In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts Dr. Britt Andreatta, an internationally recognized thought leader who uses her unique background in leadership, neuroscience, psychology, and education, to create brain-science based solutions for today’s workplace challenges. Britt is the former CLO for Lynda.com (now LinkedIn Learning) and she has over 10 million views worldwide of her online courses. She regularly consults with corporations, universities, and nonprofit organizations on leadership development and learning strategy. Britt is the author of several brain science-based books including Wired to Grow (about how the brain learns), Wired to Resist (on how we move through change), and Wired to Connect (how to create great teams through inclusion and belonging). She was recently named a Top 20 Learning Influencer for 2021.

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INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

Britt offers great perspectives on leadership, learning, and teamwork in Hybrid settings. She applies research from neuroscience into the workplace to find new ways of operating for both leaders and teams. With Hybrid and remote work here to stay, we have emphasized the need for more intentional connections and Britt reveals the science behind why it’s so important.
Some key takeaways from this talk:

• Britt provides insights into progressive ways to train and create learning experiences. She defines the three-phase model of learning in which we learn something, we remember it, and then we change our behavior (which she notes can take 40-50 repetitions). She also discusses the Growth Culture Model which helps managers and leaders to understand the different ways to bring out someone’s potential. (8:57)
• As connection was a main theme of this talk; Britt points out that from a neuroscience perspective our brains don’t perceive video calls as the same form of connection as in-person. We are losing opportunities to build trust and rapport among colleagues when in fully remote settings and need to emphasize intentional connection in these settings. (15:17)
• Britt recommends bringing teams together to develop trust and connection during team building stages prior to collaborating with one another. She also recommends leaders give teams more freedom when it comes to busy work and tasks, but to come together in-person as much as possible when collaborating and working as a collective. (27:41, 30:20)
• Sue and Britt also discuss issues surrounding psychological safety and burnout. Britt provides some intriguing data on how our brains experience exclusion the same way we experience physical pain, which points to the importance of creating safe and inclusive workplaces. Addressing burnout is also crucial to maintaining the psychological safety of teams and preventing higher rates of resignation. (11:43, 35:10)

To increase connection throughout organizations, leaders must create cultures of support, acknowledgment, and trust. By being available and accessible to others, through virtual office hours, check-ins, or drop boxes, others can bring forward feedback and ignite deeper conversations. There’s no one single magic formula, but Britt encourages leaders to look at what will fit best for the people in their organization. Hybrid work is here to stay, so adopting practices that foster connection and collaboration early on are crucial to creating long-lasting and productive teams.

FAVORITE QUOTES

• “The Growth Culture Model…helps managers and leaders make that really critical pivot from being an individual contributor that has people reporting to them, to being the facilitator of other people’s excellence. And it’s really a mind shift that their job is now to create the conditions for others to thrive, not to be a star producer themselves anymore.” (8:57)
• “I think the thing that drives it home for folks is the science on exclusion, and how damaging exclusion is…It turns out that human’s experience exclusion as a form of pain…And so, when people understand how powerful exclusion is and how powerful inclusion is, all sudden, they’re really committed to working on it.” (11:43)
• “So, the problem is, when we communicate through a screen, our body ultimately does not count it as real human connection, even though we can have conversations and other meaningful things can come out of it…In this Hybrid/remote world, teams that had a lot of in-person and trust-building time with each other before they were separated, held in there pretty well. I’m really worried about all the folks who onboarded during the last two years because while they’re very tasky with their team, and they may feel some sense of connection, their body didn’t get to anchor in all that stuff that happens when we’re in person.” (15:17)

RESOURCES

Dr. Britt Andreatta:
Website | LinkedIn
Books:
Wired to Grow: Harness the Power of Brain Science to Learn and Master Any Skill
Wired to Connect: The Brain Science of Teams and a New Model for Creating Collaboration and Inclusion
Wired to Resist: The Brain Science of Why Change Fails and a New Model for Driving Success

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sue Bethanis 0:00
Welcome, everybody to WiseTalk. This is Mariposa’s monthly podcast providing perspectives on leadership. Today we are excited to welcome Dr. Britt Andreatta. Dr. Britt is an internationally recognized thought leader who uses her unique background and leadership, neuroscience, psychology and education to create brain science-based solutions for today’s workplace challenges. As a CEO of Seventh Mind, Inc. Britt draws on her unique background and leadership, and she unlocks the best in people and organizations. Former Chief Learning Officer for lynda.com, which is now LinkedIn Learning Britt is a seasoned professional with more than 25 years of experience. She regularly consults with businesses, universities and nonprofits on leadership development and learning strategy. She was recently named a top 20 influencer for 2021. She’s also the author of a lot of books, and most recently Wired to Connect: The Brain Science of Teams and a New Model for Creating Collaboration and Inclusion, Wired to Grow: Harness the Power of Brain Science to Learn and Master Any Skill and Wired to Resist: The Brain Science of Why Change Fails and a New Model for Driving Success. So I got all of them.

Britt Andreatta 1:08
Yes, you did great.

Sue Bethanis 1:10
Okay, great. So, I really want to welcome you. She’s joining us from Santa Barbara, which I’m sure it’s beautiful down there, because it always is. It actually is kind of Santa Barbara like here today, in San Francisco. It’s been beautiful weather. So before we start into hybrid, and some of the books and such, I just want to, I read your bio, but I also want to hear from you a little bit about your own personal journey, like what got you into neuroscience? Why did you decide to write these particular books? I mean, just talk a little bit about the personal side of it if you could.

Britt Andreatta 1:40
Absolutely, I mean, my doctorate I earned at UC Santa Barbara, and it’s an education, leadership and organization. So, I’ve always kind of been at that intersection of leadership and learning. And I worked at the University for many years, I created leadership development programs and ran freshman success courses. And then after I’d kind of built everything I wanted to build, I was ready to leave higher ed and Lynda Weinman and I who had been on a panel, and she’d been recruiting me for a while, and finally, we figured out what I could do. So, I popped over there as their Chief Learning Officer and was running leadership development programs. And then she wanted it all to go in the library. So, we filmed all my content. And pretty soon it was being consumed by people around the world and getting really great reviews. And I was in that role. I mean, I’m a lifelong learner. And I’m always, you know, I will always have a subscription to Scientific, American, and Nature. And I had started to kind of geek out a little bit on the neuroscience of stuff, which wasn’t really a thing when I was getting my doctorate. So I went back into the journals, and I was really researching for my own personal interest to be better at my craft. And I was amazed at everything I was finding about what we now know about how the brain learns. So that became the first well, first it became a lunch and learn and then it became a book and a keynote. And I thought, okay, good. I’ve done that. And then we were acquired, Lynda was acquired.

Sue Bethanis 3:04
We should be like Lynda, there’s really a Lynda, by the way, there’s a Lynda with a Y that actually exists. Yeah, there’s this. It’s not just a name. But yeah. So that’s good to know.

Britt Andreatta 3:13
We were acquired by LinkedIn, and I was certified, and all the change management programs. And we were in the middle of that acquisition, and I realized none of them actually worked. But none of them explained what I was going through. So, I thought, hmm, I wonder what brain science says about change. So that became my second geek out experience and Wired to Resist. And then I guess I, you know, I was like, I guess I’m doing this, I guess I’m going to be translating neuroscience to business topics. So naturally, the next place to go is teams and inclusion. And right now, I’m working on my fourth book, which is all about purpose. So that’ll come out next year, but I’m starting to do some, I’ve learned that I’m a better writer if I present it first and then turn it into a book. I’m starting to do the keynotes on that topic right now.

Sue Bethanis 4:00
Yeah, I’m with you on that. Same with me. I have to like test stuff out first before I write it down. Great. Well, I love that story. I love how you got into neuroscience. So, talk with us. Has it changed over the last 10 years, let’s say in terms of yeah, let’s I guess we could I mean, there’s less things I can ask you. But let’s focus on connection. And I think I want to probably focus mostly on the word connect, because it’s so prevalent right now with hybrid return to work or not return to work.

Britt Andreatta 4:25
Let me first start with learning, in terms of learning and how it’s changed in 5-10 years just because I wrote the first draft, or the first edition, and then I decided to make a second edition of the core of the book Wired to Grow five years later. And typically just so you know, this, someone can call a new edition, a second edition, if they change 20% of the book, of course, I set myself for what I thought was going to be an easy writing experience, you know, but so much had changed in the field. In that five years, I had to completely rewrite the whole book, it was 80% new material. So, some of the big things in learning that have changed as well, really understanding how our brain forms and stores memories, which of course is really important for learning professional or not, we’ve really started to understand habits and how we create habit change and sustained behavior change. And then of course, Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety – that’s a psychological concept. It definitely has pinnings, in neuroscience in terms of how we respond to threatening environments, so lots of big changes. And it really changes how learning professionals create learning experiences for others. So it touches the whole training and education field. And that’s honestly then touches everything else, because we can become better leaders, we can become better managers, we can become better parents, better citizens, all through learning. So for me, it kind of then spins off into everything else.

Sue Bethanis 5:49
Right. So, what has changed then, specifically in the learning field, if you will, from neuroscience, I mean, there was, we were applying neuroscience to learning 10 years ago. So, what have you picked up in those 10 years, that’s different from like, take habit forming, for example, I mean, we use the book Leader Habit a lot. And, you know, I got, he did a lot of research to help us realize, gee, it takes 60 days to learn habits like we knew this, we knew this intuitively. I’ve been talking to people about two months for, I don’t know, 25 years, but I didn’t have the research, right. So, talk to us a little bit about how the neuroscience has actually helped us perpetuate this a bit more.

Britt Andreatta 6:31
Well, now the research shows that it’s actually numbers of repetitions, it’s not days, so it’s 40 to 50 repetitions, on average, it takes to change or establish a new habit. So, if you do that behavior every day, you’re gonna get there pretty quickly, multiple times per day, very fast, once a month, gonna take you a long time, you might not have been repetitions to do it. So that now gives learning leaders the ability to craft and design their learning experiences. So, we can build those repetitions in a room and get people on that pathway faster.

Sue Bethanis 7:01
So 40-50 days. Yeah.

Britt Andreatta 7:04
You can currently predict when the grumbling goes away. So that’s one thing, the research on memory around that we, our brain likes to attach learning to something we always already know. So, our brain has kind of file folders and scientists called them schemas. And then you can have an experience live in multiple file folders. But essentially, when we recall a memory, our brain is going back, finding that file folder and feeding that information up to us. And how it goes back is it’s tied to a sensory, it’s tied to a sight, smell, a sound, and taste. So, we can now use that information to code learning through the main senses. And also, I use it now, I never teach anything without building it around a metaphor or a schema so that I’m attaching learning to something people already know. And that makes it much more sticky. And therefore rememberable, which is what we want, we want people to be able to use that information later.

Sue Bethanis 7:56
Give me an example of a metaphor you would use with somebody.

Britt Andreatta 8:00
So I’ve built from my – So after I wrote those books, what surprised me was so many people started asking for training, and I built it for my own clients. But now I sell my training solution. So, for example, my change training is built around the metaphor of hiking or mountain climbing. You know what it is. So, then every piece of content is affiliated with that metaphor in some way. And then I use imagery, because our brain thinks in pictures, not words, to really help kind of anchor that in people’s experiences. And later, they can see one of the slides and tell me what the content was because I’m intentionally using the science of how our brain finds information to, to work that in an intentional way.

Sue Bethanis 8:43
I love that I love the images. That’s great. So, um, let’s talk a little about your book and some of your models. So, you’ve got the growth culture model and a three-phase model of learning. Tell us a bit about those, and then how we’re using those every day.

Britt Andreatta 8:57
Yeah, so I’ll start with the three-phase model of learning. I mean, I was taking all the neuroscience research and kind of breaking it down to there’s three phases, we learn something, we remember it, and then we do it, we change our behavior. So, learn, remember, do, but then that’s all housed within the context of psychological safety, because you need psych safety in order to take risks and make mistakes. So learning professionals would probably use that model, and it would help them figure out how to design and deliver the training for its optimal effectiveness. The growth culture model – that’s a model around what brings out an individual employee’s potential in a workplace and it’s a model that I teach managers and leaders so they understand the different levers they can push to bring out someone’s potential. And it’s around the metaphor of a tree and the employee being the tree. They’re sitting in psychological safety, the soil. So, everything comes from that. The trunk is their growth mindset and their workstyle, how they approach things, and then you’ve got their output and their skills. But then we’re really talking about managers or leaders are in the role of kind of the gardener or the orchard manager. They’re the ones that are responsible for creating the conditions for people to grow. And so, I also find that this particular model helps managers and leaders make that really critical pivot from being an individual contributor that has people reporting to them, to being the facilitator of other people’s excellence. And it’s really a mind shift that their job is now to create the conditions for others thrive, not to be a star producer themselves anymore.

Sue Bethanis 10:34
Yes, this is great. This is great setup for sort of mirroring. I’m going to skip over to Wire to Connect, because I love the voodle that you did on a connection. And I sent it to the people I just work with today, because we were talking basically, the premise today was hybrid culture, and how the first question I asked them is like, how are you connecting with your folks? So, they’re actually doing a lot of connection. But what I want to marry here is, how do we help people and be my whole thing is how do we be more intentional about the connection? I mean, I don’t think anyone’s going to say we, you know, you have the data, but no one’s going to argue that connection is unhealthy. I mean, the connection is helping, we want to be connected. I don’t think anyone would argue with that. But we have to be more intentional about it. So that’s where this this three-phase model comes in of learning. And how do we get people to do that? One of the things I did today with them which they got, which they liked is that there was actually like, everything I was doing with it was actionable, like I said, ‘Okay, so what are you going to do about you’, we said, ‘we heard all this noise, which one thing you’re going to do?’ That’s actionable. So that’s one way to do it. But tell me how you want to marry these how we with the idea that we want to want people to connect more in this zoom fatigue world? But how do we get them to do it?

Britt Andreatta 11:43
Yeah, so two things, I’m a firm believer that training has to be actionable. Otherwise, you can have a feel-good experience, but if you don’t actually drive behavior change training, it’s not worth the time and energy, so then we can apply that to anything and apply that to a change training, manager training, teams training. So absolutely, you know, we want people to know, things they can do to go back and make their team more connected, more productive, more positive, more inclusive. So first of all, it’s like I think people lean in more when they understand the why behind things. Science and neuroscience, because when I started describing these concepts, people immediately have an embodied memory of like, ‘Oh, I remember feeling that’, ‘I remember seeing that’, ‘I remember doing that.’ And then it’s about, again, getting real crisp about what are – you can’t flood people with too many things to do, right. So we have to be clear about okay, here are the key things you need to work on. Particularly with groups, you know, that I think the thing that drives it home for folks is the science on exclusion, and how damaging exclusion is. And the thing that blew neuroscientists away was that when they were studying exclusion, the pain center of the brain is what was lighting up on the MRI machines. Back that, but it turns out that human’s experience exclusion as a form of pain.

Sue Bethanis 13:01
Oh, my gosh, that’s awesome. That’s a great, that’s a great piece of data.

Britt Andreatta 13:05
Yeah. And social pain does not live in a different place than physical pain. There’s just- we’re so shocked that they thought well can – what happens if we give someone pain medication, and sure enough pain medication, you know, adjudicated the feeling of social pain. And this is one of the reasons I think we have an opioid epidemic is that people go on these painkillers for legitimate injuries, you broke your arm, you take that pain pill, it doesn’t make the break go away, it changes how your brain senses pain, and then it wears off and you take another pain pill? Well, while you’re on that pain pill for a legitimate physical injury, you’re getting this invisible, unspoken break from all your social pain, all the ways that you feel like you don’t fit in with your family or your community. If you’re a marginalized community, the ways in which your community is experiencing microaggressions or bias, you get a break from that. And then it’s time to cut off the pain pill because you’re healed. And yet, we don’t talk about all this other stuff. And so, when people understand how powerful exclusion is and how powerful inclusion is, all sudden, they’re really committed to working on it, and not just seeing it as a ‘Oh, yeah, check the box’ kind of thing.

Sue Bethanis 14:17
I’m gonna riff on this a bit. So, I would go so far to say, and tell me if I’m on the right track here, that part of exclusion and inclusion includes loneliness, the idea of exclusion causes loneliness, and pain. There’s another reason why people are doing these, on opioid epidemic, because we’re in the middle of a fricking pandemic that has caused a lot of loneliness and mental harm. I don’t know if that’s affecting our clients as much as other things in terms of loneliness. What I’m hearing you say is that there’s a connection between belonging and exclusion and connection, belonging connection with the opposite of exclusion loneliness. And it’s actually a physicality. So, talk with us more about that. And I guess that, whilst there, just say there’s if that’s causing the kind of pain and wonder people are in so much pain.

Britt Andreatta 15:17
Yeah, absolutely. And so I mean, we have an issue that I think is an issue in our society and the pandemic, just put it on 10x. Right. So, exclusion definitely causes feelings of isolation and loneliness. And then we know that the physical outcome of that is there’s it increases anxiety and depression, it increases illness, people just don’t have the same inflammatory response to things. The feelings are so uncomfortable, people start to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs. It leads to feelings of unworthiness and helplessness, and ultimately suicide. So, it’s really clear that exclusion, ostracism, isolation, loneliness are incredibly devastating. And then we now have an entire world where we were not physically together. Now, what’s interesting is we live in a hyper connected world, virtually, yes, yes, that’s right now, you know, lovely to meet you, Sue. But my brain knows I’m not really meeting with you, I can only see you from the collarbone up, you’re two inches tall, I can see my living room, I can see my backyard. So, my brain while we’re having this lovely communication knows we’re not really together. So, the problem is, when we communicate through a screen, our body ultimately does not count it as real human connection, even though we can have conversations and other meaningful things can come out of it. Which is why when you’re visiting, and many of us are starting to have this experience, I got to go to a conference last week. And it was just amazing to be around real humans in my tribe. When we get to be in person with other people. There’s just a level of relaxation and trust that you release. Yeah. And so, taking it to the rest of your question around in this hybrid remote world, teams that had had a lot of in person and trust building time with each other before they were separated, held in there pretty well. I’m really worried about all the folks who onboard and during the last two years, because while they’re very tasky with their team, and they may feel some sense of connection, their body didn’t get to anchor in all that stuff that happens when we’re in person. I mean, scientists don’t even still know how our brains achieve neural synchrony, how our brainwaves line up and stuff. There may be electrical impulses going through the air between our bodies that they can’t measure yet, nothing. We know pheromones play a role, and we lose pheromones on the screen. And even just right now, we’re 2d images, and our brain loses the ability to read those micro muscular differences. That tells us someone’s emotions. So, we lose so much. And yet we can be so productive. And I think the danger we’re in right now is, we have an illusion that we’re hyper productive, and we can’t quite see or measure all that we’ve lost, but we’re feeling it in our souls.

Sue Bethanis 17:57
I’m with you. I’m wondering though, while Zoom is not, or whatever want to call zoom, Google Meets, all of them, is not the best, I still think it’s better than phone and better than a lot of things. So, I mean, this having a pandemic 10 years ago would have been a very different thing. So, I think while it is 2D, we still get some of the pheromones, I guess.

Britt Andreatta 18:23
I call them good stuff. Yeah.

Sue Bethanis 18:26
So is neuroscience studying this in terms of like, what people are getting out of video?

Britt Andreatta 18:32
I mean, video is definitely better than just voice, and voice is better than just written text, right? Because all of these you start to see exacerbated layers of miscommunication and misunderstandings. I think the message for the world now is to find balance, right? And here’s what I talked about, in my book Wired to Connect, so much of what happens in those early meetings, when you bring a team together, that if you’re going to spend money on bringing people together, do it at the beginning when they’re building trust and getting to know each other. Once that’s in place, we can go long periods of time virtually and be fine. And then if there starts to be a lot of stress, or strain in the relationships, or tension and conflict, bring people back together because you’re using then all your biology to kind of help you communicate. With that said, technology is amazing and wonderful. I mean, I love that I get to connect with people around the world that I would never meet in person and connection. So it’s really about balance. You know, when we first went into the pandemic, a lot of learning leaders were worried that ‘Oh, once we push learning all online leaders are going to see the savings of that and never want to be in person.’ But good news is we all know that in person matters. We all feel it in our body. So, it’s now finding talents. So be judicious about when you bring people together. I’m just putting in the chat because some people are talking about my session that I did at ATV last week which was on the neuroscience as a purpose, I actually did it again today as a webinar for HR executive, the link lives on my LinkedIn. So go look for it and it was recorded and watch it for free. If you have to start a team virtually, which many of us have to do these days because we’re not in person you have to over index on get to know you activity. Because what we lost and where a lot of trust building happens is in those informal watercooler conversations. And those get lost when you go right into the agenda. And so, we have to build a way to create the virtual water cooler. Create times for people to share about what they did this weekend. And it’s all those little moments that we learn, oh, you have a dog. I do too. Or you saw that movie, I loved it too. Or oh my gosh, you know, those are all the moments where we learn about each other. And we have to intentionally build them back in a in a hybrid world and over index on them.

