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.
Spotting Trustworthy Employers
Job advertisements sell dreams…
But reality? That’s another story. Job descriptions, interviews, Glassdoor reviews—there’s truth in the subtext. Adam Horne, co-founder of Open Org is on a mission: to build a more trusted, transparent world of work. So, we wanted to get him on the pod to talk about how in the hell do you do that? Turns out, it's not only doable (let's start with employees having ZERO surprises around biggies like compensation, benefits, etc), but, when done authentically - can improve (like majorly improve) hiring, retention and overall health of an organization.
Our conversation covers aligning internal and external transparency, the costs of cultural mismatches and the unintentional humor (or not) of hiring managers who promise more than they deliver. Most importantly, this episode is loaded with practical advice for creating genuine, transparent work environments. If you want to avoid the smoke and mirrors and find a workplace that walks the talk, don’t miss this one.
Your Work Friends Podcast: Spotting Trustworthy Employers with Adam Horne
Job advertisements sell dreams…
But reality? That’s another story. Job descriptions, interviews, Glassdoor reviews—there’s truth in the subtext. Adam Horne, co-founder of Open Org is on a mission: to build a more trusted, transparent world of work. So, we wanted to get him on the pod to talk about how in the hell do you do that? Turns out, it's not only doable (let's start with employees having ZERO surprises around biggies like compensation, benefits, etc), but, when done authentically - can improve (like majorly improve) hiring, retention and overall health of an organization.
Our conversation covers aligning internal and external transparency, the costs of cultural mismatches and the unintentional humor (or not) of hiring managers who promise more than they deliver. Most importantly, this episode is loaded with practical advice for creating genuine, transparent work environments. If you want to avoid the smoke and mirrors and find a workplace that walks the talk, don’t miss this one.
Speaker 1: 0:00
So we're of the view that there needs to be some sort of level of openness and transparency to call yourself transparent to a degree, and we provide that level of structure, but we don't necessarily prescribe where that transparency should be and necessarily how deep that should go. So the way that I try and talk about it with companies is work on defining it for yourself first. What does that look like? And that for me, starts of understanding, like why is this word important? If you're putting on your career site or your job ads or just putting it out there, there's got to be a reason why you're saying it, and if there's not, it's just an empty word.
Speaker 2: 0:48
Mel, good Monday to you. Good Monday to you, yes. Yes, I'm going to start saying that. It just feels like a thing, it feels like it could be a thing Feels like Shakespeare Good morrow is good morrow thing, I don't know.
Speaker 3: 0:59
I'm making that up.
Speaker 2: 1:01
Good morrow is a thing, that's a thing.
Speaker 3: 1:03
Good morrow Good morrow to you.
Speaker 2: 1:07
Well, I'm stoked to talk about Adam Horn. Adam Horn is the co-founder of OpenOrg, and what I love about the work OpenOrg is doing is they're on a pretty cool mission to rebuild trust by bringing clarity to the world of work, and they're doing that by making sure that people have zero surprises at work, like when you're interviewing for a job. They want you to have zero surprises around things like comp, culture, benefits and career development, and Mel and I were really taken with what they're doing and we had a chance to talk to him. And Mel, what did you think of that conversation?
Speaker 3: 1:40
I thought it was refreshing. It was really eye-opening to hear the perspective from Adam and his experiences working with organizations and truly the benefits of transparency, which feels like a no-duh situation, but not a lot of orgs are doing it, so I'm just really excited by this work.
Speaker 1: 2:01
Yeah.
Speaker 2: 2:02
The other thing I really liked, too, was his twist on this. This is not open Oregon Adam dictating what transparency needs to look like they're really working with organizations to say, hey, what is authentic, what works for them, what works for you? Yeah, it's a really cool way of thinking about the zero surprise game for employees and whether they're coming into a company or whether they're in a company as well.
Speaker 3: 2:25
And the bottom line for your business.
Speaker 2: 2:27
A thousand percent Packed within this discussion are things that organizations can do, what individuals can do and what can you do if you're leading a team and you want to be more transparent, even if your organization might not be. So here's our conversation with Adam Horne. Adam Horne, welcome to the pod. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 1: 2:56
Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for having me on. It's awesome.
Speaker 2: 3:00
Yeah, adam, you've had a really interesting career, right. You've started multiple organizations. Now you're pulling into OpenOrg. You're a new father as well too, so you've got like a lot going on, probably trying to get some sleep here and there. Just super curious as to how did you even get into this work? How did you get to where you are today?
Speaker 1: 3:20
Yeah, I gave up on sleep a long time ago.
Speaker 1: 3:23
It's like this way, my latest uh child is my third and I've got three under six now and I've navigated the, the three kids and businesses etc over the the period of having COVID and stuff going on as well. So yeah, it's been interesting the last sort of four or five years, to be honest. But yeah, my, my career as a whole over the last sort of 12, 13 years is is all centered around people and talent. So nine of those 12 years as a founder or co-founder myself as well. So I've navigated the complexities and challenges of being a founder and trying to build and run a business, always bootstrapped, always anywhere between sort of five employees up to 70, 80 employees so that size but challenging in its own way but also a lot of that time actively working with clients externally on their hiring and their people strategy. So over that time I've had a lot of exposure to working with startups or scale-ups all over the world hundreds of them over the years and have, from a hiring perspective in particular, I've seen a very clear difference in terms of how companies benefit from being transparent or not. I've worked with some really open, transparent companies and you just tell when you walk through the door and you settle in that this is a very open, transparent environment. I've got resources, information landing on my lap and your job becomes very easy, regardless of what you're doing, but particularly when you are in that role where you're dealing with bringing new people into the business, being able to offer clarity and depth to candidates and applicants before they join, you see the benefit of that when they walk through the door it's really clear and things like attrition, retention, all of those sort of key metrics that businesses look at to try and point them towards some level of organizational health, feel really clear, really nice.
Speaker 1: 5:09
I've also had the benefit on the flip side, of working with companies that are incredibly secretive, some by design but some just through pure chaos and uncertainty and lack of communication. But as an example, I've been parachuted into businesses before where I've been told I'm not allowed to know what funding round we've just done because it's a bit secretive. So if candidates ask an interview, just tell them. You can't let them know. And I've been given about 10 different values from different employees who don't really know what values the business has.
Speaker 1: 5:39
So that end of the spectrum effectively in terms of the way businesses operate and you can still hire, you can still get people through the door, but I've seen what happens after people join and then, generally speaking, you've got that sort of revolving door type situation in those types of business and you see the struggles and the cost and the time it's been trying to just maintain headcount, let alone grow. So over that time I've had a really clear view on what transparent culture looks like and what that benefit is from being more transparent, and I've been lucky enough, whilst running my own businesses alongside that, to be able to pull that experience into how I build my own companies as well, and I've always defaulted to my own level of transparent, my own level of open, and it's worked incredibly well for me. So that, as a bit bit of a backstory, is where I come to today as regards to launching OpenOrg.
Speaker 2: 6:28
We want to talk about OpenOrg because we've seen this conversation about how transparent organizations are evolved, especially, I feel like, over the last and I could be wrong on the numbers, but it feels like especially over the last four years. Five years. Is you need to put this information out there or this is now the expectation? So I'm loving these conversations around now. Transparency is the expectation from a marketplace perspective. So, Adam, what does OpenOrg do?
Speaker 1: 6:51
The way we come in to it really is. I co-founded OpenOrg with an old friend of mine and we've known each other for 12 years, so we've had this talk track for 12 years, even about the world of work and culture and how it's broken and one day we'll fix it. And we've talked I don't want to name names, but talked about the damage that toxic review sites do to employers and to applicants and so on and so forth and how one day we'll find a new way to rebuild trust in terms of that intersection between you know, applying to a role and starting in the right type of business for you. So that's where a lot of the conversation about open org has come up and that's exactly where we sit. We want to get to the point with open org where we can help companies not just become internally transparent with their employees.
Speaker 1: 7:34
That's a really good, healthy place to be, but it only does so much for us. You've got to mirror as much of that as possible externally. There's some things you maybe aren't comfortable doing and that's fine as a limit, but there's no benefit just to being internally transparent For us. There's huge benefits to opening that door a little bit more and showing people under the bonnet, showing people exactly what they're going to be getting when they come in, because without that, people are coming into your business with the wrong expectations. Without that, people are coming into your business with the wrong expectations. So Open Org operates exactly that intersection of employer brand hiring and both internal and external transparency and trying to help employers get more aligned across that spectrum to build healthier alignment across that entire employee journey.
Speaker 2: 8:21
It's interesting when you look at why you should really think about transparency as an organization. I'd like to take it from the employee side a little bit more and also from the organization side, because one of the things you talk about is really to have employees have zero, zero surprises. When you start a new job and I personally felt that I think we all have right where you thought you were getting into a gig, you thought it was one thing, and then into it you're like, oh hell, this is this is not this at all. You talked about this a little bit earlier, but I'm wondering if you can walk us through what the benefits are to have zero surprises as an employee so much across that entire life cycle.
Speaker 1: 8:57
If you look at some of the sort of stats and the research out there around people leaving new hires leaving roles within the first 90 days or so, I think there's a stat out there and I take them with a pinch of salt because you hear different things and different things, but there's so much research on this ultimately around how many people leave roles. I think it's something like 30% of new hires leave roles within 90 days. Such a waste of time for everyone. Such a waste of time for everyone the money you spend interviewing, hiring, the time you spend in the salaries for paying all of that stuff to get into that. It's such a waste of time for everyone involved. And then you have to start again to rehire all because and most of those people leaving site misalignment on cultural role as one of the big reasons for them leaving. And then there's other studies out there that link to that.
Speaker 1: 9:43
Four in ten hiring managers have admitted to lying to candidates about a role or a culture or how business operates. So lying yeah, they actually these are the hiring managers actually admit to lying about this and this is like a resume builder survey study that you can go out there and find online. That's just the people who admit to it. It there's probably more over and above that who haven't admitted to it, but again, just at that interview stage, in terms of attracting talent, attracting candidates, there's a whole lot of problems going on there. So there's a time factor that is being wasted here. There's cost, there's money. There's also well-being and mental health involved here, particularly for the candidates and the employees, but also for the hiring managers, and my co-founder, john, has had this himself as a hiring manager in a larger corporate business, hiring people knowing that he's selling the wrong version of what people are going to get. But he's in this corporate environment where he's just feeling like he has to hire and grow and his own well-being and mental health took real damage because of that, which led to him leaving because of that situation too.
Speaker 1: 10:49
So there's a lot of reasons why transparency really is important in building trust at that early stage. But then, when you look inside the business internally, day to day, there's so many things that point to the benefits of of being transparent and opening, communicative with individuals when it comes. But once they're in, the benefit of being transparent and communicative with your employees is really important as well when you're thinking about to use layman terms like getting everyone aligned and on the same page. That's a lot of what ceos talk about wanting to get and wanting to see. That's all about communication and getting people aligned and understanding where are we going, what are we doing, and that can boil down to so many different things internally in terms of what transparency does look like, and that will differ for different people, but the benefits are there when it comes to productivity, performance, profitability. The research is out there.
Speaker 2: 11:41
What do you think really drives organizations to not be transparent, because we see this so much, especially as you get in these big behemoth organizations. There are some that do this, okay, but I would argue that most of for us, the fortune 500, I don't know if they do this really well. What is holding organizations back from being transparent?
Speaker 1: 12:04
Lots of different factors that could be founder mentality. Obviously that's probably more prevalent in smaller businesses. But if you have a more traditional CEO founder who doesn't believe in seeing employees is that they're equal ultimately and understanding the power of employee could bring when you think about things like co-creation and just communication, they see them as workers rather than, again, equals. That creates silos immediately in how companies are structured and how hierarchies work and those silos immediately cause problems with communication and what's shared and what's not shared. So there's a founder ce leadership mentality, mindset thing that is really common and we see that so much with the people leaders we speak to.
Speaker 1: 12:48
There are some instances where companies in fairness are operating in certain industries or environments where they can't share certain information and that's completely fair. But I think what I see happen there is, if they're operating in this sort of environment or industry where it's a little bit more secretive or confidential, that stops them being transparent in ways that they still could be. They suddenly put the shutters down and they use it almost as an excuse to say we can't share this, so it means we can't share anything else. We try and find ways of showing them actually there's still some really relevant information you can still share.
Speaker 1: 13:21
That's safe and okay, but the default to being closed and secretive because of that and I guess the other one probably is some companies that have just grown either very quickly or very slowly over time, with a certain mindset, with a certain culture, and it's almost too much for them to unravel now, particularly in a larger corporate sort of environment. You've got problems with pay equality and equity across the entire business. Where do you start? How do we unravel that? What do we do? It's almost easier just to keep pushing on in the direction we're going and hope that it never causes us too many problems or assume that if it does cause us problems, it's going to be cheaper for us than having to rework all of this and rebalance salaries and so that there's some companies that may be too far down the road to care about it.
Speaker 2: 14:08
It's just like that big nod of Christmas lights or something that you're like we're just not even going to handle.
Speaker 3: 14:14
Just walk away slowly. Oh gosh, adam. It's so shocking, as someone who worked in talent acquisition, to hear that hiring managers would lie in an interview. And I would say why? Just why, because people are going to find out as soon as they start the job. So it's just an interesting choice to me.
Speaker 1: 14:37
Yeah, I think there's pressure from above. Particularly when you work in a larger corporate type environment, I think you probably are more likely to just feel this pressure from above to hit targets when it comes to hiring for your team. You just do what you need to do to get people through the door and you probably have more resources around you as well, so you don't think about the cost. And when it comes to time that's invested in hiring, you've got a TA team that will. Yeah, they do. They just do their magic stuff in the background and you don't really appreciate how much work goes into that as a hiring manager sometimes. So there's lots of again reasons why people might do it. But yeah, I was shocked to see that as well.
Speaker 2: 15:14
I think I've lied. I think I've lied. Have you? Yeah, I think I have not. Let me ask you all this Is this a lie? Like when you feel like you're probably out the door anyway, but you're hiring people and you're like, yeah, the culture is great.
Speaker 3: 15:29
I actually won't say that. If someone asks me interesting, I will just what's the culture like and I've been honest.
Speaker 1: 15:36
I'll give you the good, the bad and the ugly, because I think you deserve to know it so I had this conversation with someone recently who's a I won't again name names because it's a bit of a delicate one, but it was a people leader. I think there was an m&a event. Their business has been acquired, everything would change. They were basically checked out and said I'm committed to moving on. Now everything's changed. That's not what we've built anyway, because they're in a people lead a role. They were heavily involved in hiring and interviewing.
Speaker 1: 16:04
So we that touched on that discussion of what should I be doing, and I guess my advice was similar to the. What Melza said there is that the most positive thing you can do now is try and make sure that anyone else that walks through that door and joins that business is aligned, because even though you don't think it's a great place to work anymore for you, it doesn't mean it's terrible for everyone, and there are still people out there who really will align with that culture. Even if you think it's crazy, it doesn't make any sense, there are people who might like it. So do what you can to present facts and, rather than being opinionated, try and talk explicitly about what culture looks like here, which I think actually is what so many companies don't actually understand at the starting point is like what is culture here? How do we describe it and understand it, rather than giving an opinion on how fun it is here?
Speaker 3: 16:57
Either happy hours yeah, yeah understood, yeah we have a foosball table. No, I'm just kidding that pods. No, and it's interesting because the cost I thought I read this week that what they previously thought the cost of making the wrong hire was significantly low to compare, comparing to what the actual true cost of that is. And, adam, I'm sure you must have some number that you know about. What is the cost of that at times? What could it be up to?
Speaker 1: 17:25
Yeah, I again chatted about this yesterday. I can't really give you a figure because I just keep seeing all these different figures out there, in different, yeah, but it's high. The one that seems to stick in my mind is up to two thirds of someone's salary to replace. So if someone's on $90,000 a year, it could cost you 60k to just replace them. And again circling back to the benefits of being open and transparent, the more you can share up front, it's not just about getting people aligned to the right culture. It's not just about getting people aligned and to the right culture. But there's so many benefits around onboarding and ramp up time and getting people to a point where they are more productive in the early days within your business. So companies are always looking at like how can we shorten that ramp up time so that people are effectively making us money sooner, which is completely fair? How do we do that? The more share, the more you provide up front, the quicker that happens.
Speaker 3: 18:37
What does a good open culture look like from your perspective?
Speaker 1: 18:43
that's a really interesting question. It's really hard to answer as well, because people ask us quite a lot like how do you define transparency? And this is the whole world that we're in. So we, we don't define it. We were very keen from the outset to make sure that we aren't the ones trying to define what transparent looks like.
Speaker 1: 19:01
That's part of the problem for me, like some of these awards and accolades out there that you can win about we've got great culture or a great place to work. The problem is you're prescribing to someone else's view of what good looks like You're jumping through hoops and like ticking boxes view of what good looks like you're jumping through hoops and like ticking boxes. So we're of the view that there needs to be some sort of level of openness and transparency to call yourself transparent to a degree, and we provide that level of structure, which I won't dive too deeply into, but we've got an assessment and a framework companies can follow. So we do have some level of it, but we don't necessarily prescribe where that transparency should be and necessarily how deep that should go. So the way that I try and talk about it with companies is work on defining it for yourself first. What does that look like? And there's a very high level journey that, for me, starts with understanding like why is this word important? If you're putting on your career site or your job ads or just putting it out there, there's got to be a reason why you're saying it, and if there's not, it's just an empty word. So where I tend to see it, there's two paths.
Speaker 1: 20:00
Typically, when it does work well is it's either heavily linked to your product, your value prop idea you're doing something that's bringing transparency to your customers or whatever that might be, via a platform or a product, and you can lean into transparency as a business yourself, which works really well or it ties heavily into your values and when you dig a little bit deeper and understand what those values are and why, that's when you can start to work with companies to help them understand what they should be leaning into and what they should be sharing more of.
Speaker 1: 20:28
I'll give you an example. Company I worked with recently talked a lot about they believe their strength is in having a diverse team, but they offered nothing around diversity, no transparency externally around what diversity looked like for them. I talked to them about the fact that they talk about strength and diversity and this is a really core value for them. That's an opportunity to be transparent and double down in that particular area. So, long story short, transparency is going to mean different things to different people, but I ask companies to look at their culture, their values, intrinsically to that, and look at where they can double down. You don't have to share everything across the entire spectrum, but think about what it means to your business, find ways you can double down and over index in certain ways, and that starts building a little bit of meaning behind the word for you as well.
Speaker 3: 21:13
So it's more personalized, depending on your business. I know at OpenOrg you're going in. You're taking a look at this with them, so it might not necessarily be like this is what good looks like. But in terms of leading practices, for example, what would something like open compensation what's a leading practice you might recommend, regardless of that company's personal mission? What advice would you offer?
Speaker 1: 21:41
We've still got some like minimum standards that we would say people should try and attain and get to, and then the optional. This is how you elevate it if you want to go crazy and go for it basically buffer style but for us, the minimum expectation, ideally, is to get to the point where you can comfortably put a salary or a salary band on a job advert when you're hiring. Now that, for us, is really important because you're then providing some external transparency, building trust with talent, reverse engineering that. How do we get to that stage? There's a lot of work that goes into that before you can get to that stage. So you've got to work on your compensation philosophy, your bands and your levels.
Speaker 1: 22:19
How do we benchmark our salaries? Where do we get that data from? We encourage companies to share that internally as well, as much as you possibly can, and if you can't, that's okay, but as an absolute minimum, what people really want to see is how is this decision being made? Whatever I I'm being paid, that's fine.
Speaker 1: 22:38
How have you come up with that decision? What data have you used and where have you got it from and how has that been assessed? So it's the why and the how behind the decision is actually really key for me as a minimum requirement. People don't care about what their colleagues being paid, necessarily, as long as they can see what they're being paid is fair and they feel that that lines up with what they should be getting paid. That's really key. So again, minimum expectation provide the how and the why behind the decisions with the things like pay and hopefully get to the point where you can comfortably put a salary on an advert and not have chaos ensue internally where people are reapplying for their own jobs because they see that you're paying someone else 30k more.
Speaker 3: 23:18
I never really understood why that isn't public information, because people are going to find out anyway, because they talk about it. So it's interesting to me that they don't share the process, because it is an in-depth process to go through salary band review each year and it's good for folks when they're talking about their year end and bonus and seeing where they're at and if they have room to grow. It's a good discussion to have with your people.
Speaker 1: 23:43
It's hard work and it takes a long time and that puts a lot of companies off and it won't suddenly mean that everything goes perfectly. You're still going to have some really tough, awkward, tricky conversations with employees who are unhappy about what they're paid, why they're paid it. It's not going to make everything go away, but it builds so much trust as a starting point so that when you have that conversation, people feel like they trust you. They can see it, it's open and it's a starting point for a conversation effectively. And you've got that backup. Most businesses have done their working out. They've got some data source behind them. That should build some confidence in you to have that conversation and say, look, we haven't just plucked this from thin air, this is what we've used, so share it.
Speaker 3: 24:24
It's honest and it helps others really understand the process, because I think if you're not in comp, it does feel like a mystery. Did you just throw a dart at the dartboard and pick this number? So it's good to include that. What about some leading practices in terms of company culture?
Speaker 1: 24:40
yeah, so we culture is one of the pillars under our framework and it's probably like one of the broader ones. What we try and get companies to do is really think about what does culture mean here? What does it look like? Because I think the default for a lot of companies when you look at career pages is like we've got great culture and then there's like a picture of a team playing like crazy golf or whatever they're doing on a team social and that like sums up culture on the face of it. And we're trying to get companies to start moving away from that.
Speaker 1: 25:07
Don't start sharing like all the positive employee stories of it's fun to work here, it's great. Start sharing some facts and reality around, like how do we succeed as a team? What is the sort of unique DNA or blend of how we work, our ways of work that enable us to work well together and succeed? And how do we learn? How do we fail? How do we thrive? How do we like communicate?
Speaker 1: 25:28
There's so much you can gain from understanding how a team communicates day to day. Is it synchronous? Asynchronous Boundaries have reset to communicate. Communicates day to day. Is it synchronous? Asynchronous boundaries have reset to communicate. It might seem like a lot of information, but you can get that across to people really nicely on on wiki or careers page or a job advert.
Speaker 1: 25:46
The companies that do this well do really well and they hire people who succeed really well in their business. So for us, that's culture. It's thinking more about operational excellence rather than that word culture. And when you start breaking it down like that and thinking in that way, you can actually look at some of those areas around communication and documentation and meetings. That's one of the areas under our culture pillar is encouraging companies to talk more about their approach to meetings. Engineers in particular, and others as well. Now, to be honest with you, really benefit and enjoy having blocks of time for like, deep work and focus. They don't want to be sucked into six hours of meetings a day. So start talking to people more about your approach to meetings as a business and people have the opportunity to opt in or out. That's like what we refer to as culture, rather than the coffee, the beanbags, all the other stuff.
Speaker 3: 26:38
Yeah, that's how we work around here. Right, that's all good stuff to highlight. What about benefits? How do you feel about leading practices there?
Speaker 1: 26:46
Yeah, another bugbear, and this is hard right. Like you can only get so much information on some careers page, for example, or a job advert, but they have defaulted over time to just being a little bit vague and shiny and like you can't really see much. So you see, like competitive salary mentioned, like just go a little bit deeper, even if it's an extra line to say we benchmark and pay on the 75th percentile. You can't just say it's competitive and that's going to suddenly mean it's competitive to everyone. Someone could be working for the you know business that pays 90th. Someone could be working for somewhere that's 30th.
Speaker 1: 27:20
You can't just say that and have it apply to everyone. So just add some meaning. So, generally speaking, best practice on benefits when we work with companies and look at this is just really I don't want to say tearing apart, that sounds a bit aggressive but like line by line, going through each benefit that they've listed and actually looking at how can you elevate that and add a little bit more clarity to what that is. And I think maternity leave, paternity leave, is a big one. So many companies write enhanced parental leave.
Speaker 3: 27:48
What does that even mean?
Speaker 1: 27:50
A week and if so, how much? Buy or would you offer 12 months full pay? Just tell people what it is. Actually, it's not a deal breaker for most people. It just helps them understand and plan ahead and think what does that mean for me financially if I do join here and I do decide to have a child? And it's not a deal breaker, but it helps set expectations and it's one of those things, famously, that's always been really hard to find out before you join a business.
Speaker 3: 28:14
Yeah, it's so interesting to me because my experience in organizations one that I was interviewing with or to have worked with although there's information provided, it's so high level and so vague and usually it's not until you get to the offer stage where someone will finally meet with you to get into the details. And I always think that's a disservice, Because if you're just exploring an organization, you want to be able to say what does this exactly look like, so everyone's happy in the end, You're not waiting all the way through.
Speaker 1: 28:44
Six interviews have happened, You've wasted five hours of everyone's time, You're at the offer stage and you lose that candidate because they didn't like the benefit package that they're getting Another example and one company that does this really well and you some might argue it's a bit overkill, but health insurance might work differently in the uk to the us. I don't know whether it's a little bit more comprehensive and everything's covered regardless, but absolutely not over here, like even if you have insurance.
Speaker 2: 29:11
It's absolutely like it's garbage. It's garbage.
Speaker 1: 29:14
I don't want to say I made the assumption. But it's the same here as well. There are some companies that say we offer health cover. Great, on the face of it, brilliant, I'm excited. But then you join and you realize, okay, it's just for me, it's not for my family. I didn't realize that. Or you realize, okay, I've got a very specific, rare condition that's not covered by this particular policy, so that's not a benefit to me. Now, and there's a company called Juro and others do this as well, but I know about Juro. You can, on their notion, you can dig deep on their benefits, click into their health cover and actually look at the exact policy document that they've got for their business. And it's long, it's in depth, but you can actually go and find out.
Speaker 1: 29:51
Is my specific condition covered, which is great.
Speaker 3: 29:54
Yeah, that's fantastic because that's the stuff people need to know when they're moving, especially when it impacts your family, as you mentioned, if you find out after the fact. Oh wait, that actually happened to a friend of mine where she found out with her new job, it only extends to her, it doesn't extend to her family.
Speaker 2: 30:10
So, yeah, I think a lot of organizations are doing really cool things too. I worked for an organization where, after I had my son, they flew my breast milk like overnight yeah Back to my house, which was like $800 a pop, and they did that for every single mother. And that, to me, is I don't know why you guys aren't screaming this from the effing rooftops. Yeah, there's also stuff that the organization could be screaming from the rooftops and they're not. Yeah, there's also stuff that the organization could be screaming from the rooftops and they're not.
Speaker 1: 30:39
Yeah, and this is again it's personal choice in terms of how much effort you want to put into it, but there are companies that will have. You know that we call them handbooks in the UK and try not to refer to it too heavily as handbook in the US, because it's a slightly different, slightly more legal document in the US, but like a wiki or a resource hub for employees effectively to be able to go and dig deep and look at this stuff. And you can keep it high level and say we offer enhanced parental leave. Or you can really provide a heap of depth on parental leave and not just like what do we give parents, but what does returning from maternity leave look like? How do we help you and support you and all that entire journey? There are some companies that do incredibly well, so it's not like to disparage everyone, but the majority don't scratch the surface.
Speaker 3: 31:27
What about with professional development is typically it's not something people think of as falling under benefits, but it's also something that you hope, as an employee, you continue to get, because then you feel that organization is invested in you, they're invested your growth. They want you to succeed. What does a good leading practice look like in terms of transparency around how much an organization is investing in your career development?
Speaker 1: 31:51
yeah, this is again. This you've just said those words as well. I think is like there's such a standard phrase on career sites of like we invest in people and we've got world-class career. If you're going to say that you've got world-class like career investment, whatever that might look like, show it like don't just dangle a carrot and then don't offer anything over and above that.
Speaker 1: 32:12
Really show what you offer people and give some clarity as to what that looked like on a a couple of levels. There's a few things on that. If you're going to list it as a benefit, again, something that we see a lot of companies do is dangle a carrot to say L&D budget, but again just a few more words to say what that budget is. It takes no effort and really helps people understand what they're going to be getting here. So there's tiny little tangible changes companies can go and make that really make a big difference to people. I think the deeper work and the work behind the scenes to really elevate that is looking in depth at how you progress and promote and keep people growing within your business. So career development frameworks is something that seems to be missing in the loss of companies, I think, probably for a reason. It's often it's hard to build. Sometimes if you're a bigger company and get everything in place and something that works and it ties heavily into performance, calibration and compensation and again you've got that big ball of christmas lights whatever we're talking about earlier that you can't unpick.
Speaker 1: 33:14
So career, when we look at the data of all the companies that take our assessment to understand, almost like a heat map of what companies do and don't share.
Speaker 1: 33:24
Career development uh, frameworks are always in the red, but for the large majority of companies they don't even share anything internally.
Speaker 1: 33:30
So there's a lot of companies out there saying we invest in people, but then you walk through the door and you don't have visibility of what's my next step look like or how can I move internally. So, again on our framework, one of our 35 areas that we zone in on and talk with companies about is sharing more information around internal mobility. So can you even share some basic data with people to say that this x percent of people moved internally last year, whether it's latently or vertically for promotion? That gives you a real indication as to like how people move within your business and how people can grow. So anyway, there's a lot of deeper work in depth you can go into there, but I think getting that internal clarity is helpful to people. And then, once you've got it, why wouldn't you share it? There's a few reasons here and there, but you should. And again, there's a couple of companies out there that do really well at just flipping their their internal documentation external.
Speaker 1: 34:26
And then, and it's amazing, who's doing this really well there's a company called cleo in the uk who I don't know. If you've come across a platform called progression fyi really cool, check out progressionfyi. They have their whole platform is about helping companies to build career development frameworks and using their platform. But progression fyi is also like a collective open source career development frameworks that companies share publicly. So clio have got theirs on there. They've shared it publicly and you can go on and look at all their engineering pathways, the salary bands attached to every single role, criteria for progressing.
Speaker 1: 35:04
They've got such a great name, particularly in the UK, for this stuff. And another one is Learnably, who again might not be well known outside of the UK because they're relatively small tech startup scale up, but Learnably are like an LMSms platform, so they major on development and growth for employees and they really drink their own champagne because of that. Going back to what we were talking about earlier with defining what transparency means to you, that a huge part of their value prop is about lnd and growth. So they've decided to major on being transparent about career development at learnably. If you're going to join us, we're going to make sure you know what you're going to get and how you're going to grow, and everything they've done has been crafted around that whole idea of lnd, because that's fed into their, their entire value prop as well where do you see this going in the next five years?
Speaker 1: 36:15
yeah, I am in a bubble. I have to admit that we operate a lot more at the startup scale up end of the spectrum. So companies anywhere from 20, 30 employees up to a couple of thousand starting to get larger. But we don't work with many 30, 40, 50,000 employee businesses and I get they're probably not going to be making the drastic changes anytime soon to how they operate and how they communicate. That's a lot harder. But certainly there's so many earlier stage businesses coming through. It precede stage.
Speaker 1: 36:45
I know a lot of founding teams who support what we're doing. They're a bit early stage to fully embrace and have a lot of this work verified because they haven't started hiring yet. But you see the mindset and the passion and the belief there and I'm not saying every founder coming through is like Gen Z. A lot of them are. A lot of them are coming into this world of work setting up their own companies now and then we will talk about the fact that Gen Z have. Everyone cares about transparency and trust, but Gen Z are more demanding. They care more deeply about it. It's a really important part of how they work, deeply about it. It's a really important part of how they work and they're building their own businesses now with this as a core value. So five years time I'd expect to see, particularly in the startup scale up world, businesses that do default more to transparency, whatever that means to them. They're at least able to say we're transparent and we've defined what that means, and if that's okay, because if it doesn't align with you, then fine, but it will align with certain people and and we're healthy and etc. Etc.
Speaker 1: 37:41
I'd like to see, hopefully, some good progression around pay transparency in particular. There's obviously a lot of movement in the US legally, so that's going to make some sort of change, I'm sure, and then there's some incoming changes across the EU as well. So what's sad is that either side of the UK right now we've got some legal waves happening, which is really enforcing some change, which is great, but nothing in the UK at the moment. So we'll see if we follow suit. But certainly on the pay front, that will change and I think as a knock-on effect to that, going back to what we talked about earlier, I'd heavily to. Pay is performance in career development. You can't suddenly become transparent about pay without giving people some context around how that ties into career development and levels and and how, then, they're going to be assessed to get to that next level, so that, as a trio is going to have to advance together? For me, um, as best as possible anyway yeah, that makes total sense.
Speaker 3: 38:38
I know you're as you say, you're in this the bubble, but with the, the gen z, really coming in and leading the wave of this bubble, those startups could become either clients or partners to these larger organizations. Do you think their approach to transparency may have an influence on some of these large organizations in the future?
Speaker 1: 39:01
I hope so. I hope so. As much as I don't operate so heavily in the large corporate world. As much as I don't operate so heavily in the large corporate world, I have to say some of the larger organizations out there are the ones actually doing better when it comes to things like pay transparency and visibility on career development, probably because they've got the resources there as well to do it from like a people team perspective. But particularly in the UK, the public organizations you like the NHS and you can apply to jobs and you know exactly what grade you're going to be at, what salary you're going to be at. Everyone's on the same, salary gets paid the same. There is visibility in a lot of the public organizations here which I imagine is maybe similar in the US.
Speaker 3: 39:40
It's similar. Yeah, the US government actually does transparency well.
Speaker 1: 39:44
Exactly, yeah, and there are things that you can give a little bit of a hat tip, so you just actually you know what, that there is the structure in place and similarly big consulting firms in the uk and imagine it maybe again similar in the us, like your pwc's, your ey's, etc. They've been around so long, they've got their structure so firmly set that, whilst they may not have the perfect culture for everyone, that's okay. People know what they're getting when they join. They know what they're not going to get and also the grading and the pace is like how you progress in those types of businesses is fairly clear to people and well known because they've been around for so long. So I'm I'm always wary of disparaging like large companies too much, because actually there's some things that they do really well that actually startups and scale-ups could learn from as well. Where they tend to get things wrong maybe is things like communication and day-to-day internal culture starts to get go wrong there because they become this sort of size where things start falling apart.
Speaker 2: 40:38
From that point of view, so funny with this conversation around transparency and even just like your relationship with work. I can't help but think about it like a really any relationship you have with a person, Meaning and I know we've talked about this. But when I think about dating or getting into a relationship with someone, if you're not honest or if you misrepresent yourself from the jump, you're going to have a problem. And when we think about any kind of dating scenario, if you would be like, yeah, they said that they really wanted to have X, Y and Z, but then they didn't, and we talked about how how can people start to get more transparent up above right, Especially at the org level? But I'm thinking here about where this really comes down to is individuals, how individuals are feeling as they're moving through these organizations. I'm thinking here about where this really comes down to is individuals, how individuals are feeling as they're moving through these organizations.
Speaker 2: 41:31
And I'm wondering if we can really double down on if you're a manager or if you're an employee and you're sitting in an organization that may have some opportunity. Everybody has some opportunity Individually. I have some opportunity, have some opportunity for transparency, but you really want to be this person that shows up well for your team or shows up in a way that you feel you need to as a manager. What can a manager do, agnostic of the organization, to drive transparency and drive that kind of honesty on their team?
Speaker 1: 42:06
Yeah, it's very tough. I think in some respects in smaller organizations it's more down to mindset of founder CEO. They're probably still close enough to the individual employees day to day for them to be the driving factor here. I think maybe when you get into larger organizations and most people have never ever met the ceo or know really what they look like or who they are, there is more of an opportunity possibly for managers, middle level managers, more senior managers, to try and direct and formulate some level of team level transparency. Everyone knows that as companies get larger, culture and values becomes lost on a broader level because you end up with your microcultures and across the entire business. You do have this opportunity to form your own microculture, microverse within your team. So if managers do care deeply enough about it and not to say that they're going to suddenly change the entire business and how the business operates, but there are steps that they can take to start understanding how they can build more trust with their team.
Speaker 1: 43:04
And again, this is a whole nother podcast episode, I'm sure, but managers are highly underdeveloped, under supported, under trained.
Speaker 1: 43:12
I think the latest stat that's flowing around now is like 82 percent of managers are accidental managers, like it's completely broken in terms of how management even works itself, and so most managers don't know where to start when it comes to how to manage a team and how to communicate with them, and et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: 43:30
So, in terms of like steps you can take, we're building an open manager handbook with our community now building it together like a building public community exercise, which is really cool, but that's going to be filled with a heap of like resources, guidance on like how to build trust with the team, how to communicate with the team, how to run effective one on ones, but all with a lens of how to build trust with the team, how to communicate with the team, how to run effective one-on-ones, but all with a lens of how to do it in an open, transparent way.
Speaker 1: 43:54
It's tricky because some of it will go against the grain a little bit, potentially with what you're being told you are allowed to share and aren't allowed to share. But if you're not able to be transparent ie share the reality you can at least be clear with what you are and aren't allowed to share. So there's a bit of a difference between clarity and transparency. So even if you don't have the information to share with them, you can tell them what you can share and what you do and don't know, and that in itself is at least building some trust with your team.
Speaker 2: 44:21
I've been in. I think most of us have situations where you're leading a team and you're going through something really tumultuous layoffs, budget cuts, the business isn't doing well, et cetera and I've worked with people, colleagues and peers that have been like all you need to say is that you absolutely trust the direction of the company. You're behind this 100% and we're going to move on, and I have found that when I've tried that tactic earlier on in my career, it goes over like a fart in church because people, what they want to know to your very good point is I don't need you to tell me everything, but I need to trust that you're going to tell me what you can and you're going to keep me updated and we're going to go through this together. Yeah, people don't expect you to tell them everything. They don't even expect you necessarily to tell how you're feeling about it, but they need to be able to trust that you've got their best interests and that you're going to keep them updated as they go along.
Speaker 1: 45:17
Yeah, and you've got two examples of companies that do a relatively good job on this. Again, in terms of again, this probably has to be something that is ideally fed from higher up, but maybe it could be implemented in a larger organization by a middle manager. There's a company I mentioned earlier called euro. They're really intentional as a leadership team as how they will approach crisis types scenarios, whatever that might be. Layoffs interestingly, an interesting one, because you can see a layoff coming so you can plan for it. You could think about our comms plan how we're going to approach it. Weirdly, there's no argument real argument for companies doing a really bad job on this because they they always see it coming, they always have time to plan for it and they have the opportunity to communicate it if they want to. But there are things that happen that you can't control and euro was one example. They were backed by, if you remember, the silicon valley bank issue that happened a while ago.
Speaker 1: 46:06
Yeah, everyone sort of just forgot about that a little bit. So sorry if I've given anyone ptsd, but that happened and that affected juro and within minutes of that news being announced, juro's ceo was on slack. The entire business couldn't give them an answer as to what's coming, but there was at least communication there immediately to say this has happened. We could be affected. We will keep you posted and I can't remember exactly how many updates they were given, but there was continual updates very regularly throughout the entire weekend. No expectation for employees to read this, but it all happened over a weekend, didn't it? I think from memory and yeah, that's do committed to slacking the entire business all weekend about what was going on that that sort of level of intentional communication calms nerves, makes people feel involved, looked after as safe as they possibly can be and informed, and they're an incredible business. You have to work hard at that, but that's really great.
Speaker 1: 47:01
Another example, slightly different, is someone like gitlab, who a lot of people know and accept as the most transparent company in the world. If you go on their handbook, when they talk about transparency as one of their values, they're very clear about why it's a value. They're very clear about what they do share and they give you examples of the things they share. But interestingly, there's a line in there that says there are some things we don't share and when we don't share them, we publicly document what that is and why. So you can click a link and they'll tell you exactly what they don't share with people and the reasons for not sharing that information as well. And that is like perfect scenario, like defining transparency but building expectations with employees to understand and get some context for why certain things aren't being shared.
Speaker 2: 47:48
I think that education is equally important. Right, there are some things that it is in everybody's best interest not to share at a certain point in time. Right, there just is in business. But I think the ability to say this is it and to be very upfront about it again, it's so. People know what to expect, they know what they're getting into. Yeah, it's really that. Know what to expect, they know what they're getting into. Yeah, it's really that clear yeah.
Speaker 3: 48:10
It's also just acknowledging going back to the example about the Silicon Valley Bay, it's acknowledging something is happening. We know what's happening. We don't have all the facts, but we're going to communicate to you. So people aren't like trying to fill in the blank. That's what always happens, right? They fill in their own blanks. Conspiracy theories spread throughout an organization, and then it just now you're fighting that and the real information, and then no one believes the real information when you finally give it. So I love these examples.
Speaker 1: 48:38
The comfort it must build of thinking okay, my CEO is on it, like you don't communicate anything. If an employee sees it, that news, and they haven't heard from their CEO on the weekend, they might sit there and think should I tell them about this? Do you think they've seen the news yet? Or, knowing that your CEO is slacking you on the weekends about something like this, I think yeah, the trust in that leader must just be through the roof.
Speaker 2: 48:59
Yeah absolutely, absolutely. One of the things that I think is really important is being able to control what you can control. Is being able to control what you can control and, as an employee, you're either interviewing for a job. Maybe you're sitting internally at an organization and you're wondering what could I be looking at in terms of this organization? And I'm wondering what would you tell people You're best friends interviewing for a job? What would you tell them in terms of figuring out what that company really is?
Speaker 1: 49:26
Yeah, I haven't ever had to answer that. To be honest, we do a few things to try and help folks a little bit as much, as our advice usually is trained more on helping the companies rather than because we think if we can help the companies do better, that will automatically help employees and candidates. But I spend a lot of time personally looking at career sites and job adverts and I think I've gotten very good at just cutting through the rubbish. Basically, that's there, the buzzwords, the vagueness that actually a lot of people maybe read and take for granted and take as accepted. So encouraging people to not just see the words transparent on a career page but actually, if you see that, take that as a signal that you should be looking for some level of openness or something further that gives you an idea. Or, if someone's got a core value of diversity, start understanding whether they share anything about diversity or the commitments, failings, whatever that might be. So just try and think a bit deeper and go a bit deeper on that. That's like the high level stuff. There's basic things on the job adverts that people should be looking for some clarity on and most people do, frankly, is like thinking about like compensation and flexible working, like when will I be working? Where will I be working and can you think deeper around like policy on?
Speaker 1: 50:36
Someone just says hybrid three days a week. What does that actually mean? Their questions you won't have answered pre-application, but taking that into an interview to actually like really dig deeper on that and understand is it just three days a week or is it a monday, tuesday, friday, like whatever that might be? We built and shared what we call like our interview question index and which is like an open resource on our website and it's I think it's 60 or 70 questions. We just we did it for fun, to be honest, but like opportunity for people to understand that the tougher questions they could ask employers and interview to dig deeper on things like culture, like understanding, like, and what one of the questions on there is like why did the last three people leave this team?
Speaker 1: 51:14
Or what was the last mistake your ceo admitted to which I got some flack for and people said you should be a bit softer with that like and maybe like. So maybe someone could ask what was the last thing your ceo shared you that they learned, which for me became a bit fluffy. It could be like I've read a book and learned this, so I want to understand how open are CEOs and leaders about their own mistakes, their own vulnerabilities? It gives you a real indication of psychological safety and how people communicate and share information, and if an interviewer can't give you certain information, it's not necessarily that you should run for the hills, but it might give you a bit of an indication as to how communication and information is shared in that business. If they haven't even genuinely been given the information themselves. As a recruiter of 12, 13 years, that would signal some alarm bells in my head alarm bells in my head.
Speaker 3: 52:08
Yeah, I always tell people to ask the question what brought you here and what keeps you here? Because it's the what keeps you here, where the honesty starts to come out for folks, or if you see them. Oh, I don't know yeah, yeah, that pause tell is telling yeah, there's.
Speaker 1: 52:20
Sometimes I have to, like really work hard to find out why I'm still, why I'm still in this business is, but then and even the danger with that is there's almost very opinionated. So what, what's keeping someone else in the business might not be the thing that keeps you there as well, but understanding it's hard, because so many of these things could be linked to opinion. But again, understanding, like, who is the last person that failed to thrive here and why? Like what are the factors that leads to failure in this company, rather than always saying, like, why am I going to love it here? What do do you do for fun? Like always trying to find all the fun stuff. Understand who doesn't thrive and help you understand whether that might, you know, connect the dots for you as well.
Speaker 2: 52:59
I think it's really important to dive way deeper than most people do in their interviews and to not be afraid to ask those questions. I've had many conversations with people that they really want to know X, y and Z, but they're afraid to ask or they feel like if they ask then they're going to get penalized somehow in the interview process. And I feel like these are questions that you should be asking to really get a sense of what is the organization like, but also if you're getting any kind of pushback about those questions or even asking those questions, that's also information as well.
Speaker 3: 53:33
That's when a rejection is protection. Yes, ultimately.
Speaker 1: 53:39
The hard thing right now, at this moment in time, is it's such a hard thing to advise on because they're ultimately braver questions for people to ask, slightly scarier ones, and the mindset that so many people are in right now is I've just got to find a job.
Speaker 1: 53:53
So, like at the moment, people are just trying to find, prioritize finding jobs, even if they're not perfect, and it was a similar back in 2020 with, with covid, people were joining companies as a stepping stone, knowing I just need security for now and when the market improves then I'll move. So right now, this stuff isn't always a priority for people, but I've known a good few people in the last number of months who have jumped to jobs just for a job's sake and they've left them in weeks. There's no point in joining a business and going through onboarding and ramp up and hope if your gut is telling you that this is not the right place, because nine times out of ten it won't happen and you're better off still investing your energy and your time into trying to find the right place. But it is hard.
Speaker 2: 54:35
It's a really tricky time to be doing that and I hate to put it on an employee to say you've got to go through this journey, but I think it's really great, though, that people have these tools and these questions to ask to see what situation are they getting into, what's?
Speaker 1: 54:47
really sad is it's often the TA teams and the recruiters who get the flack for this. They're useless at giving me the information I need. They're really vague and the poor recruiter that's nine times out of 10, they just haven't been given the information. I've had this myself, like not being told what funding round we just done. How am I going to do my job properly if the leadership team won't give me the basic information I need to interview? So it's not usually the TA team's fault. Honestly. They don't sit there openly trying to hide things. It's just we're working with what we've got. But again, it's a huge indication really of like how does communication happen in this business?
Speaker 2: 55:20
A thousand percent, yeah, and quite honestly, most TA teams are armed with the sexy ass information and all the information they can have so they can get those folks through the door. So if they don't have it, again I think that's a really great call out that it might not be as clear in the organization. The other thing is, if the hiring manager we talk about this sometimes there's a difference between talent acquisition, like your recruiter, and then the person that's actually going to be quote, unquote, your boss, and if either of those people don't have that information, or I think it'd be very interesting if they give you different information as well, again, I think it's just, it's a big archaeological dig.
Speaker 3: 55:56
Put on your curiosity and critical thinking hat during the interview process the rapid round, here we go adam, no pressure, by the way, try to make this as fun as possible and not terrifying. So terrible, at least yeah, all right, I going to dive right in. Some of these could be yes or no, or true or false, and some might have broader explanation, and that's totally okay. I wanted to ask of the open org companies that you are working with, are there similar characteristics that you see in their leadership teams?
Speaker 1: 56:44
yes, I can divulge a little bit more if you want yeah of course. Relatively progressive, a younger generation less precious about titles and flatter hierarchies and structures in their business.
Speaker 3: 56:58
Okay, what is the next lever being added to the list above? We talked about comp benefits, career development, culture. What else might get added?
Speaker 1: 57:10
Flexibility is another thing that I think is just such a big topic at the moment the lack of clarity on are we working from home? Is it return to office? How does that look? Is it different things to different employees? There's a lot of problems around that at the moment. So, like clarity on that should be really simple, but it's terrible at the moment, so that should be a big one.
Speaker 3: 57:34
Okay, okay. We see a lot of large organizations today talking about social impact, environmental impact. Do you think, given the age of climate change, that companies should be transparent about their environmental impact, even if it's not flattering?
Speaker 1: 57:45
Yeah, I do so. The gen z, gen z, sorry big topic for them around, like esg and environment and climate. So it's a big thing that a lot of them are looking for, apparently, from employers when they join companies. So it will signal to me that the longer that it goes on and the worst things get out there, the more important this is for companies to talk about. The downsides is the pressure of greenwashing, etc. And everyone's talking about just doing something or trying to make it look as good as possible, and that's happened with diversity over the last few years. Definitely is like huge calls to do more on diversity, but it's become very performative. So yes, definitely, but but be careful okay, okay.
Speaker 3: 58:25
Do you think social media is going to make companies be more transparent or just more cautious?
Speaker 1: 58:31
hopefully both, hopefully both. So a trait I see from the really transparent companies that I follow and watch is very vocal ceos. On linkedin, for example, they post regularly. They post about whatever they want and they're not afraid to to either be vulnerable and share failings but also like really celebrate stuff. And it's interesting the the slightly larger or secretive companies. You never hear from a ceo and the fact that they don't post about anything starts making you think are they waiting for someone to comment on a post and call them out? And this happened with bupa very recently. The ce CEO posted about an award they won for women in their leadership team and there was a comment made that went viral and it all blew up. So more cautious if you're not able to be fully transparent, but hopefully that transparency will remove the need to be cautious.
Speaker 3: 59:22
Okay, true or false? Every company should have a public fact sheet about how they operate, true, okay? And is there such a thing as too much transparency?
