on the organization and the people who go into that organization. But I think the truism that we see in the research shows this and Gardner talks about this, right, and they talk about the human deal is that people are looking for a very different set of things than what people were looking at 20 years ago, for sure.
Speaker 2: 24:48
Yeah, I think about this a lot. What does the future organization need to look like in order to do this? What are some of the big ticket structural changes that would need to happen in order for this to be the employee experience?
Speaker 1: 25:03
Philosophically, the first thing that's going to happen is a mindset shift in leaders Leaders Okay, Because actually I think the structural shift will follow this ability to imagine what things could look like. So, for example, people talk a lot about workforce planning and that can mean a lot of different things. For a lot of organizations it just means resource management. But what has it happened? Or what needs to happen if you want to get structural changes around how you recruit, how you create opportunities for people is you actually have to imagine. There is a model out there, for example is that if we get people that have the right attributes and we can develop those attributes and then we can develop the skills, we can actually create a workforce that has greater agility, for example. But today's practice is keeping most of us grounded in buying today's skills and then getting all kind of worked up around tomorrow's skills. So then we get into this hyper motion around that we need to do training and rapid upskilling and we got a whole set of terms for those kinds of activities and they're all OK. They're all the OK responses and good responses. But can you imagine a system where everybody believes in the ecosystem of work? It says I may only have it for a year to three years and then you're going to move on, because people do. We know there's a lot of research that shows this, but that actually has huge implications for how we develop people.
Speaker 1: 26:25
The question for all of us is can we actually develop people in a way knowing that they're going to leave? Because if we do that, there's a whole bunch of structural changes have to happen. Like we have to rethink the work. What does it mean to have work that's being operated or executed by people who aren't there all for a long time? And we know there are certain industries, say like logistics, call centers, where, like they know what turnover looks like and so they actually have had to come up with a work model. So the work gets structured in a way that kind of fits that demographic pattern. But that's the kind of structure thing I think could potentially take place much more broadly in corporate America. It's hard to move because there's a lot of moving parts, there's a lot of day-to-day operating results that we need to deliver, and I think you can do both. You can find those areas where you can begin to slowly shift.
Speaker 2: 27:12
It's interesting I think this was in Ashley's book. This idea of an organization would be a state, a team would be a neighborhood.
Speaker 1: 27:21
It did.
Speaker 2: 27:21
And that you're much more likely to make change at the neighborhood level. And there's responsibility I would say responsibility to your very good point around the neighborhood level and I know that Mel and I wanted to talk about. What are some things that we can do at the enterprise level, at the team level, at the individual level.
Speaker 1: 27:43
Yeah, so it's a great analogy. I'll start because if you take that notion it goes right back to that idea around is the team, is the learning unit. It is also where community and connection is most tangible. So one of the things that has to happen is how do you bring that level of tangible community and connection as you go up the organization? It's what has to happen.
Speaker 1: 28:08
It's a really tough thing to say do this and it all magically happened. The really basic question that the executive team has to ask is what do we want to accomplish with our people that's going to make us a better organization tomorrow and it integrates well with the business outcomes that we're accountable for. That sounds tactical, but I would tell you that is a really hard thing to answer. When leaders can answer that and get it down to one or two things and you know what happens when one or two things comes like to seven to 13. No, really, what's like the one or two things you're going to do that actually moves your people In what direction do you want to move in?
Speaker 2: 28:49
I've been thinking a lot lately about this idea of simplicity, because when I've seen organizations do this really well, they're not doing 15 things in shallow depth. They're doing one, two, maybe three things and they're going really hard on them in terms of yes, campaign and strat and funding them, but also in process, in the way that we build workflows, the way that we talk and the language that we use, all around these things to the point where their employees can talk about it and they know it and they feel it. It's very hard to do with 10 things.
Speaker 1: 29:24
This is going to sound harsh, and it's not meant to be harsh, but it feels more like an observation. But we tend to not focus on the one or two things because I think it actually takes a lot of courage to do. It does, and it doesn't mean that leaders are feeling less powerful or sinful, it just takes a dimension of courage. And I remember one CEO who just said we kept saying and to your point is the most simplistic message. He goes if we get our culture right, the rest will come Like we'll win in the marketplace, we'll win clients, we'll sell bigger projects. And you could, just you could feel it Like he, just he knew in his soul what the values were, he knew in his spirit, like what he was after and what he saw. And you, just you go. Yeah, I get it, you didn't get spun up on what are we on now? Like 7A of the nine point strategy, on the five year plan that gets revised every six months. It wasn't known sounding like that. It was just like this really simple view of the world.
Speaker 3: 30:24
I have a question.
Speaker 1: 30:25
Sure.
Speaker 3: 30:26
How do we crack this nut? Because I feel like we hear this story consistently, that there's a need even for the CEO, to have courage. But if you're leading the organization, why do you need to have courage? You can say, no, this is how we want to do it. So what's preventing leaders from taking that stand as a collective and saying, yeah, we're all in on this, we don't need to have courage because this is what we believe, so it's not. Again. I keep feeling this, even at the leadership level, the C-suite level, this lack of psychological safety to say this is what we need and this is what we should focus on. What makes it so challenging for people to take a hard stance.