Sue Bethanis 20:50
Yes. So, I’m using the word attentional, you’re using over index, they’re both the same thing. I think what’s great about having a practice is that we get to hear from all these different people about what they’re doing and be able to share. It’s not trademarked, share what people are doing, I actually shared with the group today, something I learned the very beginning of COVID, it was probably like March 20, where a VP, who now is a coach by the way, said to me, you know, what are we’re gonna do like he says, ‘How are we going to connect?’ and that was, so that was March 20. And then a week later, when I saw him, he says, ‘here’s what we’re gonna do,’ he has a group of 200 people, he said, ‘we’re gonna have meetings from 9 to 12, and 2 to 5. That’s it. So, people can do self-care there. Of course, at that point, kids were like, all over the place, and people were crazed. And, you know, they were just people have kids, especially having a hard time. So, to me, that was just a wonderful way of creating connection, because you are saying, this is when you can connect, so allows people to not be all over the map. And that they could feel like they can have time to themselves. So, to allow the for self-care as well. He did that for a year until he left, and I think it’s a great idea. So, tell me a little bit about what you’re hearing from your clients, what you espouse as far as ways people can connect, and be and be over indexed on it, as you say.

Britt Andreatta 22:08
Yeah, so a couple things. I think when you’re bringing a team together, having a get to know you session where you’re not just jumping into the task and the project, great questions to ask people and I borrow these from Appreciative Inquiry, you know, ask people what their strengths are, ask people a project that they recently worked on that they’re really proud of, you kind of give people a chance to share their strengths and what they’re good at. And so that certainly get to know you stuffs, you know, questions about people’s personal lives, and what gives them a sense of purpose, and what their hobbies and interests are, and all that kind of stuff, you know, you have to find a balance because different people have different comfort levels with sharing. And so, you want to put that through a filter. But the kind of getting to know you and getting to know how you approach work, and what you’re good at are all great conversations.

Sue Bethanis 22:57
Conversation starters, just icebreakers. I mean, these are speaking questions. And they’re I mean, what do you watch on Netflix? That’s the favorite one these days? What are you binging on? So yeah, so lots of those kinds of questions. And there’s many of them, and we don’t have to be, we will never run out of them.

Britt Andreatta 23:13
No, but I do think it’s important to bring in the work strengths and things. Because people want to be seen and heard, we have a biology to prove our value to the group. Because even if it’s like me, if there’s value, my biology will settle down, because I’m less likely to be ousted by the group. So being a value to the group is really important. And so, when leaders set up the opportunity to have those conversations, and when we create a culture, where we do shout outs and kudos to each other, where we acknowledge each other, and not just focus on what went wrong. Those are all things that contribute to psychological safety and people being heard. Amy Edmondson has some really good stuff around like safety, I feel very fortunate that I have the only training that she has put her stamp of approval on. But she has five strategies that leaders need to do in order to create psych safety. And the first is, you know, just be accessible, you know, management by walking around worked, because you and I might talk about a work thing, but then I’ll be like, well, so there’s something I’ve been wanting to raise with you, because now I have access to so we have to recreate access in a virtual world, having office hours, having virtual drop boxes, those kinds of things where people can bring things forward. The second one is to acknowledge your own fallibility, which is to basically you have to pierce the barrier of power. And you got to do it intentionally by saying, Hey, I don’t know everything I’m counting on you to tell me or you have a different view than I do. I really want you to bring it forward. So, we have to create those opportunities and acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers so that they feel comfortable bringing it forward. We’re making it up as we go along. The third thing you’re having conversations is being intentional about digging deeper, you know, asking more about “well tell me more about that.” “What are we missing here?” “Can you share an example’. But it has to be truly with the tone of curiosity and not someone. The fourth one, and this is the hardest one is that when people do come forward with a critique, a question, mistake, you have to train yourself that the first words out of your mouth are ‘Thank you.’ Thank you for telling me that. And I literally set up scenarios in my training where they practice just that being their first response

Sue Bethanis 25:34
they’re getting triggered

Britt Andreatta 25:36
Absolutely. We all have an ego. And if someone comes to us with a critique or a question, it’s very easy to to get defensive. But if we get defensive, we shut down, it’s like safety, and people learn things. So that’s the fourth one, and probably the hardest, but the most important. And then the fifth one is to harvest mistakes for lessons. And to have a culture where instead of it being a shame and blame game, or sweep it under the rug, you actually say, Okay, we messed up, let’s dig in, what did we learn? What would we do differently? What? What can we gain from that? And if you treat it, as we learn, as we do things, of course, we’re going to try to figure it out. You know, I think the philosophy of just don’t make the same mistake twice is a great one. We want people to improve, we want people to hold themselves to a high standard. There has to be room for mistakes, too, and really valuable.

Sue Bethanis 26:28
So one of the things that another client said to me about a year ago, I think we were talking about how to create the watercooler and, you know, how do you do that? And so what he said, which I think, you know, again, it’s great that the stuffs coming from there things that they’re experimenting with. And he said, you know, after I have a team meeting, I pick up the phone and call somebody every time. I said you’re lingering, he said yes, I’m lingering, and I also will slack somebody. So, we picked up on this, and we talked about it some more. And I’ve been sort of sharing that with other people that is the watercooler when we go to meetings in person, we always linger after sometimes we’re rushing off, but I mean, even if we’re rushing off or maybe talking with somebody on the way or, you know, we’ll come in early, and we’ll talk to somebody ‘so hey did you just see my email?’ I mean that is so what we do, and we don’t have that now, because when we have one zoom to the next. So I liked that idea of lingering. I’m not sure what neuroscience says about that. But it is connection. It’s deepening some of the things, one of the things you’ve talked about is just psychological safety. What are some other things that you do to help people with the watercooler?

Britt Andreatta 27:41
I think it’s just to be intentional about it. Second, we just need to cut back on meetings, we’re in way too many meetings. During the pandemic, we went into more meetings and were not being productive. So, you got to be – when you take a 60 minute meeting and you make it 45 minutes. So, you take a 30 minute make and you make it 25. A it helps people just be able to focus but be then leave a little room for lingering. And B you acknowledge the fact that we just don’t need to be in so many meetings. I mean, really, my challenge to everyone is get rid of 30% of your meetings. Yeah. Or even 10% would be a huge thing. Sharp return. And I think right now, what I’m challenging people to do is separate the difference between the tasky work and some of that can be done asynchronously. Right? Online collaborations, people can be co working in there, from when do we need to be in person. And we need to be in person for the trust building difficult conversations, brainstorming, onboarding. Those are things where we need to be together. And so, then we can start to be really judicious around yes, we’re going to use in person too. The thing we’re seeing in the news right now is so many people saying like company forced me back to work. And I’m sitting in the office, and everyone’s still here. Right? So that’s dumb. Like we need to bring people together when it makes a difference and let people work remotely when they’re doing tasks and stuff. And that means we’re going to have to reinvent our workday.

Sue Bethanis 29:08
Yeah. And that’s what we spend most of our time talking about today. It’s like in this thing I just did, and what I’m speaking to a lot of people about, and one of my clients is like, we just got rid of the office, what do we do to connect? What do you think I said, what you tell me? What are you doing to connect and so we talked about it and it does need to be intentional. And it does need to come from the top to say, if the top says, Okay, you guys can do what you want, which is what people are pretty much saying in a lot of the – leave it to tech companies. The banks a little bit different. But Jamie diamonds be a little bit more specific about people coming back, but even he’s like, changed his tune a little bit. So, assuming that people are saying Do what you want, it’s putting it on the managers and actually we talked today about how it’s a burden, and it’s almost like it’s almost too much in a way but they would rather have it that way because they get to choose. What would you suggest as far as what you’re seeing as people coming back from off sites. once a quarter, once a month, people coming in and every Wednesday, people having their team meetings on Mondays and then coming in and doing more water cooler stuff on Wednesdays. I mean, these are all ideas that are floating around. And I mean, I’m almost like, do whatever, but just make it consistent.

Britt Andreatta 30:20
Yeah, I mean, there’s no one magic formula. So, I always like people to look at what’s your culture and context, right, it needs to fit for your group of people. But I think this conversation around what work is tasky and what work is connection and kind of thinking about it as two separate but equally important things. We’ve spent the last two years prioritizing tasks over relationship. And while some companies had banner years during the pandemic, they’re paying the price now and the great resignation, people feel disconnected, and they’re looking for something else. So, it’s really about looking at both of those pieces as equal and important. When you do an off site, you can kind of combine them, we can be tasky, and together. But when we’re in this remote world, we need to now make sure that the connection part doesn’t fall away. And I think that if you’re going to ask people to come to the office, then those are the days when meal service is provided. So, people can eat together. Those are the days when you’re not having a ton of meetings to make decisions. But you’re having more brainstorming, conflict resolution team building activities, because the person and I realized some organizations have people literally all over the world, and they may get together once a year, if at all right? That’s okay, just be super productive of the connection time when you’re together for that period of time. Because then it will create the fabric, it creates the connective tissue that connects together.

Sue Bethanis 31:45
Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of teams, of course that were remote before. You know, so they look into those teams, did you see what they were doing in terms of bringing people together? I think it’s really helpful. And actually, I liked the idea of having the relationship building on the task, and then that does a separating them. But being aware and being cognizant of the balance, I like that a lot.

Britt Andreatta 32:11
I want to say one more thing, which is, and I’ve talked about this in the book, there’s actually three types of teamwork that we asked teams to do. And it exists on a continuum. So, the most basic is cooperation, and then there’s coordination, cooperation, collaboration, and they get increasingly more complex, and they require higher levels of skill. If you have a group of people that are each doing their independent piece of that task, and they don’t really, they’re not too interdependent, they can probably be fine staying remote and not have a lot of stuff. But the minute you’re doing cooperation or collaboration, then those relationships need to be in good shape, because the definition of collaboration is there is conflict as people tussle with ideas and co-create something together. It’s built because of everyone’s input, well, then you need to have trust, you need to have, those relationships. It needs to be, you know, girded with that relationship stuff. So, the other thing to do is if you’re a manager or leader is to look at, what type of teamwork am I asking teams to engage in? And then surrounding them with the right resources? To be great at that level?

Sue Bethanis 33:24
Yeah. So coordination, cooperation, collaboration.

Britt Andreatta 33:27
Yeah. So yeah, it’s a continuum. So, coordination is when two functions in the business are completely independent from each other. They don’t interface but they might just communicate to each other just to give each other a heads up about something. But there’s nothing that they’re doing, what’s happening over in facilities has nothing to do at all with its what’s happening over and IT right. The next example, is cooperation, where they’re still doing their independent piece of a task. But the task might get done until it hands off. So, for example, if it is bringing in new laptops for everyone, or desktops, facilities might need to play a role in that to make sure that things are ready and they’re can be handled. So, there is interdependence. They’re kind of their distinct portion. Right? Right. When there’s collaboration, which is if you’re asking facilities in it to design a whole new way of, of working or designing our workspace around tech, then they’re gonna get together and they’re going to be tussling with ideas, and they won’t know how it’s going to turn out because it’s getting built from the input. And that’s the highest level of teamwork. We use the word collaborate a lot when we really don’t mean it. Collaboration, then you really need to be indexing on relationships because definitely trust has to be there for teams to treat it that way.

Sue Bethanis 34:51
I liked that. I liked that distinction a lot. So, any last words as far as what we can do with hybrid? And I mean, I think window for a hybrid return to work. It’s what do we it is hybrid. Some people are remote only, but they’re still going to come together for off sites?

Britt Andreatta 35:10
Probably yeah, and we’re not going to be able to put this genie back in the bottle like work chain. So, you need to be embracing hybrid work. Yeah, it is the future work experience. Absolutely. It’s the new way of working. So, it’s about embracing that and maximizing its strengths and counterbalancing its weaknesses. I think the other thing that I would add, and it’s something I’ve been talking about a lot lately is burnout, people are burned out. And so, if you’re not addressing burnout, while you’re trying to bring people together, folks are in bad shape. And until they have enough rest and play, those are the only two things that help you heal from burnout. And there are seven types of rest until people can get kind of fluffed back up. They’re not their best selves. And so, when they’re being asked to come back into the workplace, which we’ve all gotten out of the habit of we don’t have the stamina for feels kind of overwhelming. For many of us, particularly women and people of color, and LGBTQ folks, we got a break from the jerks in the office, we’ve been feeling safer and happier than we have in a long time. Right. So, who wants to go back into toxicity? Those are groups that are resigning at higher levels. So right, some of the things you have to think about is first of all, we got to help people recover from burnout, and I’ll pop into the chat box, I’ve done two webinars on that that might be helpful. There, then we can really see what state our workforce is in. But I think a lot of people are leaving their current jobs, because what happens with burnout is you just have apathy, you’re tired and you have apathy. So, things that used to feel good, like accomplishing a task, working with the team aren’t good anymore. And so, people are thinking, Oh, I must leave this job. They’re not realizing that it’s actually one of the symptoms of burnout. And if they can just rest and recover a little bit, some of that joy will start coming back.

Sue Bethanis 37:01
Yeah, I like what you said about that. I mean, I think people there’s a lot of people waiting around like thinking that we were going to keep going back. So, there was not this conscious effort to connect or conscious effort to relieve burnout because we kept waiting. Yeah, I think people get now that there’s no more waiting. This is it, we are in the future. And we’re in it. So let’s be more intentional about it. So, thank you again, Britt. I really appreciate it. This is a great amount of information. I want to just let everybody know you can find Britt on LinkedIn, of course. And our website is BrittAndreatta. You can also find her on Twitter at Britt Andreatta. Thank you and thank you for the resources on the webinars as well. I got a lot out of this. I’m going to send it out to a lot of our clients, for sure. And I really appreciate you being with us.

Britt Andreatta 37:59
Thank you so much. it’s been great talking to you and talking to the folks of you who joined us.

Sue Bethanis 38:03
Yeah. Thanks again, everybody. Wish you the best. Thanks. Bye

In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts Susan MacKenty Brady, co-author of the new book Arrive and Thrive: 7 Impactful Practices for Women Navigating Leadership. Susan is the Deloitte Ellen Gabriel Chair for Women and Leadership at Simmons University and the Chief Executive Officer of The Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership. As a relationship expert, leadership well-being coach, author, and speaker, Susan educates leaders and executives globally on fostering self-awareness for optimal leadership. She advises executive teams on how to work together effectively and create inclusion and gender parity in organizations. A highly sought authority on emotionally intelligent leadership, Susan has been featured on ABC’s Good Morning America and has keynoted or consulted at over 500 organizations worldwide.

Listen to the full episode here:

Listen on: Apple | Spotify | Google

INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

Susan’s new book Arrive and Thrive stemmed from conversations between her and her co-authors around the pressure and experiences they were having as women in leadership. Within their discussions came about the 7 Impactful Practices of women in leadership. With a collective 85 years in leadership between the three of them, they were able to distill the most important tools and practices that they have used in their careers to help get them to where they are and lead effectively.

Breaking down these “7 Impactful Practices” (10:25):

1. Investing in Your Best Self – this is in part knowing who you are at your best, and how to lead from this place as often as you can. Returning to your best self as often as possible.
2. Embracing Authenticity – this is encouraging honesty from yourself about who you really are and helping other people to do the same thing.
3. Cultivating Courage – It takes courage to take on new things and ask others for help along the way. When we realize that we do not need to go it alone and reach out for support and knowledge from others, we are more likely to thrive.
4. Fostering Resilience – this is when we have a setback, we allow it to help us grow rather than returning to the same place.
5. Inspiring a Bold Vision – this applies to both the individual and organization. Work on creating an inspiring vision that others will want to contribute to.
6. Creating a Healthy Team Environment – promote an environment that is supportive, inclusive, collaborative, and healthy.
7. Committing to the Work of an Inclusive Leader – by building a healthy team environment and modeling inclusive behaviors, inclusivity spreads throughout the organization.

These are excellent practices for anyone to work on as they move into leadership roles. Particularly for women, these serve as reminders to show up from a place of authenticity, resilience, and ultimately our best selves.

Sue and Susan also discuss how the pandemic has disproportionately affected women in the workplace, and how we are seeing more and more women shifting paths as they seek more purpose and meaning in their work. As leaders, it’s important to understand the perspectives of women in the workforce and how, for some women, remaining remote offers more flexibility in their day that makes a huge difference in their work-life balance and allows them to thrive in their roles.

Some key points Susan offers to women in leadership are: to be gentle with yourself and eliminate the self-criticism, have the courage to ask for help and reach out to others for support, try to return to your best authentic self as often as possible, and remember that vulnerability is not weakness.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“When we think about our best self and leading our life from our best self, it’s where your strengths and talents, both born and earned… when those come together with where you feel called to add value to others and also comes together with what brings you joy and vitality, that is your best selves zone.” (4:30)

“I really do believe that too often our work cultures encouraged women to get our foot in the door, only to leave us without support once we do.” (7:43)

“If you woke up women of color, you know resilience. If you woke up woman, you know resilience. If you woke up in any identity that isn’t in the majority of power, you know resilience. We’ve learned it, so fostering it eluded me at first, I was confused by it…. but it turned out it really is a thriving practice for senior women to share their resilience stories.” (10:25)

RESOURCES

Susan MacKenty Brady:
Website | LinkedIn
Book: Arrive & Thrive: 7 Impactful Practices for Women Navigating Leadership

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sue Bethanis 0:00
Welcome, everyone to WiseTalk. This is Mariposa’s monthly podcast. We provide perspectives on leadership. Today we’re excited to welcome Susan MacKenty Brady. Susan is a Deloitte Ellen Gabriel chair for Women in leadership at Simmons University and the Chief Executive Office officer of the Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership. As a relationship expert, leadership wellbeing coach, author, and speaker. Susan educates leaders and executives globally on fostering self-awareness for optimal leadership. She advises executive teams on how to work together effectively and create inclusion and gender parity in organizations. She’s a highly sought-after authority on emotionally intelligent leadership. She has also been featured on ABC Good Morning America and has Keynoted or consulted in over 500 organizations. She has previously published two books on leadership her third, Arrive and Thrive: Seven Impactful Practices for Women Navigating Leadership is co-authored by Executive Chair of the Board of Deloitte, US Janet Fawlty, and Simmons University president Dr. Lynn Perry Wootton and this debuted this month and landed on the bestseller list, and The Wall Street Journal, Publisher’s Weekly and USA Today. Wow, that’s a lot, a lot, a big mouthful. So, I really appreciate you being here. And I know that we had to change the time because you were with Gloria Steinem yesterday, tell us about that, we got to start with that.

Susan MacKenty Brady 1:21
First of all, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be with you. And thanks for joining everyone. Right. So you know, we Jenna and Lynn and I did a google talk a few weeks ago, and the producer of Google Talk also does work under the header of exponent, which I hadn’t heard of. And essentially what they are is they’re talking circles with Gloria, she is 88 years old. She is living and working from her home in Manhattan. And she’s doing a few of these and they are recorded. So we’ll be publishing some version of some of this once they are out. But it’s an intimate circle, you know, the tagline of exponent is we do not get in line. We form circles. And you know, it was as generous and generative as you would think. It was just a beautiful conversation. And I’ll be honest, like walking into her home was it was like the 1970s, Gloria Steinem, like awesomeness about, you know, artifacts, and just beautiful things everywhere. And she is just lovely and a bit and sharp and fun, and just thoughtful and it was really cool conversation.

Sue Bethanis 2:36
Was it all women in the circle?

Susan MacKenty Brady 2:38
It was all women in the circle

Sue Bethanis 2:40
Right, was there a topic? Like do you think? Is there a specific topic for these things?

Susan MacKenty Brady 2:44
It’s more generative than I thought. We started with- I’m so used to doing all this press now, and it’s like, I get the question in advance, and I have a certain amount of time that I can answer. And so, you know, all the three authors we were all looking for sort of guidance. And it started with introduce yourself. And we did and we ended up talking, interestingly enough about working and mothering and doing too much, and how sort of the, you know, the theme of so much of the difficulty of waking up woman and going to work is managing your responsibilities outside of work and how we negotiate that, be that children or eldercare or even just home, whatever it is. And you know, Gloria didn’t have children. For the rest of the panel, there was four of us. And then she had two people on her team staff that participated plus Rebecca, everybody else was a mom, but Gloria, and she was so curious and interested. And yeah, we got we got right into it. Good.

Sue Bethanis 3:51
Good. Well, speaking of which, you know, I normally start with a question about your journey, and I will get to that. But I want to start with something that I saw on Twitter when I was looking at your Twitter and I want to relate to totally with what you just said, because in one of your tweets a couple of days ago, you were quoting, actually, it’s you you’re it’s what you actually said I probably from your book, it says it’s an evergreen riddle for women. On the one hand, we are told to be our authentic self. And on the other hand, the working world wasn’t made with us in mind. So it’s along the lines of what you’re talking about. Could you elaborate on that? Because not only do I completely agree with it, but I think that it would be well worth hearing your thoughts on that.