Speaker 1: 59:37
There could be. Arguably no, but in certain instances there could be. And again it's a bit like the greenwashing example just now. Don't make it become like a performative exercise just for pr. Make it like embeddable. Don't overreach.
Speaker 3: 59:51
As soon as you can't model certain behaviors, it will start to fall apart what's one organization either one that you're working with or one publicly that you've seen do this really well, like you think they're a pillar example of good transparency.
Speaker 1: 1:00:14
A company called PostHog. Posthog is a small-ish tech business in the UK. I won't drone on because I'll talk about it for hours, but check out PostHog. They've got a public handbook. They share their roadmap. Their CEO is posting on LinkedIn all the time. That's so open, so transparent. They're amazing.
Speaker 2: 1:00:26
Adam. I love the work you all are doing. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. 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.
Jerks at Work
erks are everywhere…
The micromanager. The drama queen. The sly saboteur. Toxic coworkers come in all forms—and they’re not just annoying, they’re disruptive. Ever wondered how to handle that gaslighter or micromanager in your office? Well, we’re exploring these challenging workplace dynamics with Dr. Tessa West, a psychology professor at NYU and author of "Jerks at Work."
In this episode, Dr. West shares her journey from the high-end retail world to academia, offering practical advice and engaging anecdotes that illuminate the complex nature of dealing with difficult colleagues. We unpack how to deal with jerks at work without sacrificing your sanity, success, or standards. You'll walk away with actionable strategies to not only survive but thrive in your professional environment.
Your Work Friends Podcast: Jerks at Work with Dr. Tessa West
Jerks are everywhere…
The micromanager. The drama queen. The sly saboteur. Toxic coworkers come in all forms—and they’re not just annoying, they’re disruptive. Ever wondered how to handle that gaslighter or micromanager in your office? Well, we’re exploring these challenging workplace dynamics with Dr. Tessa West, a psychology professor at NYU and author of "Jerks at Work."
In this episode, Dr. West shares her journey from the high-end retail world to academia, offering practical advice and engaging anecdotes that illuminate the complex nature of dealing with difficult colleagues. We unpack how to deal with jerks at work without sacrificing your sanity, success, or standards. You'll walk away with actionable strategies to not only survive but thrive in your professional environment.
Speaker 1: 0:00
Every jerk I've talked to, because I've been brought in by a lot of companies to do de-jerkifying coaching and most of these people are actually like lovely, and you're like I was expecting a monster and I'm just getting a sad person who is shocked.
Speaker 2: 0:15
The worst kind of thing.
Speaker 3: 0:28
Mel, what's going on? Hey, y'all have a heat wave.
Speaker 2: 0:31
Yeah, we have a heat wave. Yesterday we had an advisory for the air quality. Always a fun alert to get. Fantastic Remember when New York City, though, was in the wildfires last year, you know yeah, I happened to not be home during that time, but my husband sent me pictures. The sky was just completely orange over here, so it's just wild, ah fun with climate change.
Speaker 3: 0:55
Fun with climate change, yeah, good times, yeah. Well, speaking of New York City, we talked to someone from New York City, didn't we? We?
Speaker 2: 1:02
did, we did, we did. We spoke to Tessa West, who is a professor at NYU, and we wanted to get down on the topic of work, jerkery all the jerks at work.
Speaker 3: 1:18
Yeah, this is something that I'll tell you. One of the big themes coming out of a lot of our conversations and a lot of our work, especially on the pod, is how do I deal with these people at work that we will broadly categorize as jerks? The on the pod is how do I deal with these people at work that we will broadly categorize as jerks the gaslighters, the credit stealers, the micromanagers, all the jerks that we deal with. And so we called up Dr Tessa West. She is a professor of psychology at NYU. As Mel mentioned, she's also a leading expert in the science of interpersonal communication. Mel mentioned, she's also a leading expert in the science of interpersonal communication. She has written two books One she just dropped that's very cool called Job Therapy Finding Work that Works For you, and the other, mel. What is it? Jerks at Work, jerks at Work. Dr Tessa West has literally written the book about jerks at work, the type of jerks you meet. What do you do about them? What did you?
Speaker 2: 2:06
think about this episode, Mel. I really loved it because I think we've all been jerks at work. I don't think anyone's immune to being a jerk. I think it's on a spectrum, like we say, with a number of other things. But we've all been there. We've either been one or we've experienced it, or both. It's really insightful to think through what that looks like, how that shows up and how you can deal with it.
Speaker 3: 2:28
Loved everything that Tessa walked us through in terms of the types of jerks. What do you do about it? Stick around for the round Robin, because she absolutely gave the best one-liner for how you respond to someone being a jerk that I've ever heard in my life. I'm getting it embroidered on a pillow Awesome, yeah, it's awesome.
Speaker 2: 2:47
Well, with that, here's Tessa. Welcome, Tessa, to the your Work Friends podcast. Tell us your story. How did you get into what you do?
Speaker 1: 3:06
I'm a psychology professor at New York University and I study uncomfortable social interactions. So everything from feedback conversations with your boss to having an uncomfortable interaction in the doctor's office to working with an international group of people on a team and I've been doing this for 20 some odd years. I actually got started really studying this kind of topic of how we handle uncomfortable interactions and how they play out at work by working in retail myself and selling men's shoes at Nordstrom. I have an academic life but a non-academic path to get there, and I think if anyone's ever worked retail high-end retail in downtown Santa Barbara was where I worked. That is just the sort of perfect breeding ground for all difficult people jerks at work, status climbers, customer stealers, all that juicy stuff. I joined a lab at the same time at UC Santa Barbara. That did nothing but put people in these horrifically uncomfortable situations where you're interacting with someone who is giving you dirty looks while you give a speech on why you're a good friend. I was actually the person who gave the dirty looks.
Speaker 1: 4:15
That was my job, and so I learned academically how to study these things and study the physiology underlying people's stress they're under the skin responses while living it out in my own life working in retail, and eventually brought these worlds together to study these topics in the workplace. In the last maybe five to 10 years I've really focused on those really difficult moments we have at work, trying to figure out why we're stressed, why stress threads from one person to another and what we can do about it. And so now I have a good 30 some odd years experience uncovering all the difficult things people go through in the workplace.
Speaker 2: 4:51
One. Anyone who's been in retail myself included, also in shoes, I will add that is a very interesting experience. If you've been in any sort of customer service facing role, I'm sure you've had to have the most insane conversations. So I love that. I know, francesca, and I hear often from people am I a jerk at work one, and how do I deal with jerks at work? Which inspired us to reach out to you because we saw that you wrote a whole book on jerks at work and now job therapy. So in your study I love that you won. Your job was to give people dirty looks Interesting experience.
Speaker 3: 5:28
Sorry, but I'm thinking about. First of all, I know the exact Nordstrom you worked out is the one down in, like the city center of Santa Barbara. Really, yes, I can't imagine like that clientele selling shoes, selling men's shoes, especially when you're a pretty woman as well 18.
Speaker 1: 5:45
I didn't know what I was doing at all.
Speaker 3: 5:48
The dynamics there and the idea of. I love how this started, with this idea of like, awkward dynamics. I'm just wondering how much of that started with either you feeling awkward or you feeling like this person is awkward. Was it a mutual thing or is it more of like? Why do I feel awkward in this situation?
Speaker 1: 6:04
I think at first it was very much. Why do I feel awkward? I'm in my own head a lot and I think there's a lot to play around with there. One.
Speaker 1: 6:12
I grew up in Riverside, california, which is not a fancy place. My dad was a construction worker. I was not used to interacting with these rich Montecito men who would come in and say I need shoes for my gardener and buy like $600 shoes. So there were all there's a lot of status cues going on. So one thing I ended up studying later on was how we have cross status interactions with people who are richer or poor than us or more educated, and how we leak out our social class and all these subtle ways. So I think one of the reasons why I found those interactions so uncomfortable is because I grew up very blue collar and now I'm at UC Santa Barbara selling shoes to this like rich, white, older male population and I was asked to do all kinds of really weird things. I got down on the ground and pet someone's poodle and let it lick my face while I was putting shoes on and I just thought to myself I guess this is just what you do.
Speaker 3: 7:03
I'm okay. I'm okay, this is normal.
Speaker 1: 7:06
This isn't degrading at all. Totally fine. Totally fine, I'm going to make $60. It'll be totally worth it off the sale.
Speaker 1: 7:12
So I think a lot of that awkwardness lived in my head. It came from a lack of understanding norms, not getting the hidden curriculum of how one ought to behave in front of wealthy people. I didn't get that kind of training. And was I awkward? I'm sure I was, but I think most of us walk around with a lot of it living in our heads, more so than it actually becoming a dyadic or interpersonal phenomenon, and I definitely. For me, I try to turn lemons into lemonade and try to make a whole career out of all that really uncomfortable shoe sales experience I had. But yes, I think that the awkwardness is layered on with social cues and status issues and gender dynamics. I was the only woman in whole shoe sales, like in the men's shoes. They never let women sell men's shoes. They had a bro culture. I was brought in because I worked in the store in Riverside where I was also the only woman and convinced them that I could hack it with these bros.
Speaker 3: 8:09
So there's a lot going on, yeah, but what a great story, because I don't think you're obviously not alone in this and not alone in the awkwardness, not alone in the figuring out how to work with people and what those dynamics can do, especially in a work environment.
Speaker 2: 8:22
What was one of the most surprising things that you learned through all of your work.
Speaker 1: 8:27
Yeah, I think one finding that I kept seeing over and over again and I learned this by studying physiology and behavior at the same time is that when we're the most uncomfortable and we could see this in the lab because we measured people's blood pressure so you would get those readings live and measure their heart rate when you're the most uncomfortable, when you're the most stressed, you're the nicest readings live and measure their heart rate.
Speaker 1: 8:45
When you're the most uncomfortable, when you're the most stressed, you're the nicest, most over the top version of yourself, and my colleague, wendy Menez started calling this brittle smiles effect. So like you're so great, this kind of high pitched voice over the top smiling, and what's fascinating is because you're feeling stressed. At the same time, the anxiety still comes out, but in these kind of like weird creepy ways where you smile but not with your eyes right, so you don't have a douche and smile. We have a kind of lower half of you is smiling or you're fidgeting and avoiding eye contact, but saying the right thing and so if you're on the receiving end of one of these things.
Speaker 1: 9:17
It's like the words coming out of the person's mouth are nice, they're supportive, but it's all oozing out through these anxious cues. And what we started realizing is there's the controllable behaviors what we say and then the ones that are difficult to control how we say it and those two often misalign and that can lead to very difficult communication between people. And even talking to your jerk at work, you're probably really nice to that person if you were to go up to them. And we see this in all kinds of contexts and it's a pretty universal phenomenon, also cross-culturally. It's not just in America. I've seen it in Abu Dhabi with people from 50 countries. They do the same thing. I think that's one of our more consistent tried and true findings we found.
Speaker 3: 9:56
That's fascinating.
Speaker 2: 9:59
That's so interesting because I think one. I know I've done that when I've had to present somewhere like the over nicety to people in the room. Oh my God, but it's so interesting, Just the body language that people exude. You can't hide the body language.
Speaker 1: 10:15
Yeah, you can't control it. If you tell people okay, take a deep breath, don't look anxious, it makes it way worse. We tried that. We even tried telling people your partner's not anxious. They just had a ton of coffee today, so they're a little fidgety, they're like anxious coffee, oh my God. No, it actually makes it worse. And then they see even more anxiety than is actually there. It's really hard to get rid of this. It's a super sticky phenomenon.
Speaker 3: 10:37
It's very difficult to undo you just wrote Job Therapy, which we're super stoked about, and in the book you talk about some of the sources people have in terms of the frustration with work is actually due to some of those interpersonal relationships. When I think about people looking at a job pivot or they're unhappy in their career or they're thinking this isn't working for me anymore a lot of times people think it's because I'm not doing the right job or I'm not at the right company, not necessarily about the people you're surrounding yourself with.
Speaker 1: 11:30
I think relationships are everything at work, and I mean that in a lot of ways. So one of the main things that turns on or off our work happiness is our interpersonal relationships with people, and that doesn't just include your boss or the people on your team. That includes the people that you see day in and day out. I think that even if you're an individual contributor and I hear this a lot I'm an individual contributor. I don't need relationships. Of course you do, we all do. It doesn't matter what the nature of your work is. Those dynamics are at play and we know social networking is an important part of the work process, but we don't really understand how. So that's another component is, in addition to the one-on-one interactions you have, where you learn new information. You learn the hidden curriculum. You figure out whether your kiss-up kick-downer has a widespread problem or if it's just you.
Speaker 1: 12:11
All of those things, those kind of sticky interpersonal issues, can really turn our stress on and off. And when it comes to exploring new jobs, people often think about it very structurally I want something hybrid, or I want to work in this new city, or I need a better compensation package. They don't think about the relationship part so much, even though that's actually one of the biggest predictors of what leads us to actually drift apart psychologically from our jobs is the change in interpersonal dynamics at work. But we don't focus on that. We focus on how much we're getting paid or whether we can get promoted. But those things matter, but not as much as those interpersonal relationships, and those relationships are key to doing complex things like developing a new career identity.
Speaker 1: 12:52
Like you can't do that by reading websites or taking courses to improve this and that skill. You really have to sit down for 15 minutes and talk to a stranger and say tell me what your day-to-day looks like. That's really how you develop clarity around things, like a new identity at work, and so I really encourage people even shy people, even awkward people, even people who are individual contributors to really embrace the relational component at work in lots of different ways, and I don't mean you need to be best friends with anyone at work. You can think about relationships in different ways of serving these different purposes, but they're absolutely essential to feeling good at work and feeling good about yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 3: 13:31
I've absolutely felt that right, especially when I've been in organizations for an extended period of time. Where you feel like you have the relationships, where you feel like you have the network, it's so much easier to get things done and, quite honestly, a lot of times, work is just so much more enjoyable. Yeah, but the thing we talk about a lot too in terms of career development or even getting promoted, is you have to have sponsors, you have to have a board of directors. People need to quote unquote know who you are. That doesn't just happen and that isn't typically just based on your great work. It has to deal with do people want to vouch for you? Do they like you? Do you have the relationship to your point?
Speaker 1: 14:06
Are they willing to expend social capital to?
Speaker 1: 14:09
stand up for you. You know we often don't think about how getting promoted, you know and I don't just mean like literally getting a new job title, but having someone in the room vouch for you is costly for them. You know, even if it's, even if you're good and everyone agrees you're wonderful, if they are going to put their neck out for you and argue that you should get promoted, that means that they can't do it for the next person. In academia, it's like every time the chair goes to the dean and asks for money for a person, that's one less person that they can then ask for the next time, because we have a zero-sum amount of stuff that we're working with and we have to think about. Are we earning these relationships that are helping us in the moment but also helping us build our careers out? And every recruiter, internal and external, that I talked to for this book said that they love developing relationships with people in different stages of their careers, because they will place the same person five times. It's like a real estate agent.
Speaker 1: 15:05
They will sell you a house five times over your life and it is essential for them to get to know you and know if you're going to actually stay in a job. Do they want to place you? Because they don't get a bonus if you don't stay for six months, and so they're going to place the person they know will stay because they stayed in the last thing they placed them in. And those kind of lifelong relationships are also essential for us just in terms of our whole kind of life career trajectory, and we often don't really think about those lifey relationships outside of our specific job context.
Speaker 3: 15:34
Yeah, and then you meet these people that have these massive networks of people and they're so much better off typically than people that don't. I see this a lot too. This is such a small microcosm of this, but when you see people get laid off and then all of a sudden they're starting their LinkedIn profile, or all of a sudden they're starting to reconnect back, and it's like you should have been doing this all along, or nurturing these relationships all along to have that network to fall back on, it's a very small example, but something we see all the time.
Speaker 1: 16:02
Oh yeah, like you don't maintain those relationships and you only turn to them when you're laid off or you blast your whole network one message Like please help me. Like without those interpersonal connections. It just feels like relationship spam and I think no one likes to feel like they're being spammed in any context, especially with someone they know Not at all my parents used to say like relationships are, it's like a garden, it's a reciprocal thing.
Speaker 3: 16:24
Right, you have to tend to them, you have to nurture them and you have to give to get. You can't have it be only when I need you. So nurturing those very strong relationships obviously huge, and also giving your data something that really makes meaningful careers. And then I'm wondering on the other side of it too, where what happens when those relationships turn out to be with people that are just dicks and I've had that experience too, where you're like you're a dick, you're a jerk. And I am curious about how not even neutral relationships, but adversarial, jerky relationships impact people's careers and what they think about their careers.
Speaker 1: 17:06
I think when we have these failed relationships, losses loom larger than gains and we can perseverate on a turned relationship. For years and years I've talked to people that were like I had a best friend and then he became my boss and then I overheard him talking about me in the bathroom and it killed me. I said when did that happen? 1987. I'm still thinking about it and that's normal. When we feel like someone betrays us, we really hang on to that and to the point where we maybe have a bit of a spotlight effect, where we think it's going to damage us more than it actually does and we start to get a little conspiratorial and thinking about how they can damage our networks and things like that.
Speaker 1: 17:46
One of the people I talk about in Jerks at Work is a gaslighter and they're like the masters of trying to damage your network. Right, they don't just go after you, they go after your reputation and by doing that they hit everyone. That's a node in your network. Most jerks we deal with have less power than we think they do. Even if they tell us they're full of power and full of status, a lot of it is more bark than bite, so you need to actually do the work to figure out if there's a real concern there about that reputational damage and then be proactive about not trash talking the person but just information gathering.
Speaker 1: 18:19
We often have this instinct of they're going out there saying bad things about me.
Speaker 1: 18:22
I'm going to go out there and correct that by saying bad things about them.
Speaker 1: 18:26
But stop and take a breath and think, ok, I'm just going to information gather and get the lay of the land of my own reputation so then I can correct it and not make it about them at all, even if the person deserves that kind of negative reputation.
Speaker 1: 18:39
You have to just be super careful with gossip because you just never know how it's going to be used in the future. And we all gossip and it serves an important purpose. But the retribution piece, the piece that the it inside of you really wants to go crazy, is where you just have to focus more on controlling the narrative around your own reputation, figuring out how white for the problem is, and then I'd say these relationships fail fast. If you are getting red flagged that this person is saying negative things or credit stealing or whatever, disengage as quickly as you can from that. We all have stories I have some of when I first started going too far into a relationship with someone who is weirdly competitive or had some other tick that just didn't align with me and letting that relationship stay for too long.
Speaker 1: 19:20
And I think that's where we get a little messed up at work. We think people need to be our best friends and sometimes you figure out they're not and just disengage. I think is key. But yeah, it can hurt. I still have my stories from 20 years ago I still think about so I think it's pretty normal.
Speaker 3: 19:35
I have a reoccurring dream about somebody and it's just like why won't this go away? I see your face.
Speaker 1: 19:44
I understand. I understand it's like an ex-boyfriend they got a weird breakup with and there was no closure, none.
Speaker 3: 19:51
Yeah, and I still. There's certain things. I can't listen to. A certain song You're just like oh, I am burned. You're like I can't. Nope, nope, nope, yeah, but taking away that power to your point around when you're in it, disengaging like you don't need to keep working at it. Disengage number one and number two.
Speaker 1: 20:17
Focus on your own PR and not bad-mouthing them, right, ie Taylor Swift trash-chakes itself out at some point, hopefully, or just be very strategic about the nature of the bad-mouthing. I'd say if you do go to HR, you want to bad-mouth, don't focus on your feelings about the nature of the bad mouthing. I'd say if you do go to HR, you want a bad mouth, don't focus on your feelings about the person or your kind of description of their personality. Focus on exactly what they've done. When I have conversations with leaders about difficult people, I'll say something like okay, I'm going to tell you what happened, and if I start to editorialize this a little bit, just let me know, because I don't mean to. And then followed by we had this meeting and this is what was said, leaving my emotions aside and I don't use words like they're untrustworthy or they're disrespectful. Those are very eye of the beholder and not everyone's going to agree with you about what those things look like. So I just described the behaviors and then it makes me look like a more mature person.
Speaker 2: 21:03
Stick to the facts. But all goes back to the golden rule right Is like focus on yourself.
Speaker 1: 21:13
Don't worry about others. I'm curious, why do people show up like this? I'm a firm believer that most people who are jerks don't actually know it, because it harms them a lot to not have solid networks and good reputations. I'm dealing with a jerk right now at work and we just got some feedback about the people who report to her and it's all pretty terrible and she's been here for a long time and I asked her closest colleague what's going on. He goes oh, no one tells her. No one's ever told this person what's going on and I said why not? Because she gets a little scary and defensive.
Speaker 1: 21:41
So it's like one sign that this is going to involve some conflict or a little bit of social finesse to maneuver around and everyone's like, no, thank you, they're not getting rewarded for giving her this feedback. They don't win. She's powerful. So they could actually lose social capital. And I think most of us walk into those conversations thinking I could lose a lot if this goes poorly. And what am I gaining really by being honest with this person?
Speaker 1: 22:04
And most feedback is delivered pretty poorly and it takes the form of what I just mentioned. It's things like you're not trustworthy or you're disrespectful and no one really knows what. Some of them are out to draw blood, but I think most of them aren't. They just aren't very socially perceptive either. They don't pick up on cues that maybe, like other people, are unhappy with them. Every jerk I've talked to because I've been brought in by a lot of companies to do de-jerkifying coaching and most of these people are actually like lovely and you're like I was expecting a monster and I'm just getting a sad person who is shocked the worst kind of thing.
Speaker 2: 22:52
Yeah, we talk about that all the time how the feedback just doesn't happen. Renee Brown's clear as kind is for a good reason and real time, and not just those big words, as you mentioned, but like actionable things that they can truly address, like clear feedback that's actionable, not just feelings. What's the worst kind of jerk that you've seen in the workplace?
Speaker 1: 23:16
The one that causes the most psychological damage, I would say, is the gaslighter.
Speaker 1: 23:21
And that is a word that like took on its own. It had its own moment. It's very much in the zeitgeist, but those are people who are lying with the intent to deceive on a pretty big scale and they socially isolate their victims. And so a lot of the people who've been gaslit. It's been going on for a very long time. They've been cut off from their social networks and also it's not always in the form of an insult, or you're not good enough or you're going to feel a lot of it's fiery feedback.
Speaker 1: 23:48
You're a special person. I'm only bringing in one member from the team to know about the super secret mission that we're on together. Before you know it, you've stolen company secrets and general counsel's at your door, but you had no idea. You thought you were a part of a super special secret mission. So I think people have a complicated emotional reaction to being gaslit, partly because there's a guilt that they have done some unethical things, that they felt silly, that they were talked into, and then they have no idea what other people actually think of them and who they can trust to to get an understanding of their reputation and they feel very lost and many of them, because of that, have so much trauma that they don't trust anyone ever again in any workplace. So for these folks this is really a traumatic experience. I think it's fairly rare to run into a true gaslighter. It's different than someone who lies, but that is a very damaging one.
Speaker 2: 24:40
Yeah, I've experienced that before, francesca, you have too, I think. Yeah.
Speaker 3: 24:45
Do you think a gaslighter is like pathological?
Speaker 1: 24:47
Yeah, I think it's like access to personality disorder stuff. I think it's a lot of these are contextually based.
Speaker 1: 24:56
Jerks can be bred at work, but I feel like you have to have a special combination of some dark triad traits or whatever to really thrive, because and a lot of these gaslighters are quite good at their job- and they're very powerful and they're well-connected and they know how to frame up themselves to be protected from whatever they've asked you to do in aiding and abetting, and they usually walk out with pretty clean reputations at the end of the day and that's very frustrating for people. There's not like a sense of procedural justice.
Speaker 3: 25:29
One thing I've been having a hard time, and I am someone that is there's a special place in hell for women who don't support other women. That is my thing, and so it pains me to say this, because this is just my observation. What I have been trying to suss out, though, is most of the gaslighters I have met have been women, typically, I'd say 40 plus. I know there can be male gaslighters that are 18 years old like that, so that's fact right. What I've been trying to suss out, though, is how much of that type of behavior has been the world that they've grown up in and had to fight for and compete for in a male dominated world, yada, yada versus the pure pathology. And then where's the line where it's no, this is just who they are versus this is what they've been bred to?
Speaker 3: 26:10
do that's hard sometimes for me to suss out.
Speaker 1: 26:14
There's a lot of research on queen bee syndrome and things like that right, so you get these women in male dominated fields, and I'd also say that discrimination against women is there are no gender differences in who actually does it, and so people are like women shouldn't be discriminating against women. They do just as much as men do.
Speaker 1: 26:33
There are almost no documented kind of gender of the perceiver effects, meaning the person who does it. But when women do it, it stands out, it's much more salient and it also often takes more of a social aggression form, because the way women tend to be aggressive is much more sort of convoluted and social. And it starts when we're six years old and we learn these tactics of aggression through. Little boys hit each other, little girls gossip about each other, and there's a developmental trajectory of how we learn to be successfully aggressive that we can then take to work and the queen bees the women who've made it in these male-dominated fields. They have often suffered quite a lot. That they think earns them the right to then behave the same way. I have had a very similar experience where the people who I felt discriminated against me the most were more senior women who felt like they went through the gauntlet. It's now my turn and I need to just suck it up.
Speaker 1: 27:27
So there's a lot of kind of stereotypes about what one ought to do as a woman, when you're allowed to have babies, how you're supposed to behave and dress and no one's ever told me how to dress, except for other women showing up in job interviews. So I do think there's like a special dynamic that I think happens there with these women who have succeeded in these male dominated places.
Speaker 3: 27:47
Yeah, I like the term queen bee though, because I think that gives a nice frame for that, because it's hard Sometimes it's hard to assess. You talked about the gaslighter. In your book you write about other types of jerks at work and I'm wondering if you could give us a bit of this survey. What are the other types of jerks people meet at work?
Speaker 1: 28:05
My favorite is the kiss-up kick-downer, and this book is actually based on someone I worked with at Nordstrom's. This is why I love this person. They are very good at their job and they're super socially savvy, and so they're high on what we call status acuity. They can read the room. They can walk into a room and tell you who has status, who has respect and admiration and who doesn't. They can walk into a room and tell you who has status, who has respect and admiration and who doesn't. They can figure that out pretty quickly. So the boss tends to love them. They tend to be top performers, and if you are to complain that they are mistreating you so they kick down people at their level or beneath, you're going to get a lot of eye rolls and you're just jealous, and so they're very clever and savvy and Machiavellian and are able to get ahead through these kind of tricksy ways. They're very careful about who they gossip to and about, and they only do it in a very strategic way. And so if you have a workplace with a hierarchy which every workplace does these individuals tend to be very good at climbing up that hierarchy and then reading who has the status within that hierarchy. So that's my favorite.
Speaker 1: 29:04
I think some of the more straightforward ones are like the credit stealer who we are all probably pretty familiar with, and this person is also savvy. They tend to actually they don't just steal all their credit, they'll give you public credit for certain things so that when you then go complain it's much easier for them to say what am I talking about? I just gave them this whole speech publicly about all the hard work they've done. So credit stealers have a bulldozer type in my book as well. So this is a person who takes over meetings and agendas. They can usually work power structures behind the scenes, so you have a lot of things that end in an impasse and you're not quite sure why or what's happening, and these can all be team members.
Speaker 1: 29:43
And then I have two types of bosses. I have the micromanager, who I think most of us are familiar with, those insecure bosses that oversee all your work and they tend to do a lot but not get anything done. And then the neglectful boss, who, ironically, tends to also be a micromanager. So that's usually one person who oscillates between micromanagement and neglect. While they're micromanaging you, they're neglecting someone else, and so the neglect really gets operationalized as ignore, ignore, show up at the 11th hour, top-down control, change everything. Everyone freaks out, has a stress response and then they leave again for six months. So they go back and forth. So micromanager and neglectful boss are two people, but often one person.
Speaker 1: 30:27
And then the gaslighter who we just talked about.
Speaker 2: 30:37
I feel like I've encountered all of those in my career At the same time, sometimes all in one. I'm curious do you think every employee has been a jerk at work?
Speaker 1: 30:51
Yeah, if you've worked long enough, you are a jerk. We all have our own Achilles heel. We all have the worst version of ourselves that we can bring to work. And maybe that's a person who gets jealous and insecure and so it gets lashy outie. Or my son would say you're lashy outie. Or it's someone who feels like they need massive certainty and they're not getting it from their boss and so they hover over your Google page as you're working and they call you and you have to hide under your desk. I think we all have that version of us. When we get stressed and anxious, and some of us, that instinct is to try to overpower, to get that internal sense of control. Some of us disengage completely and become neglectful, and then some of us just have an inner instinct to be a little bit Machiavellian.
Speaker 1: 31:36
It's what we've seen, If you work in a law firm, anyone who's made partner probably is a little bit on that Machiavellian scale and thinks it's okay to kick down to climb ahead. And I think the key is just knowing what that ugliest version of you is on the inside so that you can then not make it go away but put steps in place structurally to prevent that person from coming out. But I do think we all have our inner jerk and that can be a different person at different stages of your career as well.
Speaker 1: 32:03
When you're more or less secure in a role versus completely overwhelmed, but plenty of security psychologically. But I'm a cynical person and I study the dark side of human nature and put people through really egregious social interactions to bring out the ugly version, because the nice version is not so interesting for me. But yes, I do think most of us have some inner jerk.
Speaker 2: 32:24
Yeah, I think it makes sense. Right, we're human beings, you show up that way. But I think, to your point, it's the self-awareness that's so critical, just knowing what that is what can come out. So how do you tame that, focusing on that? For employees, specifically, what are some of the ways that they can identify a jerk? Because, as you mentioned, there are covert jerks. They might not even realize that person's a jerk. And then there are some in your face jerks. One of my favorite things that you say is work jerkery, right, is this an environment full of work jerkery or not? Starting in the interview process, can they start to see that?
Speaker 1: 33:00
Yeah, I used to study first impressions. What can we get from the first 30 seconds? And actually thin slices of human behavior are actually pretty accurate predictors of the future. One thing is most work jerkery shows up a little bit ambiguous. In fact it is rare to say they're prejudiced. You don't you got to add up all these behavioral cues and then blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1: 33:27
Work jerks are a little bit like that, where you're going to have maybe a gut instinct that there's an ambiguous situation that could go either way. The first thing I tell people is do not just trust your instincts, that you can magically read what's going on in someone's mind simply by looking at their nonverbal behavior. I've done a lot of research on interpersonal accuracy and what it really takes to know what someone's thinking or feeling, and there is no magical thing. You simply have to ask, and in the case of work jerks or in an interview, you need to ask around. You need to ask networks of people. I think if you're interviewing for a job, you want to ask at stage two or three of the interview to not just talk to the hiring manager or your boss but to talk to their team members and to talk to people who've cycled out of their team at some point. You want to gather as much information as you can by people who have what's called non-overlapping social information, so they're not always in the same room at the same time with the person. They've known them at different time points in that person's career. They've known them at different jobs or on different teams and look for the signal and the noise there.
Speaker 1: 34:31
Don't trust your instinct based on what they say or their nonverbal behavior or whatever. Base it on data that you can collect. We aren't great at information gathering in an interview stage because we want to impress so badly that we just try to put our best foot forward and say the right things. But once you get far enough in the process, you should feel confident enough to ask for other connections of people and people who know those people to gain that kind of like reputational map of the individual.
Speaker 1: 34:53
What you're looking for is like cross situational consistency across these 15 different interactions, across these 15 people. When they're stressed, they do X, when they're relaxed, they do Y. And you need as much data as you can get because any one person could have a weird experience, and so you're just looking for some consistent patterns of behavior. But really don't trust your instinct. I think that's where most of us go wrong is oh, I saw them give me side eye, or they looked bored. I think they're a jerk. No, none of that stuff is actually predictive. Gather information from the networks of people in the interviews.
Speaker 2: 35:23
Okay.
Speaker 3: 35:25
Yeah, all of us with a resting bitch face appreciate that answer.
Speaker 1: 35:28
Thank you, I have an RBF. There's a science behind the RBF, folks. If your upper lip turns down when your elastic mind does, that gives you RBF. That's the magical ingredient, and so do we want to assume that everyone with a downturned upper lip is a bitch?
Speaker 2: 35:42
No, we do not. I was in a meeting once and I had a leader IME as I was presenting like fix your face.
Speaker 1: 35:49
I'm like what? That's not cool, that is bad behavior.
Speaker 2: 35:53
Yeah, I'm like I don't even know what's wrong with my face. I can't see it so cool, not helpful, yeah. Okay, I'm curious psychologically because you even mentioned something earlier. Some folks might not even ever recover from the damage that this does to them. Like, what are the long-term psychological impacts on the individual, but even teams and organizations? What happens when there's a culture of, like, jerk culture?
Speaker 1: 36:22
Yeah, I think people learn what it takes to get ahead, and the smart ones will do it, and so jerk cultures, beget jerk cultures. If a place is a place where jerks can thrive, then they will hire and they will stay there and they won't ever cycle out because nobody wants to recruit them outside of that place. And this happens with a lot of high performing jerks. There's a reason why snakes in suits is a phenomenon that we actually talk about that you get high up enough you become a little bit of a psychopath. That's not true for every organization, but it's really hard to correct an organizational cultural reputation. That can take years, and you can even wipe everyone out of the organization that was a jerk and hire a new, and it will still take forever.
Speaker 1: 37:05
We know from the science of social network and reputation spread that removing those people with a negative reputation actually does very little to change what people think of the network as a whole. And if you can think of organizations that have had Title IX issues or Me Too issues, simply getting rid of those people isn't sufficient. And it's because people know that firing is easy, but actually promoting from within and proving that you don't breed that is hard and that takes years and years. And a lot of organizations went through this with me too. They just fired all those executives that sent those nasty text messages or sexually harassed women or whatever.
Speaker 1: 37:49
That seems like too easy of a solution to most people. They think, well, why did that person get away with it for 20 years? I don't care that you're firing them now. And there's a bit of a moral licensing effect that happens. Okay, now you feel like you got rid of them. Now you're going to really go crazy because you checked off the box right, like you're feeling good about yourself, morality wise. So I think there is damage that can last years and decades. And to the individual, they're just going to be super sensitive for looking for anything that is similar to their past, jerk and even incidental similarities that have nothing to do with it or are going to cue them up. I've talked to people who go to the same hairdresser. I can't trust that person.
Speaker 1: 38:23
Or they're wearing a similar jacket or they went to the same university or are trained by the same manager 20 years ago. Incidental similarities loom large for us and we often see correlation and inferred causation from that, and so people will start to get a little bit too triggery with those things and it can really hold them back right. Or they develop lay theories about why that person treated them in a certain way that are not ever really tested or explored. But we just have our theories and then we believe them and they're idiosyncratic and we stick to them, and I think that can really lead us astray as well.
Speaker 3: 38:57
What do you do? What do you do if you have that person? Let's take my example. I have a reoccurring dream about this dumb person. I know what do I do you?
Speaker 1: 39:04
don't have any closure in that relationship. Did it just end one? I have this with like exes. It just ended one day and you never saw them. You never did the exit interview where you said all the things or it's really hard to let go of these. Like the social psychologists would call this a goal incompletion.
Speaker 3: 39:39
You didn't complete the goal of ending the relationship, and so it's this kind of subtle, incomplete goal that you have, like never jumping off a high dive, and so you're just going to perseverate on it, or it's going to like sneak into your subconscious every once in a while, and that's true for all things that we don't complete.
Speaker 3: 39:46
Should you call them up? Who is this? I don't even know who this is. No, it's super fair. Super fair, I think, even just knowing, look, it's going to pop in. That's it. Let's just know what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: 39:51
I still dream about, like people from sixth grade that I feel like I didn't have like closure on, and that's normal. It's actually totally normal. It doesn't mean that this person is still haunting you in any meaningful way. It just means that there was something incomplete that you are not able to fully move on from because you just didn't finish the goal of ending that relationship in some kind of formalized way. And that's how most relationship ends. I think that's like just how relationships are. We don't usually have some kind of light switch that goes off where it's done. It's just like a lot of ambivalence, a lot of feelings that go up and down, and then eventually we move on. But what does move on me? I don't. Yeah, it means you're still dreaming about the person, but you're functional, so it's nice.
Speaker 3: 40:34
A thousand percent. I'm glad I'm not the only one, though, so I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: 40:37
Just write them a letter saying all the things you need to say and throw it into a fire and release it.
Speaker 1: 40:43
She's going to be dreaming about the fire and talk to the fire to get the letter back Will be a worse nightmare than it started as.
Speaker 2: 40:52
Okay, scratch that All right. So with say, you're in a new job, it's the first 90 days and you're like, oh shit, I thought I did my due diligence in the interview process. I talked to people but it is clear no one gave me the real story here. What can people do? What do you do to protect yourself if you start to identify work-jerkery happening?
Speaker 1: 41:19
I think, first off, a lot of people try to go at this alone. They think that the negative treatment happens in a vacuum. And I think I've done a lot of research on what it's like to be a newcomer at work and newcomer status and the newcomer hump, and knowing what that hump is will help you strategize of what to do next. The first thing is, when you're a newcomer and you experience this, you assume that everyone around you knows it's happening and they don't care. And so first you actually need to test that assumption. Probably people don't know what's happening because they're in their own world. There's not actually an awareness of what you're up to and how you're being treated by other people, even if it happens in a meeting. Most of us spend most of our time in meetings rehearsing what we want to say next, and we almost never pay attention to what other people are actually saying. So we can remember what we said and when we were interrupted. But if you were to say, hey, mel, did you interrupt your buddy Tom, or when was he interrupted? You'd be like I don't know. All I know is when I was interrupted. So I feel like we have these spotlight effects on ourselves, so you need to break that a little bit and actually break that assumption that everyone knows what's happening except for you.
Speaker 1: 42:26
There's also a lot about norms in the workplace and hidden norms and things like that you probably aren't aware of, and so the best thing to do to learn about norms of treatment of people at work is to take what's implicit and make it explicit and just explicitly ask about how people ought to be treated.
Speaker 1: 42:41
And that sounds silly and dumb, but there could be a culture of sarcasm here or a culture of treating each other a little roughly. That is just does not sit with you well and you need to know if you're being mistreated or if this is just a normative way people act around here. I remember in academia we make people go through this like terrible two day interview process and there's a job talk that's an hour long and in some microcultures you can interrupt every three seconds and that's a good sign. It shows engagement and others. If you interrupt every three seconds, that means you're done, that means they hated the talk, and so we often have these little microcultures at work that we assume are bigger and more industry-wide than they actually are, so people could be assuming that you understand a norm that you don't because it's weirder and more idiosyncratic than they even realize.
Speaker 1: 43:28
And this is even true for jargon at work. People assume everyone in an industry uses jargon. Jargon is team-based. The five people are using the same weird words. So you want to just test your assumptions around that If it is widespread and everyone agrees it's okay behavior and you don't like that, that's your red flag. You are not going to change the whole organization and get them to all behave differently. So those are like the two key pieces of this job is probably not going to work out for you.
Speaker 1: 43:53
Widespread and everyone's okay with it, not okay with it not widespread, then you have hope. Then you can proactively work with your network or your boss or whatever. But almost everyone assumes behavior is both more widespread and more acceptable than probably others realize and they're shocked when they hear about it and a little bit surprised. So test those assumptions before you jump ship and start something else. But it is pretty normal to think you're hired into one culture and show up and get something different. I'll say all that with one major exception being. A huge problem that came up during COVID and still happening is engagement issues. You thought this would be a really engaged workplace where everyone was on board and they were active and they were in, and then you show up and like literally no one is there. That is a really tough kind of cultural level of disengagement or neglect. That is hard to fix and I wouldn't try to take that particular issue on.
Speaker 2: 44:44
What if it's your boss in those first 90 days?
Speaker 1: 44:48
Yeah, you can talk to other team members to see how they're being treated. But my favorite lay of the land networking reality check tactic for bosses is you don't want to go to your boss's boss, you want to go up and over. You want to find people who know your boss, who are at the same level as them, and so they can give you insight into this treatment. No-transcript, I have all these kinds of like little tricksy rules based on marital therapy of how to do it. But before you're even there, you want to know oh, is this what all middle managers do, or is this just mine? Going two levels up is a little bit difficult, but up and over at their level in the network is useful to just get feedback from other bosses who have a similar role as yours.
Speaker 2: 46:00
I really like that because then you're comparing and you have data to compare it against, and it isn't just the assumption that your boss is the problem, so to speak. Not saying their behavior is great if it's common either.
Speaker 1: 46:13
But yeah, but you want to know. I think when people are like, how do I know if the jerk problem is too much, I, my first question is how widespread is it? How culturally normative is it? Are they hiding their behavior Cause they know it's bad, which is a good sign for you, because that means this organization doesn't actually like it. It's so scary to deal with, but that's a good sign that it's not just the whole well has been poisoned, it's just this one person. And is it OK to give any kind of feedback to bosses and some organizations? They have a very tight hierarchy and it's completely unacceptable to ever have a real conversation with your boss that is not just about your own career path and your own performance, but about theirs. So you want a place that actually does like bite-sized, normal conversation, organic feedback across all levels.
Speaker 2: 46:59
I know we're talking about like how leaders can manage this one-on-one with folks on their team. But what do they do if they see that the team is developing this culture of jerkery together? What can they do to address it without killing?
Speaker 1: 47:15
morale on the team or trust within the team. I think you know I teach this little program called the tricky situations, and it's just a bunch of these workplace dynamics and one of them is I actually give people an example of a situation like this where you think you know who the jerk is. Bob is constantly taking on the work of senior people. It seems like there's a free rider problem at work. Why is Bob doing everyone's work, even though he's the most junior person? How do you deal with this potential free ride problem? And half the people will come to me and say, oh, clearly these senior people are taking advantage of Bob and they're offloading work. And the other half will say, oh, I've had a lot of Bobs before. These are these go-getter junior people who steal the work of senior people in an effort to climb up, and they do this in a systematic way. And so we have our lay theories of who the actual jerk is in the situation. But we should probably test that out a little bit.
Speaker 1: 48:10
I don't love the idea of bringing people in one by one and interrogating them and asking them what's going on. I actually more like to keep track of the structure of things who's doing work and when Was this work you were assigned to do or not? Let's talk about the feedback interactions you're having and focus on the little behaviors and work together with everyone as a group. One-on-one meetings end up with conspiratorial thinking often, and sometimes you eventually have to get to that, especially if HR is involved. But you want to hear. You want your whole team to hear one message from you at the same time and not assuming that the jerk is the high status person or the low status person or you even know what's going on. So I'd say, like a lot of information gathering and put your stereotypes aside of what you think is happening before you do. But I do think that teams that there's a lot of structures and systems that we can put in place to prevent jerks and not allowing things like informal networking behind the scenes to pull levers of power good old boys club networking, things like that that used to work to get people's way and so far as we continue to reinforce that and we don't have real procedural justice around rules and decision making, I think we're in trouble.
Speaker 1: 49:15
And I'd also say for bosses and leaders, if you want to make a jerk free place and you want to prevent Machiavellianism and things like that on your teams. You need to lay out super clearly what the structure is for determining raises and promotions at your organization, down to things like certain bosses don't have the status and power to do it until they've been here for five years Really clear. And then I'd say the other thing is we need more failure pipeline data so that when we aren't promoted or when we're not succeeding, we're not bitter about it. We don't start to engage in kiss up, take down behavior to get ahead. We understand that it takes five times to get this promotion and we're only on time three or we know who our social comparison others are.
Speaker 1: 49:54
So there's procedural justice around decisions that don't often favor us, because what happens when people aren't getting ahead is that's when they turn to this jerk behavior to try to do whatever it takes. And transparency, I think, can move mountains with just explaining to people, even if they don't like the rules. If they understand them, they're less likely to turn to jerk behavior to get ahead, and that's usually where we see it actually to get their way to get ahead, to pull levers of power. That's where most people turn into jerks at work.
Speaker 2: 50:20
We can see that Francesca and I talk often about the power of transparency in the workplace, because you're removing the confusion for folks immediately and they don't have to fill in the blanks and suddenly they're in survival mode every single day because they don't know what the story is or they don't have clarity on the situation. So now it's just an unsafe environment. Do you think organizations are doing enough to address jerks at work?
Speaker 1: 50:45
No, they wait till the problem crops up and then they play whack-a-mole. There's not a lot of prevention. Think about this through the lens of healthcare. Right, we wait for the heart attack to happen and then it's time to lose weight. There's not a lot of prevention and early detection and conversations to see the early red flags, to see their warning signs, and I think that's just because most of us don't know, and often the early red flags are not what ends up being the problem later. Those early signs are not often perfectly aligned with what ends up getting you reported to HR. Anxiety and stress and feeling overwhelmed is often an early red flag of micromanagement. But that could be anything. So I don't think so. I think people talk about it a lot, but they don't do a lot to actually address the issue. One of the dark reasons why is because a lot of these jerks are high performers.
Speaker 3: 51:32
At the end of the day.
Speaker 1: 51:33
We are very much yoked to performance metrics and that if you have a board, they care about that. If you're publicly traded, that's what matters, Not nice people, not so-called soft skills. And so there's good reason for people to just say I don't care about all this stuff. I have to answer the board and if our numbers stay low, I don't care. That we have jerks, we can't afford this. Bring in the Machiavellian people who will bring our numbers back up. Sorry, that was a little bit dark.
Speaker 2: 52:00
We've seen it.
Speaker 3: 52:05
Yeah, I know, there's the whole Gary Veer chat. If your best-selling salesperson is a total asshole, go in and fire him tomorrow. No one's doing that, and you can absolutely do the long-term analysis of how much that is costing you by having someone be a jerk right Turnover and we know all the stats. But that's a long-term play and we live a quarter mile at a time in corporate America. Okay, all right, tessa, we do this with all our guests. It's called Rapid Round. They're quick, short answers. They're meant to be fun. Are you ready to play Tessa? Sure, okay, six questions, so no pressure. In your opinion, who's the biggest jerk of all time?
Speaker 1: 52:52
Donald Trump, is that basic?
Speaker 3: 52:56
Depends on who you talk to that guy. Oh, that guy.
Speaker 1: 53:02
Yeah, that guy. There's no redeeming qualities, there's just not.
Speaker 3: 53:07
I can't, I can't, I can't, can't, I can't, I can't believe I know, okay, yeah we're here again. We're here here we are here, we are, here, we are, and this is why I'm looking for eu citizenship. So, looking at property in italy, looking at property in spain, just in case shit hits the fan, there you go all right, I right, I have a Canadian husband.
Speaker 1: 53:27
I'm good, I'm covered.
Speaker 3: 53:30
Nice, excellent move, excellent. Toronto's looking really good these days. That's so funny.
Speaker 1: 53:38
What's the fastest way to identify a jerk in the workplace Ask around, just ask around. Don't trust your instincts. Gather data.
Speaker 3: 53:46
What's the best one-liner response to a jerk's rude comment?
Speaker 1: 53:50
When someone's rude to you and I wish I could go back and do this the last time someone did something awful to me that I just met I would say how many other people have you said that to?
Speaker 3: 53:59
Oh, I love that.
Speaker 1: 54:04
That's great. It's a good zinger and it really gives you the power back and makes it look like you're just judging them for the behavior. But you're not internalizing it. Oh, that is the shit.
Speaker 3: 54:16
How many people have you said that? To Just give me goosebumps. I'm like, oh, that's good.
Speaker 1: 54:19
That's very good I love that. I love that For more mean girl advice, come to me yeah.
Speaker 3: 54:26
So awesome. What's the best way to get subtle revenge on a workplace jerk without getting caught?
Speaker 2: 54:31
Does that just make you the jerk?
Speaker 1: 54:33
Yeah, this is an easy one, guys. You make friends with building maintenance and you either make sure their trash never gets taken out again or you make their office incredibly hot or incredibly cold. Attack the creature comforts. Those are actually what stresses us out the most at work, and the best way to get someone to quit a job is to move their office somewhere uncomfortable or take away their parking spot. Whoa, I know how to get people to retire. That won't retire. It's parking spot and inconvenience office and a faraway bathroom that's in a weird spot or an office next to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: 55:10
Either too close or too far.
Speaker 3: 55:14
It's so simple and so brilliant. Yeah, what's your biggest pet peeve when it comes to workplace behavior? What's the one thing you're just like? Come on.
Speaker 1: 55:22
Trash talking on social media Slack or email, but will hide from you in person. I hate it when people do that. If you're gonna do it, just own it. Just do it to my face it takes a special kind of spinelessness to do that read about me and then, yeah, not, but work right next to me as you're tweeting about me I know a place that will uh mail that person poo.
Speaker 3: 55:47
I will send you that address. Just trope load if you need that. Okay, if you could give just one piece of advice to someone dealing with a difficult coworker, what would it be?
Speaker 1: 55:57
You are not alone. You're probably the 500th victim of this particular person, so don't feel like you're being isolated. Most jerks actually isolate people and make them feel very alone and that there's something wrong with them. You're not. You are probably the 500th person on the receiving end of this jerk. The best thing you can do is ask around and figure out how many. But I think that sort of feeling stupid and alone is the shame that comes along with being victimized by jerks. That we often don't talk about, especially if you're new at work and you feel like you're being bullied.
Speaker 1: 56:29
It's like back in school. Why am I being bullied? It's not about you, it's about them.
Speaker 3: 56:34
Yeah, it's nice to frame it that way, because you can honestly almost get a little bit more objective about the situation and what you can do to get yourself into a healthier place, if you know that's what this person is like and it's not about you place. If you know that's what this person is like and it's not about you. It's been so lovely to have you here today. Thank you so much for joining us. Of course, this is so fun you guys are awesome.
