Crisis Communications

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.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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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.

Rethinking Work & Workplace Culture

Your Work Friends Podcast: Why are we here? Rethinking Work & Workplace Culture with Jennifer Moss

Work is broken…

Burnout is at an all-time high. Engagement is at an all-time low. And work? Well, it’s not working for a lot of us. In this episode, we sit down with Jennifer Moss, workplace culture expert and author of Why Are We Here?, to talk about why so many of us feel unfulfilled at work—and what leaders actually need to do to fix it. We bust the biggest myths about workplace wellbeing, talk about why hope (yes, hope) is a leadership strategy, and dig into why Gen Z is side-eyeing corporate life.

If you’ve ever thought, “Is this really all there is?”—you’re not alone. Let’s rethink work, together.

Listen or watch the full episode here

---

Speaker 1: 0:00

Okay, finish this sentence. Work should feel more like blank and less like blank.

Speaker 2: 0:06

More like fuel for you know your sense of accomplishment, Less like a grind Damn right.

Speaker 1: 0:15

Love it, Love it hey, welcome to your work, friend. I'm francesca ranieri and I'm mel plett. Mel, what's going?

Speaker 3: 0:37

on. You know, spring is springing and it's sprung. Almost. Last week was the arctic, the cold here, but this week it is sunshine almost until 6 30 so, and I hear the birds chirping. I will take it. How about? What's going on with you?

Speaker 1: 0:55

say what you will about portland in the winter. We've had a very sunny winter for portland, but what most people might not know about port is in the winter the moss turns like an electric green. It's like almost fluorescent. So it's just a very cool time to be here. I love it. Yeah, pretty yeah. Yeah, I got to enjoy the nature. You know, got to enjoy the nature you do.

Speaker 3: 1:18

I think I'm one of those sad sufferers the seasonal affective disorder. I have one of those lamps. Have you seen those lamps that help you slowly wake up with the sunshine? I use that. I need the atmosphere to feel sunshine included.

Speaker 1: 1:34

Totally get it. Completely get it, completely get it. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:38

Well, we met with Jennifer Moss. Jennifer is a workplace expert, harvard Business Review columnist, author of Unlocking Happiness at Work, author of the Burnout Epidemic and now her new book, why Are we here? And it's all about creating workplace cultures where everyone wants to work and we just had such a fantastic conversation with her, Francesca. What did you think about this conversation?

Speaker 1: 2:06

Yeah, I was stoked to talk to Jennifer because she is, to me, the leading person to look at on burnout. Any of the work that Jennifer does it is absolutely locked and loaded with the latest research on things. To have her answer the question around how do you create a culture that people actually want to show up for was really interesting. The book is fascinating. She is someone that you know how you meet people like. They're so accomplished and they're so freaking good at what they do, and then they're just a very cool person on top of that. Jennifer Moss.

Speaker 3: 2:39

Yeah, 100%. She was amazing. I couldn't agree with you more. You and I talk about this all the time COVID and then our own life experiences and things that happen outside of work have really reprioritized what is meaningful for us and where our priorities stand, our values going forward, and I think so many people are going through kind of that level setting and gut check for themselves. What I really loved about Jennifer's book and I do want to read a quote that she started with that made me really think about what most people are going through. She mentions that people aren't less ambitious or lazy, we're just feeling uninspired, and that really stood out to me and I was like, yes, 100%. She's weaving together all of these really big concepts about work and providing tangible things that you can do today for yourself, for your team, to make workplaces that are inspiring.

Speaker 1: 3:35

It's practical, tangible, and most of the things that she talks about in the book and with us are things you can do in 20 minutes or less, sold in 20 minutes or less, 20 minutes or less, 20 minutes or less, 20 minutes or less. Like, come on, let's go, let's go, let's do this.

Speaker 3: 3:49

Yeah Well, friends with that, here's Jennifer Moss.

Speaker 2: 4:26

Jen, I'm going to jump right in here. What is the biggest myth about workplace idea? That you can't have one without the other. If you invest in well-being and you invest in employee happiness that somehow that's just like a nice to have and you're a human-centered leader and I think it's an ego thing like I'm just doing this for you because it's so important that people are happy and I'm a hero for that and instead it's really if you're a capitalist, if you want to be competitive you know I'm a hero for that and instead it's really if you're a capitalist, if you want to be competitive, if you want to have a really you know, future ready organization you invest in well-being.

Speaker 3: 4:55

I love to hear you say that, because I think back to the days where, when work-life balance was the thing and people were like who needs that? Like it's a badge of honor to just drive yourself into the ground, but it's bad for business, right?

Speaker 2: 5:09

It is bad for business and I wrote this article for Harvard Business Review that I think it went viral because people felt really connected to this idea of toxic productivity and the title was let's End Toxic Productivity. There is this heroic attitude towards people that don't sleep and they don't eat and they don't even take time to go pee, they just work all the time. It's like they're the high performing people and that's just because they feel like that's what they have to do to be able to be promoted. It's not anyone's real desire, but it's become something we celebrate and we need to get better at. Looking at rest is not a four letter word that. It is actually good for all of us and it makes us more productive and leads to lots of good business outcomes.

Speaker 3: 5:54

Listen, I am all for bringing back the afternoon nap. Anyone a fan from kindergarten? I feel like that was a good refresher, so let's build that in. You write that work is fundamentally broken. How did we get here?

Speaker 2: 6:11

This is a long time coming. You know, the office is 550 years old. We have sort of behaved in the same way, around that same framework. I mean we went from seven days a week to six to five, so now we're in the five zone, which has been the last hundred years. But you know, nothing's really changed about work and going into the office and it being very transactional.

Speaker 2: 6:34

But I say, since the advent of the car phone, where we were able to move our work into the new office which was our car, that changed work from a transactional relationship to a social contract. You're asking us to bring work into our home, into our personal life. You know that really breaks the expectation, and so we've had this unwinding of what our expectation of work has been and also the demands on us to be working all the time with all these blurred lines. And there was a point in the pandemic which crises do? They exacerbate all those existing problems that were there, that were boiling and exploded them, and so in the last five years it's like we went from breaking to broken and now we have to figure out a new framework for work.

Speaker 3: 7:28

Well, throughout the book, you really explored why so many of us are feeling unfulfilled at work. Do you think this is a modern problem, or is this something we've always struggled with?

Speaker 2: 7:41

When you look at Gallup's engagement data, it sort of stayed the same. We are at the worst level of active disengagement levels that we've seen in a decade, so it's extraordinarily bad now. As far as how many people are actually happy at work, it always really has stayed in that. You know, globally around 13, 15 percent and in the it's 30-ish Canada same thing, but so there's really a huge swath of the workforce that hasn't really been happy at work. But what I believe is that we had a different expectation of it before and we knew part of it was going to be a grind and there was generations that felt like, okay, that's just part of work is that it's not going to always be enjoyable, and I'm okay with that. I have different expectations from a different identity and your identity about what you did was more important than, say, pay or work-life balance or some of those other things. So our frame of reference in the last five years has really changed, and so things like flexibility used to be a perk, now it's a right. We look at being able to not be sick at work. You know, like expecting not to be burned out. That has definitely become more of an expectation, and yet we're seeing higher levels of burnout than we ever have, even since peak pandemic. And you know, we're asking more of work and work is asking more of us, and so I think we're becoming more disconnected.

Speaker 2: 9:11

Each group is being more disconnected from the other, like this data point that I had in the book on the purpose gap. You see, 85% of executives really do see and they feel their purpose. They say they live their purpose every day, whereas only 15% of frontline managers and employees feel their purpose every day. We've lost the expectation of work and we have a new frame of reference. And also, when you're trusted with something like everyone was allowed to work remotely. We did really well with that. There was investments in well-being, which was really great. There was investments in DEI, which felt really good. Employees felt like, okay, here's the moment where we're going to turn the corner and there's going to be respect and there's going to be an understanding of our needs, there's going to be empathy and compassion. And then, five years later, and all of those things are being clawed back, it feels like. And then, five years later, and all of those things are being clawed back, it feels like, oh, now I don't feel as much hope.

Speaker 1: 10:38

And so I think that's been catastrophic to levels of engagement and happiness at work. Why are we here? It's such a well-researched book, it covers a ton of ground and I'm wondering if you can talk about the three key areas leaders really need to approach differently.

Speaker 2: 10:46

Key areas leaders really need to approach differently. How I ended up really thinking about this book is that I really do think it's a stacking kind of on, based on the first part, which are foundations, and then it's addressing the novel challenges, because it's a whole new framework. We're in the multiverse of work. We've skipped, you know, timeline. We're not even the future of work, so that's sort of in this business challenges that we have to face. And then the third part is you great data point a few days ago, which was amazing, that showed that the entire workforce is pretty much feeling the same way, that leaders that have hope are what they need right now. But it's really hope, purpose and community. So feeling a sense of mattering and feeling like you have friends.

Speaker 2: 11:39

You know that work isn't just like going to school without our gym or recess. There's actually like kibitzing, like you talk about, and fun and joy. And then there's novel challenges that we need to deal with. I talk about, from a sense of compassion, freedom and openness. And compassion is really how do I take my empathy into, and that act of listening into, action with AI, fear of becoming obsolete, this sense of I hear you but I'm not doing anything about it, and this is why we need compassion, you know. Then we have freedom.

Speaker 2: 12:11

The idea of flexibility is so focused on where, but how can we maybe think about it for the 60% of the non-remote enabled workforce, why and with whom, and what we do and when we do it? There's lots of ways that we can create flexibility for that group, and just freedom is such a fundamental part of who we are, and when that strips away, we will resist it to our death. I mean, it is baked into us, and so the way that people are tackling these return to office mandates are just terrible. And then you know openness is generational divides. We need to be listening to each just terrible. And then you know openness is generational divides. We need to be listening to each other more and belonging and recognition is really, how can we have a shared vision if we can't pull people together? We're going to have just a siloed vision and that, no, we know that doesn't work. So it's about pulling people together in a sense of belonging for all of us to work better together.

Speaker 1: 13:03

I think each of those stacks is so important, think each of those stacks is so important and each of those layers is so important. And we're not going to go through all the stacks on this episode, but we do want to double click into a few of them that just seem so critical and so anchoring. And I want to talk about hope first because, I will be honest, I read the Gallup research last week, read your book as well, and I was thinking. The first time I read I was like we've grown up professionally saying hope is not a strategy in the book. And now Gallup also validates it. It's actually scientifically proven to be a strategy and you can operationalize hope. I'm curious about hope. When we are wondering why we are here, hope is the answer. Why is that?

Speaker 2: 13:44

And it's amazing because I spent some time and you would have read the book where I talked to senior leaders in the military that say hope is their only strategy, and they say you know, think about it. You're sending people out on a mission that could risk their lives and if they don't feel hopeful, they are not going to even sign up for that. Sign up for that or they're not going to be able to achieve their mission because they don't see the point of it. They don't see that there's a potential for them to hit that goal. It's too risky, and so you extrapolate that across any organization. That's the same way about asking people to risk when it comes to ideas or innovation or, you know, being being psychologically safe.

Speaker 2: 14:26

All of those things are dependent on people feeling like that. What they do is actually going to come to some sort of fruition, or it's going to be helpful, or they can see themselves in the future of their organization. You don't have hope. You do not get anyone on board with AI, and this is why we see one in two of the global workforce now saying they have AI anxiety. Hope is super fundamental and I actually feel like it's the economic tool that we need if we're really looking at solving big policy problems. We're talking about women, and this whole fertility crisis is a big conversation we're having all the time, and so you see countries putting in a whole bunch of money for women at work four-day work week in Korea and these types of things but when you actually talk to women and families that are talking about why they're putting off having children, they say I don't see a world where I can bring a child into it is heavy and it's not financial incentives that we need to give people now.

Speaker 2: 15:36

It's hope. This is the economic driver that we all need across organizations, societally and globally, and until we really get to that upstream kind of thinking about it, we're still going to be in crisis in the next 20 years.

Speaker 1: 15:51

I want to double click on this because we talk to a lot of folks, especially at the middle management level, that are burnt out. They feel like they've been asked to do more. Just like you said. They're feeling that discrepancy between feeling purpose and being like what purpose you know. And so when you say hope is the strategy, and then we have middle managers that are feeling just how the hell am I supposed to have hope? What does hope look like for me as a middle manager? How do I show up with hope when I've got 55,000 things going on? How do you respond?

Speaker 2: 16:23

to that. So I love that you've asked me this, because hope is actually one of the easiest skills that we can build, and so much of the book is changing culture in 20 minutes or less. Like I've been saying, it's just these 20 minute meetings here, these incremental shifts over here. It's not a big value change. It's actually middle managers are the ones that are the most empowered to make these changes. And when you think about hope, it's really based on Snyder's hope theory and this is what I've talked about for many, many years.

Speaker 2: 16:51

It's this idea of having goals. So really focus in your team around setting goals and not five-year goals. But how do we set daily, weekly, monthly goals that lead up to that year, that lead up to that big career pathing five years? And then the second part is having pathways. So you're planning your goals, but do you have a plan B? Do you have a plan C? Do you have a plan Z? Having secondary and tertiary plans around your goals makes you feel like that one goal, if I don't hit it this way, I have all this other backup. I've had all this other planning to hit that goal. And then it's about agency. We need autonomy in hitting those goals.

Speaker 2: 17:34

Google does a great job co-creating goals, talking with peers. Peers celebrate. It's fluid, it's just challenging enough that you feel like you've accomplished something, but not so challenging that you could never accomplish it, and not too easy that you feel like, oh well, that was easy. So you don't feel that sense of accomplishment when you reach it. All of this builds up cognitive hope day to day.

Speaker 2: 17:57

And you know, lululemon is really good I was their happiness strategy strategist way back and they do a good job of having these BHAGs, these big, hairy, audacious goals. But then they also have they celebrate the small wins. So that weekly goal or the monthly goal, the manager can be like, yeah, like sticker, you know, like here's a gift card at the end of you know you achieving this two month goal or this quarterly goal, like these are the things that we, we need to help people do, because subconsciously it builds up our hope capacity or cognitive hope, and the more hope we feel, the more we feel like we can accomplish bigger goals. And then the more risk-taking we are, the more innovative we are, the more cohesive we are with the rest of our team because we're you know, we're working, we're gelling together in a really helpful kind of way it just breeds such a good social contagion of hope across the culture.

Speaker 1: 18:49

Yeah, I love that. I know you've talked about it in some of your past books too. But that idea of chunking things out for your folks and it doesn't need to be the beehives we all love the beehives and the moonshots and it's all sexy, sexy but sometimes it just comes down to those small wins until you get the bigger wins and chunking it for your folks. Oh, I talk about purpose too, because we talked about hope and then you pull up into purpose right, that's that second element of that strong foundation that you talk about when it feels like your org is on the fourth reorg and you actually don't know where the hell it's going. But you're leading a team and you're like, all right, here's our purpose. Like, how do you do that in that 20 minute sprint?

Speaker 2: 19:31

This is a really key, I think, when you ask me of, like, what are the things that we get wrong about leadership and culture? Sorry, this is another place where we fall short a lot of, and it's because of the purpose gap. A lot of the people in that executive role feel very connected to the big mission statement. They feel it like they're in it. But most of the workforce doesn't really care about the big mission statement. They're not thinking about the vision every day, they're really in the work and sometimes that work can feel very monotonous, really boring, and so you want to stop trying to make it so far away from people. You want to tie the day-to-day work into things that people care about, and you do this in this way. That's very practical and I've watched this intervention and tried it across organizations and it's been incredible. But it's 20 minutes of a non-work-related check-in where you ask what lit you up, what stressed you out and what can we do for each other to make next week easier. So the lighting up piece managers are able to kind of get clues into what excites people. You know, what do you care about? Does it really matter that your kids are in a good school? Do you care about watching Broadway films. You have a passion for going to New York once a year and seeing all the Broadway films. I mean, these are things where it should seem innocuous but it's actually. It's really great data.

Speaker 2: 20:51

This is where you're like how do I motivate people and connect their day-to-day tasks to that thing? You know, and if and then when you look, you know at the stress stressors. People aren't going to say what they're stressed out about to their boss in day, week one or week two Absolutely not. You're putting on the front. You know it takes months actually, but that consistency and frequency and managers showing up every week saying I'm still going to ask and I'm still going to share my stressors, that vulnerability and leadership opens up psychological safety amongst the team.

Speaker 2: 21:24

So people then start sharing, like what is going on, and if you create an open space, people will tell you this is what I need, this is what's holding me back from connecting to my purpose or doing what makes me feel good every day. And so over time, consistency and frequency builds trust and then you get to use this and then the quick win piece is the hope building. So every single week you're helping each other cohesively in this team building thing like helping each other to solve problems, and so work gets easier, gets more fun, it's less toxic, it's also less exhausting and you can help each other. You learn these small ways that you can tactically help each other with workload and so overall, you start to feel like your work has more meaning, it matters more. You feel more aligned with your motivators and your purpose to the day-to-day tasks and it changes so much of how people feel about their work and how it contributes and makes an impact.

Speaker 1: 22:25

I love that too, because at the end of the day sometimes I think about if you distill down what everybody just really basically needs at a human level. It's just to be seen.

Speaker 1: 22:36

Or for someone to be interested, genuinely, like what does light you up? Or what are you about, you and me together, human to human. It's like simple, elegant questioning that really helps you, as a manager, understand and get the data to your point, but also enable someone to feel seen. We've all had leaders where we felt that potentially, hopefully you have, and you have had leaders where they don't give a shit. You know what I'm saying. They don't care. Yeah, they don't care, and you're kind of dying for them to ask or just be interested, like do you even know me?

Speaker 1: 23:06

I had a leader one time asking me how my kids are doing, after I'd worked with them for four months. I have a kid, I don't have two, and it was you know. It's like those moments where it's like you're not even in this. This is so transactional for you. I love that on the one-on-one. And the other thing I want to ask about you talk about the importance of friendships at work. Mel and I actually fun fact we're work friends and then we started this podcast and so we know the value of work friendships. But I'm wondering how organizations can facilitate community more like the idea of the true community.

Speaker 2: 23:39

This has always been something that I've been so interested in is this community piece, because going to work and not having that person a person, just a single person there, that's all you need. But people that don't have that. It's just a very miserable experience for them and I wrote about that in the burnout epidemic like a toxic, unhappy group of people that you work with can actually reduce your lifespan, like that's how detrimental it is on your mental health and well-being. So you need to have that person or else work just does, just feels really lonely. And what's happened in the last five years? And everyone wants to blame it on remote work. But I don't think that that's the case and I've shared really the data to say it's not remote work that has impacted relationships. We've been dealing with lowliness at work for a long time but it's that we have organizations that just focus on simplex relationships which are transactional, like you said. It's that I need you for this. It's basically a shared services and that's how you interact. But organizations that really focus on building multiplex relationships where it's. I know you and I know that you have a kid, not two kids or three kids, and I know that this is where that non-work related checking comes in handy because it's about developing more robust relationships that create bonds.

Speaker 2: 25:08

Five years, especially with these return to office mandates when people go back into the office, it's not like they're spending more time doing what we should be doing, which is collaborating and connecting with each other and bringing back rituals.

Speaker 2: 25:16

You know, I love that Atlassian has the hackathon every quarter, and there's companies that do a really good job of pulling people together to do cool stuff and they build relationships.

Speaker 2: 25:27

We've lost a lot of investment in team building and networking and a lot of that social piece, that social binding, is gone, and so right now, the way that we've developed friends would be different than you and Mel, which would be organic. It used to be like you'd walk in the office and maybe you were friends with someone in marketing, maybe you talked to someone in accounting. You'd have ways of having conversations with lots of different people. We've continued to hear in the data is that it's very siloed now, so we only care about our team. We don't know anything going on across the rest of the organization and the thing that I used to look for which was compatibility and you know if you made me laugh or we were both interested in cool movies. Now we're looking for conscientiousness and accountability. Those are the traits we're looking for in our friendships, which is very, it's very the ones to go dancing on Friday night with their accountable, conscientious friend Like no line.

Speaker 1: 26:27

So that didn't even accumulate with our country.

Speaker 2: 26:30

I guess that sounds fun.

Speaker 2: 26:32

That's it. We're only looking to have relationships at work that will continue to foster better work and to me, like that is the thing that we need to rework is bringing people back into spaces where, like I was talking in the book about the third space making it like Starbucks, where you're going there to debate and discuss and be connected and then you go home or wherever, to your own little world to do the heads down stuff. But right now, going into work is just like a replica of working from home and that's not building any sort of friendship or community that anyone really cares about.

Speaker 1: 27:12

It's interesting, though. I mean companies could totally reimagine those spaces to be more communal or like office, as an amenity to foster that organic relationship building or get back to it.

Speaker 2: 27:23

Yeah, and we're so time starved and we're so burned out that our social tank is really, you know, has been depleted and so again, it's like hygiene. We need to, we need to manage overwork, we need to create space for people to actually connect. You know, in the again, the 20 minutes or less. Cornell research in the book said 20 minutes of having lunch with one person once a week completely changed the dynamic of organizations. They found that morale was improved, job satisfaction increased, people made less mistakes, which I thought was really interesting. Their work performance improved. And that was 20 minutes of just having lunch away from your desk once a week. It's super simple again, but these are the things that create incremental network effect, that we're all kind of doing some of these pieces of the puzzle. Eventually the culture will flourish would be.

Speaker 1: 28:29

I would have the 20 minutes, the lunch away from my desk more, but I would invite someone from an accounting or the gallon marketing or whatever just to network more earlier on and just go to lunch with people more. I wish I would have done that. It's so nourishing.

Speaker 3: 28:38

It's so special. I worked in a big law firm when I first started out in New York and we did have that. We had a lunch crew and they had a cafeteria, but everyone knew everyone. It was a mixture of administrative staff. Paralegals, even like the lunch staff crew, would come in and eat with us and it was one massive table. There were 25 of us every single day. That's what we looked forward to and we talked about everything but work and it just made our week, but it made work better. And to this day, and it just made our week, but it made work better. And to this day, even though that firm's long gone they merged with someone else, the building's been taken over, but there's a Facebook group of alumni from that workplace down from everyone to security, to all that crew, because that's how close we were. It was like a very special environment which you don't see anymore.

Speaker 2: 29:24

Really, I love that, Mel. I love that because in the book I shared a case study of this person I interviewed at a tech company and he met with a lot of his coworkers and people in the building for lunch. They were pulled back on a project that ended up making them having to work all these long hours and slowly but surely they abandoned their lunch and he said that his team started dropping out and moving to competitors, and even in the exit interviews for me it just felt like we stopped having lunch, we stopped caring about each other. It's more than that. It's more to a lot of people, and he ended up after six years being on a track to be in a high position in that organization, left to a competitor and he initiated the lunches in the in his other place and it became this whole popular thing again.

Speaker 2: 30:12

It's so much more than people realize it's. It's the pausing, it's the connecting, it's the not talking about work, it's developing these depths of bonds that sustain and and we're not investing in that anymore because we're thinking 20 minutes, oh well, that means I have to leave 20 minutes late, I'm going to be stuck in traffic. It just means more work. When I come home at night I'll be in my pajamas working till midnight. When you're burned out, when you have that kind of toxic productivity, you don't engage in 20 minute lunches.

Speaker 3: 30:43

Now, I also am a fan of in virtual environments, because I do think you could do this in a virtual environment, like having a fun weekly debate on something random like is a hot dog a sandwich? Put it up on. Teams for everyone to contribute to the conversation, right, like how do you get what's a weekly question? But like, get creative, what can you do to engage everybody across the org?

Speaker 2: 31:04

Yeah, Is pot fruit considered to be acceptable on a pizza? Yes, no, it is a good question. Yeah, you have lots of debate, but I do think it needs to be levity, you know, and about all of the new challenges, and boy do we have them.

Speaker 3: 31:47

Ai, multi-generational workforce I think we just read something recently about Gen Z doesn't even want what we have, so there's a whole problem there. The backlash on DEI, the backlash on remote work, extensive burnout as you write about. Employee happiness is just continuing to drop. When you think about all of these new challenges, what's the one thing workplaces need to focus on now to overcome the competition against all of these things when they're trying to create a good culture?

Speaker 2: 32:19

One of the things I keep telling leaders that I work with is why do you feel, like, five years into this complete cataclysmic shift in work, that you're supposed to have it figured out? I mean, no one even knows what hybrid is Like. Why is it two or three days a week? We don't even know. Hybrid could be four times a year. Hybrid could mean lots of different things, and there is this kind of ego, I think, around us needing to have this thing sorted and wanting to just put the pandemic and now poly crisis on some sort of back burner and not think about it. And so I've been saying the one thing that leaders need to do is just let go of all of that sort of that expectation and recognize with self-awareness that we are in a completely different mindset.

Speaker 2: 33:07

Behavioral, you know, the behavioral mindset of this workforce today is clearly different. The priorities have shifted. We have Gen Zs that do see us as terrible models for what work looks like. You know most of us burning out, all of us resigning, saying we hate work, we're not great models, and so of course they're going to say I don't want that and they're going to find new avenues.

Speaker 2: 33:30

We're losing our mature workers. They're retiring early at a pace that we've never seen before, and they say I don't really fit into this workforce, it's changed. So let's get on top of that and say, okay, let's be agile, let's iterate, let's test, let's see if this works and if it doesn't, that's okay. We're going to be just much more fluid in the way that we build our strategies until we feel like, over time, I feel like we're in the pilot stage of this experiment that you know, when you look at 550 years old for the office, we're looking at a pretty long time before we're going to get any of this kind of mapped out. So for me it's about self awareness, agility and pausing and kind of coming up with a new plan.