Susan MacKenty Brady 4:30
Yeah. I have. Okay. So I will confess to you that I believed in meritocracy until probably about 10 ish years ago, when I was confronted with the truth that I might have been naive, and what I mean by that is I really thought if I work hard and you know, perform and do well and achieve that I would be treated equally to my male counterparts who did the same thing and you know, I have a 19, soon to be 20 year old and a 16, soon to be 17 year old. So I didn’t take a big period of time off other than maternity leave, which is in America for most of us, like no time at all. And so I, you know, I stayed in the workforce, and I’ve worked hard. And the sort of the hard truth I had to come to. And by the way, I was raised by a single father, my mother is in my life, but she lived 250 miles away. And my father, you know, and I had brothers, like, you can do anything you want to? So I really thought like, I don’t know, I mean, why would anything be different for me, just because I’m a female. What’s true is the unconscious biases. And the some of the even perpetuated by women, unfortunately, about other women still exist. And so we have to call them out. Mine was, for example, I learned earlier that I have admitted before, so I knew my strengths, you know, so when we think about our best self, and leading our life from our best self, it’s where your strengths and talents, both born and earned, those that you develop over time, but those are that are innate characteristics when those come together with where you feel called to add value to others. And it also comes together with what brings you joy and vitality, that is your best selves zone. And you know, as soon as you get some clues, like losing track of time, doing something, like just feeling joyful, like looking forward to something I’m talking on the professional route, chances are, those are clues that you might be in your best self zone. So I knew that I had some skill in communication and in public speaking. And my first foray into thinking about how best to do this led to the gift of feedback that I needed to practice vulnerability. And that I heard some things that weren’t very favorable about how I was out for myself. Now, I was talking about my inner critic, and it was really vulnerable. I thought it was really good for women in particular, to hear how I get myself back to worthiness. So it didn’t feel at all self-serving. And I remember at first thinking like, what, what’s that about? And then that’s literally I came crashing into the fact that a lot of the systems and the norms, but also the belief systems, right, the belief systems, not just the processes, were actually not made for us to navigate effortlessly, you know, in the professional world. So I remind us of that, because we still have work to do.

Sue Bethanis 7:28
Okay, so you’ve written a couple of books. Why this book? What was motivating for you specifically around this one? I know you have co-authors, but like, was there something specific that happened? You did some research? Tell us a little bit about that?

Susan MacKenty Brady 7:43
Yeah, first of all, I really do believe that too often our work cultures encouraged women to get our foot in the door, only to leave us without support once we do. We wrote and tried to change that. But the story behind that is my last large body of work was about how to overcome, often hidden hurdles to advancement. So as we go and confront opportunity to do more and to step into more positions of leadership, navigating some of the trickier things that I think probably all underrepresented populations have to navigate, but women comprise the biggest percentage of that. So that was mastering your inner critic. And when I came to Simmons, two things happen. One was I stepped into this Deloitte Ellen Gabriel chair and was in conversation with some two partners that Deloitte and then president of the university talking about what kind of project do we want to take on in my tenure as chair, and the conversation wasn’t about the project, the conversation was about how all four of us by any sort of standard, we’d sort of arrived in a very senior level of leadership, really needed to talk still about what was going on. Felt lonelier, at the top, felt less, in some ways, less-resourced interpersonally and tra-personally, you know, in a lot of demands, and so the pressure, so the stress is higher, the pressure is higher, we have more work to do. And we feel less comfortable being completely transparent because people are looking to us, it’s different than being authentic. And actually the idea came out of a circle, a talking circle. I told Gloria, this yesterday, the idea for this book did it’s like wow, you know, we have a lot of collective wisdom about what it would take to thrive. Let’s sit down and talk more and we were set up with Janet and Lynn, it was sort of like, uh, you know, the current sitting president at Simmons said, you have to work with Lynn, she’s the incoming and the two partners that Deloitte said I want to introduce you to Janet, just let’s see if there’s something here and the first conversation was like 85 years of collective leadership experience between the three of us which Lynn doesn’t like me to say, and, and the seven practices emerged pretty quickly and we got our footwork right, we did some research, obviously, and cold and distilled more research, and then talked to sitting CEO. So that’s how it came to be. And I wish I had it sooner, you know, in my life, I don’t think you need to arrive to get, you know, value from the practices in the book.

Sue Bethanis 10:18
But let’s talk about the seven practices, if you could go through them and maybe give some examples of a few of them, that’d be awesome.

Susan MacKenty Brady 10:25
The seven practices are both meant to be, you know, intrapersonal used as a source of reflection, but also you can apply to others as you lead, and as you grow in other ways, but the first is investing in your best self. And this is, you know, really knowing who you are at your best and how to lead your life from that place as often as you can. So there are two parts to investing in your best self, there’s knowing her and then there’s returning to her, which I think this book also I’ll just say, like, we’ve already gotten feedback that the book is really helpful to all genders, to men, to all. And, you know, the context of some of the research that we include, the context of why we thought these practices particularly would be helpful to women is in the book, nonetheless, the practices hold for everyone, I think. The second is embracing authenticity. So you know, this is encouraging honesty from yourself about who you really are, and helping other people to do the same thing. The third is cultivating courage. And I loved researching and helping to write this chapter because courage is not the absence of fear, as many people know, it’s really the presence of vulnerability and confidence mixed together. And I could talk more about courage, but we, you know, you can go in whatever direction you would like. This is our fourth practice. And the big aha for me was, you know, when we have a setback, we don’t return to the same place from where we left. We returned to, you know, hopefully, a wiser, more knowing self, and the value of fostering resilience because this practice kind of annoyed me I remember laughing with my co-authors about it. I don’t want to foster resilience, I don’t know about you, like I woke up woman, that alone if you woke up women of color, you know resilience, if you woke up a woman, you know resilience, if you woke up in any identity that isn’t in the majority of power, you know resilience. We’ve learned it, so fostering it eluded me at first, I was confused by it. And then when I dove into the research, and we did a lot of culling and distillations of wisdom out there about this, it turned out it really is a thriving practice for senior women to share their resilience stories. And the power of that so that we all can continue to learn and grow. The fifth practice is inspiring a bold vision. And we look at this both for the independent person like what’s my vision, what’s my inspired bold vision for myself and also for the organization and how to go about that. Women, I think, you know, have gotten a bad rap about women in the vision thing since the famous HBR article was written. And then we have committing, creating a healthy team environment. And our last one is committing to the work of an inclusive leader. So I would say, really, the first, the first four practices in particular really helped to fuel the last three. And if your practices were in imagery, the bullseye, the center, the core is investing in your best self because that’s from where you lead your life. We’re kicked out of our best self all the time for all sorts of reasons. We want to come back to her as often as possible, even you know, in the moment so we don’t say or do things that we regret.

Sue Bethanis 13:45
So I think this juxtaposition, I have a client I’m thinking of right now, who you know is her best self and hers who she is very assertive and being assertive on Zoom and interrupting people is something that she’s kind of getting feedback about. It’s not – it’s negative. So we had to come up with something that felt like she could get in but not be too interruptive. And so we come up with like interrupting with questions. So she felt like she wasn’t losing too much of herself. But yet still taking feedback. I think that that’s what a lot of us, especially those who are a sort of have a problem with like, trying to figure out how to be who we are, but also being collaborative as well. So can you speak to that a bit?

Susan MacKenty Brady 14:27
Leadership is a relationship. It’s a social construct, and I learned this from several of my mentors over and over again, I make the joke that my job as a leader is to narrow the delta between my intention and my impact, right? And so to be authentic, if part of my authentic self is assertiveness, which it happens to be, what’s also important is how I land how I impact others and if my timing, if my ferocity, if my intensity of assertiveness is actually having an impact on others that makes them not want to pull in and pull up, it shuts people down or out. Probably not a winning strategy. And I do need to pivot and I’ve talked to a lot of women leaders, I’m sure you have to, and men, who have a personality trait that they’re getting feedback on. That is, frankly, you know, a strength overblown or, or deep non contextualized. Right. So, it’s not that we’re asking you to be less of who you are, we’re asking you to be more conscious of how you impact others as you are, who you are, and know when to moderate your energy.

Sue Bethanis 15:43
Yeah I like that narrowing the delta between intention and impact. I like that a lot. So let’s talk about the pandemic. I don’t know, when you wrote this book, was it during it, I assume

Susan MacKenty Brady 15:51
We rallied together as an author team, the month before the pandemic. And then it took us like 10 months to get clear what we had and what we wanted to say. And we sent the proposal to a couple of publishers. Okay, so the book was written, you know, majority of last year.

Sue Bethanis 16:13
Right, right. Okay. So, you know, I figured that was it was probably last year. So given that, how has the pandemic affected women’s leadership? And in a way that’s differentiated from men? Is there? Is there a difference as to,

Susan MacKenty Brady 16:26
You know, I’d love to hear your opinion on this too. I think the great reckoning is mainly a “she” phenomenon of massive, massive proportion, I am seeing women reconcile their relationships in and outside of work, reconcile their hopes and desires. You know, I’m here as like just a bozo on the bus saying, Do not leave yourself out of your own life. Right. And if ever, there was a time when everything just kind of, you know, we were either forced in or forced out or felt different, you know, everything became acute our life is right now, I think women are in a really, really powerful position to negotiate what we need/want for ourselves in a way that we haven’t before. And I think the great reckoning is, like on record, what’s happening when women leave the workforce in droves when we need to leave. And it’s not just hourly, I mean, I’m seeing a phenomenon of knowledge workers as well really stop and think, do I want to do this anymore? If not this then what? You know. So I saw a lot of that going on. And look, I think we knew human beings, we need connection. And we also want purpose and meaning. Right, and the pandemic confronted us with all of it.

Sue Bethanis 16:46
Yeah. Yeah, no question. I’m in total agreement with you. I don’t obviously think it’s just women. I think it’s everyone. Yeah, I think it affects women proportionately because they’re the ones that are usually in stereotype, usually dealing with the home. And so there’s more juggling, I guess, on the one hand, on the other hand, it might be a little easier for some because they’re at home, and they can actually juggle what they are doing at home rather than don’t having to commute. So I think that there’s a whole commuting backlash. I think people don’t want to compete, and they realize that they’re feeling better about that. So I think that that’s a big issue. And certainly, gas prices are not helping.

Susan MacKenty Brady 18:26
But it does raise a big dilemma Sue, right. So here’s what we’re doing is now I’ve experienced, I don’t miss my two-hour commute that, by the way, in Boston, the way the crow flies, it’s just nine miles to campus, right? I don’t miss that. I don’t want it. I don’t need it. I can be perfectly effective here. The problem is I’m missing out on both the need for social interaction, but also the great political connections to rise that are happening. And so the quality of life where we have we have yet another trade-off. And so yeah, there’s definitely a trade-off. Yeah, super intentional. Yes. Super intentional to be inclusive of the people who remain at home. If there are conversations physically together, you know, it’s a hard time to lead right now.

Sue Bethanis 19:11
Well, I think that it’s going to be interesting what the data is. I don’t – there probably is data out there that I haven’t seen yet. But who is staying home? Because the office is/was made for white males. So I don’t know, the people that are going back. Are they mostly white males? I don’t I don’t know. I mean, it seems to me that that’s, I would probably venture to guess that the people that are going back are the people that the officers made for in the first place.

Susan MacKenty Brady 19:33
We talked about this. I mean, the great advent of flexibility. You know, I used to feel this way about myself and I feel this about working mothers in particular that I’ve hired in the past. There’s so, I was so grateful to get an ounce of flexible time. I would work harder at home and harder at work, you know, and so I think the whole thing comes down to what I would want to call us all to do is really think about what it is that we need in order to have wellbeing however you define well being right? Just like thriving, I’m not going to define what thriving looks like for you. And I’m not going to define what wellbeing looks like for you, that’s for you to define. But now’s the time to sort of look at these parts and think, what do I need, and then we have to courageously go make some requests at home, and at work, right to modify our lives so that we can step fully into our potential, which is part of for me, what thriving is right is, is being very thoughtful. And

Sue Bethanis 20:35
well, I was just gonna say I love the word attentional, because you’ve read it, you’ve said it a couple of times, in different ways. And I think that -California, things may be a little bit different here. I don’t know. But most people are not going back. And if they are going back they’re going back maybe once a week, at the most, so a couple of times a month. So there has to be some intentionality around how do we connect if you’re going to be on a team? If we’re going to call the team then there’s a risk, there’s an expectation of belonging and inclusiveness. So that means there has to be attention on the manager’s part to actually do that. And I think because the last few years, it’s sort of been everything’s been so mishmash, and we weren’t sure. Okay, so now we’re sure. Now we’re sure we’re gonna have Hybrid. So, therefore, we need to be just as sure about how we’re going to connect. And I think that’s part of our job is to help managers through that, because it’s going to be on the manager’s HR is not putting policies in place, Manager decides what you want to do with your team. So that means the managers have to decide, and they gotta be intentional about it. And they’ve got to have, they’ve got to talk to their team about it. And sometimes people don’t want to like they don’t care about having relationships at work. Okay. Well, most people do, though. So what do you think about that?

Susan MacKenty Brady 21:41
Well, you know, this was the topic of our board meeting. So the institute that I run at Simmons, has an incredible board of directors, you can see who’s on it if you go to inclusive leadership.com big companies, big, big companies, and we meet quarterly and we just had our meeting this week and the topic, we usually do a breakout and do lots of deep dives on a topic and the topic was, what are you doing when it comes to asking your employees to come back? Are you giving, I call it like for choice points. So you know, we’re gonna go back to the office, and you have to be there three days a week, but you can choose the three like your manager can choose the three days a week or something like that. So it was a really good discussion, what I’m seeing is the jury’s still out on this one. I think there’s a lot of experimentation going. I also think I just was coaching a woman last week, who was really struggling. And she said I think my team needs to come back. And they don’t want to, and I was trying to explore with her why she reached that conclusion. And I think there’s, there’s a lot of preferences, a lot of biases that are driving some of these decisions. And because last I checked, if you’re in a knowledge worker job, this isn’t the industrial revolution, we don’t need equipment, other than what we’re looking at, right. So I don’t know about you, but I’ve been pretty darn productive in this environment. So I think that the decisions need to be driven by the maintenance of psychological safety, which means it’s not that everyone’s always happier and everyone gets a vote. But you can bring your unique self to work, however, you bring it to work. And I want to really make sure you feel like you belong. And so I’ve got my eye on how connected in are the different members of the team. And you know, because I put my head down and had some my own resilience stories with a death in the family and a cancer scare and, and medical leave, and I wrote a book, I haven’t really been managing, per se, I rely on the people on the team to do this. And there’s so much subjectivity in all of this when we don’t offer guidelines.

Sue Bethanis 23:56
Totally. Oh, yeah, for sure.

Susan MacKenty Brady 23:57
What a great human experiment. This going back to work.

Sue Bethanis 24:02
totally. So going back to your seven practices. I do want to talk about cultivating courage because I do think that this idea of vulnerability, courage, and confidence balance of that is difficult, and it’s especially difficult on Zoom. So let’s assume that even if people go back 1,2,3 times a week, it’s not gonna be more than that. We’re going to be on zoom most of the time. And I think that doing anything on zoom in terms of expression in any kind of emoting, influencing, showing emotional intelligence, any of that is harder. So let’s focus on the courage part. How do we demonstrate courage in general? And how do we do it on Zoom? Video?

Susan MacKenty Brady 24:40
Okay, so kind of the minute the world shut down, and we started working like this, I think what happened is the two roles that felt like this became like this, and those are human resources and human being, and we actually saw the human beings with whom we resourced with every day in a different light and what I think that’s awoken in a lot of people is the need to be seen and cared for and feel safe. And it was vulnerable. And I think where cultivating Courage comes in the first, second, and third tip I have about cultivating courage is to not go it alone. We’re not meant to do much alone, you know, as you know, so, and I think sometimes we forget, I did find some research that we added in the book about people’s reluctance to ask others for help. We underestimate by as much as 50%, others’ willingness to help us. So you know, it takes courage to do anything you haven’t done before, including speaking up and asking for help to do the things we want to do. Or that we see or speaking up or speaking out. It doesn’t have to be in in a zoom, when multiple people are popped in, it can be one on one, it can be on the side. But I’d say, you know, noticing when the last time you recognize something that made you feel nervous or scared, and how you managed it. So starting to pay attention, first of all, to the moments of like, when you feel your heart race a little bit because you want to speak up and you shy away, like what are those moments where you need to sort of step in and take risks. And then I remind people a lot of the time that very rarely do we fall flat on our face and stay there forever. If we do fall flat, we get right back up. And that’s when we go to fostering resilience. And oftentimes, the risks that we take, aren’t nearly as scary when we take them as we thought they would be. And so that’s where borrowing confidence comes in. I’ve used that a lot. My first book, I’d never written a book before who and I had little impostoresque thoughts like who the hell am I to write a book? I happen to be in a, you know, in the leadership development field, surrounded by people who were best selling authors, some of them at our big conferences, and I befriended a few people and said, Can you help me understand how to go about this? And what do I want, I got the metaphor of the whale’s belly, which, which helped me through my very first big book, which was, you know, you go in thinking there’s light, and you don’t see it for a while. You’re like, head down any big project is right. But that metaphor got me through those darker days of like just a slog of feeling like oh, my god produce a manuscript. So it’s things that are just an example. I borrowed current I borrowed wisdom I asked for, help me understand sometimes I just needed to talk. And so I think so much about developing cultivating courage for ourselves is looking around and seeing other people have probably done something like what I’ve done.

Sue Bethanis 27:39
Right, but well, you know, when we start coaching with people to the beginning, before we even decided to work with us, and particularly if they’re, you know, they’re always one on one calls, right? I find myself normalizing people’s experiences because they’re there by virtue that they want help. I mean, literally, you know, if you have a coach, you’re looking for support, just to get to that step is a big deal. And then I, the next step is like just to demonstrate to them that what they’re feeling and what they’re experiencing is normal, and other people feel the same way. Other executives feel the same way. Because it does, because there is this misnomer that there’s no one else that feels this way that. And that’s why people don’t ask for help, because it’s too vulnerable, because I don’t think that anybody feels this way. And there is a ton of imposter stuff going on. I mean, we all feel it, I feel it every day, in different ways. So there is this, this lack of wanting to ask for support, which is why coaches actually we have even there’s even a market for coaches because they’re willing to do that. That’s like cachet in a way, right? But not necessarily willing to help get help from other their peers, which we course encourage because we encourage peer coaching all over the place. And in fact, if there was more peer coaching, there probably be less reason for us to be to exist.

Susan MacKenty Brady 28:03
I have to say, I’ve had, I’ve had several amazing coaches. And I’ve had the opportunity. I don’t know about you and your colleagues, I learned sometimes more. I feel like sometimes I learned more from my clients than they do from me in a coaching engagement. It’s so much easier to be clear about someone else’s journey.

Sue Bethanis 29:07
Right. Exactly. Yeah.

Susan MacKenty Brady 29:08
You know, the reason why I think, you know, most executives could and should reach out and on, you know, and step into a coaching engagement, at some point in their careers, particularly when you’re at the top is in part to have a sounding board of someone who has your back. I think peer group is the most under-leveraged, under-resourced support group of all time. And what drives us from not doing it we’re all busy, busy, busy, we’re either managing up or managing down, but we neglect the power of having a circle with our peers out of fear. I think it’s really fear-based and how will they use this information? What’s people’s agenda? You know, we’re looking for resources and one meeting and the next week, right? We’re supposed to be like collaborating, and that’s where it’s safe to sort of strategizing with a coach and think, Okay, what’s the best way to navigate this that’s going to land like I intended to write, as opposed to just, you know, rushing out the door. Yeah. I’m a big fan of coaching, I just engaged with a coach who was instrumental in helping me birth this book, not from a content perspective, but to help me get over my own stuff about not stepping fully into my to leveraging my brand. I mean, I’ve been sort of out there a lot in the past eight years-ish. And I couldn’t bring myself to, you know, post or, you know, if all felt like bragging, and because I was criticized about that earlier in my career, I was so sensitive, like, I don’t want anybody to think I’m out for myself, God helped me, you know. And I just want you to know, I just, this last week, I gave all of my social media platforms over to help with a team of people who are helping me do it because I couldn’t, that was such a big move. But a coach helped me get there. Like, you know what, what I’m hearing Susan is you will be a blocker in your own way on this particular thing, and it’s really okay for you not to have to do it yourself. And I was like, ah blew my mind.

Sue Bethanis 31:13
That’s great. That’s great. Okay, I want to shift gears here a little bit, I want to talk about burnout. So I want to talk about the other side of this because I think that there’s quite a bit of that going on and kind of and again, this might be affecting women more because they’re just taking on more. I mean, I do four zoom calls. And I’m, like spent and most of our clients are doing eight a day, at least I don’t even know how that even works. But you know, whatever, and they’re not sleeping as much. And then there are all sorts of things going on in terms of work-life balance, but I am concerned about burnout. I’m concerned about depression, I’m just concerned about sleeplessness. What do you see? And what do you have to say about how we can deal with this, and you actually use the word anti ambition as well in your book, which I think is really interesting. I had a guy who was a good friend of mine, who I used to coach say, I just don’t want to work as much anymore. Yeah, I’m like, and he doesn’t have to, which is part of it, because he’s made, he’s made it but it’s like, but he doesn’t really want to. And I think that that’s like, would be an example of anti ambition, I guess.

Susan MacKenty Brady 32:13
So look at you know, I think time is, our energy is our most precious commodity diminishes as the day as the hours roll. I think that we are in, we are beginning to experience what will probably be the greatest mental health crisis of our time. And, and we’re woefully under-resourced for it right, not only for access to therapists, but access to, you know, tools, and it’s happening, not just for those of us in the professional world, it’s happening for our children, you know, that feeling it and depression, we see it all over the place. And, stress and fatigue. And I think, you know, there won’t be a company in I think in five years, it doesn’t have a chief wellbeing officer. And just like, you know, in the early 90s, there came to be the chief diversity officer, you know, not just special companies that were great places to work for. But everybody, because we have to keep our employees well, and mentally well, the good news, I think, is that this is going to open up a place to talk about, you know, mental well-being in a way that people don’t feel shame about it.

Sue Bethanis 33:28
Yeah, that’s yes, that’s what we got to get to.