Speaker 1: 57:00
I love the vibe of this. I feel like I need a drink of prosecco or something in my weird cubicle right now.
Speaker 2: 57:06
Delicious. Next time, next time, come back.
Speaker 3: 57:14
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 friend@yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and, if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends and checkout yourworkfriends.com.
Speaker 2: 57:29
We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends.
The Workplace Psychological Safety Act
Micromanagement. Gaslighting. Constant chaos. Abusive work environments aren’t always loud—but they’re always harmful. In this episode, we’re breaking down what workplace abuse really looks like (hint: it’s not just yelling) and how to name it, navigate it, and end it. Because everyone deserves to work where safety, respect, and sanity aren’t negotiable.
In the US, do you have a right to a safe, psychologically safe workplace?
Because, right now, there is no legislation protecting employees from toxic work environments. None.
Join us for an eye-opening discussion with Deb Falzoi and Vicki Courtemanche, founders of the End Workplace Abuse initiative.
Your Work Friends Podcast: The Workplace Psychological Safety Act with Vicki Courtemanche and Deb Falzoi
Micromanagement. Gaslighting. Constant chaos. Abusive work environments aren’t always loud—but they’re always harmful. In this episode, we’re breaking down what workplace abuse really looks like (hint: it’s not just yelling) and how to name it, navigate it, and end it. Because everyone deserves to work where safety, respect, and sanity aren’t negotiable.
In the US, do you have a right to a safe, psychologically safe workplace?
Because, right now, there is no legislation protecting employees from toxic work environments. None.
Join us for an eye-opening discussion with Deb Falzoi and Vicki Courtemanche, founders of the End Workplace Abuse initiative.
Speaker 1: 0:00
The basic idea behind it is that we don't have protections from psychological abuse at work. If this bill passes into law, people will be able to sue their employers and or their individual perpetrators, Because right now, people who suffer from mistreatment at work will go to an employment lawyer and the employment lawyer will simply say I'm sorry this is happening to you, but there's nothing under the law that will protect you in this.
Speaker 2: 0:41
What's going on Mel?
Speaker 3: 0:43
Not much. I went to a fun little estate sale this past weekend and I got like a 1950s black leather clutch that is awesome for $5. So you know win-win. That was good.
Speaker 2: 1:00
Nice. I love estate sales. I love that kind of find right, yeah, yeah, especially all the vintage stuff. It was so well-made, a lot of it.
Speaker 3: 1:07
This thing is solid. I'm like oh, I can throw out my target bag.
Speaker 2: 1:12
That thing's going to last you a lifetime, you know.
Speaker 3: 1:15
Truly, just get a little conditioner on there, it's all good, it's all good.
Speaker 2: 1:19
How about you? Well, enzo got walkie talkies. Yeah, this morning I was washing my face in my bathroom. He's in the living room, which is a couple rooms away, and all of a sudden I hear him having a conversation with somebody else who's not in the house. There's no one else, oh, and so, yeah, learned that his walkie-talkies can pick up other conversations and he can talk to people, so we are now getting rid of said walkie-talkies. That is freaky. I I don't like that at all.
Speaker 3: 1:44
You know it's like some, like trucker named Jim on his CB. What's this?
Speaker 2: 1:50
And I was like what that's us yeah?
Speaker 3: 1:55
Oh God. Anyway, walkie talkies are the best, though.
Speaker 2: 1:58
Well, we had a really rad conversation with two women that are doing some pretty powerful work.
Speaker 3: 2:04
a really rad conversation with two women that are doing some pretty powerful work, absolutely. We met with Deb Falzoi and Vicky Courtemanche, who are two fearless women leading the End Workplace Abuse Initiative across the US, and they are working to introduce the Workplace Psychological Safety Act in 20 states by 2025. And they recently presented this in Massachusetts and Rhode Islands. They're still working to get them passed in those states and they have moved on to several other states as well, so there's a lot in the works here. Ultimately, bottom line is they're looking to establish psychologically safe workplaces and getting this into legislation so that employees have rights to go after employers who don't establish psychologically safe workplaces.
Speaker 2: 2:52
Yeah, I think the big thing here is that legal recourse if psychological abuse is happening and we know this happens. We know things like bullying and mobbing and systemic sabotage happen all the time and right now, for the most part, employees do not have legal recourse if that happens.
Speaker 3: 3:12
No, they don't. And I think you and I spoke about this and I thought you brought up an excellent point, Francesca where this is the new sexual harassment effort. Right, because, as you mentioned, 20 years ago, someone could have said you have a nice ass in the workplace and if you complained, what would the response usually be? Oh, get a sense of humor. And that quickly went away with sexual harassment protections. This just takes our protections to the next level, where you can no longer just abuse people in the workplace and get away with it. There's actual recourse here for the employee and man do? They have a lot of great resources on their website for folks. Yeah, if you're an individual or a team leader or a leader of an organization, we highly recommend you check out their site. We're gonna link to everything in the show notes. They have a ton of resources out there. They're also extremely accessible, so you can email them and reach out to them for consultation. And with that, here is how to end. Well, friends, we're super excited to uh meet today with the co-founders and representatives for end workplace abuse. Uh, and that's deborah falzoy and vicky Kordamanch.
Speaker 3: 4:44
Debra started Dignity Together and she was really focused on helping workers who feel stuck in toxic work cultures and those who are healing from toxic work cultures, and really the goal is to help people take back their life, take back their power. Debra also has a podcast called Screw the Hierarchy and I did listen to a few episodes which I loved, and it highlights personal stories and the impacts of abuse in the workplace. Deb and Vicki co-founded the End Workplace Abuse Organization and they co-authored the Workplace Psychological Safety Act. End Workplace Abuse is an organization leading really a collective movement which is advocating for psychological safety at work. They are citizen lobbyists for protective legislation and policies. They're helping to build leaders who campaign for abuse-free workplaces and they offer coaching and playbooks to do this, which we love, and they're here to collaborate with organizations to help advance workers' rights. So welcome Debra and Vicki. How are you both doing today?
Speaker 1: 5:52
Good Thanks so much for having us.
Speaker 3: 5:55
Yes, thank you Absolutely. Thanks for being here. Tell us a little bit how did end workplace abuse begin?
Speaker 1: 6:04
We both have lived experience with workplace abuse. We've worked on other legislative campaigns and we really wanted to put forth the strongest piece of legislation we could, while also walking the talk around how we organize in terms of creating a really collaborative environment, building as many leaders as we can in this movement, to create a national movement, because there are so many people affected by this who wanted to do something about it, and so we started. We got busy writing the Workplace Psychological Safety Act set up a lot of foundational things like the website. Psychological Safety Act set up a lot of foundational things like the website, talking points, documents, policies, norms to make sure our own culture is healthy and safe for people.
Speaker 4: 6:54
I'll just go a little bit before that, because we both have lived experience around this and she had been bullied in the workplace 10 years before me. I saw her postings on social media and she was actually the first other person that I met who had experienced workplace abuse and I was very sick when I came out. I had a lot of health issues and I wasn't really able to do much of anything. But the work that she was doing really gave me a lot of hope and it was probably about four or five months deep that we finally did meet up in person and as I continued to get better, started doing little things that she would ask and she's always good about that, always making room for everybody to step in and have a voice in this or help in it we kept getting like deeper and deeper, help in it.
Speaker 3: 7:42
We kept getting like deeper and deeper and, as Deb eloquently already said, we found ourselves in this space that we could do it differently than what we saw out there. I love it. It starts with one step right. Coming together and collaboratively is a really powerful story. Tell us more about the Workplace Psychological Safety Act. What is the? I know there's a. The bill is a lot of language, but what is the if you had to explain it to someone like they're five? What does it encompass?
Speaker 1: 8:11
The basic idea behind it is that we don't have protections from psychological abuse at work, so at a baseline it gives people legal recourse for what we call a toxic work environment that a reasonable person would deem toxic. Right now, the major source of protections that people have are anti-discrimination law and, looking at the history of that law, the courts really moved from looking at impact to looking at intent years later and it really watered down the strength of that law so that if you feel like you're the subject of racist or sexist ageist, ableist, any type of behavior that's protected under that law, then you still have to prove the intent of the perpetrator, and that sets a really high bar In looking at the way mistreatment works at work. We wanted to focus on the behaviors that happen and enough of a baseline rather than looking at someone's having a bad day at the office. Enough of a baseline to deem it a toxic work environment by a reasonable person, and that would actually give more protections to for everyone, but especially for women and people of color, who are disproportionately harmed by mistreatment at work.
Speaker 1: 9:42
If this law passes, or this bill passes into law, people will be able to sue their employers and or their individual perpetrators, because right now, people who suffer from mistreatment at work will go to an employment lawyer and the employment lawyer will simply say I'm sorry, this is happening to you, but there's nothing under the law that will protect you in this.
Speaker 1: 10:03
There's nothing to sue against. So we want to put that in place because it is such a prevalent tool that employers use against employees, often for speaking up about this behavior, and that's a huge piece that Vicky brought into. It is what's not just this workplace bullying phenomenon. It's that the employers at their level are ignoring these situations or retaliating against people because they want to avoid liability. So that's this and that's really the level where a lot of people feel betrayed by. We really focused, honed in on that aspect of it, because there's nobody holding the employers accountable for holding the bullies accountable. That's a major piece of the playbook that we thought was missing from not just other pieces of legislation, but from the messaging that really resonates with people to build this movement.
Speaker 2: 11:03
We do have anti-discrimination, and then there's this act as well. Can you give an example of where the laws that are in place now aren't cutting it for people that are bullying? For example, if someone's getting bullied by their manager, is that not covered by anti-discrimination right now?
Speaker 1: 11:23
It isn't, unless the person can prove that the reason for their mistreatment is because they're a member of a protected class, because they're of a certain race or because they're a woman or that sort of thing. The best example I can really give is if a bully is bullying everyone equally, then when everyone's suffering from harm, then there's really distinguished about even somebody in a protected class, about the way that they're being mistreated. I've heard people say, if you're like an equal opportunity jerk, like there's no legal recourse for that because the target's not being singled out because of their membership in a protected class.
Speaker 2: 12:07
It's interesting because we see this a lot, especially sometimes at the executive level. People are a equal opportunity jerk and we get the well, that's just working with executives. That's just what this is. This is the type of behavior that they have and it's like no, this is actually not healthy at all and not constructive at all, and right now, there's no legal recourse for that.
Speaker 4: 12:28
Yeah, because the norm, like you said, it's what people have just accepted nowadays that that's how people are going to act at that level.
Speaker 1: 12:36
Yeah, and we really want to implicate. You know people go to HR to report these situations often, but HR also often gets bullied because by the people they're reporting to. So this is really often a directive from the very top down, usually a culture issue, that there is that discriminatory impact on people who aren't in power typically. Basically.
Speaker 4: 13:01
I'd just like to add to we were very intentional when we used the terminology psychological safety, because we were trying to go at it a different way, because passing the law is still not even our greatest obstacle. Raising public awareness is still our greatest obstacle. So when you say workplace bullying, no one knows what you mean by that. They don't know what you really mean by that. They conjure up whatever they want in their mind from their own experience, but they don't understand really that it's a process of dehumanization and it's a process of traumatization. So we were very intentional because, as I said, we have the two bars. We're trying to pass law, but we're also trying to raise public awareness and that still is almost in the forefront. But when we use the term psychological abuse and psychological safety, that has resonated with people. Now everyone knows what we're talking about. Everyone understands what that is. It's taken off.
Speaker 3: 14:03
That's a great segue into my next question. Vicki, on the website I noticed you talk about an abuser playbook. What does it look like?
Speaker 1: 14:13
I think too, in terms of the playbook, what we're seeing is a lot of high performers affected by this. They pose a threat to someone in power who wants to reinforce their own power and control. Performer is weakened is very typical tactics for abuse, like false accusations, sabotage, verbal abuse. We see outright lies in performance reviews. We see withholding information from people, overloading unreasonably heavy workloads all sorts of different tactics that are designed by people in power because that power differential is so important to weaken their target, to dim their flame, basically. And so when the person starts to catch on and starts to feel devalued, a lot of times they internalize what's happening to them and so they end up subscribing to the narrative until they really catch on that these things are happening. They start to notice that they're feeling so devalued and demeaned all the time, and then when they finally go to report it to a higher up or HR, depending on who the perpetrator is if they go to their own boss or if the perpetrator is their boss that's when that sort of second level of betrayal can kick in and they realize the process just gets dragged out. You think that the company is going to care that there's some form of mistreatment happening and that it's in the way of their bottom line. But really oftentimes we see investigations never happening or they're inadequate investigations and then people try legal recourse and realize that the whole society isn't on their side because there's no law against this behavior which basically tells them the harm done to them is okay. It just adds layer upon layer of betrayal. It can be really hard. A lot of these ways of harming people can be done behind closed doors. It can be done through gossip and sabotage that people don't have any ideas happening until months, weeks or months later. So it can be really hard to see.
Speaker 1: 16:35
A lot of times, just sensing that the perpetrator has these power and control issues and that they're trying to reinforce that at every turn, instead of what I think of as a healthy relationship with a boss is like trying to flatten that hierarchy as much as possible and being a support and trying to figure out what their subordinates need.
Speaker 1: 17:03
There is that heavy layer of power and control with this. So I think when people start to see that for what it is and realize I know in my situation, when I saw that happening, my response was internalizing it and thinking well, I have to try harder then. And that really was the opposite of what going to help me, because that threatened the bully more. The abuse ramped up and had I been able to catch it more quickly, I think I would have been able to detach from it more easily and just say, okay, may have still gone to HR, may have still gone to the head doing the right thing, but the typical response is avoiding liability. That education piece is huge as to what is likely to happen, given the power structures and the system that the people in power have designed to maintain their own power.
Speaker 3: 18:35
So how can employees, or even employers, recognize that abuse is happening in the workplace? What do they need to look out for?
Speaker 1: 18:43
So when we just define even just basic psychological abuse, we're talking about a violation of an employee's inherent basic right to dignity. So this is severe or pervasive infliction of toxic or unethical words and or actions, whether they're intentional or unintentional, direct or indirect. These can also be omissions. They're directed in terms of creating the toxic work environment Bullying we call it employee to employee interpersonal abuse.
Speaker 4: 19:15
As Deb said, that was a big part of what we went after in the playbook and in the legislation was holding the employer accountable, and we use the word mobbing and what we mean by that is organizational bullying, so it's more the employer, it's representative employees to the employee. I've since learned, thanks to Jen Fraser who wrote the Bully Brain, another word and I use it more often now, and it's institutional complicity. That's good. Now that is clearer than mobbing. So we're learning as we go and I'm trying to use that terminology.
Speaker 1: 19:57
And then we see sabotage as a type of bullying. There's all sorts of different ways to even define bullying, but also to categorize types of bullying. But sabotage we've bucketed into things that are types of exclusion, so things like excluded from meetings and conversations that you should be involved with. This could be timely access to resources, information that you need to do your job, assignment of work. We've seen situations where people are not given information that they need to do work they've been assigned to, and then they get reprimanded for not completing the work, so they're basically being set up to fail. Unfairness falls into this. We talk about gaslighting, which is where the narrative gets twisted, so you believe you were made to be the problem. I'll call this crazy making too, where this can be micromanaging and inconsistent complying with rules. It could be a demotion or threatening of job loss without any cause. Inaccurate performance reviews that's a big one, especially when new management comes in and they want to hire their own people. They'll just start a paper trail, but it won't be accurate in order to push out the employee. It could be discounting work, taking credit for work, blocking requests for needed training or leave, increasing responsibilities without giving authority to complete the responsibilities, removing responsibilities with no explanation, unreasonably heavy workloads, underwork, consistently to the point where somebody feels useless, so they're not doing what they were promised would be they would be doing in that role. Unrealistic deadlines We've heard a lot of stories about people essentially like being set up to fail where they're given these ridiculously unrealistic deadlines that they can't meet. Favoritism is involved with this, where a lot of people have this separate set of rules because they're not in the in crowd. Vague reviews, accusations without any backup. We've heard of people having their equipment tampered with, their personal belongings tampered with, and then the last part of this is lack of clarity. So it can be really vague directions, deception around work, expectations, deadlines, reprimands without any ways to improve. Again, this isn't a bad day at the office. This is like the norm of how expectations are set and sort of thing. Like vicky said too.
Speaker 1: 22:46
When it comes to the bullying and the mobbing, the, a lot of people talk about mobbing as like group bullying essentially, and that can be part of the playbook too, where it starts with one-on-one person in power, person, a lesser role, and then that person in power creates this false narrative behind the scenes and gets other people to join into that false narrative, then a lot of times people side with that power out of fear of losing their own job.
Speaker 1: 23:19
And then, gradually too, the target can just feel so isolated, have no idea what's going on behind the scenes, but they're characterized in a way that they have no idea about and it's completely opposite of how they feel, believe that they're performing, or at least were performing, and then that's when that mobbing piece, as we're defining it with the institutional complicity it often escalates to that, because people feel trapped. They have no idea what to do, where to go, who will help them. And so when HR is training on anti-discrimination law and encouraging reports of mistreatment, they believe that going to HR will be the solution. But oftentimes HR will just be looking to see if there's any sort of valid complaint, if there's a legal liability, and they'll do some sort of risk assessment and decide should we just push this person out and avoid the liability? How much of a risk does this person pose?
Speaker 2: 24:23
Which is one of the reasons why you need a law like this right, because HR is going to go to the law, they're going to go to A what is legal, and then what's the liability for the organization, which is why you need this as a law, because if it's not, it's very gray. It can be very gray for HR. I have a question, though, about the bobbing piece, which is does it have to be, or even the bullying, or even the sabotage, does it have to be somebody in power?
Speaker 1: 24:50
Because I've seen this peer to peer, I've seen this as team members doing it to their leader. It can be lateral bullying and it can be upward bullying too. I think the most common is that downward bullying, but it can happen from any direction. I've heard of situations in all of those ways and to your point earlier too, I was going to say we have heard HR people say we need a tool, a law, to be able to hold these bullies accountable. So I think it will benefit HR to have this tool to actually do something about the bullying.
Speaker 4: 25:33
Their profession has really been called out this phenomenon, because the statistics say that at least 71% of our businesses don't do the right thing when this happens. So there's a lot of people out there who are either uncomfortable doing what they're told to do or there's lots of people out there who have left HR because they won't do that. It's sad because they're the flying monkeys of this. They're the ones who come out and make it happen. We pull back the layer even further than HR. We point to the legal department, whoever that legal head is. They are and this is funny, francesca, because you're saying they want a law, but really what they're doing is skirting the law by doing this. I've talked about this even if this law is passed, it's going to be like whack-a-mole with them, like they're going to pop up and try to do something else, because that's the way the legal departments function. Culture and operationalize HR will need to fundamentally shift.
Speaker 2: 26:45
There's so much culture change that will need to happen in organizations for organizations to be healthy enough for not having this happen. And I think back to like when anti-sexual harassment rolled out. I mean, sitting in our seats right now. No way in hell would you ever think that telling your administrative assistant that they have a nice ass is okay. That was okay 20 years ago, quite honestly. And now it's not. And we're still in this realm right now with bullying, with sabotage, with mobbingbing, where this stuff is still culturally, in a lot of places, tolerated. Okay, organizations are complicit.
Speaker 1: 27:25
I'm excited by this and then I also think it is a massive sea change, very similar to what sexual harassment was yeah, in fact, we try to model the bill on sexual harassment law, saying that like it's the work environment, like that hostile they're. They call it a hostile work environment, we're calling it toxic. It's the baseline and people don't need to prove psychological injury. But yeah, it is. It is going to be gradually this huge shift for employers and their work cultures.
Speaker 2: 27:59
I'm curious about with what you both are working on. Obviously you've done a tremendous amount to push this forward. What are some of the priority hot button issues that you're working on within the next three months? What's hot for you right now?
Speaker 1: 28:16
I mean, one of the biggest things is a Rhode Island the bill in Rhode Island. So we have two active bills, one in Massachusetts and one in Rhode Island, and we have just a couple more months in the session in Rhode Island. It just passed the Senate Labor Committee, it's on to a vote in the Senate floor, it'll move to the House Labor Committee and we're mobilizing people getting the message out there to take action, to write the house labor committee. So that's our biggest priority. We're still in the early days of even having formed our national teams and our teams of bill directors. We have about 20 new states that are working on getting legislation introduced in 2025. We're going to do another training to get more people on board. It's super energizing. Just the educational piece alone of this is huge and just the creativity coming out, the connections and coalition building people are doing.
Speaker 4: 29:19
If this passes in Rhode Island, this would be our first win of a law. We just have to have that under our belt. I can't tell you how many other legislators we've watched hearings around the country, and the first thing that the chairs ask is has this passed anyplace else? So we can't wait to say yes.
Speaker 1: 30:00
I want to ask, not if but when this gets passed in Rhode Island and when momentum picks up, what will employees be able to do? The big thing is to sue their employer for mistreatment that meets that baseline standard. Right now they don't have the ability to do that. It's not going to be this wave of the magic wand, like we've seen. Obviously, sexual harassment is still really prevalent, despite there being a lot against it. But the other piece is this is really about prevention. So the bill actually has a lot of language around what the employer can do to minimize their own liability from training and having a policy, which we know doesn't work in and of itself, but that as a start, in terms of trying to prevent this behavior, to having thorough investigations and then, when they do find that there was bullying happening, coaching, counseling, discipline. We want there to be an adequate addressing of this issue from start to finish, from educating and monitoring the work environment to actually holding bullies accountable.
Speaker 3: 31:04
You talk a lot about what organizations can do in terms of prevention, but what can team leaders do today? What can just teammates do today to help with that prevention in the workplace or be advocates for others if they're not the victim of it, but see it happening? What can they be doing?
Speaker 1: 31:24
It's a really tough situation for bystanders to be in because pretty much stuck between siding with the abuser and siding with the target, and if that abuser is their boss, then putting themselves in a situation to have to be the next target. Basically, we encourage people to speak out, but we know that there's risk, a lot of risk, in doing that. So I think even just telling the target, even private I saw this happen to you. I like to validate it for them and knowledge that they were harmed and that they're a human being and harm wasn't okay To just be there for set goals, help people understand that the vision and mission and the goals of their unit, even if there's a lot of toxic behavior coming down from the top.
Speaker 1: 32:33
What's a tough position for a manager to be in dealing with that and trying to change the culture of their own department. But I think that's the power that they have. How do you treat people as workers, as though they're adults and that they can control their jobs and that they have social support? And I think everything that we're supporting, including the Workplace Psychological Safety Act, just all goes back to that, in that if managers treat their subordinates like people, then not only will they be healthier, but their bottom lines will actually increase. I think the bottom line is just bringing the humanity back to the workplace, or to the workplace in the first place.
Speaker 3: 33:21
This has been just really wonderful and appreciate all of the tips and insights.
Speaker 4: 33:27
I just want to say thank you for this space because this is raising public awareness. So every time that this gets put out there on a podcast, or someone reposts the social media or wants to submit written testimony, it all counts.
Speaker 1: 33:44
One of the biggest parts of this work is that we're giving people hope who are otherwise feeling so trapped in what they're experiencing. It's important for people to know there is hope out there. We're both living proof that there is happiness on the other side of all of this and, with support and taking their own voices back, they can get there too, and collectively, no matter what happens. If we're speaking out together, then we're taking a stand for ourselves, and I think that's huge.
Speaker 3: 34:18
Love it Well. Thank you both so much for being here with us today. Appreciate you, Thank you.
Speaker 2: 34:23
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 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.
Play at Work
At work, play means profit…
Ping-pong tables aren’t the point. Real play drives trust, energy, and bold thinking—and the companies that embrace it are winning big. Play isn’t a perk, it’s a strategy. In a world obsessed with productivity, could play be your team's secret weapon?
Brandon Wetzstein has helped transform teams at major organizations by tapping into the power of strategic play. In this episode, he breaks down why traditional "serious" approaches often lead to mediocre solutions, and how structured play can break through conventional thinking to unlock breakthrough ideas.
Your Work Friends Podcast: Play at Work with Brandon Wetzstein
At work, play means profit…
Ping-pong tables aren’t the point. Real play drives trust, energy, and bold thinking—and the companies that embrace it are winning big. Play isn’t a perk, it’s a strategy. In a world obsessed with productivity, could play be your team's secret weapon?
Brandon Wetzstein has helped transform teams at major organizations by tapping into the power of strategic play. In this episode, he breaks down why traditional "serious" approaches often lead to mediocre solutions, and how structured play can break through conventional thinking to unlock breakthrough ideas.
Speaker 1: 0:00
And a lot of times we need more ideas to come up with better. If you ask people for ideas, the first like one to seven or eight ideas. Everyone just comes up with the same things. They're very similar because we have a very systematic mind. For the most part, it's when you start getting to idea nine, 10, 11, 12, 13. And yeah, sometimes we need to get a little bit weird to come up with that thing. That is the brilliant idea. And the more ideas, the more creativity we can have, the more imagination, the more we can get out of our own way.
Speaker 2: 0:36
What's going on, mel? Not much is going on. It's finally chilly here. Last week we had some 80-degree weather on November 1st, which was a little strange, but we went down to the beach to enjoy it, which was really nice. How about you? Very?
Speaker 3: 0:55
nice, very nice. I have a bone to pick with every single person that I grew up with. Tell me more, okay. So we're going back and re-watching these kid movies, mainly because I have a seven-year-old, and one of the movies we watched that I just saw for the first time was Karate Kid.
Speaker 2: 1:12
I can't get over that. You're just seeing Karate Kid. First of all, Listen. When I meet your parents, I need to ask why.
Speaker 3: 1:19
Because my dad felt that the Betamax was superior technology to the VHS and there was like one rental store that actually had Betamax no bloodluster for you. It was like we finally got it a VHS when it was too late.
Speaker 2: 1:34
DVDs are coming out, but you finally got the VHS.
Speaker 3: 1:37
Yes, 100% the switch. There was like three months. Like I just saw Goonies, I just saw most of the Star.
Speaker 2: 1:43
Wars. I mean, those are pretty big ones to miss in your childhood.
Speaker 3: 1:46
Going through high school and college with everybody quoting these movies etc. And the quotes from Karate Kid were always like wax on, wax off. Yeah, why is it that no one ever talked about the ending of that movie? Because, I swear to God, you go through two hours and then all of a sudden the movie just freaking ends. That is the most abrupt ending I've ever had in my life. You're like wait, what happened? What if that bit? I would like to know why no one talked about the dumb ending of that movie.
Speaker 2: 2:15
It's the 80s. Tell you, watching 80s movies is so funny.
Speaker 3: 2:19
The choices All right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: 2:22
We had the pleasure of sitting down with Brandon Wettstein from AnyCreate. He's just so rad. He's talking to us about play in the workplace and you and I have talked about the importance of play at work, and we're not talking about forced team building events here at all. One of the things that really stands out to me is how the play part of being at work, having fun with what you do has been beaten out of org cultures. It seems we no longer relax and get to this point where you can shut off the noise and really connect as a team and get together and just think about what's possible. But there's so many stats that show how important play is for the success of teams and for organizations. It nurtures things like critical thinking, creativity, it powers innovation, it helps really make teams feel connected. Breakdown silos increases collaboration, communication. The list goes on and on. What do you think? The thing that I loved?
Speaker 3: 3:26
about our conversation with Brandon is, when you think about play at work, automatically a lot of people think ping pong tables, play-doh, etc. But there are many ways that we can play at work. For instance, organizing work, that could be an aspect of play. If you really get into that, like if you really love to plan events or organize events, that can be an aspect of play. And really understanding what play is to you is critical. So I loved this conversation because, to your point, I think we've lost play and we can get it back. You can choose to get it back and reincorporate it into your work, even if it's not coming from your organization 100%.
Speaker 2: 4:05
This is a goodie. We leave you guys with some really good pointers on how to start thinking about play within the org, especially if you're a leader, how to start nurturing that with your own teams and the work that you do. So with that, here's Brandon. All right, brandon, could you tell us about your journey and what inspired you to start in EatCreate?
Speaker 1: 4:38
Oh yes, it's one of those things where whenever you look backwards, it all makes sense Going forward. You're like what, how did this happen? I started my career in retail, working in stores selling electronics, actually when I was in college. When I date myself here, hgtv first came out as a giant, huge TVs and that led me moving into corporate environments, again in a very retail. Most of my career was in retail, both store side and corporate.
Speaker 1: 5:03
And then there was there's like that epiphany moment that happens and for me it was running a design thinking workshop within the operations group at Target, which is one of the companies that, and that moment crystallized my purpose. And what happened in that moment is there was a person who was on my team, a person who was a little bit shy, and this person came a lot in this design thinking workshop right. Their ideas came up. It's so much information, so much energy and I always hold that moment really close to my heart because I remember how great it felt to give that person an avenue, an arena to to share, whereas in the normal space of, especially in operations, teams like I was always in operations and operators make the fun zone right.
Speaker 1: 5:47
Yeah, it's the black and white right. There's no gray, and so SOP land yeah.
Speaker 1: 5:56
This was the challenging part is how do you get creative and innovative and have some fun, have some joy and get people to come up with some crazy ideas in operations when that's not like the way that they normally work and I shouldn't say they me too, that was an operator as well, and so I just I love that moment and that was really a crystallizing piece, and so I was introduced to Lego serious play not too far after that moment and my curiosity just got to me on this and I started pulling the thread and reading some books. I never could quite figure out how to do it on my own. I wanted to try it, but I just couldn't. So I finally got certified in 2019 and I fell in love. I was like this is amazing.
Speaker 1: 6:31
This is the secret to getting groups to communicate and understand and listen to each other in a fun and playful way, and so that's why I started at 8Create and again, it's been five years now, which is just amazing to me, and I still love it. Every session I do, every workshop, every team building, bringing these methods to various teams to help them connect, communicate and collaborate differently. It's just, it's so joyful because it's this unexpected. We're going to have fun and we're going to do work like that possible. No, that doesn't make any sense, but it is and it works and it's amazingly impactful and I can't wait to do it with more and more companies hopefully the rest of my days.
Speaker 2: 7:12
Yeah, pretty nice. I didn't even know you could get certified in play. That sounds like a really fun process to go through. How was that? What was that like?
Speaker 1: 7:21
I'm certified it's very specifically in a methodology that's called Lego serious play. I did not make this up. Lego back in the late nineties was really looking at who they were as a company. They stood for creativity and imagination they still do but that's not how they were developing their business internally. We have all this creativity and imagination that we're bringing to the world and to children everywhere, but how do we bring that into our boardroom? How can we bring creativity and imagination into strategy really was the question, and then they spent a few years building this, playing with it, tweaking with it, and then they sold it as a consulting service for better part of a decade. Now, as we know of Lego today, they're not a consulting company. This is not what they do, and they know that too, and they stepped away from it in about 2010. And they did release an open source document that anyone can go read. You can go on Lego's website I believe it's legocom slash serious play. There's all sorts of information on there. However, it's not enough to read and do on your own At least, for me, it wasn't and so part of the people that ran and developed this system at Lego were basically gifted some of the IP and they created more IP around it and they created these certifications.
Speaker 1: 8:29
There's about two or three different groups out there that are very well known for certifications and they all have different strengths and backgrounds histories, but it does help to understand and see how this comes to life from someone who knows what they're doing. And then, once you have that and the idea is it's like drinking from a fire hose Once you get done, you're like, oh my gosh, I could do anything with this. There's so many applications and ways that you can use it and people use it for a lot of different things. I use it for organizations and teams mostly, but there are some people that I was certified with that use it for play therapy. There's people that half the people that were in my certification class worked in schools, various high schools, colleges, trying to get students to think differently and get out of their own way. So it really is a communication methodology that allows you to get out of your own way and bring that creativity and imagination that Lego was striving to bring to really any type of situation.
Speaker 2: 9:18
I love that. I also love that your background is in operations, because when people think of play, they think of only the forced fun, team building activities that happen. We often hear like the I don't want forced fun, but that's not what you're saying, that's not what you're talking about here.
Speaker 1: 9:36
I was introduced to it when I was working at Target, but I know that companies like NASA, the Department of Defense, google, apple there's so many organizations that have used this because it's been scientifically proven. It's not even just the playful aspect of it, but there's so many other psychology like the communication pieces, the mentally offloading information and physical objects. All of these things have different types of benefits. When you combine them, they're just new and creative ways to get people out of their own way.
Speaker 2: 10:04
Yeah, can you explain how Innate Create helps organizations really embrace play and creativity in the workplace?
Speaker 1: 10:12
Absolutely, and so the most important part of at least the workshops and the team building sessions that we do is that it's not like you're going to do this and have fun. It's we're going to create, in essence, a sandbox. We're going to create the environment that allows you to figure out how you want to play in this space, if that makes sense. So with this Lego method, that is our primary methodology. There's a couple of keys to it. One people are building stories out of Lego bricks, and when I say building stories, we're basically using metaphor and generally don't introduce it that way, because a lot of people hold on metaphor. Let's back this up a little bit. No, we're just going to create stories and we start off with a very basic build just to get them back into playing with Legos, Because for a lot of people, they maybe haven't touched Lego in a long time or they put away their kids Legos. It's not necessarily a joyful thing for them at home.
Speaker 2: 11:05
Or they're like. I just stepped on a Lego last night.
Speaker 1: 11:09
I just bombed all out of my house Exactly, but one of the key aspects of this methodology is that the builder can't be wrong and I'm going to say that again because it's so impactful.
Speaker 1: 11:20
The builder can't be wrong. And so, when you think about this, we're not building airplanes, we're not building cars and trucks. We're not building things per se, because there's certain people that I'm sure are much more attuned to building things and coming up with creative Lego ideas. But when you build stories and you can't be wrong suddenly whatever you build is up to you, and so some people build these large, elaborate things. Some people do build cars and ships, and that's fine, but some people build really abstract things that you have no idea what they mean until they tell you. And so it gives this freedom to people to express themselves in whatever way they would like, and some people will just put two pieces together and that will be their answer to a question. And to give you an example of a question we might ask and one of my favorite ones is in our team building sessions. It's just, the main focus is getting people to know each other better. They ask people to build a model that tells a story about who they are outside of work. That's it. That's it. It's that simple and there's no. You can't be wrong and you can choose right. Okay, how do you build a model of oh my gosh, what a huge topic. Do I build my hobbies? Do I build my children, my family, the fact that I have a soup pot and the crock pot, whatever, right, there's no wrong answer. And what you get is this amazing amount of ideas and thoughts, of insights, and people share what they want. And so that's where I think it really is different from most other types of team buildings, because it gives people the freedom to express themselves and share whatever they might want to share.
Speaker 1: 12:46
And it's amazing, the things that come up in these sessions, too. You find out. I did a session in California once where we found out like half the group was growing citrus, like as a whole. You're like, oh, wow, we're all growing citrus, cool, okay. So they created a little group afterwards. Another group I did in DC. We had a group of five or six people that all had adopted a dog in the past like six months, and it was just this weird thing. We're like no one knew this. So it's amazing. There's so much depth and dimensions of who we are outside of work, but we don't necessarily show up and just talk about ourselves. It's not socially acceptable and this just gives us an avenue to share a little bit, but do so in a very psychologically safe way, do so in a very easy way and, again, each person decides how much and what they would like to share.
Speaker 2: 13:30
Yeah, I love that. What's one of the most rewarding projects you've worked on since you've been in this space? Because you came from OBS, so I always think of those being the most skeptical folks coming in on this stuff, right. So is there a skeptic whose mind you changed or someone you were really nervous about? That was really rewarding once you ran this year workshop.
Speaker 1: 13:51
Yeah, one of my favorites is a two and a half or three hour session with the senior leadership team of a very large nonprofit, and we were there to really dig into communication, which is shocking. It's one of the things I get brought in to talk about a lot because communication is one of those interesting things where it's very important to talk about, but it's very sharp right. It has a lot of edges, so you have to watch out how you're going to talk about it, and so I've got 12 participants in this group and it was amazing to watch A the variety. There's a little bit of skepticism in the room. There's a little bit of skepticism in the room. There's a little bit of excitement too, though there always is, because some people like to play with Legos. But then the question when you get that level of seniority is is this fluffy or is this a waste of time? Are we actually going to get something? And I think the reason why I love it so much is A. It was amazingly impactful.
Speaker 1: 14:39
We really looked at the communication journey from a standpoint of what does world-class communication look like in a senior leadership team, and we got to a point where everyone had a chance to express their thoughts and their ideas. Using the Lego models. We looked at the negative side of things. Think of the worst team you've ever worked for. Build a model that shows what horrible communication looks like. Let's take a look at a model of what amazing communication looks like. Let's take a look at what communication looks like from a psychological safety perspective or from a candor perspective. And we started putting a lot of these lenses to it and what ended up happening is, after about two and a half three hours, we were able to really pinpoint about three different, very important point of views on this leadership team, and that were there was a group of people that was extremely frustrated with the level of psychological safety. They wanted to feel like they were able to express their opinions and their thoughts in a safe way. There was another group of people that felt like there was a responsibility in everyone in the group, needed to have a certain level of candor with each other. And then there was another person in the group this was actually the CEO who really did not necessarily disagree with those, but felt like everyone had a responsibility to really put in the legwork and the effort before bringing up ideas, thoughts or opinions.
Speaker 1: 15:56
So you get these three aspects all rotating around one another right. We need to have candor and speak our mind and speak up. We need to be able to feel safe to speak up, but we also need to put in the due diligence If we're going to bring up an opinion or a thought or an idea that we've actually thought about it right, we're not just winging it and firing from the hip. And the thing is, when you look at all three of those, they're all doable. You just have to have these expectations with each other in that reflection point, and so to be able to get to that type of information in two and a half, three hours is amazing, and to do so in such a fun and playful way.
Speaker 1: 16:30
And that was that's why that was such a favorite for me because the play aspect. It really allows people to put aside some of the group dynamics that stops us from communicating effectively. You put eight, 10, 12 people in a room. You're going to have hierarchy differences, you're going to have ego differences, you're going to have extroversion, introversion, all of these things histories, backgrounds, all of this comes into play in every type of meeting and with this play aspect, especially with this Lego serious play method that gets reduced massively, if not even eliminated, because you're so people are so focused on the model that they're building. And how do I create the story around what? My thoughts are? That it allows for a much more open expression in a very safe way, but it also keeps the tangents very much out of the way. It keeps people very focused on the topic at hand. We're not allowing ourselves to go off in one direction or another, so we can get to the topic at hand, really understand where everyone's at.
Speaker 2: 17:28
Yeah, it really cuts through some of the dynamics that might be happening right.
Speaker 2: 17:31
It removes all of the minutiae that shows up in team dynamics and it seems really powerful to come to this joint agreement in just under two hours on how you're going to operate as a team in terms of communication and idea sharing, which is really fantastic.
Speaker 2: 17:47
Francesca and I have facilitated, like you, a ton of learning and sometimes, when you're working with teams, those dynamics especially when you're talking about how are we going to operate, how do we prefer to work Like, how do we come together with different working styles and show up as a team together To your good point some of those dynamics can take the conversation off the rails and you start to go down these routes that are not productive and not getting to know. But what can we do together? So I love the concept of how this offers a level of focus and safety for everyone to share their ideas, and it's pretty impactful to come to a joint leadership agreement on this is how we're going to operate in just share their ideas, and it's pretty impactful to come to a joint leadership agreement on this is how we're going to operate in just under two hours, and everyone feels positive about that outcome because they all contributed in a way that is really beautiful.
Speaker 1: 18:35
It does From a psychological perspective. There's a couple of key things that's really fun to see. So one and this is part of the facilitation as well is when people build their model. So let's say I have my model. Of course I've got a visual of AIDS, I've got a little duck in front of me, but let's say this is my idea of like world-class communication is speaking your mind? I don't know right. I could say that that's what this, uh, sure, we'll go with that. But what happens is, as I'm talking and usually someone does build a duck they build something weird and something it looks like something a five year old might make.
Speaker 1: 19:04
People are generally looking at the model and not the person, and so what happens is that displaces the attention onto whatever the thing is and not directly at you, and so it makes it easier to talk. One because the attention is on the model itself, but also, too, because this idea is out here now, and so now I'm not talking about this thing or this opinion that's in my head, but I'm talking about this weird little toy thing. That's a pile of Legos, which is not threatening, which is easy to, it's playful. Usually there's some fun metaphors going on in there you can see some physicality, no-transcript, say in the middle of sessions wow, I didn't really need to go that deep or I didn't mean to say that much or I didn't mean to go that far, but because it's so safe to talk, right, it's usually not a regretful thing, but it's more of a reflection.
Speaker 1: 20:06
Oh, I can't believe I just said that in this group of people that I never would have said this if we were just having a verbal discussion. But it's really. I think it's empowering too, where people are like oh yeah, you know what? I'm glad I said that right, because it is what people truly think. They put time into building this model and their thoughts and their opinions. And, yeah, they get to take that psychological safety and feel a little bit better about sharing whatever it is they might be doing.
Speaker 3: 20:44
I'm wondering about how play shows up when it's not facilitated. How play shows up potentially at work, or should could show up at work, and just the dailiness of work. Why is play essential for someone at work? And just the dailiness of work. Why is play essential for someone at work in general?
Speaker 1: 21:02
Oh, there's so many. There's so many good answers to this that if you think about play, you go back to childhood. Right, and here's the fun part If you want to research, play and go read books on play, like 90% of the books on play, if not 98%, are all about kids. Because kids, that's what kids do, right, it's natural Watch children. No one needs to be taught how to play. They just go, they do it, they play pretend, they try things out, and so play gives us so many different tools. So one it allows us to try things right. And we think about everything that's been written about embracing failure. Do kids think about failure when they try stuff while playing?
Speaker 1: 21:38
No they just do, and if it doesn't work out, fine, I learned, I go on to the next thing, I go on to the next thing, I go great. I think one is trying things, you're able to try things on, You're able to play, and it gives you a way to experience something in a very low risk type of scenario. No-transcript, little bit goofy, being a little bit silly, allows you to take all of these borders that we have in our mind right, all of these boundaries, all of these walls, all of these rules, and get rid of them and start thinking about things in different ways than you might have done before. One of my favorite exercises is an improv exercise. I do this with my audience. I have people pair up and I use an animal of some kind of. One person gets to be a llama and the other person gets to be a lion. Everyone choose and I'll set a timer for 45 seconds and have one person say lions are great because X and they have to list as many things as they can and they have to say lions are great because every time so. Lions are great because they have big teeth. Lions are great because they have giant veins. Lions are great because they're king of the jungle, and after about 45 seconds, the other person's counting.
Speaker 1: 23:11
We asked the audience how many did you get? Seven, eight, nine, 10, 15, whatever the number is. But then we asked what did people say? And they all said things that were true about lions right, that they are kings of the jungle, that they have, that they eat meat, whatever that might be Like. Did anyone say that lions are great at their taxes? Did anyone say that lions are great because they wear polka dots on Halloween? Did anyone say that lions are great because they make an amazing vegetarian chili?
Speaker 1: 23:33
And everyone's, yeah, they start laughing. You're like what, wait a minute, hold on. They're like there's no rules to this, you can make up whatever you want. And so then we flip it around and we have the llamas go and we do the same exact thing, but this time take off those limitations that you put on yourself. Right, with this rule that it has to actually be true about lions, and then we watch everyone do 1.5 to 2. Times more ideas. Right, instead of going, I'm just coming out with as many ideas as possible. I'm really trying to think of what is actually true, about why it's, and so that is just an interesting framework to think of.
Speaker 1: 24:04
Okay, so now, when we're trying to be creative or innovative at work, what type of rules are we putting in our own way? And this is where that playful mindset right. How do we use play to have more fun, come up with better ideas? And a lot of times we need more ideas to come up with better. If you ask people for ideas, the first like one to seven or eight ideas. Everyone just comes up with the same things. They're very similar because we have a very systematic mind Not 100%, but for the most part it's when you start getting to idea nine, 10, 11, 12, 13. And yeah, sometimes we need to get a little bit weird to come up with that thing. That is the brilliant idea. And the more ideas, the more creativity we can have, the more imagination, the more we can get out of our own way.
Speaker 3: 24:46
You said the mindset of play. So many times when I think about mindsets it comes down to a trigger question you can ask yourself so you get into the mindset? Is there a question you can ask yourself to say how do I get into play?
Speaker 1: 24:59
Yeah, I think there's a lot of different ways to do this. One of the things that I do on my own not shockingly, I use Legos because I have them, but I will actually build out my thoughts and ideas out of like on a table. I'll build it physically, I'll say this is what I'm doing for my business plan or my marketing plan or whatever, and I'll build it out of Lego and have some fun with it. Right, and then you can come up with some ideas. So that's one aspect to you could ask a question of and this is another exercise from design thinking is to give yourself different prompts of how might I solve this If I was Walt Disney? How might I solve this If I had no money? How might I solve this If had a trillion dollars? Or if I was, pick a name, right, if I was Harvey T Firestone, how would I solve this? Or pick anyone, and just give yourself a different frame and try to get out of your own way. And I think that's the hardest part is right, we know what we know and we're in our own minds all the time. Right, we're here, we're not going anywhere, but we have to recognize when we get in our own rut. This question could be very different for different people and it could be using a physical medium, it could be framing someone else, it could be utilizing music there's so many different triggers. But having something and trying something and literally playing with it is step one. Each person is probably going to be a little bit different, but the fact that you're trying is probably that first step into figuring out how each person can make that true for themselves.
Speaker 1: 26:33
The cool other part of play is it's fun, right, it can be fun. The cool other part of play is it's fun, right, it can be fun. And I think one of the other aspects is we think about stress, and especially now we're getting much smarter about how the brain reacts to stress and what cortisol does to our creativity. And yet when we get people in a playful state, their ideas are better, they're more creative, they work better together. And one of the other aspects of play that works with especially with children and adults, is when we play with people we actually connect. Think of when you play.
Speaker 1: 27:02
There's a wonderful book out there titled Aptly Play by Dr Stuart Brown, and he outlines eight attributes of play, and one of those attributes is a diminished consciousness of self. So when we think about how we think about ourselves, we're in a stressful board meeting with eight people or 10, and how are we going to fix this thing? Everyone's stressed right, and so we're not going to come up with our best ideas when we're stressed and we're feeling under pressure. But if we can deflate that a little bit and get a little play and start building off of each other's ideas and getting that consciousness of self, instead of sitting there wondering how am I being viewed? How I speak up? Should I not speak up? Will I be judged for this? When we're playing, we're just bringing our full self forward, and so we connect better, work better together. Everything just gets better. We have that play aspect attached to it just freaking refreshing too.
Speaker 3: 27:50
like I, I have a six-year-old and it's always amazing to watch him play and to your very good point, that he doesn't give a shit about how he looks, if he's feeling, if he's dirty, if it's the right thing to do or not, and your idea around to around that diminished sense of self, or even the fact that people don't care what other people think they're just creating or in that mode. We lose that so quickly. I think about adolescence and everything else. We lose it really quickly. And then to be able to come back to yourself and your work and come back to play in your work in these little ways is just so refreshing.
Speaker 1: 28:27
There's an important thing there, right, some of us lose play, yeah, and it's in those teenage years, and I've been thinking a lot about this because I have a couple of nieces that are in that age.
Speaker 1: 28:39
We're there, you know, I think one's 12 and the other's 15 right now, and it's been really interesting because I visit them often and to watch this sort of transition, and especially from a play mindset, because, as you said before, kids are like I'm going to go play, I'm going to go do goofy things, we're going gonna go nuts. And yet I watched as the oldest started having this little bit of a divide and I think if in the I started to think about this and reflect on my own life and I'm actually curious if this was true to you too but there becomes this point where you start wanting to be an adult and for some reason, we decide that play is not part of that. And I remember going to being at the breakfast table or whatever with my parents or aunts and sitting there and yeah, so we are going to have this little more conversation. I am an adult and I'm going to not be silly and playful. And then 10 minutes later you're off playing and you're being silly.
Speaker 1: 29:32
So you create this interesting divergent path where you still want to play as a kid but you also want to be adult because you see all this cool responsibility like I can stay up later, eat what I want all these freedoms that come with adulthood, and somehow you just see this divergence happen and I think a lot of folks don't necessarily find their way back to play right, because you're also in those teenage and those adolescent years. You're trying to figure out how you fit in at school with your peers. You figure out who you are, how you dress a face full of acne or whatever's going on. You're also worried about what people think of you, that you're a little bit more protected with who you are and you're not as free as you were with that five or six year old.
Speaker 1: 30:09
this is how we're gonna play right, let's just have a fun time. I don't care what anyone thinks. Now you care what everyone thinks a lot. And so that transition we just have to find our way back to play Again. It's fun, it's joy, it's creativity, it's learning. It's learning, it's trying things, it's growing.
Speaker 1: 30:25
If you ever want to connect with people or make friends in a very quick way, go find a way to play with them. Go play on a sports team. Go play board games With adults too. One of the cool aspects of this book play is they outline different archetypes as adults, because we play different as we get older. Some people want to play sports and games and things that are still considered very play like, but to other people, things like collecting things becomes play, or collecting experiences becomes a version of play. One of my favorites is there's the planner, or the director is one of the terms that Dr Brown uses for one of the archetypes, and this is the person who loves to like plan parties or plan vacations, and they want to put all this stuff together. I'm like that's not play for me, but for some people apparently that's really fun. They can't wait to do that and that's play for them. So it's interesting as we get older too, we can recognize what play means for and and it's going to be different from person to person.