Speaker 3: 34:21

Yeah, well, it's also like will we really ever have this all mapped out? Or is this just start being okay with the unknown and working together to be like I don't know either, and we'll figure it out together?

Speaker 2: 34:49

I love that you say that, because even five-year strategies right now, when we have Gen AI and what's changed we have to imagine that that's going to be five years where the things that we thought were going to happen have been totally changed around, and so that is really. It is understanding that we're in a state of uncertainty and will be for quite some time now. That's why, if you really want to be successful, it is managing through change and learning how to do that much better. Unfortunately, we just see a demographic of CEOs. Most of them are male, most of them are in their 60s, and it's been very difficult. We've seen just that like trying to shift over into especially what Gen Zs are asking for. That feels so foreign, it feels so far away from the way that they were professionally raised. So I have empathy for both groups, but we do need to connect somewhere, because having divisions, that and us being that far apart in our goals, there's no way we can hit those plans, that vision, if we don't start talking to each other.

Speaker 3: 35:45

Yeah, if we can't find common ground, it is moving to a danger zone. I think last week Francesca and I were, we were covering new week new headlines and we read something around how it was like 73 percent of Gen Z's that were polled Don't quote me on this, because I think it was somewhere around there where they were mentioning they don't even want the job. Like we're heading for a manager meltdown this year, in fact, because they can't find common ground and what they see is what they don't want. But, as you mentioned, it's deeply affecting the future of organizations and business. So what are your thoughts on that? Like, how can we start to find common ground?

Speaker 2: 36:24

I say first across the organization. Even managers can do this. How often do you express frustration with an entire generation and how often do we have conversations like oh, I'm so frustrated like my boomer, my Xer, whatever bandager, usually Xers are boomers. Everyone's a boomer if they're over the age of like 45. So it's like how does my Xer.

Speaker 1: 36:50

I don't appreciate that.

Speaker 2: 36:51

That I do not appreciate being I don't like being lumped in there but, I'm here but to get everyone on to say I'm a boomer, so it's like anyone over a certain age. It's kind of like this exasperation. And yet then we see this rise of youngism. We've never seen it this harsh before, where young people are coming into the office and it's basically like they're already defied as lazy. And if they do ask for things like respectful hours so that they can have friends, I mean they're just trying to meet people and develop relationships that might be long lasting, so they can have family and plan their lives. But if you're working 60 or 70 hours a week, it's just not appropriate for anything else in your life. The fact that they're asking for this with this perception that they're just lazy, it seems like what they're asking for is just so, gen Z, that puts people off. They're opting out of the workforce. Because of it. They're willing to accept an extraordinarily less amount of pay. All the data showing it's up to 37 percent less pay to have work life balance. So for them they're not like Xers and boomers were where it was by the house get married, have kids, so you have all these golden handcuffs tying you to your job. They're putting off buying homes later because of financial the situation that they're in. They just don't have that. They're living longer with their parents, they're not getting married, they're not having kids, so their ability to be mobile and take less pay makes it so we're not holding onto them, and with the same carrot. And that means having to be flexible.

Speaker 2: 38:28

And so I keep telling managers just like audit your language, audit the narratives that go on in your organization. Try to remove those things that really do separate you. Auditing your language really changes how you feel about another group, and I should also say the youngest generation. Their whole point is to push back on the status quo, like that's what you expect. Every generation does that. Why are we surprised that this generation is pushing back on the status quo, like that's what you expect. Every generation does that. Why are we surprised that this generation is pushing back on the status quo Like this is their job, this is every generation's job is to question whether the generation before them have done the right job. You know, societally and politically and economically, and every generation's done that. So here we have another generation that's just coming in to tell us we're doing a bad job. That's the way it goes.

Speaker 3: 39:20

I feel like Gen Z's role is actually to remind us that we're all human beings in here for a finite amount of time, so maybe we should all stop prioritizing work as the number one priority.

Speaker 2: 39:31

I love it. I say Gen Z's say well-being is not antithetical to work ethic. They say that loud and clear and I fully agree with that. So it's probably why I have maybe my bias to say let's listen to Gen Zs because you know, maybe they're pushing the pendulum really far in one direction, but that's the only way that we're going to have change, that sort of meets in the middle. So let's let them do that and then figure out a way that sort of marries all worlds.

Speaker 3: 39:59

Couldn't agree more. Another big topic is AI, and you talk about the fear of becoming obsolete. So how can leaders navigate all of what's happening in AI today and really kind of squash the FOBO that's happening for their teams?

Speaker 2: 40:19

So I love the term FOBO. I mean Gallup really stripped it with that one. You know I love JOMO the joy of missing out. That's one of my favorite. Fobo is a good one too.

Speaker 2: 40:29

The data is showing that it's really increasing, and it's increasing a lot for younger cohorts. It used to be automation, so mature workers were ones that were most threat. You saw that obsolescence really coming out in that group. But our younger generation are feeling it, and a lot of that is that we've got again like hyperbolic language. We're in a mass extinction event I robot and everything's going to fall apart, or it's 300 million jobs are going to be lost, or or then it's everything's rosy with AI. Everything's going to be great. You know we're going to, they're going to be our pilot and you won't have to work again, and I don't like the idea of people not wanting to work or not working again. A, that's an economic catastrophe, because how are we going to care for everyone not working? And B, just from a human standpoint, we get a lot of fuel from work, and so what?

Speaker 2: 41:22

I have this LinkedIn course that I basically took that chapter of FOBO and brought that in to say how do we create AI enthusiasm instead of AI anxiety, because it's here and that's the reality and so we need to normalize it. We need to talk about how ubiquitous AI is in the rest of our lives so it isn't so scary. We need to make sure that people feel skilled up and not overlooking mature workers, because we're seeing that they're getting constantly overlooked for training in AI. It's kind of like both of them are giving up and yet pretty robust research looked at mature workers and said and there was 40% of them that said I would stay longer if I had this continued training, if I felt like you were training me up to handle this, but I'm overlooked constantly. So there's things that we need to do around training and just preparedness. We also want to create curious cultures.

Speaker 2: 42:18

Have a once a month meeting around some new experimentation that you had with AI. You share it back with the team. It can be personal or professional. You can have some personal, some professional so you can talk about oh, I did this trick and I used AI and now I've been able to do my work faster. It's been great.

Speaker 2: 42:34

So that's really important is create experimentation, and I would say the most important part and this is probably at the executive leadership level is we need to deliver on the promise of AI. So the promise of AI was that you will have your mundane tasks taken away and then you will have really creative, cool work that you get to do. A lot of people that I've interviewed are saying I had the mundane stuff taken away, but now I have extreme boredom and I'm not getting any of that. So there's a promise undelivered. And then also Gen AI is supposed to save us time, so if we're finished our project early, we should be given that time back.

Speaker 2: 43:14

It shouldn't be that we're just adding more productivity when it's supposed to create efficiencies. So these are two things at the policy level that I think executive leaders need to say. Are we delivering on the promise of AI in these two areas? And maybe it's changing the way we measure productivity. It's more around goals, not hours, and so that's at the GDP level that we need to be looking at that. But just even in organizations, we can change policies to make the promise of AI feel like it's worth investing in for employees.

Speaker 1: 43:48

I'm wondering if most organizations even have mapped out what the promise of AI was to their employees, because they're very focused on stakeholders shareholders but not viewing their employees as stakeholders and or saying this is what AI can do for you. Like, I don't feel like a lot of organizations have explicitly said that or put that in their EBP as either it's a major problem.

Speaker 2: 44:13

A major problem. The Microsoft Trends report that came out in collaboration with LinkedIn found that 60% of CEOs don't believe that there's a strategy, and so this is what happened, and there was this really interesting report, too, that showed that technology wasn't even on the radar of sort of business disruptions up until the last two years, and it went from not even being on the top set of stressors that CEOs were feeling to sixth place and then in a year to first place. This last year was like first place biggest disruptors to business, and so everyone's really just adopted AI. Because I need to adopt AI, I need to show that I'm competitive, but with no. I need to show that I'm competitive but with no strategy, and you need to know your why before you adopt AI. Know your why before you adopt AI, so then you can then communicate that, and that lends to managers being able to communicate the why. I'm curious about what organizations or are there?

Speaker 1: 45:17

organizations that are getting this right. I'm curious about what organizations, or are there organizations that are getting this right?

Speaker 2: 45:33

Yeah, there are. There's just so much right now that I'm seeing that are, you know, are making it difficult for people to stay on track with some of that investment. I talked about Bain and Company in the book. I mean they're doing things like even just cold rooms for women that have menopause, for example. It seems again so simple, like just having spaces that you can work in that are cooler.

Speaker 2: 45:58

But for me as a perimenopausal 47-year-old, I had the worst brain fog in writing this last book in the first six months and I actually felt like I'm not supposed to be a writer anymore. The amount of questioning of my capacity and my efficacy was really wild. And then it was going to my doctor and she was able to just say I think you're going through perimenopause, and that was such a weight lifted. I really did feel like I was not good at my job anymore and I think of women at this age peak career my job anymore, and I think of women at this age peak career feeling ineffective. And so there are organizations that are saying we can't have that. We need to do things that are more responsible for women.

Speaker 2: 46:44

We still are seeing, which I feel is like these big declines in keeping women in the workforce. We're at the thinnest executive pipeline that we've seen yet in history. For the first time in a decade, global CEOs of women have gone down, and it was already like a shit number in the first place. I think it was 11 and a half percent. Now it's 10 and a half percent yeah, celebrating incremental gains.

Speaker 2: 47:08

I'm very over that, and so I think work isn't working for women. We need diverse thinking. We've demonstrated in Anita Williams Woolley's work at Google that collective intelligence increases when you have more female gender representation on teams. I want people to start looking at this as this is a business strategy, not a benevolent strategy. This is not to be benevolent. I'm not being an ally, I'm being a capitalist when I in my executive pipeline, and so the more we can look at it as a business imperative versus a benevolence imperative, the more we'll. I think we'll put that into the strategic priority set, and right now it just it's a lot about allyship and doing good and not seeing diversity in represented in leadership is actually being really good for business, and the more that we can change that narrative and talk about it in that way, the less it's something that can be cut out, and I do think that, and you would have read in the book that I do think the way we've done it so far hasn't been really successful.

Speaker 1: 48:14

What I've always tried to reconcile is the data, even though these programs haven't been around for that long. When you look at the history of work, I appreciate that, of how powerful your ROI is on inclusion, belonging women in leadership roles, diversity, happiness at work. I mean all of the things that you're talking about. Hope, purpose, right, the data is there, the return on investment is there, hard dollars, and you can make the monetary case for all of this and I'm wondering is it the narrative around? We need to start talking about hard dollars on this all the time, when we talk about this stuff to sell it more. What is this flip in the narrative? I can't figure it out you know what.

Speaker 2: 49:06

It's always going to be a bottom line issue and as we start to see a deficit in our talents resources and this is what I think Anita in the book that I love that she shared is just like we're wasting this incredible talent pool and no one seems to really care that it's slipping away.

Speaker 2: 49:28

And what I'm seeing is and I think it's actually, in a lot of ways, maybe beneficial to women is that women are saying I'm seeing is and I think it's actually, in a lot of ways, maybe beneficial to women is that women are saying I'm going to start to build up my own IP, I'm going to start up my own companies and, because they are so good at it, they're going to create their own space and they're going to start to demonstrate that they don't really need that other infrastructure.

Speaker 2: 49:50

And we're going to create this whole economy of women leading organizations and actually having patents and having opportunities for other women, because women will hire more women, because you hire like, and so, as that starts to break ground, which we are seeing, we're seeing so many more women move into part-time roles so that they can work on some of these other things. We are seeing like IP for women increase. We are seeing women opt out of workplaces that are not inclusive and moving to organizations that are, so they're demonstrating with their feet, and so the more that becomes something. That is a bottom line issue, which might take a while to show up maybe irrationally optimistic of me, but the data feels like it supports it, that that's what's going to start to happen and we're going to see this very different shift in this economy for women.

Speaker 3: 50:45

Well, it's funny, francesca and I just did a whole thing. I mean, women drive the global economy. We own almost all of the purchasing power globally and a recent article said if you, you know, if the economy is running well, you might want to start by thinking women today, and one of the stats that recently came out was, in 2023 alone, 49% of small businesses for the first time, more women than men are starting small businesses. So I think, yeah, I mean, the stats are showing they're leaving in droves because they're leaving places where they're not considered. They aren't.

Speaker 2: 51:21

And policies like return to office are actually extremely exclusive for women, and until we're solving the second shift and making sure that unpaid labor is balanced across both teams in the family, this is the only option for women. So those exclusive policies women are just like. That's not what I want. The core heart of the book is that we faced our mortality as a collective, and what happens to the brain when you face your mortality is you actually start to subconsciously reprioritize things that are about legacy leaving. It's more about what matters you know in the world, what matters to you as a human being, and so for women it was. They felt years of just having to take care of their family, protect them from such risk.

Speaker 2: 52:13

It was a very strong emotional experience for a lot of families and women in particular, and so now they're looking at it after they face their finitude. They're like this thing that I'm doing, that's toxic, that does not include me, that does not care about me. I don't really see that as something that in when a life is short mentality that I can accept anymore, and when you're not faced with that, you really don't see that there is something that's sort of like happening very quickly. You don't have the same urgency on it, but that experience and polycrisis has put urgency on us to leave legacies, put urgency on us to do more with our lives, and so for the people that are pro-social, for the people that care about the world and care about these things, they're looking at work as not something that matters as much, but they're still equally ambitious, and that's the thing that's cool about women. They're like how do I make work fit into my life instead of trying to fit into work's expectation of me, and I think that's like where it's going to be really cool.

Speaker 2: 53:17

I have gone back a few times to Riyadh. So Saudi Arabia has this real focus on 2030 women empowerment goals. So I also think other countries are going to go. Ok, we always looked at that country as being so far behind, it wasn't progressive, and they're putting this huge investment in women right now because they do understand it from an economic standpoint If one of the things that Saudi Arabia does understand is wealth and how to build wealth, and they are just looking at women as their builders of wealth right now.

Speaker 3: 54:02

All right, jennifer, we're going to move into a rapid round. This is not a pop quiz. It's meant to be fun and to get a little more versatile. To get to know you, we'll start with the work question. It's 2030. What do you think work's going to look like? This is such a great question.

Speaker 2: 54:20

It's going to look the same, but I do think that we're going to see incremental differences in a more pro-social way.

Speaker 1: 54:34

Okay, finish this sentence. For companies to build work cultures everyone wants. Leaders need to model the behavior.

Speaker 2: 54:42

Employees can't be what they can't see. Leaders need to model the behavior.

Speaker 1: 54:47

Next sentence Work should feel more like blank and less like blank.

Speaker 2: 54:53

More like fuel for you know your sense of accomplishment. Less like a grind Damn right.

Speaker 3: 55:03

Not it? What music are you listening to right now?

Speaker 2: 55:07

I'm super into Olivia Dean. I don't know if you've heard her, but she's so good and she has a song called Dive. I would highly recommend it. But she just became super well known because I guess she has a song on the Bridget Jones new movie, so people are learning about her. But she's great, okay.

Speaker 3: 55:30

Is Dive one of your favorite songs from her, or do you have a favorite that's like on repeat?

Speaker 2: 55:34

Well, Lola Young does the song Messy, which I really like, and she does a version of it which I love. But Dive, yeah, there's something about it that's sort of catchy and lovely, but a lot of her songs are like that and I really like Bakar B-A-K-A-R. If you just want to have a good vibes hang out in your car and feel like kind of like moving your shoulders, yeah, that's a good one.

Speaker 3: 55:58

Got to get some jams for my Trader Joe's parking lot. My bell Going on All right. What are you reading?

Speaker 2: 56:04

right now. Oh, so I like almost solely read fiction, which is hilarious as a nonfiction writer. But I'm reading Coco Meller's book. I don't know if you have heard of her. She's really good. It's oh God I just blanked on the book on the name it's Frankenstein and oh God, I can't remember. But it's really such a fun little book and she's got cool. I don't know really cool ways of thinking about characters. And I'm also reading James, which is this cool book that is. So I read multiple books at the same time and I'm always reading. I have a book with me, I carry it with me all the time, I read constantly Like I'm a super reader. And James is the idea of Reed telling the story of Huck Finn from Jim's point of view.

Speaker 3: 56:55

How fun it's really so far.

Speaker 2: 56:57

It's really neat. So one sort of beachy reads and then the other is like I got to have some meat in my brain, okay, okay.

Speaker 3: 57:06

Who do you personally really admire?

Speaker 2: 57:10

It's a really good question because there's lots of people that I really do admire, but you know, I would say my mom. So my mom was the first nurse practitioner in all of Canada and she's in the books, you know and she didn't ever talk about her stuff because she was a nurse and a nurse practitioner and so you kind of would come home. She had told me later on in life that she would come home and she had, like, had to deal with really traumatic, awful things, especially in a lot of car accidents in rural towns where she lived. And even when we moved, you know, to Canada, like to Eastern Canada, what happened was just like this sense of, I don't know, having to come home and be a good mom and also have to deal with all this stuff. And when she moved, she had to give up being a nurse practitioner because there did not exist in Ontario. So she was like, ok, well then I'll figure something else out.

Speaker 2: 58:09

She was very resilient, so she ended up teaching nursing at McMaster University, which was huge, and then working in ICU at McMaster University McMaster Hospital, which one of like it's a sick kids hospital, so they do just great work and then she decided that she wanted to stop nursing and started her own manufacturing company and sold quilts and had like multiple stores and a whole bunch of sewers working for her as like the final stage in her life. And I just feel, like you know, as a person that we never thought was the entrepreneur, I realized she was and she just didn't just do things like in small ways, she just did things in big ways, but she was so quiet about it and it wasn't until later on that I went wow, like you have subconsciously been my person that I've admired, that I've tried to mirror my life after Okay, Last one what's one piece of advice you want everyone to have?

Speaker 2: 59:10

This has been hugely beneficial for me, because I didn't learn this until I burned out and it's. You can have anything, not everything, and it's always about a series of choices and we constantly want to have everything and you can have anything. You just need to choose in your priority structure what matters most and when. You have that really figured out in your priority structure what matters most and when you have that really figured out that anything feels like everything.

Speaker 3: 59:40

I love it, thank you, thanks for sharing with us.

Speaker 2: 59:42

Yeah, I love it. So easy to talk to you. Oh, it's pleasant. You have fun. Yes, it's great.

Speaker 3: 59:52

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.

Jobs, Politics & Policy at Work

Your Work Friends Podcast: Jobs, Politics & Policy at Work with Ryan Stygar & Harrison Newman

Elections shape work…

A second Trump administration could bring major changes to your workplace—whether you're an employee, a leader, or in HR. From labor rights and healthcare to immigration, DEI, and workplace safety—this episode dives into how political policy directly impacts your day-to-day work experience. No spin. Just straight talk on what’s potentially coming, and what to start paying attention to now.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

All right, I think we're live.

Speaker 2: 0:02

Yeah, yeah, Okay. Well, hey, we're here Welcome to your work friends and we're here to talk about jobs, politics and policy in the workplace and what you might expect with the new Trump administration coming in. I'm Mel Platt, I'm the co-host and co-founder of your work friends and owner of Cordelia Consulting, and with me is my partner in crime, Francesca Francesca.

Speaker 1: 0:28

Hey, I'm Francesca Ranieri, co-founder and co-host of your Work Friends pod with Mel, and I'm also the founder of Frank.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Yeah, yeah, and friends, we have been doing this work for a long, long ass time and what we want to do is connect you with the best experts.

Speaker 2: 0:47

With us tonight, we'll introduce those folks in a second to really break down all this work stuff to help you stay ahead, and that's our goal for tonight. With us is Ryan Steiger. He's an employment lawyer with Centurion trial attorneys in San Diego, California, but you also might know him as attorney Ryan on TikTok and Instagram, and he's also a former wildland firefighter, which he's incredibly proud of. We're incredibly proud of him too. And then with us is also Harrison Newman. He is the VP of HR benefits at Corporate Synergies in New York City. He's also the VP of communications for New York City SHRM and a budding harpist only for one night, from what we understand. So welcome to you both. Thank you both for being here and with us.

Speaker 2: 1:34

So here's the deal. We are going to be talking about five core topics around work policy, and those include labor and wage policies, healthcare and benefits, immigration, DEI and workplace safety all of the hot topics everyone's hearing about. We have about five minutes for those five topics each. We're also going to be making some bold predictions here along the way all speculative, of course, because we don't have crystal balls, but we're going to be ripping things from the headlines and making our best assumptions to help you think through things. Going to be ripping things from the headlines and making our best assumptions to help you think through things. If you are joining us live, please, please, please drop your questions in the chat. We will be monitoring them and we have some live Q&A at the end. But we're going to jump right in with a nice little question for you both.

Speaker 4: 2:18

How's that sound? Right on, let's do it.

Speaker 1: 2:20

Yeah, I actually want to do this for all of us, because I'm really curious. I know we all have a point of view on this. If you were to think about one word that would describe the workplace in 2025, what's your word? A single word, a single word, or what you're expecting?

Speaker 4: 2:37

what you're expecting. In a single word, I'm going to go with burnout.

Speaker 2: 2:41

Oh, that's a good one.

Speaker 4: 2:42

Yeah, I hope it's not tired at this point. It's been going around quite a bit, but the general consensus I get from all the employees I represent, the people I talk to is people are tired, things are more expensive than they've ever been, wages are going up but they're not keeping up. And that creates a bit of a conflict, because your employer is sitting there saying my costs of business are going up and I'm paying you more than ever. The employees are saying, yeah, you're paying me more than ever, but it's really not a big increase, boss, and meanwhile my rent has gone up like 50% over the past eight years. It's getting rough out there and now, with what many anticipate will be fewer worker protections, not more, that burnout could turn into apathy. I certainly hope it doesn't, but burnout is my word of 2025 so far.

Speaker 1: 3:29

Yeah, good one Harrison.

Speaker 3: 3:32

I'm going to cheat a little bit. I'm going to use a word, but I'm going to give it a slightly different definition than typical. I'm going to use disruptive, but I'm not going to use disruptive in a bad way per se, because I don't know if disruptive is necessarily bad. I think you're going to see a lot of disruption in the workforce. I think you're going to see a lot of people wearing hats they've never worn before, because I think there's going to be a lot more responsibilities thrown on HR, thrown on executives navigating things in real time, because things might move very fast, because it might be one morning this is the cool thing and the next morning some other idea comes up and everything changes, and I think we're going to see a lot of disruption. Um, but I'm not going to use disruption as a negative term, because sometimes disruption leads to good things. Sometimes you need to burn something and I should not be using that word right now with everything going on but sometimes you need to burn something down to build something else new, and I think that disruption is really the word, but I'm going to tweak it a little bit and disruption which could be positive disruption, yeah all right, can I change my answer to seesaw because now that I'm thinking about it and it's pertinent to some of the things we're going to talk

Speaker 4: 4:38

about um anyone following nlrb guidance, eeoc guidance, dol guidance we're going to talk about that in detail. Everything that Biden just undid is going to be undid again because we're dealing with a Trump sandwich. The problem is, the Trump we're getting this time is a little different than the Trump we got last time. He has new people in his ear with new ideas, and a lot of those people are mortal enemies with conflicting ideas. So I think we are going to see disruption is a great term, but I think, seesaw, we'll see press conferences where he boldly declares one policy and then the next day something totally different comes out.

Speaker 1: 5:18

Ryan, my word was whiplash for the exact same reason.

Speaker 3: 5:21

Oh, there we go.

Speaker 1: 5:23

Yeah, Mel, before we, before we.

Speaker 2: 5:25

I actually was going to pull from our good friend, uh, Ashley Goodall and say blender. I feel like we're all going into the blender. It's just going to feel like we're in a constant blender. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:37

I uh, I had a lot of people say you know, francesca, get yourself centered, get yourself grounded, get your chakras out. This year You're going to need it. It's going to be a lot of change. We all know that. What that change will be, hey, you know, we're not sure, but one of the reasons why we're here is to think about what could happen and what we're already seeing. Let's get into it with our first topic, which is around like labor and wage policies, and, ryan, I'm going to take this over to you first. What are you thinking, again, when we think about labor policies, wage policies, things like overtime have been talked about, all this good jazz. What's 2025 going to look like?

Speaker 4: 6:15

Well, we're going to see a massive shakeup in the beginning, and that's not unusual for when we have a new administration come in. But I want to dispel any myths that Trump is at all a normal candidate. He is not a normal presidential candidate. We're going to see big changes. We're going to see him fast. So the agencies I'm looking at the most are the National Labor Relations Board, the EEOC, the DOL, of course, and OSHA. So the first thing we're going to see is a complete change in leadership. It's going to start with the National Labor Relations Board's general counsel, jennifer Abruzzo.

Speaker 4: 6:51

Now what we've seen in the past four years is the NLRB greatly expanding their interpretation of the National Labor Relations Act. We saw things like a ban on captive audience meetings. That's where the employer requires you to come into some kind of hallway and they explain their position on unionization. Thanks to the NLRB's most recent ruling on those captive audience meetings, employers can't do that anymore. They can have meetings about their views on unionization, but they can't track attendance. They can't punish you if you don't go. It has to be voluntary, but all the people advancing that expansion are going to be fired and we're going to see a new general counsel. We're probably going to see a Republican majority because on December 11th, the Congress did not extend the terms to 2026 like we had thought they would, so we're going to get a Republican majority in the NLRB. We're going to get a Republican majority in the EEOC.