Susan MacKenty Brady 33:32
And I’m happy to use I mean, I use myself as part of the first practice of investing in your best self. The latter, no first is coming to know her and the latter is returning, the return is all about us all about self-esteem. And it’s about holding ourselves in warm regard. And knowing that we are imperfect human beings and so we will err, we need to have a way to shore up internally inside of ourselves and come back to a place of enough-ness in ourselves. And we also need to do with other people. So when we feel disappointed with the people around us, because I don’t know about you, but I just I’m more short-tempered, after two years of the pandemic, I know my fuse is shorter because I’m tired or because you know, because and I have to sort of pay attention pretty quickly. If I’m feeling some level of disappointment be it at home or even with people I work with totally, and my tone and my effect and so practicing, hey, I want to check in with how I landed gives other people permission to do that too. And if I practice this, if I walk this then I’m okay calling on one of my direct reports and saying you know, I think let’s talk about what happened just now because I think your intention was x, here’s how it landed for me, what’s going on? And when I’ll likely hear oh my gosh, my kids, daycare, overwhelmed

Sue Bethanis 34:52
Yeah. all the things.

Susan MacKenty Brady 34:57
This Yeah, officially here. I think most Leaders are woefully ill-prepared for this as well, because

Sue Bethanis 35:03
I don’t think they’re even asking. So I think we need to be, you know, we need to be asking like you you asked, you said, Well, what’s Hey, that just happened that was different, like what happened like what’s going on with you? I think that we need to ask because we’re gonna find out a whole shitload of stuff that’s going on that people are trying to manage in the background. You mentioned kids, like, as much as I have hated the pandemic. I’m as, like a big extrovert, and it’s been horrible, horrible. My poor kid who’s 16, you know, to go through a pandemic, at 14 or 15 is like, just horrible. So I just like as bad as I feel, he feels worse. So I just could have like, put my energy toward him because it’s just if you’re an extrovert, and you’ve lost connection with people, it’s really difficult. It’s really hard

Susan MacKenty Brady 35:50
Yeah. And I think that’s the biggest opportunity from a mental health standpoint is right. Isolation is dangerous.

Sue Bethanis 35:56
Yes, it is. One of everybody but especially for extroverts.

Susan MacKenty Brady 36:00
For everybody. I, myself am undersocialized. I got this from one of my friends and mentors, undersocialized and then yet when I went back, I had like 10 events in seven days, weeks ago. And I had to like get dressed and wear pants that zip and like, were presentable outside my home. I was just a hot mess. I went out and I realized I am so ill-prepared to make small talk. I’m sorry. I undersocialized I was like, what, what am I talking about? Like? It’s almost like we have to reculture ourselves.

Sue Bethanis 36:38
There’s no question about it. Like we have to put the pants on and we have to put our small talk hat on seriously. I think it’s okay. I think everybody, Well, I think we realize it. So we kind of got to the under socialized. I like that word under socialized? I do think that there’s the issue of social isolation. I do. And I think that there’s a difference between loneliness and solitude. I think that in the solitude there’s been a lot of lessons that we’ve had to learn around that and how we were able to practice that more because we’ve been in the pandemic but it wouldn’t tell it to go to loneliness. I think that that’s and isolation is causing that I think that that’s a different matter. Our last WiseTalk guest actually talked about loneliness. And I mean, what have you seen in this? I think this is part of the issue around the well-being and the mental crisis, you’re, you’re addressing, I think that that’s part of it. Say more about that.

Susan MacKenty Brady 37:32
So first of all, I have to say, so I love the distinction between solitude and loneliness. It’s really, I could kind of geek out with you about that alone, but the remedy for, I think, now’s the time, if you’re not journaling already, folks start to journal. I mean, there’s so much richness and giving yourself time with your own thoughts and feelings, and expressing them, even if they seem jumbled and crazy to write it down and get it out. And then talk to others about it. I think the time is now to be conscious, and when I talk about intention, or thoughtfulness, or consciousness, it starts with a framework of self-awareness and it goes to a framework of self-management, which means tuning in and tuning up, if your heart feels lonely, if you feel like you’re sad, that’s probably a good indication that you should call your best friend reach out to you know, someone who you love and trust, make a connection, right? Because it’s a slippery slope. Different from I’m at the point where yes, I’m, you know, with a book release, and it got on best selling and I’ve heard from more people in the last three weeks of my life than I have in the last 10 years combined. And I love it and I’m doing all these kinds of podcasts, everything. I love it and I’m craving alone time, solitude. I’m not worried about people you know, I’m not worried about being lonely. And so I think that the skill and again, coaching can help, I’m not trying to like you know, buoy our profession, but I’m just saying like, I’m probably preaching to the choir, I think part of what we need to offer in our redesign of value and when it comes to executive coaching is allowing for restoration and rejuvenation and teaching leaders how to do that. Because here’s the thing if we don’t do it, we will burn out and last I checked our organizations desperately need us.

Sue Bethanis 39:26
okay. Lots of good things anything any last thoughts? There are a lot of great things we talked about ambition I love the vulnerability and confidence like

Susan MacKenty Brady 39:36
I have to say like I’m a big fan of an Adam Grants work on everything and the red thread other than don’t go it alone that runs through all the seven practices is for sure leading with a curious mind. I mean, nothing works when you don’t let’s just put it that way. But I also I guess what I would want to end with is reminding us all to be gentle with ourselves and gentle with the people around us if ever I was saying this before the pandemic like, everybody chill out, I mean my gosh, like, Can you just be a little more gentle on your self-criticism? Can you be a little more gentle on your expectations of others and how fast and hard you’re rowing the boat and PS that was for me to you know, gosh, if that was needed three years ago, it sure needs to be right now. Okay, and yeah, I get I have a sign in my office that says Get gentle with it. I give it to every single one of my coaching.

Sue Bethanis 40:29
I love it. I love that. You know, the article that I penned last year that still is relevant is you know, take the armor off, you know, the same…

Susan MacKenty Brady 40:38
Yeah the veneer of perfection, guess what folks like it’s cracked. If you didn’t do it, the world orchestrated that for us. Now what are you going to do?

Sue Bethanis 40:47
that’s right. That’s right. Well, it’s been lovely to be with you. I want to just give everybody some more information. It’s Susan MacKenty Brady. You can find her on LinkedIn. You can also find her on the website Arrive and Thrive and her Twitter is @smackentybrady, again the book is Arrive and Thrive: 7 Impactful Practices for Women Navigating Leadership.

Susan MacKenty Brady 41:13
So arriveandthrive.com to

Sue Bethanis 41:16
Tthanks again, everybody. See you guys next time. Thanks again, Susan.

Susan MacKenty Brady 41:24
Here’s to thriving everybody. Yes, thank you. Bye

In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts connection enthusiasts and author Ryan Jenkins. Ryan is the co-founder of LessLonely.com, the world’s first resource fully dedicated to reducing worker isolation and strengthening team connections. His new book, co-authored with Steven Van Cohen is Connectable: How Leaders Can Move Teams From Isolated to All In. Ryan is an internationally recognized keynote speaker and three-time published author. He speaks all over the world to companies such as State Farm, Salesforce, Wells Fargo, FedEx, Liberty Mutual, and John Deere. For a decade, he has been helping organizations create engaged, inclusive, and high-performing teams by lessening worker loneliness and closing generational gaps. Ryan’s top-ranked insights have been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, and The Wall Street Journal.

Listen to the full episode here:

Listen on: Apple | Spotify | Google

INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

Loneliness doesn’t stem from a lack of people, but a lack of connection. Ryan dives into how workplace loneliness is derived from a low quality of connection to teammates, leadership, and work itself, and that if we do not get more intentional in our interactions we will continue to drift apart. He provides some great data from recent research that shows the effects of loneliness including that “lonely workers are seven times less likely to be engaged at work, five times more likely to miss work due to stress, and then they’re twice as likely to think about leaving their employer” (11:29). He also mentions that research shows loneliness affects our brain the same way physical pain would, leading us to see the larger impact it can have on an individual level. As the pandemic has ramped up feelings of disconnectedness and loneliness and led us to the point of the current Great Resignation, it is evident that we need to be even more deliberate about connection in the workplace.

Ryan provides a four-step model, the Less Loneliness Framework^TM, as a system to combat loneliness and increase connection. (18:19)

1. Look at loneliness and gain awareness of its impacts.
2. Invest in connection and create safe spaces for connection in the workplace.
3. Narrow your focus and create more clarity on what’s important.
4. Kindle the momentum and continue to focus on connectivity.

Some additional key takeaways from this talk:

• When we prioritize convenience over connection, we are doing ourselves a disservice. We should prioritize using the time saved to reinvest in meaningful connections. (9:46)
• Whether introverted or extroverted, there is really no difference in the necessity of connection. While introverts handle solitude better, they still need meaningful connection. (15:38)
• Our social skills are like a muscle we need to exercise and coming out of the pandemic we need to be more intentional in building up our social skills and connections to reduce loneliness. (35:31)
• Leaders can have a huge impact on the prevention of loneliness in the workforce by creating more opportunities for learning, engagement, and social connection. Individuals are less likely to want to leave a company if they feel connected to their work and their organization. (36:22)

Ryan also offers a few solutions and practices to help combat loneliness in the workforce. His team created the first Team Connection Assessment which is an anonymous test that provides leadership with an honest assessment of how well team members are connected to other team members, leadership, and the organization itself. It provides leaders with specific recommendations for how to increase connection. Ryan’s website also offers a digital course on connection in addition to a card deck that provides remote workers with activities to connect with their team. Implementing resources like these are invaluable during a time when fostering connection is needed most.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“How do we define workplace loneliness? It’s defined by the distress caused by the perceived inadequacy of a quality connection to teammates, leaders, and the organization itself.” (3:19)

“As we can all attest, connections don’t happen naturally, right? They don’t. You have to work at them, you have to be intentional. And so, we will just naturally drift away from each other if we aren’t more intentional.” (4:49)

“The more that we can share some of these non-work-related things, we create data points that people can start connecting to. And if we’re not deliberate, and intentional, these opportunities won’t surface.” (25:23)

“I think creating a sense of belonging might be one of the greatest talent retention levers you can pull because why would you ever want to leave a place that you felt connected, where you felt seen and heard and you had a voice, and you could contribute.” (38:34)

RESOURCES

Ryan Jenkins:
Website | LinkedIn
Book: Connectable: How Leaders Can Move Teams from Isolated to All In

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sue Bethanis 0:00
Welcome, everyone to WiseTalk. This is Mariposa’s monthly podcast providing perspectives on leadership. Today we’re excited to welcome Ryan Jenkins. Thanks so much for being here. Ryan is an internationally recognized keynote speaker, virtual trainer, and author for a decade he has helped organizations such as Coke Salesforce.com, John Deere, the Home Depot, Wells Fargo and Delta Airlines optimize generational dynamics, lessen workforce loneliness and prepare for the future of work. Ryan is also the co-founder of lesslonely.com, the world’s first resource fully dedicated to reducing worker isolation and strengthening team connections, love that title. Ryan’s top-ranked insights have been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, and the Wall Street Journal, he has written over 200 articles for Ink Magazine and Entrepreneur magazine. He has written three books Millennial Manual, The Generation Z guide, and his latest book with co-author Steven Van Cohen is Connectable: How Leaders Can Move Teams From Isolated to All In. Ryan also holds a bachelor’s degree from Miami University in marketing entrepreneurship. He is a dedicated husband and dad currently living in Atlanta. Well, so welcome. And thanks so much for being here. I’m just so fascinated with this title; you really caught our eye. Certainly, my team, we spent probably an ordinate amount of time talking about isolation, solitude, the difference, loneliness, the difference between that and solitude. really curious to hear more about it. But before we get into the content, I read your bio. But I always like to start with the first question, which is, you know, how did you decide to write this book? What’s the backstory? And how did you come to it?

Ryan Jenkins 1:40
Yeah, so I spent over a decade speaking and consulting, and most of my work has been in the generational differences space, specifically, helping organizations understand the emerging generations and how to attract, lead, and engage the next generation workforce. And it was in writing my last book, which is all about Gen Z, which is the youngest generation entering the workforce, that I learned that they are the loneliest generation. And I found that to be so troubling. And I got curious as to why that was happening. And then what can we do to help? And that started my journey down the loneliness path. And that was all pre-pandemic. Once the pandemic hit, I brought all this research to my clients thinking, I don’t know, does anyone want to talk about loneliness? Let’s see. I didn’t think they did, they would, because human humanities never wanted to talk or address loneliness. Right. But I was dead wrong. Everyone wanted to, it became the most popular program of 2020 and 2021. I knew we had something here. The initial interest, really then put the research into hyperdrive. And we’ve researched over 2000 global workers now. And we worked with 50 global leaders on what they’re specifically doing to address worker isolation and loneliness. And now we’ve worked with hundreds of organizations on this topic. And so yeah, that’s where we’ve got to today, and we’ve condensed it all into the book. And we’ve created a ton of other resources to help organizations and individuals on this topic.

Sue Bethanis 3:11
Okay, that sounds and of course, the first question I have is like, how do you define loneliness? And what is what do you consider workplace loneliness? How do you look at that?

Ryan Jenkins 3:19
Yeah, I think it’s probably best to start with just loneliness in general, because a lot of people misconstrue what it is, and it’s not the absence of people like, which seems obvious, and what most people think it’s actually the absence of connection. It’s not the absence of people, it’s the absence of connection. Because we we’ve all been there, we’ve all been in a crowded restaurant, or crowded office space or event where we feel disconnected and isolated, even though there’s all these people around. So it’s not the absence of people. It’s the absence of connection. And there’s a lot of different varieties of connection, right, there can be connection to oneself, there can be connection to team members, to leaders, to organizations, to the work itself, to purpose, to meaning, there’s all different kinds of levels of connection that we have to be focused on. And specifically in the book, we try to make a strong argument that work is the most fertile ground for us to address loneliness, because there are so many loneliness lifelines. So that’s kind of the overarching definition of loneliness. But how do we define workplace loneliness? It’s defined by the distress caused by the perceived inadequacy of a quality connection to teammates, leaders, and the organization itself.

Sue Bethanis 4:34
So, tell us about the research and in terms of I want to know what happened before the pandemic, what were you finding, then how it’s I’m going to make an assumption that it’s become more pronounced during the pandemic. Tell us a little bit about what the research is saying about what that looks like.

Ryan Jenkins 4:49
Yeah, so the loneliness has been increasing for quite some time pre pandemic. And you’re right, your assumptions right. The loneliness escalated during the pandemic; it really put a spotlight on it. And because loneliness is increasing, that means it’s malleable, right? So it can also decrease. And through our research, it was glaring that it doesn’t take much, we’ve just got to be a little bit intentional, and put a little bit more focus attention on some of these pro social behaviors that we can all enact whether we’re an individual contributor, or a leader, and to really move the needle. So yeah, it was growing. If we don’t do anything, we’re gonna continue to drift away from each other because as more technology comes into our lives, and as we continue to adopt this hybrid and remote work situation we will continue to drift apart. Because as we can all attest, connections don’t happen naturally, right? They don’t, you have to work at them, you have to gotta be intentional. And so we will just naturally drift away from each other if we aren’t more intentional. So if nothing else, we would love for this book to just be a kind of a beacon or a sounding alarm, that we’ve got to start putting our attention to this because if not, the loneliness will continue to increase, we’ll just find ourselves more disconnected and just more frustrated and ill because the other interesting fact on all this is we have just like you and I have been ignoring loneliness. Neuroscientists have been ignoring loneliness too. And the research is only about six, about six years ago, they really started to figure out how loneliness is impacting our brain, and how it’s impacting our physical health as well. Yes. And so we’re all it’s all kind of new to us. And so we’re still trying to wrap our heads around, what does it mean? How do we define it? How do we sense it in our bodies, and so all of this awareness is going to help us to really put a get our arms around it, so we can start tackling it. But you know, it’s going to take some intentional effort and some more focus. And we’re excited to be brought to that topic.

Sue Bethanis 6:45
Yeah. So before we get into how we deal with it, I really want to go back to before the pandemic for a second, there’s a book that was written god it probably has been written about 15 years ago, Alone Together. And she talked about how, because of technology, and this is before even Facebook, I think, we’re in the same room together, you know, you can imagine we’re sitting at dinner, and we’re together, but we’re really feeling alone, because we’re not connecting. The classic is, you know, you look around a restaurant, and you know, they have two people on their phones and trying to eat dinner, right? I think the technology has already started to drift. I love what you said about drifting, we are drifting apart. It’s been a hallmark of our practice, of course, and just a hallmark of my own personal legacy to connect people. I mean, it’s always been my important, what I feel deemed to be super important in my life. But besides, I mean, would you agree with that, like the technology was already causing some of this drift? And and pandemic has just made it worse? Or tell me, that’s too simple.

Ryan Jenkins 7:46
No, no, I’ll give a good example here in a minute. But that yeah, according to the research we did, we asked folks, you know, what do you believe contributes most to yours and or others, loneliness. And the top two responses, number one was technology and social media. And number two was busyness. And those are two things that aren’t going away anytime soon. So again, that’s additional cause for us to focus on this and make sure that this doesn’t get away from us. But in the in the book, we use the example of ATMs and then we chronicle the journey of the individual that that that that invented the ATM, his name is Donald Wetzel. And he actually had the idea for this piece of technology while standing in line at a bank. And he was standing in line for over 20 minutes. And he thought there’s got to be a better way. And thus, the idea of the ATM was born. And when they brought it to market, and you know, these lines went away, and people stopped going into the banks, this is what happens with humans, right? We gravitate towards the convenience. And oftentimes what’s the cost is social, and it’s our connections with one another. And I was giving a talk recently, and I was telling the story about the ATM and there was a gal in the audience who came up to me afterwards and said, I used to be a bank teller, before we had an ATM. She said before ATM, people would come in and it would be a social event every Friday, you know, cash in their checks? She said, as soon as the ATM came in, everyone, just started to no longer show up. And she said, we lost track of people. And we have some people who never saw again. And, you know, this is, you know, the ATMs now are in many forms our lives, right? It’s it could be email or mobile devices or, you know, contactless delivery, all these things now are convenient. And we’re naturally drawn to these things because we want to save time. And we, you know, go towards the least resistance avenue.

Sue Bethanis 9:45
Right. Right.

Ryan Jenkins 9:46
But we you know, my hope is that if we’re going towards these more convenient items, then that should leave us with more time and that more time we should prioritize with more connection. And I think what’s happening here, Sue is that you know, These conveniences are great. And I’m not making the case that they should go away. And I don’t think any of us would push a button that says delete the internet or, like, yeah, yeah, these are useful things that enrich our lives. So it’s a balance, it’s not a problem to solve, it’s attention to manage. But what’s not happening if we’re not having the conversation about connection, and I don’t think I don’t think collectively we understand how important connection is. And in the book, we make the case that while connection, and belonging is not the most dire and most urgent need that we have, it is the most significant need. And that’s tied to a number of studies, we can go into if you want, but that’s what we’re up against. And so while we’re going to continuously go towards the convenience, we need to start really thinking to ourselves about the connection standpoint. And I think organizations need to be having this conversation too, that hey, are we just doing remote work? Because it’s convenient, or, you know, individual professionals,

Sue Bethanis 10:54
It is convenient because of the commutes. Right, obviously. But let me ask you, I’ve got two questions. Before again, I want to get into like, what do we do about it, but I have all these other things I want to ask you first, if connecting to other humans, but feeling connected to animals to ideas to a lot of ways feel connected? What’s the problem? I mean, I’m being a little devil advocate here, because I know what the problem is. But I but I want to know what the science says. It’s like, okay, so what does it do to our, you know, our physicality? For example? Was it due to our psychology or psychological being? Our safety that kind of thing?

Ryan Jenkins 11:29
Yeah so, recent research was done, where they took a group of individuals, and they put them through an experience of exclusion. And they monitored their brains and their brains lit up, which wasn’t surprising, but where the brain lit up was really telling. And it was the same part of the brain that actually registers physical pain. So when we are excluded, when we have, we are disconnected from all the things that you mentioned, if we’re feeling that disconnection, our body goes into fight or flight mode. And so we are then distracted, we’re not able to show up fully for those things that we care about or wanting to be connected to. So that’s why this is such an important conversation at work. Because if folks are feeling disconnected and isolated, then they are distracted at best and debilitated at worst. And so then we’ve got to bring them in. Because if you know, if they’re feeling isolated and alone, then it’s as if they’re showing up to work as if they’re someone’s being punching them in the gut, right. And that pain is going to get all the attention and they’re not going to show up fully for team members and clients and customers. And so that’s why this is an important topic. And you know, lonely workers, according to the research, lonely workers are seven times less likely to be engaged at work, they’re five times more likely to miss work due to stress, and then they’re twice as likely to think about leaving their employer. So this is definitely got some bottom line business impacts that we have to be aware of.

Sue Bethanis 12:58
Totally. So about a week ago, I was taking my 16 year old to school, and he says to me, out of the blue, you know, the existential moment, he says, “Mom, what’s the goal?” And I said, well, you know, what do you mean? I thought he was talking about today or the assignment he was doing, I don’t know what he was talking about. I go “honey, what are you talking about? What do you mean, the goal?” “Like the goal, like what am I doing? Like, what are we doing here?” He was very, it’s a very existential question.

Ryan Jenkins 13:26
I love that.