Speaker 3: 31:21
Uh, like, running is running play. It depends why you're running, how. No, I know, yeah, but to your point, some there's I have a lot of friends that that is absolutely play like they, they live for it, live for it and I would just be like shoot me in the face.
Speaker 2: 31:33
Yes, I am totally the planner for fun. It's so funny because I'm like the travel planner. I am the friend people call to find they want to go to Italy for 20 days on this type of budget. What can we make happen? And I figure it out and it's like a puzzle. I think it's fun to figure it out.
Speaker 1: 31:54
I love it. No way, some people love it.
Speaker 3: 31:59
Yeah, exactly, this is just where my joy is versus.
Speaker 1: 32:02
That's the fun. Right, as we have unique, different ways. One of the recommendations of Dr Brown, in the book too, is, as an adult, if you're not finding play, is to think about what you liked as a kid. What did you like to play? And go back to some of that stuff. Right, and maybe there's play archetypes that you've not tried. It could be. The explorer is one of the play archetypes, the collector, the artist, where just creation is fun. I think I have a lot of friends I like to cook. You know for a lot of other friends that experimentation and creating dishes, that's play. That could be fun because you're creating something, and so there's so many things that can be played that we can open our definition.
Speaker 2: 32:44
We can the play that we can open our definition. We could broaden it a little bit into just playing, pretend or goofing off or being silly. Yeah, I love that that, that you're providing this like larger framework of what play can look like and it's not just what we traditionally think of as play. For sure, absolutely was anyone else guilty of doing like weird plays with your cousins, or creating musicals and then making your family watch them. Anyone I think that's just me, just me I used to love to play like hotel or restaurant.
Speaker 3: 33:05
I used to love to organize things, puzzles like mel it's interesting to think about. There's windows to the soul throughout life and play early on window can absolutely show up in your adult life as well.
Speaker 1: 33:18
With the technology tools. Now, you know my nieces and nephews. They make movies, they record and get scripts and all of these things. One of the things that always amazes me most is they don't sit down and think about it. Let's talk about how this is going to work and make a big plan, which is what adults do. They're like no, we're just going to do it, we're just going to jump in and figure it out. It goes back to that like just no hesitation to do, and there's something empowering about that, there's something so fantastic about that. Are you guys familiar with the marshmallow spaghetti exercise? This is like a corporate thing that's been done for years.
Speaker 3: 33:51
No, tell us more.
Speaker 1: 33:53
It's an interesting exercise. You basically break up a team into groups and you have three or four people and you give them, like there's three, I would say three things. You give them like a box of spaghetti noodles, marshmallow and like some tape and that's it. And the challenge is to be like who can build the highest tower out of these spaghetti noodles and marshmallow and to spoil what basically happens.
Speaker 1: 34:14
They've done this with MBA students and like high-powered lawyers and all these different types of groups that you'd think would be really successful, and the ones who are the most successful it's five-year-olds and they come up with the tallest tower. Because what happens is the adults as they sit, they think, they talk, they debate, they go back and forth on what we should we do, what could we do, what should we do? You have a whole box of spaghetti noodles and kids just go, they just start trying stuff and they fail, they try, they fail, they try, they fail, they try, they fail, and they get so much learning done in such a short period of time that they finally get a much, much better ending, and yet we adults just talk ourselves but you're over thinkers yeah, just go do it, just try it, see what happens at the team level, day-to-day, outside of planned events.
Speaker 2: 35:14
How can leaders really set the tone for an environment where, let's be honest, there's some real boring shit we got to do, but it's a day to day or a deal with. But how can leaders foster this environment of fun or thinking without our egos or removing the over thing to everyday work problem? What can they be doing?
Speaker 1: 35:41
problem. What can they be doing? Part of that is recognizing like who who on your team might have a talent at doing this. There's a new psychometric personality exercise out there called principles this new ray, dalio, adam grant, and but there's actually a level of humor and humor is one of their traits and what's interesting is this humor trait not shocking very high end that people they're more lighthearted, they tend to want to create and make fun environments, and so I think a lot of it might be. If you're a leader, maybe that isn't your bag. Find someone whose it is and maybe give them that responsibility or ask them to help maybe create a more fun environment or create maybe it is a happy hour or a lunch or get some ideas out there. And I think work with the team too right. I think there's a general. Some communication should happen before and because there might be a team that maybe as a whole team doesn't have a lot of humor and maybe they don't want a ton of fun.
Speaker 1: 36:31
I do think that every team should have some fun. There's a level, but find that person and empower them to do that I was, I think. One of the reasons why play has been so central to what I have done in all of my jobs, no matter what role I've been in, is very early on in my career, as I work for and with a lot of people who did like to use play a lot when I worked in retail stores in in college. I consistently work with leaders. We find ways to to have fun, and so I just think there needs to be an intent and then finding the person or people with the skill set that would like to be able to do that and give it a try.
Speaker 2: 37:06
What do you recommend to the leader who wants to introduce this to their skeptical team on how they can use play to innovate or build it into the workplace? I know, obviously find the person on your team who's good at play, but what do you recommend if they've never done this before? It might not be part of the larger culture, but it's a microculture a leader would like to set up to make their team highly engaged and productive, more collaborative, more communicative. What would you recommend?
Speaker 1: 37:40
I've yet to come across this. A team of skeptics is tough, don't get me wrong. There's probably one or two skeptics in many groups, especially if I'm doing a lot of larger, like 25 to 50 person group sessions, and there's a couple in that group.
Speaker 2: 37:53
Always.
Speaker 1: 37:53
You can't avoid it. But the fun part is, especially with the Lego sessions, is it goes away almost immediately. It's amazing. So one trust that the Lego method itself, actually it'll just work on its own. Two, I think it's just asking people to be open. Come in, give it a try. There's no wrong answer. Right, you can't do wrong. You're just going to have legos. Just be yourself, right? Yeah, engage however you want to engage. I think letting people know that the expectation is just letting them be themselves is maybe it takes a little bit of pressure off. And what I've found is that the cynics usually come around about 20 minutes into the session because they're like they're not sure, but they don't want to like be the person who's just not participating. Right, and they're like, okay, fine, I'll build. My first build is always build a tower, whatever you want to build yeah hours.
Speaker 1: 38:44
but something happens when people open that bag of legos and they start playing, like little smiles come to mouth, they start getting into it and they're not competing, they're not building a thing, they're just. They can do whatever they want. And again their colleagues are smiling, people are having fun and there's something about that. We'll say on the good side of like group think right, where you get these people together and suddenly, if every, if nine out of 10 people are laughing and having a good time, that 10th is eventually right. Even if they want to resist it a little bit, they'll get into it.
Speaker 1: 39:14
And it always happens because I'm just building stuff with Legos and you got little like minig figures and at some point you just can't take yourself too seriously in that type of situation.
Speaker 2: 39:24
Yeah.
Speaker 3: 39:25
Yeah, I like that. We just talked about leaders and then I think about employees, one of the things Mel and I talk about the future of work all the time. We know deeply human connections are going to be so key and things like innovation, creativity, empathy, capabilities that are truly differentiated from AI, especially around play, because play, to me, is one of those competencies that incorporate all of these other aspects like empathy, like creativity, like innovation, wrapped in one Employees being able to advocate for play or to be able to come to work with play or know how to incorporate play, is so key. Yet a lot of people are again working in ops or in accounting or in these very kind of honestly stodgy places. So I'm curious as to if you have an employee that is working in corporate America, usa, and they really want to bring play more into it, what are the first one or two steps? I know we talked about the mindset earlier, but I am curious about what's a safe way somebody can advocate for bringing play into their personal work more.
Speaker 1: 40:37
So there's two aspects of that right. There's the individual side. It could be even starting with a colleague or two and trying something right. Maybe finding a method online or again like design thinking is also a fantastic methodology that you can take bits and pieces from to create playful, innovative, unique ways of approaching things For a broader team. If you have a team, if you're a leader, again, it's taking those baby steps, it's starting and one anchoring play and creativity and imagination to hopefully some type of core value within the organization.
Speaker 3: 41:09
Because I think that matters too. If you're just a company and all you want to do is yeah, if your values are to make money, then I don't know that play is right for you.
Speaker 1: 41:17
But if you're in a purpose-driven type organization that truly wants to excel at customer experience, employee experience, making a difference in people's lives and whatever again, whatever product service that you're in and I think most companies have this right, I think most companies have this right, I think most companies I've talked to or worked with there's a level that we want to create a place where people like to work and they create good products and services for our customers and happy employees and engaged employees mean happy and engaged customers and all of that is connected. I think if you have those, then play isn't extremely hard to get. It's finding the right methods that people can apply to, and it could be like starting small. It could be just having a little bit of fun. It could be just talking about what play actually means to people in the room. Like, how did you play? What was your favorite game as a kid? You could start with something as little as that.
Speaker 2: 42:19
Brandon, we have what we call a rapid round. It's quick questions, it could be yes or no or the first thing you think of. It could be longer too if it's oh no. I have more to say about about this. Are you open to doing a rapid round with us? Yes, do it.
Speaker 3: 42:36
I feel like I'm on a game show.
Speaker 1: 42:37
You are a game show okay to have more creativity.
Speaker 2: 42:44
Is it a solo walking situation or brainstorming situation?
Speaker 1: 42:49
Oh, it's both. I think it's both. Yeah, I am a walker, I love walking, get out, it's a physical movement. Yeah, our bodies and minds are connected. Walking for sure. But a good brainstorm is fun too, because you can bring other people.
Speaker 2: 43:04
Yeah, get that outside perspective. I feel like, francesca, you and I are brainstorming every day we go through. Oh my God. I feel like, francesca, you and I are brainstorming every day we go through. Oh my God, we're like what about this?
Speaker 3: 43:14
The problem is we have too many ideas that we have to be like stick to the plan, yeah, stick to the plan, yeah, walking brainstorm, though we would just be on fire, yeah, that's true, walking brainstorm, I love that yeah.
Speaker 2: 43:27
That's a good combo.
Speaker 1: 43:33
Is a playful leader, a better leader. I'm biased. I'm gonna say yeah, I would, but that would be by preference, I think. Maybe not in general, but for me, yes, for me yeah, I think so good, okay, best work day, pick me up play activity oh, my gosh man.
Speaker 1: 43:51
I just just because it popped in my head, I I would love to go swing on some monkey bars. I feel like that would be. If that was a thing, I would just go do it. I think generally adults are not allowed on children's playgrounds most of the time, but if there was one at my work, go to this.
Speaker 2: 44:04
You may just start a new fad. Instead of all the ping pong tables. It's a build in jungle game. I would do that.
Speaker 3: 44:12
That would be fun. Have you all tried to be? I tried the other day because my son can do pull-ups. I have no upper body strength. I'm like what happened here. What?
Speaker 2: 44:18
happened here. The last time I was at a playground I really embarrassed myself because the little animals that are like on that weird bendy thing that you like, so I got on one and flung myself off because I went a little too hard. Can creativity thrive under deadlines? Please say yes.
Speaker 1: 44:38
No, I think so. I think so Because I think sometimes pressure can be a good lever. So I think back to in my last job. I remember planning a manager summit and this was like a global thing. We're already doing it in like Barcelona and Shanghai, and they gave me like six weeks to the first one at least. But the pressure summit and this was like a global thing, we were already doing it in like Barcelona and Shanghai, and they gave me like six weeks to the first one at least. But the pressure forced me to get really creative, to understand, because we didn't have objectives or anything like that, and so it was it did. It forced me to move and try things so we could figure out what worked quickly. No, I do think so. I think there's a level of reason within that If you're like, do this tonight by 5, that's probably going to kill creativity. But yeah, if there's a little bit of time in there, I think pressure can help.
Speaker 2: 45:18
Okay, Best creativity booster music or silence.
Speaker 1: 45:26
Can I say I want to say walking. I feel like I know we said that before, but I think walking and it could be with music or without, I think that's a very personal preference.
Speaker 2: 45:34
Okay, okay, morning meetings. Would you provide coffee or games?
Speaker 1: 45:41
Ooh both Okay, yeah, again, I think you've really got to tap into the personalities. I think there's some people that are like I'm a morning person, so let's go. I want coffee and games, but I know other people that might stare daggers at me If there was no coffee.
Speaker 2: 45:56
they're like no. Game is still noon, I'm not showing up. Very cool. I appreciate you answering this rapid round. It has been super pleasurable to have you as a guest and we're so excited to share with our listeners all that they can learn from you from play Brandon. How can folks get in touch with you?
Speaker 1: 46:17
You can get in touch with me via my website. It's innatecreatescom. You can also go to brandonthelegoguycom.
Speaker 2: 46:24
Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: 46:26
Thank you so much for having me Bless, all right, bye friend, that would be blessed.
Speaker 2: 46:29
All right, bye, friend. Hey friends, this episode of your Work Friends was hosted by Francesca Ranieri and myself, Mel Plett this episode was produced and edited by Mel Plett and myself, Francesca Ranieri.
Speaker 2: 46:42
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, join us over on LinkedIn in our large and growing community, and you can email us at friend at your work, friendscom, or visit us on your work, friendscom. 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.
Crisis Communications
Crisis doesn’t wait…
One wrong message can tank your reputation. One delayed response can cost you trust. When the pressure’s on and the spotlight’s burning, do you know what to say?
In this episode of Your Work Friends, we dive into the art and science of crisis communications with expert Anne-Marie Squeo. From understanding what qualifies as a crisis to mastering the first 24 hours, this conversation is packed with actionable insights for leaders, teams, and anyone navigating turbulent times. We’re giving you the playbook for crisis communications—so you don’t freeze when everything falls apart.
Your Work Friends Podcast: Crisis Communications with Anne Marie Squeo
Crisis doesn’t wait…
One wrong message can tank your reputation. One delayed response can cost you trust. When the pressure’s on and the spotlight’s burning, do you know what to say?
In this episode of Your Work Friends, we dive into the art and science of crisis communications with expert Anne-Marie Squeo. From understanding what qualifies as a crisis to mastering the first 24 hours, this conversation is packed with actionable insights for leaders, teams, and anyone navigating turbulent times. We’re giving you the playbook for crisis communications—so you don’t freeze when everything falls apart.
Speaker 1: 0:00
But it wasn't three hours later, when I was getting my car to drive to work, that I got an urgent phone call that the blimp was about to crash and it was rush hour. It was Pennsylvania I-95 was in its path. I was like, oh, jesus Christ going on mel what's up?
Speaker 3: 0:32
what's up? Um, I have good news, you have good news, I like it. You know, I do starting uh, next week the sun sets at 5 pm oh.
Speaker 2: 0:43
Oh, my gosh, I'm telling you during the winter nuts, nuts, winter nuts. What, what is on my mind During the winter nuts? With my sweaty balls, during the winter months, I become a bear. I am just like oh, it's 7 o'clock, I'm going to get my jams. It is not good, listen same.
Speaker 3: 1:05
It has been getting dark at like around, like November-ish December. It starts getting dark at 3 pm. It's unacceptable. Is it 11? I have my slippers on, oh my gosh. Well, we were incredibly lucky to sit down with Anne-Marie Sgueo today, who is an expert in crisis communications. She is the CEO and founder of Proofpoint Communications. She's a strategic branding communications and crisis PR maven. She's also a Pulitzer winning business journalist, and two words to describe her battle proven. What did you take away from this conversation?
Speaker 2: 1:51
I love crisis communications. I think it's just a fascinating topic about how companies and how people respond to crisis, and there was a lot that Anne-Marie shared that looked really under the hood around how this all works within organizations, how decisions are made and, honestly, what good looks like. That I did not know and I think is really, really eye-opening for anybody listening. What did you think, mel?
Speaker 3: 2:18
Absolutely agree. If you're a leader in an organization, you're going to find this episode extremely useful and helpful. She gave some pretty clear tips on. This is how you show up and this is how you pull through and come together. So with that, here's Anne-Marie we are so excited to have you join us today on your Work Friends, and I'm going to jump right in with a headline that came out from Axios and I want to get your thoughts. They said CEOs are enjoying a hot speech. Winter, when we're speaking out in outrageous ways, carries no cost and we know recently we saw the UnitedHealthcare CEO not really dealing well with critical crisis and Mark Zuckerberg's comments on the Joe Rogan podcast on how that's impacting meta. What are your thoughts on that statement?
Speaker 1: 3:24
podcast on how that's impacting meta. What are your thoughts on that statement? There's always a cost. The question is how you're measuring it. We'll go back to United Healthcare.
Speaker 1: 3:36
I think Zuck's comments are, frankly, just bizarre and I keep wondering what his wife thinks. But a lot of my friends have gone off threads. They've gone off Instagram and closed their Facebook accounts. There's a critical piece to this in terms of has no cost, right.
Speaker 1: 3:51
One of the things that I've been thinking a lot about is, you know, when Jeff Bezos pisses us all off and you know, we're like I'm not using Amazon anymore. I'm just I'm not, and I tried this. Actually I tried this for a couple of months last year and it's really hard. So if you're addicted to the product or service and you have been for the last five years then it's probably unlikely you're going to get unaddicted. But if it's more marginal in your existence, so the Washington Post subscription, that is like the eighth thing I read any day. I can live without that Right. So I mean, I think that it's going to be hard for CEOs to say there's no cost, because for some it might appear that way because their product or service is so essential to our lives that most of us can't imagine we'd be punishing ourselves if we cut it off. But if you don't fall in that category and most people don't then there are going to be repercussions for doing things that piss off 50% or more of your customers, subscribers, whatever.
Speaker 3: 5:03
Yeah, I think Francesca and I were talking about this before the session and one of the things we both agreed on was there's maybe five people, I think Francesca you said, who have a few money to be able to not have a cost to their statements.
Speaker 1: 5:16
Yeah, I mean again, most CEOs, I think, measure the cost financially. But bad reputations have bad financial implications and they might not happen immediately. But one thing that I think that is a mid-term kind of outcome of, say, meta's CEO's comments is you're already seeing blue sky and all these competitors come up and they're going to get better. Just like threads stepped in to pick up where Twitter X left off, someone's going to step in and pick up where both of those guys left off and run away with it. And the eyeballs and the advertising money Don't count too soon. I wouldn't count my chickens before they're hatched, because it might not be that the next three months are impacted, but the next 12 months may well be as alternatives come to bear.
Speaker 2: 6:12
It's so fun to watch. There's, I imagine, in your area, someone's always in crisis and, to your very good point, you started this by saying going through the Trump administration, every organization is going to be in crisis because of all the change that's going on. And I'm curious about how do you define either like a PR crisis or crisis communications? For those that don't know about this topic, what is it?
Speaker 1: 6:34
Oh, this is a great question because, you know, I've definitely worked places where the CEO or senior leaders thought everything was a crisis, you know.
Speaker 1: 6:45
So if we're not included in a story, it's a crisis, and if we are included in a negative story, it's a crisis, and you know, I think that all of us in the industry have to kind of set a barometer for what actually requires a crisis response, and that's an important conversation and level setting that needs to happen in every organization, because if you, the communications team, are not aligned or at least educating your leaders about what makes the cut for when we're going into crisis mode, you will spend your entire day and night and weekends fighting fires that are not important and you'll never get to the good stuff and the important stuff.
Speaker 1: 7:31
So I think, if it's a real crisis, francesca, I think it's got real reputational and financial implications for a company and business implications. So you are a railroad company and your railroad went off the tracks in Ohio and potentially poisoned an entire community with toxic things that came out of the cars. You've got a crisis and it's going to potentially result in regulatory repercussions, punitive government, punitive repercussions, lawsuits, environmental related issues. That is a legitimate crisis. I would say things that no one's going to be talking about in 24 or 48 hours, not a crisis. So I think, by definition, a crisis is going to be longer than 48 hours. You may feel like it's a crisis in the moment, but if it's going away and no one's going to remember it in a year, it wasn't a crisis.
Speaker 2: 8:31
I'm curious about that timing right, I mean within 48 hours. If no one's going to be talking about it, it's not a crisis. I'm curious on the other aspect of that because, especially with social media, the first 24 hours of a crisis, or that after something happens, the train derails and spills chemicals, the LA wildfires are happening, UnitedHealthcare CEO gets shot, the BP oil spill that first 24 hours seems like it's so critical. And then, especially with social media, the speed of which information gets put out into the ether. How important is the first 24 hours If you've identified that this is in fact a crisis? How important is that first 24 hours as an organization?
Speaker 1: 9:16
It's very important to establish trust and confidence in whatever comes next. I think the challenge of the first 24 hours in some of these situations is you don't really know a lot in that first 24 hours, right, whether it's an oil spill, a plane crash, a derailment, a cyber attack, I mean there's some stuff you know, but there's so very much that you do not know and you won't know for a while. But you have to establish the kind of connected tissue that you're going to need in this situation and whether you're going to be viewed as someone who's withholding information or going to be forthcoming when you can be information or going to be forthcoming when you can be. And the challenge, of course, in social media things tend to move much more quickly. You know, like years ago, right, like you know, we didn't know when there was a crisis until the news came out the next day. So I mean, you guys might be too young to remember that, but I mean now everything's like people might know about it on social media before even the company is aware that something happened. So it creates both benefits and detriments in any crisis situation because on the pro side, you can use social media to find out, so you can be listening all the time, and so if people start talking about something, you know about it before it becomes a wildfire and you can disseminate information more broadly more quickly because of it. But so can dis and misinformation get disseminated more quickly, and now you don't just have a crisis of the underlying event, you have a crisis that you're trying to contain information that's actually inaccurate about the underlying event, and so it has definitely made the job of a communications team, a crisis PR team and a leadership team exponentially harder, because you've got all these moving pieces and you can't afford to wait. And yet you can't afford to be too detailed either, because you might be issuing a detail in the first to make it up 10 hours turns out not to be true, and now you've got to go back and correct.
Speaker 1: 11:39
Now you've started to break trust right, and we started with first. We want to establish that we are going to be a trustworthy communicator in this situation. You know, the wildfires are sort of an interesting example where I've got a lot of friends who live in LA. Many have been evacuated. Luckily nobody's lost their home yet that I know of. But every single one of them said the communications have been God awful and you saw it in some of these press interviews that they were doing where fire chief was dissing the mayor and the mayor didn't know and she's smiling. Meanwhile, people's homes are burning down and I'm thinking I wouldn't trust this crowd at all, especially if my life and my family's life was in danger.
Speaker 1: 12:24
So that's really that first 24 hours. I think we all recognize you might not know enough, but you've got to establish that I'm going to be a trusted partner with you in this endeavor. That feeling is something that's either going to help long-term in managing this crisis or it's going to hurt you long-term in attempting to manage the crisis. So that getting the right spokesperson out there, having a transparent and trustworthy demeanor, not hiding facts that are easily known from multiple sources but you're not willing to confirm it there's so many little things that end up adding up to that. How do people feel about us right now? And I think that's one of the key thing in the first day of any major crisis.
Speaker 2: 13:15
So much of this comes out to planning you had mentioned too earlier on. One of the things you want to do is establish what is a crisis, which I think is super important. So you're not chasing down the fact that you didn't get into Fast Company this month, right, like that's not a crisis. Dora, flying out of a Boeing Max right, that's a crisis.
Speaker 1: 13:36
I'm not sure Apple, in which case it was like great sales point because the phone dropped miles and still was working. That's hilarious.
Speaker 2: 13:44
It's so funny. I live in Portland, Oregon. The door of the Boeing Max landed in one of my neighbor's yards over yonder, so it was like a big like oh, he found the door. I'm like that is not what you want as a company. I'd love to open up the hood a little bit on who's behind these organizations. What's the command center look like for crisis communications? Who is determining what's a crisis? Who is determining at these organizations how to even respond, or who's going to be the spokesperson? What does that typically look like?
Speaker 1: 14:15
And it varies, right, it varies depending on the crisis, the company and the people. So if you've got, let's say, you're a big company and you have a crisis, then you know you undoubtedly have a senior comms person, a chief communications officer, a VP of communications, who's going to be point in theory on that if you let them and they often want to put their voice and their reaction into the situation and it can make it much harder to get to where you might need to be if that's the case. But your command center it's going to change depending on what the crisis is. So the two constants that I have seen in every crisis is comms and legal. We're always there.
Speaker 1: 15:06
Now, if it's a product thing, right, like if it's an airplane crash, the head of the Boeing commercial airplanes business is going to be involved. Probably the engineering folks and manufacturing folks are going to be involved. Legal is definitely involved. Comms is involved, Leadership is involved, but comms and legal are almost in every single crisis. If it's an employee event somebody was killed in the workplace and it's because of whatever reason, you know, hr is going to be involved. Right, it's a cyber attack Then your information security and your technology officer are going to be involved. So it's going to change depending on the crisis, but always should have communications and legal at the table. Looking at that working in lockstep and it's wonderful when that happens.
Speaker 2: 16:00
Yeah, especially because your comms people. That is their craft, that is their skill, and especially when you're the CEO or even if you're head of product or head of engineering. I think sometimes there might be too much of an emotional bias on some of those things.
Speaker 1: 16:14
If you're coming in I don't know if you've seen that, or- not, because, well, let's face it, a crisis is only a crisis because something didn't work right, something went wrong, someone was killed, a railroad went off the tracks, we were breached in a cyber attack, or a customer was breached in a cyber attack, so something didn't work right. It's never a crisis when everything's going well, so that's just going to ratchet up everybody's emotions. From a communication standpoint, it's important to understand that, because we're not actually going to be able to appropriately address this crisis if we don't understand where everyone's coming from, so that we can get them where we need to go. And so it could take a little while and that's the challenge, of course is that in most crises, time is of the essence, and yet you've got to somehow get people on this path with you so you could do the right thing instead of doing nothing, which is often most people's default position, which is let's just say nothing, or let's just say the bare minimum and leave it at that right.
Speaker 1: 17:27
One of the things that I thought was interesting Boeing had two plane crashes within a year and a half or so, and their statements were overly lawyered and ice cold. I mean, everybody uniformly looked at those statements and were like really, 346 people are dead in these two plane crashes and you're like basically thoughts and prayers, and yet you know there's a lot. You don't know when you have to put that statement out, you know could it have been pilot error.
Speaker 1: 18:02
Maybe it's not the airplane's fault. You don't want to overdo it, but you can't come across as being almost uncaring when people's lives were ended and many families globally were impacted by those two events.
Speaker 2: 18:19
It's interesting when you can feel where it's overly lawyered or sometimes it's overly emotional. The one I always remember from grad school is during the BP oil spill and the CEO made it all about himself, like, well, no one's suffering as much as I am and everyone's like you need to go away. This is not about you, but it.
Speaker 1: 18:39
Didn't his weekend plans get ruined or something?
Speaker 2: 18:42
Yes, and you're like I'm sorry, the Gulf of Mexico is completely under crude oil right now, but it seems like comms really is that, for lack of a better term almost like the adult in the room that's helping you strike the right balance for whatever the situation calls for.
Speaker 1: 18:58
You have to be the truth sayer in the room Like you have got to be the one who walks in the room and just says it, and it doesn't always make you very popular to do that. When I was at Xerox and I was the chief brand and comms officer, the pandemic hit. And you know, the week before everyone was told to send their employees home we had already sent our employees in Italy home Because, remember, italy was a really hot spot I went to the CEO and said we need to send everybody home and he was like are you nuts? And I was like no, I mean, have you not paid attention to the news? So we had a whole meeting and nobody else agreed with me. And the next day I had to go back to him and I was like so can we talk about sending everybody home? And he's like I thought we had a meeting about it yesterday. And I'm like, well, we did, but we came to the wrong answer, so we're going to let's have that conversation again. And so he said, okay, you got five minutes to go.
Speaker 1: 19:53
And I did, and he sent everybody home and he told employees in an all employee phone call, like you guys have Ann Marie to thank for me actually getting ahead of this issue. And the way he got ahead of the issue was me saying, like here's the thing. We don't even know what the deal is with this thing. All we know is it's very transmissible from human to human. You are going to send everybody home. So the question is do you want to send them home today and get ahead of being ordered to send everybody home and be perceived as a good leader, or do you want to wait until the government tells you to send everybody home and just do it then? Either way, you're doing it, so you just have to decide when you want to do it and wanted to do it ahead of time. So we sent everybody home and then the order came 48, 72 hours later. He got a lot of credit from our employees.
Speaker 2: 20:38
That's goodwill.
Speaker 1: 20:45
That of credit from our employees. That's goodwill. That's goodwill man. This guy cares about his people. You should have just taken the credit. That's my job is to give you credit and he was like no people should know how that went down. So for communicators, it requires a level of courage for any leader, but especially for a communicator, because there's we're probably the only ones in the room with no direct relationship to the cause of the event. We are probably the most objective person in the room. In a crisis, we have to stand strong and ask the questions and be unemotional and super calm and not accusatory, and just try to get people moving in the right direction.
Speaker 3: 21:38
When you think of essential elements, that communications teams or even if you're a leader right, what's a playbook to have in place to help you contain the crisis, when stuff pops up?
Speaker 1: 21:53
What are the key elements you would include in that? Yeah, it's funny. Playbooks are a thing. There are whole firms that will come in and build you a crisis playbook. I always think that's a hilarious notion.
Speaker 3: 22:06
Seems like it would be situation to situation. Right, it depends.
Speaker 1: 22:10
Right. You can't possibly be prepared for every possible. I mean, now listen, if you run a rail company, you can be prepared for a derailment, right.
Speaker 3: 22:18
Yeah.
Speaker 1: 22:19
Yeah, you got that the same thing with an airplane crash but for the most part, there's going to be stuff that happens that you never thought you were going to be involved with. So I'm not a big believer in playbooks.
Speaker 1: 22:31
In fact, at one company I worked at, I arrived my first week somebody came over and handed me like this three quarters of an inch thick crisis playbook and I was like really, and I put it in the drawer and I never, ever looked at it, and this was a company that had many crises during my tenure there but we never once related to the book, and I'll tell you, no CEO has ever asked me what does the police playbook say about how to handle this crisis?
Speaker 3: 23:02
Let's go through our manual.
Speaker 1: 23:05
It says, if an employee dies. So I am just a big believer in all the pre-work that makes it possible to successfully manage a crisis, a crisis. So hire really good people with diverse experiences, who may have handled various crises in different companies or at agencies or whatnot, and then let them tackle the problems when they start happening. Establish authority and trust with the leadership team, because it actually doesn't matter if you're in charge and you have a playbook. If the CEO doesn't trust you, you are not going to be able to influence the outcome of this crisis. Define what a crisis is. Who needs to sign off on the actions related to that crisis.
Speaker 1: 23:58
I'm just a really big believer in hire people with good judgment, great experience, different experience, and make sure that everything that you're doing up to the point of the crisis ensures that you have the authority and the trust and the seat at the table to influence and drive that discussion and that outcome, because otherwise you're just you're. You're just going to take it along for the ride. Don't be a passenger on this bus. Drive this bus.
Speaker 1: 24:26
We're really the only ones, as I said, that are sort of objective in this situation and have that external sensibility to understand what's happening outside the business so that we can bring that to whatever solution and communication strategy we're developing.
Speaker 3: 24:44
I think you make the best point is that the communications team is probably the most neutral party in any room when they're dealing with something like this. You just bring a different point of view, that and it takes out the emotions completely from it, which is needed. How do you manage those emotions up front if you're a comms person?
Speaker 1: 25:01
Listen and empathize with that person, because often all that person really needs is to emote. They need to get all that they're feeling out there and they're probably going to get to the right place. But if they don't have the space to do that, you're going to be bouncing up against it when you're trying to get them someplace else. So I do think that despite the fact that we are communicators because we are, in theory, better at communicating I think this is one of those very important situations where it's better to just listen to people and let them go through it If it's 20 minutes an hour whatever because they're probably going to talk themselves to exactly where you need them to be, or close to it, and then understand that those emotions are real.
Speaker 1: 25:50
If you're a CEO and say, like you're in a precarious position. Your company's not financially performing that well. There have been, you know, major recalls or something on your product and other things, and now a crisis hits. You're scared. That's your number one response is, even if you're not articulating it, there's like a knot in your stomach Like is this the thing that's going to push me out the door? What you need is a comms person who understands that. That that's your starting point, but here's where we need to go and actually, if we manage this crisis really well, it will elevate your standing instead of being the nail in your coffin.
Speaker 3: 26:31
That makes sense. One of the things that we talk about often is transparency and how transparent you can be, because we're always up against general counsel and their feedback as well around what you can and can't say. How do you balance transparency with the legal constraints that come up during a crisis?
Speaker 1: 26:51
I mean. The thing is, you don't want to build trust between the comms and legal team in the middle of a crisis, right? Because if it's not there, trust me it's not coming that week. So that's a relationship that is so absolutely essential. That comms legal relationship. I have never had a general counsel. Well, actually, once, once I had a general counsel and it was painful not to have that trusted relationship. But in every other role we were like attached to the hip because we understood there was going to be so many touch points where we were going to have to come to mutually agreeable decisions that we had to be on the same wavelength. And who can build the relationships that are going to allow you to influence the solutions, move quickly and do it with trust, because you can't build it in the middle of a crisis.
Speaker 3: 27:50
So say someone's day one on a new job. They were the new comms leader. How do they quickly because you have to get that buy-in between multiple departments as soon as a crisis comes up how do they quickly gain that trust from business leadership, from those department leads? What's the best way for them to build trust quickly?
Speaker 1: 28:12
I guess not screw it up, but I actually had this happen to me. I did have this happen to me. It was my first week at Lockheed Martin and a major military program. So I was on like day two or three a major military program. The Pentagon had changed the acquisition strategy and thrown everything into flux and I remember standing in the middle of my office thinking, jesus, what are we doing now? And I just like gathered all the people who needed to be in the room on this.
Speaker 1: 28:44
Even though I was the new person, I was like, okay, we have a crisis, we need to come up with a media statement, a media plan, at least for 24 hours, then we can regroup tomorrow, cause this was at like four o'clock in the afternoon, I pulled everybody together, we figured it out, we moved out the statement and it worked fine. And then the next day we got to work as a larger group on a plan. If you're new, like you're going to need to pull in the people who are there and use your best judgment. This is where the judgment piece comes in, because judgment isn't something that like appears. You can't go to Walmart, pick it up off a store shelf.
Speaker 3: 29:18
Yeah, agreed, well, I think it's one kudos to you, because, holy cow, day three, that's a big, that's a big thing to do.
Speaker 1: 29:25
In fact my email. They had misspelled my email, so my actual email at the company still wasn't working. So I was having to call people and be like can you just come to my office Because I can't email you, and we just had to move quickly, email you and we just had to move quickly. I actually love those.
Speaker 3: 29:43
What do you think? They're fun. I can see you easily doing fine under pressure. What do you? What do you think was your secret sauce in that moment, though? How did you get everyone to go along with what you?
Speaker 1: 29:55
staying calm. You know I had I'd written about the defense industry as a reporter, I had worked at a different defense company, I understood the subject, I understood what we were dealing with and so I could move really quickly If I hadn't. I think, at the end of the day, most of us know what the right thing is to do in the moment, and the harder part, as we've been talking about, is getting other people there, and so in this case I guess I got more latitude than somebody who was totally green would have gotten, because I was a known entity and people trusted me Right. Otherwise that trust would have to be developed over time.
Speaker 3: 30:36
Yeah, Like so. Trust truly is the secret sauce for it to be effective.
Speaker 1: 30:40
I think it is. I think it is.
Speaker 2: 30:41
Yeah, I'm very curious about one of the most unexpected crisis scenarios that you managed through. You don't have to name names, but is there any that comes to mind where you're like that was unexpected.
Speaker 1: 30:53
Yeah, actually A blimp, a blimp.
Speaker 2: 31:02
Like the Goodyear blimp, like the Goodyear blip.
Speaker 1: 31:05
When I was at Lockheed we had this prototype airship it's called the Hail Deep and we all got up at 3.30 am to watch this massive, massive it was like, I think, five football fields long airship takeoff from a dock in akron, ohio. It was beautiful dawn, lovely, but it wasn't three hours later, when I was getting my car to drive to work, that I got an urgent phone call that the blimp was was about to crash and it was rush hour. It was pennsylvania i-95 was in its path. I was like, oh, jesus Christ, so that was definitely a crisis. I mean, again, we had a plan for what would happen if we had issues with it, but it really looked like it was going to be a flawless test and it did not. It was not a flawless test and it ended up coming down in a wooded area very close to a beaver dam in Pennsylvania. The good news was we immediately dispatched a communicator to the beaver dam to answer all the local news press questions. So we basically it wasn't like a national news story, but certainly in the Philadelphia, ohio, pennsylvania area you know it was a couple of days of coverage of this massive airship that went down and, you know, working again by the before.
Speaker 1: 32:31
It took 10 minutes to get to the office. By the time I got into the office, we had all the necessary people on the phone. I'm like where's the airship? Like it was just like drilling the questions. Like, okay, I've dispatched this person, let's get this information written up, get it into that person's hands. They need to be on site. Reporters are going to come to the location. Blah, blah, blah. Work with the local authorities. We were seamless. I had everybody on an open line in my office for three hours. I was like, just come back and talk on the squawk box, I'm leaving the line open and so that's you know.
Speaker 1: 33:06
I mean, this is the stuff that happens in the middle of a crisis, you just have to stop doing everything else and just do this.
Speaker 2: 33:14
Well, which begs the point of not having a playbook, because I don't know if you're working at Lockheed Martin, you probably don't think you're going to have to deal with the National Beaver Society because the blip crashed in their dam. Do you know what I'm saying Like? But now here you are.
Speaker 3: 33:27
The ASPCA has got you on a speed dial. Yeah, I can't imagine.
Speaker 1: 33:32
Right, Like you cannot plan for every possible crisis trying to hurt the beavers no no beaver was killed. No beaver was hurt in the testing of the singer ship.
Speaker 2: 33:45
What do you know? If a crisis response was successful, what do you measure?
Speaker 1: 33:52
Nowadays, with social media, there are all kinds of tools that you can listen to how people are talking. So there's the qualitative and then the quantitative. On the qualitative side, you know if people are pissed off. You mentioned UnitedHealthcare earlier and I actually would love to go back to that, but it was pretty remarkable that a man was murdered and people were talking about how hot the assassin was and how people are feeling about your company when they're cheering for the murderer instead of being completely outraged about what happened.
Speaker 1: 34:46
And I would just say one thing I actually think that UnitedHealthcare is doing a very good job with this. So you know, yesterday was their earnings and their CEO of the parent company, United Health, talked about what's wrong with the healthcare system, and he also had an editorial in the New York Times a week or two after the murder happened that addressed it. Now it does beg the question as the nation's largest insurance company, what are you doing to solve the problem? So great that you're now acknowledging that there is a problem, but what are you doing to solve it, which I hope is the next piece for that? But I've seen them lean into this in a manner that I think is better than some companies do in these situations.
Speaker 3: 35:38
I have a quick question follow up for that, because with UnitedHealthcare, what I found interesting, just as an observer and someone consuming, they're getting out at front about acknowledging their role but then their actions seem to not align with their acknowledgement. So, for example, like an article came out yesterday about how they're one of the few insurance companies who are increasing I think it was cancer medication by over 1000% compared to other insurers, making it more expensive for their customers. So when you see like you see the CEO coming out and they're acknowledging it, partly responsible for the state of the healthcare system, but they haven't taken it to what should be the next level, you know as the nation's largest insurer.
Speaker 1: 36:44
Here are the things we're going to do differently, right, boom, boom, boom, boom, right, and and hopefully, fingers crossed that's their next piece, because otherwise, in a couple of months, this yes, it's broken and we're really sorry and we have to all do better is not going to play well with the vast majority of the public, because they're going to be like yeah, we heard that from you for six months now and you haven't done anything different.
Speaker 3: 37:10
It's the new thoughts and prayers.
Speaker 1: 37:12
Right. So I do think that that is always the challenge right, Even if your crisis communications response is great. Boeing had the same issue. Their issue was the problem with the manufacturing of these planes. That has come out and now gotten a lot of media coverage and government intervention and other things right. I often would say it's comms' job to like prepare the garden, fertilize the soil, make sure that it's an environment in which things can grow, but if things don't grow here, that's not my fault, that's your fault.
Speaker 2: 37:47
Can you tell a lot about a company's culture by how they respond in a crisis? Absolutely.
Speaker 1: 37:54
Yeah, absolutely. I mean because that response isn't coming out of nowhere. And if it does come out of nowhere, then it probably won't be trusted. Think about the insurance industry right now and these fires, I mean.
Speaker 1: 38:09
It's not a good scene and they had already cut off people's insurance policies, and I lived in California. Insurance was extraordinarily expensive to get and that was when you could even get it. Now you can't even get it in many places, and I wasn't in a fire zone, but at this point you don't really know what a fire zone is. It could be anywhere. So I think that the way in which these companies have approached their business will make them inherently trustworthy in this situation because of everything that led up to it. Now maybe somebody will step out and do the right thing.
Speaker 1: 38:44
Do the right thing has multiple implications because at the end of the day, many of these are publicly traded companies and they're mining their portfolio for risk and they only want to have a risk exposure of make it up 30%, 40%. So that means we can't cover any of these folks unless they pay this much more money, and that makes it prohibitively expensive and most people can't afford that. And so again, we get down to sort of a situation where, okay, if you're part of the problem, you're also part of the solution. So are you going to lead on this and try to figure out how we might be able to at least address this? So I saw on the news last night. People are hanging signs with QR codes to their GoFundMe pages in the front of their burnt houses in Pacific Palisades so that people driving by can just get to their QR card and give them money. That's terrible In this country, with the kind of money this country has, that anyone should have to have a GoFundMe page, especially if they had insurance.
Speaker 2: 39:51
Agreed. You mentioned that almost every company is going to be in crisis this year. I feel like the insurance companies are like they're in the hot seat. Buckle up.
Speaker 1: 40:01
That kid is going on trial, that man is going on trial for shooting the UnitedHealthcare CEO, and so will the healthcare industry, insurance industry, be on trial, because that is going to be part of that entire trial. There's two trials right now and if they got combined, you know, or maybe even three, if they bring federal charges they'll get combined into one trial. But make no mistake, he will be on trial, and so will the healthcare insurance industry.
Speaker 3: 40:36
I'd love to talk about advice that you personally might give to folks who are in a crisis, dealing with crisis, just based on your own experience. What's your go-to stress reliever? What do you do when you're in an active crisis situation?
Speaker 1: 40:55
when you're in an active crisis situation. Well, after the work, I would definitely have a glass of red wine During it. I mean, I think it's really important to just try to stay calm and clear and whatever you need to do, that is important Exercise or meditate or whatever it is for you. Exercise or meditate or whatever it is for you like. Being very calm and almost impersonal about the situation is really important when everyone else is flipping out.
Speaker 3: 41:26
So that's from a communication standpoint. If you're a leader, in one word, what's the most important quality a leader needs?
Speaker 1: 41:34
Judgment no question Judgment.
Speaker 3: 41:37
What is the best piece of crisis management advice that you've ever been given? Don't be afraid to ask the hard questions.
Speaker 1: 41:44
Often what happens in a crisis is not only are people afraid to ask the hard question, they're afraid to ask the follow-up to the hard question. Up to the hard question. But if you don't know everything that you need to know, your crisis is going to mushroom right, and you could have gotten ahead of it if you had just kept going down that line of questioning to get what else do? I need to know that we're not doing right so I can respond, because there's going to be a reporter calling me about this in less than 36 hours. So tell me everything now so I can get ready for it. So I think, ask the hard questions and ask the hard follow-up questions.
Speaker 3: 42:24
Almost like an attorney. Like I don't want any surprises here.
Speaker 1: 42:28
Yeah, I mean, that's the worst thing that any business can have is a surprise.
Speaker 3: 42:33
Okay, what are some or what's one crisis communication myth that you would like to debunk?
Speaker 1: 42:41
You don't need a playbook. You need courage, commitment and clarity, but you do not need a playbook.
Speaker 2: 42:47
All right, anne-marie, we like to get to know our guests on a more personal level, so I'm going to ask you some rapid round questions that are just light and easy. We just want to get to know you. Are you down? Okay, let's do it. All right, it's 2030.
Speaker 1: 43:04
What do you think work is going to look like? Well, I'm really hoping that the AI is doing all the mundane things and that we're down to a three day work week.
Speaker 2: 43:12
Yeah, I like the world.
Speaker 3: 43:12
We're here for it.
Speaker 2: 43:13
Painting. Yes, yes. What music are you listening to right now?
Speaker 1: 43:21
You know, I listen to such a bizarre blend of music. What was playing in my car just today? I was listening to a little John Legend a little while ago, nice, nice.
Speaker 2: 43:34
All right, all right. Do you know he started as a management consultant? I read that Isn't that wild yeah.
Speaker 3: 43:39
Yeah.
Speaker 1: 43:41
Listen, bain, or I think Bain or BCG. Yeah, it was one of the.
Speaker 2: 43:45
It was one of the MBBs, I thought. I know, mel and I come from Deloitte and everyone's always trying to oh no, it was Deloitte. I'm like it was not Deloitte. We like to claim everything. What are you reading?
Speaker 1: 43:57
I am reading Mel Robbins' Let them Theory.
Speaker 3: 44:02
What do?
Speaker 2: 44:02
you think it is a great way to start the year. Nice, that's a tough one, like that whole idea.
Speaker 1: 44:12
I think that would be. It's tough, right, and I was actually having a little mini meltdown about something last week and I was complaining to my husband and he was like, well, honey, what about? Let them, let them. I was like, oh my God, yes, right, perfect. Was it free yeah.
Speaker 2: 44:28
Yeah, yeah. Who do you really admire? I?
Speaker 1: 44:33
really admire Michelle Obama. I think that she is authentic, I think she has demonstrated really good judgment and I think she lives her values. You know, she's not afraid to live them, and I think that's like one of the most important things we can do, especially as women, and stop trying to contort ourselves into what everyone wants us to be and be who we want to be.
Speaker 3: 44:57
I recently someone on social media said that they're going to RSVP as Michelle Obama going forward when they say no to things and she's not showing up to anything anymore.
Speaker 2: 45:06
There's been all these great memes of her just like no, no, thank you, yeah, no, and I also love the fact that I don't need to give you a reason.
Speaker 3: 45:16
No explanation needed.
Speaker 1: 45:18
That actually is something that I have been over the last couple of years, trying to break the habit of right. Like I always feel like well, what are you going to tell them about why you're not going? And I'm like why do I have to tell them anything? Why does anyone need to know why I'm not doing something?
Speaker 3: 45:33
No is a full explanation.
Speaker 1: 45:35
Yeah, Right, but I wasn't raised like that and for most of my life I always was like I can't do that because I have these other and I'm like you know, nobody cares, Nobody. I'm making a bigger deal out of this than anyone else. No, I can't do it, Sorry, Next time. So I think that it's just. It is something that we have to practice in order to get comfortable with it.
Speaker 2: 45:56
Yeah, and it's definitely a muscle. I'm always like worried about everybody else's feelings and it's like no one gives a shit. You can either come or you can't, it's fine.
Speaker 1: 46:02
And also, at the end of the day, like it doesn't make you nice or not nice to do that, right, it's just, it just is.
Speaker 2: 46:10
Yeah, last one, a piece of advice you'd want everyone to know a piece of advice you'd want everyone to know.
Speaker 1: 46:20
I think it's important to understand who you are and then be the best version of that person. We all spend so much time trying to fit in to different scenarios and situations that we sometimes get so lost and then we're not the best version of anything. So no, we're not perfect. Figure out like what's where do you get your joy, what, what makes you unhappy? And then try to be the best version of the person. That is that, and don't worry about what everyone else thinks. You know, frankly, they're going to talk about you anyway. So you know like there's just really no point worrying about it.
Speaker 2: 46:59
Yeah, let them yeah.
Speaker 1: 47:01
I mean, we all have to get inspiration from places. I'm hoping that you know, as I keep reading this book, that it is very inspiring to remind myself that I have no control over what other people think. I only have control over what I think.
Speaker 2: 47:17
Yeah, yeah. And how you live your life and how you take your energy, you know or channel your energy I think that's such sage advice is to figure out who you are and then just try to be the best version of that, and that's it.
Speaker 1: 47:28
No one's asking for any more than that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: 47:33
Love it, love it.
Speaker 3: 47:35
Thanks guys. This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, Mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagram. So please, please, join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please like, rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going.
Speaker 2: 48:21
Yeah.
Speaker 3: 48:23
All right, Take care, friends. Bye friends, Bye friends.
Belonging & Unhiding at Work
At work, we tweak our tone, filter our stories, and sideline parts of ourselves to fit in—and it’s exhausting. In this live episode, we’re joined by Ruth Rathblott, TEDx speaker and bestselling author, and Dr. Beth Kaplan, researcher and author of Braving the Workplace, to talk about the hidden labor of self-editing and why it’s costing us more than we think.
We dig into the emotional toll of always managing perceptions, the difference between fitting in and belonging, and what it takes to create workplaces where people can show up without shrinking and hiding. Whether you’re leading teams or just trying to feel like yourself from 9 to 5, this conversation will hit home.
Your Work Friends Podcast: Belonging & Unhiding at Work with Dr. Beth Kaplan & Ruth Rathblott
At work, we tweak our tone, filter our stories, and sideline parts of ourselves to fit in—and it’s exhausting. In this live episode, we’re joined by Ruth Rathblott, TEDx speaker and bestselling author, and Dr. Beth Kaplan, researcher and author of Braving the Workplace, to talk about the hidden labor of self-editing and why it’s costing us more than we think.