Speaker 4: 7:53

And what's interesting about the EEOC, particularly and I know we don't have a lot of time so I'll wrap this up quick what we saw in 2020 was something really groundbreaking. What we saw in 2020 was something really groundbreaking. We saw LGBTQ status, gender expression, gender identity being protected. For the longest time. It was actually legal to fire someone because they identified as trans in some states, but the EEOC reinterpreted that. Well, not the EEOC, I'm sorry. The EEOC issued guidance after the Supreme Court's ruling in Bostock v Clayton County, georgia. The thing is the most likely person to chair the EEOC. Now she let me pull up her name again it's Andrea. Do you guys know who I'm talking about?

Speaker 1: 8:41

I do not.

Speaker 4: 8:43

I'm blanking on her name for a minute.

Speaker 1: 8:45

But that Andrea Andrea thing, that's always a, that's a tricky.

Speaker 4: 8:50

Yeah, well, anyway, here I'll pull up her name in a minute. I'm blanking on her name for no reason at all, but basically what's going to happen is she has expressed a serious dissent with the EEOC's interpretation of Bostock v Clayton County, georgia. So we are going to see a retraction, a restriction, a neutering of protections for LGBTQ employees. The reason we're going to see a retraction and not just a cessation on progress is because she has Andrea I can't remember her last name has expressed many times that she feels Clayton County, georgia that decision was a mistake. She feels that LGBTQ quote unquote special interests are an attack on women's rights and an attack on religious freedoms. We can debate whether we think that's true or not, but what's not up for debate is the EEOC is going to greatly restrict its expansion of those LGBTQ protections. We also may see some restrictions on the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and how the EEOC interprets that.

Speaker 1: 9:50

Harrison, what would you add?

Speaker 3: 9:52

Just going back to the LGBTQ, I think you're going to see a lot in.

Speaker 3: 9:56

So MySpace obviously is in the benefits side, but I think you're really going to see a huge change or shift in DEI initiatives and we're going to talk about that a little bit later on probably, but we're going to see a major shift in and I hate the word wool culture, but I think a lot of the election was based on that.

Speaker 3: 10:11

I think that's really going to impact the workforce in general because I think people who feel a certain way might feel empowered by the results to act on that more. So I think it's going to be the role of businesses to balance that out and see so a little bit, because some of the C-suite who might've felt a certain way but acted differently because the culture and the trend was going one way, the results of the election, the way the election was run, might empower those same people to start shifting work environment and the culture inside of works. I think it's going to be important that the people inside of the businesses HR specifically, but everybody there to help navigate that culture and make sure there's still an inclusive culture inside of the workforce.

Speaker 1: 10:50

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm wondering just to go back specifically, really quickly before we go on to our next topic around labor and wage we got a lot of questions around overtime and Mel and I did an episode on Project 2025, trying to interpret that largely thought of as the Republican platform right right around some of these things. Are you all seeing anything around overtime at all in terms of it retracting overtime or going to that like four-week look?

Speaker 4: 11:18

I think it's possible, though remotely like not really likely, remotely likely, leaning towards unlikely that we'll see a change to those overtime rules. If anything, we would see something like the Project 2025 80 hour rule rather than the 40 hour rule. There was some discussion about that, but I really don't think it's likely. I think it's right up there with no tax on overtime and no tax on tips. I think Mr Trump was just saying what he thinks his base wanted to hear. Most of his efforts it's this. It's, on one hand, look, no tax on overtime. I'm going to new rules at the DOL. He's going to throw out most of the inclusivity efforts at the EEOC. So really, what we're going to see is a major change of leadership and then the people in those leadership positions are going to make small changes over time. Something sweeping with the overtime. I really don't think is likely.

Speaker 3: 12:25

Yeah, I think we might see multiple changes in leadership. If this is anything like the first administration, the people in his ear right now might not be the same people in his ear six months from now. So I mean, once again, we talk about that whiplash, but if it's anything like the first time around the people in his ear, he sours on them very quickly and that can change. So what we see right now could be very different six months, one year, two years, for good or bad, but it could be very different as we go along.

Speaker 1: 12:50

Super fair, super fair Mel.

Speaker 2: 12:55

Yeah, we're going to talk about healthcare and benefits. So, harrison, I know like you love this topic very, very much. A lot of people stay in their jobs for healthcare and insurance. I can argue until the cows come home. Those things should not be tied together, but they are. Let's talk about what you're seeing here. How could employer provided healthcare change?

Speaker 3: 13:18

So we don't know what's going to happen. For the most part, there's a lot of talks around the ACA and how the ACA is going to go away. As you go, attack the ACA. I don't see that happening. With everything else, he might change the name of the ACA. I mean the fact that it's referred to as Obamacare I'm sure bothers him. If it was like the Gulf of Mexico, maybe we'll change the name. But besides for that, I don't see the ACA going away because in the first administration they removed all the parts of contention. For the most part, everything that people really didn't like is already gone and in some capacity, the ACA is working. Will we explore different ideas, as he said during one of the debates, if somebody comes up with a better idea, will that happen? Possibly, but I don't really see that.

Speaker 3: 14:01

Where I see the workforce really changing is going back to what we talked about before is from a culture standpoint and balancing that culture and the results of the election. The culture I see people looking at more broad based benefits and more flexible benefits because we don't know what's coming up next. His actions indirectly the repeal of Grovy Way and companies have to pivot to have travel benefits, because if you lived in one of the states where abortion was illegal, you had to pay for employees to travel and stay elsewhere. There was a Supreme Court I don't know the exact ruling if it went through regarding gender reassignment surgeries in certain states being illegal. I think Tennessee was one of those. So you might see an expansion of those benefits and travel benefits to start covering other aspects. But I think the biggest change I look at benefits and you would talk about benefits being the reason people stay at a job. I look at benefits as one of the easiest tools that a company has to create a culture. It's one of the things you can build on and manage completely and if you're offering a benefits, the benefits is a culture of the organization. It speaks for the values of the organization and I think you're going to see that more because the outside values might be very different. There might be attack on LGBTQ rights, there might be attack on abortion rights, women's rights, and I think you're going to see an expansion of benefits, whether it's through lifestyle accounts that have very broad uses, potentially, where you could use it for multiple different things, through HSA accounts and stuff like that.

Speaker 3: 15:29

I do think you're going to see companies look more towards their benefits package to build the culture that they want, because there are other regulations and other things coming down the pipe that might prevent them from doing that. So I don't think the ACA is going away a pipe that might prevent them from doing that. So I don't think the ACA is going away. I do think we will have an expansion on HSAs and these pre-tax benefits. Interestingly enough, I do think towards. One of the last things he did from the benefit standpoint was extend leave. So I do think we might see more leave management and paid leave, whether on a state level or federal level. But I think, overall, if you're looking for the global biggest change to the benefits, I think and it's been happening overall, but I think it's going to be more important now than before because of external sources it's going to be those broad benefits that help build a culture within the organization.

Speaker 2: 16:18

Yeah, Francesca and I were talking right before we started the live about that. It's like the employers who are going to be kind of winning in terms of the talent marketplace in a few years are those that create benefits packages that benefit their employees and really retain employees and attract new talent in their organization.

Speaker 4: 16:37

Yeah, that brings up some other interesting points too. I mean, as we discussed, my world is really more in the EEOC. By the way, our current share is Charlotte Burroughs, who's fantastic in my opinion, and, by the way, the person who I predict. This isn't certain. There's been no announcements. I predict it's Andrea Lucas is her last name. She's a Republican, she's the only Republican there right now and she'll probably be the new head of the EEOC, which could be problematic for anyone seeking things like gender-affirming care, protection from LGBTQ discrimination, the right to use a bathroom that they're comfortable with. Also, there's some other issues that come up.

Speaker 4: 17:16

Remember, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act was passed in 2022. That instituted sweeping, pretty exciting guidance on how to protect pregnant women at work or women seeking fertility treatments. Those fertility treatments that were protected under EEOC guidance included things like fertility treatments and abortions. No way in hell is Andrea Lucas going to let that continue. She is going to either decline to enforce any actions under that guidance or issue new guidance is what I expect. So, unfortunately, what I think we're going to see is a patchwork.

Speaker 4: 17:54

They keep saying that they want to return all of these questions to the states, but I think anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows. The ultimate Republican agenda is a nationwide abortion ban, no exceptions, and we know that's where they're headed. So what we're going to see, at least in the short term, I think, is a patchwork where employees in California have more right to access things like IVF or an abortion, if you need it, than an employee in Florida. So we may see a tug of war with people wanting remote opportunities or relocation, but certainly we talk about access to employer-sponsored benefits, your employer's right to maybe deny certain benefits based on your fertility treatments. There may not be as much recourse as it as we'd hope to see. That's my current prediction. No, and it's going to be difficultourse as it as we'd hope to see. That's my current prediction.

Speaker 3: 18:43

No, and it's going to be difficult, as you mentioned, from the state level. You're going to have state by state and there are very few employers right now that are single state. Most of them have multiple states, so you're going to have different rules and regulations for each state. It's going to come on. It's going to add a lot more work to the HR departments and the finance departments, even because it's going to be state-by-state regulations. Having these culture benefits or these travel benefits. I mean we might get some good out of it. Look, we've got ICHRs, we've got the individual HRAs the first time around. He's shown a tendency to think outside the box when it comes to benefits. Maybe there'll be some changes in the prescription standpoint.

Speaker 3: 19:16

I'm optimistic. I don't know if I'm optimistic because there's a reason to be. I'm optimistic because you have to be optimistic, so there might be some good that comes out of it. But going back to my first word, I think it's going to be disruptive. I think you're going to have a lot more hats being worn by HR and finance having to navigate different rules on a state-by-state basis, because I don't think we'll have a federal ban. I don't think there's enough push for that right now. I don't think they want a federal ban 100%. They want the argument of a federal ban. I think they like having the conversation more than the actual doing of these things. But I do think, on a state by state basis, you're going to have states where these laws are going to be very. California and Texas are going to be very different when it comes to what's covered and not covered.

Speaker 4: 19:57

Forgive my ignorance.

Speaker 4: 19:59

Harrison and I did want to say Mel. When we talk about optimism, one thing to be optimistic about is Mr Trump has talked about concepts of a plan to repeal disastrous Obamacare. Let's not forget who he is. He is a performer first, and everything else second. He knows that his base hates Obama. Doesn't matter why they hate him, he just knows they hate Obama.

Speaker 4: 20:28

So if he says I'm going to destroy Obamacare and liberate all the poor people affected by Obamacare, most of those followers of his do not realize he's talking about the Affordable Care Act and a lot of those people have health benefits because of the Affordable Care Act and I would hope that any advisors advising Mr Trump would let him know hey, if you take away your voters' health care, that is going to be an immediate life change that they notice and it's going to be really hard to blame Democrats for that. So I think one of the things we can be optimistic about is ACA fundamentally is probably not going anywhere. It would be pretty self-destructive to attack it head-on. So many people's benefits may stay the same, although abortion and healthcare-related benefits may be harder to access. And I'm sorry about the jump. I have a dog who wants to go on a walk really bad and he's giving me little nips on my knee, and that's why I keep jumping around.

Speaker 2: 21:20

Turn the conversation.

Speaker 3: 21:24

What's that, mel? How do you ask a question, or yeah?

Speaker 2: 21:27

I guess I I wanted, I wanted to follow up on the abortion um ban because I'm curious when it comes and forgive my ignorance because I'm not very closely related, tied to this work. But, um, you know, I imagine, if there are regulations in place in a state-by-state basis, can employers be? Can employers be held accountable if someone receives an abortion? That's on their play role and what? What kind of legal implications might they face if they are providing access to resources for that service if it's like, illegal in their state?

Speaker 3: 21:59

So what's interesting is in Texas you have to offer benefits that cover. The employee has the right to choose whether their benefits cover or do not cover abortion. Now, whether you have abortion, whether abortion is so, I can opt out. If I feel abortions morally wrong, I can say I do not want abortion being covered under my policy. Where somebody else says I believe abortions right, I want abortion covered, it's the exact same benefits, except one covers, one doesn't. Even though in the state of Texas you can't get an abortion anyway. What that means is based on my policy, I can't go to a neighboring state where it is legal and do that.

Speaker 3: 22:35

So far and I'll leave the legal questions more to the attorney so far we haven't seen any litigation about allowing them to travel outside of the state. In theory, that would be against the Republican theory of state rules, because if a state wants to do it, you can't do that. Now, we all know people don't play nice in the sandbox and because something doesn't fit a narrative doesn't mean they won't go against it. I don't see them penalizing in that regards. But I do think that you're going to see an expansion of these travel benefits, which might cover more LGBTQ or what they call the woke benefits aspect and some of these things that might be banned in certain states and allowed in others. I think you might see very, very different benefits in different states across the board.

Speaker 2: 23:16

Ryan, what do you think?

Speaker 4: 23:18

Definitely. I was trying to find the Supreme Court case that sort of reaffirms this, but I'm just going to say it, you're going to take my word for it. We have a constitutional right to free interstate travel, ok, so one of the things we're finding is states really throwing up lots of restrictions around abortion for many reasons and some liability for the employer who offers a benefits package that theoretically covers some of those treatments and you take it out of state. That's an open question. I haven't seen any litigation on that, but we do see things like Texas's $10,000 abortion bounty hunter rule, which there actually was at least one successful prosecution under that law that we've seen so far. So what is going to happen?

Speaker 4: 24:06

Optimistically, I would say that a near total abortion ban and a total ban on employer benefits across state lines for fertility treatments may not happen, because we have a constitutional right to interstate travel and the whole point of that right is that Americans would, in theory, have the same fundamental rights in Tennessee as they do in Louisiana, as they do in Colorado. Now we know in practice, especially over the past 10 years, that's not really the case. Unfortunately, we have a pretty far right Supreme Court right now, and it's a Supreme Court that has demonstrated over and over again that they're not afraid to legislate from the bench. They're not afraid to take precedent and throw it out the window. They're not afraid to give a president criminal immunity. They're not afraid to overturn Roe v Wade. They don't really need a lot of justification to do it.

Speaker 4: 24:54

So why am I going on that rant? I think that what we will most likely see is attempts by the federal government, with their Republican majority almost everywhere, to do a total abortion ban. Any way they can do it, and they might first attack things like employer benefits, maybe trying to hold the employer accountable, deny them certain federal funding, deny them certain benefits or taxes, or fine them or sue them if they offer any kind of fertility treatment or anything like that. But that would immediately be challenged by the coalition of attorneys general in blue states that are trying to protect those rights. So I think the optimistic take is that it would be tied up until Mr Trump's term is over and then hopefully a new president could take a new DOJ and end all of that. But I do think that those reproductive rights are going to be the first thing under attack starting this year.

Speaker 2: 25:53

Okay, thank you both. On to the next topic.

Speaker 1: 25:56

All right. So we've talked about labor and wage. We've talked about health care. The next topic up we wanted to talk about was the latest of du jour between Elon Musk and the constituents on the right, where he told someone to F his face immigration. So I want to talk about immigration.

Speaker 1: 26:15

For those that may not know, especially as it relates to employment. There's two types of visas that typically people work under right when they come to this country. There's an H1A visa, which I believe is typically more seasonal work, agricultural work, and then there's the H1B visa, which is much like, seems to be much more skilled work. You're for longer periods of time, you're sponsored by a company and it could be like Silicon Valley basically mostly Silicon Valley, some professional. Silicon Valley, basically mostly Silicon Valley, some professional. Quote unquote the argument this week or last week I have no sense of time anymore is that they wanted to get. The Republican Party said we want to get rid of these H-1B visas. Elon Musk said hell, no, over my dead body. I want to know we're not even in week two of the year, so we're not even in week two of the year. What's going to happen with?

Speaker 4: 27:07

immigration this year. Harrison, I'm going to go you first. Yeah. Harrison please Give me the hard one.

Speaker 3: 27:12

No, I mean, who knows? Like I said, it goes back to who's in his ear at this day. Elon Musk is in his ear right now and I do think he has a lot of power and I don't know what he is politically, but he's not a Republican. He's for him, basically, but he's for innovation, he's for growth, he's for disruption and going back and might not be the positive way we were talking about earlier, but he's for these things. I don't see them taking those full aspects.

Speaker 3: 27:40

I think a lot of these things and I think Brian mentioned it earlier a lot of these things are campaign talk because they rile people up, but I don't know how practically speaking, these things are, because illegal immigrants are one thing and he's going to target and he's going to do that, but getting rid of these visas, these people use these employees, they need these employees and if they don't have these employees, their business is going to be expensive the money they're going to have to pay a lot more for somebody else who doesn't have these visas. And we already have a work shortage. I think there's, for every 100 jobs globally, there's 95 employees at this standpoint. So there's already a work shortage in that standpoint. So I do think, practically speaking, while it sounds great in a bumper sticker, the people in his ears right now must be one of those main voices who I do think does have his ear. I don't see major changes from the visa standpoint of getting them out of the workforce, because they're necessary for the workforce in many ways.

Speaker 1: 28:34

Yeah, I heard a stat I can't remember what, I'll put it in the show notes, though that for every H-1B visa holder it creates 1.86 jobs. So to your point, it's not only about the job shortage, but it's also about job growth, sometimes with the H-1Bs. But, ryan, you were trying to hop in there, sorry about that.

Speaker 4: 28:52

Well, there's an interesting sort of exponential effect Creating more jobs actually leads to creating more jobs. It's a funny thing, kind of like how you make more money when you put more money in a high-interest savings account. That's kind of the effect we see. So I believe you, francesca. That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 4: 29:07

Now, h-1b visa I don't think it's going anywhere. I actually don't. I'm not an immigration attorney. This is just based on my tangential knowledge in employment law. I don't think it's going anywhere and I don't think there's going to be many restrictions on it, for two main reasons. Number one national security. Trump is one of the first presidents in my lifetime to want a military parade and he wants to invade Greenland and he wants to invade Panama and he's going to need a big giant military to kick off World War III. If we are going to have any hope of national security during whatever he wants to do, we need the best and brightest engineers to make our F-22s and F-35s and battleships and stuff work, and the defense industry is heavily dependent on skilled labor like that. Boeing alone has thousands. And speaking of thousands this is the second consideration Trump's most important allies rely on H-1B visa labor for their companies. Musk alone has, I think, 2,000 that he's employed across his companies.

Speaker 4: 30:06

And Musk has Trump on a pretty tight leash. Musk has a lot of power. It's quiet power compared to Trump's, but it's a lot of power. And then we look at people like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and all the big billionaires who are trying to curry favor with Trump. They rely on those engineers and mathematicians. And that kind of leads to a third point. If your goal is to eliminate or declaw, the Department of Education and the United States continues to slip in science, technology, engineering and maths compared to other industrialized peers, we really have no option except to get that talent elsewhere other industrialized peers we really have no option except to get that talent elsewhere. So if we want to remain an economic and military superpower, H-1B visa is an essential part of that.

Speaker 3: 30:49

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You can't get rid of it. You need the workers, and the people in his ear are not going to let him get rid of it, so not unless you don't want your missiles to launch when you hit the button.

Speaker 4: 31:01

I mean it's going to be a consideration.

Speaker 3: 31:03

unfortunately, it might be a good thing from our standpoint.

Speaker 4: 31:07

Yeah, you know that's something we can debate whether it's good or bad, but the point is I don't think H-1B is going anywhere. What I do think and this is a bit more concerning to me one thing that we see in OSHA anti-retaliation statutes and US Department of Labor anti-retaliation statutes is employers cannot take advantage of undocumented labor, also known as illegals, is what Trump supporters call them, but I call them undocumented. Undocumented labor and pay them less than a minimum wage or not pay them at all and threaten them with incarceration, them less than a minimum wage or not pay them at all and threaten them with incarceration, violence, reporting them to ICE, things like that. The reason those anti-retaliation rules exist is so that no employer can benefit from human trafficking or straight up kidnapping. That's actually a really big problem. Even here in California, I've been in cases where we have 20, 30 undocumented immigrants who don't want to work for the employer, but they have been threatened and intimidated into staying there for subminimum wages. Now why is that so important? Trump is borderline violently.

Speaker 4: 32:14

Anti-retaliation statutes against undocumented people are not enforced, or perhaps reduced or rescinded when, basically, if you say, hey, I'm undocumented, but I'm working in this warehouse and they're not giving us safety gear. They're paying us $4 an hour. Sometimes they don't pay us at all. Um, the new osha, the new dll under trump, is going to say hey, that's really interesting. By the way, you're under arrest. Uh, that that's what my biggest fear and concern is. That's worst case scenario for me yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 1: 32:57

I was reading an article the other day. It was a article, but it was about how do you handle workplace raids around immigration as a leader, and you know the fact that we're talking about that as something else that might be happening in the ether is just on a human level.

Speaker 4: 33:16

It's upsetting, that's why I opened by saying I want to dispel any notion that Donald Trump is a normal president. He is not George Bush, he is not Mitt Romney. He is an entirely different creature that operates on a completely different system than any US president I have seen. Because, whereas other presidents sure there was corruption, ineptitude, certain moral decisions that we might disagree with, certain moral decisions that we might disagree with, the sort of seesaw, whiplash, unpredictability and violent rhetoric Really it's the violence in the rhetoric that's so different about Trump.

Speaker 4: 33:51

What it creates a concern for employment rights advocates like me is listen, even if you're here illegally. Yes, you might have broke the law, maybe you were trafficked, I don't know. That's a separate issue. But but even so, I do not want a legal framework that makes it possible for employers to exploit your undocumented status to extract free labor from you. That is a serious human rights concern and, and one of my biggest predictions is that a lot of those protections may go away. Right now they're still intact. So if you are undocumented and your employer is taking advantage of that, you should report it or at least talk to an attorney about your options first.

Speaker 3: 34:29

I'll just add on one thing. You're talking about the civility, the incivility, and I agree 100%. It's a crazy world we're living in, but I'll be the optimistic and I'll keep my optimistic eyes and glasses on. I think, mel we were speaking about this when we first spoke is the one thing we didn't see was the massive incivility after the election that we expected from either side and once again, obviously one side won. But I think there's something to be optimistic about is the workforce is almost controlling itself.

Speaker 3: 34:57

We were prepared that whichever side won, we were going to see massive incivility and, truth be told, if the other side would have won, we probably would not, would have seen it and a couple of days ago, January 6th, might not have been exactly the same and there might have been other results that the other side would have won. But we're seeing the workforce really take that step and not showing up to work and reacting differently. We're seeing a much more mellow, civil reaction where, all right, we can do this and I think the workforce HR specifically is a really good job of building that culture with an organization where, whatever comes, we're going to help and we're going to control it and we got your back, and I think that's my optimism is hopefully that will offset some of the external craziness, and it's another role HR and the businesses are going to have to run is keeping civilian workforce. But optimistically, based on the election results, using that one snapshot, they might be getting the hang of it and doing a good job at that. Hopefully at least. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:06

I also like the idea of business potentially as a check and balance that unwritten check and balance, I guess on culture it might not be a bad thing for sure.

Speaker 3: 36:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:16

Mel, you want to go into our next topic? Let's go, let's dive, right in DEI.

Speaker 4: 36:23

Oh boy Cool, More good news.

Speaker 2: 36:25

More good news. Yeah, more hot topics we saw in 2024, DEI was certainly under attack in the corporate sector. We know SHRM even removed an element of DEI as well, which had a lot of interesting backlash, which had a lot of interesting backlash. Do you think this continues in 2025? And can there be? Do you expect there to be further rollbacks and challenges with DEI programs in workplaces under the administration's policies that might be coming?

Speaker 4: 36:57

I can go for this, but I feel like I tend to jump on these. Harrison, do you want to go, or shall I run? I went first last time. I'll give you the easy one. I got the hard one. Right now. Swing very far to the right, very quickly.

Speaker 4: 37:17

We're going to see a majority Republican commission and my prediction that I would bet money on is Andrea Lucas to actually chair the EEOC, and that is very much a case of the fox in the hen house. The EEOC arguably exists to improve diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace, and we will have the I guess we could call them the anti-woke people in there. The most serious immediate concerns I have is the EEOC rolling back protections, rolling back enforcement, but also the federal government punishing certain employers who have DEI initiatives, because the current chatter on the right-wing side of policymaking is DEI is inherently racist and anti-American. I know that sounds insane, but they've done many mental gymnastics to justify that position. So what they want to do is say that well, if you have a program that promotes equity, diversity and inclusion, what you're really doing is being racist, you're being anti-white, you're being anti-male, you're promoting people based on skin color, and that's not OK. So we will see.

Speaker 4: 38:34

I think federal guidelines that punish employers for having DEI initiatives. A great example would be anyone accepting federal money, anyone with a federal contract. They would be required to disband any DEI initiatives they have. But on the flip side of that we have companies like Costco which are basically coming out and saying no, having diverse viewpoints is actually part of the reason we're winning, it's part of the reason we're so successful, and that's not going anywhere.

Speaker 4: 39:03

So there is the sort of hard policy and soft policy tug of war we're going to see, and I think what we're going to see on hard policy is a lot of initiatives by the Republican majorities to punish DEI programs and discourage them. But soft policy will have companies that say well, what do our customers want, john Deere? Those companies very proudly disbanded their DEI initiatives because they know who their customers are. Costco also seems to know that their customer base tends to be middle upper class, young professionals, educated people who tend to lean more liberal, and that could have informed their decision to put their feet down and say no, dei is here to stay. I will say this regardless of the federal government's new direction on being anti-woke or anti-DEI, the Civil Rights Act is not going anywhere. Its enforcement might change, its interpretation of some details will change, but, straight up, discrimination is still going to be illegal, at least for the next couple of years.