Speaker 1: 31:10
My theory around this is that organizations as systems have different or varying permissions.
Speaker 3: 31:15
Yeah.
Speaker 1: 31:16
So some organization will give a lot of permission to its leaders to have courage around how they want to drive and how they want to lead, and other organizations don't.
Speaker 1: 31:26
And I think the leaders who prosper in whatever organization they are, I think they figured out right one way or the other, either consciously, with lots of self-awareness, or they just found what was comfortable and found a way to prosper in the environment they're in. But what I would say to any leader at any level that if you're not feeling that sort of integration of yourself and your values with the organization's values, then it's something to question and to think about. Dear colleague john blumberg writes about this around the return on integrity and he talks a lot about personal values actually have to really align with the organizational values and that's a journey. But I would say sometimes what happens is that leaders are like all of us, get caught up in the systems that we're in and so they only have, or feel like they only have, certain permission to go a certain way. The transformational leader not meaning about creating transformation organization, but the leader who's transforming themselves will find a path. They'll find a way to rise above that, to transcend them.
Speaker 3: 32:29
It's just so interesting even to hear that there are certain organizations that still don't value that perspective in this day and age, with all of the research that shows when you commit to your people, you will see business results. I think I ask every guest why do you think that is? Why do you think there are still some organizations that don't see the value?
Speaker 1: 32:54
Why do you think that is? Why do you think there are still some organizations that don't see the value? It comes down again to this view around what matters most. Right in its simplest terms. And if you're someone who's wired by power and you're wired by money, and that's what gets you excited and energized, that's what gets you energized and you're going to operate that way. If you're wired a little bit differently, then you have different set of priorities and actions. And here's the thing that I think we know theoretically in all our leadership development, research and so forth is that it takes a diversity of leaders to make it happen, but most organizations tend to put in place a leader who looks just like everybody else, because that is the ethos of the system. That is what we value in the system is that we value making money, we value power, we value the political game or what have you. And again, not all organizations are wired that way. That's one pattern.
Speaker 3: 33:45
Yeah, what advice would you give to that leader that has a mismatch with their organization but they want to try to make a dent in a positive direction? What advice would you give to that person?
Speaker 1: 33:59
Yeah, I love American landscape portrait, like just because there's this notion that humans are really small and the landscape of kind of the continent was just so daunting. And without getting into sort of the historical politics around, who was here first? Because I appreciate that discussion very much but built into the psyche, I think, of what we do sometimes is around this notion around that it could be lonely, right, you could be out there foraging your way. But what's so exciting about it, I think, for the leader who's up for this, is that you can be in the worst set of circumstances and have the best time of your life Because you have this authority to tell the story that you want to tell, to cram the path or kind of create the path that you have.
Speaker 1: 34:45
And I think what the irony of this statement is that there are a whole lot of people watching, taking notes and maybe following along at the same time and I think every organization, as homogenous as it might feel, there's this huge diversity of potential in people that actually see this and want something more. That's what's so amazing is that you could be in a really tough situation, but the arc and the joy is freeing out a path through all of that, even if you don't get to the change that you would like to have gotten to. Is the change the goal or is the journey? It's the destination of the journey more important, but I would say the journey is more important Totally makes me wonder.
Speaker 2: 35:25
Just an offshoot point I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I'm on a journey myself. This idea of work because so much of work has been around quarter by quarter results, revenue, shareholder return, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's profit driven. Yeah, point blank Done. One of the things that I'm excited about AI is that it's going to force conversations around. How do we view people, how do we think about augmenting people and enable them to do their best work? Because all the other administrative schmutz could be taken care of. There's so many opportunities for those discussions. I'm optimistic about it. With what's happening in the ether, can we swing the pendulum from everything has to be around profit and rev a little bit over to people and balance it more?
Speaker 1: 36:11
Yeah, but again, we're not on either end of the pole right.
Speaker 2: 36:14
We can't be, we shouldn't be.
Speaker 1: 36:16
We're somewhere that we're trying to figure out what the balance is of both of these things, and we all live and benefit from being in a capitalist society. So, whether or not people want to admit it, we're all capitalists at some level, and that's an okay thing. The question you're on is then again, like where you're getting to is what is the balance for that, for how we think about people? So back to the ai. The question is how do we redesign work? What's tomorrow's work? Because we know tomorrow's work isn't going to be today's work. But if we only think about replacing today's work with ai and automation, we can miss the question.
Speaker 1: 36:52
Yeah, so we do that and we should be asking okay, what are we doing tomorrow? It's not today. And that part's really exciting because, look, if you look back around for these analogies, if you look back around when you had horse-drawn carriages moving people around, just think of all the technology changes that are taking place we're going to find a way. And I think, through all of this, what's really exciting is this talent discussion has come to the foreground, because we all recognize that people are really a critical part of the equation and while we think that there's slogans or initiatives to talk about workforce planning or kind of talent and culture and different things like that. And all those things indicate is that we understand there's a new equation, that we have. That part gives me a lot of hope.
Speaker 3: 37:57
This is our favorite part, Mike.