We dig into the emotional toll of always managing perceptions, the difference between fitting in and belonging, and what it takes to create workplaces where people can show up without shrinking and hiding. Whether you’re leading teams or just trying to feel like yourself from 9 to 5, this conversation will hit home.
Speaker 1: 0:00
Most of us are hiding something about ourselves and it's exhausting and it's lonely and we come up with a narrative that we think we're the only ones.
Speaker 2: 0:23
Hello friends, I am Mel and this is your Work, friends, and with me is my co-host, francesca.
Speaker 3: 0:32
Hello.
Speaker 2: 0:34
Okay, great introduction. And today we are so lucky to have two amazing experts with us and we're talking about belonging and unhiding at work. We're going to dive into what belonging and unhiding mean, what they look like in action, why people hide, the true costs of hiding, how to incorporate strategies to nurture belonging and unhiding in the workplace, especially in this climate. And we're going to leave some room for some listener Q&A, and our experts are going to give us their bold predictions on the way out. So let me introduce these lovely folks. With us is Ruth Rothblatt. She is my mentor through the National Speakers Association, but she is also an esteemed TEDx speaker, executive coach, consultant, bestselling, author of three books Single-Handedly Learning to Unhide and Embrace Connection and Unhide and Seek Live your Best Life, do your Best Work. She also was published in Time everybody, so check that out. She's acknowledged for her expertise in unlocking individual and team potential and just all around rad human being.
Speaker 2: 1:42
And also with us is Dr Beth Kaplan. She is the author of Braving the Workplace, which officially launched today. Get this book, it's amazing. She has also been recognized as a must read by the Next Big Idea Club. She's a researcher, writer, thought leader. She's worked with organizations like Salesforce, the University of Pennsylvania, georgetown University and the Carnegie Foundation. She's also developing a groundbreaking belonging tool with the University of Pennsylvania, georgetown University and the Carnegie Foundation. She's also developing a groundbreaking belonging tool with the University of Pennsylvania which will measure belonging and propensity to thrive. Welcome to you both and thanks for joining us today. Thank you, great to be with you.
Speaker 1: 2:19
Yeah, thanks for having this. I'm excited for this conversation.
Speaker 2: 2:23
Yes, Very awesome. I'd love to jump in right away and just learning more about your personal stories, how you got started in this work, what inspired you to start this work. So tell me a little bit more about you guys. Beth, I'll start with you.
Speaker 4: 2:38
Sure so excited to be with all of you today. And, yes, it is launch day, so how exciting is that? Thank you so much for cheering me on. So, believe it or not, I didn't set out to study belonging. However, like most researchers who studied their own trauma, I set out to understand why so many people, myself included, felt like they had to prove their worth just to exist in certain spaces, and the more I researched, the clearer it became belonging. It's always about belonging, and belonging is so complex and everyone has their own definition. So, for me, my exciting gift to the world was redefining and being able to give new tools and a language to something that's a little bit more complex than most of us understand. So, to me, I look at belonging as the innate desire to be part of something larger than ourselves, without sacrificing who we are.
Speaker 2: 3:30
I like it. I like the. Let's not sacrifice ourselves for the greater good? Oh, absolutely. How about you, Ruth?
Speaker 1: 3:36
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in terms of what Beth was just saying that resonates so deeply. I also did not start out to talk about unhiding in my life. I probably was the furthest from wanting to do that, as someone who hid for 25 years a big part of myself. I actually started in the nonprofit space. I was a nonprofit leader and CEO who was focused on young people and helping them express themselves, helping them think about college access and college success, mentoring and education, and it wasn't until I was in a conversation about actually DEI that I started to realize I had been hiding a huge part of myself and I had not shared that with the world. I hadn't shared it with myself, so I had been.
Speaker 1: 4:26
I was born with a disability. I hadn't shared it with myself, so I had been. I was born with a disability. I was born with a limb difference and for your listeners that means I was born missing my left hand, part of my left hand, and when I was 13, I started tucking it in my pocket. When you go off to a new high school, I think some of us have those flashes of what high school can feel like, where it's oh, I have to fit in. Do I make friends? Am I going to get along with people? Who am I going to sit with at lunch? Like all those feelings of high school. And I started hiding at that time and didn't realize the impact it was having on how I was showing up, how I was connecting with people, and didn't even know there was a tool or a conversation or word that could help unhide.
Speaker 1: 5:10
And so that's where I've spent the last few years really delving into that research, delving into what was the process of unhiding and then finding out honestly, beth and Mel and Francesca, that most of us are hiding something about ourselves, and it's exhausting and it's lonely and we come up with a narrative that we think we're the only ones.
Speaker 2: 5:31
Yeah, I don't think we are. I think that's, ruth I, why I love what you're doing so much, because you can't have belonging without unhiding yourself too. So I'm so excited to talk about how these things align together. And yeah, I think we've all can relate to that feeling of not belonging through high school for sure, but some I used to joke often that corporate environments can often feel like high school, where there are certainly cliques or in groups and out groups and navigating political landmines and then, for various reasons, to fit into those groups, you change yourself. I tried to hide my New England accent, but someone called out the R that I add on idea, just little things like that. I think we all do things to try to hide who we are. But today is the purpose of today is like how do we get people comfortable with thinking about belonging differently and what that could look like and how to unhide themselves? So I appreciate it. I'm going to hand it over to Francesca. She's going to dive into how we define it. So thanks.
Speaker 3: 6:30
I think both of these topics are so important in and of themselves, and I know, beth, you started by talking about how belonging is this innate desire to be something or to be part of something bigger than ourselves, without sacrificing ourselves, yes, which I think is your contribution there is there without sacrificing ourselves, which is critical, right. And then I think the unhiding piece, too, I'm curious about just to ground ourselves on how both of these things show up at work, the belonging piece and the unhiding piece. And, beth, I guess we're taking your definition. Is there anything in addition to your core definition about how this shows up at work?
Speaker 4: 7:09
Yeah, there's a lot to say here, and what's really most interesting and probably most confusing to people is they think the opposite of belonging is exclusion. That's one of the biggest misconceptions in the workplace, when in reality, the opposite of belonging is fitting in. Misconceptions in the workplace when in reality the opposite of belonging is fitting in. And why I believe that with so much passion is because fitting in means giving up a part of yourself to be part of something else. Where belonging doesn't require you to give up who you are, it means being who you are right.
Speaker 4: 7:40
A lot of us in the workplace in particular will hide. A lot of us in the workplace in particular will hide, as we know, different parts. They may mask or they may cover or flat out just hide, and we think it's going to make us feel like we belong harder, and that's just not true. It never ends well. I think Ruth's story is so brilliant and so powerful because, a it's real, b all of us can relate to something. And C we understand it right. So I'm sure, ruth, for you all of this is advanced common sense, because you've been living with it forever. And for listeners out there, there's probably something that you feel that you're hiding as well, or you're trying so hard to fit in that you're sacrificing what makes you, and that's going to take a toll. Yeah.
Speaker 3: 8:30
Ruth, are you seeing that too, as you're looking at like on hiding at work too? How are you seeing this come to fruition for people?
Speaker 1: 8:36
Yeah, I think it's what and, beth, you started it so perfectly in terms of that sacrificing yourself part, because that's where it shows up. And I think the other piece that, francesca, you were intimating also is that need to be in corporate. And how is it, how are you fitting in? Because that's a piece that we're told often like we want you to be a good culture fit, we want you to fit in. So that means sometimes sacrificing a piece of yourself, right, or downplaying a piece of yourself or covering a piece of yourself, and for some it actually means to what you said, beth. It means hiding part of yourself, and that comes from we all have a need to want to be accepted right. There's the acceptance piece to this, and I think about it in terms of why I look at.
Speaker 1: 9:22
What's the underlying piece of that? It comes from a fear of rejection, a fear of judgment, a fear of Really. I had a friend recently who said to me I haven't shared part of my health diagnosis out loud because I'm afraid of being pitied. So there's that fear there too. A lot of this is wrapped up in shame, this idea of if I share this part of myself, someone will reject me, someone will judge me. Someone won't give me a promotion because of it. I won't be seen as a leader. I've had women even in 2025, who don't share that they have kids at work because they're afraid of someone saying they're into their motherhood, they care more about their kids. They're not really on track for promotion. So I'm not going to share that part. And that's sacrificing yourself. That is absolutely sacrificing yourself to fit in, to go home. So I do. I think about it, how it shows up.
Speaker 1: 10:18
I think the other piece I would add on is in the workplace. Many of us were taught a very old school mentality around leadership and a framework around leadership. We were taught that you're not supposed to share things about yourself. You're supposed to keep people at arm's length. You're supposed to be, not be vulnerable and not share challenges. You're supposed to be strong, and the definition of strong was the idea of a mask of armor around yourself. And so that plays in, because then that's how our employees see us. So then they can't make mistakes, either because they're afraid oh, I'm going to be, I'm going to upset them or I'm not going to. I need to be perfect. There's a full affection piece to unhiding yeah, oh go ahead, beth, sorry, no, I was just thinking about you.
Speaker 4: 11:03
made me think, ruth, about duck syndrome. Right, that's when you start to see certain things evolve like duck syndrome, where people make it look so effortless and then they're peddling their little feet so hard to keep up in the name of resilience at times or fitting in or all the things, and we're all hardwired for deep human connection, but there's something about us that makes us feel unworthy of it. That seems to feel like the universal work experience these days.
Speaker 3: 11:30
Which is totally nuts, because I think about the archetype of leadership, ruth, that you were talking about, and what it takes to get there, beth, in terms of the duck syndrome, and it feels like we've all grown up in this archetype of the sports leader, the coach or the war hero. Right, you have to be Shackleton or you have to be the freaking coach from Miracle on Ice. It's one of these two.
Speaker 3: 11:52
And when you unpack any of those things. Yes, they demonstrated these certain behaviors, but then, behind the scenes, they were masking shit too, and so this is all built on a farce from Get.
Speaker 4: 12:04
Yeah, absolutely. And the thing is you said something that caught my attention. We would like to mirror these performance coaches, but here's the thing Performance coaches are invested in their athletes' health and their well-being. Where they'll stop you if you're overdoing it or you're going to burn yourself out. Workplace rewards it. The more sweat and tears you put into it, you're getting promoted, girl. And the thing is it makes us want to work harder and we also think that our sacrifice will make us belong harder, and that's why sacrificial belonging makes sense to most people. It's giving up a part of yourself, consciously or subconsciously, for the greater good and, spoiler alert, it never works. Never. It doesn't make you feel any better.
Speaker 1: 12:48
No. And to add on to that too, I think there's a piece around. A symptom of it is also overachieving right or overcompensating. This need to keep the duck feet going, or sometimes even to loud yourself with in terms of this is how much I'm doing Like this is how much I'm constantly overachieving or overcompensating so that I get ahead, so that nobody will look at that other part of myself that I'm hiding in some ways, and also then I don't have to share it with anyone, I can overcompensate for it and it's exhausting when you think about psychological safety and its role in nurturing belonging or creating spaces where people can unhide.
Speaker 2: 13:43
What does that? What does good psychological safety look like in the workplace?
Speaker 4: 13:47
to support it it's a good question. I think psychological safety is the feeling of being safe, no matter what environment you are to be able to speak up to speak your truth, to speak truth to power, and I think it's all the things. The interesting thing is, in order to have a strong sense of belonging, psychological safety needs to be table stakes. It doesn't mean you'll necessarily have that sense of belonging or maybe this aspirational sense of belonging that you may be searching for, but you really can't go through the workplace feeling that belonging uncertainty, for example which is the silent killer and feel safe at the same time. Those thoughts don't exist together and most psychological safety is based on a positive. So when you're starting with a negative and you're trying to combat it with negative forces, like sacrifice or any thwarted feelings in general, it's going to end badly, yeah.
Speaker 1: 14:44
It's funny when I speak, I often ask people, the organizer, I say what does success look like? When I finish the speech, what will?
Speaker 4: 14:53
it look like.
Speaker 1: 14:53
They say oh, there's an awareness raised that people will feel like they're digging into themselves but also their coworkers. And then one organizer said to me it would be great if everyone could unhide something. And I said absolutely not. And she said what do you mean? I said I'm not trying to create a Jerry Springer viral moment here with people. That's not the goal. I want people to feel safe. I said the only way that I will even consider doing this is if the leader, the CEO, goes first. And the organizer said that's never going to happen.
Speaker 1: 15:31
I said I know, so why would we expect others to unhide if it's not safe? Because I really spend a lot of time in my space thinking about how was I as a leader, when did I create that psychological safety for others? When did I model it myself in terms of creating that space? Because it is about leaders going first in terms of creating psychological safety, being vulnerable, creating that safe place. And I think the thing that I sorry I would just add on to this is the idea of sometimes we hide and it keeps people feeling comfortable and safe. Also, there is a payoff to hiding in terms of creating safety and psychological safety for others, sometimes because maybe it's too much, and so I think about it on both ends. Why do we hide? And then, how are those around us? How are we creating that safe, comfortable space for them?
Speaker 4: 16:25
Absolutely. I'm going to chime in because we do those things on purpose, because the hiding sometimes feels better than facing something head on that may feel really uncomfortable. I talk about this a lot in the book about the different disorders that are related to the workplace, and one of them happens to be avoidance disorder, and I would raise my hand and tell you that I'm amongst the worst, in fact, in a way that makes every leader that I've ever had feel better about me. There's sometimes when I've had leaders in the past I haven't maybe talked to them for a month or so and a one-on-one will come up and I'm like there's just too much to say and they're so busy. So I'll go to them and I'll cancel and I'll be like I don't have that much and you're busy, they love it. It's almost like it's addictive. The last leader I had that I said that and I did that with said to me you, just you're the best.
Speaker 4: 17:14
I can't understand how I got so lucky and, truthfully, what I had to force myself to the next time was to let her know that I was avoiding her and it was incredibly uncomfortable because she did nothing to warrant it. I need to also make that very clear it was on me. It was a story I was telling myself that she was too busy, that I wasn't as important, that she had bigger fish to fry. I could keep going and going, but the reality of the situation is that I was not comfortable communicating with her because so much time kept passing. So I'm sure there's other people out there that are listening. That may get that very well and, like I said, it's often rewarded because you're giving time back in someone's mind.
Speaker 2: 18:00
I think we've all been there, right when we're like, I just don't want to bother them, so I'm not going to ask. I'll suffer in silence over here it's fine, but death by a million, it's fine where the hell am I going with this Is where is the line Like?
Speaker 3: 18:26
if it's psychological safety, like a bell curve right when you want to create as much safety for people to feel like they're comfortable, but not too much safety where they're too comfortable. Does this make sense?
Speaker 4: 18:36
Yes, it does, because there's comfort, and then there's also self-awareness. A lot of times people ask me that all the time, is it safe to bring your authentic self to work? Yes, but you should not be in spots that you shouldn't be loyal, in spots that your brain can't get you out of. And it's the same thing with psychological safety. Knowing and being self-aware has to accompany it. It really does. There's things that are just not appropriate, and those are typically not necessarily related to your identity.
Speaker 2: 19:07
Or necessarily right for the workplace. That's right, yeah, when you think about a professional environment versus a personal environment.
Speaker 3: 19:15
Ruth, do you feel like you could bring your authentic self to work?
Speaker 1: 19:18
No, and I you know what. I don't even actually always advise it quite yet, because I think that we're not totally set up for it. I think that sometimes in the workplace we don't have the coaches and the supports and the leaders who are willing to go first and the support that it requires, because what it may mean to bring my authentic self to work if I'm someone and maybe it's one of your listeners as well is bringing my depression forward right.
Speaker 1: 19:44
That authentic self. It may mean the caretaking responsibilities that I have at home, that I'm afraid to tell somebody that because somebody is going to say, oh, you know what, you're more interested in taking care of your child or your parent or your child or somebody in your life, and so I'm not totally convinced that we're there yet. I would love that to be the North Star, where we could bring our best selves to work, because that's what I'm invested in is how do we bring our best selves to work? I will say, even with that though there's a caveat to me in terms of my work that I talk about strategic hiding that sometimes feels okay to hide part of yourself because it's not advantageous to whether you're in a lawsuit or you're in a negotiation or you're in something that bringing your authentic self would damage or hurt you in terms of that space. So I think about it as strategic hiding. How do we allow for ourselves to discern when we unhide, when we create that space for ourselves? Is it a safe environment?
Speaker 1: 20:48
I was at a speed dating thing recently and I was thinking about my hand and did it feel safe to share it with people in a seven minute cycle where you're going around and checking in. Did it feel safe in that moment? It's about having agency, about when do we choose to unhide, when do we choose to hide. So I get the choice of when do I share that out? And I think that's the same with any aspect, whether it's we hide parts of our past, whether it's we hide parts of our present, or even I've had people share that they hide parts of their dreams and aspirations. So it's that when do we share it so that we can feel supported? That's when I think about spreading, and how is it holding us back? What are some of?
Speaker 2: 21:30
the like signals that someone can look for or kind of pay attention for to or for in order to make those split decision thing, split decisions around whether it's safe to unhide, or what does that look like for both of you?
Speaker 4: 21:50
That's a really great question. So I, through the conversation, I was thinking about one of the types of belonging which is called dissimulated belonging, and it's confusing to people. Truthfully, dissimulated belonging is when you do feel a sense of belonging, but maybe not in the context you're in. Let's just say that Ruth is a phenomenal employee, but she's just not the corporate cheerleader and, by the way, she doesn't want to be and she's happy. But we all know the workplace wants corporate cheerleaders. We want everyone rolling out the drink cart for happy hour and we want everyone to be able to go after work. After you've just spent nine hours with your nearest and dearest and spend another five hours with them, and there's some people that get their purpose outside of work, which sounds blasphemous to some of us. So dissimulated belonging is a great example of people that are very happy with their sense of belonging, right, and they may just need to get out of there because why not? But it's never acceptable to say that right.
Speaker 4: 22:45
I hear time and time again there was a work event and I need to go work out after work, but I lied and I said I have to get home because my commute is too long and I'm going to pick up work when I get home and then everyone's like oh, that makes sense.
Speaker 4: 22:58
And why should we have to hide the fact that we don't necessarily want to be a workhorse, because that's what gets us promoted, or to be seen better in people's eyes. It's really sad when the state of the world is that that is a factor in promotion. I know you both know this very well. I think what we used to say in the early 2000s which makes me cringe every time is we would be at the promotion table with I don't know, it might've been like a 50 bucks. Then now it's two bucks or four bucks and we'd be like can you get a drink with him? Guys, remember that one or dissimulated belongers. They have a sense of belonging. It's just not in your workplace and, by the way, they don't feel bad about it. It's usually everyone around them and that's yeah.
Speaker 3: 23:46
I've also had the. They're accused of not really being in it. If they don't go to the happy hour, or it's like this. It's a, and then it becomes a culture fit issue. Oh, they don't really want it.
Speaker 4: 23:55
Some people also don't want to hang with their boss after work. Yeah, boss is not. It's never the most comfortable situation and it doesn't matter how close you are, because sometimes that's even harder in that right. So I think that's one great example of hiding that takes place. That's appropriate, because we're not all built the same and we all get different motivations, and most of us don't like to share when it's not work that it's their motivating factor.
Speaker 1: 24:23
Yeah, sometimes bosses don't want to go to the happy hour. Oh yeah, so I totally understand that, and sometimes they do, and then they're like nobody wants me here. But, I think the other piece to some of this is, as leaders and managers, we focus a lot on performance.
Speaker 1: 24:40
We focus on productivity and sometimes we forget about people Right, and we make a lot of assumptions about behavior rather than checking in, and so I'm a big proponent of what do those pause check-ins look like, right, when you first sit down with someone with your full agenda, how do you create space to find out how they are, how you can support them? How do you slow it down a little bit? Because I think again, I sometimes I own my leadership style for years. How do we slow it down a little bit so that we can have the conversation about how are you doing? How can I support you? What's going on?
Speaker 1: 25:16
I'm noticing some things in your work, just so people have a space, a safe space, to be able to talk about it, and that it's consistent, because there's definitely research out there. That's talking about consistency, and there's also research about I think I guess the first piece to all of this Francesca and Mel and Beth is naming it right. So we have to be able to name that. Hiding is universal. Most of us are doing it at some point.
Speaker 1: 25:39
What does it look like? How is it holding you back? Deloitte did a study 60% of people are hiding. Randstadt, the HR survey, did a survey recently that said that 68% of Gen Z the ones that have all the apps and all the social media that we think oh, they're out there all the time they talk about 68% of them are hiding and they don't trust their leaders to unhide too, so they just keep their noses down in their work and they're like I'll get through it. That is not existence, that is not freedom, that is not joy, that is not belonging.
Speaker 2: 26:10
It's got to be really bad for business too, when you think about it, right, because what are you missing out on by not nurturing these types of environments? I'm going to hand it over to Francesca to talk about that, because I'd love to hear about the cost.
Speaker 3: 26:24
Yeah, I'm going to start, I'm going to try to say I want to separate these two because I'm curious if there is a difference in the cost. And I'm going to start, ruth, with you, without a hiding piece of it what is the cost of hiding at work? And you can take that from the employee, from the org, from the manager. What's the cost?
Speaker 1: 26:39
Yeah, I think there's a personal cost and I think there's a professional cost. I like to split them. The personal cost is it's exhausting. It takes a toll on our mental and our physical health. That is a big piece of it. It is lonely in terms of you think you're the only one, so you sit there and you're like, oh, nobody's going to understand this. So there's this loneliness, isolation piece to it. And then there's also feeling disconnected. That's that belonging piece that I think Beth talks about and I want to even hear more and dig into that piece. So there's that personal piece.
Speaker 1: 27:10
And then from a professional piece, when we're hiding, we don't feel as engaged right Our company, even as leaders, we're not as engaged. We don't feel the same sense of loyalty to the company that we're working for. The retention suffers. That's a big piece of when you're hiding.
Speaker 1: 27:26
And then the last piece, which I think is probably one of the most critical pieces in terms of the bottom line of any business, is innovation. Innovation suffers when you are so sitting there worried about how much if somebody finds out this thing about me, or wow, I didn't go to the right school, or my education's not high enough, or my finances aren't what they're supposed to be, or my relationship status. It is preoccupying your mind that you don't get a chance to be as innovative and as creative as you need to be, and I can tell you, as someone who was born with a difference, I spent my life being creative, but when I hid that, that got taken away because I was so spent so much time in that other space of hiding, and so that retention, that engagement and that innovation are lacking, and even our leadership then lacks because we don't feel connected to our teams.
Speaker 3: 28:20
Yeah, and those are big costs and all things that are absolutely needed, right, yeah?
Speaker 4: 28:26
So I can tell you that employee engagement costs the US anywhere between $450 and $550 billion annually. That's pretty sad and crazy. And if we want to dive a little deeper, when it's loneliness driven or stress related in particular, it costs $154 billion annually are stress-related in particular, it costs $154 billion annually. That's just unbelievable. It feels like the things we're putting in place are really killing a fly with a hammer. There's nothing more to that, and a lot of the times these things could be fixed with just simple care. That's what's scary.
Speaker 4: 29:00
Employees that feel excluded are 50% more likely to leave than those who feel a strong sense of belonging. Okay, so we think about this. We think of belonging uncertainty, which I always call the silent killer, which leads to presenteeism, where employees are physically present, they're all mentally checked out, and there's so many varieties of disengagement when care costs us very little and I always say to people that feel like unhiding or belonging is a bit hokier because it has anything to do with emotions Then if you don't want to, if you want to look at it in a bottom lines numbers kind of game, then look at the disengagement and look how much it's costing you. We used to say something like it costs one to two times a person's salary and now they're estimating it's four times. Oh wow, because it goes beyond the onboarding and the retention, the recruiting and the different efforts. It cycles back to the top level vision and problems the company's face.
Speaker 3: 29:56
All those like the 2x, the 3x, the 4x numbers. I think what's interesting about those is one is that scales right. It scales from individual contributor up to exact right and I believe me, I've met disengaged C-level folks. This isn't just a manager or a frontline person, this is all the way to the top, which is massive. The other thing I'm curious about, too, is especially when you have a leader who's disengaged, a leader that doesn't feel like they belong, like that's got to cast a shadow in an organization. I just I can't. I cannot believe that you could have a disengaged leader or someone that doesn't feel like they belong or someone that feels like they're hiding, yet they're creating an organization that has that.
Speaker 4: 30:38
Do you see that? Yeah, it's in the research that I've done. What happens to the leader, and I will say this. So psychological safety does focus around the fact that the leader needs to build that safety, but what happens when the leader needs to build it for themselves?
Speaker 4: 30:52
I often feel like the workplace demands so much of leaders, and what about their safety? That being said, I know that the leaders are mostly causing the harm, so I'm not naive in that sense. But when leaders themselves don't feel a sense of belonging, it permeates in so many different ways, including a lot of armchair therapy. That happens with your subordinates who don't know what they're doing. And since people look to their leaders in times of change, yes, it's killing the innovation that Ruth talked about but it's also can be really soul crushing because, unfortunately, people think their leaders are better than them. They look to their leaders to know more than them, and that's just not always the case.
Speaker 4: 31:31
That's why, in truthfulness, we talked about leadership training. But I'll tell you, I'm one of those people that never received leadership training until I was like 10 to 15 years. In. Leaders are typically made, not born, that way, and so most of us were promoted because we were just really good at our jobs. So there's this unfair standard, and now, especially, most workplaces expect their leaders to have an element of psychology that we've never been trained for.
Speaker 3: 31:59
Yeah, nor do we have time for right. It's Mel and I are pulling the longitudinal data on, like the amount of direct reports managers have right now has almost doubled Like you have more to do. You have more resources or more direct reports, more on your plate, and now, all of a sudden, you need to be a therapist and maybe you went through manager training and you're not getting leadership training until you're a VP or an SVP or an EVP, so everyone in between is like fighting for themselves, absolutely.
Speaker 1: 32:29
And the workforce is changing too.
Speaker 1: 32:32
In terms of newer to the workforce, there is a level of transparency that they're demanding from leadership in a very interesting and intense way, really political correct here. That's a piece of it. And then also, you have, for the first time, one of the blessings of what came out of COVID is the opportunity to talk about mental health for the first time, especially as leaders, and honestly even owning it for themselves, right, and being able to talk about it. And yet how? To your point, leaders are required to do a lot right now and employees are demanding, and yet we have this old, this way that we were trained, if we did get training, or even if we just watched leaders ahead of us. In terms of that osmosis, training of this is the way leaders are supposed to be, and it hasn't caught up in terms of how and that's why, where I spend my time, even like you, beth, thinking about graduate schools, right, or even where that college is thinking about what do leaders need and what are they going to need in terms of this work?
Speaker 3: 33:33
And organizationally, how do we set up systems that they can actually operate within too? It's like the two different components of it for sure, right.
Speaker 4: 33:40
Think about all the return to work, all the things that leaders have to deal with. If you're a leader who works from home and then you have because you're in a remote office, then you have to enforce other people Right After. You've just talked about the fact of how great it is to have no commute or the things that you can get done or how you're supplementing that time with things that are healthy for you, and then you have to take that away from others.
Speaker 2: 34:03
It's pretty taxing things that are healthy for you and then you have to take that away from others.
Speaker 2: 34:07
It's pretty taxing. It's funny when we were coming out of COVID we had a friend share a story with us like the catalyst, as we started to talk about building this podcast, which the first episode idea officially was something like Gucci sweaters and lake house dreams, because I think our friend mentioned they were in an all handshands meeting about returning to office while the leader was in their second lake house talking about being at their lake house wearing a very expensive Gucci sweater and just not thinking about the impact on folks with what that does for their team. Love to hear what you can do as an individual, if, if you're a leader, or really what orgs should be doing. So we talked a little bit about individual right and what it means to bring your authentic self and how you can evaluate that. But what other advice would you give to individuals here who are struggling with hiding or struggling with belonging? What advice would you give or strategies to those individuals? Ruth, you want to go first.
Speaker 1: 35:29
No, you can go first. I definitely have a framework, so I'm ready for that.
Speaker 4: 35:33
So if we're talking about individuals, I like to say that you control the narrative. So everyone wants one-on-one time with their leaders. Build the agenda, make sure that you're taking control of that. I often say the exact same thing to leaders is that's your employees' time with you. So, while you may come into the meeting with at least like 15 checklist items you need to do because you need to report to someone else that's their time with you. Your job in that meeting is to meet them where they're at.
Speaker 4: 36:04
The number one thing that our employees want from leaders is care. Right, it's not, I wish. Every single time I hear this, people are like oh trust, oh respect, and it's always care. And care has a really large spectrum thoughtfulness, candor, advocacy. There's so many components to it. And when you tell, when you as an individual go to your manager and you're able to have a conversation with them about what it means to be successful in role, it also is a wake-up call for them to say what is successful as a leader, right, how are people going to want to follow me?
Speaker 4: 36:40
So I always say to individuals is to build the agenda and to make sure that your leaders are sticking with it. At the same time, leaders, when you're opening up your calls with people, the first thing on your mouth should be what can I do for you? What interference can I remove? And as you walk through that agenda with them, start to also remember what's important to that person. You need to get to know them outside of this little Zoom box here and you need to be able to know what's important. And that may be. You may be thinking to yourself I don't know what they do on the weekends and I don't know what's important to them, but that's not what I mean. What values do they have? What do they like about their jobs? And make sure at all costs that you do something that helps light them up.
Speaker 3: 37:23
Really huge.
Speaker 4: 37:24
You want to always make sure that you're doing things that show them that you know who they are, and that's really one of the biggest things that helps change our sense of longing in the workplace.
Speaker 1: 37:36
Ruth, yeah, and I think where Beth and I definitely overlap is that it's a choice, right. It's a powerful choice that you get to make, and I think that holds true with unhiding as well. And for me there's a four-step framework that I created in whether it's an individual, or I was just meeting with someone who inherited a really toxic quote, unquote team and I said try this framework. And so the first step is acknowledging it, right Only, like creating a space of awareness, like whether it's again as an individual or whether it's a leader or whether it's managing a team. It's the idea of acknowledge what's happening, like create awareness, and I, you can do that through journaling, you can do that through therapy, through meditation, through just taking a silent moment to be a little bit what I call self-centered, right, like centering on yourself and think about that space. The second piece to it is inviting someone in, and I imagine when I say that second step, somebody immediately comes to your mind, right, somebody, whether it's an HR leader, whether it's your manager, whether it's a coworker, whether it's a friend, to say, hey, here's what's happening. When that person came to me with a toxic work environment, I said what's beautiful about what you're doing is you're inviting each person in one-on-one, not making this a group, collective thing, but starting to talk about individual behavior, talking about inviting them in. Here's what I'm seeing, same with hiding how am I showing up? What am I holding back? How is hiding, holding me back and inviting that one person in that you can share that with? I imagine the people I think about as the cheat sheet is somebody who shows empathy, somebody who asks questions with kindness and curiosity, someone who's willing to reveal a little bit about themselves and share their own journey with you, someone who asks questions. That's the person I'd be looking for in that second step.
Speaker 1: 39:34
The third step, after you've acknowledged it and you've invited someone in, is about how do you then build community? And we've all seen those employee resource groups or business resource groups. They actually can If you step back. They have a lot of power because there's a shared experience in terms of people who have gone through them. There you can find meetups and community organizations, finding spaces where you don't feel so alone in this. These steps are small, but they're powerful.
Speaker 1: 40:04
And then the fourth step is scaring out your own journey so that somebody else can see themselves in you and they can start on their own journey of unhiding. They can start on their own journey. That same leader who said I have this toxic work environment, start on their own journey. That same leader who said I have this toxic work environment. I said, once you've gotten through a lot of it and gotten your team to the place they need to be, I can imagine and I would probably bet money on this, and I don't bet money easily but that there is another team within the organization that could use what you just did to their benefit in terms of creating their team and improving their team. So, sharing out that story so that somebody else can learn and start their own journey, and mapping it out, that's where I think about unhiding.
Speaker 2: 40:46
I think that's really powerful. And what you were just sharing actually made me think of Beth One identifying the one person to share it with. So I love Ruth like that. How do you identify that person? What are the markers? But then, beth, it made me think of your story with your boss. What, just bringing it back to that personal story, what gave you the courage to finally share, what made it safe for you the avoidance.
Speaker 4: 41:11
For me, what made it safe was probably less to do about her and more to do about me. I was just going, I was going out of my mind. I I'm so tired of being so nervous before every one-on-one, and I did wind up telling her that and she was like me. I'm the one who makes you nervous, and we had a great conversation around it. I'm like you make everyone nervous. She's like you've got thick skin and at the same time, maybe I didn't.
Speaker 4: 41:39
When it comes to her, and what she had told me which was really wonderful and showed me care, maybe not in the direction she was meaning it was that she sees me as a person that she wants to build thicker, even thicker skin with. So every single time I go to hide, she's going to stop me. So every single time I go to hide, she's going to stop me. And it's not because she wants to control me. It's because she really wants me to be a better version of myself, because I told her I need to be a better version. So she's not controlling me or making me be something I'm not. She's, in fact, bringing out a better part of me and let's be honest, isn't that why we all got into leadership?
Speaker 4: 42:15
Because you want to coach and grow people? I did for the money, yeah, because you love filling out a million forms. That's right. It just does it for you, but that's it, and I think what was really fascinating is that changed our entire dynamic. It really did. I think that most people weren't very honest with her and they were just yesing her and I think, out of everyone I've ever met, she's the last person you do that with and most of our leaders don't want to be. Yes, they really do want honesty from people, but her entire conversation that's just not always easy to do. Yeah, Scary.
Speaker 3: 42:51
The one thing I have always thought about as a leader is it's really those one-on-ones are so important and when you start moving them or canceling them, or if somebody starts canceling them with me, that's like a non-negotiable Like we are. This is your time, this is sacred time, Because I think that in and of itself shows care just to keep those consistent and keep those on the calendar. So it's meaningful to you as the leader as well.
Speaker 4: 43:20
Oh yeah, consistency is care. That's absolutely true. Honestly, one of my best and brightest I've ever had the fortune of leading said that to me. He said you give me such anxiety because you move meetings. And I know that you have valid reasons and I thought to myself oh my goodness, an excuse, no matter how many, how valid, is a bad book. And I've never moved that person's one-on-one, and it's been years and years and, by the way, we still talk about it. He still can't believe what the impact had and as a leader, I had no idea. So, leaders, if you're out there listening, don't change your one-on-one times as much as you can keep them consistent.
Speaker 1: 44:06
It means the world to people, yeah, and if you put your hand up to say I just need five minutes, go find the person after the five minutes so that they can know that you do want to see them and care about find them. Yeah, because I think we also. I think what you're also touching on, beth, is especially in the example you gave is sometimes we have that unreliable narrator in our head right that tells us that this person is this or I'm this to them, or like we don't, and we don't pause to check it out. We don't stop and get the actual this is a tough one actual, accurate information. Yes, I didn't add another A on there, but that's a piece of it is this unreliable narrator who is giving us false information, sometimes trying to keep us safe because, oh, maybe that boss was super scary at times or maybe you know what you weren't ready for a meeting, but it's the idea of yeah, how do we check out that unreliable narrator?
Speaker 2: 44:56
I always ask my coaching clients to ask themselves what evidence do I have to show this is true? What evidence do you have? And often when they pause to think about that, they're like you know what? I really don't have evidence to prove that. So it's such a just even that one question can help with that. I'd love to move to like organization-wide, because leaders will wait for the the last because they get dumped on everything. So, from an org standpoint because I do think it starts at the org level, they set the tone right. When you think about how organizations can implement either strategies or policy, workplace policies around, how we work around here, what are some things that they can do to better foster environments where people have greater belonging or can feel safe to unhide. What does that look like? Or what have you seen? That's good.
Speaker 4: 45:48
I would take a look at taking all the unwritten rules and writing them down. It's one of the first things I say. It's the easiest low-hanging fruit Things like PTO. It's the easiest low-hanging fruit Things like PTO, which is meant to de-stress people, stresses them out terribly. Oh, my goodness, I had three weeks before, but the second I take more than one week. Someone jumps all over me. There's so many things that just need a bit of clarification, because clear is kind. So all the unwritten rules and all the social contracts start breaking them and writing them down.
Speaker 1: 46:20
And I think I would add on to it unwritten rules and all the social contracts, start breaking them and writing them down, and I think I would add on to it, I guess, the thing that as you're talking about like organizations, though, are people right. So it's like leader. I do look at leaders and I do think about leadership, and I think it's a two-way street. If leaders are willing, if we're asking leaders to be vulnerable and do all these things, employees have to meet us also halfway, right, like it has to be. It's a two way street, and I do. I think that there's a space around training.
Speaker 1: 46:48
I do think that there's a space, like it's the dirty little secret that even most CEOs I know have executive coaches. Right, there's a reason for it, and yet they don't talk about it, because it's like the idea that, oh, you're weak if you have that, or you don't know what you're doing, and yet why is it such a dirty little secret? Why are people hiding it? Like it's that space of this is. Actually it's like people who go to therapy being like, oh, I don't want to talk about going to therapy, it actually makes you stronger. So we can start to normalize leadership, executive coaching and training and what those pieces and starting with people. That's why going back to colleges and education around leadership is so important, because that's that informs the organization, because an organization is just as a typically just a spreadsheet or a what do you call it A hierarchy and or building. It's actually who's in there and are they thinking about these topics that we're bringing up today?
Speaker 2: 47:42
Because they're critical. They really are. I agree with you. I think recently I think it was Culture Amp they put out an article, that famous quote oh, people don't leave organizations, they leave their direct managers. They did further research on that and found that even if you had the worst manager or the best manager in the world, you're more likely to leave if senior leadership doesn't model the behavior that supports leaders. So, like, when I think of like organization wide, I think of that like C-suite senior leadership team, that really it starts with them from the top. And I couldn't agree with you more, Ruth, about I wish coaching just started from the day you join through the day you leave as an alumni, Like it's just like therapy, like it just supports you to be better and to be better with other people.
Speaker 1: 48:27
And then sometimes isn't seen as it shouldn't be seen as a punishment, like you're not punished because you actually see an executive coach, or we recommend that. It's the idea of yeah, and I'm even I don't know if I'm totally even convinced that it's always about senior leadership. Sometimes it is. It's the training about how do we value the space. Yeah, I think there's a lot here to unpack.
Speaker 3: 48:49
I actually feel like, given what is going on in the world right now, I would arm every C-level executive with a coach, with a therapist, if they were ready for it and if they wanted it. But I do not understand how you can go through and lead an organization in these times and not need both of those services at least every three to six months. I really don't. Yeah, thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Speaker 2: 49:25
Okay, we have a few listener Q&As and we have about nine minutes left. We'll get to that and then we'll close off on some bold predictions. How does that sound? Love it.
Speaker 3: 49:30
All right, francesca, I am great. We have four questions that came in. I will do my best to read them and then whoever would like to answer them. Fantastic, here we go. I've been told to bring my full self to work, but when I speak up or show more personality, I sometimes feel like it backfires. I worry about being judged or seen as unprofessional. How can I balance authenticity with workplace expectations?
Speaker 1: 49:52
I can try this one.
Speaker 1: 49:54
This is where I spend time. I do. I think it's about finding a culture fit in terms of your authentic self. Where will they value that space of you? And if they're not valuing it, I'm not saying you have to leave every job, but are there spaces within that organization that you can be your best self? Because I don't even know if it's.
Speaker 1: 50:12
Again, authentic is the right word. I think it's how do you bring your best self where you get the support you need? And if you're not getting it from a manager or your coworkers, are there other opportunities to find it? And have you asked? Have you gone through the process of asking?
Speaker 1: 50:26
And again, it's not trying to make it a viral moment, it's about trying to think about taking those small steps. So how can you get the support you need around that best self or where you need support? So it's I think about it as small steps and thinking about where are those safe environments where you can be vulnerable or where others are modeling that? And then leaning into those employee resource groups, leaning into the spaces or coworkers where you can and, if all else fails, find a new job. And I'm not saying that lightly, I am serious when I say it is find a culture fit where they do appreciate the different perspectives and different experiences that you bring, because that's the work. The North Star here is how do we create workplaces where they do value different experiences and different perspectives?
Speaker 3: 51:15
I also love that you said about asking too, because I think a lot of times people think it's just going to show up or arrive or be obvious, and so much of the time you have to do a little digging before you start looking. Potentially too, beth, anything to add to that?
Speaker 4: 51:30
I always say that if you're worried about the way you're coming across or the way you're showing up, ask advice or ask someone, one person that you trust, whether that's your leader or it's a trusted friend how am I showing up? Because I'm getting a little anxious when I say X, y or Z, do a little gut check, never hurts, yeah.
Speaker 3: 51:47
Yeah, love it. These are small, very doable things that can really have a very big impact. I love that. All right, I'm going to pull this over to you, beth, for the first one, because we're talking about belonging. My company talks a lot about belonging, but in practice it feels like only certain types of people truly fit in. I'm not sure if I'm being too sensitive or if there's a real issue. How can employees tell if a workplace genuinely supports authenticity, and what should they do if they don't feel safe being themselves? I'll start with you, beth.
Speaker 4: 52:16
Been there, done that. So I always like to say, when I talk about it a lot in the book, what does alignment look like, or misalignment? If a company is telling you that their biggest values are trust, respect and the color purple right, there's so many different things Are they wearing purple? Do they trust one another and they're respecting? So when it becomes lip service, that's when we all have that deep disconnect. So you have to really determine whether or not you feel that pull or you feel aligned to it.
Speaker 4: 52:47
If you're not feeling it there, then you really have some things to think about. Whether you're, you know, like when you become in an impasse, our first instinct is to quit. Right, but livelihood is tied to our jobs. That's not realistic for everyone and here's the problem If we don't resolve it within the last place we left, it's going to come with us to every other job.
Speaker 4: 53:08
Okay, so I talk a lot about some nasty bosses I've had in the past and I've talked about the fact that one still follows me. They do, he does, and I can't help it, and I've even made strides to reach out to him and it feels like I was kind to someone that punched me in the face, if that makes sense. So there's ways to do it that you feel that you are going with your gut and you're trusting yourself, but quitting is not one of them, unfortunately. In this situation, I would do a little bit more of a deeper analysis around what the fit looks like against your values and then, if it's not a fit, then I would slowly start to look, because if it's eroding your sense of self or your worth or your identity or your sense of mattering, those are all triggers that it is time to leave. You just need to do it in a time and a space that's going to make your life easier.
Speaker 3: 53:59
All right, I'm going to do one last question just for the sake of time here. Sure, let's get into politics. Just kidding, okay. With the current political climate and companies pulling back on DEI efforts which we know, sometimes belonging and hiding is lumped in there with DEI sometimes I've noticed a shift in how belonging and inclusion are talked about, or not talked about, at work. How should employees and leaders navigate these changes while still advocating for workplaces where everyone feels valued?
Speaker 4: 54:28
So my first bet is to stop shifting to belonging and I know that's really funny from a belonging researcher. But when we impose belonging, there's a whole lot of performance belonging that starts to happen. Right, and, by the way, corporations are not that creative. But when we impose belonging, there's a whole lot of performance belonging that starts to happen. Right, and, by the way, corporations are not that creative. If I hear one more you belong here slogan as the theme of 2025, because the thing is, it's not that easy and belonging is not something that others decide for you. That's inclusion.
Speaker 4: 54:54
So if you want to make it a more inclusive environment, I welcome it. If you want to tell people they belong, I caution you, because that is a beautiful sentiment, but it's not always the case. And then employees feel really bad or like it's just them or something's wrong with them and that's not the outcome we want for them, right? I don't think companies set out to ruin people's lives I don't but at the same time, those are the outcomes. So I personally think and I do have research that really pulls them apart from one another Diversity, equity, inclusion, equality they're all so important. Don't lump them together and don't call them belonging just because you want to really substitute for something that is being unfortunately torn away from people.
Speaker 3: 55:37
Yeah, that's a brilliant point, ruth. What would you add there?
Speaker 1: 55:41
Yeah, I would recognize that this is happening. I think that's a so I'm glad you asked the question because if it hadn't come up, I think that it impacts both the work that Beth and I do and also the work that you are doing, mel and Francesca. In terms of DEI specifically and I think that's it's funny I was on a panel a year ago and it was before a lot of this real serious backlash. There was beginning backlash that we've been feeling and people feeling excluded in some ways. What DEI didn't do well is it had some people feeling excluded from the conversation and there was a really powerful speaker that I was on the panel with and he said you know what?
Speaker 1: 56:17
I'm going to start calling it a humanity practice, because nobody can start to argue with that, and I thought that was really beautiful because we are all about humanity. We're about different. How do we start to again value those different perspectives and those different experiences from employees and to leaders and to the organization? How do we start to really create space for that? Because that is going to drive business, that is going to be the impact on innovation and creativity, that impacts retention and engagement. Those differences that we bring are actually the gifts that we have. So I know that DEI, quote, unquote is going away and this kind of falls into the last my bold prediction. But I'm going to these bold predictions.
Speaker 2: 57:22
I have some targeted questions first. So, ruth, I don't know if we'll get to it right away, but I want to save it, so we have to make time for that. Five years from now, guys are workplaces getting this right. What do you think?
Speaker 1: 57:39
Think about 2020 to 2025, right. What do you think? Think about 2020 to 2025, right, that's a five-year segment, right. What did we get right and what did we not? Based on a huge pandemic. So I think about culture that way too.
Speaker 4: 57:51
What are we going?
Speaker 1: 57:51
to oh, that's a tough one. I don't know. I don't. I think if you had asked me yeah, if you had asked us a month ago, maybe six weeks ago.
Speaker 1: 58:06
I'd be different. Maybe I don't. I think that there's going to be a. I think we are going to get it right, because I yeah, I'm going to be positive on this one, I'm going to own it, because I think there are enough of us that are upset and seeing what's happening and we've had a taste of what it can look like to value difference and what it can be like to feel like we are included. And I'm scared to say, beth, but we have a taste of it, right, so we can't go back. When you see something, you can't unsee it, and so we've seen a taste of what it is. And I think that there are enough of us that keep pushing the envelope and don't get scared, because that fear is real, even not wanting to sign up for a website and putting a fake address. I've been doing that lately because I'm scared of that, but I'm like, no, that's not the way we push forward. So I'm going to say, yes, we're on the road to getting it right.
Speaker 2: 58:57
I'm going to contact you in five years. No, what do you think?
Speaker 4: 59:02
Seth, I think it's going to require a lot of bravery, and I think bravery in the workplace is being yourself every day in a world that tells you to be someone else or something different. So I am one of the most positive people you're going to meet. It hurts me deeply to say that. I think it might get a little worse before it gets better, and what I hope that happens to Ruth's point is we all kick our own asses a little bit out there to make sure that we are the change. I'm not really a cliche person. It's all coming out in cliches, but the thing is. In order for us to really achieve that bravery, we have to stand in our own truth and we have to be able to pull together, because the thing is, we need to also acknowledge that we're in it together.
Speaker 4: 59:42
Yeah that's it. It does not win whether, when you, until you stop sacrificing who you are and you help the other people around you, do just the same thing.
Speaker 1: 59:51
Yeah, and that's really the goal of unhiding right Is standing in truth. That is truly it, because you can't really. We say we want to get to know people and accept them, but unless you fully know me, you can't accept me. That's part of the journey.
Speaker 2: 1:00:05
There's this sign in Key West. I saw it everywhere. It was like one humankind or something like that. But going back to your humanity point, ruth, it's yes. At the end of the day, we're all human beings, so how do we can just support each other at that level as like human beings? Okay, this is my second bold prediction question for you both. What's one radical change If you could wave a magic wand tomorrow? What's one radical change that you would have companies make? No small tweaks, only a bold move. What would that one thing be?
Speaker 4: 1:00:38
I'm going to say valuing diversity of thought.
Speaker 1: 1:00:42
Okay, I'm going to say having an unhiding manifesto that every organization, just like we did with other lenses of diversity, that we put up manifestos, that this one actually believes in the idea of valuing difference and allowing for that space and naming it, because, again, we can say all the things we want, unless we name it, it doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: 1:01:04
Okay, I want to now get back to Ruth. What's your bold prediction that you wanted to share?
Speaker 1: 1:01:12
I absolutely believe, given return to office, given the backlash with DEI, given where we are in terms of this conversation around belonging and inclusion and we have a workforce that's coming in demanding transparency I absolutely believe there is a new model of leadership that is right there, that we can grab onto and that we are building, because I don't think the leadership of yesterday works anymore and the one for the future is almost too far for us. What do we need right now? And to me, that's unhidden leadership. That is a new model of leadership and it's different than authentic leadership. It's different than bold leadership and all of the terms. It's the idea of how do you create space for others to be themselves, to be their best selves.
Speaker 2: 1:02:00
I like it.
Speaker 4: 1:02:01
Beth, what about you? What's your final bold? I wrote down, I wrote human-centric leadership.
Speaker 2: 1:02:04
Yeah.
Speaker 4: 1:02:05
We're on the same wavelength and I think it's because here's the thing. I do believe we are in a trauma-informed workplace. That's what the state of the workplace looks like, and for so long it's been so taboo. And talking about the trauma that people feel is just not enough. They feel like their trauma is less than, and that's just not the truth. And is it appropriate always to discuss all the trauma? No, not at all. But human centric leadership that is able to balance productivity with human need is really. Where is the prediction I think we're going to get to?