Speaker 3: 40:07

I'm curious if you're looking from the legal standpoint, where I look at it is more from the practical employer standpoint of the mindset.

Speaker 3: 40:15

I look at the last election and one of the things I saw was I think it was definitely a statement of one side and I hate the word woke, but one side ran on an anti-woke culture, dei being one of those initiatives where they're running where it's, it's it's. We want everybody to be equal. I don't see color, which I know is one of the worst things you could possibly say, but that's what they're running on that standpoint, say, but that's what they're running on that standpoint. I'm curious to see the employers, the C-suites, the people higher up in the companies, what message they take out of the election results. Does that free them to do like there was a lot of pressure from a lot of these CEOs and executives to instill these DEI initiatives? Even from the legal standpoint? Just to me, that's the way the culture was going, that's the way society was going. Do they see this election results where Trump won most of these states and we could debate whether it was a landslide victory or a lot of small victories, but one significantly and one without a shadow of a doubt. Do they take it as a mandate to do what they want to do from the first part that these initiatives are wrong or do they take it as a mandate?

Speaker 3: 41:18

I'm curious if you're going to see those hiring standpoints and once again going back to the role of HR and I'm a benefits nerd I'll roll it back into employee benefits like I do everything else. I think it's going to be the role of the workforce to offset that. I think you're going to see going back to your CISO. I think you're going to see a CISO between some of the CISO level executives and the old school higher up executives who might have one view of the EI and the people on the ground in the workforce, and it might change state by state of business by business.

Speaker 3: 41:45

But I think the businesses are going to have to create a culture and employee benefits is one of those main aspects where you might start seeing more DEI initiative benefits inside the workforce. You might see more benefits focusing on the LGBTQ plus community. You might see more benefits that have mental health solutions, more ERGs, employee resource groups coming up outside so they can talk and have safe spaces and once again, another word I hate, but safe spaces discuss these issues and talk so, even besides the legal standpoint, I'm curious what the election results not even the Trump presidency, but the message that people take out of the results. I'm curious how that trickles down to the workforce of a DEI initiative, and that's really what scares me the most.

Speaker 4: 42:29

Yeah, I think whether employers interpret it as some sort of mandate is honestly going to depend on their biases. You know, I think a mistake we all make is we look at big corporations, big institutions and think that they're these sort of ultra-rational things and they really are not.

Speaker 3: 42:46

They think everyone's right.

Speaker 4: 42:48

Yeah, there's a lot of hubris, that's for sure, and they have their own biases. What is the Walt Disney Company going to do today? Well, let's find out what kind of mood Bob Iger is in. He's a person, he's not a machine. Uh, so here's what I think we're gonna see. I think, if you want to look at what the next few years will look like, look at the past few years, and it actually starts with believe it or not. I want to quickly talk about rings of power produced by amazon. Did you guys hear about that show or see that show?

Speaker 1: 43:16

rings of power rings of power.

Speaker 4: 43:19

It was an amazon adaptation of jr tolkien's the lord of the rings.

Speaker 1: 43:22

I knew this. I knew this was going here. I'm like he's gonna be talking about lord of the rings.

Speaker 4: 43:27

It supposedly covered events thousands of years before the original trilogy occurred. Now the quality of the show, in my personal opinion, is atrocious horrible writing. They spent a billion dollars. The sets look like my niece could have made them, like I don't know where all that money went. It's a very poorly produced show.

Speaker 4: 43:45

But that aside, one thing that really upset a lot of people was a black elf, a black female dwarf, a female lead who was accused of being a Mary Sue, and having watched nine episodes I agree she was a Mary Sue, very poorly written character. Many of the main characters from Tolkien's work who happened to be men were completely written out of the show. So what happened was? That show, I think, is a perfect specimen of the culture shift that we're going to see, and this is a sort of soft policy. This is not hard policy. It's a soft policy where people, because of pop culture productions like Rings of Power, rightly or wrongly believe that America has become too woke and has started doing diversity, equity, inclusion for its own sake and at the expense of better qualified men and white people. Whether you agree with that is one thing, but whether that's the prevailing wins right now.

Speaker 4: 44:40

I don't think is up for debate. I think it's very clear. That's where we're at. So what I think we're going to see is a very strong quote, unquote anti-woke culture in a lot of businesses, in a lot of media, especially with Trump at the helm, where we're probably going to see some. Really, we might see some rational discussions, really we might see some rational discussions.

Speaker 4: 45:00

Like Rings of Power should not have written out very important male characters to Tolkien's work just because they didn't want too many male characters dominating the scene. They should not have completely rewritten Galadriel's character to suit a political agenda. That was a mistake. So we'll see little changes like that. But we might see more aggressive things like joking about racial slurs is now okay. Don't be so woke, don't be so soft. You know women aren't the same as men. Everyone knows they're more flighty, irrational, emotional. Let the men handle this. Uh, perhaps that won't be seen as outrageous and rude as it ought to be. So I think what will happen is the pendulum will swing very far right. I think a lot of companies are going to go anti-woke for a while and it may trigger more instances of incivility, insensitivity, straight up, jaw-dropping instances of discrimination, and then that pendulum will left again, hopefully to a rational center, where it belongs.

Speaker 1: 45:59

Oh go ahead.

Speaker 2: 46:01

Oh, I was just going to say, Harrison, to your point about the election results. What I thought was so interesting is it wasn't a landslide. By any means, I have the final numbers up. Do you want to tell my?

Speaker 4: 46:11

dad that.

Speaker 2: 46:12

Yeah, because Kamala, you know she had 48.3% of the votes and Trump had 49.8. So when you look at those numbers, that is a very like almost 50-50 split in terms of what representation looks like and who people wanted as a candidate to represent them.

Speaker 3: 46:31

When you think of People see in statistics in general. People see in statistics what they want to fit their definition.

Speaker 2: 46:38

A hundred percent, I'm just. It's curious, though, when you think about the workplace, or like CEOs thinking about these policies and how they're going to react to their workforce and support their employees or the culture they're trying to build, like they need to almost look at the workforce as it could be this 50-50 split.

Speaker 3: 46:56

So that's where it's interesting and that's where I think the biggest challenge and I keep picking on HR, but it really is HR that's going to be the biggest challenge with HR, because you're going to have certain people, honestly, probably the billionaire owners or the higher up people in these corporations not to pick on the billionaires, but who see the results one way, who see the results that this was an electoral landslide and we're going to use that mandate of this is what the country wants, based on those results. And then you have the fact that, yes, it might have been an electoral college landslide but, as you said, the actual employees, the boots on the ground. If you did a straw poll of the employees who they're working with, it could be 50-50. It might even be a little bit more more in some states. It's probably a lot more new york, california, it's a lot more where they don't care. So it's going to be. Hr is going to be stuck in the middle there. So hr is going to have such an important role of balancing that and it's it's going to. It's going to be I hate to use the word fun because it's like fun which is disruptive, disruptive fun, but it's going to be fun to watch the HR role grow in 2025, because they're going to be balancing that out a lot more, because it's exactly what you said.

Speaker 3: 48:08

It's two statistics that are both. It's two truths. You won the election in the electoral landslide, but the actual vote count was so much smaller. So, from the CEO or the high-level executive standpoint, this was a mandate of anti-woke, but 50% of your population still feels that he was the wrong candidate and voted the other way. So HR is going to be an interesting pickle or conundrum, or whatever cool word you want to use to do that. But, brian, the one question is should I watch that show or not? You're saying it's horrible.

Speaker 4: 48:43

Watch a YouTube review of the show Listen. As a writer myself, I care very deeply about things like plot, structure and character development. Rings of Power is a masterclass in how to do the opposite of all of those things.

Speaker 3: 48:59

So not on my net, not on my not on potatoes one or it's.

Speaker 4: 49:03

It's just a badly written show. I I don't know who the chief writers were, but they need to try another profession.

Speaker 2: 49:10

I love it. Thank you both for for uh talking through that and we're going to move on to the next final topic kind of talked about this a little bit earlier, but I do want to talk about safety and workplace safety.

Speaker 1: 49:22

Mel and I have talked a lot about like child labor laws. We've started seeing some of this eek out already in florida, for example, of some of these child labor laws, labor safety regulations getting loosened already under the biden administration. Um, what, what happens with, again, regulations, safety?

Speaker 4: 49:43

2025? We're speculating, of course. We don't have crystal balls. We don't know what is going to happen.

Speaker 1: 49:49

I have a magic eight ball if anybody wants it. Oh lovely.

Speaker 4: 49:53

And then I'm not going to pretend I don't have a strong anti-Trump bias I do. I think he's a grotesque human being, apart from his policies. So I tend to look at him with a strong lens of distrust. I don't trust the guy. I don't trust he's going to do the right thing. I don't trust he's going to act in people's best interest. So with those disclaimers out, let's take a look at the past.

Speaker 4: 50:12

In his first term, donald Trump greatly reduced OSHA protections. He reduced OSHA investigators to a historic low. I think there were only something like 600 and something OSHA investigators during his term, which sounds like a lot. Until you realize, I believe the statistic that they released later was it would take those 600 something investigators over 60 years to investigate every covered employer in their jurisdiction only once. So not enough investigators, a record low of actions taken to protect employees, and there is at least a correlation I don't want to say a causal effect, I don't think I'm qualified to say that but there is a correlation of higher instances of workplace injuries and workplace deaths when we have fewer OSHA actions, because the truth is most employees are too scared or they don't know their rights or they don't have the means to access private representation. So it really is up to OSHA to assert workplace safety.

Speaker 4: 51:11

The other thing that we're going to see much less activity from OSHA creating new protections for workers. A really unfortunate example is OSHA's heat safety rule. The United States is one of the few industrialized nations that does not have a unified heat safety standard. It's a patchwork across the states and some states, like Texas and Florida, have even banned heat safety protections. They said we don't have a heat safety protection rule Cities, cities and counties. If you make one, you're in big trouble. It's void. So that's pretty weird that the right-wing republican agenda seems to be not just not creating a heat safety standard but banning it.

Speaker 4: 51:50

So what I think is going to happen? The osha heat safety proposal is gone. Uh, anyone trying to enforce an osha action is more likely than not going to have to rely on the general duty provision, which is that employers have a general duty to create a workplace free from unreasonable hazards, not anywhere near as profound as we'd like to see. If an actual hey, if your employee is really hot, you should give them water, that would be nice. So we are going to see fewer investigators, we'll see fewer new rulemaking and we may see more lax interpretations of rules in Rocha's jurisdiction. I think that general duty statute, as loose as it is, is going to get a little looser.

Speaker 3: 52:29

Yeah, I mean, this is not my area by any stretch, but just based on basic logic. He's pro-business and anti-litigating business and letting them do what they want, and he's looking to cut money from the federal government and cut as much money as possible. Which is going to cut these people investigating situations. Put those two together and you're not looking for it's not looking at great results. Once again, I'm not being optimistic over here, but you're not. The optimism is that businesses will do the right things amongst themselves when not being asked Fingers crossed, who knows? But at the same point, from a federal standpoint, he's looking to cut as much as he can from the federal budget and cut as many jobs that he sees unfit, and he's going to let businesses do what they want. So I don't see outside of maybe state laws and maybe on a-state basis, they're implementing some rules and regulations. I don't see that being a good idea.

Speaker 4: 53:22

State-by-state. We'll see, Harrison. And the reason I brought up the Texas and Florida bans on heat safety proposals is, you know, depending on how zealous Republicans decide to get with their policymaking. Remember, I come from a far-right background. I was raised in a very conservative home and I worked for very conservative employers in a red dot in the blue sea that is California. So I'm pretty familiar with their interpretations of these things. They genuinely see departments like OSHA as unconstitutional.

Speaker 4: 54:01

In fact, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has even opined that if a challenge to the existence of OSHA comes before the Supreme Court, he would like to strike the agency down. He thinks the entire existence of OSHA is unconstitutional. Now, does he actually think that? Or does Harlan Crowe think that? And Harlan Crowe took him on a yacht trip? That's a totally different discussion. But the point is, the people with a position to eliminate OSHA or greatly restrict its rulemaking authority have already made their intentions clear and we're already seeing challenges in the Fifth Circuit. Harrison, I think I detected that you're in Canada. Our court system has federal circuits. The Fifth Circuit is in Texas, Louisiana. It's the Deep South and that's known as a Republican stronghold rule, saying that they're affected by the rule because they know the Fifth Circuit will go their way and now they're going to try to go up to the Supreme Court. So there is a risk that OSHA will have its authorities severely restricted or the agency even disbanded. That would be pretty extreme. But severely restricted, I think, is more likely.

Speaker 3: 55:15

Go ahead, Harrison. He's going to target the administrations that targeted him. He's going to go after first. I don't think there's been any OSHA attacks on him, so I think we might limit that a little bit. But yeah, he's not going to invest into it. I don't think it's going to go away per se, because I think there still is enough push from people and even though they do have a Republican majority, it's such a thin majority at this point.

Speaker 4: 55:35

I think he's going to hopefully pick his dad, I'm talking about the Supreme Court's majority, which is 63. The Supreme Court has the authority to say oh, this whole OSHA experiment, it was unconstitutional. The executive branch overstepped their authority by creating this horrible network of unelected bureaucrats I'm doing quotes for everyone listening Unelected bureaucrats, when really Congress needs to make these rules. Congress created OSHA and empowered it to enforce Congress as well, which is important because when Congress writes laws, they are intentionally broad and intentionally vague. There's been this narrative in the Trumpverse that, oh, congress is so bad at their jobs. Look how broad the legislation is. They do that intentionally because the lawmakers cannot foresee every possible hypothetical that may occur under that statute. So it makes a lot more sense to have an agency tasked with enforcing that statute, like how the EEOC enforces our Civil Rights Act, to help address those little what-ifs and hypotheticals and niche situations as they go, because, as we've seen, congress is really really, really bad at reaching a consensus on niche, specific issues.

Speaker 1: 56:48

Yeah, you know, the thing that I hold true to that is that just because some of these whole departments and or some of these regulations might get lowered or just gone away, go bye, bye. Basically, it doesn't mean that a company needs to lower its standards, right oh?

Speaker 4: 57:03

absolutely not. And I will say the more probable thing if anyone in Trump's camp is even remotely intelligent and I hope there's at least one smart person there if they want to affect their agenda with the minimal pushback, the smartest thing they can do is put certain people in charge of those agencies and they simply decline to enforce. That would be the more probable thing. I see where Andrea Lucas at the EEOC might see a very egregious gender pay discrepancy at a company and just say, oh, didn't see it, don't know anything about that. Because what better way to get your way without rocking the boat than to simply take charge of the agencies and have them do nothing? If they do nothing, it's like they don't exist at all. I think that's a possibility as well.

Speaker 2: 57:49

That's interesting.

Speaker 4: 57:51

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 57:52

Mel over to you.

Speaker 2: 57:53

Yeah, well, we have some listener Q&A and we just touched on OSHA, so I'm going to skip that question, but some of the stuff coming in. Someone said I'm a parent and I'm interested in what we might see to support families. Trump pushed a very family-centric policy with his messaging. Do you think things like on-site child care will be a greater priority in workplaces?

Speaker 3: 58:16

Yes, so on-site I don't know, but you definitely are going to see it. I say you're definitely going to see as definite as anything can be in a Trump administration, but I do think that they run on family values and a lot of this is family values. So a lot of it's going to be an enhancement of parental leave, child care support. You might see stuff like dependent care, fsas limits be enhanced significantly. I mean, obviously you're going to see tax incentives for families. You're going to see a lot of enhancements on the quote unquote family value benefits, a family value workforce. For some that's going to be very beneficial, as a parent is going to be very beneficial.

Speaker 3: 58:59

I do think you're going to see paid leave In New York. They instituted I'm going blank on the word, but not maternal leave, pregnancy leave, prenatal leave where you actually have hours where you can see doctor's appointments paid in New York. You might see stuff like that be expanded. It's a very Republican, very evangelical presidency right now. That's what we're seeing.

Speaker 3: 59:22

I do think stuff that all of the family value title really be enhanced and I do think that's where you're going to see a lot of the change, a lot of the growth which could benefit some people significantly. Once again might make it a little more complicated to administer on the employer's behalf, but I definitely do see that being a focus to appease his base and show that he's doing something positive for at least some people in that situation. Yeah, childcare is expensive man it is and pre-taxing that is definitely going to be a value. And paid leave is one thing. I think america I'm not going to pretend I know the numbers, but I do think the um attorney and paternity leave in america is one of the worst in the world and we don't take advantage of those as much.

Speaker 3: 1:00:02

So I do think it sucks, it totally sucks yeah, yeah, so enhancements that significantly, and he started doing that at the end of his last term.

Speaker 2: 1:00:13

Okay, there's been significant talk about raising the federal minimum wage. Absolutely not happening. We have a better shot.

Speaker 4: 1:00:23

We have a better shot at paid parental leave, and the reason for it's actually not crazy to say this. I know that Trump gets painted very negatively by people like me. There is actually a not zero percent shot at paid parental leave under the Trump administration. It's very slim for a number of reasons we could get into, but in 2019, he actually signed legislation to approve paid parental leave for some federal employees, which is shocking because, oh my God, you're spending money on people who have nothing to offer you. Mr Trump, that is not a character, but we welcome it, so it's possible that we could see more of that.

Speaker 3: 1:00:56

Yeah, but it doesn't affect him specifically. But you're seeing where he's going. Once again. He doesn't have views. He was pro-abortion before. He was anti-abortion. He has views based on the people around him and you're seeing the pro-family values really chip in. And I do think if you're looking to invest in benefits or buy stock in benefits that are going to do stuff, whatever that might be, in any capacity, it's going to be the pro-family values. It's going to be the parental leave. It's going to be, once again, we want you to have more kids. We want you to have these values. We want you to have the family. We don't want the abortions Stuff like that.

Speaker 3: 1:01:39

I definitely do think he is going to invest because, even though it doesn't help him specifically, I do think part of this term I'm hoping that he realizes this is his swan song. He's not running again. He at some point in this presidency. He is so egotistical and this is a good thing. In some ways he's going to look at his legacy and he's going to look at what he can do from his legacy standpoint and I think things like paid leave and family value issues will tie into that and I do believe strongly that at some point in this presidency he's going to look at his legacy and I do think that's going to be one of the ways he's going to try enhancing it universal health care in there.

Speaker 1: 1:02:10

Man just like wrapping up up yeah that he's not gonna do I definitely know on universal health care.

Speaker 4: 1:02:18

Uh, if, anything he'll try to create something to give uh private health insurances some kind of benefit or leg up on government sponsored health care. He wants to get as many people off government health care as he can yeah, I mean, and he's done some good stuff like that.

Speaker 3: 1:02:31

Once again, he's done in his first can, in his did the ICHRAS, which are the individual HRAs, which is surprising because he's pushing people towards the Obamacare marketplaces. But he allowed employers to create these health accounts to buy. Instead of having an employer paid policy. We're going to give you money to buy money off the exchanges. That was something we did in the first term to enhance stuff like that, the HSAs.

Speaker 3: 1:02:56

He's a tax man. He's going to look at the financial aspect. So when it comes to things that are tax benefits and things that will help the rich hide money in certain regards and his buddies and himself hide money he's going to do that. So let's take full advantage of those situations. So I do think, when it comes I don't think it's all doom and gloom when it comes to health care yes, certain things abortion rights, fertility, dei rights, 100% those are going to be under attack. But I do think stuff like parental once again I hate to say it, but the family values aspect of the benefits, things like ICHRAs going to the individual marketplace, benefits to help child care, paid leave and stuff like that I do think we might see a major growth, specifically towards the tail end of his presidency, where he is looking to build a lot of legacy.

Speaker 2: 1:03:40

I know we are over time, so I'd love to jump to our crystal ball. Well, it's all been a crystal ball, but our closing crystal ball predictions here, if that's okay with you both. It sounds like the theme of the night is workplaces really are going to have to take charge in terms of setting the tone for what the experience is, and Francesca and I talk about this often. Do your due diligence when you're choosing your employer because, guess what, you're choosing them as much as they're choosing you. So with that, in 60 seconds or less, share your boldest prediction for how jobs, politics and policy will evolve under this administration by 2028. Boldest your boldest. You're big and bold. We'll come. Well, I'm gonna rock the vote right now.

Speaker 4: 1:04:27

Unless he dies or is literally too sick to put up a fight, trump will not peacefully relinquish power in 2028, and I know that because he tried not to do that last time. I mean, that shouldn't even be bold. That's like beyond obvious to me that unless he is dead or too sick, he's going to cling to it. He's not going anywhere. But let's look at how that affects people at work.

Speaker 2: 1:04:52

If we will.

Speaker 4: 1:04:53

We are going to see tax cuts. Uh, they're going to probably favor corporations and the wealthy and what they choose to do with those tax cuts. Hopefully we see enough pushback on soft policy that the downwind effects that trickle down that we've been promised since the 80s that should come any day. Now I hope we actually will see some of those tax savings invested into the workforce. I hope, but that may not be likely because we will see a retraction of union power.

Speaker 4: 1:05:23

Donald Trump has said that he will veto the Protecting Workers' Rights Organized Act, the PRO Act. He is definitely going to scale back NLRB efforts. There are cases on the docket now which could dismantle or greatly gut the NLRB. So we are going to see much more diversity of protections, state by state ton of litigation of federal agencies under the Trump regime trying to curtail certain rights and protections and the coalition of democratic AGs trying to fight that. So we're going to see a lot of lawsuits, a lot less union power, probably some tax cuts and maybe, hopefully, as a result of those tax cuts, your employer offers some kind of enhanced medical or other programs for you. Those are my predictions currently.

Speaker 3: 1:06:18

Okay, you took the dark side.

Speaker 3: 1:06:19

I'll take the light side of things, please do. I think, my biggest prediction. Well, I think if we ran this podcast every six months, our answers will change every six months for the next four years. That's the boldest prediction. I think that's not even bold. I think that's obvious.

Speaker 3: 1:06:33

What I see and I think interesting is, I think the HR world and my focus is on HR and human resources and, as a benefits consultant, those are the ones I deal with on a daily basis I think the role of HR is going to skyrocket. They've wanted a seat at the table for years. They're slowly starting to get it. I think you're going to see, over the next four years, them really have a larger seat on the table for all the reasons we've spoken about. There's so much going on in the workforce where HR is going to be so necessary that they're going to need to have a seat at the table. So my bold prediction is we're going to see a significant growth in the human resource space, and there's going to be good, there's going to be bad, and there's going to be good, there's going to be bad.

Speaker 3: 1:07:16

Our hope and optimism is that the businesses are able to take the good and benefit from the good and will work around the bad. I think it's going to be a lot more pressure on the workforces. I think it's going to be a lot more reliability and it's going to be more important and this is really where HR comes in. Employers are going to be much more specific of picking where they work. I posted on my LinkedIn today the famous thing from Jerry Maguire show me the money and that's where you chose your job and that's where you chose you're going to work. That's not going to be in four years. The next four years. That's not going to be what employers are looking for. They're going to be looking for culture, because they're not getting it anywhere else. And the employers, hr, finance, the CEOs, the C-suites.

Speaker 3: 1:08:00

It is going to be so important to build a culture within your organization that you're going to help attract and retain, because there are going to be a lot of obstacles against you and their roles are going to be done significantly. And show me the money is not going to be the answer, it's show me the culture. At this point, I just made one catchphrase.

Speaker 2: 1:08:14

The culture we got gotta make some bumper stickers, harrison, I'm already making shirts.

Speaker 4: 1:08:17

I'm I'm stealing that and I will not be giving you credit.

Speaker 2: 1:08:20

Harrison, I'm sorry we're gonna work on that statement, harrison, we'll give you, we'll put your photo next to it. Uh, francesca, what about you?

Speaker 1: 1:08:33

you know I I will go out. I just to be very candid, I vote on like predominantly on social justice issues and after the select, I voted for kamala. I'm sure that's not. That's probably obvious. Um, I try to write an rfk, but after the election, the feeling I had was know, when you're dating someone and you're like I think they're cheating on me, but I'm not sure. And then you find out they're cheating on you and you're like well, now I know.

Speaker 1: 1:09:05

And there's a freedom in kind of knowing. This is what you're dealing with and what I think will be very interesting over 2028, and this is not an optimistic or negative I think what you're going to see, especially in organizations and Harrison to your very good point around culture is now it's going to be very clear, for whatever reason, what your company stands for or not, what kind of culture your company has or not, and you can opt in to whatever that is as an employee. And that's where I'm actually kind of like that meme eating the popcorn and just walking it, because everybody has the opportunity to choose their lane at this point. Yeah, I'm excited about it, the clarity that comes with knowing that someone's cheating on you.

Speaker 4: 1:09:54

I agree with and I do think that the big winners over the next few years, um, spoiler, big shock. Uh, women make up a large percentage of the workforce and they are incredibly talented. Uh, I am one of only two men in my organization. Uh, that's not for any discriminatory reason, just the most qualified candidates have happened to be women. So I think we are going to have a very strong trad culture that's pushing back that sort of oh, men are in the office, women are at home. But organizations that open up their culture, open up their doors to female professionals, are going to be the big winners, because if you make that kind of talent feel comfortable in your organization, you have a leg up on the people who make them uncomfortable.