Sue Bethanis 13:27
I know. And I was like, wow, okay. Okay, mom, like put your like, decide make a decision, like, what are you gonna say? So I said, “Well, honey, that’s a really great question. And what do you think the goal is?” And he didn’t, he said, “I don’t know.” I mean, he was actually really, like he wasn’t crying, but he was just, like, kind of bummed out, you know, so that this response I gave him was about connection, I think, I think the goal is to connect to other people, I think, because the goal is to do something for the world through that connection. So that’s kind of what we settled on. And he was he was good with that. Now he is a strong extrovert, and I am too, like big time. I think that I suspect you are too. I suspect that some of this has different. There are differences between introverts and extroverts. And what an introvert would feel lonely about what might be different from what an extrovert might feel lonely about. And then there’s a thing around solitude, too, that I think plays into this. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Ryan Jenkins 14:24
Yeah, I am actually an introvert. I just play an extrovert in that in other certain aspects of my life. My co-author Steven Van Cohen, he’s an extrovert. It’s been nice to have these kinds of dueling perspectives in the book. But look, I mean, loneliness is no respecter of person. It’s a universal human condition. And yes, we all are experiencing it differently and biologically, some of us are more predisposed to experience it more intensely than others. But at the end of the day, we all experience it. And loneliness isn’t shameful. It’s simply a signal that we belong together, just like hunger is our signal to eat something, loneliness is our signal to connect with others. And so that’s a big goal of ours is to bring loneliness into the sunlight and say, not a big deal. We got it, we got to, I mean, it is a big deal. But you know, it’s not shameful as we all once thought.

Sue Bethanis 15:24
It’s a really, really good point, especially with COVID. And people thinking, oh, yeah, I should be able to handle this should be able to handle this solitude this lack of connection. I think that’s a lot of what people are dealing with.

Ryan Jenkins 15:38
Yeah, and so the introvert extrovert, I mean, what we found study after study after study is both, there’s really no differences as far as the benefits of connecting with others. There was a great study by Nick Eppley, out of the University of Chicago. And he’s he was fascinated by studying people that traveled in and out of Chicago on the train, the public transit, and he always noticed that people weren’t connecting. He actually decided to put together a study that would that created three conditions. One was people were asked to keep to themselves. The second one was the control conditions where they could do whatever they want. Spoiler alert, they kept to themselves. And then number three was they were asked to forge a connection with someone you hadn’t connected with before. And here’s what’s so fascinating. Most people predicted that they would be less satisfied if they were forced into connection with somebody. But at the end of it, the most satisfied folks, for the folks in that connection condition, whether they were introvert or extrovert didn’t matter. And what what’s fascinating too, is we explore solitude in the book, and you mentioned at the top, that isolation itself isn’t really positive or negative. The negative state of isolation is loneliness, the positive state of isolation and solitude and solitude, how we define it is the freedom of input from other minds. So you could be in a crowded coffee shop. But if your thinking is self-directed, that can be a form of solitude. And obviously, introverts are typically better suited to engage in solitude and solitude can be insurance against loneliness. Because again, loneliness isn’t the absence of people, it’s the absence of connection. So if you have a strong connection with oneself, again, that kind of serves as insurance against loneliness, Mm hmm. So that serves individuals or introverts, well, but of course, they tend to widely underestimate how much they need connection and how much their well-being will be boosted by pursuing those. And then extroverts are kind of the opposite, right? They what they can fall victim to, is having too many superficial or surface level connections and not having that quality, deep connection. Right? There’s a lot of different elements at play here. But at the end of the day, just know that loneliness is no respecter of person. We all experience it not shameful, simply a signal.

Sue Bethanis 17:59
Yeah. Okay. That’s great. I do want to get some folks to jump in here. But let me just ask you one more question. And then we’ll do that. And you have a four-step model in your book called less loneliness framework. Could you go through that with us? And that would be an antidote to some of this, for sure. So I want to hear from you a little bit more about it.

Unknown Speaker 18:19
Yes, the four steps in the model is a circle. And the reason it’s a circle is because we have to constantly forge and nurture and reconnect, I like to think of, to think of your well-being like the battery of your phone, right? Like we get your phone is constantly depleting. So you have to connect it to a charger. Same thing with humans are well, beings constantly depleting and we have to connect with others. And really, connecting with others is the wellspring of our well-being. And so we’re all I like to think of all of us as well-being sources for everybody. Right? So connecting with somebody can really be that replenishing. And so back to the loneliness framework gets four steps. Number one is to look at loneliness. So it’s this kind of gain awareness, understand the science of it and appreciate the impact it has on people’s health and their well-being and how it’s impacting businesses. And then the second step is to invest in connection. So we identify investing in personal connections, investing in professional connections amongst a team, but then also investing in safe connections, creating safe spaces for folks to connect at work. The third step is narrowing your focus. So you know, confusion spurs alienation, but it’s really clarity that cultivates connection. And so, you know, think about it if you went on a hike and you didn’t have a map and you got lost. That’s very isolating. It’s very lonesome, and you know, if you’re lost, so clarity is something that’s really underappreciated as relates to loneliness. So how do we help folks gain more clarity on what’s important and what they what’s right in front of them? And then fourth and final is the kindle the momentum. So it’s really about this. You know, if you’re doing those first three steps, how do you continuously keep that momentum going? And if you can, you know, start greasing the wheels with some of these connections, then it really just doesn’t take much else to keep the those wheels turning.

Sue Bethanis 20:19
And that spells LINK.

Ryan Jenkins 20:20
LINK Yes.

Sue Bethanis 20:22
Look, Invest, Narrow, and Kindle. I like it a lot. Okay, and so, in this is good an example. So sticking with the teams you’re working with inside organizations. How are they using this? Is it like a? Do they use it in workshops? You teach it workshops, and then they apply it with each other? And they help each other do it? Or how are you using it?

Ryan Jenkins 20:47
You know, big thing right now is just awareness, right? Because people aren’t quite, they feel the isolation. They know it’s impacting their team, but they haven’t thought about it in depth. they don’t have the vernacular around it. They don’t there’s no data there. Right. So it’s kind of nebulous. So we’re finding more and more, it’s just takes, it’s just more of an awareness and starting to get folks to think about it. But yeah, I mean, it’s anywhere from, you know, keynote presentations that we’re doing, workshops, we also, we developed something that we’re really excited about, it’s called the team connection assessment. So we worked with researchers out of Harvard, in the University of Alabama, and the University of Canterbury, to develop the first assessment that it’s empirically validated to actually quantify and measure the strength of connections across the team. And so the, the idea is that we’ve got leaders and team members will take the whole team will go through it, and take it and it spits out a aggregated report that measures how strong the connections are with the with between the team members, the team members in the leader, and then the with the folks, the team and the organization itself.

Sue Bethanis 21:52
And is it anonymous, so like if people aren’t gonna get called out?

Ryan Jenkins 21:56
Correct, it’s anonymous. And then the leaders get an aggravated report that’s got then specific recommendations on what they can do. So we’re really excited about that. Because so much of the time it’s that we’re getting that a lot as well not sure how connected or unconnected we are. And so now there’s a tool that actually quantifies it. So really excited about the work that we’ve done there. And then we’ve got a digital course that folks can put in their LMS system. And then we even created these cards, which is, which is fun. It’s just a deck of cards, there’s 30 activities on them, that folks can do. So the goal there was, you know, if you’re a remote worker, every day you pull a card, it’s got a two to three minute activity on it. And it’s the goal is to reconnect with humanity and your team. Because again, if we’re not intentional about it, if it’s not in front of us, if we’re not thinking about it will just drift away from each other, which is so unfortunate.

Sue Bethanis 22:46
I talked with an HR person this morning, an HR leader, and we’re talking about she used the word intentional, I use the word, I said, I’m gonna go a step farther and say deliberate, we have to deliberately create this cohesion, this connection. And I think I don’t think anyone’s gonna argue with that. No one’s going to argue about like whether we should be more connected. I think it’s this is how we do it. So what kind of community like in our case, we talked about the kinds of their meetings and the I mean, even org design in terms of, you know, how are they bringing people together? This is executive teaching we’re talking about. And how can we bring people together to the office, if they’re going to be if everyone’s remote? How to bring people to the office, every in our case every five weeks? How do we linger after meetings? So that we’re not just having, you know, having boxes all day and zoom? And how do we you know, get someone on the phone or slack them real quick or dissident, there’s a lingering so a connectedness to person one on one, what other ideas you have in terms of how people can connect?

Ryan Jenkins 23:49
i love that what you just said there lingering after meetings, there is so much-

Sue Bethanis 23:54
One of my clients told me that it’s actually he gets credit for that.

Ryan Jenkins 23:58
And then is this done in the virtual setting where you know, meetings done, and then folks can jump if they want? but anyone else can linger?

Sue Bethanis 24:06
Essentially linger on the Zoom, but also linger as he’ll pick up the phone and call somebody like us actually use the phone? Or slack or slack, right? Or text? I mean, just like the other In other words, it’s like you’re, you have a group meeting, but then you’re just gonna it’s just like in a meeting regular meeting you’re walking someone off to their next meeting or you linger with them. Hey, did you get my email about blah, blah, blah. That happened a lot in pre pandemic where people would linger after the meeting. So we’re trying to create that same feeling and so it’s not a water cooler thing. It’s more of a lingering thing.

Ryan Jenkins 24:39
Hmm. I love that. Because it’s so true because it’s all the, those little nuances, you know, with when we were in person, it was the overhearing of a conversation a couple desks over or, you know, sharing something personal right before meeting started, like all those little moments or you know, going to lunch together, right, those were all the moments you start to build context. Yeah, share non work-related things. And then now in the remote world, the digital world, those things are now nonexistent unless we deliberately build them in.

Sue Bethanis 25:11
Yes, yeah. So we have a question on chat about how this can build trust, you started talking about that a little bit. So how, what are some ways that we can this connection builds trust?

Ryan Jenkins 25:23
Yeah, that’s so funny that this question came up, because I listened to a podcast yesterday from a trust expert. And I was so fascinated, I don’t think I was thinking, gosh, there’s got to be such a clear connection here between trust and loneliness, and connection. And I was and I said to myself, I should explore that further. Now, here we are. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I’m no trust expert. But of course, you know, when do we feel the most trust with someone, it’s usually when we have context and we have, you know, there’s, there’s a long-standing relationship, we’ve seen the ins and outs of this individual. And so I think that becomes hard in a hybrid world, or in a world where we keep surface level conversations, because we don’t get to actually know the individual. So let me give you a good example, that also relates to what we’re just talking about. So one organization that we highlight in the book, they do what’s called an inside scoop. So it’s, every week, on their all hands meeting, they have one person share one thing for just five minutes, the top of the meeting that and the only rule is it can’t be work related. So it has to be non-work related. And there was one individual that one point that she showed a picture of her training for a marathon, and no one had any idea that she was that athletically inclined. And it actually she had, in the past had qualified for the Olympics. So the whole team had seen this individual as a very detail oriented researcher, and now this whole new world, a new perspective, are opened up just by her sharing that one picture. And I think, you know, giving a framework giving permission for folks to do these things can help grease the wheels, right? To your point, again, we got to be deliberate about these things. So I imagine the trust, elevated amongst that team now that they can see a human behind the job. And you know, the more that we can share some of these non work-related things, we create data points that people can start connecting to right. And if we’re, again, if we’re not deliberate, and intentional, these opportunities won’t surface. And so, we’ve just got to be extra mindful that

Sue Bethanis 27:35
We will continue to drift. What I’ve gotten most more than anything out of this conversation is this idea of drifting. And as someone who loves the ocean, and who’s somebody who loves the ocean, not in Maui, but I at least pretend I am right now. He’s like, that is it is a drifting it’s a feeling when we think about drifting, driftwood drifting, drifting away. It’s just it feels. Yeah, it doesn’t feel very good.

Ryan Jenkins 28:00
It’s so subtle, you don’t feel it until one day you pick your head up, and you’re going, Oh, my gosh, and you’re so far away, and yeah, and you feel lost, and you feel where do I start? And it’s that’s it, that was a terrible feeling.

Sue Bethanis 28:11
I think that we were seeing that we’re seeing people who are lost during the pandemic. Okay.

Speaker 3 28:16
So thank you really interesting. And I wondered, Ryan, have you got research findings on the distinction between, for example, having well, let’s just say having a one-on-one meeting via zoom versus being in person? What is the distinction? So I like Sue, I’m a coach. And people will often say, I just don’t like zoom. It’s not the same, we don’t get the same connection. You know, and everybody’s entitled to their opinion. I don’t feel that. Is that just me? What does the research tell us?

Ryan Jenkins 28:51
Yeah. So. So again, think back to the definition, loneliness, it’s not the absence of people. It’s the absence of connection. So we don’t have to be in the same room to cultivate a connection. You know, it’s not geographic specific. So we can create a connection digitally. Without a doubt. It usually takes more effort, right, we have to be perhaps more calculated with are the questions and body language and that sort of thing. But it can’t happen, no doubt. And I think, you know, thank goodness that we had this technology at our disposal when we all had to go away into our corners of the world, right. I mean, yeah, I mean, what would it have looked like if we had not had this technology?

Speaker 3 29:31
Imagine Yes. Horrific to think. Yeah.

Ryan Jenkins 29:38
But I’d say, you know, in person is going to – if your goal is to create enhanced connection, in person really can’t be beat. And you know, whether that’s one on one or a large group, but of course, you know, there’s all other elements to be thinking about. And so, you know, the level of connection that can be cultivated on Zoom should not be you know, discounted. So there’s, and there’s some and more research coming out about this, which is really interesting. Actually, the one research I think my you might find interesting. And I get a lot too is, you know, we don’t have a lot of folks that are turning on their cameras during these sessions like, Are these people disconnecting? Should we ask them to turn their cameras on. And I think there’s a time and place where cameras on is helpful. Like, you know, this conversation between all of us, like you’ve been able to see me is probably helpful. But there’s a lot of context to where it’s actually can be hindering specifically for introverts, it can be extremely taxing for introverts who have spent all day in virtual sections, because the stimuli of having all of these faces and different things to be looking at can be very intensive for this group. And so another video call where they have to turn on their camera will actually they’ll actually be less engaged at that point. And additionally, there’s some research showing that where they’ve put two people in a room, and they turn off the lights, right, so they can’t see each other. And they’ve assessed what happens then. And people are actually demonstrating closer listening and more empathy, when there’s no visual because they’re really focused on the meaning behind the words and the, the emotion intentionality. And I’m guilty of this when the cameras on and I’m zoomed, like, right now I’m looking at me because I want to kind of get my gesture, right. And, you know, want to make sure I’m smiling appropriately. And so, so sometimes it’s not as helpful to have the camera on. So those are all things to consider. But I think, you know, another tactic I’ve been adopting lately is I defer to the other folks that I’m interacting with. So if someone scheduled a meeting, I’ll typically turn my camera off and join. And if theirs is on, then I quickly turned mine on to kind of meet their what their preferences or expectation, because I, because if I if I have it on and someone joins, then I think they don’t have it on like, Okay, I better turn mine on, right. So, you know, this is all pretty new. We’re all still kind of wading through this, but there’s pros and cons of all of it, but still can’t be in person.

Speaker 3 32:09
But still, the fact what you’re saying is, you know, even with Zoom, we because it’s human connection, we are alleviating the loneliness, to some extent, not as much as if we were in person, but it’s still pretty good, right?

Ryan Jenkins 32:28
Yeah, in the absence of anything else that we could do? I mean, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I remember during the pandemic, we we’d have zoom calls with other couple friends, and we’d play games digitally. And it was, that was better than nothing, right? We weren’t gonna all get on the same phone call and be able to play a game together necessarily. So yeah, we just have to be that much more intentional. And kind of back to what Sue was talking about, too. As far as, you know, all these little like the conversation you would have had before you started a coaching session with a client, you know, that sort of missed a bit in the digital session? Yeah. So there’s all these other little

Speaker 3 33:09
It’s like all the other little things isn’t it? the pre, and the after.

Sue Bethanis 33:17
Thanks for joining.

Ryan Jenkins 33:18
I’m reminded of a company Automatic familiar with the company Automatic? for the ones that create have created WordPress, which half the internet runs on WordPress.

Sue Bethanis 33:27
Yeah, I didn’t realize that I know WordPress, obviously. But yeah, that they’re assisted. Yeah, got it.

Ryan Jenkins 33:31
So Automatic is it’s got over 1000 employees, and they’ve always been 100% remote, and, but they know how powerful human connection can be. So while they have people all over the world, one week, every year, they bring everybody together, and they just it’s just a celebration. It’s just a time to create culture and really connect with other folks. And they do they’re so intentional about that one week, they’ve said that that carries them the whole the year. And it’s different, right? I mean, I’m sure everyone can relate. And we talked to so many organizations, we’re like, yeah, half the people that we have on our team. Now, we’ve never actually met in person. And it’s just different, right? It’s just not quite the same.

Sue Bethanis 34:11
It’s not and then what happens is you meet them and you’re like, Oh, God, you’re taller than I thought or shorter. You don’t have no idea how tall people are. Is we’re all sitting here. Um, yeah, totally. But the same HR person was talking with this morning, she, they’re going to have a 750-person team building, bring everyone together in May. And so we were talking about it and she says, I’m concerned it might be overwhelming for people I said, No shit, I said, you’re gonna have to have a lot of like space for people to go off to cubbies and be, you know, twos and threes and so that they don’t feel overwhelmed by too many people because we’re not used to it. You know, it’s just we’re not used to being in crowded places. So there’s safety issues and just feeling of that kind of feeling as well. So you want to kind of ease I guess the point is we want to ease people back in as we’re going back to more of a hybrid, or a lot of companies were working whether, you know, of course or tech and many of them were remote or hybrid before, and now they’re going to be remote only or if remote only they’re still want to be wanting people to come in and they’re doing it like with off sites every quarter or, or bringing the team in every Wednesday or something like that. And I think easy ended that I think is going to be important. Do you have any thing to say about that? It’s almost the opposite a little bit, because you don’t want to overwhelm people.

Ryan Jenkins 35:31
I think there’s a lot to be said there. And I think too, there’s a lot of our social skills is like a muscle. Right. And don’t exercise it. it atrophies. Yeah, so no doubt it’s. And that’s been proven to right. I mean, just as much as we exercise our mind, and our physical bodies, like social fitness is a real thing. It’s part of the reason why we connected the Connect Act Two is because it’s, you know, again, if we’re not intentional about it, we’re not building it, it’ll atrophy. And while we, we desire that connection, we’ll never be able to stamp that out. Because that’s just wired and humans are skilled to be able to navigate to the small talk or whatever else, the listening can atrophy. So it’s important to stay sharp.

Sue Bethanis 36:14
Yeah, definitely no question about it. So another question came in the chat. You mentioned about connect lifelines. This person wants to know what that is.

Ryan Jenkins 36:22
Yeah, I mentioned that. I’m mostly just because it’s loneliness lifeline. Sounds good, really. But it’s this idea that at work, I think the context I was using this at work lies the most loneliness lifelines. Because one, it’s where we spend most of our time, our waking hours is at work. There’s natural connections and relationships that that we encounter at work. But again, the other things that really help with lessening loneliness are things like routine, learning, lessens loneliness. So the same way that you can’t experience anger while you’re being grateful. Same thing, we can’t experience loneliness, if we’re enthralled in learning something new and then purpose, right finding meaning in our work that really helps to drive less loneliness. So there’s all these what we call loneliness, lifelines, that leaders and organizations can throw out there to the ocean of folks that are feeling isolated and alone. So that’s what we mean by loneliness lifelines. Yeah, yep.

Sue Bethanis 37:23
I love it. So this great resignations happening. I mean, it’s, it’s not surprising. I think that there’s a lot of people who were not happy before, feeling like you have to bring their armor to work and how I mean, I’ve talked to one of my clients. He’s a former client, but he’s been friends now. And he, he’s living in Hawaii now. And he’s, when we were there last, he just said, like, I don’t, I don’t want to work so much. Like he just doesn’t want to work as much. And I think that he’s not alone. And whether he’s in Hawaii or not, but it’s like, people don’t want to work as much, and they don’t want to commute. And they don’t want to put as much energy. It’s just it’s actually about the energy that that because there was so much energy being put toward it, like we’re talking, you know, 10, 12, 14-hour days or more during the commute. So people are burned out. So I think that there’s no, there’s that that to me is the is the middle you are the context for part of why there’s a great resignation. So how does loneliness fit into this? And how do we so there’s that for so the first question, and how do we help leaders help prevent their people from leaving and being part of the great resignation?

Ryan Jenkins 38:34
Yeah, great insights. You know, if you think about loneliness, you think it’s someone that’s, that’s isolated, they feel detached, they feel disconnected? Well, if you’re disconnected from something, you’re very susceptible to go somewhere else, right? There’s not a lot of effort, you’re not connected to the work the organization, the people, there the leaders, right. So if you’re very, it’s very easy to jump ship and go somewhere else. And so I think that’s a big issue. And of course, loneliness, lonely workers are twice as likely to think about leaving their e
mployer. And research after research shows, especially with the emerging generation is they’re looking for more environments that can help support mental health for you. They’re looking to their organizations to help them support with some of these things. And so to your point, yeah, if organizations aren’t thinking about this, if they’re not providing these things, which typically was things that were supposed to be done outside of work on your personal time, well, work and life have blended like we’ve never seen before us, we’re bringing more of our personal life into work and our work home with us. And so this point, it’s all just life. So these are so I think, you know, there’s a big shake up happening. And I think just like markets correct, I think the labor markets correcting too, and I think we’re going to start seeing some really healthy and vibrant organizations coming out of this. And so I think yeah, I think creating a sense of belonging might be one of the greatest talent retention levers you can pull because why would you ever want to leave a place that you felt connected, where you felt seen and heard and, and you had a voice and you could contribute. So I think that’s, that’s really important to start creating those. And again, it doesn’t take as much as we think. And one of the great ways to do this, we actually interviewed a gentleman by the name of Steve Cole, he’s out of UCLA. And he studies loneliness, and how it shows up in the body. And he says, one of one of the best ways to actually let me preface it first, he would say, one of the worst things you could do is if you want to lessen loneliness in a team, or individuals, is get two lonely people together and say, You guys are both lonely, get together, then you won’t be lonely. That’s just not how it works. I mean, that usually typically make things worse, typically, what’s the best thing to do in Steve Cole’s opinion, and based on his research, is to involve people, right? Ask them to contribute to something. So ask them to help, right? Can you help me with this, or, you know, in the language of what we use in the book is pull people into a compelling narrative into some meaningful work, and make sure that they have a clear understanding of the work that they do, and the people benefiting from that work. Right. You got to draw those connections. And that will keep folks connected to the organization?