Speaker 2: 1:02:46
I hope we all start to just demand it more. So let's get there together. I appreciate you both so much. Thank you for joining us today. This was super helpful. We're going to sign off, but listen, I'm going to share our socials. You can find us on yourworkfriendscom. Also on this YouTube channel if you subscribe. We have a LinkedIn community If you're over on the professional side and you want to join the conversation over there. But you can also find us on Instagram and TikTok. You should definitely check out Ruth's books and you should definitely check out Dr Beth Kaplan's new book. They are awesome. You can follow them on LinkedIn and also on Instagram. We're tagging them and everything. So please go find them and follow them for more great advice in this area. And just thank you for joining us tonight and with that, francesca. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Speaker 3: 1:03:33
Just Beth and Ruth had a big publishing week. Beth, your book went out. Ruth, you went into time this week. This is big. We will post both of these, as Mel said, in our show notes. Read them. Required reading.
Speaker 4: 1:03:47
Thank you. Thank you both so much, and Ruth, you're brilliant, so thank you.
Speaker 1: 1:03:51
We're on the same page. I can't wait. We're in it together.
Speaker 4: 1:03:54
That's right.
The Courage Gap
Women are still being told to “lean in,” “speak up,” and “prove it”—but what if the real power lies in owning your value from the start? In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Margie Warrell—global authority on courageous leadership and author of The Courage Gap—to talk about how women can stop shrinking, start leading, and close the gap between fear and action.
From micro-challenges that build your courage muscle to leading with authenticity, Margie brings 25+ years of real talk, bold strategies, and personal insight to help women thrive in today's corporate landscape—without waiting to feel ready.
Your Work Friends Podcast: The Courage Gap with Dr. Margie Warrell
Women are still being told to “lean in,” “speak up,” and “prove it”—but what if the real power lies in owning your value from the start? In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Margie Warrell—global authority on courageous leadership and author of The Courage Gap—to talk about how women can stop shrinking, start leading, and close the gap between fear and action.
From micro-challenges that build your courage muscle to leading with authenticity, Margie brings 25+ years of real talk, bold strategies, and personal insight to help women thrive in today's corporate landscape—without waiting to feel ready.
Speaker 1: 0:00
And that is this courage gap I talk about. It's the gap between who we are and who we could be if we risked being brave and backed ourselves more often. What's going on, mel? Not much. You remember that movie, field of?
Speaker 2: 0:14
Dreams? Yes, oh, mel, not much. You remember that movie. Field of Dreams? Yes, oh, I love that movie. It's such a good movie, yeah, and I rewatched it, balled my eyes out.
Speaker 3: 0:36
It gets you in the feels. It gets you in the feels. It's such a great movie. It's a great movie, it's an inspirational movie, it's a very inspirational movie. Different feeling when you watched it the first time to now.
Speaker 2: 0:52
I think I watched a movie like every 10 years randomly and every year I feel like I've taken something completely different from it. This time I got super repped when the doctor crossed the line to help the kid and then Ray Liotta's character was like hey, kid, you were good kid. And then Ray Liotta's character was like hey, kid, you were good. I fucking lost it. Jeff and I were like, and Enzo's like where's he going?
Speaker 3: 1:11
Like it's just, yeah, it's so good. I love that you're showing all these classics to Enzo too, all right, well, hey, friends, this week we had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr Margie Worrell, a leadership advisor and executive coach, a keynote speaker, a bestselling author. She wrote the Courage Gap, which is out now, and also You've Got this. She's the host of Live Brave podcast, guest lecturer at Georgetown University, and a courage catalyst is what she likes to say. And we were introduced to Dr Margie through her recent article in Forbes letting women know, as DEI is canceled, more women need to own their worth and not prove it. And the courage gap talks about five different steps that you can take to take braver action in your life, and that's what we talked about. Francesca, what did you love about this episode?
Speaker 2: 2:08
I feel like, for all the strides women have made and women before us, women before them we still have a lot of gaps that we're trying to close. From CEO titles, VP titles, pay you name it we're still on this journey. Some of that journey comes down to big changes like policy, but a lot of it comes down to these daily interactions or these daily moves that you make for yourself. That can be really courageous, and so I was really interested in talking with her about it and I loved what she had shared with us.
Speaker 3: 2:39
One of the biggest takeaways for me in the discussion was we all have these goals and things that we're aspiring to do, and it's hard to dream sometimes or express your dreams, and my favorite quote from her was be selective in who you share your dreams with, because some people might throw a cold bucket of water on it and you don't want that to happen.
Speaker 2: 3:01
I also love that she shared the five key things to have more courage for women and for men. They're very hyper practical. I'm not going to I'm not going to spoil it for folks. You have to listen to the episode. There are things that we can all be doing now to have more courage, especially at work. Right, it can feel very hard to speak up Sometimes. It can feel hard to stand up for yourself or to dream big, like you talked about, and those are those exact moments when you should.
Speaker 3: 3:30
You should. That's what I loved about her article and that's what I loved about this episode. It's really getting us through, overcoming our fear. When we make fear-based decisions, and especially as women, we probably feel like Ooh, we're, we just took 20 steps backwards, so now we need to work even harder. But that's not what we should be doing. According to Margie, we need to own what we already bring to the table. So with that, here's Dr Margie, good to be with you, good to have you with us. Recently, you wrote an article in Forbes noting that, as DEI is getting canceled everywhere, women need to own their worth and stop proving it. So we'd love to hear from you why it's more critical than ever to discuss this topic.
Speaker 1: 4:27
Oh, I wrote that article because I have always believed that, as women, we are our own greatest source of strength and elevation, even when the systems around us aren't supporting us. And as we've seen the kind of the firing or the cancellation of DEI in many spheres, I think that women are finding themselves feeling a little disheartened and demoralized and some feel like they're having to prove themselves all over again. So we can't wait for systems or other people to elevate us. We have to elevate ourselves. And yeah, we could point fingers and we can lay blame and we can complain about it, but I think, at the end of the day, the most effective thing we can do is starting with ourselves and backing ourselves and operating from a place of owning our value fully.
Speaker 3: 5:17
Yeah, yeah. I was just reading another article today in Inc Magazine I don't know if you've seen that one yet where someone just recently did a deep dive of Google searches. So what people do in the privacy of their own home when they're researching male CEOs versus female CEOs. And for male CEOs, it's all about compensation all the keywords that come up and for female CEOs, compensation is one keyword, but the remaining keywords by 1,650% is related to who is their husband, who is their family? Are they a mother? Which I found really interesting. What do you think about that?
Speaker 1: 5:53
I just think it shows that there's a long way to go until there's a genuinely level playing field. I think another one is when we get to the day when we don't blink for a man to be the caregiver at home and that's not anything to be. Oh, she's got a house husband. That's actually something that we raise our eyebrows about, and I was just with someone the other day and she is out in America from Australia, taryn Bromfitt and she was saying how her husband is at home with their four teenagers, and we sat there as women having dinner this is two nights ago saying good for him, that's great, how's he going? How's he managing at all? And she's going. Good job.
Speaker 1: 6:33
And I had four children too, and whenever my husband was left with four children, we would go good for him, he's managing. Okay, that's great. But never in the history of ever did anyone ever say to a man whose wife was at home with four kids going oh, how is she managing? That's good that she lets you go away, that's great. So there's just such this double standard and so, yes, when it's a woman, we're like oh, what's her situation? Does she have children? And I just think it speaks to the double standards, but also our own curiosity of how women who rise to senior ranks manage to do Do they have children, do they have a husband at home? And just recognizing that we all bring some level of sometimes our own bias and fascination with that, because I think we've just got a long way to go until that's just not something that's of any more interest.
Speaker 3: 7:30
Yeah, I can't wait for the day. Dei is just under a microscope right now, unfortunately. How do you feel this is specifically impacting women in the workplace you touched a little bit on. Now I feel like I have to prove myself all over again. I can relate to that. I'm sure we all can. How else is this impacting women in the future?
Speaker 1: 7:50
Look, there's some women who say and some responded to my Forbes column saying I don't feel I have to prove myself and I'm good and I don't honestly feel this has affected me. So I want to just say that out the front. But I also know, because I get to work with a lot of women in my work, who are saying, yeah, like there's been a shift in the winds, even unspoken, as there's this shift in the winds and there is a little bit of did you get to this place because you're a woman? How much of that was because of your gender? And if you're a woman of color, even more so. Are you only here because? And if you're a woman of color who is LBGTQ, even more so oh, is that why you are where you are?
Speaker 1: 8:33
And so I think any woman who already has a little self-doubt, whoever has a little imposter syndrome and I rarely meet a woman who doesn't have moments of that I think it just adds like water onto the seeds of doubt. Am I here because of that? Now, I'm not saying everyone feels that. I don't feel that at all. I have never thought I've got anywhere because I'm a woman. But I know there are some that do feel a little bit like they have to prove themselves to be more than worthy of that spot. They have to work extra hard and do an extra good job. And, let's face it, there are real biases. We know women are judged more harshly on performance and when women make a mistake it costs them more than when men make a mistake. So it's not like this is all just made up and in our minds. There is realities there too. It has left some women feeling like they do have to prove themselves and maybe they're doubting themselves a little more too. Okay.
Speaker 2: 9:34
Your article struck me. I consider myself a relatively confident person and honestly, it's a very interesting to feel like 45 and I'm still feeling this sense of am I worthy? I have to continually prove myself constantly. You're only as good as your last success and I am curious about why you think women feel this way.
Speaker 1: 9:55
I think there's multiple factors that contribute to women feeling that way. But I think, if we just go all the way back to our childhoods and where we were raised, when I did my PhD dissertation, I did it on women who had reached the C-suite in multinational corporations and so I did a lot of interviews with women who had reached these positions of significant positional power and authority and influence. And what was really interesting and I was looking at, what are the defining features, what are the defining characteristics and mindsets of women who've reached that spot and there was a host of them reach that spot and there was a host of them. But often they came from an environment where they had someone who believed in them and said you've got what it takes. A lot of them said they never, ever vaguely thought about being in the C-suite. That wasn't on their horizon, but they also had someone who they had. Experiences that helped to build like a little bit of grit and resilience up in them and they didn't let what other people said be overly defining of them, like when people would say, oh, you're just there because you're pretty or whatever. Like they were very, pretty resilient and what I would call anti-fragile. But I think we've got to recognize not everyone grows up in some environment where they do feel empowered and they're emboldened and they develop real grit and resilience and anti-fragility.
Speaker 1: 11:26
And a lot of women grow up environments with a lack of female role models, without people who are championing them, saying absolutely, you can do anything you want. You're 45. I'm 10 years on you. I grew up without any female role models, without anyone saying you can do anything you want. You're 45. I'm 10 years on you. I grew up without any female role models, without anyone saying you can do anything you want. And so I was way in my 30s and even 40s where I'm like, oh, I'm just as capable as these people over here, with that lack of belief.
Speaker 1: 11:51
And so I think we don't always grow up with the same surrounded and immersed in the same belief systems that we can do and be anything we want. We may intellectually know it's not true. We may intellectually know that we are just as capable and just as clever, but there's often these little lingering doubts in the back of our head that are going who do you think you are? And when are people going to realize you're not that good? And that's not to say that men don't also sometimes experience that, but it's more pervasive among women.
Speaker 1: 12:30
And while I'd like to think the needle has changed in the last 30, 40 years, I have a daughter who's 25. She has entered the workforce at a time that's really different to when I entered the workforce, but I still sometimes see it like oh, I don't know if I should do that. I'm thinking, why not? Of course you can, and I find myself saying that. Mind you, I sometimes still say that to my sons as well. So I'm not sure that she's got more doubt than my sons, but I still see women sometimes holding themselves back more than the barriers around them.
Speaker 2: 13:04
Yeah, those tapes that we have, those are hard ones to take out, especially the voices in your head. I am curious, if you don't have somebody that's saying you do have what it takes, or having a mentor that brings you along, that sees something in you, what can somebody do on their own to start feeling that they can own it or they do have value, that they shut off those tapes? What are some things that really help?
Speaker 1: 13:28
I would say seek out people who inspire you. Whether you get a book and read about Madeleine Albright, get a book and read about. Whether you get a book and read about Madeleine Albright, get a book and read about. Insert some woman that you find just fascinating and inspiring, whoever that may be, whether that's Angela Merkel or Oprah or whatever, because when we read those stories we can see a little of ourselves in their story and, man, they overcame that Like gee, yeah, they've got strengths and gifts that maybe are different to yours.
Speaker 1: 14:00
But I think just that one seek out in person the kind of women that you'd like to get to know better. Surround yourself, go out and go to a conference where you're going to meet those people and connect with those people. Join an organization where you get to meet those people people and connect with those people. Join an organization where you get to meet those people. I have to say myself time and time again it has been the example of other women who go oh honey, you got this, or like they'll say stuff and they don't have to know me really well, but I'm like I love what they see and they may be 15 or 20 years ahead of me or maybe they're 10 years younger than me, but it's still affirming. I would also say to be really intentional about the relationships that you invest in, but also those that you don't invest in, those that may be playing you small and sometimes that can be friends.
Speaker 1: 14:52
It can be our frenemies, it can be our family and you might not just be able to cut yourself off from family, and I'm not suggesting for a moment that you should. I've got family members who I'm like you know what. I don't even tell them about some of the things I'm up to because I know they will just pour a big bucket of cold water on it. They are only going to feed my doubts. When I told my family I was writing my first book, which is quite a few years ago, and I was nervous about doing it because my family is in Australia, there's something called the tall poppy syndrome and it's this cultural phenomena where, if you aspire to raise too far above your current level, you run a significant risk of being cut down like a tall poppy that's standing out from all the rest and the culture I grew up in in rural Australia was strong with this, and I remember sharing with my family.
Speaker 1: 15:46
It was Christmas and I said to everybody what's something everyone wants to do in the next 12 months? And one sister said I want to go into South America and my brother wanted to do his MBA and my mother said she'd like to volunteer more For her. That was a big, bold thing, I'd like to volunteer more. And then I got around all my siblings there were six siblings and parents and they said what do you want to do in the next 12 months? And I said I'd like to write the outline for a book. I didn't even say I wanted to write a book, I just like to write the outline. I had four kids, six and under at the time, and my brother. I have three, so I'm not going to name which one.
Speaker 1: 16:30
He immediately said what are you going to write a book about? And it was just like I didn't need that, like I did, I already had that going in my head. Who am I to write a book? And I didn't need him to go what are you going to write a book about? And I said, oh, like how to be, how to like be more confident and to go after what we really want to go after in our lives. And I could just see him like going, oh, okay.
Speaker 1: 16:54
And the conversation moved on, and so I would just say it could be family that you need to set some rails on. Don't share with them your little seedlings of ambition if you think they're going to jump all over them. And it could be your mother and it could be actually your best friend, because maybe that's threatening to her because she's not doing it. So just be careful who you share your aspirations with, particularly in the early days, when it's just a little tiny seedling that's still germinating and you're like you've got so much doubt yourself. You don't know yourself whether or not you have what it takes. So the last thing you need is someone else to jump on that wagon and go. But how are you going to do that? That could be really hard. 60% of small business owners fail. Like how are you going to manage that? That could be really hard. 60% of small business owners fail. How are you going to manage that with three young children or whatever it is?
Speaker 1: 17:42
As I said, I have four children. I remember thinking about having a fourth child and how can I ever have a fourth child and pursue a career? I did not know one woman who had four children in a career. It just speaks to that. I had a pretty limited environment and I didn't know anyone. And I had one girlfriend who said you can totally do it. I know a woman has four children. And then she started like finding examples for me of others and I clung to those examples oh, it can be done. And to give myself permission not to know exactly how I do it, but to figure it out as I went along. That was very empowering for me to go okay, I'm along. That was very empowering for me to go okay. I'm going to now allow the possibility for it to happen, which to me actually was an act of courage, because I was a little terrified that I would not manage the juggling act.
Speaker 2: 18:29
Yeah, I love that. It's an act of courage to move forward and keep on moving forward. I also like the inverse of that is the friend or the person that's going to be like yeah, go, you can do this, you've got this. Listening to those stories, especially from women, that are telling you to go and keep going is huge.
Speaker 1: 18:45
Yeah, yeah, no, yes, and I think sometimes we give away our power to the opinions of others too quickly, too readily, too often, and when I say give away our power, we let what other people might think matter way more than is serving us. Do you think this is a good idea? Do you think I can do this? What will people think if I try this? Maybe they'll think I'm a little crazy. Who am I to do it?
Speaker 1: 19:17
And I say hold your own opinion in higher esteem than you hold the opinion of others. That doesn't mean you shouldn't seek out counsel and you shouldn't seek out other people's perspectives, but don't let anyone else's opinion override your own opinion. They've got their opinions and maybe there's some value in them and maybe they have some things that will broaden what you're considering and help you think about things a little more rigorously or consider things you mightn't have considered. But at the end of the day, you've got to trust yourself and trust your gut and trust your own intuition. Just be careful how much power you give to what other people think you should and shouldn't do.
Speaker 3: 20:19
What I'd love to talk about are the unique strengths women do bring to business, because I think there are unique strengths we bring, like intuitiveness. It's not to say men don't have that, but I feel like women might have that unique strength. One of the organizations Francesca and I follow is Pink Chip, which follows the success of female CEOs and how they're significantly outperforming male CEOs in terms of business success, for varying reasons. So when you think about the leadership strengths or the unique leadership strengths women bring to business success, what are those unique strengths that we bring?
Speaker 1: 20:46
Women obviously have a strong our brains are wide this way but just to be able to empathize with what's going on for others, not just intellectually understand what they think, but to be able to really sense and feel what they feel.
Speaker 1: 21:00
And we know that emotions drive action, not logic. And I think women bring a real gift and strength and some more than others, obviously at being able to empathize with what's going on for others so they can form really authentic connection with people at that deeper level, really authentic connection with people at that deeper level. I think women often aren't as settled with a sense of needing to prove their strength and be tough I'm generalizing but so there's less ego often running the show. It's what is it that it feels like the right thing to do here versus what's going to make me look strong and look tough. I think women are naturally good at building bridges and gaining collaboration and because I think we're less captive to an ego that has to prove how good we are and how strong we are, we're able to get around defensiveness at times and get underneath it and to connect with people at a meaningful, in an authentic way that sometimes men can't, because there's a little more posturing and proving, and I call it pissing competitions, without getting too crude.
Speaker 2: 22:09
I'm bigger than you.
Speaker 1: 22:10
My shoe is bigger than your shoe and I'm like, seriously, what's the outcome you're trying to achieve here and how can you go about working together to get a better outcome, versus making it about you and your big ego and needing to prove that you're trying to achieve here? And how can you go about working together to get a better outcome versus making it about you and your big ego and needing to prove that you're better than that person? I think on multiple different ways, women bring a great many strengths. Another in the research shows yes, men tend at times to be more willing to wing it, so they can be quicker to sometimes just jump in and take a risk. But they also can do more dumb, stupid things faster as well. And so women tend to be a little more considered, a little more thoughtful about is this a good? It doesn't mean women won't take risks, but they'll go about it a little more thoughtfully. They won't jump in. Test the water with two feet. They'll go. Okay, let's test the depth of the water with one foot before we jump in with two feet, and so on multiple different areas. The study that came out of Harvard of the 19 key strengths of leadership, women were stronger on 17. So I'm not going to list 17, but there is many ways that women bring those strengths to the table, and that's not to say that men don't bring a lot of strengths too.
Speaker 1: 23:23
To me, this isn't about women are better than men. I feel really strongly about that. I don't like the saying the future is female. I hope not. I really hope not.
Speaker 1: 23:28
I hope that the future is just more collaborative of men and women on an equal playing field, partnering to make better decisions and get better outcomes, because we need the strengths the feminine leadership strengths, masculine leadership strengths and we need them to be in collaboration together, and so I think it's important that that gets recognized, and this isn't about one or the other one. Better than worse than I do think there's situations where men's strengths may be more suited for that specific situation. Maybe that company in this industry in this moment in time, but yes, as you're talking about pink chip companies, obviously women are exceptionally good at what they do and make excellent leaders and can produce excellent outcomes and really good at being inclusive and, I think, harnessing the diversity within teams and diversity on all measures. Diversity isn't just about gender and it's not just about race. It is on all measures. Women are really good at being able to harness that value of diversity in all forms in the teams that they are leading, that they're part of.
Speaker 3: 24:34
Yeah, it sounds. Ideal state the future is balanced across it all.
Speaker 2: 24:39
I get your opinion on this, because this is not a political statement. I'm going on objective reporting here. There's a lot of talk in ether around masculine energy and I'm curious about when it feels like in a lot of corporate America the masculine energy is taking over. What's your point of view on how women operate now in corporate America? What's the move?
Speaker 1: 25:05
Stand your ground, stand tall in your power and your worth and, given there may be a sense that the winds are shifting a little bit, don't let people play you small. We teach people how to treat us and I think at times that means we need to push back and call things out, and that may not be natural. I know for myself. My natural state is not combative, it's not argumentative. It tends to be very accommodating and maybe a little bit too acquiescent to other people's, what other people would like, et cetera. But I know at times when I've been in a situation where I feel like someone is trying to dominate here, they're trying to claim an idea that's mine, they're trying to maybe take advantage of my agreeableness that sometimes I need to lean in and speak up and act in ways that aren't my natural. It's not my default and go sorry, excuse me, I haven't finished what I was saying. If you would just give me a moment, we can go over to you once I finished and like, versus just letting someone cut in right or someone's taking your idea going, I just want to just step back a bit for a moment. I actually suggested that yesterday and not doing it in a way that's derogatory, but we stand firm in our own power and our own value and our worth, and we make sure people know that we won't be pushed over, because I think we do get what we tolerate. And sometimes we tolerate things to avoid conflict, to avoid an awkward, difficult moment, to avoid coming across as being God, she's hard work or she's sensitive, and yet over time you're like okay, people will take advantage of that. As I wrote about in this book, the Courage Gap, how do we cultivate our capacity to take brave action? Fear constricts our actions that we take and courage expands the actions that we take, and it's about expanding your behavioral repertoire.
Speaker 1: 27:05
No, I'm not a naturally combative person, but can I be combative if I need to be? Can I be strident and really assert myself into something? Yeah, you bet I can, and I don't want to do that all the time, but I can lean in and do that when I need to, or ask for my worth or make sure my voice is heard and speak with the authority that's needed. And so practicing that and I do think it takes practice. If you're someone who tends to be a little bit more diminutive, you don't need your voice heard. You're happy not to say anything in a meeting unless you have something compelling to say. I would say no. Practice injecting your voice into that meeting. Practice speaking up with a little more volume or a little more depth. Practice standing a little taller. Practice you being first to ask a question or to put forward an idea, even though you're not 100% sure how it's going to land. Practice that it's a muscle that you build and you've got to put in those reps.
Speaker 2: 28:01
Yeah, Very true, very true, and I love it's those moments where you need to stand your ground.
Speaker 1: 28:06
And I actually think, in these times when you could rationalize why, oh, pull your head in and don't do it, I believe it is in times like this, when we can find the most reasons to be a little timid, a little cautious, to play it safe, that our voice is most needed and we are most called to step up, speak up and really claim our place. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: 28:39
Yes, absolutely yeah. We've talked a lot about this, but when you say bet on yourself, like in one sentence, what does that truly mean? You could do two sentences. I don't want to give you limits.
Speaker 1: 28:58
Act in ways that affirm that you have everything it takes to achieve your wildest vision of success.
Speaker 3: 29:11
Okay, I want to put that on a mug. No.
Speaker 1: 29:15
When I say back yourself, like back yourself and not your doubts. Act in ways that show that you expect good things to come your way and that you're going to do your part. If the universe is conspiring for you, are you doing 100% of your part to set yourself up for those great things to happen? Like? You've got to do your part, you've got to be putting yourself out there. You've got to be taking the risks. You can't expect amazing things to happen while you're playing it safe. You've got to take the risk, take the chance and make that bet on yourself. I had curiosity.
Speaker 2: 29:54
Do you feel like most people need to be grounded in, like knowing that you have a higher self or knowing that you're here to do something? Is there a higher purpose thing going on here?
Speaker 1: 30:03
as well. You're saying does belief in something that's bigger than ourselves help us show up in the world as more of who it is, who we can be? I think that's something.
Speaker 2: 30:21
Much more articulately, steve. Yes, thank you.
Speaker 1: 30:25
Look, I get it. There's some people who go I don't believe in God, I'm not religious, I'm not spiritual whatever. And I would just say this If you ever say, oh, I believe in karma, then you're believing in some force that's bigger than yourself. If you say the universe, you're believing in some force that's bigger than yourself. If you believe in what goes around, comes around, you're believing in something that's bigger than yourself. I actually am a Christian, so I absolutely believe in something that's bigger than myself.
Speaker 1: 30:53
But regardless of whether you have any religious belief at all, you can still believe that who you are is more than the body that you're in and more than the brains that you've got, and more than your current emotional state.
Speaker 1: 31:08
And, yes, I believe that we are all here to fulfill a purpose that leaves the world a little bit better off, because we lived, walked on it for 80, 90 years. I believe that. Does that compel me to be brave at times when I really don't want to be? Yes, it does. But even if you don't believe that, there is something that is immensely empowering to believe that you are innately worthy by the virtue of the fact that you are in the world, and that you have innate worth to bring to others around you, and you cannot bring that in all its force and all its glory if you are second guessing yourself, because when you doubt yourself, you don't only do yourself a disservice, you shortchange, I believe, the whole world, but you certainly shortchange all those people around you of who it is you can be. And that is this courage gap I talk about. It's the gap between who we are and who we could be if we risked being brave and backed ourselves more often.
Speaker 2: 32:28
How can we enable people to close that courage gap, especially women? What can we be doing as bosses, as peers, I think organizationally. What would you say to that?
Speaker 1: 32:33
When I look at leadership and I think of it as three domains of the either we and the it, personal leadership, interpersonal leadership and enterprise leadership, our organization, our business, our team, et cetera, you know what can we be doing? I just wrote a book on that, so find my book Courage Gap Shameless plug. But hey if you're going to do it.
Speaker 1: 32:52
That's what I wrote the book about. Number one I'm just going to really quickly just say five quick things. Number Number one I'm just going to really quickly just say five quick things. Number one focus on what it is that you want. What's the outcome you want for yourself? What's the outcome you want for others? What's the outcome you want for your team, your organization? Get really clear about that. And what are the values that underpin who you need to be, how you need to show up to move toward that vision of what you want? Because your vision for what you want, your commitment to that, has to be bigger than the vision of what you want. Because your vision for what you want, your commitment to that, has to be bigger than the fears of what you don't want. Otherwise, fear is going to govern.
Speaker 1: 33:24
Number two challenge the story that you're telling yourself. Our beliefs are the software of behavior and so often we're operating from a narrative oh, I don't think I've got what it takes. Oh, I'm not sure I'm ready. Oh, I need to have a bit more skill, knowledge. Oh, what will people know? What is the belief that you need to operate from for you to achieve what it is you want to achieve? To become the woman that you know you have it within you to become. What is the belief system? So re-script, what's keeping you stuck or stressed or having you living a little too safely?
Speaker 1: 33:57
Number three embody courage. Take a breath, stand tall, put your shoulders back, like how we hold ourselves physically matters. In fact, there was a study out of Kellogg Business School that found that how we hold ourselves physically shifts our perception of our own power and agency, but it also shifts how others see us. When you walk in a room like you own that room and you sit down like you absolutely belong there, it shifts how other people perceive you, but it starts with how you perceive yourself. Number four make friends with discomfort, and if you can't make friends with it, at least make a truce with it that you are going to get uncomfortable as often as need be because you cannot become who you want to be and do what you want to do and create a psychologically safe environment around you.
Speaker 1: 34:45
If you're only ever being comfortable yourself, you've got to be willing to do the very awkward things, and from a management and leadership perspective, when it comes to fostering what I call a culture of courage and I have spoken to Amy Edmondson, who coined the term psychological safety on my Live Brave podcast a few times. The two go hand in hand. They're the two sides of the same coin. We cannot foster a psychological safety if we're not willing to be vulnerable, if we're not willing to say I messed up, I don't know, or what might I have got wrong here, or invite feedback. So you've got to be role modeling that.
Speaker 1: 35:21
But start with making friends with that discomfort and doing the very things that scare you Every day. Do a little thing. I'm going to do something every day. That's a little uncomfortable, and the more often we do that, we build that muscle.
Speaker 1: 35:33
And number five be a little kinder to yourself when you mess up, because you're human.
Speaker 1: 35:40
Because you're human, you're human.
Speaker 1: 35:42
And without knowing you really well, mel or Francesca, I'm going to guess that today you were not as brilliant and brave and wonderful and organized and disciplined and patient with your children or whatever, as you'd love to be.
Speaker 1: 35:59
And that is the human condition. We are never going to be all things all the time. But when we can be a little kinder to ourselves and extend a little more grace inward, when we either try something and we balls it up or when we hold back and we're like, oh shit, I know I should reach out and have that conversation. When we hold back and we're like, oh shit, I know I should reach out and have that conversation, but oh God, I can't, I just can't, I'm just not doing it today, like when our inner chicken little gets the better of us, just be kind to yourself and go. Okay, because we're not going to risk being brave if we beat up on ourselves every time we fall and we are a lot braver and we show up as a bigger version of ourselves when we can embrace that we are fallible and we are flawed and we are not always going to be fearless.
Speaker 2: 36:46
That's a good vibe though. Yeah, that's a good vibe.
Speaker 3: 36:49
All right, all right, we are closing things out with rapid round. So, margie, this is what we like to just get to know you a little bit better one-on-one, get your thoughts outside of just this topic. Are you game for us to dive right in? Yeah, go for it. Okay, it's 2030. What's work going to look like?
Speaker 1: 37:09
I think we're going to see more fluid, purpose-driven work environments. I think the need that really was underscored during the pandemic that people are looking for meaning. They want to work for organizations that reflect their values. I think we're going to see more and more of that people prioritizing purpose and meaning over titles, that also value flexibility over formality. I think we're going to see more of that and a greater desire for real authenticity, as distinct from that sort of posturing and looking good, that people really want to see people being really human. As technology and gen AI takes on a bigger role, that human touch is going to be even more sought after and valued.
Speaker 3: 37:53
Okay. Totally agree, yes, we're on the same page. What, what music are you listening to right now?
Speaker 1: 38:00
oh, my goodness, I have a fairly broad repertoire. I I have to listen to just 80s classics. Yeah, yes, I go back. I still love john denver and neil diamond, but I also I love ederan and I love Pink, so I just got this broad one. I love Lauren Daigle. I just there's a lot of people I like listening to. I love Kelly Clarkson, so needless to say, I'm broad.
Speaker 3: 38:27
What are you reading right now? Or listening to podcasts yourself?
Speaker 1: 38:33
Ah, podcasts. I really like Ezra Klein. I listen to him, but I actually listen to a broad spectrum of people on podcasts. I like 10% Happier. I feel like this is a weird one to say Joe Rogan I listen to Joe Rogan. I find him really interesting, though I do often fast forward through it and I do little bursts of Mel Robbins.
Speaker 3: 38:51
Okay, all right. Who do you really admire?
Speaker 1: 38:58
Who do you really admire? Who do I really admire? I did admire my mom, who passed away 18 months ago, because she had such a beautiful, humble gentle, serene way about her. She was all about service and never about ego. So I'm just going to stop there.
Speaker 3: 39:13
Okay. What's one piece of advice you want everyone to know oh, do not wait until you feel brave to do the brave thing. I love it. Thank you for being here, dr margie. We really appreciate it and we do want to plug the courage gap five steps to bra Action because that just came out. So please do check it out. And, margie, how can our listeners connect with you for ongoing insights and resources on this topic?
Speaker 1: 39:50
Oh, thank you. They can find me on social media, LinkedIn, anywhere though I'm not very active on TikTok, but Insta I am there. They can go to my website, margieworrellcom, and take my courage quiz on the book page, sign up for my newsletter, and I also have my own Live Brave podcast. That is everywhere you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 3: 40:04
Yes, we are following it, by the way. So thank you, thank you for joining us. We really appreciate you being here.
Speaker 1: 40:14
It was awesome to speak with you both and I just want you two to just keep backing yourselves because you're doing great work in the world. To just keep backing yourselves because you're doing great work in the world.
Speaker 3: 40:19
This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams, so please join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye friends, bye friends.
The Ego Equation for Leadership Success
What makes great leaders different—and how do you measure it?
In this episode, we sit down with former DocuSign CEO Dan Springer to unpack the Ego Equation:
(Skills ÷ Ego) ^ Work = Success.
Dan shares leadership lessons from decades in tech, including how ego almost derailed his career and what changed after a layoff turned into a leadership awakening.
Your Work Friends Podcast: The Ego Equation with Dan Springer
Impact over ego, thats the mantra for true leadership success.
What if the key to great leadership isn't confidence or charisma, but checking your ego? Former DocuSign CEO Dan Springer shares his Ego Equation and how humility, hard work, and self-awareness drive results that actually last.
So, what makes great leaders different—and how do you measure it?
(Skills ÷ Ego) ^ Work = Success.
Dan shares leadership lessons from decades in tech, including how ego almost derailed his career and what changed after a layoff turned into a leadership awakening.
Speaker 1: 0:00
I try to define ego as
Speaker 2: 0:02
High ego is putting yourself as the primary, putting yourself first, and low ego, which is preferred in this context, is someone that puts the organization or the greater goals or family. It could be. Any type of organization you're involved with puts that first.
Speaker 1: 0:32
We brought Dan Springer on to talk about leadership and ego, and he's probably one of the best people to talk about this with, because this guy has ran mega organizations as a CEO, as a board member. He's genuinely a really nice guy and, more than that, he knows how to get returns in a business and really create these workplaces that people love to work at. If you ask anybody who's worked under Dan Springer, they loved where they were working, and so we wanted to figure out what was it that made him who he is and what did he attribute to his leadership success? And what he talked about was ego.
Speaker 3: 1:12
Yeah, he was such a great example of somebody who can focus on the human in the workplace while also having very successful business results, and how those two things went hand in hand together. Yeah, there is some secret sauce that he shared with us. That's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: 1:30
Totally agree. Dan Springer is the former CEO of DocuSign. He's also still on the board. He's an incredibly seasoned tech leader with decades of experience scaling some of the biggest names in SaaS like Responsys, teleo, nextcard, and. He began his career at McKinsey was a partner there. He's led billion-dollar exits, built high-growth teams and knows firsthand how ego can make or break great leadership. And you're right, mel. He brought this refreshingly honest take on what it really takes to lead well.
Speaker 3: 1:59
I think this is one of my favorite episodes so far and one of my favorite guests. The insights he brought were really valuable and others will get value out of this too.
Speaker 1: 2:07
It wasn't his Dave Matthews story.
Speaker 3: 2:10
I did love Dave Matthews as a fellow DMV. The fun fact in Connecticut I was at the Meadows with my friend for a DMV when there was an entire flipping of the cars and arson back in the 90s what the hell? At a Dave Matthews concert. It got out of control. I don't know what happened and we parked in a McDonald's parking lot. This is just a side story you can take out, but it got towed and we hitchhiked with some randos to go find our car at the Impel lot.
Speaker 1: 2:41
Listen my favorite Dave Matthews story, can I tell you, yeah. So there is something I celebrate every year, which is the anniversary of the Dave Matthews Band tour bus. Oh, the bridges in Chicago. And if you don't know this story, Mel, can I tell this story? Yes.
Speaker 3: 2:56
They're probably like please not again, just when we're not brought up, so I've never been in Chicago.
Speaker 1: 3:02
There's the river in Chicago and then it dumps out into the lake and over the river are a series of bridges that are grated and they can lift up and down so tall boats can go through to the lake Keyword grated. The other thing I want everyone to know about Chicago is it's a massive architecture town, so they have these wonderful architectural cruises. If you ever go to Chicago you have to go on them. They're fantastic and you can see all of the different buildings and the stories behind them, etc. They are typically open boats, so think about massive kind of pontoon boats looking up and admiring all the skyscrapers.
Speaker 1: 3:37
On this very warm summer day there was an architectural boat cruise cruising down the river looking at all the skyscrapers and at the same time the Dave Matthews Band tour bus was going over one of these graded bridges and the bus driver accidentally decided to dump the toilet out and it dumped all over this architectural horror boat. So it is one of the most disgusting stories, but also one of the funniest stories on the planet. I love to tell it just because it's so man dave matthews, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: 4:11
If you were on that boat, the universe was just like f you, in particular today. What like?
Speaker 1: 4:18
but you've got some explaining. I love talking with dan, not only about the dave matthews story, but about his experience and how he's really looked at ego in this equation. If you don't know, dan, he's also a mathematician back liberal arts major, which I love, but he has this idea of how do you manage ego with skills and hard work. How do you pull that into balance to really set yourself up for success and to set your team up for success as well?
Speaker 3: 4:42
And you can do this equation yourself tomorrow to gut check your own ego. Yep, good tool, right away, great tool, and with that here's Dan Dan.
Speaker 1: 5:04
how are you today?
Speaker 2: 5:05
I'm doing great Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: 5:06
Great, absolutely All right. I want to get you right into this. We're here to talk about ego and leadership and your background. I'm so excited for it.
Speaker 3: 5:14
All right, we want to start in understanding your origin story around the whole concept of so and ego and the role ego has played, and so I'd love to understand how your own relationship with your own ego evolved throughout your professional career.
Speaker 2: 5:29
I've been called by many, particularly as a young man, to have prodigious ego, so I guess this is a good topic. The simplest construct around that I try to define ego is high ego is putting yourself as the primary, putting yourself first in the context. It could be your family, it could be your office, it could be your company, it could be your sports team, whatever it is. And low ego, which is preferred in this context, is someone that puts the organization or the greater goals. Or, again, it could be family, it could be any type of organization you're involved with puts that first.
Speaker 2: 6:01
And my own origin story, I think, is a good, healthy, I mean growing up with the world being presented to me.
Speaker 2: 6:10
In a certain way. It was when I was growing up I was pretty egocentric. I think I was pretty focused on Dan, and although I had wonderful role models like my mom, my hero, who demonstrated to me by putting me first, been really dedicated to whichever life to me, I probably should have seen that sooner, but I was a little slow on the uptake and somewhere, probably in my late 20s, I at least became aware of the fact that I was a little bit of a selfish person or a selfish SOB, maybe it would be more accurate. And then professionally I started to figure that out a little bit in leading people. But it wasn't until I had my first son that I think I really figured out that it wasn't about me. And once you have that ability to love someone more than you love yourself, it opens up your ability to just be much less egocentric in everything you do. So that was probably my. So I was. I'm embarrassed to say that now, but early thirties before I probably got to a reasonably evolved sense of ego.
Speaker 3: 7:13
Yeah, that makes sense, right, our brains aren't even fully formed until we're about 24, I think so to make good decisions and things like that. So it's totally understandable. We're in the non-judgment zone, by the way.
Speaker 2: 7:22
All right.
Speaker 3: 7:22
So having your son obviously major pivotal moment. What other kind of pivotal moments did you have that really transformed your understanding of ego, especially in leadership?
Speaker 2: 7:33
Yeah, so two, actually One before I had my son in my first job managing people. So I worked for the phone company. I was a forecaster, a econometrician, I did modeling and I showed up and they didn't have sophistication at Pacific Valley at that time. So I quickly got promoted less than a year in my first job as a college and I was now managing people. My parents' age that had been professional forecasters but didn't have some of the technical skills I had, and I quickly realized how bad I was at the job.
Speaker 2: 7:59
But I couldn't figure out for the longest time why. And it was because I was a little jerk. I couldn't figure out for the longest time why. And it was because I was a little jerk. And who's this little jerk telling me he's experienced and good people with probably a condescending ear if we want to be honest about it. But I eventually got that feedback so I did get a snippet. Being a jerk is not the best archetype of manager that you probably want to have. Then I think fast forward to probably having a son. But the it was one period that I think was really powerful for me, where I started to respect how wonderful some of the people we work with are and I ran a company you've never heard of called Tellio. It was my first time as the CEO and I ran it into the ground.
Speaker 2: 8:38
we sold it for 50 bucks to our Donnelly maybe a little more, not very much money, and so that's why you've never heard of it and I will bury the details of the company. It's important to me but it won't be to your audience. But something happened is right after I joined. It was like it was a dire situation and we had to do a slight restructuring. It was a small company but we had to do a layoff and I had never done that in a role, in a manager role, in a manager role. I've been a consultant at McKinsey, so I've been around a little bit of cost cutting. And that night after the layoff I was in my office late and four of the guys that had been laid off were standing outside the doors like a glass door looking in and they knocked and they came in and for a minute I had this thought are they telling you to beat the crap out of?
Speaker 2: 9:19
me, I can figure out why they don't want to stay around and these four guys sat down and they just asked to check in on how I was doing and they said they could tell how difficult it had been for me to go through the layoff their layoff, not my layoff, their layoff that they were worried about me and I'll tell you for the next couple of years.
Speaker 2: 9:40
That was this incredible strong feeling.
Speaker 2: 9:42
Every time I thought about it it made me feel worse, obviously, because these are the greatest human beings that could get laid off and they're worried about the guy that just came in to be their boss, that had to carry out the action.
Speaker 2: 9:53
And two, it just made me realize how wonderful people can be and it's just always stuck with me as a message that we have a responsibility when we lead an organization for those people, a responsibility when we lead an organization for those people, and I vowed I would never it hasn't happened yet, but it could never have a layoff of people who were doing their job well and were losing their opportunity because leadership in this case me failed to provide the opportunity. So don't overhire, don't get into that situation and when you have it. It's a painful lesson, but it was hugely eye-opening for me against the quality of people and the really serious responsibility we have as leaders for the people that work for us, and not everyone feels that way. I think it's really important If you're not feeling that way, not caring that much about your people, what are you doing in management?
Speaker 3: 10:40
Yeah, you have to think about the whole person and get down to humanity. At the end of the day, we are bigger than our jobs, so life is bigger than that.
Speaker 1: 10:48
Yeah. So Mel and I didn't go to math school. Dan, we did not go to math school. I know you did. I know you were being a jerk to the Yellow Pages people. Let's talk about how you were a jerk, dan. No, I'm just kidding. I was sitting there thinking like you were 30. I think I was like 35 before I got that that lesson around. Don't be a total asshole to people. But one of the things that I love about what you've come up with is an ego equation or an equation how to think about ego, because we have all these stories around. It's about how smart you are, it is about your strategy and you're playing five degree chess over here. Or maybe it's about the fact that you work your ass off. I'm wondering if you can talk about the mathy equation. You have to think about ego and work and skills as it relates to success.
Speaker 2: 11:39
It's a little bit geeky. Sure, it's only geeky when you put numbers to it. Conceptually, even liberal arts majors like myself even though I was a math and liberal arts college people we can really grasp these concepts. The simple expression which I've used in this so like sewing needle and thread is you have your skills that are usually highly correlated to the fortune you were given with your smarts and your ability to build skills. And then you have your ego.
Speaker 2: 12:04
As I mentioned earlier is your ability to control your focus on yourself versus to the broader organization, and then, as you said, how hard you work. And the equation for the geeks out there like myself is you take those skills that you have, the S, you divide it by your ego, so you want to have less ego, obviously. Then you take that and you raise it to the power of how hard you work. And if you do play around with little numbers I generally use one to five and you assess yourself. I'll give you my own self-assessment, so yeah, and then we're, we're on this spectrum think of this bell curve spectrum, not a one to five.
Speaker 2: 12:38
When it comes to skills that have been built, I think I'm a four. Most of my life asserted I was a five, but we can get to the ego point. I just had a lot of good fortunes. It's not so much that I'm smarter than other people or more skill, I just showed up in some really good situations that made me look good. So I've had a lot of serendipity. And then the ego. And again I don't think I was ever a five.
Speaker 2: 13:02
On the ego, Maybe I was a four. There's a distribution curve and there's other people out there that could be pretty condescending, jerk like two, but I was probably in the four zone. I'm down to about a two in my self-assessment. So I'm pretty good not the best, but I'm pretty good at trying to really put the organization first and get out of my own ego and then on how hard I work. It's four or five. I've been a five at times. Sustaining five is very difficult but I think I'm a good, solid four.
Speaker 2: 13:27
So if you use the four, two, four, you say four divided by two is two. You raise that to the power of four and you get two, four, eight, 16. And that's pretty good. And, of course, when you're a competitive person, like I am, you play this game and you go. Okay, what I really want to do is be a five over a one. Raise it to the it. Just, it really probably doesn't happen very often and, quite frankly, if you have people operating with a high ego, you do the math. If you're around a one, it doesn't matter how hard you work. You're not going to get the number any better. If you're below one, it's effective. A person working really hard has all focused on themselves could actually be a detriment to an organization. So that's how I think about the formula and have to chat about each of the elements more, but I use that in evaluating people and thinking about how effective they can be in our organization.
Speaker 1: 14:17
Let me ask you this so you're 16 and you're so score. Is there a range? Let's say you're building out a C-suite, for example, or you're building out whatever and you're trying to gauge where people are at what's considered like a good score.
Speaker 2: 14:32
16 is good and again, it's my form. I'm not going to create a system that I have a terrible outcome in.
Speaker 2: 14:38
And you're like, wow, I really need work, I have to change the model. But 16 is good, have to change the model there. The 16 is good and the real challenge is it's the most of us, of course, most situation. I'm talking about me as a software exec to 16. Um, by the way, the only place I've ever been better is actually in in in sports, and the reason is and this is that you're really fortunate if you have this makeup my whole life, life I played sports all through college, division III college, but still some of my college soccer and lacrosse teams.
Speaker 2: 15:09
But all through school, all through every team I ever played on, I don't think I was ever the most skilled player on my team and I had just enough self-knowledge to know. I think sometimes I was one of the better players I knew. I was never the most skilled player on any, whether it was football, soccer, basketball, cross, whatever but nobody worked harder.
Speaker 2: 15:31
I don't believe anyone on any team I was ever on. I know it was a pretty aggressive statement to make, but I can't. How are you going to know? How are you going to refute it?
Speaker 3: 15:38
anyway, Ever Sounds a little like. Ego Sounds a little like ego.
Speaker 2: 15:43
Yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way. Can you have ego about how hard you work? Maybe, and I do think if you look at the stats score you'll always see not as many points but a lot of assists from Dan's work, and that was the joy I had as being a playmaker and trying to make other people score and succeed. So in sports it's the only time I've ever been ever better than I have as a profession. But I would just clearly say 16 is taking me a career to get to. I was realistically a one-two, probably most of my career because of the ego that suppresses the ratio of the smarts, and so if you had a team of 16s, that would be a killer team.
Speaker 2: 16:22
Everyone could get their egos down. Some people might get it by a five and a three. You're playing the different modes, but yeah, it's all about getting that balance right.
Speaker 1: 16:30
Is there ever a situation where you need to have hot ego?
Speaker 2: 16:34
Yeah, and again, the problem with the definition of the word ego in general. There could be a lot of different nuances and interpretations of that, and I think they can be healthy ego for sure, in the construct that I'm defining. I don't think so. I think it's optimal is to be a team player, because not only does it help the team's output, but then it forces other people, because of that behavior you exhibit, to do the same. People want to be drawn, I think, to something bigger than themselves, and if other people lead that way, it makes it easier. So you have a knockoff effect on other people when you bring down your ego and some cultures can get to the place where that happens. But just to be clear, there's high-performing cultures that have high ego.
Speaker 2: 17:12
I worked at McKinsey. There are investment banks, I would tell you. Most of them is a model where people are fighting, particularly in banks, for their compensation. It's a big thing, it's a let me show you how great I was and the deals I got done. Therefore, I deserve more compensation in that model. By definition, I think you should answer your question. That's supposed to be a high ego place. Now, over time, that can have become destructive, and yeah, but I think that's the balance. Leadership and that kind of organization has to figure out a way to maintain that competitiveness around individual performance and at the same time still figure out how do we have some collegial nature that we can build a firm together.
Speaker 1: 17:53
You've taken your career where it is based on this model. You see it and evaluate your teams based on this model. We doubled down on ego, but I would love to understand what do you think about skills? And when you think about hard work, what would you recommend people consider when they're looking at upping those potentially? Just to balance out the equation.
Speaker 2: 18:14
One thing I tell you about the skills side, the hardest part about skills, it's the one I think we can do the least Now it doesn't mean you can't take classes and get training things, but core thing that drives and in fact you didn't ask if I stole this idea. There's no SEW, quite like the way I do it. But this construct of these sort of three forces in determining how effective people are in their work was stolen from a guy I worked with at McKinsey years ago, an Australian guy, clemenger, and he actually initially his thinking was it wasn't skills, it was smarts. It's also smarts are trainable. It's a very McKinsey way to think about it. Right, and he'd been a career McKinsey Was we just want smart people, because smart people will figure out problems, but they'll also figure out how to learn and grow To some extent your clock speed.
Speaker 2: 18:59
You can work on it. You're born with what you got. Thank or don't thank your parents, but you got what you got. So that one is much harder for people to control. And I would tell you the best thing you can do to either quote unquote improve your smarts or your skills it's the learning you get, it's taking wisdom from your experiences. So what makes you smarter, effectively or more skilled is the fact that you have ability to take feedback and say, oh, I got to move a little bit over this way, so that's probably the most important piece, except that a lot of it is going to be.