Speaker 2: 1:10:37

Yeah, I would say the research out there shows also that women are better leaders. Sorry, I did a whole episode on this based on a recent report, but also we lead the buying power in this country, and so I think when corporations are making decisions about how they treat employees and how they show up in the world, they're going to have to really think about that. Women are more than 50% of this population and we have the power to impact their bottom lines for each.

Speaker 3: 1:11:06

Now we need to teach the voters they're better leaders, but that's it.

Speaker 1: 1:11:09

By the way, women buy on all sides too right by the way, women buy on all sides too, right.

Speaker 2: 1:11:19

So I guess my bold prediction was going to be that I think overtime is grossly going to get thrown out away completely. They're really trying to get rid of overtime and paying people overtime. I feel so passionate about this subject, but I agree with Harrison, I agree with all of you actually. I think culture is going to be at the center, and I don't think it just falls on HR. It falls on every leader within an organization to run culture. It's not HR's job to lead culture, and, in fact, organizations that lean too much on HR are going to lose, because it has to trickle down from the top, and so I think if you are paying attention to your employees and you're caring for them, through all of the whiplash, you will come out winning, no matter how things go.

Speaker 4: 1:12:00

That's a really good point, mel, and I think one thing employers should realize is just because the federal government says you can do something doesn't mean you should. There's a lot of things as an employer I could do to my employees if I wanted to, and they have no redress. But guess what? They're just going to leave. If you're going to be a bully and point to the rules and say, oh, the rules say I'm allowed to do this, it's like you're allowed to do it but it's not a good idea.

Speaker 3: 1:12:22

The other interesting thing is they might benefit from that. The fact that it's not mandated gives them an advantage, because not everybody's doing it. When it's mandated, everybody's doing it because you have to do it. If you're not mandating and you're doing it anyway, you're going to get a leg up on the good quality talent, because they're going to want to work for you guys. Yeah, 100%, that's the glass half full.

Speaker 4: 1:12:45

It's a positive, that's fantastic, Harrison, I agree, and not to gloat, but I have a really fun sort of rule at my firm that's different. We comply with overtime rules in California, of course, but we have a special overtime rule that is not required, but it's the rule here. If you're ever asked to do something that is outside your normal job duties, regardless of how many hours you've worked, we pay time and a half for that. If you are an office manager and I ask you to take on a role that maybe the intake specialist would normally do, are an office manager and I ask you to take on a role that maybe the intake specialist would normally do guess what Time and a half. The reason we do this is to help avoid things like people feeling scope creep and then they wake up one day with a million new job responsibilities they never agreed to and no raise.

Speaker 2: 1:13:26

Duties as assigned.

Speaker 4: 1:13:29

Exactly. I don't do that because I know firsthand the resentment that that can create. So I'm not trying to say, oh look at me, I'm the best employer in the world.

Speaker 4: 1:13:37

It's smart to say you're doing something outside your job duties time and a half. So employers who are always looking for a way to nickel and dime their own employees they're going to lose and you know what's going to happen is those employers are going to go to people like me and look for anything. Any violation they can to sue those guys over is going to go to people like me and look for anything, any violation they can, to sue those guys over.

Speaker 3: 1:13:56

Disruption creates success. Disruption does create success. Look at COVID, look at everything the people did really well during those times because they adapted. People are going to adapt to what's going on with Trump. There's going to be people who are going to be very successful and there's going to be people who are going to fail under the Trump administration. It might not be the people you think. It might be the complete opposite of people you think. It might be people who see differently than him, because they're adapting to what's going on and they're making themselves better because of it, and we're going to see a lot of success. We're going to see a lot of failure, like everybody, and we just hopefully all your listeners now have to listen to this.

Speaker 4: 1:14:34

They're going to be on the successful side. Yeah, I think the people who can be pragmatic despite any moral or personal outrage we see to what's going on will be the winners.

Speaker 2: 1:14:40

Absolutely Adaptability. Yeah, protect our peace too. All right, thank you both. So much, Francesca. I'm handing it over to you.

Speaker 1: 1:14:48

All right, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us today. Please like and subscribe, and follow us on your work, friends, on the platform of your choice. Also, feel free to join us on any of our socials on Instagram, tiktok or LinkedIn as well. Harrison Ryan, thanks so much for joining us today. Appreciate you both.

Speaker 4: 1:15:05

Thanks so much for having us Always great talking to you, Harrison. You're a lot of fun too. I guess we'll hang out more.

Speaker 3: 1:15:10

Well, we'll definitely talk Ryan. More Well, we'll definitely talk Ryan. I'll follow you now and I feel bad. You're attorney, ryan. I should have been employee benefits Harrison but people don't forget what you do.

Belonging & Unhiding at Work

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.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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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 Ego Equation for Leadership Success

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.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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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.

Open Talent

Your Work Friends Podcast: Open Talent with John Winsor

Rigid roles are out, and fluid talent is in. John Winsor breaks down the open talent revolution—and why your next big opportunity won’t come from climbing a ladder, but from thinking like a portfolio builder.

In this episode, we sit down with John Winsor, Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School’s Digital, Design, and Data (D³) Institute, Open Assembly Founder and Author of many books including Open Talent: Leveraging a Global Workforce to Solve Your Biggest Challenges,

We dug into how the open talent revolution is transforming how we work. John unpacks why both companies and workers are shifting to portfolio careers, and reveals why "we own employees" is a dying concept being replaced by "I'm gonna make it so sexy and attractive that I'm gonna attract you into it." Adopting an abundance mindset can unlock new career growth.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

One of the things I could never figure out is like leaders, where did the concept of we own employees ever come from? It's such a crazy concept, right? It's all my people. I do the work that I am demanding they do. What the fuck? That's so crazy. Hey guys, I've got a cool project over here. I'm going to make it so sexy and so attractive that I'm going to attract you into it, and then I'm going to take you into it, and then I'm going to take really good care of you, and that always seems to work out better, right.

Speaker 2: 0:43

Welcome to your Work friends. I'm Francesca and I'm Mel. We are breaking work down, so you get ahead, Mel.

Speaker 3: 0:52

How are you doing? I am doing excellent. Thank you very much. It is like 70 degrees, I can't complain. How about you Listen?

Speaker 2: 1:00

it's good, Mel. Do you know where your water meter is?

Speaker 3: 1:05

No, I have no freaking clue. It's somewhere outside of my house, but I just get those ads all the time about buying insurance in case the water pipe breaks from the street to your house.

Speaker 2: 1:14

Yeah, I came home from dropping off Enzo and the city was outside, they're flushing the fire hydrants, but they couldn't find our water meter, and so I was like, do you know where your water meter is?

Speaker 3: 1:24

And I'm like if the city can't find it, what does that mean for you?

Speaker 2: 1:28

You're just shit out of luck. Yeah, not stealing a lot of confidence from our friends? Are you guys billing me? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:35

Yeah Well, we had such an amazing conversation and just fun conversation with John Windsor. Conversation and just fun conversation with John Windsor, the author of Open Talent. For those of you who don't know John, he's an entrepreneur, he's a thought leader and he's a global authority figure on the future of work. He's currently the executive in residence at Harvard Business School's Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard Lish. Founder and chairman of Open Assembly and, among many. First, john founded Victor and Spoils in 2009, the world's first ad agency that sourced from the crowd. He is the co-author of Open Talent and also the author of Flipped Spark Beyond the Brand and the co-author of Baked In Just an all-around rad person doing pretty amazing things. How do you feel about this conversation?

Speaker 2: 2:28

Listen, john's one of those guys you just want to. Can I just talk to you about life in general?

Speaker 3: 2:33

The insights from this episode awesome, and we've been talking about open talent for years.

Speaker 2: 2:40

If you don't know what open talent is in general, it's basically that organizations will move to having contract or gig like work, either sourcing those gigs either internally in their organization so you can move around and do more projects, as opposed to being decked to one team and one boss for years and years and years. Right, you're going to move around to different projects based on your skills, or they're going to get that talent externally. You and I have been working in this way, mel, for the last 10 years with Deloitte. We worked with this all the time.

Speaker 3: 3:13

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:14

You. We had what was called adaptive organizations, where you had a core of full-time folks that were really geared towards strat and relationship and we hired out right when we needed to for the projects. We did this all the time. This is something that's going to become more and more the norm, especially with AI, especially as organizations are getting really focused on only having full-time workers that serve their core competence or, quite honestly, it makes sense financially for them to carry full time. It has massive benefits to an organization. It has really interesting benefits to employees that want to live a portfolio type of life.

Speaker 3: 3:54

It's also a huge retention play for that core group if they can get it right internally.

Speaker 2: 4:00

Listen, if you're going to learn about this topic from anyone, you're going to want to learn about it from John. Not only has he lived this with Victor and Spoils, with Open Assembly and with Harvard, he sees this all the time. Plus, he just gets life Great person to learn from.

Speaker 3: 4:15

With you on that. Listen, get the book. Get the book, go to his website. We'll include all the socials here so you can follow him, because you absolutely should and with that here's Jon Windsor.

Speaker 2: 4:43

All right, jon, we're here to talk about open talent.

Speaker 1: 4:45

Yeah, which is very exciting.

Speaker 2: 4:48

I loved reading this book. It actually brought me back to my Deloitte days because and you mentioned Deloitte in the book- multiple times. Yeah, yeah, and you've lived this life with Victor and Spoils and Open Assembly. This has been your world.

Speaker 1: 5:02

It has been how would you define open talent.

Speaker 1: 5:05

Open talent is just an operating system. Where you have it depends on the side of the situation, though. From a company perspective, it's really relying on variable costs. Talent right From an individual side, it's having a portfolio career and having the confidence to do that. It's hard because I think we've all been taught at work there are all these rules and regulations and you can't step over the line and you might have to do something that breaks some kind of unsaid cultural rule or legal rule, whereas when you're on your own, you got to pay attention to everything. You've got to be way more optimistic and way more aggressive, and that's a huge shift for a lot of people. It's really been difficult for people to shift.

Speaker 1: 5:44

So for us I use the term because I was trying to figure out a term that certainly born out of open source software. That, to me, was the first thing, but secondly, it's like how do you think about open talent externally, building external talent clouds and internally, like how do I create a system that allows everybody in the company to participate in a way that helps the company get to the outcomes they need but yet gives the freedom to people for them to explore and be a part of advancing their career. It could be a software engineer going. This stuff sucks. I want to be in marketing. What's the opportunity? Most people have to leave the organization to do that and how do we create an internal talent marketplace that allow for that exploration.

Speaker 1: 6:26

And then my history is more around the idea of crowdsourcing ideas and we built a bunch of stuff at Harvard with NASA, around the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation to solve really hard problems. And over again we see that crowds always trump experts and it's because of the adjacent knowledge and the ability to not be encumbered by tried and true ways of doing things that are very linear. It's very much throwing caution to the wind and trying new things. So those are the three legs to the Open Talents Tool and I tried to use a term that built off some history, played to the idea of open and then laid some groundwork that you can use it anywhere.

Speaker 2: 7:05

Organizations. In my experience, they'll start with the external marketplace. Oh, we're going to start hiring folks from open assembly or Upwork or something like that. They'll do an external marketplace where they're trying to bring in folks to do project-based work or at the most basic level. One of the things that's been so interesting to me is, to your very good point, I find most organizations lag on the internal marketplace. My entire career has been in talent development and it's so interesting that most organizations are sitting on such raw talent that career development is the number one thing people want, more than pay your rear, and that mobility internally is such a key thing. Have you found the same thing that most people feel like it's easier to go external than it is to queue that up internal? Do they do it at the same time and why? Yeah, I love compound questions.

Speaker 1: 8:01

No, it's great. I think that the issue really is the managerial level and it's really talent hoarding. If you've got a really great team, you're like, oh, I can't have them, instead of going hey, you guys, in the context of my team, you guys are all hired guns, like you're working here because you want to on this team. You're working here because I need you. If I do something wrong, you might want to jump off the team. So need you. If I do something wrong, you might want to jump off the team. So why not start from the basis of just hey, come if you want, leave if you want, if you need some help doing something else, totally fine. But if you're not passionate about it, you're like life's way too short. But I think it's that change in the leadership and the bureaucracy and the allowing. One of the things I could never figure out is like leaders. Where did the concept of we own employees ever come from? It's such a crazy concept. Right, it's all my people. I do the work that I am demanding they do. What the fuck? That's so crazy. Hey guys, I've got a cool project over here. I'm going to make it so sexy and so attractive that I'm going to attract you into it and then I'm going to take really good care of you and that always seems to work out better, right? If you can say it's an honor to work with you guys, come be a part of it. I'll make it really important for your career, for you as an individual, instead of saying you got to be here at this time and these are the requirements and blah, blah, blah, blah blah.

Speaker 1: 9:23

I think it's the old white man issue in culture, right? I think that's what happened over COVID and I think that's why there's been some push to return to office. Is that, like old white guys sit in a corner office all by themselves, they've judged their importance and their identity on how many people were in the cubicles outside their office and, sorry, it doesn't work that way anymore. People do great work all over the world and you just want the best talent. So that's a shift, right? Do I want to control the talent? Because if you want to control the talent, you are not going to get the best talent. Or do I want to work with the best talent and like, how do I do that? How can I be curious? How can I get people engaged?

Speaker 2: 10:09

Yeah, it also reminds me of something that I read in the book. Mel and I both sorry Mel, not to out you. It's fine, we're both a bunch of woo-woos and one of the things that you talked about in the book was abundance and this idea of abundance. It's so funny because more and more I'm just like oh shit, it's everywhere. Woo-woo is everywhere.

Speaker 1: 10:19

As in Vine's new book, right, yes, I mean which is fantastic, and I agree.

Speaker 2: 10:25

I feel like there's been this model of scarcity. This is mine, this is my piece of the pie. I'm going to piss through everything, so I protect my territory. No, you can't have this talent, even if it's in the same company versus.

Speaker 3: 10:41

Even if they aren't doing anything right now. It's so selfish.

Speaker 2: 10:48

It's so selfish, it's so selfish it is. It is, and moving into that kind of abundance mindset is a really interesting flip around. There's enough great work to go around. There's enough currency from a leadership perspective to go around. The other thing that I was always so surprised by as someone running a team there are always times where it's way cheaper to contract that out or bring in somebody for a smaller period of time, or you can be the best planner and still have these oh shit moments. We need staff, aug here, or we need someone to take this on. It's so interesting that even in the most numbers-driven organizations that they don't get the efficiency play and a budget play. It's a slam dunk Totally. I think you a slam dunk Totally.

Speaker 1: 11:25

I think you're really hitting into something. It is a scarcity mindset, but I can't. Maybe I'm trying to defend the old white guys, being an old white guy.

Speaker 1: 11:33

But I think what's happened is the whole world was set up for white guys to be managers, right, you go to Harvard Business School, where I work, and you get your degree and you have a system and you have a process. And then you go to a big company like a Deloitte and then they have a process and a system and anything that's variance outside that system just doesn't work. But one of the problems so many companies are having is that mindset is a vestige of an industrial age and truly you think about Drucker's work or even more modern thinkers like Jim Collins work. The philosophy is a scarce philosophy because the raw materials, the talent it was scarce. He didn't know where to get it. Education was really scarce, but I have to hire from an Ivy league school because that Ivy league business school education is way better than anything else and not so much. It was like I, I gotta get this raw material from somewhere because there's only one place in the world to get it and it's really limited. Probably not that way anymore and now that we're in this digital age where there's much, much more abundance, I think we're going to see that completely accelerate. With ai, yeah is that we don't have to think that way anymore, but it's's a vestige.

Speaker 1: 12:43

One of the things we talked for a second about the Ezra Klein book and one of the things I found so interesting is he really takes on kind of democratic cities that have created scarcity through bureaucracy around housing, and I noticed it here in Boulder. One of the things that's really interesting is, yeah, boulder's become way bigger than it was and it's a bummer for all of us. You guys live in Portland, right? One of the problems is we've had this kind of let's shut the gate after we're here, and so one of the things that's happened, which I didn't really understand and I really resonated with that Ezra Klein abundance idea, was that boulders become outrageously expensive. There's still a three-story limit to buildings, and if you could take a building and build a five-story building instead of a three-story building, all of a sudden it makes economic sense to do low-income housing, but at a three-story building you can't cost it out to do that, and so by having this, we've got to make the place beautiful. We've got to make sure this is a scarce resource. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that there's not enough pie to go around. I think that same thing applies inside companies that over decades have had this kind of scarce commodity Even in the beginning of the digital age.

Speaker 1: 14:07

I still have this vestige of I got to get rid of some of the photos on my phone because there's just so much shitty. I took a picture to send to my wife on a piece of pizza. Do I really want that as a memory? But then I think about like in the IFD of abundance is like. It doesn't cost me anything, it doesn't. I shouldn't worry about. Like. Why would I worry about that? Why would I sit around for two hours and select the photos on my phone that I need to throw out?

Speaker 1: 14:36

The reason we do that is because at one time there was only so much room on our computer or our phones to do it, and so we needed to continually manage our resources, and so I think we're just seeing this kind of natural evolution towards abundance.

Speaker 2: 14:47

Yeah, I think there needs to be that switch right and there's that opportunity for that switch towards abundance in corporations. I'm wondering what your perspective is on folks that are working right now, because I feel like there is also a scarcity feel. Consumer sentiment is in the tank, hustling employers is in the tank. There is a fear that AI is going to take my job, absolutely. What's the abundance lens for employees, or is there one?

Speaker 1: 15:14

Yeah, I think there is. I think, first of all, that you got to dissuade the scarce mindset of living beyond your means. I don't know about you guys, but the happiest people I know doesn't matter where they are on the economic scale If they are somehow having more income than they spend. It could be some dude living on a beach. He gets, catches tons of fish and he does the whole like coconuts and he's totally happy, right, yeah, so I think that's the thing, right, that the kind of abundant mindset. There's more tomorrow, that. And I find that interestingly in places like mexico or indonesia or even japan. I was just in japan skiing and I just so surprised how people are just so gentle and so thoughtful, and I think it's because they have this abundance they don't have to be on that bus or even though the bus is small, there's abundant space to put another two or three people in. So it's just this really beautiful sense of it's all going to be okay. But it's hard if you've got a huge mortgage and you're stressed and you buy into all this stress. I don't know. I think that's part of it is refactoring things.

Speaker 1: 16:19

I'm teaching some stuff at Harvard, but I'm teaching a class at Denver University and on freelance and what? My assumption is that we're all going to have portfolio jobs. You guys do, I do. That's just the future, right, it's just what we do. But how do we train these kids to do it? And so it's like a one-day sprint. But one of my really odd takeaways is there are all these rules and regulations around AI. So I decided it's going to be a class about using AI to create a class about AI, and the kids are going to be in charge of designing a class with AI about the best way to teach kids about AI. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3: 16:59

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:00

So I only want to do it because I want to poke the bear. There's lots of 20-year-old professors that have been there for 20 years. They use the same syllabus and I want the kids to so rock new kinds of syllabuses and say, oh, this took me 10 minutes to do, oh, I can bring this out in a half an hour.

Speaker 1: 17:16

And I want to be open about it. I want to be like the next time a professor tells you not to use AI. Use AI, Sure to use AI, Because this is the future. This is what we need to learn. We all need to learn this. It's a new skill we've got to learn and we've got to look at it abundantly. Try to be creative about it.

Speaker 3: 17:43

I love where this is going because I'm a huge believer in open talent concept. I think as someone who's worked in talent my whole career and then worked in talent acquisition, and you see the talent that comes into an organization. You also see when it leaves and you're like what happened to that guy? He was awesome and I think a lot of it is like that lack of opportunity, as you said, like things can get stale or they might have a leader who's holding on to them for dear life Right but they're not really thinking about the employee and what they need to feel purpose and meaning in the work that they do. So I love this concept and really believe in it. I also think there's a huge opportunity to unbreak innovation within an organization, because what keeps me up at night is how much innovation is lost because we don't have this type of model.

Speaker 1: 18:26

When you think about who didn't we tap into to find, like hot Cheetos no it's funny because I just was on a conversation yesterday with a consulting company that won't be named.

Speaker 2: 18:37

Does it rhyme with Beloit? Yeah, just joking.

Speaker 1: 18:41

That's a good guess but I can't confirm or deny. And there was a new senior person and we were having a conversation and I was like how's it going?

Speaker 2: 18:50

And I don't know.

Speaker 1: 18:50

I'm like how's it going? He's on board. He's been like six weeks and I'm getting there and I got another five weeks and I'll talk to you in six or seven weeks about this project that we were supposed to start like eight months ago and I was like I don't know if I'll be around then, but try my phone and if I'm up for something then great. But good luck with that onboarding. I'm glad you're going. Everything about the family history of the organization and what they were doing back in the 1800s.

Speaker 3: 19:15

Exciting stuff. Exciting stuff, exciting stuff.

Speaker 1: 19:17

Really relevant to how you do your job.

Speaker 3: 19:20

Yeah, oh man, I'm really excited about where your work is headed. One of the things that you talked about was moving away from hierarchies to networks. I love that because I think about the silos and all the dollars lost on redundant work that happens across organizations. But you have those organizations that are just holding on to this so tight, like this is how it works. How do organizations who are so used to this hierarchical structure, how do they even start to begin to make that shift so this works for them?

Speaker 1: 19:49

If you figure that out, will you let me know?

Speaker 3: 19:53

Yeah, what's one small step they can take to test and learn.

Speaker 1: 19:57

It starts with an open dialogue, right, and, unfortunately, the things that I see. I don't know if you guys see it, but the bottom's just begging for this, right, like Z folks trying to be more flexible, and the very top is really focused on the outcomes and it goes beyond the C-level and gets dropped into some bureaucracy and everybody starts following the rules and it's just crazy. It's just really crazy, I think, especially with ai, for those leaders that are more curious.

Speaker 1: 20:26

They're just going to go around the bureaucracy, right, they're just going to go yeah I'm going to take some smart people, give them some ai tools, go build, build something. Blow up the bureaucracy. We did a case study recently on Coursera and they have a really amazing CEO and he's trying to figure out how to push things with AI and one of the examples he used his team came up with and one of the examples was when you have a course and you want to translate it into 20 different languages right, so 20 courses, 20 different languages. It was 12 weeks and $10,000 per translation, and so that's $4 million. Somebody on his team said I think I can do this in chat, gpt, and now the system costs him $40 per translation and takes about three hours to do with that, with the fact checking and somebody leaning into it. So I, so it's saved them.

Speaker 1: 21:22

What is that? Eight hundred dollars or something like that. It's such a radical shift in cost. But to me, the really magical thing is that was a huge friction point. Certainly some people who are translators lost their jobs and that's a real bummer. But but for the rest of the organization sitting around waiting 12 weeks for a translation, it just kills the organization. Like I got a new course. Is it in Spanish? Damn, it's not in Spanish. It won't be in Spanish for 12 weeks. I'm off to the next thing.

Speaker 3: 21:50

But it's also like thinking about those translators and how do you continue to use them to be that human checkpoint for AI, right? Like how do you take that group of people and use them elsewhere?

Speaker 1: 22:00

I think some of it has to be mandated.

Speaker 2: 22:02

I was at this.

Speaker 1: 22:02

Eric Von Hippel is this crazy, really amazing guy that in his eighties at MIT works on user innovation, and Charlie Shee's guy from Harvard. We had this round table and we're talking about innovation. So charlie told the story which just totally blew my mind. The port of la, the biggest port in america, 10 000 workers, all union longshoremen, just had a strike last year. What they didn't resolve in the strike was automation. That's still on the table. They're still arguing about it. It takes five minutes to load a container. Once the truck pulls up a container onto a ship, right. So 10,000 people, five minutes to get the work done, organized, but very disorganized. Then he showed a picture of a port in Shenzhen in China, four times as big. It takes 10 seconds not five minutes, but 10 seconds to put a container on a ship Four times as big. Guess how many employees works at the dock 200.

Speaker 1: 23:05

Zero, oh yeah, really, yeah. Zero. It's all automated, it's all powered by hydro. There are like 25 people sitting in a control tower oh sure, yeah, the core crew yeah, but nobody is down near the ships, it's all automated.

Speaker 1: 23:22

And and charlie's point is a really good point we're sitting here fighting about people holding on to legacy jobs, saying my grandfather was a longshoreman, my dad was longshoreman, I deserve to be a longshoreman, my dad was a longshoreman, I deserve to be a longshoreman. And in China their point is sorry, technology replaced that. Here's three training modules or three different training paths you can do, but you don't have a job as a longshoreman. That is no longer a job that you have. And I know that we get into this weird place, especially in the US, on like self-determination and choice and things like that, but unfortunately we can decide to change the type of employment that we have and mandate it, or the market's going to decide for us, and I would suggest that the turn of the last century. There are probably a lot of buggy whip manufacturers and people that made buggy whips that were really good, but I don't know too many buggy whip manufacturers anymore that are around and a lot of people got displaced, but that's just the way it goes.

Speaker 3: 24:18

What are those folks that used to walk around to light the lanterns or to wake people up in the morning? That job went away too. I feel like in every generation there's that shift. It's great that legacy existed in some of these jobs with your family, and there's something really special about that when you think about it. But at the same time it's did you want to do this job because of that or because it's what you really wanted? If, now that you have the opportunity to think about something else, you could maybe do, what does that look like for you?