Sue Bethanis 41:09
Yeah. Well, I think meaningfulness is when we look at the studies on why people leave or waiting for resignation, why people leave or stay, it’s the meaningful work is number one out, you know, then boss, then money is way down there. And connected to your team. That’s, that’s also up there. So, but they’ve got to have meaningful work. And in Teresa Amabile’s work around ‘small wins’ and The Progress Principle really just brings that home, it’s like, you know, you do meaningful work with the small wins you get from that, and the progress you make is really why people stay. I mean, that’s the mate that well, it’s, it seems obvious, but the work that their study that they did was they actually researched it and looked at the inner world of people, of employees and managers to see how progress made a difference in terms of their work. It was fascinating work. It’s really interesting work. Another plug for her, but yeah, so well, any last thoughts? Ryan, this has been wonderful. Any other key lessons that you hope that our listeners in our, in our readers come away with?

Ryan Jenkins 42:16
Yeah, I’m gonna share this quote, it’s by the late Robin Williams, who was an actor and comedian. And it’s a really poignant quote. And I think there’s a direct call to action for all of us, so I’ll share it with you here it says. He said, quote, “I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone, it’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone.” Ah, and I think, you know, as leaders, and as people, we’re constantly interacting with other folks. And I think his quote is just a constant reminder to all of us that, you know, universal human laws to just never make someone feel alone, especially if you’re with them. And that’s kind of our charge to leaders, and everyone that reads the book or listens to conversations like this, it’s just a subtle reminder that we are all the source of well-being for others. And if we can just help each other because we’re only as unified as our loneliest members. So if we can all play a little part in bringing each other closer, and I think we’re gonna have healthier teams, we’re gonna have healthier communities and ultimately, a healthier collective humanity.

Sue Bethanis 43:22
Yeah, that’s great. Thank you. Well I just want to honor Katie, she did ask one more question here in the chat. And she asked, how does loneliness show up in the body? And I think she said, I think we were going to go there but didn’t have the answer. I think you mentioned some of that. But you can maybe you give one more example.

Unknown Speaker 43:40
They’ve identified where it shows up in our brains. But as far as it shows up in the body, we’re not quite sure yet. And it’s really, it’s a subjective feeling. And it’s hard to know, does loneliness come first, and that leads to burnout? Or does burnout come first and that contributes to loneliness? Or do we experience depression, and that leads to loneliness? Does loneliness lead to depression? It’s really hard to say. And I just heard a podcast with Brene Brown, her new book, Atlas of the Heart just came out. Have you read that Sue? I haven’t read it either. But she was talking about it. And with all the research that she’s done, humans can only communicate three emotions. It’s basically sad, mad, and glad. So we don’t have the vernacular of what other emotions that we’re feeling. I think that mental health, of course, is becoming a growing conversation, which is fantastic. As more of these conversations start to bubble up, we’re all going to start to have a little bit more access to what we’re feeling and how it shows up and that’s going to be helpful for us to then communicate to those around us on how they can help us or us to fully express what might be the crux of our issue or how we’re feeling so and we do this with our kids, we have a chart that has all probably about 25 different emojis. And we asked them, you know, today what, you know, what was your kind of your general feeling of today? And we try to stretch them a little bit to think about this and that and I find myself doing the same thing like, okay, no, really, it wasn’t this, it was more of this. Right? And you think we’d be so much further along and we’d be all this much more emotionally intelligent, but it’s tough, and it’s hard work. So yeah, I don’t quite know, we don’t quite know how loneliness shows up in the body. But we the last thing I’ll share is Vivek Murthy, who is the two-time US Surgeon General, yes, the 19th. In the current one, he wrote a book called together and he used to he would travel the country, just to try to get a sense of the health of the United States. And he said that the underlying ailment of why people were having illness was loneliness was just this disconnection in this kind of languishing and so, again, yeah, so anyway, so not quite sure, but hopefully this conversation right, yeah, start to get a little bit more in tune with loneliness. And yes, when you experience it, and when you like, I’ve become hyper in tune with the highs of connection. So when I have a small connection with a barista or someone in an elevator like I can be on it was just incredible. Like, yeah, where where’s this been all my life?

Sue Bethanis 46:29
Yeah, I get it. It’s a high pressure. It’s ready. I feel the same way. Yeah, well, I’ve got a high from listening to you. So thank you so much for the connection. Ryan seriously. Your website is lesslonely.com and also Ryan-Jenkins.com. Your Twitter is @theRyanJenks as well as your LinkedIn. And the book, of course, is Connectable: How Leaders Can Move Teams from Isolated to All In. Again, thank you so much for being with us. It was wonderful to be with you. And I only wish you the best and want to stay connected for sure.

Ryan Jenkins 47:03
Let’s stay connected. Thank you Sue thanks, everyone. Have a great day.

Sue Bethanis 47:06
Yeah let me just say one more. One more question about how to get to know more about the team assessment. I assume if you go on Lesslonely.com You’ll be able to see more about that.

Ryan Jenkins 47:14
Yeah, lesslonely.com and then just click the Assessment tab. And you’re good to go.

Sue Bethanis 47:18
Perfect. Awesome. Aloha. And mahalo. We’ll see you next time. Bye now. Bye, everyone.

In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts Anne Helen Peterson, a former senior culture writer for Buzzfeed News. Anne now writes about the future of work, celebrity burnout, and more at her newsletter called Culture Study that’s a full-time venture at Substack. She is the author of four books, most recently: Out of The Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home co-written with Charlie Weitzel. She also wrote: Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation. She received her Ph.D. in Media Studies from the University of Texas, where she studied the history of the gossip industry.

Listen to the full episode here:

Listen on: Apple | Spotify | Google

INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

The way we perceive in-person offices has shifted, and from Anne’s perspective, pre-pandemic offices need a much larger renovation to keep up with the changes in the workforce. Remote and hybrid work has given many people flexibility that they are no longer willing to give up, and companies who are unable to meet these needs are going to see an inability to retain talent. Anne provides some great perspectives on how companies should be moving forward in this unprecedented era, and how to find the middle ground between the needs of the employee and the company.

Some of the key takeaways from this talk:

• Prioritize intentionality when it comes to creating a culture in remote and hybrid environments. Find what works best for your employees to create spaces for community and connection. (12:39)
• If you are unable to offer employees a fully remote option, consider having core working hours for when people are needed to work together in person. Have these hours be mid-day if possible, to ease the commute and allow people to still drop off and pick up kids from school. (19:33)
• Find ways to create equity whether in person, hybrid, or remote. This can be related to benefits, promotions, and more. Know that just because someone is in the office does not mean they are working harder or more deserving than someone who is remote. (27:37)
• Instead of focusing on the minimum amount of time employees need to be in the office, flip it around to an office maximum. This has benefits for organizing the workplace while providing flexibility to employees. (29:34)

On the topic of community and connection, Anne has an interesting perspective. She believes that although it may seem like there has been a lack of connection compared to pre-pandemic, it has less to do with the remote work and more to do with the pandemic itself. Companies have been remote long before the pandemic and have found creative ways to maintain connectedness. She claims that some companies try to foster too much connection and can provide too many amenities to keep employees on campus for all their needs, which can lead to burnout. Whereas supporting communication and encouraging occasional gatherings can lead to more sustainable connections moving forward.

Anne predicts that offices as we know it will continue to shift and evolve. She believes more collaborative workspaces, like We Work, will be on the rise to provide dynamic spaces for people looking to get out of their home offices. Companies are already shifting away from even the word ‘office’ to terms such as labs or collaborative studios to embody a new sense of meaning when it comes to in-person work. The way we work is changing and compromising to meet the needs of the company as well as the needs of the employees is essential.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“We’ve allowed work to devour our lives and that makes a lot of us really unhappy. And in many cases, worse workers. We burn out faster, we feel more miserable in the jobs that we do. So how can we rethink or add another axis to our lives in terms of community that allows us to be better workers and better community members to one another?” 10:53

“(The pre-pandemic office) was all built to cater to a certain style of worker, we are not that workplace anymore. So why would we go back to that style of workplace?” 22:16

“In some organizations that just have a totally free, do whatever you want, let’s see what happens policy, you’re going to see some equity issues….You’re going to have a lot of people coming into the office who don’t have caregiving responsibilities… and some of that means that you will have younger people in the office and some of that means that you will have, in a lot of cases, more men in the office.” (27:36)

RESOURCES

Anne Helen Petersen:
Website | LinkedIn

Book: Out of the Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working From Home

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sue Bethanis 0:04
Welcome, everyone to WiseTalk. This is Mariposa’s monthly Leadership Forum. We’re really happy today to have Anne Helen Peterson. Anne is a former senior culture writer for Buzzfeed News and now writes about the future of work, celebrity burnout, and more at her newsletter called Culture Study that’s a full-time venture at Substack. She is the author of four books, most recently: Out of the Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home. And that’s co-written with Charlie Weitzel. And another book she’s written is Can’t Even: How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation. She received her Ph.D. in Media Studies from the University of Texas, and she lives now in Lummi Island, Washington, which is near Canada, as we’ve found out. So welcome very much, I really appreciate you being here. And it’s nice to have a writer with us who does a lot of research because we, lots of times, we have coaches, and lots of times we have sometimes we have clients. And so, you have a different perspective, which we really appreciate. So, I read your bio, but we like to start out with your sort of your personal journey, and how did you decide to write this particular book, besides the obvious that we’re in a pandemic? And I suppose we’re supposedly working from home, you have actually a different view on that, which is interesting.

Anne Helen Peterson 1:20
Yeah, I have come to think of this book as part of like, the larger cinematic universe. With my third book Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation. So cinematic universe, you know, is often used to describe like Marvel movies, that sort of thing. And this, like thematically, are very much aligned in a lot of ways because they’re addressing this larger question of what is our relationship to work? And specifically looking, this isn’t necessarily the case of the whole of the burnout book. But a lot of the condition that I’m talking about is the type of attitude towards work adopted by people who work in office work, you know, broadly conceived. So people I don’t like, you know, knowledge work is such a silly term, because you have to have knowledge to do all sorts of work, right. Any sort of work that is portable, that is not wed to a certain location. And I think that that sort of work, its portability is part of this encourages a certain type of attitude, and also people who are doing that sort of work, who are college-educated and who have internalized some ideas about, you know, what college would promise and what sort of security that this sort of work would promise have struggled to find that stability. And so I think sometimes the coping mechanisms that we adopt in order to find stability amidst precarity lead to toxic work environments, but also pretty toxic strategies and attitudes towards work. And so that’s it, I think that like they are really in conversation in a lot of ways.

Sue Bethanis 2:54
Right. So it sounds like there’s a jumping off from your other book, was there something else in your research or in your background that sort of pointed to why you wanted to do this particular book?

Anne Helen Peterson 3:04
Yeah, I forgot to address this. I used to be an academic Ph.D. in Media Studies from the University of Texas, I graduated in 2011. And I was in the academic world, I was an assistant professor for three years after that. And that world, all of my bad ideas about work, I got them – I mean, some of them germinated when I was young- but most of them really, really were cultivated as an academic. And then part of what made me a good academic in terms of like my ability to work all the time, which is it a highly prized skill within academia also made me good at digital journalism, and the skills that are necessary to navigate that sort of precarious environment that is really predicated on the ability to work all the time, right, like the ability to pretend or to pay people to behave in a way as if there is nothing in your life other than work. And so I think that that background equipped me to think about these topics in pretty interesting ways. And also like the intersection of work with passion work broadly, and the ideas that we often internalize about what should be expected of us to do work that is, quote, unquote, lovable. So whether that’s teaching, doing journalism, working in the nonprofit sphere, there are a lot of intersections and explosions that happen there too.

Sue Bethanis 4:21
Cool. Okay. Thanks for that, that that makes it – it’s always good to know like little bit where you’re coming from. So your book is framed around four concepts, flexibility, culture, technologies of the office, and community. So let’s start with flexibility. You talked about genuine flexibility, how can we create a work culture that promotes real genuine flexibility that can benefit both the employee in the organization? I mean, this is so steeped right now, right? Tell us a bit more about what you mean by that.

Anne Helen Peterson 4:43
Yeah, I think because I come to any subject from this like academic, sociological, historical background, I always look in and like okay, what is flexibility meant historically, and it’s fascinating to look at the way that they use the word was used in The 1960s, 70s, and 80s, it was entirely you know, the flexibility on the corporation’s part to expand and contract at ease. Right. A great example of this is finding office space that has readily expandable cubicles so that if you hire a bunch of people for our project, you can just put them in that space. And then when, when you have to lay them off six months later, right, it’s easy to expand and contract, which is a real contrast to the way that the peak organization man style of business where someone started to work for you, and they work for you for the rest of their lives, right. It’s very different. But the framing of that term flexibility was all about how does this benefit the corporation, right? Does this benefit the stockholder? And not at all about how does this benefit the employee. And so I think what we were really trying to search for with this understanding of what genuine flexibility is, is how do we come up with a situation when it comes to when and how we work that is mutually beneficial to the employee and the employer? Right? How do we come up with a style of work that makes work survivable? Thrivable is not a word, but it’s like makes it a place where you can thrive, that also a lovely byproduct also creates less turnover, you get better talent, that product is better. productivity goes up, like how do you find that happy medium? And I think genuine flexibility is one of the ways.

Sue Bethanis 6:24
And how are companies doing that right now? Organizations?

Anne Helen Peterson 6:27
They’re struggling. And I think part of the problem and I know anyone who’s listening to this, who is an HR professional or an executive is that the ball has just been kicked on the road so many times, right. Like we keep thinking, Okay, we have this firm back to the office day, and then nope, right?

Sue Bethanis 6:43
Yes. I think maybe think people think now they might, but I don’t know. It’s like, you never know. But yeah, I think that there’s never been a time I don’t think until now where I think I might really happen. And that’s because I think that the government is really taking the lead on that. And yeah, you know, and I think making it a little easier, I guess.

Anne Helen Peterson 7:01
Well, and we’re also at a point too, you know, almost exactly two years into when we first went home from offices where patterns have been entrenched, right? Like, people, you cannot be calling people, everyone back to the office right now and be like, Okay, we’re here, right? It’s just, it’s just not gonna work. And I think most corporations understand that. So what is the happy medium? This is what’s hard too because I think there are, there’s a lot of thinking about equity, there’s a lot of thinking about what sort of daycare and care options are available to people right now, because the system’s broken, right? Like this system, it was broken before the pandemic, and it’s even more broken now. And so if you can’t find, you know, like, my friends in Seattle, there’s no one to drive the buses to the after school thing. So someone has to leave their job at 3 pm, to drop to drive their kid who is in full-time care, from elementary school, to the after-school program at the Boys and Girls Club. And like they can, you know, maybe carpool with some other kids, but like that, that has to be something that’s part of my friend’s flexible workday. And so how do you get that?

Sue Bethanis 8:05
You know, one way to get that would be for companies to provide that.

Anne Helen Peterson 8:09
Right? Well, we’re like, say, alright, we have figured out what our core hours are, right. And I know that a lot of companies are moving towards this like we have core hours that we want you to be in the office. And then let’s figure out from there, what your schedule is. And that might vary team by team. task by task. that sort of week by week, but what are our core hours?

Sue Bethanis 8:29
So as you mentioned, already, this idea that the day comes back as move, move, move, especially with these bigger corporations, I mean, Amazon’s move there, it’s a bunch of time. So has Apple. And they also shifted from let’s come back five days a week to three days a week to let’s come back two days a week, and some have decided that no one has to come back. Right. And in your research, I want to focus on tech companies is that really is most of the people that are on the call or in tech companies. What are you noticing about what tech companies are doing? And I can tell you what I’m noticing too.

Anne Helen Peterson 9:00
Yeah, I see a really interesting divide. I think that the smaller tech companies are a lot more nimble, and a lot more responsive right now. I think that Apple dragging its feet is really interesting. And I think there’s gonna be some pushback there continued. What’s happening at Microsoft is fascinating, because that was a company that really felt very butts in seats to me, that has realized that like, in order to be competitive, that they need to have the same sort of competence, this flexibility that these other companies that are poaching their talent are offering. I know who wants to drive to Redmond, right? And I think some companies though… I have a friend who works at a phone company, I don’t want to say the name but like they have said there’s no working from home on Mondays and Fridays, even for upper level and that to me is just such evidence of distressed

Sue Bethanis 9:46
totally. Yeah. And so they’re saying you have to come into the office every day. No,

Anne Helen Peterson 9:51
you can. You can work from home sometimes on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, but you can’t work on Monday because there’s they’re basically saying like you’re gonna screw around on Fridays if we let you work from home on Fridays, and you know what, here’s the thing, maybe you take off a little bit early when your kids get off school, so you can go to a ski weekend or whatever, if that’s a higher quality of life for you, if like the person works really hard to get all the things that are that need to be done. I think that’s great, right, like, allowed you to have lives. But then I sometimes I’ll talk to a leader, CEO, and they’re like, that’s wage theft. It’s not

Sue Bethanis 10:23
Yeah, I don’t think that…so you said a phone company, I don’t know how techie there. But I mean, I would agree with you most small tests in our little sample that we see. Yeah, 60 companies or so that we work with. You know, most of the small companies are not requiring anybody to come back.

Anne Helen Peterson 10:41
Yeah totally. And the small companies are being so much more innovative with four-day workweeks, that sort of thing. Right.

Sue Bethanis 10:47
Right. So we got culture, technology, the office, and community, could you just briefly talk about what you mean by those?

Anne Helen Peterson 10:53
Culture, again, is one of those things like so each one of these, we could start by defining it by how it’s been historically defined, which is oftentimes crappy, right? Like, what is work culture, it’s all the gossip that people say about what you need to know about a place, and how remote work flexible work can change how we think about that thing. So how can remote and flexible work dramatically change the way we think about culture? For one thing, it can really change the monoculture, which is oftentimes a certain sort of person, race, family situation, a location that thrives in an in-person office environment, and then technologies of the office, same sort of thing like what are, for better and for worse, what are the things that remote work facilitates in terms of communicating and how we put together an office space and how we think about how like email and meetings take up our days, and how that works differently. And the community is, I think the part of the book that a lot of people are surprised by that it’s essentially about we’ve allowed work to devour our lives. And that makes a lot of us really unhappy. And in many cases, worse workers, right, we burn out faster, we feel more miserable, and in the jobs that we do. So how can we rethink or add another axis to our lives in terms of community that allows us to be better workers and better community members from one another? Okay.

Sue Bethanis 12:09
So lots of questions. Let’s take culture for a second, we spent a lot of time talking about culture in our organization and with our clients. So my definition of culture is how things are around here. Yeah. So it could be gossip, or it can be, you know, something on the wall, or it can be where your, you know, water cooler is or literally or whatever, it’s behaviors. Yeah. So if there’s no here that changes things a lot. Right. So how have you seen people grapple with that to create it here? And what suggestions do you have?

Anne Helen Peterson 12:39
Yeah, you know, we talked with a lot of companies that were remote first or distributed over the course of doing the book. And they all they were like, this isn’t hard, guys. Right? Like, you just have to be intentional about it. You can create this culture, you just have to stop thinking, how can we create a happy hour in Zoom, that you don’t take offline activities and just try to port them over into online spaces? It’s more thinking about like, how do we do things on here online? What does that look like? And I think every, every organization is different in this capacity in terms of like, what people are up for, right? Like what people are willing to do in a space online. Like I was talking with one company that like, you know, they do like cool VR things. And like their workforces game for that because of this sort of work that they do. They don’t think, Oh, this is hokey and weird or doing more like Metaverse style things. Again, not as weird if it’s something that you’re familiar with, and you work with all the time. But sometimes that can be really lame, too. You know, I mean, that doesn’t, but a lot of in-person stuff that culture-building stuff that companies do is also lame. So how do we think about new ways that we can promote culture?

Sue Bethanis 13:54
What does that so how do you suggest or how often have people done it? How have people been intentional? I mean, this is I use the same exact word. And it’s amazing that it’s intentionality. It’s like, you can’t just bump into people, obviously, you have to be intentional. You have to linger after meetings, you have to get on Slack. You have to get on the phone, you have to be intentional about it.