Speaker 2: 19:28
You're given processing capability and then the one is applying yourself, and if you just do more and you're active, it goes back to the work. How hard you work. If you take on opportunities. Every time you have a chance to do something new and different, you do it and then you listen and learn about how you did. That's the best thing I think you can do to improve your sort of smart skills and on work, that's probably the least complex, right?
Speaker 2: 19:51
And it's just how will you apply yourself? It's definitely about working smarter, not just harder, although I sometimes think we use the excuse of working smart, not hard, to not fully deploy ourselves and really invest ourselves in the things we're working on. But that could be personal, professional, across the board. We often know when we're just showing up and there's days sometimes where that's all you can muster, just showing up. But if you find yourself only just showing up a lot of the time, you're probably not in the right place, because you just don't have that enthusiasm for your work to allow you to get up to a four or maybe even a five on how hard you work.
Speaker 1: 20:29
Yeah, it's interesting when you have those where you. Is it context you know what I'm saying Like when you're in a situation I know when you were at DocuSign or Responsys, for example, too, it felt like that was like these magical times, right, these magical cultures where you wanted to show up, right, it's the context of it, or is it the individual that's always going to have that lens, or is it a combination of both? I think it could be situational, right.
Speaker 2: 20:52
Yeah, but your point about the magical times what makes people remember times as magical is because they work really hard with a group of people they respect and care for and built a great album, and when you do that, it bonds people. I think we were chatting the other day and I told you that there was this 10-year reunion of people from when we sold Responses to Oracle and I thought the whole idea was a little wacky in the first place, to be completely honest with you, and then, when hundreds of people showed up and said it was a really special way for them to be back with people, it felt more like a college reunion than a company had been part of. You had something special and that culture that you were part of will always be important to you.
Speaker 1: 21:37
It's the power of when you have this in masses, right, when everybody is pulling in their weight or has a high SO score, right. That's the power of that too. Come to think about it, I don't think I've ever had a magical work experience where I phoned it in or where I was very egocentric, or like I was the smartest person in the freaking room, like that never, ever happened. I think that's common.
Speaker 2: 21:58
I think that experience you're describing is probably common and I would say there are times, particularly in technology industry, where you get on a wave and you probably could continue to have great success with phoning it in a little bit, although be careful, because when you're riding that kind of wave it's going to crash at some point. But I would tell you, I bet it's not a magical experience. I think it's very difficult, if you didn't really work hard at something, to truly enjoy the success and the outcome, because it's not as important, it's not as special to you as if you know that you really applied yourself fully.
Speaker 1: 22:32
Yeah, you got to be invested.
Speaker 3: 22:46
Something that really resonates with me with what you said, because, as another former athlete but I will say I was D1. Just rubbing it in a little, just a little, but I was a rower, so it doesn't really count as a former athlete, throughout my life, one of the things that I heard time and time again from my coaches and like you, I was never the best, but what I always got was the heart award. Because when you're the one giving heart and in my mind, when I keep hearing you say hard work, that's what I keep hearing.
Speaker 3: 23:12
Oh, the people who give heart, like you have the heart in it. Is that what you mean when you say hard work absolutely?
Speaker 2: 23:18
and in fact it's funny. I was thinking about your point about crew. It actually is a great example because, if you think about again, I never rode crew in any close to semblance of a real way, but oddly enough, I went to a strange high school in Seattle that happened to have crew, which is unusual, particularly unusual. Then on the West Coast, I'm going to start and for the next six, about six minutes, I'm going to get increasingly uncomfortable to the point that my body's going to hate what I'm doing and I'm going to collapse in exhaustion and you go and that's what we do every time and that's our form, and there's probably some track and field things that are like that a little bit, and it's the only one you do in unison, depending on three other, seven other I guess, four and eight if you count. But what a crazy bond that people must have with the team when you go through that.
Speaker 2: 24:17
You've probably seen it, but you see the boys in the boat. There's a movie from the book the Boys in the Boat. The book was better than the movie. Usually Not always, but usually it's the University of Washington men's crew that won the Olympic gold medal in 1936. No-transcript.
Speaker 3: 24:53
Oh, I loved crew. By the way, I think when I talked to any of my teammates, most of us did it so we could watch the sunrise before class, because it was just a fun experience at 5 am.
Speaker 3: 25:03
I wanted to go back to those high-performance work cultures, because we've all worked in them, right, like I worked in big law. We work cultures because we've all worked in them, right, like I worked in big law. We've worked in the big four, all of those things. Do you think something has to happen in terms of, like performance management? Performance management set up in a way to be egocentric or to build ego, because there's always this kind of back and forth? Do you brag about the work you've done and that impacts your potential bonus and your raise or your opportunities for growth, but none of us get our work done, necessarily as individual contributors. Even when you're an individual contributor, you still need others to complete your work, and so do you think there's an opportunity for organizations to think differently about performance management and how you brag about the things you've done while also bringing along everyone else who helped you get there?
Speaker 2: 25:50
I think so. Yeah, and I'll tell you the first thing. There's certain things in business life that are close to universally. True. There's probably none that are quite, but there's two I want to talk to One related to your question, but first I'll do the other one.
Speaker 2: 26:03
It's amazing how what we learned in kindergarten is so important for what we do in life. Saying please, saying thank you and saying I'm sorry when appropriate is the simplest thing to do, and when we don't do it oftentimes it leads to fairly significant conflict and problems. I'm not saying it always solves everything, but at least creates the opportunity and the space to be successful. And one of the things that I think is really corollary to that is about teams that you described. And if you say we instead of I, first of all people know.
Speaker 2: 26:40
So if you're so worried that you have to be clear that you did something, the detraction that you're going to get from your colleague to everyone else I need you to point out that it was you Way swaps, any extra benefit you might get in bonus time or what you're just got, is my opinion.
Speaker 2: 26:55
But if you do that chest beating and you do it around a wee, it's amazing how everyone gives you license to brag all you want because it's about wee, and if you figure out a way to try to give the credit in a credible way to other people, because we've all seen the bullshit, the fake oh, thank the little people, because it wasn't me and you just look and you're like, okay, that not only gets you the credit for having delivered the great results that your team's done, but, more importantly, that we language makes everyone else feel great and it sets us up for another success, because now everyone wants to do it again. So you're also building followership from teams. So I think that's the answer to the question is just be a we oriented and get away from needing to point out what people probably already know when you've done something great.
Speaker 1: 27:55
Yeah, I'll tell you too, where I've seen people be really successful is with that we language and that authentic we language like you talked about, with their team, and also cross-functionally as well. When you can be we, when you're reaching across the aisle with finance and HR and marketing and you're going at it we as one, that is hugely powerful, especially as you're going up in the ranks.
Speaker 2: 28:17
And I would also tell you I think it's powerful when you're the hardest grader on yourself. A lot of people say they're the hardest grader on themselves, they're toughest on themselves. I don't always find that to be the case and I find if you can do that and get a reputation amongst your colleagues for being tougher on yourself than you are on them, it's a really exponentially improving opportunity. I'll give you one sort of dumb example. But at Responsys I had this thing where I tried to change the way we thought about performance reviews. So we did everything out of 100. It's just just like a hundred. But a hundred was perfect Pretty hard to be perfect and I was CEO for 10 years at Responsys. I had twice a year had a review and I would submit my self-assessment, just like I would have all my managers first submit a self-assessment, and I never had a hundred. I never got above low nineties and we had a couple of quarters that led to a half year performance that you would say those were pretty good and I had a board that would push back and say come on, this has got to be a hundred percent and I'm like a hundred, how can you get a hundred? But what would happen is I'd come in and say, yeah, I think I had an 82. And they'd be this is crazy. You at least have a 90. We have to argue this up to a 90. Think about that.
Speaker 2: 29:28
Normally my experiences before that was the other way around. I think I'm about 115. And then someone else has to say, god, we really think he's about a 90, but now we've got to say he's an 80 to try to compromise. So it just totally changes that. Every single executive my direct reports at responses but one and I'll get to the one in a second Over time grasped that and said this is the way I want it to be.
Speaker 2: 29:54
I want to be in a situation when I come in tougher on myself and my manager was me says no, I think better than that. Those conversations are so rewarding and I did. One executive who was very talented and a great executive and he had grown up in a sense of I'm above 100%, everything I do is above 100%, and the math major in me says there is no above 100%. It's impossible to be above 100% Asymptomically. Approaching 100% on most things is almost impossible, and so that mentality to get out of that I got all Ben Antonio, but I got everyone else there and it was I think it was a big part of our culture that then went down and trickled down wherever what it was saying like. Let me be tougher on myself.
Speaker 1: 30:39
Let me ask you this In those moments, did you want to rate yourself 100? In the back of your mind, were you like I actually was 100, but I'm going to put it in myself at a 91? Or were you like, no, I was genuinely in 91, you wasn't you can't what's truth I think there's times where I thought I was pretty damn good.
Speaker 2: 30:56
Yeah, we had a lot of challenges too, but the early parts of the company was a complete turnaround. There was some, I think. You know I often talk I'll give you a. Let me answer your question, then I'll give you them. Yeah, there were times when I thought I was great, but because I defined it it as 100%. It's just yeah, you can't.
Speaker 2: 31:12
One of my pet peeves when people say I gave 110%, you don't have 110. There is no 110. And I appreciate what the construct they're trying to say pushing yourself. No, it's like the crew thing, like my 100% is to get us there in six minutes. I got us in five minutes and 55 seconds. I did more than a hundred percent. Well, you just reset. What a hundred percent is? That's new love.
Speaker 2: 31:32
But but that concept, yes, there are probably some times when I might've been a little bit I don't know too cute by half about saying no, the IPO was great, it just wasn't really the accomplishment I wanted for the company. I think we could have done better. Or my last time I sold the company at the highest multiple SaaS offer company I'd ever had. That was a pretty good outcome. Ceo should feel good, the whole team should feel good about that. But there were some things that just weren't quite optimized in those periods and I think it's important to always tell yourself that the grade you would give yourself is lower than the grade you'd give the company If you're the CEO or general manager for your business, because telling people I'm better than you are and I'm pulling us up, it's a hugely odd message to send, and you and I have talked about this before.
Speaker 2: 32:21
I think the leadership model I try to think about is the inverted pyramid. Instead of a CEO at the top and then all these people coming down, I say the job of a leader is to make everyone else on the team successful. So you should think about it as an inverted leadership model. And the simple example is that if you think about a company, particularly if it gets to scale, even if you have a lot of self-confidence, managed ego I have a lot of self-confidence. The best I could be at a company of scale let's say there's a thousand employees maybe I could be as good as three or four people. I would have to just be in my A game constantly. Best case, I could be as good as three or four actually, but if I could make each of those thousand people 10% better, that's like hundreds of people you've added of good work, so it just swamps it, and so if you get your mindset to think like that versus to think top, down ones, so it just swamps it.
Speaker 2: 33:09
And so if you get your mindset to think like that, versus to think top down, I think it helps you to achieve.
Speaker 3: 33:15
I like the we, not me, concept over there. Yeah, when you think about how leaders can accurately assess where they fall on this scale, can they accurately self-assess, or does it require some external measurements? I'm the only one that can self-assess.
Speaker 2: 33:32
You're the only one Awesome, sorry, sorry. Of course, everyone can do your own self-assessment. In fact, doing a self-assessment is great. More valuable for most of us probably two is to ask the people you work with, ask your colleagues, ask the team you manage, ask your manager hey, how do you think about me? In this format, and that would be the fun exercise. If you're doing it as a management team, I should do this actually my next gig. You should actually just ask everyone to do that assessment for everyone on the team and then you give people the sense of here's what you said about you and here's what the rest of us said about you.
Speaker 2: 34:04
In each of these dimensions, I think it could be really powerful way, and I'll tell you that the hard part about it is assessing. You try to think about assessing people when you don't have a lot of data. Most people, if you work with colleagues and you ask people oh yeah, francesca, usually people have a pretty similar view. The hard part is like when you're interviewing someone and you meet them and you say, hey, should we hire this person? You're trying to assess how successful they'll be. It's much harder to figure out some of these things. There's some things that are typically around the smarts and skills. People have degrees and things, or people have a track record where they've delivered tremendous performance. So you see some areas where you can get that.
Speaker 2: 34:41
The ego one, of course, is the hardest one, although the work one is interesting because a lot of people tout how hard they work and again they're just about working hard. It's about working smart. Sometimes you can't completely rock that. You get a better sense from other people, but the ego one is the hardest one and the way I'll give you my fun interview question. I love to ask people. If it were you, mel, I would say hey. So, mel, if I had in the room everyone that you've been working with for the last five years, but you weren't there and I said to them what's really great about what Mel does? What would they say? And then you answered that question and then, when I'm finished, I said, hey, if I asked that same group, what are the things Mel should be working on? What are some areas where you know Mel could be a little more effective?
Speaker 2: 35:27
What would they say to that? And of course, everyone loves the first question. First of all, they'd say I'm the smartest person. They give you, as they should. You're giving them a softball to say what's great about you, yeah. But the second question is interesting because there's basically three buckets of answers and some people are in tune with issues that they're working on and they've gotten feedback in the past. Maybe they've made some improvement, they know there's more, and that's a really thoughtful and great answer. Another answer is I don't think they have anything to say. Look, that would be it.
Speaker 3: 36:01
Look at what we're saying. Such a weird response.
Speaker 2: 36:02
Really they just have. No, they actually just they've never dawned on them that people might not think they're perfect and they may be great but just like. That's an indication that we ought to be probing further how effective they are in teams if it's never sort of done. But the worst answer of all is what I call the faux answer. And the faux answer is let me tell you what they'd say Now. First of all, they say I work too hard and carrying the load of the whole team makes everyone feel terrible because I do so much more than everyone else, and that's a real problem for people.
Speaker 2: 36:38
And they give two or three things that you're like the most ridiculous fake critique of all time. Then you actually realize this person's smart. They probably have some awareness of things that they could work on and be better, but they're manipulative and they're full of shit and they're basically going to say let me tell you how I can smooth that. That's actually indicative to me. They could be skilled and there might be certain roles where that sort of ability to communicate and feel if they're going to be an actor or something you might say that's a great skill, to be able to have right To improvise that answer. But to be a colleague, that's a person that's I'm going to be wary, I'm going to be wary. Can they really dedicate themselves to a mission to work with other people? So that's a great question to ask.
Speaker 3: 37:17
I love that question, Someone who worked in talent acquisition. I think it's such a smart question to ask because I've heard also those rehearsed answers and you're like, oh OK, yeah, I don't know about that. What are some ways? I guess, when you think about warning signs Because I would see that as a warning sign, just as you did but when someone's in the job, what are some of the warning signs that indicate ego might be creeping up or interfering with their leadership effectiveness?
Speaker 2: 37:43
Core issue of where an ego is a problem is usually not in someone's self-led efforts around their interactions with the team, and so I think where we see people who are less effective team members and aren't able to the company or the team first, that's where you see it and you see it from their colleagues. And what do I be careful about? I'm a big believer in things like 360 feedback. I'm not actually a huge believer in massive programmatic you have your talent, background, sort of solutions but I think the discipline of getting feedback in a thoughtful, targeted way, as opposed to just lots of forms that people start filling out in a shitty way, is not, honestly, the key to success. It is in a thoughtful way, given the person and the individual. You as a manager do work, but getting that feedback from folks is great. One thing to be careful about is just because other people are unhappy with someone or complain about someone doesn't mean they're the problem. Are unhappy with someone or complain about someone doesn't mean they're the problem. A lot of times we ask someone to carry some pretty heavy water and drive some pretty aggressive performance and some people might not like that and they might say that's a bad person. A lot of times. Let's get this at.
Speaker 2: 38:45
Docusign or CPL would say they're not living the DocuSign values. They were very important. We had this really strong set of values. Docu DocSend's an amazing company and it's got some things that are really strong. By the way, we've had some challenges last couple of years. Some of those values have allowed us, I think, to maintain more success. But it's really easy to pull the values card and say I don't like the way Mel's doing that and so I'm going to say throw the value set. I'd be really careful that the person that's willing to throw that might not just be doing well, they might be actually saying the scrutiny and management I'm getting is making me uncomfortable. And the person is trying to give me aggressive feedback and somehow I missed the memo that said feedback is a gift and since I didn't think feedback was a gift, I think the person's riding me really hard, but actually they're trying to make me better. So get feedback but make sure you're triangulating and then get observations yourself. That's how I'd propose attacking that role.
Speaker 1: 39:41
Okay, here's a question. I feel like we have a lot of representations of ego in the extreme. I've seen very high up leaders, board members, ceos, it could be even a manager. I've seen individual contributors and they're so egocentric they're bordering on narcissistic or maybe they are or just a straight psycho. We've all worked for them. What do you like? Some of those environments incent that, incent that behavior, reward that behavior. If you're in an organization that you feel like that's happening, or you're walking into a culture where that day that's happening, how do you start to advocate for more of this balance? How do you operate as yourself? If you're someone that isn't that way and likes to operate with more of the balance, do you go? What do you do? What's the play there?
Speaker 2: 40:29
So, the first thing is why? Why do you want to do what you're describing you want to do? Do you diagnose that there's a problem in the company? You see a performance challenge happening at some point, or we have a nutrition problem because we have some people's behaviors driving good people out. I'd like to try to understand what the thing I'm trying to fix is before I take my remedy. But in general, I'm a big believer in we motivate people with incentive structures. Some of those are financial incentive structures, some of the praise, all sorts of levels that we have for incentives for people. And so if you're driving behavior and you're seeing it not just one individual, but you're seeing it more creep into your business in a way that you think it's not healthy, I'd look at your incentive structure.
Speaker 2: 41:08
And so one of the phenomenas is you might say we have a lot of individual achievement awards. Let's go to a team award and a company could take a bonus approach and say it's subjectively based on each individual's performance. Or you could say we're going to have a total team outcome. These are our top three goals, and if we achieve them we all win in that award, and if we don't, that's one lever. But I think that kind of concept is thinking about what you've put in place in your organization to drive the behavior you're driving. And the other one and this is one that I don't understand why more people don't do it other than you know. I have some conflict avoidance in my own nature, so I understand it's a human phenomenon. We often avoid conflict, francesca, less you than the rest of us. You're so nice.
Speaker 2: 41:52
You spiked on that in a good way, but the answer is talk about it. I don't know. We have this thing where everyone's in a closed room secretly saying, oh, Billy's doing this and Susie's doing this. Hey, Billy, Susie, people think you're being a jerk and I don't know why. That's not who I think you are. So let's go show them that's wrong and what are the things we're going to do together to have it? And I think, same thing Not everyone accepts feedback as a gift at the beginning, but you have to explain to them.
Speaker 2: 42:18
You want to be successful here. You're going to work with me in addressing this feedback and I think you would find most people 90%-ish people if they know that you care about them and they know that you respect them, they will take that feedback and they will want to be better. And there's some people who just can't take it or see it feels too personal and they have to say it's not me, it's the person that's complaining. Understand that there's a cycle. You go through that process. Past that, I think most people can say you know what? I want to be better, I want to be more effective, so I want to work on it.
Speaker 1: 42:52
Yeah, Mel and I are. We're writing a book and we just came out of research and that's the number one thing around being feeling like you're being respected and valued. You cannot have feedback, trust, development, conversation, anything without that. That is the base, for you have to have that mutual respect and that mutual value, and I think it's something that we overlook or we assume it's just there yeah, right and we've never had a goddamn conversation about it.
Speaker 2: 43:20
Yeah, and I'll, yeah. Um, and you have data. And so what happens when you have data? You sometimes that ad is just nobody cares what you know until they know that you care. And so if you're there, you say I got all this information, make you better. I'm like, are you trying to make better? If you're there and you say I got all this information to make you better, I'm like are you trying to make better? Are you setting me up for failure? Like when I understand that you're. When you show up to tell me something, it's because you care about me and you care about the success of what we're building together. Yeah, then I really do want to know, I want to understand, I care about this feedback that's going to make me better.
Speaker 1: 43:49
Yeah, I think starting with care is such a huge thing. Starting with care might be your answer to my next question, which is I'm dead. It's a little crazy out there these days, but it's a little uncertain. Yeah, hashtag tariffs, speaking of incentive structures as opposed to sticks. I am curious, though if you're a leader, especially if you're a C-level executive, and you have the entire company on your shoulders and you're trying to navigate uncertainty it could be now, it could be in the future, I don't care, but I am curious about how you protect that balance of your ego as you're going through that, because I have to believe that it might be up and down, depending on what situation you're in, what win you have, what punch you just took in the phase. How do you maintain and balance that ego when you are just in a blitzkrieg of bullshit?
Speaker 2: 44:40
Yeah, two things. One, it was harder for me to insightfully answer that question today because I'm at a place where I've had so much good fortune in my career and I've gotten a lot of boost. That makes me feel good about myself professionally, and not that I don't have things I'm constantly working on, for sure, but I've been so fortunate that I don't walk around with a chip on my shoulder that I, you know, because of this crisis or some other, I either need to prove myself. I do feel like I need to prove myself every day, but I don't feel like I'm coming from a defensive way of doing that and proving myself. So that makes it easier. But if I go back a couple IPOs ago, yeah, I think it's a real challenge.
Speaker 2: 45:20
I think what you're describing is absolutely a challenge, and the more that the market gets crazy your market, whatever that is it's easy to feel like it's unfair and lashing out and attacking, and then sometimes even the people that are close to you. You should be pulling together. Some people are critical of them. We're blaming. You know the blame game. If you just sold more, we wouldn't have this problem. So it's your fault.
Speaker 2: 45:42
Sales is fault, which has been a huge issue, by the way, in enterprise software the last couple of years, the number of companies, because I spent a lot of time talking to people about running more software companies that say a company is great, the only problem is our sales team. If we just had a new head of sales, it's going to be great. I'm like really, because every software company is saying the same thing. Is it really just the sales leaders? I don't think so, and so I do think the hard thing when everything is going crazy like that is to just go back and say what can I control and what can I not? I can't control tariffs, I can't control any of these things. I have to make decisions based on the fact that some externalities are there and those external factors are happening. But I have to go back to our team and say I don't know what the outcome is. I just can't tell you what the outcome is going to be, but I can tell you what the inputs are and we're going our very best at doing it in the way we believe and at the quality that we believe we can deliver for our customers, for employees, whatever. And let's just do that, because that's what we can control, and I know it's the same thing like stock price is a phenomenon.
Speaker 2: 46:41
Companies go public and every CEO gives the same speech, or pretty much every CEO. Guys, we can't control the stock price. You shouldn't be spending time looking at the stock price. That response is early on. I made this thing. I said I'm not going to look at the stock price except for Friday afternoon every week. I will not look at the stock If you ask me about it. I don't want to know. I don't care. I don't want to know what the stock price is. What am I going to do on any given day? How are you.
Speaker 1: 47:06
This is a backward.
Speaker 2: 47:07
This isn't that. Leaving is a backward indicator. We got to be focused on our business and getting people out of that mindset. Actually, one thing we did response is we had the IPO and we didn't go ring the bell in New York. We did the IPO. We came back to the office and we were with the office and the people and the day after IPO we said let's play Sales to do. We got product to build. We got customers to take care of. We said what happened to go public yesterday? It's fun and Our customers take care of it. What happened to go public yesterday? It was fun and we should all feel good about it. It was a nice accomplishment. Back to work, because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter in the context of what we have to do every day. I'm sure we care about it and create liquidity for people. Lots of wonderful things that happen. I'm not against celebrating. I'm all about celebrating. Why do we have the opportunity to celebrate?
Speaker 3: 48:03
Because, because we did these other things really well for the last several years, so let's keep doing those things. Looking back at your younger self and what you know now, what do you wish you could tell your younger self?
Speaker 2: 48:10
I think probably a couple things. One is I didn't have a lot of patience, I was in a hurry and I think it's okay to be moving fast, but I think I would tell myself as part of that smell the roses, enjoy the time, enjoy the experiences you're having, and I sometimes skip things to get on to the next, and sometimes I think that's a mistake a lot of us make. And life it's not the end, it's the journey and really making sure you enjoy the journey. And that probably is mostly then around investing in relationships, and not necessarily just like your most important relationship, but the people you know that are just wonderful. It could be colleagues, could be friends, any number of places. Really take advantage of those personal relationships. That is what life is fun to do. So that'd be number one.
Speaker 2: 48:59
Number two, and there's no question, after the practice speech I gave you on this topic earlier, I would tell myself to chill, cool my jets a little bit about then and realize that the joy I was going to get in life, the real joy I have, comes from seeing other people being successful, and I had to accumulate a certain amount of professional success and personal success before I could start to do that. So I missed a lot of years of a lot of joy I could have had. I think I had little snippets of it. I'm not a total jerk. I did care about the people I worked with but it was all in the lens of they could be successful to make me more successful. And if I think I could have just appreciated them more for them and been better for them, starting that sooner I would get a lot more joy. So those would probably be the two things. There's probably a lot of things I would tell myself, but those would be the. Those would be the.
Speaker 3: 49:52
I like it. The second one, especially when you think of giving their best advice to emerging leaders, that's like a big takeaway that they can start today. Okay.
Speaker 1: 49:59
Rapid round questions. You can answer these with one word or a sentence, or however long you want. Sometimes these are our most interesting questions. Are you ready to play? I'm ready to play. Okay, it is 2030. What does work look like? Work will be very similar to what it is today in the post-COVID world Very similar.
Speaker 2: 50:25
All right, interesting. No, I should elaborate. I thought I was supposed to do rapid fire.
Speaker 1: 50:28
Wait, now, I want to know the answer. Wait, why do you think it's going to be similar? Why do you think it's going to be similar?
Speaker 2: 50:35
I think we've had a lot of transformational change going into and coming out of COVID and I think the amount of change in the way we work, assimilate is limited. We're humans and we have our patterns and we have our trends. So I think we've gotten to this place. I don't think it's exactly equilibrium, but in terms of our people going to be in the office, are they going to be remote, I think we're getting to that zone of where we're going to be. I would add, I think artificial intelligence will change the way we work, but I think it's going to be less impact. It'll be massively impactful on business, less impactful on people than I think we realize, because we're adaptable and the things that get automated and then we do things as humans that can't be automated. So I don't think that will change as much as some people are forecasting in the next five years.
Speaker 2: 51:15
Are you an AI optimist? I'm an optimist, for sure. Yeah, I definitely. I have my I call it terminator awareness of what's happening. I just don't see it. I really don't. Maybe it's my. I'm an optimist. I'm also. My faith in humanity is pretty high. Yeah, I'm pretty optimistic.
Speaker 1: 51:31
That's good. There's a lot of really awesome possibility there. I'm stoked for it. I'm stoked for it. Yeah, what music are you listening to right now?
Speaker 2: 51:39
I've been listening to Dave Matthews almost nonstop the last 10 days. Nothing wrong with a little DMV. We had Dave come to an event. Jane Goodall introduced him to me. We did an event at DocuSign. He is the funniest person I've ever been on stage with. If he was an actor, I don't know if you know this before he became a musician he was an actor.
Speaker 2: 51:59
He's been in a number of films since he's become famous, but he is just the funniest. He has the driest, quick-witted sense of humor that I never would have fully understood, even though I've been a fan for years and then joined C&M on stage, so Dave was the bomb Best session ever. At any event, Get out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: 52:18
I always read him as like either really awkward to talk to or making like really uncomfortable jokes period.
Speaker 3: 52:26
Yeah, I got the impression. He seems like a good call.
Speaker 2: 52:29
So he roasted me in front. He had the DocuSign employee base and customers and he was constantly making fun of me in a way that the docuside employee based and customers and he was constantly making fun of me in a way that, of course, that audience love oh sure so you know he knew his audience.
Speaker 2: 52:40
Um, yeah, he's a musical genius. So you're right, sometimes there's oddities with people who are creative geniuses. Uh, there's some of that awkwardness. He's so genuine. I'll just say one little snippet. We should move past dave matthews, but he moved to seattle from charlottesville where they really got going. So he lives in in the seattle area and up until this is about five years ago, he just moved out of a one bathroom house with his three children and his wife and he was just like, yeah, and driving his 1970 something volvo, he's just a guy, that's like.
Speaker 2: 53:13
I don't have any heirs. He's just the same person that I think he wanted to be ever since he was probably 20 or something like that. Yeah, he's a treasure.
Speaker 1: 53:22
See that story restores my faith in humanity. Honestly Like that's it. Okay, what are you reading? What are you reading?
Speaker 2: 53:29
So I just finished reading something I half read. It was embarrassing Principles by Ray Dalio, which is a tome of a big book. But the exciting thing that I just started reading again and I think I read it before. But I'm embarrassed. I can remember his Profiles in Courage. It was a Pulitzer Prize winning, jfk wrote it and it's one of those books that everyone knows about, but then you just maybe never read. And anyway, jillian got it for me and I saw it at a bookstore. He's a bookstore and I'm reading it and he's a gifted writer, in addition to being such a special politician.
Speaker 1: 54:05
It's also interesting to go back, even if you have read something way back, to go back and reread it. All right, here's my last question for you. What piece of advice would you give someone? What's your best piece of advice for them?
Speaker 2: 54:15
Oh, if it's mildly professional advice I suppose there's other realms, but I guess this would fit more broadly is in life the key is to find I used to be a consultant, so I like to do everything in two by two matrices. It is to find the combination of the things that you're good at and the things you like doing and get into that upper right corner. And I think the biggest thing that people sometimes forget is the things you like, and I think we're naturally drawn to. We get positive feedback on the things we're good at, but finding that intersection of the things you really love doing, that's the thing that you need to focus on.
Speaker 1: 54:48
It makes it really enjoyable, right? I look forward to it.
Speaker 3: 54:50
Cool, love it. We appreciate you being with us today. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: 54:53
Me as well. I really enjoyed it. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: 55:00
This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, Mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams, so please join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends. Thank you.
Managerial Sabotage
Management is in crisis…
Today’s managers are feeling the squeeze from above, below, and all sides. In this episode, David Rice, Executive Editor at People Managing People, joins us to share what it really feels like to be a modern day manager. From the lack of formal training to the growing expectations from executives and teams, we talk about why the role is harder than ever and what can actually help.
Whether you're deep in the middle or just stepping into the manager role, you’ll find practical ways to build connection, navigate pressure, and move forward with more clarity and confidence in a rapidly changing world.
Your Work Friends Podcast: Managerial Sabotage with Davide Rice, People Managing People
Today’s managers are feeling the squeeze from above, below, and all sides. In this episode, David Rice, Executive Editor at People Managing People, joins us to share what it really feels like to be a modern day manager. From the lack of formal training to the growing expectations from executives and teams, we talk about why the role is harder than ever and what can actually help.
Whether you're deep in the middle or just stepping into the manager role, you’ll find practical ways to build connection, navigate pressure, and move forward with more clarity and confidence in a rapidly changing world.
Speaker 1: 0:00
The thing that disturbs me and keeps me up at night is the fact that, essentially, at this point, ascending into management ranks is an experience akin to being sabotaged. It's almost a betrayal in some ways.
Speaker 2: 0:31
Welcome to your Work Friends. I'm Francesca and I'm Mel. We're breaking down work, so you get ahead, Mel. You and I talk a lot about the state of the workplace. Actually, every single day we're talking about what's happening with work, what's happening with jobs, and one of the things that we just keep coming back to is what the hell is going on with the manager and the manager role.
Speaker 3: 0:51
We've covered it several times in New Week New Headlines First of all. Managers are in the sandwich, the classic corporate sandwich between executive leadership and then their employees, and they're getting dumped on every which way. We covered an article several months back talking about this is the crisis year of the manager, because we see orgs ripping them out, which we both have expressed as a dumb move for many reasons. And the other piece there is the younger people don't want the gig because it's a thinkless job right now being a manager.
Speaker 2: 1:28
It's hard, right, it's hard and to your very good point, that's getting attacked from all sides and we wanted to bring in somebody that hears about what the hell is really going on Real street conversation with the manager. So we brought in David Rice. David is the executive editor of People Managing People, where he's looking at the stories that are happening in the workplace specifically around management, and he's really trying to get at, with people managing people, the heart of the issues that are faced not only by HR professionals but by employees too. So we thought, because he's getting this great overview of what's going on in the ether, he can be a very good person to get the very real street, very raw, very honest perspective on what's going on with managers.
Speaker 3: 2:12
Yeah, a lot of insightful conversation. I also, side note, love all of his videos, so if you're not following David on LinkedIn, you should be and check out his weekly videos.
Speaker 2: 2:23
David is very dry, he is very no bullshit, but he's spot on, so we hope you enjoy this conversation with that. Here's David.
Speaker 3: 2:44
David, it's so good to see you. All right, David.
Speaker 2: 2:47
Again, thanks so much for joining us today. We're super stoked to talk about the state of managers In our part of the world. Mel and I are hearing from managers. We're reading the news about managers. They're getting it from all sides. We're flattening, we're taking managers out. Apparently, ai is now coming for your job all this good jazz. Like it's a. It's a crazy time to be a manager, and especially in your role as the executive editor at People Managing People. What are you hearing? What are you seeing? What is the world of the manager looking like right now? And I'm curious what's keeping you up at night?
Speaker 1: 3:20
as it relates to managers these days, I think the thing that, like disturbs me and keeps me up at night is the fact that, like, essentially at this point, ascending into management ranks is an experience akin to being sabotaged, right, like it's almost a betrayal in some ways, like if you think about the fact that 82% of managers received no formal training. So it's just here, go do this really difficult thing. I'm not going to help you do it. And even the whole way that you were successful, you got into this because you were, in theory, good at something. So is this how we're going to reward success and high performance? Is here's this new challenge that I'm just not going to help you with. And I don't care. I guess I don't care if you're good at it or not.
Speaker 1: 4:09
As somebody who spends a lot of time talking about leadership and how to create success and how to innovate and inspire people to do new things, how can we do that to managers? It's just disturbing, right? It would be like trying to train your pets to go to the bathroom outside but never open the door. What do you want them to do? I don't understand. So what are we doing? There's a lot in this world that I'm like what are we doing? But when I think about business, that's the thing that I just. It blows my mind and makes me want to pull my hair out.
Speaker 2: 4:49
Yeah I mean to your point is we're not setting them up for success at all. If there's a development piece, 82% of people aren't even getting trained. Mel and I absolutely know that to be true. Very few organizations are doing that and even if they are, it's not necessarily that they're developing them the right way, because managing is a very different skill than individual contributor. It's a completely different turn. We know it's one of the hardest roles to step into. If you ask most people in their career ladder, that flip up into manager was way harder than that flip up into executive.
Speaker 1: 5:19
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: 5:19
Because it's just so different and I love your analogy. So we're basically saying, yeah, this is what you need to do, but we're not allowing you to do it or we're not setting you up for success to do it, ie opening the door. Is there anything that gives you hope? Because we absolutely agree on that reality. But is there anything where you're like? But this is interesting.
Speaker 1: 5:37
Yeah, I think the thing that gives me hope is there's a lot of people coming together around common experiences right now, common goals, desires. I think 2025, when we look back on it in a couple of years will be like a pivotal year for community building. That's my hope, that's one of the things that I really wanted to see from this year and for changing the way we think about traditional dynamics. So, whether that's how we use something like LinkedIn or how we approach going to a conference or interacting with each other online which obviously I think could use an overhaul but I'm seeing a lot of people agree on what they see Like we all agree that this is happening to managers, right, and we know what we want to change.
Speaker 1: 6:16
I think there's not as much difference in philosophy or the spectrum of thought around this. There is about a bunch of other issues, right. So I think it's a little different in that we want to build thought around this. There is about a bunch of other issues, right. So I think it's a little different in that we want to build community around this, and that's a skill that we need to learn in and of itself, and so I think it's going to be good for us to come together on that stuff and identify the things that we want. We've all been sold a lot of well, I'll say this bullshit narratives about either management or what it means to be a leader. There's a lot of this like alpha talk and I have no time for it, but it's one of those things that like pervades the leadership space. I just think it's going to be short-lived and we're all going to come together and identify some things. The need for managers maybe we'll get into this as we go, but I don't think that the need for managers is going to disappear.
Speaker 2: 7:10
I want to talk about that community piece real quick. Community Are you seeing community inside organizations or are you seeing people actually going outside organizations to find that community because it's the only place they're getting it?
Speaker 1: 7:24
I think both. I think it's cool to see community within organizations because people are. We talk about, we always talk about like peer-to-peer learning, but I think more and more people are realizing like I can go to this person and get some kind of value, especially around AI, right, I think that people are seeing the things that their coworkers are doing with it and they're going whoa, I didn't know you could do that. Teach me how to do that. So they're learning a lot of things from each other and that, in and of itself, is building internal community.
Speaker 1: 7:51
But I also think, with all these layoffs and the things that you see, trust is low. In some ways there's loyalty, but in other ways people are like whoa, they ain't going to be loyal to me, so why should I be loyal to them? They ain't going to be loyal to me, so why should I be loyal to them? And they want to go out and build their communities outside of it. So they're going to the thing they're trying to build their networks. They're going to people that they have common visions with and engaging more.
Speaker 1: 8:13
We're seeing that activity that even you see in slack communities, right, there's more and more of that popping up and there's a lot more groups out there identifying that and going, hey, I think we can create this community. The facilitation of that is increasing as well, so there's more options and there's more desire to take advantage of it. It just gets infused into sort of the culture and the way that we all think I've got to be part of one of these things so that I can continue to grow, because the organization's not going to help me do it necessarily. I think that is a thing that's coming out now, but I ultimately think that it's a good thing. It's something that we all need to do anyways.
Speaker 2: 8:51
There's this overall sentiment for managers right now that, like I'm on my own and so I gotta figure this out, either through community or internally or externally, because my faith that my company is gonna be doing it for me or my leader is going to be doing it for me is nil. Am I reading that right? Is that what you're hearing and feeling?
Speaker 1: 9:25
who's above you to help you. It's generally like either director, like VPs or executives who have no time or desire to help you figure out your challenges and problems right. They're just not going to step in and help you. And so who are you going to turn? Yeah, you have to go to other people that are having a common experience and build some sort of rapport or understanding. You have to find out what tools are you using to understand these problems better. Where are you getting your advice from that kind of thing? And that's one of the things that we see, partially because we seek to be the thing that you would go to. Naturally, when we are successful, we find that people are gaining value from what we're doing. That is part of what's driving. It is like amongst managers. And then you see, like the flattening of organizations right, they're firing managers left and right, so it's. I don't even think they care if I succeed or not.
Speaker 2: 10:11
If I don't, they'll just use it as a reason to cut my salary from the books and, I guess, get ai to do it yeah, yeah, which is funny the deloitte human capital trends just came out, which a lot of times is thought of as one of the key indicators for where human performance, human capital consulting, is going right in all these organizations. And they just were like psych should be on, you shouldn't be taking this manager layer and I'm like no shit Sherlock.
Speaker 1: 10:40
Let's not, yeah, so it's figure.
Speaker 2: 10:42
Yeah, having 67 direct reports as a VP didn't work. I'm shocked.
Speaker 1: 10:48
I'm sure.
Speaker 3: 10:49
Yeah, it's painful, we just covered a few weeks back that, like Gen Z, has no interest in even moving into the management role, and there's obviously a much better way that people can be preparing people to be in this role. Ideally, from the time you step in the door as a junior level employee, you're gaining this training before you. From the time you step in the door as a junior level employee, you're gaining this training before you even make it to that step. Right, so it isn't this big surprise or big shift. You cover so many different organizations, so you see excellent use cases and really bad use cases. What do you see being done really well?
Speaker 1: 11:17
It's tough to say, because I'd probably say so-and-so is doing it right now, and then two weeks from now they flatten half the thing. So-and-so is doing it right now, and then two weeks from now, they flattened half the.
Speaker 3: 11:26
Thing.
Speaker 1: 11:26
Yeah, it's tough to say who's getting it right and who's getting it wrong. If you're looking at it like okay, no-transcript, and you're actually giving them tools to do that, then you're doing it right. One thing I've always said is, from the pandemic time, nobody ever adjusted. Nobody ever adjusted what they were doing to manage differently. Right, we went to remote. They didn't know how to do that. That's part of the reasons why there's a lot of reasons why they want to force people back into offices that are not great, but one of them is they never learned how to do this any other way, still doing things by the idea of butts in seats. And then you realize, oh, the increase in things like employee monitoring software. We talk about that all the time because it's one of the things we do reviews on our website but you see the increase in that and you're like, is that healthy? Is that any better than just looking at butts in seats? No, it's not a gauge of productivity. They got these like mouse jigglers and all these weird gadgets you can buy to fake productivity, if that's how you're going to measure productivity.
Speaker 1: 12:29
And so the ones that are doing it right, I think, are like look, you got to shift to like measuring output reasonably, measuring outcomes responsibly. Those are like two of the key things. Don't get lost on a goal. You can create this really big inflated expectation and think that's reasonable or responsible. It's not. It's about figuring out. Okay, what does productivity actually look like? Meaningful productivity, not just like completing tasks or creating a huge volume of work, because you can create a huge volume of work. But if it all sucks, what's the difference? It's not going to move the needle. We've got all these traditional quotas and traditional ways of thinking about things like productivity, things like business impact. We've got to get away from it being so role-specific, it being quota specific. I would say in a lot of cases, a lot of it is like volume of what people are doing rather than the velocity or the value of what they're doing. So the ones that are thinking ahead and trying to change that are doing it right.
Speaker 3: 13:35
Yeah, thinking about more meaningful impact than just like checking the box. And we hear it all the time, francesca and I get people reaching out to us. They're feeling the squeeze at the top from the executives that they're reporting up to, or they're a manager, their senior manager, who's getting it from the executive right.
Speaker 3: 13:53
And then they're also dealing with the emotions of their own team and the things that they're experiencing in the day to day. So they're just what's that song Stuck in the Middle with you? They're just really all stuck in this kind of hellish landscape of the middle being pulled in a million directions but also not feeling cared for in either way. If someone's in that space right now, what advice do you have for them if they're in the squeeze?
Speaker 1: 14:19
Yeah, it's tough right, because we're in this period where executive demands are just so out of touch with the experience and the reality of the lives people are living. They could use this moment to gain trust and instead they've used it to put in RTO orders and talk about 60-hour work weeks. A lot of what we're seeing, especially when they start yapping in the media, just erodes people's image of what leadership is right. So if you're in that space, I think the thing that you got to do is basically do whatever you can to increase transparency about what's going on in the org, what's going on with roles and I know transparency is one of those words that gets overused to the point that it means something different to everybody but just try to be real with people about what's happening. Respect them as adults. Okay, what's going on with their roles? What skills do they need? Just be human about it. Be real.
Speaker 1: 15:12
Everybody's terrified that a layoff is coming all the time. Now they're responding to what they see out in the world and what they want to see is you being a human being with them. They can't trust you more than the AI. If you feel like some soulless corporate suit, right, they might as well just listen to the all-knowing robot overlord that's going to own their future. That's why Gen Z wants to go to the AI instead of their manager. So you've got to find a way to establish good faith. You've got an find a way to establish like good faith. You've got an employee population right now that has no faith in leadership, and then you end up, if you don't do this right, you end up looking like a shill for people who are out there saying all these things in the media, or people who are just maybe not understanding the basics of their existence essentially, and it damages your ability to establish a relationship or trust with them.
Speaker 2: 16:08
Why do you think people don't do this? Mel and I, in our research, we talk a lot about the boss-employee-boss relationship, because it is a relationship I'm curious about. Why don't you think managers show up as a human? What's going on there?
Speaker 1: 16:22
I think there's a couple of reasons. One is the manager is expected to deliver certain things from the business, certain outcomes, and so it gets a little bit like it's not like they have any shortage of meetings and work to do themselves, so they're already bogged down and they've got a lot of pressure from the business to deliver results bogged down and they've got a lot of pressure from the business to deliver results. On top of that, you're talking about a couple of generations that have been, I would say, systematically weaponized against each other by media narratives. Right, everything is Gen Z this, but for a long time it was millennials and their damn avocado toast. Right, everything's just.
Speaker 1: 17:07
Oh, this group is awful, awful, and what you end up with is like a group of people. They kind of look at each other weird to begin with, and then you've got really big shifts that happen because of technology. Right, like millennials and gen z, they don't like phone calls, they don't even want to go to meetings. Yeah, we were talking about somebody on the phone. Just text me, or couldn't this meeting have been an email? How many times have you heard that? But it's an old fashioned way to get together. Talk about it, just settle it, and so you're not communicating to people how they want to be communicated to.
Speaker 1: 17:34
In a lot of cases, you're not understanding their culture, essentially because there's age differences or different ways of doing things that you grew up with. Because when you grew up, that didn't exist, like when I entered the workforce, slack wasn't a thing, it just didn't exist. We did everything by email. But you combine all that together and you've got a place where people just don't understand each other.
Speaker 1: 17:57
I feel like and managers, if they are typically a little bit more advanced in their career right now you're probably talking about somebody in their mid-30s to late-40s, let's say, a 24-year-old those experiences are wildly different, right, and their expectations are wildly different. You interpret things at work differently, and now they're being polarized by everything. Oh, I don't understand them and their pronouns and those like that. It's constantly one thing after another to highlight our differences, never our commonalities. We never talk about the things that we experience the same way. We never talk about the things that affect us in the same way. So that's why there is no trust For managers. It's going to have to be a conscious effort on your part to sit down, make a lot of eye contact.
Speaker 1: 18:49
Really, you know what I mean Not an awkward amount, but be present with somebody, be in the room with them, see them as a person, learn about things like energy and body language and personal dynamics, what it is that might be sitting between you and somebody that you're finding it difficult to connect with. Those are the things like as a manager. This job is going to become less and less about technical skills, I'm convinced, because a lot of all the technical stuff you'll just be able to do it with AI. The thing that's going to differentiate you as a manager is your ability to connect to another human being and to see within them what it is you can do to help them achieve that. But it's not easy to do and it's inherently awkward for groups that are different like that, I would say.
Speaker 1: 19:36
Easy, but it's simple it doesn't actually require too much technical thought.
Speaker 2: 19:44
It doesn't, and it's so fun because to point out, like commonalities right, there's way more that we have in common.
Speaker 3: 19:48
humans really don't need a lot, they really don't there seems to be a huge missed opportunity we've reported on, like the silver tsunami that's coming in 2030 and all the the knowledge that we should be learning, but is there a huge missed opportunity happening right now for organizations to have more intergenerational connections and community building to help bridge that gap and have that conversation, especially as we're going through these major transitions? Is that a space where companies should really be focusing?
Speaker 1: 20:21
I would say yes. Here's the challenge, though. We're basically like conditioned to distrust each other, right? So, like older folks, they don't want to trust Gen Z because they're entitled or lazy or whatever the stereotypes they peddle about them. And you've got like the OK boomer side to it where it's just oh, here they go, and we spend all this time thinking about our differences. There's not a lot of motivation to go. Okay, maybe he doesn't get this AI thing, but he was in the workforce when the internet came about and that must've been a huge shift. What lessons did he learn from that? They're not motivated to ask that question because inherently, you'd have to be interested in them or see their value, see their humanity, and everything that we do is meant to polarize and tear us apart, but it's hard to create something totally different within the walls of your organization when the broader culture is constantly peppering people with this narrative of difference. It makes it difficult for us to learn from each other unless there's some other connector.
Speaker 1: 21:24
We did a thing at work. We were just messing around with Sora when it came out, and my team and I we were like, what if we did this with it? I said, well, have it, make me the Pope. And then it did and I was like, oh my God, that's hilarious. That looks ridiculous. Now make it, make all of you my cardinals. So I did that and it was ridiculous. And then we were like, okay, now give all the cardinals blowout hairstyles. And the images were so funny. We were all laughing so hard. I can't remember the last time we all laughed this hard together, but it was lovely. It was like we had a great bonding moment out of it that I ended up making this video.
Speaker 1: 22:06
But I thought to myself you could use that, though In terms of management. You can use that to create all kinds of experiences, to change people's narratives about each other. If you got somebody from Gen Z guiding somebody from Gen X or a baby boomer through that experience and they're joking around and working through it together to make the funniest, goofiest, stupidest thing they can make, well, all of a sudden, in that moment, you are just like two human beings having a good time, and that should be okay. At work, us learn from each other and figure out. Okay, I don't agree with them on everything, but maybe Tom over there, maybe he has an idea about how this could work. That's what we need. We need that institutional knowledge to transfer somehow, and it can't just be through SOPs and internal documentation.
Speaker 3: 22:58
Right, like it's going to have to be that conversation.
Speaker 1: 23:00
Yeah, it has to be. That's the only way. That's really the only way people are going to remember it or actually apply it.
Speaker 3: 23:12
We talked a little bit about, organizations are ripping out the middle, and now we also see there's definitely well, let's not do that and it's just a turmoil across the board. What does all of this mean for someone who maybe has invested years of their life so far just to reach the manager level, and now they've made it, and this is the year they're experiencing? What does this all mean for them? What advice would you give to someone who's in that place?
Speaker 1: 23:41
does this all mean for them? What advice would you give to someone who's in that place? It's difficult, right? Like you spent 10 years trying to climb the ladder and then now the ladder has been abandoned and about to fall over, with you on it, right?
Speaker 3: 23:51
Yeah, it's like the top rungs are gone, the bottom that you were on are gone and now you're just hanging on.