Speaker 1: 24:43

What do you need to pay attention to, right? Do you guys remember? In the book there are all horses in one car and then, 10 years later, in 1913, there were all cars and one horse in 10 years. We're thinking that our progress is up going through the roof and we're changing so fast, but that would mean that our streets were all horses in 2015. And that there would be cars now. That would be like saying, oh, we had cars and now we have flying right autonomous and if you consider that tesla's been going since 2003, like this transition is not that fast.

Speaker 1: 25:29

And you could say that, oh, isn't it sad for all the people that took care of the horses and the stables and the people that picked up the shit on streets, and Some of those jobs weren't really great, but they needed to change. Sorry, we don't need your services for shoveling shit.

Speaker 2: 25:45

Here's my thing on that, though. China, for example, is offering retraining opportunities for people. So here are the three paths you can go on. I'm looking at organizations, and there are only 18% of organizations that are actively reskilling their people for new jobs.

Speaker 1: 26:02

And then, beyond that, what skills are human skills and what skills are synthetic skills? Right, a thousand percent.

Speaker 2: 26:08

Or hybrid or hybrid. My concern comes from whose responsibility is that to retrain those people? Is it government? Is it corporations? Because I don't see anyone taking up the reins there.

Speaker 1: 26:23

I know it's an irresponsibility right. Unfortunately, our unfettered capitalism is all about maximizing profits or shareholder return in the very short run and you can't think beyond the next quarter. So AI is a hot thing. Let's get rid of all these people and hire a bunch of AI people and not oh, that's's going. Let's retrain a bunch of people. They've already committed to the company. It's going to save us a ton of money. Here are the people that can really do that. It challenges the core western philosophy of self-determination. Right, you should have trained yourself on ai six months ago. We're going to hire somebody that has six months worth of experience.

Speaker 2: 27:01

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:07

And I think we just need a little bit more of a collective mentality. There are pockets of companies that get it and usually, in my mind, they're usually singularly owned. They're owned by some maverick who doesn't really care that much. Yeah, I want to make more money, I want to do this, but I like Judy down in shipping, I'm going to take care of her. It's interesting, right, because I would say because Patagonia is always a really interesting case for me.

Speaker 1: 27:26

There are a lot of people at Patagonia that were there way too long, but they just so added to the culture. He answered the phones way after you needed a receptionist, but his name was Chipper Bro, and Chipper Bro remembered everybody's name. He remembered everything. You didn't go on hold. You talked to Chipper Bro. He's like where are you going on your next surf trip, dude? Oh yeah, I'd go here. It made Patagonia who they are, just that human connection.

Speaker 1: 27:56

But I think what happens is, if you have that kind of feeling, then, in the same breath, yvonne walked in one day, and long time ago, and 10% of the revenue was non-organic t-shirts, and he didn't like that idea. So he cut the t-shirt line and said let's put the money that we're going to make here into subsidizing farmers to grow organic cotton and then in five years we can buy that back and start t-shirts again, and that's really bold. But if you're secure, knowing that you're going to have employment, you're part of it. Even if you get let go in an honest, thoughtful way, then you're fine with it. But it's these kind of dark room, black box oh, this division has to go, no rhyme or reason. It sometimes feels. Oh, the CEO is not going to make his bonus unless he lops off a thousand employees.

Speaker 3: 28:43

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:44

And it just doesn't work.

Speaker 3: 28:45

Agree, you mentioned we have a very short window to start to get this right. So, when you think about this, if you test this tomorrow I'm thinking of the renegade we were just talking about that's not going to pay attention to the rules. And just let me try this out. For the renegade leaders out there who are like, yeah, I'm going to try this open talent model and how that lines up with AI too and what we need to look at, what would you advise for them to do to dip their toe in this?

Speaker 1: 29:11

I think first you have to have a mental model right. So you've got to have a thesis and you got to get agreement on the thesis. So, francesca, like you said, going from scarcity to abundance I think that's the first thing is saying the world's abundant. We have so many opportunities and we have to figure out how do we get to the opportunities we need to grow or to do whatever we want to accomplish. Above that, most companies even struggle with the idea of purpose, like why are you even in business, besides making a few people rich? So, understanding what your purpose is, understanding that it's really an abundant mindset. But then, after that, I think it's really getting focused on outcomes. What are the outcomes I need?

Speaker 1: 29:46

And then let's what are the tasks we need to do to get to those outcomes? And then what are the skills we need? And we know that right now, in the next few years, it's going to be AI 24 seven. So how do we retrain people? How do we get people up to speed? How do we get the right talent in place?

Speaker 1: 30:02

What I've noticed in leaders that get it, it's not that sensitivity and wavy grave, it's also even a more radical, I wouldn't say brutality, but at least honesty. So I was in a meeting in New York last week and we had this big kind of ai training for this large company and that so the head person, that's, the editor, and all her staff. They literally just blew off the owner ceo to request to be there and they flew to a concert and it's because they had to cover it for the magazine and they've refused to adopt ai and refuse to do anything like. That's cheating. Can't have AI write our articles. So we spent five hours working through some of this stuff and the CEO looks around the room and looks like he won't have a job on Monday, meaning the editor that decided to take her staff and do something else. To me that was not a brutal move, but it was more of an acknowledgement that, hey, this is scary times.

Speaker 1: 31:05

Thank you so much for committing your time and being here at my request. If you don't want to be here, it's totally fine, I get it. I don't have time to babysit, sorry. We've got a lot of great things to do and we're going to use technology and we need to satisfy our customers and our customers have a lot of friction in their lives and we got to solve for that. And if're going to use technology and we need to satisfy our customers and our customers have a lot of friction in their lives and we got to solve for that. And if you want to not do what's best by our customers, then that's great. There's a lot of other great things to do in the world and I love that. I love the kind of just like certainty because, as much as it's a bummer for a few people, it shows the rest of the organization like whoa. We're going for it.

Speaker 1: 31:42

And there's not some like clandestine non-talked about conversation in a non-transparent way, but if it's very transparent and very open. So that's the third part of the stool. What's my purpose? The abundant mindset and then the ability to move fast and make great decisions.

Speaker 3: 31:58

And that story is so poignant because you hear that all the time when change happens, where someone really just is like fighting versus how can I lean into it? How can you reframe your mindset right now, maybe be open to what's possible? It might have a positive effect for your experience here.

Speaker 1: 32:15

Yeah, it's almost like we could never have an AI aggregate comments on our website, because somebody has to take the time and understand the nuance. Good luck with that.

Speaker 3: 32:25

I've done a lot of synthesis and I will tell you I am so glad AI exists to help with that. How can someone listening today, who's in that traditional space of wherever they are, start to really think about how they can? What would they be as a freelancer, even while they're still within this assigned job? How can they start to test that for themselves of what that might look like, so that when things do change, they're ready for it?

Speaker 1: 32:51

Yeah, definitely do some side gigs. Yeah, like Moonlight. Start right away. Doesn't even matter, right, like the cost of failure is so low. Start a podcast. I don't mean to set up a bunch of people. You guys are already wrong. Sorry, you guys have already pierced through the stratosphere. Just go try some shit. Right, like? I think that's the sad thing, right? It's like when we're kids the world's our oyster. We have so many possibilities and somewhere along the way we forget we have to do all these things we have to do, and that's just total bullshit we don't have to do them we have these mental models that we feel so obligated to do things.

Speaker 1: 33:29

And then for most people we've had a lot of tragedy and we've gotten stung on some things. But I think back to our opening comments. This is the time for optimism. I think everybody has to grow into an optimist. I think pessimists are going to have a really difficult time because the world's not paid to be the same.

Speaker 3: 34:00

All right, we're going to jump right in with some rapid round questions for you. Typically one word answers are okay, we're not going to judge if you do that, but if you'd like to elaborate, please do. How's that sound?

Speaker 1: 34:11

Yeah, for sure, all right Perfect.

Speaker 3: 34:14

All right, it's 2030. What is work looking like?

Speaker 1: 34:28

looking like. Oh man, it's looking somewhere in Indonesia with your phone and waiting for the next set to come in as your agents do all the work for you.

Speaker 3: 34:34

Sounds nice, actually, sign me up. What's one thing about corporate culture that you'd like to just see die already?

Speaker 1: 34:41

Bureaucracy.

Speaker 3: 34:43

Sometimes it's like turning a cruise ship to get things done.

Speaker 1: 34:46

Oh my God, it's horrible.

Speaker 3: 34:48

What's the greatest opportunity most organizations are missing out on right now?

Speaker 1: 34:53

Tapping to the people's passion, or not just their people's passion, but the passion of the culture, and what I mean by that is like the larger culture of customers and suppliers, and it just that's so sad that there's like us against them inside, outside all that stuff. It doesn't work.

Speaker 3: 35:09

Yeah, I like that. Okay, all right, now we're going to get personal Are you ready yeah. Okay, what music are you listening to right now? What's on repeat on your playlist?

Speaker 1: 35:18

I'm a discover weekly guy, oh okay, and I love that because I love so much music. But the idea of just sitting down every Monday morning going, oh my God, a whole new playlist Some weeks it's awesome, some weeks it sucks. And the thing that kind of has been turning me out lately are these two guys, hermanos Gutierrez, these guitar players. Okay, and they would be a funky Spanish flamingo kind of thing Anyway.

Speaker 3: 35:44

Oh, that's so nice, that's awesome.

Speaker 1: 35:46

Yeah, top of mind, okay, Expecting, like Katy Perry or something.

Speaker 3: 35:50

No, I had no expectations. I do this because one I'm interested. Like you, I like music from everywhere and I love that DJ feature that they have on Spotify. Have you tried your personal DJ yet?

Speaker 1: 36:01

No.

Speaker 3: 36:02

They haven't, I gotta do it, okay, yeah, I'm old school Okay. They throw in some of your favorites and some new stuff into the mix. Good for road trips. Yeah, what are you reading right now?

Speaker 1: 36:17

Reading could also be listening to a book. I was just talking about an amazing book the other day that I've read a couple times and I just love it. It's called Perfume and it's got the subtitle something creepy the smell of death. It's all like 1400 or 1600s in France about a super smeller. Unfortunately, right now I'm like totally absorbed. There's too much going on in the world, although I have to tell you guys, somebody just sent me this great podcast. My wife and I both listened to it. It's called fierce intimacy. It's really good. I was like, yeah, it's like in. The old concept is like you have to fiercely fight for the relationship and you've got to give each other space about it. You got to likecely fight for your relationship and you've got to give each other space about it.

Speaker 3: 37:04

You've got to like total transparency. I like that. Yeah, just get in. Be in it.

Speaker 1: 37:06

You're in it, be in it. Yeah, don't avoid it.

Speaker 3: 37:09

I love that. Okay, the perfume one is so interesting to me. Francesca and I talked about this when we went to Tuscany. You recommended the Santa Maria Novella perfumery place. It's just such an interesting history with perfume, yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:21

And the whole super smeller thing and the people that they used to hire do that, and oh, it's so crazy, that's so cool. What a cool history. Who do you admire most? Oh my God, that's a good question. My dad, for sure. My dad's still alive. He's a modern day Ernest Hemingway. Such a stud, I would say. There's a collection of people right. I think that there are lots of people that inspire me for different reasons. Tinker certainly one of them. Good friend, like we talked about, Francesca.

Speaker 1: 37:49

My wife Emily she's definitely kept me going, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 37:56

Good stuff. We like to hear it. What's a piece of advice you would love to give to others because you didn't have it for yourself a long time ago?

Speaker 1: 38:05

The guy told me this and my wife at the time, bridget, and I we just adopted two kids from Russia and we always hung out at this coffee shop and this guy kind of looks like Albert Einstein. I used to have a one man, albert Einstein show, len, and he didn't have any kids Kind of looked at our kids and they were like two or three and looked at us and looked at the kids and he's I have some parenting advice for you. She was like oh no, lynn, I don't know if you want to hear it, and he said that some mother had told him this said most parents when kids do things that are outside the norm, they always say be careful.

Speaker 1: 38:51

But be careful creates all this fear. It's like be careful, you might hurt yourself. Be careful, that's too high, be careful, that's too fast. So instead just always say pay attention. And so if your son or daughter says I'm going to climb that tree, if you say be careful, it's should I or shouldn't I climb the tree, instead of saying pay attention, meaning go as high as you want, but pay attention to your inner feeling and how you're willing to explore, and when you're not feeling comfortable, come back down, it's all about you.

Speaker 1: 39:19

And so that's something that was really magical for me as a dad to allow my sons to explore. But it's also, I think, a really good thing to think about in work, right, and it's like there's so much fear, especially around this new world of AI, and like how do we be less careful and pay more attention?

Speaker 3: 39:38

I really love that shift in thinking.

Speaker 1: 39:41

It's crazy, just to pay attention.

Speaker 3: 39:42

Yeah, what a shift, and it totally eliminates the fear out of things.

Speaker 1: 39:46

I know right it does.

Speaker 1: 39:48

One of the things I just love about AI is back to Einstein. It's that Einstein quote that says if you gave me a problem and an hour to solve it, I spend 55 minutes on the problem or the question, five minutes on the solution. And I think somehow in the industrial age we got so focused on the execution and the solution right and solving the problem properly. And what's so great is now the cost of execution is going to zero. But it's really the value of what's the problem you're trying to solve. How do you really define that in an interesting way? It's an exciting time, it is. There's a lot to look forward to solve. How do you really define that in an interesting way?

Speaker 3: 40:20

It's an exciting time, it is. There's a lot to look forward to. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 40:23

A time to pay attention.

Speaker 3: 40:25

A time to pay attention. For sure, we loved having you here. We love the book Open Talent, everybody. We appreciate you being with us today. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 1: 40:36

Me as well. I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 3: 40:41

It's been such an honor. 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.

Managerial Sabotage

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.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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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.

Employment is Dead

Your Work Friends Podcast: Employment is Dead with Deborah Perry Piscione & Josh Drean

In this episode, we dive into why the traditional nine-to-five no longer cuts it and explore how AI, gig economies, and decentralized organizations are reshaping work as we know it.

We sat down with futurists, innovation thought leaders, and founders of Work3 Institute’s Deborah Perry Piscione and Josh Drean to get into the mindset shift from “I work for you, you pay me” to a future where skills and purpose matter more than a desk and a paycheck. You’ll hear bold predictions about money possibly disappearing, villages re-emerging, and why flexibility, community, and entrepreneurial thinking are now non-negotiables.

If you’re curious about what work—and your role in it—might look like in the next five to ten years, this episode will give you plenty to think about.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

Traditional models of employment are failing to meet the needs of the evolving workforce. Employment as it looks from an industrial age kind of model of you work for me, I'll give you X amount of dollars for Y amount of hours, I'm the boss, I tell you exactly what you need to build and exactly what you need to do, and you don't ask questions. Just does not serve us anymore.

Speaker 2: 0:40

Hey, this is your Work Friends. I'm Mel Plett and I'm Francesca Ranieri. We're breaking down work to help you stay ahead.

Speaker 3: 0:48

We're also joined by Lucy, a 60 pound boxer, who is breathing into the mic right now.

Speaker 2: 0:53

How is that a hot breath going for you?

Speaker 3: 0:55

It's like the best dog, but her breath is just. Here's a mint. Here's a mint. I know I gotta get some of those greenies. I'm like here's a mint, here's a mint. I know I gotta get some of those greenies. I'm like I don't want to know.

Speaker 2: 1:08

I don't want to know oh, I mean, here she is just, but this is the panting, is not francesca it?

Speaker 3: 1:12

is not. It is not. It's just like in a brand new, whole new audience base after this episode and in other news we'll do a class for only fans oh my god, a new way of working. A new way of working. Yeah, speaking of a new way of working, we had a mind-blowing conversation the other day we did we met with the authors of employment is dead.

Speaker 2: 1:38

deborah perry piscione is a globally recognized innovation thought leader. She's an architect of improvisational innovation, a New York Times bestselling author the Secrets of Silicon Valley, serial entrepreneur of six companies, a LinkedIn learning author, and she also worked on Capitol Hill. And then Josh Dreen joined us as well. He's the co-author, co-founder and director of employee experience at the Work3 Institute. His work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, forbes, fast Company and the Economist. They both speak globally actually to bring work and tech insights to digital first leaders, but they're very focused on human-centric workplaces as well. Very interesting concept Employment is dead. What I also took away from that conversation is it's mainly how we think about traditional employment. But work is still here to stay. It just might look a little bit different. How about you? Yeah?

Speaker 3: 2:35

One of the things in this whole AI conversation that I think we've been really missing is what could work really look like in the next five to 10 years. Both Josh and Debra brought some very mind-blowing perspectives of how work could feel decentralized and gigged and really exciting Potentially, how we don't even have money anymore. Are we going to return to villages? If you are looking for a futurist's view of what the world of work, what your life might look like, especially on this whole AI trajectory, this is the episode for you. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:14

Listen, it's a thought piece for sure. Noodle on it. Let us know what you think. With that, here's Debra and Josh. All right, welcome Josh and Deborah. We're so excited to see you both. All right, we're going to set the stage and jump right in, because we're in it. The title Employment is Dead. Really bold statement. What led you both to this conclusion?

Speaker 1: 3:44

Oh yes, employment is dead. Our bold pitch is that traditional models of employment are failing to meet the needs of the evolving workforce. Employment, as it looks from an industrial age kind of model of you work for me, I'll give you X amount of dollars for Y amount of hours, I'm the boss, I tell you exactly what you need to build and exactly what you need to do, and you don't ask questions, just does not serve us anymore. And when Debra said it's dead, we do make the distinction that work and employment are two very different things, and we've just bled it together and don't think too much about it. But in the very first chapter of the book we say employment is this construct that we designed. That doesn't work.

Speaker 1: 4:30

Work, on the other hand, individuals who want to build skills, who want to be a part of a company or a movement bigger than themselves, to belong to a community. That is what is important. So how do we reclaim some of those elements? And we talk more about this and we can get further into it, but I'm curious to have you weigh in on that, debra.

Speaker 4: 4:50

Well, I wanted to give a little bit of another additional nugget on the backstory. Josh and I really thought we'd have a multi-year run rate with this book, and we'll be lucky if we have five months, because this concept of these jobs eroding is happening so quickly. So the world really needs to wake up and, on the one hand, we're going to get back more time so that we can be better citizens, better family members, have more time to do things. We just really have been desiring this European lifestyle for so long. Now we're going to be able to get it, but we do need to look down the road, not only for ourselves, for subsistence, but how do we all collectively work together, which can look quite different from an economic model that we've known for over 150 years?

Speaker 2: 5:38

Yeah, I think everyone's pretty cozy with how it's always been right. That's always hard, but what I gained from the book was traditional jobs are gone, but work is here to stay. So the optimistic realist in me is employment might be dead, but work is here to stay. There's work that's going to happen For the time being. Yeah, for the time being.

Speaker 4: 6:00

I almost got, even though Waymo has been in San Francisco for quite some time I haven't seen it in my Silicon Valley neighborhood until recently and I was waiting to wave at the car, not realizing it was a Waymo, because I smile at people when I they're waiting for me to cross the street. I was like there's nobody in that car so soon. Just as much as AI is evolving, so are robots and humanoids, and so we are getting to, you know, that general AGI, artificial intelligence, where it can rationalize, teach itself and be in concert with robots being able to learn on their own, and so that's happening a lot faster than we anticipated as well, and so that's happening a lot faster than we anticipated as well.

Speaker 3: 6:45

The evolution of work has changed. A lot of people haven't studied this so deeply, so I'm wondering if you can talk through how expectations of work have changed over the years, just to set the stage.

Speaker 1: 6:58

Yeah, I can jump in here. I spent a lot of time working with HR professionals and when you look at HR in general, that field has just shifted so much. When you look at the beginning of HR, right, it was personnel and I think that it was birthed out of this idea of we have people who work at the company. We need to pay them. They could get into trouble and we could be sued as a company for whatever they say or whatever they do after hours, and so let's get ahead of that. So the traditional model of HR was how can we do the paper things it's paying people PTO and then we got into this era of discretionary effort where it was like people work for us nine to five. It's very contractual, but how can we almost trick them into doing more work, staying later, creeping into some of their personal time? What can we do to make the workplace exciting? To be there at 6 pm, at 7 pm, come in earlier, and so there's the carrot and the stick. Your bonuses are tied to that. And there's also the look we've got snacks in the break room, We've got beer on tap, we have a lot of different things. And that birthed the employee engagement movement which was yeah, we're Apple, we're Google, we want you to have an amazing experience at our organization. So how can we engage you more? And that's where we have hot yoga, or we cater food every single day, or we'll watch your pet. We have a pet daycare on campus right, it's very much this 2000s view and that has shifted into employee experience.

Speaker 1: 8:34

I think is where we are today is how can we design experiences that employees want to have and need to have? The problem is we're still falling behind because we're unwilling to look at the deep and true needs of employees. We actually write about it in the book. We call them the 10 operating principles of work, three, the non-negotiables of the modern workforce. And, just to give you an example, employees want flexibility. That's one of our operating principles. Can we offer them flexibility? And, like we did during the pandemic, we don't really do it now, and so we see a lot of companies who are more. How do we get them back into the office? The RTO mandate over. What if we customized their schedules and individualized it so they can work according to their circadian rhythm? Yes, you can go get your kids at 3 pm, Because we know that you log back on at 7 and you work until midnight type thing, and so there's a lot of flexibility that we can be offering employees. It's just it feels like we're still stuck in that model.

Speaker 3: 9:34

Why do you think that is? Why are we still stuck?

Speaker 4: 9:39

Today's model is based on really Taylorism, which Taylor was an engineer in the early 1900s who came up with the concept and said people do not have emotions. They don't have feelings, they're just cogs on a wheel to get that widget job done. And that was really the creation around middle management as well. We became very consumed with time and for someone like myself, I never understood if I didn't eat lunch on a particular day in my Washington DC Capitol Hill office and my work was done at two o'clock, why do I have to sit there until six? Because our hours were eight to six. And then, if you pulled all-nighters in Washington DC, at least in my generation, you got like a badge of honor. Rather than looking at the output or the productivity behind work, we just got into the concept of time, and so it is really hard if you may be very innovative and I think, sitting here in Silicon Valley around companies like Google who did try to do things very differently Marissa Mayer was very famous at Google for allowing people to tap into their rhythm, as Josh mentioned and just when do you work best? It may not be within that eight to six timeframe, and I had to adopt that engineer model when I first moved to Silicon Valley, because every engineer I worked with was really extraordinary in the middle of the night and that's when they got their work done.

Speaker 4: 11:13

Technology and products and consumerism in foods. But yet our cost of living is at its highest, in part because of premium pricing. So Gen Z has like 82% less buying power than baby boomers did because of all this additional abundance and the fees around it. So if you're always trying to catch up in order to pay your rent or your mortgage, it's just hard to grow beyond. You just don't have time to think about it because you're on that treadmill.

Speaker 3: 11:54

Yeah, it's such an interesting thing because we know that a 30-year-old today is worse off than their parents were. To your very good point right, the buying power in the younger generation is not there, and I think there's a lot of reasons for that too. And then we're also looking at potentially jobs going away, work going away. This idea of job security non-existent definitely now doesn't exist anymore. Technology is going to drive this so much faster, right, we're going to get into these holes so much faster. My biggest concern is this economic wealth gap is going to get even bigger, from the people that have to the people that don't have.

Speaker 3: 12:37

And does technology exacerbate that or does it democratize that?

Speaker 4: 12:41

Yeah, that's such a great question because, as Josh knows, I used to always say AI is going to democratize opportunity, but really what it's coming down to is digital fluency. I sit in the middle of this stuff and trying to keep up with it day to day. I'm like, oh, you haven't heard about Manus, that's going to build out the company for you. That's Reid Hoffman's new startup and Josh and I are very much on the global speaking circuit and I'm lucky of a speech last two weeks. I'm constantly revising it. So there's exhaustion with keeping up and you cannot keep pace with the five or so AI companies. Where they're going to be the winner takes all situation. There was a venture capitalist who made a famous statement as the SaaS kind of model where you would eventually exhaust those sales. In an AI model, you can not only take all the jobs, but you can take all the salaries of the people that used to work for you. It's endless. The money is endless.

Speaker 3: 13:46

Yeah, I was just reading AI 2027, that white paper that's out there too, and it just feels like it all starts to funnel up into three big things at the end of the day, and it's just holy shit, as all the wealth and all of the abundance, if you will, going to ladder into these three conglomerates, whatever we want to call them.

Speaker 2: 14:19

It's fascinating to watch, and the3, because I and Josh. You started to talk about it a little bit, but can you both break down what Work3 is all about for our listeners?

Speaker 1: 14:29

Yeah. So the Work3 Institute is an HR and AI advisory where we help companies marry emerging technologies with workforce strategies. It's hey, we want to use AI. We have no idea how to get started. We want to help our people better use AI and upskill them to be able to 50x productivity, 10x productivity, whatever the promise of AI is going to be. We just don't know how to do that, and a lot of it tends to be.

Speaker 1: 14:57

These forward-thinking human-centric companies who see the change happening don't know how to get on board and we match them with some of this technology. A lot of it, to be honest, is like you've never touched a generative ai tool. Here's a few options. And generative AI tool here's a few options. Here's some homework to start using it today. Just use it in your daily life. We are big on helping reclaim human fulfillment at work and satisfaction. It's something that, especially as companies are being squeezed right now economically, how do we not lose sight of employee satisfaction? How do you continue to do well by your people? Because if you look at the stats, they're not great either. Most employees are burned out. Most employees would take a new job in a heartbeat. Most employees don't trust their companies to do right by them at this time, and so tackling those human-centric projects head on.