Anne Helen Peterson 14:13
Yeah. And I think one great example of a way that you can be intentional with this is with the onboarding of new employees. Because I think sometimes people assume like, Oh, when I started this company, I just kind of gradually learned the ropes, right? I observed people around. Or they have a mentor system where you get paired with someone who does something similar to you, right? Or you have a cohort operation where you have a Slack group where people can ask questions, but it’s monitored, and no one can actually ask the questions that you really want to ask. Right? So how do you give new employees a space where they can talk? How do you promote that without explicitly promoting and you’re like, hey, maybe you guys should have a signal group where you can actually ask people the questions that you want to ask. Or a great example that I’ve heard is that instead of pairing people randomly with other mentors who are not very good at mentoring, right, like, that’s not a skill, that’s a tool that’s a great tool in their toolbox, or don’t have the time for it right? It’s not on their job description, figure out who in your company really is the Welcome Wagon? Who was really good at it? And who wants to do it? Right? It takes intentionality. Yeah, and take something off their plate so that they’re not just doing emotional labor on top of everything else. And it can’t just be one person, obviously. And also, you should have enough people at your company so that like, let’s say, you have a new employee who’s black, there should be another black employee there who can tell you okay, here’s how this company deals with race, right? And sometimes those sorts of communications will have happened before the hiring process, when someone reaches out to say, like, what is it like to be black at this company? But that’s something to where someone’s like, Well, how do we start putting this stuff in place? If we’re like a snow cap company, wherever once all the leadership is white? How do we start doing this stuff, changing the monoculture? If we already are in a bad place, you gotta look at your hiring alongside all this other stuff.

Sue Bethanis 16:00
I agree. I agree. I mean, hiring is key to culture and leadership development, obviously, it is key to culture. Okay, let’s stop for a second because we’re about halfway. So really liking the conversation so far, thank you. So who has a question – Tamar, I know you sent a chat over if you want to elaborate on that. You’re welcome to. Hello, how are you?

Speaker 3 16:22
I’m good. How are you? See, that was in direct response to Sue, you mentioned something about, gosh, what did you say, and there were some other perks and you’re like, you know, maybe the employer can provide that. But one of the things that I would say is that I don’t think it’s necessarily a struggle at my company, and I do work for a large tech company. It’s not necessarily a struggle, but it’s a topic. And that is in trying to create equity in all of the various aspects of what it means to have identified what place you are going to work from, from time to time. And we are asking people to define what that means for them, whether they are fully remote, that they’re fully in the office or if they are hybrid. But that there are some things that come along with certainly the two polls, if you are fully remote, you already get a package or going to receive a package of benefits that people who are fully in the office do not receive, that could include additional money that could include, you know, putting together something for your home office, that someone who gets to comes to the office regularly is not going to get in where it is right now that we are having conversations is like, what does hybrid actually mean? Because if it’s the best of both worlds, that’s not going to work long term, unless, really, to your point with intention figured out then within these various buckets, how can we very clearly state what is applicable to each of them? If you make a different choice? What does that mean for what you have versus what you are now going to get? And so that’s why I said that it’s not necessarily as easy as you know, saying, none of this is easy.

Anne Helen Peterson 18:03
No, yeah. Right. Like people are like, I want to go back into the office every day because I’m sick of my house, or my kids, or yeah, and like six weeks, they’re like, I hate this commute. I want to go no days a week.

Sue Bethanis 18:15
Right, right. Yeah, I think that’s the there’s time. And so are you noticing is anybody going back full time?

Speaker 3 18:20
Yes. So, where we see them the most and more than I will preface this by saying about 75% of our offices are open. We have 25 locations around the world, where we are sitting the most folks going in are OUS. So that’s outside of the United States. The folks in EMEA as well as folks in APJ, Asia Pacific region are going back in more numbers. And I would say AMEA is probably leading the charge. It makes sense to me just because those places have a very, very different understanding of what culture community in those things mean with them. It is very much a sort of awe. And that’s not where we generally come from. And they’re not that it’s a detriment. It’s just different. And things like commutes, which you all talked about, like, even me, I live over across from San Francisco, that’s my home office. But I don’t want to go an hour to go 10 miles. I wasn’t interested in doing it before. I never really don’t want to do it. Now if I can have like,

Anne Helen Peterson 19:31
You can figure out the core hours for work right? And this is part of what my book tries to talk about is like a hard thing that you have to do before you can come up with these remote ideas is like, what is the work right? Like what is the work that we are doing and what part of it demands synchronicity and what part of it can be done asynchronously? And if you can figure out that that part where you want people to be together, either online or not online, right and like actual physical spaces, then you can be like, alright, every Wednesday 11 to 2 people can go commute off times. So the commute is at least alleviated and also doesn’t necessarily interfere fear with, like pickup times for care and that sort of thing, too.

Sue Bethanis 20:12
Yeah. Great. Well, Tamar, any follow-up?

Speaker 3 20:16
I have plenty.

Sue Bethanis 20:19
Um, well, you should say what you do too, it would help people understand why you’re so

Speaker 3 20:24
Sure. So, I’m the vice president of real estate and workplace globally, for a tech company. And yeah, we patent locations for other companies.

Sue Bethanis 20:33
Yeah. And your role is in real estate facilities, obviously, you know, you think about this, much more than most. So that’s why I want to make sure people knew where coming from Tamar, and I’ve known each other for one time. And yeah, I’m always impressed with your viewpoint on stuff. So I appreciate it.

Anne Helen Peterson 20:41
I have a question. Do you guys have a head of remote?

Sue Bethanis 20:52
So we recently did hire what we – when we originally thought about it, it was kind of head of remote. Yeah, what it ended up being was more organizational effectiveness. Yeah. And I do think that that was an appropriate change, just even from the titling. Yeah. Right, rather than something that’s very specific on, like, the fact that people are not in an office. Yep. And there’s a whole bunch around that too. Like, you know, I’m advocating for not even calling our locations offices anymore, like, what will they become in the future? Because as soon as you say office, and this is not going to be great everywhere, but as soon as you say office, there is an immediate mental thing that happens with what it looks like, what you will be able to get there. And really, that should change. Yeah, yeah. And office, you know, it’s so old, it’s, you know, post World War II era of when office actually became a thing where people would go to, and that was really the sort of that was the beginning of the office that we know today starts from this place of like, needing to get a whole bunch of people together to do work. And while they’re still some of that, the intention behind it is very different. And the intention behind it is how to work better together, either asynchronously or synchronously. But also to continue to build culture a different kind of culture.

Anne Helen Peterson 22:15
Well and the interesting thing, too, sometimes I think there’s this assumption that like, somehow the office, the pre-pandemic office was like neutral in some way. But like that office, you know, as you mentioned, it was built post World War II, vast majority of people going into that office were white dudes, right? And who had someone at home, who was helping them with the rest of their lives, it wasn’t built, like the style of the office, the rhythms of the office, what you received at the office was all built to cater to a certain style of worker, we are not that workplace anymore. So why would we go back to that style of workplace?

Sue Bethanis 22:51
Right, right. Cool. Tamar, thank you. Look, always a pleasure. I want to talk about community a little bit, because I think in my opinion, I guess you could say is that what’s lost is the sense of connection or go community. And it might be like, you know that the happy hour, or it might be the literally having coffee, most tech companies provide coffee and lunch and everything breakfast, you name it, at least the coffee was probably the most prevalent. And you know, you don’t, you don’t have that anymore. So, people are trying to do that, you know, have coffee on Zoom, and, you know, trying to shove this shove the idea of watercooler into zoom, and people doing that because they’re trying to connect. So, what are your ideas around this? Yes, I agree with you that the office was made for a bunch of white dudes back in after the war, I get that, but at the same time, it does allow for connection. So, what do we do about that?

Anne Helen Peterson 23:46
So it’s interesting, I think, you know, there’s been some fascinating studies out about, like, how much innovation actually comes from water cooler moments, which is like not that much, right. But my sort of oppositional take is that I think workplaces have become too much of a source of community. And that when your workplace is a family, we all know that that’s a red flag and whenever one uses that language, but I also think when everyone in your workplace is best friends, it’s also not great. And I think that encourages this sort of toxicity. And also, from an HR perspective, it’s certainly not fantastic in terms of potential violations and that sort of thing. But also like it just it promotes a culture of overwork, too, because you’re at work. And this is particularly true with tech companies with large campuses, like pre-pandemic…

Sue Bethanis 24:36
Like they want to keep them there. Yeah.

Anne Helen Peterson 24:39
You want to keep them there. You’re like, I don’t need to go to a bar. We have a bar on our campus. I don’t need to belong to a gym, we have a gym on our campus. I don’t need to learn how to cook because all of my meals are provided for me. And in some ways that incentivizes being there and working all the time, in a way that benefits the company, but in some ways, I think it promotes a relationship to work that eventually leads to burnout and people leaving the company.

Sue Bethanis 25:05
Agreed and you forgot the dry cleaning. But yeah, I agree. I totally agree with you. I guess there’s a happy medium. So, let’s just go to the happy medium. I mean, I think that there is something that suddenly yesterday I was I had some friends over, they said, what do you, you know, are you gonna keep working? I said, well, yeah, I’m gonna keep working. I mean because it’s a way for me to connect to people. I mean, like, it’s a source of connection.

Anne Helen Peterson 25:25
Right? And, you know, you want to talk about the thing that you do, right. Like, that’s interesting.

Sue Bethanis 25:30
Yeah, I happen to have a fun job to be able to connect to people pretty intimately. So, it’s nice, but I think that people are missing that. Yeah. And because they’re, you know, some of it’s because there’s insularity around you to see and your family and even friends it’s hard. I think they’re missing it with friends and with work friends.

Anne Helen Peterson 25:49
So yeah, people are lonely is the way that I guess you can think about it.

Sue Bethanis 25:54
Solitude is one thing, but it’s after that it’s like, okay.

Anne Helen Peterson 25:56
And you’re like other people for the last few years have been dangerous, right, like, just medically dangerous for a lot of people. So how do we rethink this? I do think and again, I don’t know how much this really, I think will vary from company to company. But I think like Slack and discord and chat apps like there’s just a lot of ways that you can have somebody that is distant lately about something else entirely that allows you to connect about work, right? So, I don’t know, you’re like in a puzzle swap discord channel. This is very popular in my personal discord, this around my newsletters, there’s like, one for wordle right, and one for puzzles, swap and one for other hobbies, and like other TV shows, and in some ways, those are a time suck. But so is like getting a coffee, and when you talk about you should like do Wordle together or watch a movie or whatever. Like the actual phrase, water-cooler TV show is about people at work talking about a TV show at work. So, if you allow people in those spaces to talk about nonwork things, they promote an intimacy that allows a modicum of trust when you’re talking about work things as well. Right.

Sue Bethanis 27:01
And that’s exactly right. Okay, this is great. Let’s go back to something that Tamara said that it’s kind of out there, it’s like, it’s easy, it’s easier to figure out the remote thing, it’s easier to figure out people who are in the office, but it’s the in-between, it’s hard. So, what are some ideas around hybrid, I mean, you mentioned this idea of like, you got to figure what the work is, I totally agree with that. But their other ideas you have in terms of how to help HR folks, frankly, anybody, but especially HR managers, terms of how to deal with the hybrid, we just say, Okay, come in whenever you want, or come in on Wednesdays, or…

Anne Helen Peterson 27:36
Each company is gonna have to see how it shakes out in some ways, like, they’re gonna see who’s coming in who’s not, and how it feels, and how it feels. But I do think that what we’re gonna see in some organizations that just have a totally free, do whatever you want, let’s see what happens policy, you’re gonna see some equity issues. Because people that I know, but also people that are part of my larger lose that are community and I get people who email me all the time, but here’s what’s happening in my corporation, you’re just gonna have a lot of people coming into the office who don’t have caregiving responsibilities, or who don’t have primary caregiving responsibilities. And that could be for kids, it can also be for elders, right. And some of that means that you will have younger people in the office. And some of that means that you will have in a lot of cases, more men in the office, and also people who feel very comfortable in the office, which depending on extrovert style, will be extroverts and or people who, like there’s, I mean, there are fewer microaggressions online than there are necessarily in the office and like I’ll like things about getting ready, right? It takes more time for women to get ready to go into the office than it does for men, in most cases, not all. So, what you’re gonna see are these trends of a certain type of person coming into the office and a lot of leadership loves being in the office, because leadership skills are more like control. Yeah, it’s control. And it’s also just like what you do as a leader is more legible when you are in person. Right that that work is what’s called concrete. So there, there’s going to be the eyeballs and eyeballs of the person who’s in the office and like it’s going to communicate, this person is working more, even if they’re trying actively not to, to think that they’re trying not to think, oh, just because a person is in the office doesn’t mean that they’re working harder. It still is going to feel that way in a lot of ways.

Sue Bethanis 29:24
It’s hard not for it to Yeah, frankly.

Anne Helen Peterson 29:26
Yeah, totally it’s presence bias for a better word.

Sue Bethanis 29:31
And trademark that.

Anne Helen Peterson 29:34
And also just like there will be like opportunities. They’re like, Hey, you Yes, yes. Right. Totally. And that’s it’s not equitable. Right? That’s right. And so I think one thing that we talked about a little bit in the book and I’ve written about is you need to come up with it in office maximum as well. And that’s hard for people to hear.

Sue Bethanis 29:53
I love that. That’s the first time I’ve heard anybody say that in-office maximum versus in-office minimum because we’re all talking about minimum Yeah. So if that’s the case, we say something to the effect of like everybody comes in Wednesdays, you get to come in three days. I mean, I’m making this up. But you get to come in three days.

Anne Helen Peterson 30:10
Yeah. The maximum number of days to come in. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, part of that, too. I think you’ll see this more in companies that are using more of like a hot desk. situation. Yes, yes. Because it actually makes it a lot easier. If you have a max capacity on any certain day.

Sue Bethanis 30:27
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it will, it makes, I mean, for someone like Tamara, who’s dealing with real estate and facilities, it’s like you get, you know, I’ve heard a lot of that from HR, as well, that I work with a guy, another guy that did IT. So he’s obviously in very much into with HR and facilities, it’s like, they can only have so many people in the office. Yep. Can’t have if they can’t have everybody in the office at the same time. Right. Exactly. So, so, uh, yeah. So I think I like it. So to answer your question Tamara I hope we answered it, it’s like, yeah, there is. So what we’re proposing here or thinking about is the idea of there’s a maximum that you’re allowed to come in? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Got it. Okay.

Anne Helen Peterson 31:06
I mean, I think that’s interesting, too. I, I’m really fascinated, I actually did an interview with someone at the New York Times, he was writing a piece about real estate and larger tech companies in office space. And he was like, you know, it’s interesting if all these tech companies are really going for this flex option. Why are they buying so much real estate? And my answer was because they have, the big ones have endless money. And they’re like, well, we just want to have all possibilities open to people. But if you have to be more mindful about the size of your real estate that you’re purchasing, this is I think, like having a maximum makes it transforms it into something. And going back to what Tamara was saying as well, just giving it a different name. Even I know that Dropbox is thinking of their previous office spaces much more as studios as a collaborative studio. So you only go in, if you’re working with other people, you don’t go in to send emails so you can go to work with other people. But if you want to send emails, you could do that at home, or you could do it in a third space. And that’s the other thing that’s really hard for people to understand right now is because a lot of these third spaces are not great space, or what happened. And I think we’re gonna see a lot more development of really cool third spaces that are more accessible to more people.

Sue Bethanis 32:25
Do you mean like cafes and like, WeWork? So what do you mean by that?

Anne Helen Peterson 32:28
Yeah, combination. You know, cafes, WeWork. Private? Yeah. We’re both like, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that that’s true. I don’t know enough about WeWork and how they can if you can provide or protect data privacy more if you’re working in a more secure location where you sure don’t that more but yeah, like a coffee shop… But young people, if you’re like, there’s some work that you can definitely do.

Sue Bethanis 32:56
Yeah. But does it these are all like the way we’re thinking in terms of being creative. Because I think that that’s what’s great about this situation is that it requires us to think more creatively requires us to think more intentionally. And so that is why we do these, you know, these talks and to get people to think about different ideas. And I really, really appreciate both of you actually, Tamar. Yeah, I love how you’re chiming in here a lot. I appreciate that a lot. We’ve got just a couple more minutes. So what are some other things in your book that you think would be helpful to this audience?

Anne Helen Peterson 33:27
Well, one thing that I think in messaging to employees as well. Whatever working from home was for the last years, it’s not what the future of working from home is going to look like. Right? What so that includes options for third spaces, but also what it feels like. You know, I think a lot of companies have met in person sparingly, or, you know, during the kind of lulls and in peaks of the pandemic. But what if you can actually have a happy hour? Every week? How is that going to change how it feels? Or what if you are able to really convene in summits every quarter for people who are more distributed, gonna change how it feels? Right.

Sue Bethanis 34:08
We know that’s happening, by the way. A lot of our folks are doing offsites Yeah. On Off sites, bringing people together off sites on-site, actually. Yeah, that’s happening more and more, we’re getting asked to do it, and we’re seeing it more and so it’s gonna be more like, yeah, once a quarter kind of thing.

Anne Helen Peterson 34:25
Yeah. And that’s gonna change how we think about the amount of community and culture to I think, like when I meet with my friends from college, right, like you meet for a three day weekend or a four day weekend, incredibly concentrated like a fun time, no kids, no partners, just friends. Right. And it’s enough to last you for like three months sometimes. Right? And I think that that is in some ways what we’re gonna see with work collaboration, as well as you have that really, and again, distributed companies were doing this before and there’s A lot of wisdom there that we can gain from them.

Sue Bethanis 35:03
There’s a lot of research on. In fact, people will say, you know, how do I fire people in Zoom era? I’m like, Well, how do I fire people? Period? Right? And I said, well, and you obviously you can’t see them. So I said, so I just went back to research around how are people firing people in, you know, remote? I mean, it’s like, it’s not that different. Is it? So you get the articles. So still good from three years ago, and 10 years ago? Yeah. So but the stuff like that, I mean, I, we laugh about it. But I mean, that’s, it’s a lot harder to hire and fire people right now. Yeah, it has been, do you require that when you’re hiring people, you’re going to require people to come in to meet them at that you don’t? So they can just send them? What if there is an office and have them? And so that there’s that? I mean, I think that that might happen more and more now? Yeah, I don’t think it was. Yeah. And on the other side of it is, are people going to take a job if they have to come in? So there’s both sides of that? Right.

Anne Helen Peterson 35:57
I think that that’s one of the disconnects about why they’re so like, there are so many jobs, but then also people feel like they can’t get a job. Yes, right. Matching, the matching is just not happening. And I do think that that will change a little bit as we get, like a little further into whatever this next movement is going to be. But right now, it seems like an impasse between like, Yeah, well, this is what I want. And this is what I want. And those things are not the same.

Sue Bethanis 36:23
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, really good point. Well, listen, you’ve been wonderful in terms of your inputs. And I can’t wait to read more of the book. And I just want to remind everybody, again, that Anne’s book Out of the Office: The Big Problem and the Bigger Promise of Working from Home, and you can get that anywhere, but particularly on Amazon, your website annehelen.substack.com

Anne Helen Peterson 36:45
Yeah. And I write about all sorts of stuff because it’s called Culture Study. But there’s a lot of if you just even Google Culture Study and then work, there will be a lot of stuff.

Sue Bethanis 36:57
So again, thank you so much for being with us, and I appreciate it very much. Alright, everybody. Thanks again. And we’ll see you next time. Bye.

In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts Liz Wiseman, a researcher and executive advisor who teaches leadership to executives around the world. Liz is the author of New York Times bestseller Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius Inside Our Schools, Wall Street Journal bestseller Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work, and Wall Street Journal bestseller Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact. She’s the CEO of the Wiseman Group, a leadership research and development firm headquartered in Silicon Valley. Some of her recent clients include Apple, AT&T, Disney, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Nike, Salesforce, Tesla, and Twitter. Liz has conducted significant research in the field of leadership and collective intelligence and writes for the Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and a variety of other businesses and leadership journals. She is a frequent guest lecturer at BYU and Stanford University.

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INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

Driven by the desire to understand how ‘impact players’ are able to have influence over teams, Liz has studied what makes them different and what makes them so impactful. Impact players are next-level contributors that go above and beyond what’s expected of them to solve problems and get the job done. They are indispensable during these critical times and by learning about what makes them so invaluable we can, in turn, teach and coach others to do the same.

Here are some of the key takeaways from this talk and the 5 practices that make an impact player:

1. Impact players can tackle messy problems by stepping up and doing the job that needs to be done, even when it’s not being asked of them. (11:03)
2. Even when roles are unclear, impact players see leadership is needed and step up. (13:30)
3. Impact players scan for and see obstacles, and rather than escalating or handing off difficult problems, they take ownership and finish the work. (14:44)
4. Impact players embrace change and moving targets, prepared to adapt when things don’t go according to plan. (18:18)
5. In the face of unrelenting demands, impact players are able to make the load feel lighter for everyone. (21:41)

As remote work has evolved, impact players have appeared as those who are able to handle the constant change, step up when needed, and solve the problems that come up. A main question that arises, is how can we coach this proactiveness into others? These impact players serve as role models on their teams and in turn create other hard-working and driven individuals, but how can we teach this as coaches and leaders? Liz offers that many of these practices are learnable, with some being harder than others. While most natural impact players are shaped by their formative years, by studying how they operate and how they naturally perform, we can see the ways in which we can shape others to do the same. By shifting mindsets and encouraging these practices, we can create more impact players in the workplace.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“That is what an impact player really is. So they’re these standout contributors that make teams better. We see it out in the sports world, but they also exist in the work world.” 8:29

“These are the situations to gain mastery of, to know how to deal with messy problems. To know how to respond when you see a leadership vacuum or roles are unclear. If you want to hire people with these kinds of capabilities, hire people who are adept at these kinds of situations.” (21:41)

“The impact player is building community, is building longing. They’re making hard things feel light for everyone.” (21:41)

“We often think development happens and coaching happens between the manager and the team member, but that pure based modeling, coaching, mentoring, like, ‘Hey, let me give you some of what’s on my plate and help you be successful.’ I think it’s a much more powerful form of learning.” (30:15)

RESOURCES

Liz Wiseman:

Website | Linkedin

Book: Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

Website | Amazon

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sue Bethanis  0:00
Welcome, everyone to WiseTalk. This is Mariposa’s monthly podcast. We provide perspectives on leadership. Today we’re excited to welcome back Liz Wiseman. So Liz is a friend and a colleague, and she’s was with us in 2015. Which seems like a long time ago. And just really a treat to have you back. So thank you for being here.