Speaker 1: 38:00
Yep, okay, I'm prepared. The fun part is.
Speaker 3: 38:03
You hopefully don't need to be so it's just a group of questions. Yes, no one word answers or a longer answer. If you're like this needs a longer response, that's totally fine. That's some of our best conversation, but we'll just go through the series and the point is first thing that pops in mind. If that sounds good, sure, okay, what are you currently reading, or I'll say listening, in case you're a fan of audiobooks.
Speaker 1: 38:28
Yeah, I am a reader because I just I absorb it sticks a little bit better. There's two things I'm currently reading. One is it's the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory by Tim Alberta. I don't know if you know this book, but it's about the Christian nationalist movement and how it's taking place. It's a long read about halfway through but it's a really fascinating bit of journalism that he's done. The other one is by a friend and colleague. It's called Leading to Greatness, by Jim Reed, who was the CHRO of Rogers in Toronto.
Speaker 3: 38:55
What song is on repeat for you? Oh?
Speaker 1: 38:59
I got two. One is a young artist named Jalen Nwunda, it's called I think it's called Come Around and Love Me, and the other one is an older one. It's a jazz tune. It's by Stan Getz and Oscar Peterson. It's called Tour's End.
Speaker 3: 39:11
Many people feel their companies don't care about their growth. From your experience, what are the top two signs that a company genuinely invests in its employees? So, like you're interviewing, you're researching, you're talking to people, what are the two big giveaways that they're truly investing in their employees?
Speaker 1: 39:31
Yeah, the way I think about this or feel about this is twofold. One is you'll hear and see an excitement and that the employees see a connection around what they're doing in their day job with who they are. The subtext of that is, or the vision that you may get a sense of is and who they're becoming Right, one which is related to excitement word, but you have this real sort of palpable sense of energy around that they're actually learning and growing, that their job is not just a job but it's actually a building block along those lines around where they want to get to. It could be career and it could be beyond career.
Speaker 3: 40:11
I love that. The thought of like their face lights up, because we've all seen that right, when you've had an interview and you ask someone about their experience, you can really you see the shift, someone who truly loves it. Okay, ai, the big elephant in the room. Ai and how it's going to impact people. What's the one thing an employee can do today to avoid being left in the dust and stay relevant? What's one thing they should just do if nothing else.
Speaker 1: 40:39
Okay. So there's a tactical thing If you're organizing, or two tactical things. If your organization's got like LinkedIn Learning, for example, or you could go on the web or what have you, you need to learn fundamentals about AI. Go and do that, it's great. The other thing, what I would do, is it's available, but use Copilot, use ChatGPT and integrate it into what you do in your day-to-day and you'll soon find out, at least in this kind of the large language model stuff. There's just so much opportunity for how it can enhance your work process and how you use your time and energy to get work done. And there's this whole thing around that. Microsoft puts out research around work, and one of the things he said, one of the skills to learn, is how you do delegation, ai delegation, which is basically how you prompt AI right, and especially in this sort of co-pilot context, and I thought that was so interesting, because they're learning how to get the answer that they feel like they're looking for by getting the right prompt.
Speaker 3: 41:39
Microsoft does offer really cool ongoing education for folks on AI, so highly recommend it for anyone. There, you go, yeah, okay. What's one thing that's giving you a lot of joy these days?
Speaker 1: 41:52
Oh, my goodness, wow. There's a lot of things, but I'm a little bit of a fitness kind of person. I have this routine every morning that I do core exercises for 30 to 40 minutes and while it's not always comfortable for me, it brings me a lot of joy because I see the reward of the habit that I've worked on. So that's probably one thing that's top of mind.
Speaker 3: 42:13
Nice, I like it. Who's a leader you really admire?
Speaker 1: 42:17
Okay. So I don't know if I have a leader that I really admire, and the reason being is that I think leaders are situational. The qualities of leaders depend on the situation they're in. That said, I'll give you an example of a leader that I do admire in the situation that he's in, and that's President Volodymyr Zelensky and what he's doing to keep Ukraine together and fight the war. Would I ask President Zelensky to run the transformation around our AI strategy for an organization? Don't know, don't know. It's a different set of capabilities, different situations. For me it's like a multiple answer, but I think there's a lot of leaders in a lot of levels. They have really fantastic qualities.
Speaker 2: 42:57
Mike, it was so great to talk with you today.
Speaker 1: 42:58
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited and I enjoyed the privilege of being able to share my thoughts and feelings with you.
Speaker 3: 43:10
Hey friends, this episode of your Work Friends was hosted by Francesca Ranieri and myself, Mel Plett.
Speaker 2: 43:16
This episode was produced and edited by Mel Plett and myself, Francesca Ranieri.
Speaker 3: 43:22
Our theme music is by Pink Zebra and you can follow us over on all of our social media platforms Instagram, tiktok, youtube and, if you're so inclined, joined us over on LinkedIn in our large and growing community, and you can email us at friend@yourworkfriends.com, or visit us on yourworkfriends.com. Also, folks, please like, subscribe and leave a review. If you enjoyed this episode, and if you really enjoyed it, please share with a work friend or two. Thanks friends, thanks friends.