Speaker 2: 15:51

You talked about the principles earlier and I loved, debra, what you were saying too. Just, things are changing so quickly and Josh mentioning RTO, right, we swung all the way over here during COVID. Now we're all the way back and something about the traditional model and I know we started to touch on those barriers that actually are gonna get people to the future. Some of it has to do with, like, executive leadership still thinking in that very traditional way, right, like even some of these folks who are really tech forward are still like I need to see your face and I need to see it every day from eight to six, as you mentioned, deborah, and if you're not a butt in a seat, I don't trust you're getting the work done. How do you get them to cut through that old way of thinking to get them to the future?

Speaker 4: 16:38

So the last chapter of our book is on the work three transformation. How do you go from the traditional organization into the era of AI? And a lot of it has to do with communication and, as Josh mentioned, it's about the people. First, the human element. When we wrote this book, we really thought the adoption would come from a lot of the big organizations and the consulting firms. But what happened, with Doge coming out and the geopolitical component of this is, people were losing their jobs so much faster. And then there needed to be a proof point If you were in the hiring business, that you had to prove that AI couldn't do that job.

Speaker 4: 17:21

This book quickly shifted to the individual wanting to know what do I need to do? Because we can't call this unemployment anymore. We need an entirely new economic model in this era of AI, because moving into that next job, it's just not going to be there. But I think, mel, it's more about fear and holding on as long as they can, because they know this is happening. So I don't care if you're Accenture or you're a law firm or whatever you are. You know that AI is going to take over your business. It just is. And so let me hold on to the work element as long as I can, and Josh and I have certainly talked about it. They probably sign these long-term real estate leases. They're just holding on as long as they possibly can, and I know you want to talk about some recent articles where one of the anthropic co-founders has talked about job loss.

Speaker 4: 18:21

That's going to happen at the entry level, but CEOs, boards of directors, can all be taken out by AI, so why not hold on as long as you can and let's work together as long?

Speaker 2: 18:31

as we can. We saw it even two years ago, right when they were testing AI, taking the bar exam or the accounting exam, and they're passing with flying colors Like absolutely it's at all levels, not just entry level, For those types of business leaders or even in professional services that are kind of holding on with fear. How do you move them to the place of opportunity of the portfolio worker in those environments so that everyone can continue to feel?

Speaker 4: 18:58

whole to some degree. What's happening simultaneously is Gen Z coming up. We often talk about various kind of use cases or individuals, young people that have made a tremendous amount of money at 15 years old, generating, creating a game on Roblox, and I think the average Roblox developer, Josh teenager, makes about $65,000 a year. So you know they're not going to want to necessarily come into what traditional work offers when they've had so much control and ownership over being that gain developer. And so you are having this market. Yes, 50% of these entry-level jobs, white-collar jobs, are going to go away in the next one to five years. There's also a lot of interesting things happen on the Web3 side in the metaverse. Josh, you're really the expert here, so you should weigh in.

Speaker 1: 19:58

Yeah, the answer is if you look at the pattern over time, companies who operate in fear, especially large companies who don't take the risks that Debra's talking about and don't push things forward, will risk obsolescence. That's just how it is. And the argument that we make again is that if we are still having the employment conversation and that's exactly what we're having right now which is oh, are you at a nine to five full-time employment with one company or unemployed? Those are the only two options. This doesn't make sense. And the younger generation to Debra's point already has abandoned traditional nine to fives. They are abandoning college right now, they are adopting AI and they are pushing forward in a way that doesn't even make sense to these aging leaders who have been doing this for so long. In a certain way, it's just outside their scope. Mel, you mentioned a DAO or a Decentralized, autonomous Organization. Some of our more progressive clients are piloting DAOs within their organization right now, which sounds like a scary word or a Web3 new thing, but really all it is like we don't need decision makers at the top of one person, a manager making all of the decisions and just telling us exactly what we need to do. You hired me because I have skills and I have a voice and I'm creative and there's a lot more that I can offer to the team. So what if we distributed tokens to them, voting power? Essentially it's you want to make a choice for the team? Get on Snapshot. It's just a Web3 tool that will allow you to vote in real time which direction the company could go, and you can make hundreds of these decisions every week together in an instant. And once the group has decided collectively which direction they need to move, then a smart contract will execute and say all right, that's the direction that we're headed.

Speaker 1: 21:55

And now you have hyper agile teams that don't. They're not bound by the same red tape, their hands aren't as tied as other teams and they're moving quickly and they're producing more results than other teams. And so there are companies that are doing it that way. What I think this large scale global DAO, like a global gig economy, is going to be more so the mainstream than an internal gig economy. Why should I work for you only when I can do my same skills for several companies and several projects? That feels better to employees. And so again, how do you attract Gen Z? A lot of companies can't even answer that question. They just label them as lazy or entitled. And then there are companies who are like oh, let's pilot some DAOs. And then there's, oh, let's operate outside of traditional employment, which feels like I don't even get the value out of the work that I contribute, so pay me more for the work that I'm doing. There's a lot to unpack there, but that's just a teaser.

Speaker 2: 22:58

We know Gen Z is already making up 30% of the workforce. Between Gen Z and millennials, I guess borderline zennials, that's 70% of the workforce already. Right, and Gen Z want to feel like they're co-creating the workplace with you, they're not just showing up and being told what to do. So I actually love that concept of the voting piece that you talked about. Where is this working really well? I know you can't share client names, understood, but where are you seeing this working really well? What are you hearing from feedback where you are testing this out Abroad, abroad, good.

Speaker 4: 23:32

Of course Switzerland, Germany I might ask them out. Josh and I do a lot of global work overall, so yeah, there's definitely forward-thinking individuals overseas.

Speaker 1: 23:52

We share case studies with them. Individuals overseas we share case studies with them.

Speaker 1: 23:58

It just feels like a couple standard deviations away from what they are willing to do, right, Even if this was working really well, like JuiceboxDAO is a great example, right?

Speaker 1: 24:05

This is a vibrant, interoperable community that doesn't employ anyone, and yet they have so many people core contributors, or bounty hunters, as you call it in the Web3 world who are contributing and adding value and getting paid based on the value that they are generating. And so, again, it's very difficult to come into a leadership place and say, hey, work is changing. And they're like give us some answers and it's yeah, but the answers aren't going to be what you're used to and they're going to challenge everything that you know and like AI added to all of that which is moving so rapidly. It's difficult, and that's part of the reason why, with AI, we see a large group of companies who are like oh yeah, AI is going to replace my expensive workforce, and people are tossing around oh yeah, we're just going to be unemployed, Everyone's going to be unemployed. It's guys like broaden your horizons, maximize the skills that you have and you will always be working.

Speaker 3: 25:10

I think that's my question. How are people going to make money? I think that's my question. How are people going to make money? And you've mentioned, like the creator economy with Roblox, right, or, for instance, these DAOs. I find it very lazy when companies go oh, I'm just going to fire everybody, or we're just going to get efficiency gains, or we're just going to dump a bunch of money in AI and throw spaghetti at the wall to try to figure out what's happening, without really thinking about what the art of the possible could be in their organization. And we see this very commonly when technology hits. It's like tech for tech's sake, as opposed to actually enabling your business to be something better than it could be. Yep, like, how are people going to make money? And my secondary sub question of that is do companies really go away?

Speaker 4: 25:54

I'm going to tell you what I think is going to happen in five years, when money goes away. Josh, why don't you do the interim step? Because that's the beauty of our collaboration is Josh is in the thick of things and I am looking more at the economic models of the future.

Speaker 3: 26:09

Can we have both, though, because I'd love to know the now and the future.

Speaker 4: 26:12

if you'd be willing to share, yeah for sure, josh, you want to begin, and then I'll follow up future, if you'd be willing to share.

Speaker 1: 26:17

Yeah, for sure, Josh. You want to begin and then I'll follow up. Yeah, and just to clarify how are individual employees going to make money in kind of a gig economy, space creator economy, or how are companies going to make money knowing that employees are probably going to choose alternative work models?

Speaker 3: 26:32

Let's start with employees like individual people, because I think that's the biggest concern for a lot of folks right now is will jobs exist? Will work exist?

Speaker 1: 26:40

Yeah, it's so funny. So many TikTokers who are like I'm unemployed. I just got laid off for the second time this year, so blow up my TikTok and collectively we can hopefully make some money. Everyone's trying to carve that space out, and I would say the reason why the creator economy has stagnated, the reason why the gig economy isn't hot right now, the reason why Airbnb and Uber is not excelling like they used to, is partially because plenty of reasons right, but from an employee's perspective, if I'm driving for Uber, you have a centralized company. They need massive amounts of cashflow in order to keep the business running, and so where are you going to get that cash? You can go to investors and you're tied down to being more and more profitable, and the employee just gets to a place where this isn't even worth it. I'm not even making enough money.

Speaker 1: 27:33

Too much of it is flowing back to a centralized organization, and so one answer could be decentralized organizations, which is we cut out the middleman. We don't need them. We have technology that exists where you can open an app and get to work. It runs peer to peer, which means I offer my skills and my services outside of an Upwork. Upwork right now is the only way. There's other platforms, sure, but if you want to be a freelancer, the only way you're going to find work is through some of these channels. Again, upwork takes a large cut of that.

Speaker 1: 28:09

So how do you make this make sense? Plus, benefits are tied up into employment. Specifically, there's a lot of challenges that have not materialized yet, and I'm just letting everyone know on this podcast today that smart people are working on this technology and the minute that it becomes viable for the masses, why would an employee work a full-time job when they could have just as much, if not more, money, working on projects that they love with, like passionate individuals, single mothers working three hours a day because that makes sense to them over other options? And Reid Hoffman he has said that traditional jobs will be dead by 2034. And I think a lot of people misinterpret that to be like AI is taking all of your jobs. You'll be done by 2034. What he's really saying is that model, that decentralized gig economy, will be viable by 2034 and everyone will be choosing that.

Speaker 4: 29:02

And Josh, he revised that year in the next two to four years.

Speaker 3: 29:06

Oh Jesus.

Speaker 4: 29:08

Yeah, if you look at his Manus AI, you'll understand why because it can create the company for you. So, francesca, your question is the question I hope that I always get asked and rarely do so in the interim. We're gonna have to be incredibly entrepreneurial, whether you're entrepreneur or not. So you could be driving for Uber right now and you also make these delicious gluten-free chocolate chip cookies that people have been asking you to provide for parties and locally, but now you're giving it to your Uber customers and they're starting to take orders. So what I mean by that is you want multiple revenue streams and getting those revenue streams to work together.

Speaker 4: 29:50

My head is really where are we going to be when money goes away? So I'll give you an example, and this is a geopolitical issue as well we may move back towards communal living. We're seeing a lot of that pop up around the world. We may grow our own food. I think we're going to see much more of the rise of the family-run business, and I don't mean just the mom and pop small storefronts. These can be multi-billion dollar businesses, but we are going to have to be much more reliant on our families and our immediate community.

Speaker 4: 30:30

And then government is going to have to figure out an entirely new support system, a safety net, because you can't just call it unemployment anymore. If President Trump wants to pay women $8,000 to have a baby, which he's asked for because of our birth rates being in decline, then you're going to actually have to pay people to, whether it's mom or dad, to take care of that child on top of it. So you're going to have to pay for childcare or elder care Again. It is going to be so fundamentally different from what we know today, and I'm heading off to Copenhagen and a few other Scandinavian countries next week just to continue to look at some of their ways, of the way they live their life and what can be adopted around the world.

Speaker 4: 31:23

I was just in Mexico City. They certainly have the family-run multi-billion-dollar business nailed down, not that it doesn't come without its challenges, but we are going to move much more towards the village, if you will, almost back in time, because it's not about the big corporation anymore. They say the average company. Big company in the future is going to be 50 to 200 people, and then you're going to have the company of one, the big unicorn, and then you're going to have the company of one, the we going to barter? Are we going to be more providing subsistence to ourselves, our families, our communities? And that is the big unknown question at the moment.

Speaker 2: 32:27

If money goes away, how do you have a multi-billion dollar business?

Speaker 4: 32:30

There'll be a few of those people that do have the digital fluency because you are capturing, as I said earlier, the SaaS or any technological kind of innovation. There was a market that you target to. Now, in an AI economy, as jobs go away, you can capture those jobs and the salaries you are paying people. So there's still going to be services that need to be provided for, but we do have to services or functions. I used to say we'll have the barbell economy where you're either the AI engineer or you're the plumber. Now I say you've got to do both. Really, the generations of the future can have some degree of cognitive functionality before AI completely takes it over. We do need those physical skills in the interim before humanoids are fully developed.

Speaker 3: 33:30

Are you guys freaked out by this, or is this exciting to you, or is this exciting to?

Speaker 4: 33:34

you. It's exciting to me because I think we know, had it not been for COVID, we wouldn't have evolved, We'd still be in the same kind of mindset. And so when we think about the problems of the environment, right, we don't need to drive to work anymore. You go to a place like Copenhagen. Everybody is biking. Things become more localized. So I think we had this great big globalization and if anything the president is doing right now is bringing it back to the US, whatever your politics are manufacturing consumerism, and I think eventually that's going to become more and more localized.

Speaker 3: 34:25

Knowing humans' capacity for change, and this is happening so quickly that will there be in the short term a lot of pain.

Speaker 4: 34:36

No matter what your religious perspectives are, there is a belief that we're coming into the era of the feminine, and in that feminine it is more about the heart rather than the head. We've been chasing capitalism for so long, and the haves and the have-nots, the dichotomy and the spread continues to get larger and larger. And, to your point, has that made us happier, having money, or has it made us more lonely? Because we're always on the chase, even among the world's richest men. It's just a continuous battle. Who's on top? Who cares? How much money do you really need?

Speaker 4: 35:18

And so I do think we will be in a position where we will have more time to give back in ways that families need. Particularly children need. They need that love and support. And there's something very beautiful about that family farm, with those children getting up at 3 am and all working together to contribute to the family wealth. And I think it's scary because, again, we've been in this kind of world of work that we've known for 150 years now. But we will have to evolve. We don't have a choice. With or without the AI hype, it's happening. So we're not going to have a choice, but to evolve at this time.

Speaker 2: 36:02

The beauty of this. It brings us back to a place for why we're all here anyway, which is to live, because I think one thing that I heard as a common theme throughout COVID post-COVID was this mass reflection that took place because people finally had an opportunity to slow down and remove the blinders of the hamster wheel that they were just on and they're like whoa, I didn't realize how much of my life I'm missing on, and so it's interesting. It seems pretty optimistic to me, although I think there's a lot to work through and there may be a lot of scary things too, but at the same time it gives us the opportunity to be just human beings and exist.

Speaker 3: 36:41

What about the people that are like freaked out? We talk to people all the time that are I'm going to lose my job, AI is going to take my job. You've got obviously anthropic guy saying you're not going to have a job. What do you say to those folks?

Speaker 1: 36:56

I would say it's not black or white. I have a job and I don't anymore. If you have skills that you want to develop, if you have things that you're passionate about, start chasing them now and don't worry about the certifications or the college degrees. That stuff is irrelevant. Just build your skills alongside AI and there will be a place for you, whether it's gig economy 3.0, whether it's in a creator economy world. Youtube has shown us that you can make a video on anything and you can find a following and make money off of that. A decentralized gig economy will be more than that. It'll be what skills do you have? Let's apply it. In these ways, ai will be able to match you on projects. You don't have to look for clients. You don't have to beg companies to hire you with your cover letter. It'll be as easy as opening an app and getting started. But definitely hone those skills. God. The death of the cover letter, please go.

Speaker 2: 37:50

I was going to say you just made every employee happy to hear that.

Speaker 4: 37:53

I don't know if you guys are of the generation. I actually had to mail it in the mail.

Speaker 3: 37:57

Oh yeah.

Speaker 4: 37:58

Oh yeah, you didn't have to go through that, but I'm a little bit more draconian.

Speaker 2: 38:12

I am wake the hell up, wrap it round, and this is to get to know you better as human beings and your personal POVs on a couple of things. It's 2030. In one word, or one sentence what's work? Going to look like Dead.

Speaker 1: 38:34

Decentralized.

Speaker 2: 38:36

What's one thing about corporate culture you'd like to see disappear for good?

Speaker 4: 38:41

All of it.

Speaker 1: 38:44

Management.

Speaker 2: 38:46

Interesting. Okay, what's the greatest opportunity that most organizations are missing out on?

Speaker 4: 38:55

Treating their people as human.

Speaker 1: 38:59

AI.

Speaker 4: 39:01

Okay.

Speaker 2: 39:03

What music are you listening to right now? What's on your playlist Keeping you happy?

Speaker 4: 39:08

I'm going to Coldplay tomorrow night. Oh, that's amazing.

Speaker 2: 39:14

Do you have a favorite?

Speaker 4: 39:15

song from their albums oh many.

Speaker 2: 39:17

Just love it. Yeah, okay, how about you, josh?

Speaker 1: 39:22

Yeah, all of my early 2000s punk rock fans. They're all putting out albums now. So we've got some All-American Rejects in there, some Jimmy World. They're keeping me happy by feeding me more music.

Speaker 2: 39:35

Yeah, Listen, Gen X and the millennials and Xennials. Over here we have the best generation of music coming up. In that time Everyone's coming back.

Speaker 1: 39:43

No one can argue that.

Speaker 2: 39:44

No, what are you guys reading right now? It could be audio book too. No judgment.

Speaker 1: 39:53

I'm reading Open Talent right now. It's a book that actually came out Harvard Business Review Press about the same time as ours, very much in the same vein as the work that we wrote about, but it's very much talking about the now of work, which is how do we open up our workforces to a talent marketplace or an internal gig economy.

Speaker 2: 40:15

So it's very fascinating marketplace or an internal gig economy. So it's very fascinating. Yeah, we we had john on the pod recently. It was an awesome book and very in line with also your concepts as well in terms of that portfolio work of the future. So it's really good. Who do you?

Speaker 1: 40:39

I am a work nerd, so I all of the greats the Adam Grants, the Marcus Buckinghams come to mind. There's a lot of great work, social media individuals right now who are doing some great work. So a shout out to Chris Donnelly, there Just changing work, one TikTok at a time.

Speaker 4: 41:00

Yeah, and I hit it more from a historical perspective, of a lot of women who were the first Amelia Earhart, just somebody I admire greatly, even someone like Oprah, who understood the concept of ownership rather than just being a successful broadcaster. So people who really broke the mold and were first and likely told no quite often and just continue to persevere.

Speaker 1: 41:30

Yeah, I like that. And shout out to Debra, who is a modern Amelia Earhart in my mind. She does all the value she puts on conferences in Silicon Valley of these powerful women who are making big waves in the investment space, innovation space, keeping that trend moving forward. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 41:50

So what's one piece of advice you want everyone to know? And it doesn't necessarily we're going to get to the advice you want employees to have at the end. So this could be personal or professional, but if you were talking to someone you care about, what's one piece of advice you would give them today that you'd want them to take away To?

Speaker 4: 42:06

take risks. There are no wrong answers. I was always that person and this is something I do see, quite a dichotomy between men and women, not to generalize. But men will just jump and women will come to the edge of the cliff and it's almost analysis by paralysis, by analysis. At this stage, you got to try a lot of things and figure out what sticks, and there are no wrong answers and there's nothing embarrassing or just by. I don't even want to call it failure, because you learn along the way. The worst thing is to not try.

Speaker 1: 42:44

I love that, debra. The worst thing is to not try. It's so true. I would say and this tends to be aligned with the content that we write about is prioritize skills over experience. I have a younger brother who's considering going to college right now and he's hey man, is it worth it? I'm seeing a lot of stuff about it, and when I was a kid there was no other option. It was like go to college, that's the only way to get skills. But nowadays there are so many other options to learn and grow, and so I would say don't worry about the piece of paper and learn and grow. And so I would say don't worry about the piece of paper. And, yes, college is a great experience. The community side of it is great, but you need to make sure that you are at least graduating with skills that are going to be attractive in the marketplace.

Speaker 3: 43:27

This has been an amazing conversation and super appreciate the glimpse of what's actually going on today and what will be coming and how people can get on the bus for their own benefit. You both are doing work and keeping up to date with this. As it's changing every two weeks, how can our listeners stay?

Speaker 1: 43:45

connected with you. Find us on LinkedIn Debra Perry-Pershoni or Josh Dreen. The Works for the Institute is there as well. We love to chat about any of the challenges that you are facing and love to connect Debra Josh thanks so much for joining us today.

Speaker 3: 44:00

Thank you for having us.

Speaker 2: 44:02

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.

The Work of Your Life

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Work of Your Life with Joan Burke

Culture isn’t a checkbox, it’s the secret weapon behind every high-performing organization. Join HR visionary Joan Burke as she unveils her ‘Work of Your Life’ blueprint from DocuSign to Responsys, showing you how to transform managers into master coaches, ignite engagement, and make retention your ultimate growth engine.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

So if you really care about the success of your organization, if you care about revenue, then you got to care about the people who are leading the organization and your talent. It is a no-brainer.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Welcome to your Work. Friends. I'm Francesca and I'm Mel, and we're breaking down work so you get ahead. For those of you that don't know, every year, mel and I sit down and think about what are the topics that we want to talk about, and then we think about the guests we want, and we're always looking for people that are actively in it. They're either a really deep subject matter expert, they're on the line in the seat doing the role and they're really able to think about how you get some of this stuff done. So we can always make work better, and one of the things that we were always wondering about are how do you create these cultures where people feel like they can really do their best work? And that brought us to Joan Burke.

Speaker 2: 1:02

Joan, if you don't know, her is just a real deal CHRO. She is now a board member, she's an advisor. She's been a chief people officer at places like DocuSign, marketo Responses. She's been a CHRO at small companies, major companies, in multiple different industries. She's been there, she's done that and she's been able to create these cultures where people can do the work of their lives, and we wanted to talk to her about how she did that. What did you think of this conversation, mel?

Speaker 3: 1:34

I loved it because as an HR person lifelong HR person like Joan I really appreciate the hard line that she took in every interview, which was she's human-centered and it's human first and if that doesn't align then it's not the right fit for her. And because of that alignment she's been able to go in and build these beautiful workplaces. I'm just really inspired by the legacy she leaves behind and the message it leaves for others.

Speaker 2: 1:59

It takes a whole village to create a culture where people feel like they can do the work of their lives. Joan gives you the playbook for how she did this, what needed to be in play at DocuSign, at Responsys. She's. Also gave us some tips If you're not in these types of companies, what you can do yourselves to create the work of your life and if you're interviewing, what you can look for and some questions you can ask to see if a company is going to enable you to do the work of your life. This conversation, to me, was just fantastic. Joan's the real deal, and with that, here's Joan.

Speaker 3: 2:41

At DocuSign, you really created something super special, right? It was a culture where that employee experience enabled a lot of folks to, as you call it, do the work of their lives. In today's environment, things are changing. How do you make the business case to do that today?

Speaker 1: 3:02

So the business case is the same as the business case was when we did it in DocuSign. I joined them in 2017. Even though it's an employer's market, the best talent always has options. You should never walk away from that or feel as though I have to prioritize revenue. I have to prioritize this and I don't have time or this isn't important. It is as important now as it was when we were doing it.

Speaker 1: 3:26

Now, when we were doing it hyper competitive, the market was crazy. Everybody's trying to get good talent. Now. I would say it's important to do that because you need to keep your good talent. The pendulum will swing. It will go from being an employer's market to being an employee's market at some point in time, and the companies that invest in their people now, when that happens, they're not going to see them walking out the door. They're going to have an increase in retention and I think it's a false narrative to say it's an either or. If you're going to prioritize a business, you're going to prioritize people. So it's absolutely as important now as it was seven years ago, when the market was very different than it is today.

Speaker 3: 4:07

Francesca and I often say people fuel your business. So absolutely Both are so super important right Well, at the end of the day, if you think about it, revenue happens because you've got great talent.

Speaker 1: 4:17

These things do not happen on their own. It always is people that are responsible for that success in organizations, always.

Speaker 3: 4:24

Oh, and they're the base of the business.

Speaker 2: 4:26

Yeah, so you have a very good point. I think the thing that won't change is that people want to be able to do work and do the good work and to do the work of their lives. I don't think that's going to change. I really don't that intrinsic need want desire. At DocuSign. That was what you were really striving for people to have is had some great partnerships in the leadership team there.

Speaker 1: 5:08

Certainly Dan Springer, the CEO, scott Ulrich, who was initially the CMO, became the COO. These are people who totally got it and we thought really long and hard about how do we differentiate DocuSign and so candidate is going to be looking at a number of different companies. What is going to make them want to come to DocuSign? If a candidate is going to be looking at a number of different companies, what is going to make them want to come to DocuSign versus go to Adobe, go to Google? How do we make sure, also, that the values that we stood for authentically DocuSign and not ones that you could go to any website and pick up the words and they're fine, but there's nothing special about it? This is where the working life came in. This is what we said. People, as you just said, francesca, people want to do great work. Employees do not come to work to do a crappy job. They don't. They don't come to work to do a boring job. They come to work because they want to succeed, they want to contribute and they want to do a great job. So we thought, looking back, when people view their career, what we hoped is that people would say donkey, sign. That's where I did the work of my life. This was a marketing thing, because Scott is a great marketer. We intentionally didn't say the best work of your life, because you don't need best. It's like the work of your life. That vacation I had the time of my life, so we had to operationalize it. We had to bring it to life and we talked about it as being actually really important and, in many ways, a personal statement. I, joe, wouldn't know what one of my employees' work of their life was until I spent time with them and we understood how we were going to help that person get there and what were the opportunities, what was the development? And then, when it came time to do our low engagement surveys, one of the questions we always ask is are you doing the work of your life? If you're not doing the work of your life, what do you need from the company? What do you need from your manager to do the work of your life? We put it into self-evaluations. We put it into feedback. It was an employment brand for us. Your recruiters are going to go to job fairs, they're going to have a booth, they're going to have a banner. It might as well be something cool that makes some sense, and it did. Our recruiters would say people would go by and say, whoa, work your Life, what's that all about?