Speaker 1: 23:57
You're like the whole thing rotted out from under me, yeah, but it does mean that you're going to have to be as flexible as you can when it comes to things like upskilling, showing your skills differently, finding ways to play the game in a different way, showcasing your impact essentially on any project or whatever it is that you're working on, ascend in an organization. I'm looking really hard at how I can showcase my outcomes and basically build narratives about how I've been a driving force behind whatever it is we were trying to do and how I integrate tech into my skillset. So you want to be really flexible around that. I work in an editorial space. Right, we are, I would say, in general, we are, I would say, in general, a curmudgeonly bunch. Anyways, editors are not lighthearted and high-spirited people.
Speaker 1: 24:49
most of the time there's always a lot of resistance to anything.
Speaker 2: 24:52
You guys don't have a fun committee there's no fun committee.
Speaker 1: 25:00
The fun committee is occasionally get together, have a few drinks and have a big bitch session. You're constantly trying to understand things in a different way or look at it in a different way, and a lot of this AI stuff does make you go oh, what is this? Oh God. But one of the things that's been tough for everybody is that, essentially, the job as it was five years ago doesn't exist anymore. The term editor is actually starting to mean something different, and you've got to be comfortable with that. You got to be prepared to integrate tech into it. However, you're going to do it, and this is not just our roles. This is across the spectrum of roles within the workforce, whether it's marketing or you're doing coding. The things that you thought were going to be central or core to your work aren't necessarily that anymore, and you're going to have to figure out how you're going to be flexible and adaptable and learn to use this stuff to do it better, quicker, in different ways than you've ever done it before.
Speaker 3: 25:52
Francesca I think I used to say this to you a long time ago where I was, like everyone needs to start to tap into their inner Madonna, who has painted herself like a million times over the last 40 years Got to tap into that right Reinvention.
Speaker 1: 26:09
Yeah, don't be attached to your title. Be attached to things that matter. Your salary matters, it's how you pay your bills. Your title is not how you pay your bills. I've always said you can call me the head schmuck in charge, I don't care. Call me whatever you want. This is what I want to make. This is what I want my benefits package to look like those concrete things that make my life possible. That's what I'm after. You can call me whatever you want, I don't care.
Speaker 3: 26:38
And don't let work define your self-worth.
Speaker 1: 26:40
You shouldn't even really connect it to your worth at all, like at all. One of the things that we did recently was we did a survey about the TV show Severance. We did a survey asking would you get the procedure?
Speaker 2: 26:54
What is Severance about for those that don't?
Speaker 1: 26:56
know. So, essentially, severance is a dystopian workplace drama, in which this company called Lumen Industries, I think it is has created a way so that you can sever your personality between work and your private life, so when you're at work, you don't remember anything about your private life, and when you're in your private life, you don't remember anything about work. It's called your innie and your outie, right, and so you live these two completely separate lives, not knowing, and you just know that you have to go like here at this time kind of thing. So I asked people would you do it? I had been asked by a UK journalist in response to a UK survey that found that 12% of the UK population would do it. So I was like let's see if we can find out a little bit more about the US and Canada. So we did our own version of it, and, for us, 20% said either definitely or they probably would 20%. Wow, 20%.
Speaker 1: 27:52
Here's the really disturbing part, though. We asked people what would be the amount of money that you would need to consider, and almost 70 gave a price only 30. I wouldn't do it for any amount of money. Almost 70 had an amount in which they were like yeah, I'll do it for that I was like oh man, what does that say say about us, when we're at with work, how we're connected to it? People aren't seeing value between what they learn at work and applying it into their life. Every experience I've had informs who I am as a person. That includes what happened at work, not just the stuff that was outside of it. But I think other people aren't maybe seeing the connection or aren't seeing the value of the connection, and that's a little disturbing and sad, quite frankly.
Speaker 2: 28:41
Let's extrapolate that to the US population that 20% of the population wants to hasa dollar amount figure that they would go for to sever their work. Mind it's actually almost a benefit, yeah, To cause yourself a traumatic brain injury.
Speaker 1: 28:57
It's actually almost a benefit, yeah, to cause yourself a traumatic brain injury. That's essentially what it is, if you think about it.
Speaker 2: 29:03
Yeah, it brings a really interesting question around what's the biggest thing that needs to change? If you could change one thing that would make the role of a manager more palatable right now, or at least not want to have to sever some sort of autonomy. Basically, what would need to change?
Speaker 1: 29:26
This isn't just a workplace thing. This is how we all serve, and I'm not to get too political here, but too much of our lives is now dedicated to serving capitalism. Essentially, that's really what it is. This idea that labor unions are bad was the beginning of the end for reasonable behavior about work. And you think about the way Europe constructs work and what their expectations are for people. It's very pretty reasonable.
Speaker 1: 29:59
But in the United States your life is work. Your value to the society is tied to whether or not you have a job and what you do within that job, how much money you make, how much you consume. All of our lives is essentially in some service to capitalism when you really break it down and that would have to change culturally in order for this to get totally better. Because what people are really trying to block out when they answer that question is the way in which they serve it, and they'd almost rather just not remember it than have to deal with all the demands of it and trying to make it match their personal values, Because that's hard. A lot of organizations really don't. How often are you going to find a job that matches your personal values? If you I don't know care about the planet. It's hard Culturally. We just have to shift away from your purpose is to serve the machine, and I don't know if that's going to happen.
Speaker 2: 30:57
I think these Gen B kids are gonna do it.
Speaker 1: 30:59
I have a lot of faith in them. I do? I have a lot they've had a real I'm not gonna put up with this shit kind of attitude and I'm like good for you guys. You know children are our future, yeah we'll see how alpha does when they get there.
Speaker 3: 31:28
We do this thing called wrap it round, where we'll ask you a question. You can respond yes, no or elaborate if you feel so. How do you?
Speaker 1: 31:36
feel All right. Yeah, I'm going to ask anybody I work with. I'm super long-winded all the time, so I'm always going to elaborate.
Speaker 3: 31:43
Let's do that. This is where the juice comes, so we love it. So it's 2030.
Speaker 1: 31:52
What's work going to look like? Well, haven't you heard? We're all going to be wandering around trying to figure out what our purpose is in life. Least you listen to bill gates, right? I do think it'll be very mechanical, like in all respects, like robots will be in the workplace. They've made it to agi the white collar jobs. I don't know if they'll exist or not.
Speaker 1: 32:09
There's this cool thing going around. It's called like ai 2027.com, and somebody ran like a simulation based on all current events and everything, and it was very, I don't know to say, enlightening or disturbing, but it was interesting. Let's just put it that way. I don't know, will white collar jobs exist in five years? Maybe, but this goes all the way up to the ceo, right, because strategy is a skill like it'll do that better, it'll do decision making better, supposedly. Yeah, creative tasks you go right down the list, and they may even do some of the blue collar stuff too, better too. I was saying to somebody recently that old saying plumbers rule the world. They do, I don't, I do, they do. And I don't know if it'll do plumbing as well.
Speaker 3: 32:51
So maybe plumbing is the thing to get into someone who lives in an old house in new england. I don't know if AI is going to be able to navigate it like Joe.
Speaker 1: 33:02
Yeah, because Joe has just been rigging that thing for years.
Speaker 3: 33:06
He's been in every janky house. He knows how to navigate around here. It's so interesting you say that as you respond about Shopify's CEO, who is asking everyone to justify hiring for humans and to showcase what they consider to use AI first before they put in human bodies.
Speaker 2: 33:24
We're always trying to see that. I read that same memo.
Speaker 3: 33:27
Yeah, yeah, okay, let's move on to something a little more fun, a little more personal. What music are you listening to right now? What's hyping you up?
Speaker 1: 33:36
It's spring and I'm going through this like reliving of my college music listening, and I'm listening to a lot of like early to mid 2000s indie hip hop at the moment Indie hip hop. Yeah, what do you?
Speaker 2: 33:47
consider indie hip hop.
Speaker 1: 33:49
Oh God, jedi mind tricks and yeah, like stuff that was like not on the radio at the time, so it was like very, we used to call it underground. Now they just label it indie, same thing as they do with rock music.
Speaker 3: 34:04
What are you reading or listening to right now?
Speaker 1: 34:08
I started this book called the Fourth Turning, by William Strauss and Neil Howe. It's about American history. They present it as seasons it's like 80 to 100 year cycles, and it presents the idea that we are currently in a historical winter, which is a very difficult time, and spring will eventually come. But it breaks down the last hundred years as like examples of these seasons. I can't speak too much about it. I've only just started it.
Speaker 3: 34:34
It's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting to see the patterns and maybe what to look out for.
Speaker 1: 34:39
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2: 34:40
Now I'm curious did you get to the part where are we in winter, Because it feels like we're like Minnesota January.
Speaker 1: 34:47
I think we're all just to that point where it's like the post-Christmas depression.
Speaker 3: 34:54
Like I got bills and I'm on a holiday hangover.
Speaker 1: 34:58
You're just like I don't know. At least the football playoffs are on. I can just eat chicken wings whenever I want.
Speaker 3: 35:07
Who do you really admire?
Speaker 1: 35:09
Former Liverpool FC manager, jurgen Klopp, is one of my favorite people in the world. I look up to him a great deal, not just because I'm a big supporter of the football club itself, but because he's an incredible example of what a leader could be, and he's just an example of how to transform culture and, honestly, just a lovely human being.
Speaker 3: 35:30
Okay, what's a piece of advice you wish everyone knew?
Speaker 1: 35:35
I was once given a really valuable piece of advice that I think is great for leaders and really anyone working with other human beings to remember, and it's that you can't expect something you've learned through experience to be common sense for somebody else. And it's just one of those things like you think why wouldn't they do that? So you didn't know how to do that. Always, like, eventually, you learn that because you broke the thing or you made the mistake, and so don't expect anybody else to just know that because you think it's a thing that you're supposed to know.
Speaker 2: 36:16
All right, David, so awesome to talk with you today. Thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: 36:19
Yeah, yeah, I hope I didn't ramble, too much. No, it's awesome?
Speaker 3: 36:22
Not at all, not at all. And hey, how can our listeners best connect with you Of?
Speaker 1: 36:26
course, you can get in touch with me on LinkedIn. I'm easy enough to find on there. Be sure to check out to the People Managing People podcast. I'm the host on there. If you come over to peoplemanagingpeoplecom, you can get signed up for the newsletter and I'm always sending on a regular basis, a couple of times a week, different messages from us, and then come to one of our events. That's what I really recommend. Our next one is dedicated to RTO mandates. It's on April 24th, but, yeah, give me a follow and don't hesitate to reach out. Awesome, all right, thanks for being here.
Speaker 2: 36:56
Thank you to reach out Awesome.
Speaker 1: 36:56
All right, thanks for being here, thank you.
Speaker 3: 36:59
This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams. So please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends.
Overcoming the Broken Rung
The Broken Rung isn’t just a metaphor—it’s the career barrier keeping women from advancing from day one. We sat down with Lareina Yee, Senior Partner at McKinsey and co-author of The Broken Rung, to talk about why fixing this early career promotion gap could close the gender equity gap in a single generation.
We cover the data, the hidden career tax women face, the power of experience capital, and why sponsorship—not mentorship—is the game-changer leaders need to embrace now. Whether you are navigating your own career or leading others, this is a must-listen playbook for how to advance, advocate, and unlock opportunity at every level
Your Work Friends Podcast: The Broken Rung with Lareina Yee
The Broken Rung isn’t just a metaphor—it’s the career barrier keeping women from advancing from day one. We sat down with Lareina Yee, Senior Partner at McKinsey and co-author of The Broken Rung, to talk about why fixing this early career promotion gap could close the gender equity gap in a single generation.
We cover the data, the hidden career tax women face, the power of experience capital, and why sponsorship—not mentorship—is the game-changer leaders need to embrace now. Whether you are navigating your own career or leading others, this is a must-listen playbook for how to advance, advocate, and unlock opportunity at every level.
Speaker 1: 0:00
I'm Mel Plett, talent strategist coach and someone who survived big law, big four and more than a few broken org charts. I'm Francesca.
Speaker 2: 0:07
I've led people strategy at Nike and Deloitte. I like my advice how I like my coffee strong and no bullshit.
Speaker 1: 0:11
We host your work, friends. The podcast that breaks work down, so you stay ahead.
Speaker 2: 0:15
We talk work stuff, the human stuff, the awkward messy, what the f*** is actually happening stuff. Each week we drop new episodes with real talk, smart guests, fresh insights and straight up advice. Hit play. We've got you Ahas and ahas and, yeah, the occasional F-bomb or two. We had a really interesting conversation, we did.
Speaker 1: 0:48
We were able to speak with Lorena Yee, one of the co-authors of the Broken Rung. Lorena is a senior partner at McKinsey Company and she advises companies on growth technology and transformation. She also co-founded the Women in the Workplace Study with leaninorg. That's what made us reach out to her, as we were fascinated. We covered that a few months ago in New Week New Headlines and then, obviously, the Broken Rung book came out and in that report they're highlighting all of the challenges that women are facing in corporate America.
Speaker 1: 1:22
Lorena also chairs McKinsey's Technology Council and hosts the podcast At the Edge, where she talks about technology trends. And then, beyond her professional role, she's a mom of three and she serves on the board of San Francisco's Ballet. But this was an awesome episode. She is talking about one of the earliest career barriers that women face, which is this broken rung and ways that we can overcome it together. In this book I think you and I both said it was covered cover to cover with yellow highlighter from all of the stats that we were reading- yeah, I ran out of highlighter while I was reading this book.
Speaker 2: 1:56
The thing for me is we've had the glass ceiling. We know pay parity is not there yet and probably won't be for our lifetime, and what was so interesting was this early career issue that they have really nailed on. Even if you're not early career, even if you're not a woman, the thing about this book is it is a playbook for how to get ahead in your career If you're a woman, if you're a man, if you're gender non-binary. This book is absolutely packed with how do you get ahead when you have everything against you, and it is a must read for anybody, especially in corporate America. We love talking with her. We focus a lot about women here, but I think it can apply to anybody.
Speaker 1: 2:42
One of the things that really stood out to me is this isn't just a playbook. If you're in your early career, it's identifying when this starts, but it is. It does give you information, no matter where you are, whether you're just starting out, you're in the messy middle or if you're like towards the end of in thinking about your next move. She gives you ways that you can think about how to level up. The other thing for me that was so interesting was the concept of if we were able to fix this broken rung at the start of a woman's career, then we could have parity in a generation versus 150 plus years. So that, to me, was super powerful. I'm just going to read a quote from the book Lorena mentioned was this is not just a women's issue, as you point out. It's an issue for our whole society and the global economy. So read the book, listen to the episode. Here's Lorena.
Speaker 2: 3:46
All right, loretta. For those of us that haven't heard about this concept of the broken run, I'm wondering if you can explain it to our listeners, like a five-year-old. What?
Speaker 3: 3:55
is the broken run. You start work, you landed the job and you find that pretty much men and women are pretty equal. When you look around the room, right, 48% women entering the corporate pipeline in the United States, for example, and similarly globally. But guess what? Time for the first promotion. And here's the rub For every 100 men who have the odds of getting that promotion, only 81 women see those same odds of advancement. And that's the broken rung. That very first step on the career ladder is broken and it comes up fast.
Speaker 2: 4:33
What was so interesting to me so much of the time we're thinking about women, advancement, we're thinking about it manager on up, how do we get people to a C-suite or a VP? Because it's happening at this manager level. We're not getting people into these upper echelons. And I thought what's so interesting about your research is that this is happening very early and if you don't nail it early or don't look at it early, it has this kind of compounding effect on your career. What about that keeps you up at night?
Speaker 3: 5:05
your career. What about that keeps you up at night? All of it. By focusing on the broken rung, I wouldn't want to take attention away from the fact that people will call that middle layer, francesca, like the messy middle, the frozen middle, that piece of it or the glass ceiling. Let's be clear that still exists, and whilst we've made progress in corporate America, as an example, when I founded Women in the Workplace, we were 19% women reporting to CEOs at the C-suite. Now we're at 29%, so we're really close to 30. So that's great, but we're all really good at math. That's not parity, that's not 50%, that doesn't represent the population. So we've got challenges across the whole talent pipeline or ladder, however you want to visualize it.
Speaker 3: 5:49
I think the challenge with the middle, though the math, is that you've already lost a lot of women, or they've gotten stuck or they're stalled. It's not entirely clear exactly what happens to all those women, because some of them don't leave the workforce altogether, but let's just say largely stalled and stuck. So you are already in the middle, dealing with probably something around 37% women. You're already dealing with a smaller population, trying to put it in slates, so you're just so many steps behind, and I do think to the early broken rung.
Speaker 3: 6:25
I do think it catches women by surprise and it may even happen and they didn't even realize it, because it's not like an exam where they publish the results. You don't know where you are on the curve and it may have been a delay by a year, six months, two years, or maybe you decided to go somewhere else and so some of these types of things may not be completely perceptible, but I think when you talk to women over the course of 20, 30 years in work and they think back, they're like huh. And when we look at the data year over year, it shows that same phenomenon. Maybe it's 84 women, maybe it's 81, maybe 79. It's bouncing around a little bit, but it's nowhere near parity.
Speaker 2: 7:06
I want to dive into that. Why that first promotion? Why is that so critical for people to really focus on?
Speaker 3: 7:15
There are a lot of things. One, if you just think of a merit-based view, you want to actually be rewarded for the work you do. So there's a simple thing. There's also financially. You're not just working to work for the benefit of society and you may feel very mission oriented, you may feel very purpose filled and you may feel incredible pride for what you do, but you're also there for your economic earnings. And to earn less through differences in promotion is another type of tax on top of a general phenomenon we see in terms of a wage disparity between women and men. It's another form. But the other thing is let's just think about a talented woman who, by and large women graduate at higher rates than men for undergraduate degrees and by and large, with higher GPAs. And so you've got a talented woman. She's doing all the right things and missing maybe by a year, maybe two or three years, that first promotion is missing her ability to reach her full professional potential, and careers in life are long and those delays have almost compound effects over time.
Speaker 2: 8:32
And we haven't even hit motherhood yet. This is the thing that I read in the book the idea of the motherhood tax, where we'll talk about it a little bit longer. But for every kid that someone has, they get taxed. More and more Theirathers get a bonus for having kids. It's phenomenal, it's absolutely phenomenal.
Speaker 3: 8:50
I mean, we've all been in the meeting where the mom is rushing to go to the soccer game and everyone's like okay, fine, maybe even non-event, not even like eyebrow raising. And then the guy is I've got to go. Same thing, I've got to go, I've got to get to the soccer game at 430. And people are like high five, you're amazing. And, by the way, do I think it's amazing that dad is leaving for the soccer game, a hundred percent, I'm just saying that. I equally think it's a high five moment for the woman to leave as well.
Speaker 1: 9:17
Yeah, it is. Eye roll for the woman oh, gotta go again. And then for the guy it's good for you, you're such a good dad. Yeah, you're a leader. You're a leader. I want to talk about experience capital. That was one of my favorite parts of the book because I agree it's totally needed. But can you share with our listeners what is experience capital?
Speaker 3: 9:40
What's that concept?
Speaker 3: 9:41
So the punchline is 50% of your lifetime earnings come from what you gain on the job, and the reason this is important is you look at many women and, as I mentioned earlier, women outperform in school, they graduate at higher rates, particularly in the United States, and oftentimes they're graduating with higher GPAs and so they have done the first part really well.
Speaker 3: 10:06
But when we just look at representation nevermind how the experience feels, which we have a lot of data on as well, it's women are not succeeding to their potential in the workplace, at least if you look at representation, right, and so the idea of experience capital is if you were really great at school, how do you apply what helped you be wonderful at school to managing intentionally your portfolio of experiences that drive both the economic outcomes for you, your livelihood, but also your professional opportunities, and so you think about choosing your major, choosing your classes, getting an A. How do you be purposeful in making those decisions, in accumulating the experiences that matter, not just the job in front of you, which certainly is important, but what is the accumulation of experience over time, and can you get it earlier? Because it pays to get it earlier often, and bigger.
Speaker 1: 11:13
Can you do that in a way that sets you up really well for a lifetime of work? One of the things that you called out that I really love too was, as part of gaining that experience capital, was making sure you gain some of that experience capital, unlike the P&L side of the house and like really being deep into the business. So for anyone listening, p&l, profit and loss, that's one example. But what are some of those examples of like business side? So, say you're, I have a very strong HR background, by the way, but to be in strategic HR, I had to get that experience pretty early. So how can folks who aren't traditionally like on that business side, how can they gain that very important business experience capital and what does that mean? How is it different when you think about the experience capital you do gain? How does that differently set them up financially down the road?
Speaker 3: 12:00
Sure, Well, let's take your career as an example, and I might be getting parts of that wrong, but you have a passion for HR and a lot of women will connect with work to where they feel purpose, where they feel talent and being an aspiring alley, which is a P&L role maybe sales, maybe product, maybe in a business unit. That experience GM. But it is to say that having that experience short long at some point will make you better at whatever you want to do. The other thing is if you aspire to be a CEO to the chip tracker idea, the pink chip one year we looked at it, 95% of the CEOs that year we looked at it all came from P&L. So like virtually impossible, very unlikely, that if you haven't had P&L experience and you realize, understandably, halfway through your career that you aspire to be a CEO, this is going to be a central part. So that's one experience. Another piece of experience capital is entrepreneurship and people think that's just being a founder and yes, that's amazing. Both of you have founded this. That's entrepreneurship. But I bet both of you also were entrepreneurs in the companies that you were in before and it's a huge skill that makes a difference. How do you take initiative, how do you lead? How do you invent Versus? Here's the thing that I was given and I've checked all the boxes, so entrepreneurship is a huge piece.
Speaker 3: 13:50
The other thing that we talk about is skill differentiation. We call that bold moves, and so if you look at one job to a next job and it could be within the same company right, You're doing different roles. Bold moves are where you do a 25% or more skill difference between your former job and your new job, and women who take two, three big bold moves over their career have outsized impact, both economically as well as their ability to progress. So there are more, but just maybe to pause, take a deep breath. There are a lot of things we can do that are super concrete that help us build experience capital. And if you're young in your career gosh, you got to build that early and often. And if you're a little older in your career you know me, or like middle age, think about the experience capital you need to maybe pivot or do something new or to expand even more opportunities. It's a huge piece.
Speaker 1: 14:47
I appreciate that because I think a lot of folks forget that you can have an entrepreneurial experience while you're in an organization. It's like looking for those project opportunities where you can gain that skill set. For somebody who might be more of an introvert I'm an ambivert right, so it takes a lot of effort to reach out for those experiences and that sort of thing. Maybe they don't have a flashy or visible role. What's a way that they can start to advocate for themselves, to begin to build that experience capital?
Speaker 3: 15:19
I think, first of all, you've got to play to your strengths. So you may see someone who's an extrovert, very charismatic, maybe an athlete, so she happens to play golf which tends to be helpful in a male world and you're not in all cases. She's out in the golf course and you're just like that's not me and first of all, good for her, she should go with all those strengths. But you're like that's not me and first of all, good for her, she should go with all the strengths, right. But you're like how do I meet other people if I'm different? So I think there's one thing which is to know yourself and build off your strengths.
Speaker 3: 15:54
I remember early in my career being in consulting. My strength was the data and the analysis that I was doing and part of the credibility was really just the work itself. But the work is a basis to have a conversation with others and a basis to build trust. And then you start maybe building a relationship and entrepreneurship is following up. I remember meeting just this amazing executive and I was like you're just so like you're a role model, and I didn't say that. But then I remember just keeping in touch with her over time. Not a ton, I was whatever, maybe 10 levels more junior to her, but I remember when I was leaving Asia, moving back to the US, she was the last person that I had kind of coffee with who was a client, before I left. You've got to do it in your own style, but I think you do need to be purposeful and, for those who are analytic, write it down. Write down who do you work with, who you have a connection and network with, who have you worked with before that you could rekindle. If you're kind of customer or client facing, or if you're supply chain facing, who's outside of your organization and also maybe people from school. So how do you think about building those networks? And just make sure that we know that women tend to have more narrow, more junior networks. Just make sure that over time it's not going to happen overnight, but over time you invest in building some more senior networks.
Speaker 3: 17:28
I know one guy that I talked to joined this nonprofit board and I invested my personal time and I spent time and had lunch with every single board member, all of which were at least a decade more advanced in their career than me, and I built this local network. He said so when you join a board, you join a nonprofit board. This is what you should do, and I was like I didn't even think about that. I'm so busy just trying to get through my day. It didn't occur to me to like schedule lunch with each person on the board, get to know them, build a relationship. And it was true. I looked at the list and I was like I am the most junior person from a professional person on this board, so there are lots of ways you can do it, yeah.
Speaker 1: 18:10
I think it's. Yeah, finding your little avenue is going to be the most important. What works for you. I think folks sometimes can equate being outgoing as the folks who get the opportunity, but you don't have to fit that niche to get the same kind of experience capital you're talking about.
Speaker 3: 18:24
And some really senior people are quite introverted themselves, right? So that's not, you would find a connection.
Speaker 1: 18:34
Yeah, you'll find some kinsmanship in that, for sure. I wanted to talk about the sponsorship versus mentorship because something that really stood out to me in the Women in the Workplace report was that women are overly mentored and we're undersponsored significantly. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Speaker 3: 18:56
Yeah. So one thing is maybe just to define the difference, because sometimes I just feel like we don't have the facts to make the decision. So mentorship is Francesca, you're my mentor, I identify with you. You go to coffee. If I have a bad day or something didn't happen quite right on a project, you empathize and you give me some suggestions on how to think about it. But, mel, if you're my sponsor, you do everything Francesca does. But you also open windows and doors for me and that may be as explicit as you are actually putting me up for promotion, but it could be more everyday actions. Like Mel, you say Lorena, I know you've been working really hard on this. Why don't you come to the meeting and why don't you present? And I remember there's this really amazing sponsor we do a sponsor award at McKinsey and one of the winners.
Speaker 3: 19:54
There's this story that he faked a bloody nose because he knew that the client was like, wanted him to be there. He faked a bloody nose and he wants her to go so that the woman partner who is up for senior partner would present but also be seen as like super senior. It's like he was an actor. Everybody thought he had a bloody nose, medical reason to leave, but no bloody nose. He actually was just creating truly an opportunity for her to shine. By the way, she became one of the co-leaders of the client and all these great things happen.
Speaker 3: 20:29
You can do that on a Tuesday at four, on a Friday at nine. These are not hard things and so when you think about, and if you're senior and you're listening to this, how do you open doors and windows for others? But it can be very subtle things that help and it can be really being there in the moment to say this person should be on the slate and really helping you get promoted or keeping in touch with you and offering you an opportunity somewhere else. Women are just under-sponsored and maybe also it's not as clear how to develop sponsor relationships. But I think it's like women. If you put your mind to it, you can do it.
Speaker 1: 21:07
If you realize this is something that's as important as delivering your quota or whatever your MBOs are or OKRs, and you think about it as something you do a little bit every quarter over time you'll have a really powerful senior network something that stood out to me in the book was and I'm paraphrasing, but it was essentially the biggest issue with this broken rung is, once the first rung is broken, it just has this compounding sort of domino effect, right, because now there's less women at each stage to continue to sponsor other women up. But men can be sponsors too not trying to leave them out of the conversation, right? And the other powerful thing that you said in the book was that if we can repair this first rung, it'll help us repair all of the subsequent rungs, which could help us really fix this issue or bring parity within a generation, which is huge because that within one generation is 10 years versus 150 years. But how important is sponsorship, or what level of does sponsorship play, and the importance of fixing that first rung?
Speaker 3: 22:23
All of the above. So if 70% of the C-suite are men, then it's really important that men are sponsors in your network to percent women at the starting gate. And then we dropped down in the middle and the VP layers down to 38, et cetera, et cetera, and at the top for the SVP layers and the C-suite, we are at 29%. So it's almost like a math thing because you just have fewer women in the talent pool overall. So if I were to say I'd like to see equal men and women on the slate, that's actually something that is a little hard to accomplish because you actually have maybe a third, maybe 40% each level. You have fewer women. And so I think if we sometimes what we talk about for companies that are trying to work on this is you have a funnel, you need to have a pipe. So a really healthy company starts with a percentage of women and you would have that same percentage mirrored across all the talent levels. That would be really healthy.
Speaker 3: 23:47
Many years ago I met a tech company who was like it's just so hard, et cetera, et cetera. The classic we don't have engineers. But one thing we told them that really surprised them. I said you have a top beginning funnel problem. Yeah, you're at something.
Speaker 3: 24:00
I think they were maybe 38, 37% women at the entry, so that's not good, but interestingly enough, they had that pipe. I said so you're doing something right really well, which most of your peers are not, which is you're able to retain them. You do have a bit of a drop off at the top, but that's really amazing. So for you, if you actually could fix the entry level, you clearly have a culture that supports women in a very natural way. You are in great shape and they were like gosh. I thought we were going to have this meeting. You're going to be an awful report card and I said, yeah, I mean you're starting out ranks not so good, but actually there's some really good stuff there. For companies that want to change, you have to just take a look at your data and say, just as you would any kind of business problem, where would be the two or three most important interventions? Where, if I fix this, it would really change in one generation? And I think for companies who are very determined to do this, it's possible.
Speaker 1: 25:02
It's interesting too, speaking of what companies can do, because you mentioned, mckinsey has their sponsorship award, which I love to hear, and we've worked in talent forever, so you always hear about the mentorship program, but rarely do I hear about a formal sponsorship program. What have you seen work really well in terms of programs that support the sponsorship for this kind of success?
Speaker 3: 25:25
I think, a couple things. It's important to say that whilst women tend to feel over-mentored, under-sponsored, there are men who also feel this way. If you de-average it, maybe the men who don't have the classic archetypical attributes or men of color. So there can be, when you de-average, lots of people need this. So a couple of things. One is going from a spiritual agreement that sponsorship is a good idea to actually creating a program. So program means that you actually define mentorship, sponsorship. Program means that you actually track the data. For some you may actually hold them accountable, not like a quota, like you have to have X number of sponsor ease or mentors, but as part of how you think have to have X number of sponsorees or mentors, but as part of how you think of good leadership, as part of the equation. If you have the data, if you have the qualitative and what you value gets measured in some way.
Speaker 3: 26:19
So I'm not suggesting like a one for one. You only get promoted if you're a sponsor. We all know that and you all both know very well. Like when you think about leadership, there's a way that kind of goes into your reviews and potentially your compensation, your feedback, how you're viewed. I think you build it in yeah, you built it in a hundred percent and then you may have some programs that kind of activate it.
Speaker 3: 26:43
But I think you really commit to a culture of sponsorship, which the insane thing to me is it helps. It's like your classic all boats rise, everyone benefits everyone. And if there are women, as the human population will have, who are not good sponsors, it's good. They will, as leaders, learn to be good sponsors. Men will learn to be good sponsors and sometimes for men and I've seen this when they see their data and they realize they don't have a single woman that they sponsor, they will autocorrect that themselves. It's not like they woke up and said how can I not have any women as sponsors? Sometimes data is like an incredible amount of sunlight for people to do the right thing.
Speaker 2: 27:42
I want to talk about motherhood and navigating career transitions with motherhood. You mentioned in the book that motherhood could actually be a boost to your career, and it's not something we typically hear. Can you talk a little bit more about how it can boost your career?
Speaker 3: 27:58
Yeah, so that's not an easy thing. In the chapter we do really spend a bit of time on Claudia Goldman's Nobel Prize economist. We do want to make sure that a lot of the research that she's done gets proper understanding in terms of biases towards women and terms of a motherhood penalty and all of those things. With that said, it is hard. I think part of it was squeezing out and looking at stories where women can succeed inside of it and, for me, also a little bit of a search for the urban legend to see if it's true. So one of the stories that you saw was a woman.
Speaker 3: 28:38
The phrase that I've always used is make sure you pack a round trip ticket, not just to leave to go on parental leave, but also to come back and to come back with intention. Leave to go on parental leave, but also to come back and to come back with intention. Part of that would be building your network and thinking about your skills, moderating your time, all these types of things. And one of the stories in the book is a woman who was a rising star lawyer. As she had her first kid, she made the decision to actually be a full-time mom. She's an amazing mom raised three boys. 14 years into that, she exercised her round trip ticket. She went back and she did a reboarding program. Some companies, not all, offer this, but LinkedIn offered it. She got back into the workforce and is a rising star lawyer at LinkedIn and I just think this concept that we measure it in very zero one ways Okay, I had the baby, I'm having the baby, I take my paid maternity or parental leave, I come back. I think there are variations to make that work for you. So that's one story that I was very inspired by.
Speaker 3: 29:45
The other thing is would you use the policies as ingredients to bake your own cake, would you say? Look, in my company there's the parental leave and I see a lot of mostly dual career couples. We see a lot more of women and men under 40 are dual career, whereas baby boomers tend to be more like a single person leading the household. Let's use the woman and the partner's parental leave to maximize it. How do we, how do we go slow, go fast across that portfolio? Like really sharing with your partner the chutes and ladders of a career? We see also like how do you use some of the part-time? How to use rotations to kickstart your next bold move, like maybe you're like, okay, I'm going to do the thing that I really know how to do in an excellent way and I'm going to do it at 80%, but then actually, when my littlest one is in school, hits three, I'm going to take a bold move and I'm going to do this. Or, by the way, I'm going to actually invest in a bunch of technology skills and pilots and things because I'm going to make a bold move.
Speaker 3: 30:54
And these are just like excessive examples. How do you apply really intentional thinking to that time as opposed to gosh? This is just the discount time. And also back to the network point, I think and I don't think this is as much in the book, but I think having a peer network when you're a young mom at least for me personally I see you nodding, being able to call someone who was working full time, who had kids under 10, like me, and just to say I've had the hardest week in that time. I didn't need a sponsor, I didn't need a mentor, I just needed a friend to say, yeah, it's really hard with you.
Speaker 2: 31:41
Yeah, it's tough, right. I remember this is a little bit maybe TMI, but I always go there is. I remember I was at the point where I was breastfeeding and I was still working and shipping my milk back until it was really great about that, like freezing it and shipping it back home, which is amazing and lovely. But I remember just feeling touched out, vultured because I was getting it at work and I was literally having the call with her while my pump was going and I felt totally okay with it.
Speaker 3: 32:06
But she knew both of my lives and you really do need that, that feeling of someone gets you A little grace Like I think you have to set the pace of your own career versus expect others, and both of you have done that in your careers. But there may be times where you're like I'm going 60 miles an hour and by the way I've structured it and my expectations are that, and then there are times I'm doubling down and going super fast and I'm going to do a bold move and a this and a that, and so I don't. I don't think it's a linear climb and actually when we look at men who are very successful underneath it, it wasn't so I just. When we look at men who are very successful underneath it, it wasn't so I just I think it's. We try. Sometimes perfection can be the enemy of progress. That phrase and maybe redefine what perfection is.
Speaker 3: 32:58
At certain moments of your career, I took a really long first parental leave and I was really fortunate to be in a dual career situation so I could afford to. But I was really young, I wasn't even 30 yet and I really I just wanted to learn how to be a mom for a while. I wanted to take nine months off and at that time paid leave was not six weeks, single digits or something like that that's also betting on yourself and taking a risk. It's saying I'm confident that when I'm ready to go back, that job will be there and I may have missed something. But I actually, as a gift not just to my child but also to myself, would like to learn how to be a mom for a bit and enjoy it.
Speaker 2: 33:47
The beautiful thing about the book, though, is it does give you the playbook, for if you're going to make those choices which are totally great to make that there are other moves you can make that won't make that choice, just like a lifelong decision to write. I feel like this idea of these are your options, these are the ways you can put it in sixth gear, pull it down to third gear, make a right turn, make a left turn and create a beautiful career for yourself and a great life too, because I feel like I'm not saying you can balance everything all the time and have everything you want, but you can sure as hell be way more intentional about it and get to where you want to go in a way that maybe was linear to your point.
Speaker 3: 34:34
And some of those basics matter. I remember we talk about negotiation. People always think negotiation is just your pay, by the way, women tend not to negotiate. So, hi, pro tip, do negotiate. But negotiation is also other types of things.
Speaker 3: 34:46
So I remember because we didn't have at the time this was 22 years ago we didn't have the type of programs and I was actually not even in the United States, and so I remember talking to the office manager and saying look, I know that this isn't the typical thing, but I'd really like to take nine months, maybe more off, but I actually am super committed to coming back and I will stay in touch. And when I came back, they were like that's hard and consulting, and you were flying out. And I said, look, just for my first thing, back for my first month, can you just help me do something local so that I just don't get straight on an airplane and whatever that is, I'll do it. Any industry, any team, that would be such a gift and that's part of negotiating how you come back. He said got it, let's do. That Turns out to the entrepreneurship we were working on something that became a huge local client and because I worked on it and worked really hard with all these other folks, some of which I didn't know already.
Speaker 3: 35:54
We actually had all these sort of. I had a year where I didn't get on the airplane, and part of it is a little bit of a little bit of luck, a little bit of negotiating, asking that's. That's a positive negotiation. I will work really hard, but could you help me not reduce travel just for a little bit, and then we'll sort it out. Just give me a sec to rebase. I'm still the person that you loved and valued before. I didn't think at the time. It takes courage to do that, but it does take some courage to have that conversation and you do need to work in an environment where that conversation would be received well, not to make too much of the example, but I do think in the book there are all these women who make it work in spite of, and so there's a lot of data, mel, as you mentioned, but for me I think the stories are just really inspirational about what are the tactical things they did to get from A to B.
Speaker 2: 36:49
Yeah, a lot of great moves. I think it's required reading, quite honestly, to think about how do you really own your career, and own your career as a woman? Just you got to read up.
Speaker 1: 37:00
You got to read up. Keeping it simple for our listeners, especially those who might be like am I already part of the broken rung? Do I need to address this? What's one thing they can do next week to get back on track?
Speaker 3: 37:16
reframe. You're not off track. You are always on track and there's always opportunity in front of you, and betting on yourself is always a good bet. So look ahead and what's your next move? Do you want to go to the power alley? Do you want to exercise entrepreneurship? Do you want to build in the skills that matter for the future, the 12 million occupations that we know will shift by 2030. Do you want to increase your network? Pick one, pick one, just pick one and get started.
Speaker 1: 37:53
I love that. I love that concept that you're never off track. You're never off track. Yeah, we're just all taking fun side quests.
Speaker 3: 38:04
How much you have already. Yeah, I, your portfolio just may look a little different than that guy next door to you, and that's okay. Really, what are you good at? What do you have? Where does that point you? And then start opening the windows and doors yourself. Go get people to help you. Yeah, I love it. You can do it.
Speaker 1: 38:28
What about leaders? If you're a leader leading a team and this is information new and for maybe it's new information for somebody listening today what's something that they can take away or start to do to analyze and make sure that they're being a good sponsor or they're recognizing that they might be holding people back. How can they support not holding them back or pushing them forward?
Speaker 3: 38:54
The first thing is to maybe just mark a couple of like a piece of data or story that that honestly struck you very authentically. Doesn't need to be many, just one or two. And I would go share that with a man and a woman on your team and just say I was reading this since stopped me in my tracks. What do you think? Do you think we have a fair workplace? Do you feel the opportunities are the same? And the man might say I feel over-mentored, under-sponsored. You're like that's good feedback, but pro tip, does any of this resonate with you? I just start with that. Just start locally, in your own community and neighborhood.
Speaker 1: 39:40
Starting the conversation. Let's just have the conversation.
Speaker 3: 39:50
Yeah, and I think the other thing a leader can de-risk what feel like high stakes conversations, and opening to have the conversation, to listen, to learn, is huge. There's a story of a woman who was in the creative arts. She was in performing arts in New York and she had an underlying mindset that if you are creative it's okay to be disorganized, because that kind of comes with being creative. And she didn't even know that this was an underlying mindset. But she was super disorganized and she had her baby a couple months old and for women who remember or who have had babies in that early stage, there's very few windows. If you live in New York City, you can get that baby outside and take the baby for a walk before the baby needs to eat and nap. And so she missed the whole window because she was so disorganized. She was like, oh my God, where's the diapers? Where's this, where's that? She missed the window and she was so disorganized she's like, oh my God, where's the diapers? Where's this, where's that? She missed the window. And then the baby's crying and she describes and I've talked to her about this also personally she describes looking at this wonderful child's face and saying, kiddo, this isn't going to work.
Speaker 3: 40:53
So not only that's a point of deep failure, like I think for me.
Speaker 3: 40:57
I'm like, oh my god, I would have been in a ball and tears and like that just sounds awful and we've all been there.
Speaker 3: 41:04
Anyway, the reason I mentioned this is because it's a very relatable moment. But from that moment, not only does she become really good at organizing, she builds a business to organize other executives, both men and women. She writes two New York Times bestseller books or more, and she has this whole career where she actually helps people with their operating models, with their leadership. But it starts with the wedge of what was a point of failure became a point of strength, became a point of building a business, became a point of giving to others and helping others not organize how they get their walks for their babies, but like thinking about how the softer skills help you be a better leader, the full set of softer skills. And she's no longer in performing arts, she's in corporate America and I just I also just wanted to share that sometimes both men and women are so afraid to make a mistake and there's a lot in the zeitgeist about that. But I do think you never know, like, how do you take that in as a pivot point to something else we'll run on.
Speaker 1: 42:26
I'm gonna start with some high-level questions. They can be one word responses, or one sentence, two sentences, whatever you feel most confident with, but the whole point is just to get your immediate reaction to the question. Okay, ready to dive in, ready? Okay, it's 2030. What's work going to look like? It will be AI powered. Okay, what's one thing about corporate culture you'd like to see disappear for good? Bias, thank you. What's the greatest opportunity that most organizations are missing out on right now?
Speaker 3: 42:57
Women, young women, even better answer.
Speaker 1: 43:02
What music are you listening to right now?
Speaker 3: 43:05
Oh, I really like Bruno Mars and his collaborations, many of which are women artists, but I do really love the collaborations.
Speaker 1: 43:13
I like his new stuff too. It's like fun, yeah, so good. What are you reading, and that could be physically reading or listening to an audio book right now?
Speaker 3: 43:25
I am obsessed with AI podcasts, so yeah.
Speaker 1: 43:29
What's your favorite AI podcast? What do you recommend?
Speaker 3: 43:32
Oh, I really like no Priors and Training Data from Sequoia and the Possible podcast. And of course, I think everyone in tech listens to Hard Fork. I'd be remiss not to mention Hard Fork, but that's kind of obvious.
Speaker 2: 43:47
Love that.
Speaker 1: 43:50
Perfect, who do?
Speaker 3: 43:54
you really admire the 11% women CEOs of the world Each and every one of them. For everything that they're doing and for being a pioneer Awesome.
Speaker 1: 44:07
We recommend all the time on this podcast that people start to follow. I'm sure you do, but the organization Pink Chip that's tracking all of the global female CEOs and their success. So, yeah, any chance I can to plug it, I like to bring it back up. Good plug. Yeah, what's a piece of advice you want everyone to know?
Speaker 3: 44:26
Build your networks make sure they're powerful networks and people who are going to be your personal board of directors. I love that.
Speaker 1: 44:34
All right. Last thing, where can listeners follow? You stay abreast of all of the goodness and new research that you have coming out on this topic. What's the what's the best? Obviously, read the book. We're going to link to that but how can they continue to stay informed beyond reading the book?
Speaker 3: 44:53
All of our gender and research. On mckinseycom, you can search under my name or just search under the topics. We have 10 years of women in the workplace, so there's a lot of data in there. And I'm on LinkedIn and I've been trying to be better at posting thoughts and sharing things that are interesting. You all can give me the feedback. You're like, nah, it's not really working, but it'd be good if you were more. But I'm focused on LinkedIn me the feedback. You're like nah, it's not really working, but it'd be good if you were more but I'm focused on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1: 45:26
This has been so lovely. Lorena, thank you for joining us. Oh, thank you. Both Appreciate you. This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra, and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriendscom, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams, so please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends.
The Power of Mattering
This episode is for anyone who has ever questioned their worth or forgotten the impact they have on others. We sat down with Zach Mercurio to explore what happens when people truly feel seen, valued, and significant. Whether you are the one needing the reminder or the one in a position to give it, this conversation unpacks why mattering is not soft, it is essential.
From how we lead and collaborate to how we show up for our families and friends, we all rise when people know they count. If you have been feeling invisible or want to create spaces where others feel seen, this is the episode to hit play.
Your Work Friends Podcast: The Power of Mattering with Zach Mercurio
This episode is for anyone who has ever questioned their worth or forgotten the impact they have on others. We sat down with Zach Mercurio to explore what happens when people truly feel seen, valued, and significant. Whether you are the one needing the reminder or the one in a position to give it, this conversation unpacks why mattering is not soft, it is essential.
From how we lead and collaborate to how we show up for our families and friends, we all rise when people know they count. If you have been feeling invisible or want to create spaces where others feel seen, this is the episode to hit play.
Speaker 1: 0:05
I'm Mel Plett, talent strategist coach and someone who survived Big Law, big Four and more than a few broken org charts.
Speaker 2: 0:11
I'm Francesca. I've led people strategy at Nike and Deloitte. I like my advice how I like my coffee strong and no bullshit. We host your work friends, the podcast that breaks work down so you stay ahead. We talk work stuff. The human stuff, the awkward messy, what the f*** is actually happening, stuff Each week we drop new episodes with real talk, smart guests, fresh insights and straight-up advice Hit, play. We've got you, yeah, the occasional F-bomb or two.
Speaker 1: 0:37
Hey, this is your Work, friends podcast. I'm Mel Plett and I'm Francesca Ranieri. We're breaking down work, so you stay ahead, Francesca. What's going on?
Speaker 3: 0:50
Not much. Summer's full rolling Went to an airplane house.
Speaker 1: 0:53
You sent me those pictures of the airplane house and I'm intrigued. I want to see the inside. Sounds interesting.
Speaker 3: 0:59
Yeah, For those that don't know, in the Portland area there's a guy that. For those that don't know, in the Portland area, there's a guy that I think it's a 727 that he took apart and rebuilt in the woods and you can go up to this airplane that is now his house. My understanding is that he's also going to be building one in Japan as well, but it's actually really cool because he lets anybody on his property you can go and stand on the wing. Would you ever want to live in a plane?
Speaker 1: 1:27
I could see myself living in a plane. If it was gutted and you made it into something really cool, why not? Who?
Speaker 3: 1:31
cares. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like a prefab home yeah.
Speaker 1: 1:35
Yeah, why not I don't know If you could turn a school bus into a home.
Speaker 3: 1:40
There's options here Recycling.
Speaker 1: 1:44
Yes, that is the name of the game. Okay, we sat down with Zach Mercurio, who recently published his book the Power of Mattering, which just blew me away. Zach is a researcher, an author, a speaker, and he specializes in purposeful leadership, mattering, meaningful work and positive org psychology. He wrote the Power of Mattering how Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance, and he also wrote the Invisible Leader Transforming your Life, your Work and your Org, and the Power of Authentic Purpose. And he's worked with hundreds of organizations worldwide, including teams at JP Morgan, delta, marriott International, the National Park Service, the Army and more. And his work, his research on meaningful work, has been awarded by ATD, the Academy of Management and the Academy of Human Resource Development. And I don't know about you, but this book just blew me away in how much people don't see how they matter right now. This book just blew me away in how much people don't see how they matter.
Speaker 3: 2:45
Right now, I'll tell you, for the majority of the book, I had, like, almost felt like I was going to cry, like I was feeling so emotional about it. And it's because, at the end of the day and what Zach talks about is, even from the very first moments of your life, you want to feel like you matter. You need to know that you matter and, by the way, that does not change ever. Yet there's so many of us walking around feeling like we don't matter at all. You'll hear Zach talk about this, but just so you understand the difference also between belonging and inclusion and mattering belonging is being asked to be a part of the team, inclusion is getting to play the game, and mattering is knowing how you contribute, knowing how you're significant to the team, and that's the difference. It's the knowing of how you offer value, how you're significant and feeling. That's the difference. We've got opportunities to do that every day, all day, for everybody in your life.
Speaker 1: 3:51
For everybody. Yeah, Personally and professionally. And listen, the squishy stuff matters. People don't want to talk about the squish, but the squishy stuff is what drives organizations. You need to give a shit. Stuff is what drives organizations. You need to give a shit and it's different than belonging. It's actually you seeing why you matter. I love the example he also gives about NASA and laddering, and everyone from the janitor up through the astronaut knew how they contributed to getting a man on the moon and it got me thinking how are we doing that for our own teams and our people at work, Even if it's on a project? How are you letting them know how their contribution even if they're doing the design of the deck, like how does that contribute to the overall results and why? It not just how it contributes, but why it matters and why their role in this matters? I would say, on my own reflection, I wish I did more of that. It's something I definitely will be paying a lot more attention to.
Speaker 3: 4:49
Yeah, yeah, I think the I feel like I tried to do this and I feel like I should have done it even more no-transcript, no-transcript, no-transcript.
Speaker 1: 45:17
Okay, these can be one word answers. They could be a sentence. We could dive in further wherever it goes. All right, it's 2030. What's work going to look like?
Speaker 4: 45:26
There's two ways it could go. So one, the bosses are getting the power back right now because the talent market has shifted. You know it was more pro employee, Now it's more in favor of employers right now, and whatever bosses do with this newfound power will change the experience of working I, whatever bosses do with this newfound power will change the experience of no-transcript.
Speaker 1: 57:09
Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriendscom, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagram. So please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye friends.