Speaker 1: 7:18

There were a lot of components to the work of your life. We also invested very heavily in our managers in terms of developing and training them. We had a work your life management program that was based on four pillars. That were pillars that we believe were unique to DocuSign, that we want to help be our managers. So it was very real and I'll give you an example. I was on LinkedIn the other day and there's a woman who I hired, probably about six months before I left DocuSign day, and there's a woman who I hired probably about six months before I left DocuSign. She just left now. So we're talking three years ago. She was talking about going into the organization, but when she was talking about DocuSign, she said I did the work of my life. So I thought, wow, it stuck. It stuck, at least for people who were there. I think when we created that program, the work your life starts up.

Speaker 2: 8:04

That, to me, is a real test. It's one of the real tests of how do you have a brand that you know sticks, and one is just people using the language, which is huge. And what I love about the work you did, whenever I think about a brand and thinking about if you're going to say we want you to be able to do the work of your life no-transcript DocuSign stood for, which is an environment and the climate.

Speaker 1: 8:59

And we say DocuSign helps people, it saves paper, paper saves trees. So we're all about DocuSign for forests. And I would talk to candidates and I could see the excitement, enthusiasm when I would say let me tell you what we're about, let me tell you about this work you're doing, let me tell you how much we care about the environment in the world. There were a lot of really great components of the DocuSign culture that kind of came together in a way that I think made people feel really good about the organization. And one of the things you might ask is how did you know that it really delivered results for the company? And I think it's hard to take up one program and say, okay, I could connect the dots and this is the exact revenue we got from this because of that. But I can tell you that every time we did anything around this, anytime we talked about the work-year life and when we would fortunately for us get great reviews from our employees on Glassdoor, we saw an incredible spike in the number of resumes that were coming in. People want to work for a company that they feel good about.

Speaker 1: 10:02

Dan Springer is the CEO. His approval rating on Glassdoor was 98. We were always in like the top 15 companies in technology. That's how we can say it made a difference because our employees cared about writing great reviews, and those are the only reviews we cared about. Docusend was not a pay-to-play company. We were not going to ever be informed. We were never going to pay to be part of some sort of a best place to work. That's what we felt the real value was.

Speaker 2: 10:30

That's what our employees really said. Yeah, out of curiosity, the day-to-day feel like the vibe. I am very much on vibes lately, joan, when you think about the vibe at Dacusign when the work of your life was hitting on all pistons After launch.

Speaker 1: 10:50

It's embedded in the DNA. What did it feel like, just as a leader and an employee? Once they got it and that was a more from an employee communication perspective we would do mid-year feedback sessions. So it wasn't about evaluations, it was just feedback, and they were having conversations with their managers and we would really target those disingenuous about work your life, figure out whether this is working for people. So there was some excitement, enthusiasm. We went into a pandemic and the world changed overnight in March of 2020. Now, I would say, because we had built such a foundation with our employees about caring about them, about their development, about work your life, we were able to carry that through during the pandemic.

Speaker 1: 11:32

For any sheep people officer, I will tell you that in that 47-year career I had the hardest work I ever did was running a people organization during the pandemic. Yeah, trying to figure out how do we best support our employees through their mental health, through daycare. Hiring managers get comfortable around hiring people over Zoom, where they're like I never hired somebody I didn't meet in person. You better do it because somebody else is going to hire them. So I think we took the same level of care during that period.

Speaker 1: 12:04

It looked a little different. It was around support. There was a lot of different things we did to help our employees be successful and it paid off, I would say, in states. So the work shifted a bit and I used to say the companies that are win when this pandemic is over are the companies where the employees feel really good and felt very taken care of during that period. And DocuSign did it. And the reason why DocuSign did it it was a leadership team that actually believed that this was ultimately what's good for the employees. It's going to be good for the company.

Speaker 2: 12:38

Yeah, it sounds like, even in, I would say, a crisis situation, which COVID, especially in HR it was. I'm just going to say bonkers, absolutely bonkers. Right, but I love the fact that lens to enable people to do the work of your life, to truly care for people. It sounds like you're making decisions through that lens. It didn't change just because we were going through a very traumatic time.

Speaker 1: 13:00

You feel like you turned the volume up on that care during that time turned it up and we saw the feedback that we got in our employee engagement surveys, which we did at least two a year or more. The last survey that we did, we got 6,000 comments in that survey 6,000 comments and Dan and I would read every single one of those comments. He'd read them. I was going to read them. There was no way I was not going to be a patient animal reading those comments. But they actually produce so much more richness than really just the raw data and we heard people talk about how well they felt supported by their manager, and not just from a corporate perspective, and not just the programs and the benefits that we put in place, which were all new.

Speaker 1: 13:47

During that period we were able to really pressure test that the work we were doing and the decisions we were making and the investments we were making in again these benefits and trying to make it easy for people to take care of their kids and work from home and have Zoom and parents who were ill, and it was thank you, Francesca. It was a bonkers period, there's no other word for it. And then, if you think about it, we went from that to the great resignation right which can I say something that lasted about 15 minutes, Like really that was done and now the pendulum has swollen completely the other way. So one of the things I would say is think about the time you're in and what you need to do, but know that things change and can change very quickly. You don't abandon all the things that matter to you, that are important to your organization, just because you can and you can.

Speaker 2: 14:46

Out of curiosity, how important is it to have your peer group, the CMO, the CTO, any of the C's your CEO or your board? How important is it to have them on board when you're trying to make these kind of decisions and, probably more importantly, stick to the plan when shit's hitting the fan? How important is that so?

Speaker 1: 15:05

well, I critical. If the only people who are enthused about these programs that are willing to keep them alive, as the HR team, that's doomed, it's just never going to work. But having that consistency when the shit hits the fan, you're still not going to walk away from your principles and your values as an organization. You're still going to invest in employees, you're still going to care about the development, you're still going to give them feedback. You cannot do that without the leadership involved. The reason why I think we were so successful at DocuSign is because Dan was so authentic in both belief in these programs and talked about it. We did all hands meetings every quarter and during COVID we did a lot more of them just to make sure we stayed connected to people. He never abandoned the things that were like the pillars of who we were as an organization.

Speaker 3: 16:04

You've done this several times over now DocuSign. You did this at Responsys. What was the secret sauce? You have to have the CEO.

Speaker 1: 16:11

If you don't have the CEO, then it's going to be lips of risk, because that's who people look to, that's their coming to door, that's where they're getting their insight and their messaging. And it has to be authentic. It cannot be lips of risk because people see through falsehoods and I always say the most important leadership is authentic leadership. It's be who you are and with all those organizations I've had really authentic leaders who would speak to the programs, who would talk about the importance of employees in the team and helping them be successful. It worked. But if you don't have that, I would say it's running uphill Everything dies If HR is running it.

Speaker 3: 16:49

you have to have that buy-in. Let's say your CEO is a skeptic. How do you fight through that skepticism?

Speaker 1: 16:57

You kind of build a business case right and the business case is talent drives success. It just does. And even in a bad job market, which we're in right now, the best talent always has options, always has options, how bad it is, they always do. So if you really care about the successful organization, if you care about revenue, then you got to care about the people who are leading the organization and your talent. It is a no-brainer in some ways. And here's what I am excited about.

Speaker 1: 17:25

I feel like in many organizations and particularly I'm working with some VCs they get it, they totally get it, and where a lot in the past you might say, oh VCs, I don't want their portfolio companies to spend a lot of money on marketing and HR, I'm seeing VCs actually pushing their portfolio companies and these are companies of maybe $30 to $50 million of revenue to hire that cheap people officer sooner than a lot of founders are ready to do, because founders, by the most part, they don't want to spend money. So I am extremely encouraged about that. I'm also seeing a lot of enthusiasm for people going to these smaller private companies and not so much like the big companies the Googles, the Metas that people went to. They're feeling like they're getting an opportunity to really be very hands-on, to be part of a successful organization, to see where their contribution is actually making a difference on a daily basis, with less bureaucracy, maybe less politics. So I think that there's a lot of opportunity for people to seek out these smaller private organizations.

Speaker 3: 18:34

I coach a lot of folks who are being impacted by layoffs right now, so I'm seeing that trend as well. Even if they came from these big megas, they're looking at smaller orgs where they can actually feel the impact that they have. So that's tracking. When you think of pushback on budgets, we hear a lot around. Budgets are tightening up with everything that's happening with AI. Leadership's very focused on short-term results. Someone making the business case. What advice would you give to them?

Speaker 1: 18:59

I would say that the Work of your Life program at DocSign it was not a heavy investment at all. These were things we were already doing. We're already doing performance reviews. We were already doing employee engagement surveys. We already cared about what people felt on Glassdoor. We were already going to job fairs. It's not true that these things cost a lot of money. Get that off the table. Just say it's bullshit. Right here there is investment, for sure is when you're investing in developing people and particularly leaders. So when we created the Work your Life Management Program, that was an investment. We again decided that it was really extremely important to us to have great managers in the company. We needed to put together programs, we needed to design them, we needed to facilitate them. So there were certain places where you may be able to say, okay, I'm going to cut back a little bit on this one and maybe use some different approaches where I don't spend quite the same money, but caring about your corporate culture, being articulate about your corporate culture and reinforcing your corporate culture it doesn't cost money.

Speaker 3: 20:02

Those human components, those day-to-day interactions. That's free. You can change that tomorrow.

Speaker 1: 20:09

One of the things that we did at DocuSign is we had a mentor program and everybody wanted mentors, right. So we're like, all right, how are we going to make this, operationalize this and make this make sense? And we realized, when you ask somebody to be your mentor, it's a big deal right, and it's time this is going to take. But one of the things that we did, which is like a skinny version of a mentor program, is we said anybody will go and have a cup of coffee with you Half hour Well, great. So if somebody called me up and said, john, I was watching the all-hands meeting last month, I think you did a great job with the presentation. I'm really trying to work out skills. Can we have a cup of coffee in half hour and just talk about that? It's like absolutely so. There are ways to just skivvy back certain programs and things that are less intense or maybe not so time consuming and not so expensive. You just gotta be a little bit thoughtful and creative about it.

Speaker 3: 20:59

If your budget's tight, what are the three areas? You'd say? This is where you double down.

Speaker 1: 21:05

It's really about helping grow people. Managers we always cared about how we help individual contributors grow and succeed too. But at the end of the day, if I had a dollar of investment, I'm going to put 75 cents of it against managers and 25 cents against the individual contributors, because I know that ultimately the value that those individual contributors are going to get is because they've got a better manager who cares about their development, who cares about their career, who thinks about not just job opportunities but actually assignments that are going to help them grow and develop. And I always say that the most powerful thing we can do to help people grow is put them, give them on-job assignments to see how they stretch, see how they grow. The investment you make on the individual contributor side pays off by really overinvesting, maybe in the managers.

Speaker 3: 21:51

I love to hear it because I was just at a conference where a room full of people, when we asked how many people invested in their manager's training and development, maybe 5% of the room raised their hand, which was really disheartening to see. So you heard it here, folks 75 cents for your managers.

Speaker 2: 22:09

It's nuts to me. I'm going to make a Catholic Italian reference here, but you can cut this. So in Italian cooking, a lot of dishes start with the trinity, which is the onion, the carrot and the celery. It is the substance that makes everything right, it's the base, mirepoix, if you will. And I always think the trinity of talent development is onboarding, manager development and coaching. If you had to pick three and manager development, you're very good. Point, joan, 75 cents of that, right. The biggest onion little bit of carrot, little bit of celery. The onion is the manager development. The data's there, the results are there. You could do absolutely no formal training whatsoever, but if you had an amazing manager, you're set.

Speaker 1: 22:54

I love that. I've never heard about the Trinity Battalion cooking. I'm going to use that. Seriously, no gosh, God, really no. We grew up Irish. My mother was Italian. That's great.

Speaker 2: 23:04

There you go, there you go. We're big fans. We're big fans. Let's say you're an employee, you don't have this. What can somebody do as an individual contributor, no matter what their circumstance? Create the work of their life for themselves.

Speaker 1: 23:16

Oh man, that's a tough one. Yeah, I know they're not in a powerful position to be able to do that, which many people are not. Sometimes I say find it elsewhere, and I'm not saying leave your job right. For some people it might be leave your job, but for many others that's unrealistic. It just is not the right market for people to do that.

Speaker 1: 23:39

But find your tribe right. Find the people who are like-minded, who have the same sets of values. Find that network where, through connection and through conversations and through learnings about how people are dealing with those challenges inside their organizations, that you can take back for yourself to be able to say I'm not getting from my company, but I am getting what I need from this group of people up there. One of the things that's difficult is developing a network is hard, it takes a lot of work, but it can be so rewarding. I remember during the pandemic I had this network of about 20 chief people officers and we met every week for like just an hour and it was the good, bad and the ugly advice in terms of the thing that was working, the things that weren't working. It was so important, it was so powerful that if you don't have that if you can find a way to create that, I'm just, I have just always thought that could be incredibly rewarding to just have whatever mind appears.

Speaker 2: 24:44

It's interesting to see what other people are doing commiserate on the good, bad and ugly, because that's every job. There's always things. There's something so important about being part of a community. Just like, you're not alone in this, no matter what stage you are in your career, because there's a lot of human messy feelings that go along with every single stage in your career.

Speaker 1: 25:02

Absolutely. I could go into depth with DiWalt on this call about those crappy jobs I had and how hard they were and the lesson I learned and how I hoped during that period. And that's like experiences, right. The other thing I would say is you can create a network of people who have similar values at you but are at different stages of their career, so have seen the work and experienced it and can look back and say, all right, let me tell you, when I was in my 30s, the world was different, but a lot of the experiences and the challenges that you have there's definitely similarities. So here's how I cultivate people for all different generations and I think you'll find it very worthwhile. Best advice.

Speaker 2: 25:48

Curious about. On the flip of this, where you're interviewing for a company, what are the tells? What are the tells that say this is a great culture, this is a culture that's going to support you in doing the work of your life? Are there tells people can see from the outside?

Speaker 1: 26:02

There are. You want to make sure that it's not just the recruiters who are telling you that story. Their job is to serve a certain organization. You need to drill down. So when you're talking to an organization and hopefully having a number of different interviews with people so you get a good sense of that company and some of them would be peers, some of them would be a manager is that you're paying very good attention to what they're saying and you're actually teasing out from them whether or not what you're hearing from these recruiters if in fact they're real McCoy.

Speaker 1: 26:30

And then you check out Glassdoor, you check out Blind, you look at what people are saying inside the organization to know whether it's for real or whether it is just give talk. So you got to do your own homework and it does help, as I said, if you know your why and you can actually articulate your why, to have the people sitting across from you, from the company, explain why your why is either going to work or not work in this company. You should put them on the spot a little bit in a nice kind of way. That's how you tease this out, right.

Speaker 3: 27:02

What were some of your go-to questions? To tease it out.

Speaker 1: 27:05

Well, I think the biggest thing would be to say tell me what people three layers down this organization are saying about this company. Tell me what you're hearing from your teams. And if I was to just go around right now and go from desk to desk and just kind of casually stop and ask people questions what is it like to work here? What would they tell me? Would they tell it to? What would they say? And ask those questions and say what are your employee engagement scores? What are people saying about the employee experience here? Have you seen progress or are things going backwards? So it's just doing a lot of due diligence and interviewing the people in the company as much as they're interviewing you with you.

Speaker 3: 27:53

There's what you ask in the interview, but then there's what really happened when you get there on day one, your first 90 days in a company. How do you further tease this out? Like, how do you figure out who are the secret decision makers? What are the things that are going to make it a better experience? What are your questions in those first 90 to help you?

Speaker 1: 28:08

Who are the savvy insiders? You got to figure them out and some of that is asking. Again, it's asking a lot of people, a lot of questions and owning your own onboarding right. So it isn't just I'm the manager, here's the playbook, you have the free people to talk to. It's like all right. I got to drill down even more. I want to speak with these four people over here. I want to know more about what's going on in the IT department, not relying on a routine onboarding process, but create something for yourself that's robust.

Speaker 1: 28:43

And I would also say, as an insider from Chief People Officer perspective, onboarding is so important. Those first 90 days, those first six months, it's how you show up, because you want to know what's going on, but you want people to know you. My mother used to say it's not who you know, it's who knows you that matters. And that's really right, mom, that's what I would do. I would be really thoughtful about who I wanted to meet with and just make it happen. Just make it happen. And people don't say no, they really don't, you're new to the organization, they want to meet the new person.

Speaker 2: 29:17

I'll tell you I have a few regrets looking back on my career, A few. There's times where I'm like I should not have handled that the way I did I did. Life goes on. You learn right, you live, you learn. But one of the red thread regrets or if I could do it over again is I wish I would have done what you just suggested, which was get out there and meet people, Ask for the coffee, Get a habit of just asking for the coffee. Even when I was an individual contributor, I wish I would have done that, because it makes it so much more easy and enjoyable to get work done.

Speaker 1: 29:50

Absolutely, absolutely. That is part of working your life right. It's just feeling like you're part of an organization that you're connected to. Connections are so important. At the end of the day, we look back and say, did I feel like I made a difference here and who are the people that I can look and say, oh my God, look at the tribe. I was able to be part of that built up, part of something. Completely agree with you, francesca. Very important.

Speaker 3: 30:11

What you created super valuable and, I think, unfortunately a lot of ways, unique, and I hope you get to a place where this is more the standard and not the exception. How can we get there?

Speaker 1: 30:23

Back to what I was saying earlier about the pendulum swinging.

Speaker 1: 30:26

People and leaders could be mindful of the fact that things are going to change and the companies that continue to be committed throughout a sluggish job market and challenging competitive environment, they stay true to who they are. They're the ones who are going to win at the end of the day. They're the ones who are not going to lose their talent. Let's think about this. On the other side, all of those law firms that capitulated to the administration and actually in many ways destroyed their brand, hurt their culture and their values, and they've had some of their top lawyers who are walking out the door saying I'm not going to be part of this Law students who got out of law school. They don't want to interview with those organizations. So there's a big price to pay for abandoning what managed you as an organization just because you can or because the times are tough. In fact, when the times are tough is when you really need to double down and just be even more vigilant about what matters to you and how you want to run your organization.

Speaker 3: 31:41

Joan, are you up for some rapid round questions?

Speaker 1: 31:46

I am ready.

Speaker 3: 31:48

This can be one word answers. This can be as long as you'd like to take it, but really quick. Whatever comes to top of mind, Okay jumping in. It's 2030. What's your prediction about what work looks like?

Speaker 1: 32:03

One exciting thing is, I think we're all going to have AI agents who are going to be reading our emails for us and making our travel plans and maybe scheduling our doctor's appointments. So those are things I'm super excited about. But I want to answer that question by saying here's what I hope. I hope that by 2030, the human-centered jobs are more valued and are higher compensated, and by that I mean the teachers, the EMTs, the caregivers, the therapists. I hope that AI will have helped automate so much of the roles that can be automated that we will really see the need for these people to be doing the great job that they do. That's my hope. I like that.

Speaker 3: 32:46

That's a good one. What is one?

Speaker 1: 32:51

thing about corporate culture that you'd like to just see die already. Personality assessments, color, myers-briggs Dis I like to see them all go far away. I believe that they label people, and I have seen them do more damage inside an organization than them.

Speaker 3: 33:08

I agree with you. I think they're fun and it's interesting if it's like personal introspection. But too often they can be weaponized and people make them their whole personality when that's not the intent.

Speaker 1: 33:19

Let me just tell you I was talking to somebody who was leaving the organization and they were looking for their next role. We were talking and they said they did colors in their organization. This person said every single person on the HR leadership team was a red. So that kind of said you're not a red, you're probably not going to be on the HR leadership team. Anyway, that is a bugaboo of mine which I've actually had for some time.

Speaker 3: 33:39

Okay, what is the greatest opportunity that orgs are actually missing out on?

Speaker 1: 33:45

So I think it's cross-functional data. Data exists in silos inside organizations. First of all, we know it's not pristine and I think part of this whole going to AI is going to be like cleaning up data and making it good. But if companies can use the power of cross-functional information, they're going to be able to streamline decision-making, become way more efficient as organizations.

Speaker 3: 34:12

How many times have we all worked in an organization and found out three other departments are working on a similar project Exactly? A little more personal. What's on your playlist right now? What music are you listening to?

Speaker 1: 34:24

So I'm listening to a guy named Leif Volderweck Okay, check him out. One of his songs I really like Transatlantic Flight. I also love Kim Petraeus. She does a version of the old Kate Bush song Running Up that Hill, and if you like that song and there's many different versions of it I would say check out her version of it and her video of doing it at Outside Lands in San Francisco in 2022. She's so cool and it's just completely joyful. And then I'm a big fan of Florence, yeah.

Speaker 3: 34:57

I love her. You did a really beautiful collaboration. Do you know the artist Blood Orange? Yes, have you heard her collaboration with him? I have not. So this is a great tip. Very good, put that in your as Francesca says, be in your bonnet for this weekend. Go look it up, it's really good. What are you reading right now?

Speaker 1: 35:16

It could be audiobook or old school pages, so I'm an old school pages person, so right now I'm reading the Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich person, so right now I'm reading the Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich. I stopped on the Pulitzer, I think, in 2020. But I would say that the book that I've loved the most that I've read in the last eight months has been James by Percival Everett, and I would highly recommend that book.

Speaker 3: 35:36

What do you really admire? Could be personal, professional.

Speaker 1: 35:40

There's so many people in my life and historically I admire, but I'm going to pick one person Right now. I'm going to pick Laura Steinem. We need to stand on the shoulders of the people who came before us talking about and reporting on women's issues, on reproductive rights, on equal pay, on health care. And the thing I love about her, she's 91 years old. She's still with us. She absolutely never sold out. She's my shout out, she's my hero right now.

Speaker 3: 36:15

What's one piece of advice that you've received, or just something that's your personal piece of advice that you want someone to know you would give everybody today?

Speaker 1: 36:24

If I could pick a couple, because there's career and then there's personal. So if I think about career advice, I want to say careers are long. Mine was very long, was 47 years long, and that means that you're going to have some jobs that are crappy jobs, and, rather than running away from them, a lot of those crappy jobs are incredibly important and meaningful. They're either the lessons you needed to learn, they're people you needed to know, or, in one case, it was a ticket I needed to punch. It was experience. I needed to get that next job, which was my goal, and so embrace the crappy jobs. They're going to happen the way of life.

Speaker 1: 37:07

The other thing I would say, though, from a career perspective, is know your brand and who you are. Know your why, know what is important to you. So let me give you an example. When I would meet with CEOs and I was doing job interviews for chief people officer roles, I would always say to them I believe the best human resources, I believe my job as the head of human resources is to help managers be the best managers they can be. Only people who work for me at HR is my team, the rest of the people who work for managers and how they feel about the organization is oftentimes how they feel about their managers. Do they feel like they're getting feedback and they're being coached and they're being developed? So I would say, if you don't agree with that, perfectly fine, but that means I'm not the right person for you, I'm not right for the role. Go hire somebody else. So that's just an example of a philosophy that I developed early on that stayed true for me throughout my career and I would use it as an evaluation tool as I was deciding where I was going to go next. And then the personal advice and this is not profound. Everybody on this who's listening to this has probably heard this, but it's a lesson that we don't always take to heart, and I can even give you a recent example that I did not, and I regret it. Make sure you tell the people in your life who have been meaningful to you, who you've learned from, what they've done and how they've helped you, and be specific.

Speaker 1: 38:36

When I was starting my career many years ago, I was at a large financial services company in Boston and as a very junior person, I had the opportunity to work with the CEO of that company, and it was remarkable that I had that opportunity because he was here and I was like and I got to know him and we worked on a few projects and I learned so much from him and I had so many great stories about this person as a human, as a leader. Two months ago he died at 98 years old and I wrote his wife a note and I said I want to tell you stories about your husband that come from a young professional. And I told her these stories. She wrote back to me and she said it was very profound for her to hear these and she said they were so jizzing with Jim.

Speaker 1: 39:22

The stories were so Jim and she said I wish he could have read this. And I'm like I wish I could have written it. I wish I had written it. So don't wait till that person's gone and you're telling their spouse. It's great to tell their spouse, but let them know when you have the opportunity.

Speaker 2: 39:37

What a gift to give someone to bring the spirit of their loved one back through the story. That's a really beautiful gift to give someone. Joan, it's been awesome to chat with you today. Tell us where people can find you.

Speaker 1: 39:51

I'm on LinkedIn Also. I'm part of the Chief People Officer Forum, so if there's anybody who is a Chief People Officer and wants to join a network, to build community and wants to quarter, have topics of interest and experts who are going to be able to talk about topics, we've got one coming up next week and it's all like AI. What is this going to mean for you people, officers?

Speaker 2: 40:10

We will link to your LinkedIn and the CPO forum. There's nothing stronger than community, so definitely check that out, joan. Thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you, joan.

Speaker 3: 40:19

It was great to be with you. This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, Mel Plett and Francesco 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. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye friends.