Liz Wiseman  0:22
It’s good to be here. It’s like, that was back when life was easy.

Sue Bethanis  0:26
Yeah, for sure. Let me tell you a little bit about Liz. She’s a researcher and executive advisor who teaches leadership to executives around the world. She is the author of The New York Times bestseller Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. And I’ll say that I give that your article to every client we have. So, it’s a great, great concept and a great book. She also wrote The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius Inside our Schools, to Wall Street Journal bestsellers, Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work, and a new book that we’re gonna talk about today, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger and Multiply your Impact. She’s the CEO, of the Weizmann group, a leadership research and development firm headquartered in Silicon Valley. Some of her recent clients include Apple, AT&T, Disney, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Nike, Salesforce, Tesla, and Twitter, Liz has conducted significant research in the field of leadership and collective intelligence and writes for the Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and a variety of other businesses and leadership journals. She is a frequent guest lecturer at BYU. And that’s your Alma Mater, right? Yes. And Stanford University as a former executive at Oracle, which is where I got to know Liz. She worked there as the Vice President of Oracle University as a global leader for human resource development, a lot to talk about. So I just read your bio, which is obviously super prolific. But what I want to start with is, you know, how did you decide to write this particular book, you obviously saw something on the market? Obviously, you started probably thinking about this before the pandemic. So tell us a little bit about how that all came together?

Liz Wiseman  1:57
Well, there’s the noble answer to this question. And then there’s the truth. What do you want? Both? Well, there is a little bit of noble intent is that I think, I think it’s a piece of work that will help people get more out of work. And we can talk more about that I really do think it will create a better work experience for people. Now. Here’s the part that sort of the true reason. So, I want to back up just a little bit on the journey. So, you understand some context and what I’m going to give a fairly truthful answer. Because the truth is I was bored. That’s why I wrote the book. And, you know, when I wrote Multipliers, somebody said, I don’t know. It was like, maybe a year after the book came out, and the book had been shared, and it had been useful. And somebody said, “wow, it must feel so good to have made this contribution to your profession.” Like, wow, I had never thought of it that way. Like I wasn’t trying to make a contribution. I just had a question I didn’t have an answer to and I’m relaying the former president of Oracle once referred to me as a dog on a bone. He’s like you were a dog on a bone like you do not let go of things. And I don’t think he meant like, lack of forgiveness. But it was

Sue Bethanis  3:16
Even in a good way.

Liz Wiseman  3:19
In a good but annoying way. You persist like you personified? Yeah. And so, with Multipliers, I really had this question like, why is it that some leaders seem to amplify intelligence and make everyone smarter, and other people seem to suck the life out of a team and out of a room, and I’m just a dog on a bone like trying to figure out an answer to this. I wasn’t trying to do anything noble. I just, like had this dogged curiosity. And so that’s usually why I get up enough like, oh, to write a book, I just want to know, or I’m bored. And in this case, I was a little bit bored. And it wasn’t I didn’t have things to do. I just was like, I don’t know. Twiddling my thumbs. Yeah. And, and there’s a couple things that really like get me one is, I get bored, having answers to things.

Sue Bethanis  4:15
You want to learn. Yeah, you are a learner.

Liz Wiseman  4:17
Yeah. And I’m like out there teaching and teaching the whole thing and you get into this mode where, you know, it’s the same questions, and I feel like I have the same answers. And then I also get, you know, like, bored of not having an answer. And this is really what drove this book is, I know a lot about what it takes for leaders to create an environment where people can contribute at their best, that I feel like I know a lot about but what I didn’t know a lot about was what does it take for individuals. Like what, what’s the mindset and the practices that individuals need to bring to this and there was this moment of I don’t know if it was a prompt truth, but I was teaching a workshop at Salesforce a place probably that you spent some time too. And, you know, I’m teaching about how to be a multiplier leader and someone in that workshop, you know, raises his hand and I can tell he’s agitated about something he’s like, yay. Yeah, I want to be able to be a Multiplier Leader. Got it? Got it. Got it, but you can’t multiply zero.

Sue Bethanis  5:23
That’s good. Yeah, you can’t the math doesn’t work.

Liz Wiseman  5:27
Well, and, and I am like in horror at first, because I think what he’s saying is I got a bunch of ding-a-lings working on my team, and I can’t do anything with that. Because I was looking at this lens of intelligence. And I was about to, like, you know, like, burst into my speech about, you know, hate. Not everyone’s a genius, I get it. But everyone brings intelligence and capability. And your job as a leader is to multiply that blah, blah, blah. And he’s like, yeah, no, like my job, I have to have a certain, like, approach of mindset to, to bring out the best of people, but people to show up with the right mindset to practices. And like, oh, well, that’s interesting. And what does that look like? And I got tired of like, encountering that situation, and not knowing what that looked like. Okay, so I go into dog on a bone mode.

Sue Bethanis  6:16
And so, so tell us a little bit about this book. And like, how did you different because, you know, you’ve got many books, and you’re so prolific in that. How did you differentiate Impact Player particularly?

Liz Wiseman  6:29
Well, you know, my friend Scott Miller at Franklin Covey, he said, it is like, you know, what, if you’re a leader read Multipliers. If you’re a leader, and you want to, like get the most out of your team, like read Impact Players, and then share it with your team members, that’s kind of I thought that was a very simple way to look at it, which is the book Impact Players is about the impact players of the workforce. So you know, we’re familiar with this term from sports.

Sue Bethanis  6:57
Yeah, I was gonna say you picked it up sports? Yeah, for sure.

Liz Wiseman  7:01
Yeah. And it’s not because I’m a massive sports fan or athlete. It’s just like you, it’s so clear that impact players on a team, these are standout contributors. They’re talented, they’re capable. They, you know, make this amazing contribution, but they also change the team culture, and people play better because there’s this impact layer on your team, you’re like, you know what, we actually stand a chance of doing well, because we’ve got this force on our team. And you know, in some ways, they’re multipliers to the teams. Oh, yeah.

Sue Bethanis  7:33
You mean, you can just teach if we could look at the sports in the Bay Area. I mean, you’ve got Buster Posey, who is the consummate impact player, it doesn’t say much, but because of the way he’s played and the way he, what he does say things that are so impactful, and to be a big loss to the Giants. I mean, he’s bad. Yeah. But to me, it’s his leadership, that’s going to be the biggest loss. And then you got Stephen Curry, of course, who I mean, you know, consummate impact player. And so, it’s affecting our sports. I mean, I’m a big sports person. So, I was like, really happy to see that.

Liz Wiseman  8:11
And I love that you bring up Steph Curry. We were just watching the Warriors game, or one of my friends told me she said, Oh, yeah, you know, because I’ve always thought of like Steph Curry as his big shooter, this point scorer.

Sue Bethanis  8:26
He is. he’s had a problem lately. But go ahead.

Liz Wiseman  8:29
But that’s how I always have seen him. Yes, definitely. And she said, they actually have the statistics to show that other people play better when he is out on the court is that they score more points. Yes. And that is what an impact player really is. So they’re these standout contributors that make teams better. We see it out in the sports world, but they also exist in the work world. And I wanted to know, like, how they think and how they work. And that’s really what the book is about. What is their mindset? What are they? What makes them tick? What do they do differently than other people? And what I’m always fascinated in is what are like the small, seemingly insignificant differences in how people approach their work that end up creating this enormous kind of impact and this difference? And, you know, there are two ways to look at the book. One is, gee, how can we get people to work so that they create more value for the team in the company? You can look and you can actually read the whole book with this lens. There’s another lens to read this book in, which is how do I approach my work so that it creates more joy and satisfaction for me? Because, you know, it’s one thing that we saw with these, these high impact contributors are that they bring extraordinary value to the organization to their managers. They’re service-oriented. But it all comes back to them. Give maybe in terms of like remuneration and promotion and recognition, but also just this kind of satisfaction of knowing you’re doing work that really matters, that making a difference that you’ve built influence and power and impact and it’s kind of a good way to work.

Sue Bethanis  10:26
Okay, so let’s, let’s break it down a little bit. Um, first of all, let me ask you one more question. When did you finish the book? Like, I want to know the timeframe?

Liz Wiseman  10:34
Oh, so, I sent off the manuscript about a year ago. So, March?

Sue Bethanis  10:42
Alright, so you’d had a year COVID? Okay. All right. That’s, that’s gonna cover my questions. Alright, so let’s speak a little bit about what is an impact player? Like, what are the five practices of Impact Player? And then we can apply that to what I’ll go into right now.

Liz Wiseman  11:03
Yeah, well, actually, I want to start, if I can, with kind of what we’re going through right now, because so what I did is, you know, I interviewed 170 managers and looked at how do these people think, and how’s it differently then. And this is probably the most important thing if someone’s gonna read the book, or try to get value from it. Is, I’m not comparing high performers and low performers. This is like, high impact versus rock-solid contributor. So we’re looking for like the thin slices of difference between good and great. And so we’re kind of building this model, and I could see what mindsets and practices differentiated impact players from we’ll call them, ordinary contributors. And as I looked at it, it wasn’t even what was interesting wasn’t the difference in behavior. It was the situations that differentiated them because here’s how managers described these ordinary contributors sort of inaccurate, across 170 data points is they took ownership, they did their job, they did their job extremely well. They were talented, they were smart, they were hard-working, they follow direction, they carry their weight on teams, they were focused, like, what? That’s all good. What’s wrong with that, like, if you offer me a resume or a hire with that profile, I’m going to take it. And what was fascinating is that these ordinary contributors were stellar in ordinary times. So let’s get to the COVID thing. And I remember, like, I was on a plane when I just kept pouring through this behavioral data that I had in the situations that seemed to differentiate them. And it popped out to them like, wow, as I kept clustering them, there were these five situations that the impact players handled very differently than other people. And they are messy problems. When it’s not his job, her job. It’s not that departments charter. It’s not this, it’s like it just kind of is out in no man’s land. But it’s important, right? And in that situation, what most people do is they do their job, like, Oh, here’s my piece of that. And I’ll do my part, where’s the impact players tend to do the job that needs to be done. They have a healthy disrespect for their job description. If I guess my job description is like base camp, like where I hang out, do my work, but I’m really here so that when I spot problems, I can go after them.

Sue Bethanis  13:26
Right? That’s a really good description, and especially obviously, apropos right now still,

Liz Wiseman  13:30
Yeah. Because like, whose job is it to clean up the mess that COVID’s created? Like, whose job is it to solve that problem? What was nobody’s job? You know, now all were suddenly public health officials, the second was unclear roles where, you know, we’re clearly moving to a very collaborative workplace. But we still need to know like, well, who’s in charge of this initiative, or this meeting, where we have these constant leadership vacuums and what most people do I hear it all the time for my friends in the corporate world is like, well, roles are unclear. And like, I need role clarification, we need role clarification, we need someone to come in and tell us what impact players aren’t waiting for this. They’re just stepping in and saying, Well, you know, what, if it’s unclear would it be helpful if I took the lead on this? Yes, please.

Sue Bethanis  14:16
Yeah, yeah, this is great.

Liz Wiseman  14:18
But they don’t need to always be the boss. They can step in and lead a meeting or initiative, but when their work is done, they can step back into their rightful slot in the org chart or what have you, and there’s willingness to follow other people’s lead as they are, their own.

Sue Bethanis  14:36
And you describe some of those as the WIN. What’s important now? Right, I like that the WIN metaphor.

Liz Wiseman  14:44
That was sort of an accidental acronym I usually don’t like those metaphors. In fact, my editor she’s as she sees that she’s like, I usually hate acronyms, but I really liked it. It’s like they have this sense of like, here’s my job, and here’s my base role, but I’m constantly scanning for the WIN: what’s important right now? And how do I channel my energy on what’s important? And how do I step up and lead where I can play an important role. But step back, you know, the third, like it is how they deal with unforeseen obstacles that require no definition, of course. And, you know, and this was the thing, like one of these little nuances that I think has a lot of meaning is that most of the solid contributors, they took ownership, they were responsible for things are like, I got it, I own it. But when they encountered the unreasonable obstacle out of my hands out of my control, above my paygrade, what our default behavior is, is to escalate that up, like okay, let me hand this to the higher-ups. And the impact players just never handed it off, they kept ownership got it over the finish line, but they didn’t do it so low as in, I’m going to heroically handle all these things that are out of my control, right, they were coordinating the response. So rather than, escalate to the SVP, they’re reaching out to the SVP saying, Hey, I’m on this, but I need your help. Like, can I pull you in, I need 10 minutes from you, I need approval from you. But they don’t do the handoff.

Sue Bethanis  16:15
So most of what you’re seeing so far to me sounds like just taking initiative and not just taking it in for the sake of taking it but doing it is most relevant as the way and I wonder when what’s important now and the most relevant situations?

Liz Wiseman  16:29
Yeah. Well cause, you know, taking initiative, there’s a lot of people who take initiative who honestly really annoy me. See, admit it, like it kind of know you to where someone’s like, Hey, this is what I want. Like, give me this, put me in coach. Yeah, that’s they’re pursuing their agenda.

Sue Bethanis  16:48

Yeah, exactly. Right. It’s for the exactly right.

Liz Wiseman  16:51
And the impact player is taking that initiative, like put me in coach, but they understand the moment they’re like, I will do the job. I will, I will help the team secure the win. But this is not showboating. And. Right. So it’s an initiative aimed at what’s in service to the organization.

Sue Bethanis  17:08
Now, you’ve not played sports in your life?

Liz Wiseman  17:11
Oh no, I’ve played sports. I play them particularly well, like poker. Okay.

Sue Bethanis  17:15
Because this so much of what you’re saying is good players and leaders, you know, captains and leaders were taken down to the moment, so it resonates a lot of people. Yeah.

Liz Wiseman  17:26
And, you know, I’ve played some sports and been on teams, but I’ve also been, you know, a 4x Mom, you know, like four-time mom, and I’ve been to a lot of games. And like, there’s this one moment. This is like you toss your kid under the bus just a little bit in this example here. But, you know, I remember when my daughters like her coach said, “Man, that girl-” she’s playing soccer. “She’s like a one-woman wrecking crew.” And like, she would just like blast through everyone. And that’s kind of what that initiative looks like without being aware of what’s going on versus like that same initiative, but total awareness and ability to read the field. And know what does my team need for me right now?  And maybe it’s for me to drop back and let somebody else drive to the goal.

Sue Bethanis  18:14
Yep. Yeah. Okay, great. So okay, so we’re on four.

Liz Wiseman  18:18
Oh, four, moving targets, like, the mark is changing, the situation’s changing like we started the project. And how many times do we encounter this, I started the project with one objective, but it keeps morphing on me, it’s changing. And I can’t pin down what we’re trying to accomplish when the targets are moving. And, you know, what the ordinary contributor does is they try to manage and minimize that change, like, Okay, let’s see if we can get this thing. Let’s pin it to the wall. So we can shoot at this target. And the impact players are saying, okay, targets changed. Let me change with it. And the image that I get with this one is like this idea that you finish a day of work, you go to sleep, they sleep for eight hours, this fantasy situation, you know, you wake up the next morning, and you just assume that while you were sleeping, the world changed that your world changed that this project you’re working on, you can’t just pick it up and carry on with it, you probably have to, like check-in like what’s happened, like, you wake up expecting things to have changed on you.

Sue Bethanis  19:23
Yeah, that’s awesome. You expect that you expect the uncertainty.

Liz Wiseman  19:26
And I that so I think you’ve nailed one of the themes of across this is that the impact player and, and really, it’s the mindset that allows us to have a lot of impact is when we just normalize problems. Yeah, you expect them, you’re not trying to avoid them. You’re like my job is to solve problems. I will have problems this will be hard. This will change on us. This is our reality, you know, and the last difference is, how they deal with just unrelenting demands when the workload just feels heavy. You know, most people are looking for help which ends up adding to the burden that managers and their colleagues are already feeling. They’re sort of high maintenance. Like, here’s what I need and the impact players finding a way to just make work light. For everyone like this. It was this word that just kept coming up in all these interviews is like they were easy. Not easy going.

Sue Bethanis  20:18
I wouldn’t think so. Yeah, they are trying to make things easier.

Liz Wiseman  20:21
They just made things easier, like if they’re going to forward. So I’d like to think in very practical terms on this, you know, if they’re going to afford a long email chain, where it’s like, everyone’s been weighing in on this, they forward it to their colleague or their boss, they wouldn’t dare forward it and say, What do you think? Your thoughts question mark, which then creates this burden, like, okay, great. Now I have to read that whole thing. They will have summarized it saying, this email chain, you know, we’re debating these two issues, we need to decide if a or b, I think we should do a, you know, do you agree? Or, like, they’re, they’re making themselves easy to work with.

Sue Bethanis  20:57
I love it.

Liz Wiseman  20:58
They’re low maintenance. They’re like these cars that just go but no, require this like constant trip to the shop.

Sue Bethanis  21:06
Right? Okay. I love it. Okay, so let’s take these, they’re all amazing. And let’s apply it to what you’ve noticed in just in general, how were really, focused on tech right now. Most of tech is still remote. I mean, we keep saying the hybrid. But there’s, you know, we keep saying we’re going to go back, and we’re not going back yet. It’s been two years now, I think people get used to being home. So how has this? How are these practices that you just outlined? How does the impact player have as much impact remote as they would in the office?

Liz Wiseman  21:41
Well, I think it starts with, like, kind of what is the impact player mindset do with our current reality is these five situations and they’re probably a few more, but these are the biggies. This is the reality of the modern workplace. And you know, it’s, these aren’t the exceptions, these are now the rules like these are the situations to master. Like, in some ways, when you write a book like this, you think, Oh, I’m trying to advocate for a set of mindset to behaviors. And in some ways, what I’m really advocating for is, you know, what, these are the situations to gain mastery of like, know how to deal with messy problems. You know, know how to respond when you see a leadership vacuum or roles are unclear. If you want to hire people with these kinds of capabilities, hire people who are adept at these kinds of situations. Yeah. You know, what does this look like in the remote world? You know, the remote world is just generating more and more of these kinds of problems. Can I just rant a little bit about the problems created by the remote world? Yes. So let’s think about the problems generated, then this would be a great thing for people who are logged on to add to, so it creates a whole set of messy problems. It also creates, I’m going to do this in no particular order. They come in my head, it creates social isolation. Just I’m listening to a book this morning. See, No Stranger, I think is what it’s called, talked about. Technically, if a prisoner is in solitary confinement for 15 days, it’s equivalent to torture. So it’s like now raises that to experience of torture, like 15 days in solitary confinement, like We’re way beyond that. Like, there’s a lot of people are like, oh, yeah, I passed the 15-day mark, all by myself a long time ago. Yeah. And so we’re coming out of this experience where our community structures are being broken down. I’m out for a walk in the morning. And I’m like, oh, yeah, those are my neighbors. I remember once talking to them, knowing them, sharing like bread with them. And it’s happening in our workplace. And you know, the impact player is building community is building longing. They’re making hard things feel light for everyone. There’s just one story in the book about Sue Warnky, and a woman named Lynn at Salesforce that just is emblematic of what this kind of community looks like. It’s acknowledging that you know what, everyone’s going through hard stuff. Let’s not add to this phantom workload, being remote. I think some of the most insidious problems is it really, really easy for a lot of would-be impact players to go missing, that the loudest person is the one who gets attention. And I think there’s, it’s so easy for people to get off their game because they’re not getting all of those subtext messages about what’s important. They’re like, oh, I’m just doing my work. And they don’t look up to realize, Wow, the priorities are shifted, and you miss that conversation. It’s all that hallway connective tissue that we get when we’re in person. And so it’s so easy to miss the mark right now. And it’s really easy for some people more than others to go unseen

Sue Bethanis  24:59
Well, it takes more for an impact player would have more effort to connect. You can’t just sit around in your house, you have to make an effort to do extra calls or connect on Slack or whatever. I mean, there’s a lot to do or say, Hey, let’s go for a walk. It’s safe to go for a walk in the park even now. Yeah, it takes initiative. You can’t just sit around. And this is everything you say, it comes back to taking initiative.

Liz Wiseman  25:26
It does. It was fun. My young son, my youngest, who’s just started his freshman year at college. He said his word for this year, it was kind of a new thing. He said, “Mom, do you know people like come up with words to like, instead of New Year’s resolutions like New Year’s words, and mine’s gonna be proactive.” Oh, good. And, and you know, he’s an introvert who’s gone off to college, with his last year and a half of high school, like, from his bedroom, and from his bed and you know, hasn’t really reached out to people. So yeah, it’s really easy to get isolated, it’s really easy for people who aren’t in a dominant demographic group, yep. To go unseen, it’s really easy for people who do work behind the scenes to be missing for their managers not to see the value of their contribution. And I think one of the things that we don’t really talk about a lot, is that working remote breaks chains of impact in consequence. So let’s say I am a financial analyst, and I do a piece of work and now an analysis and I send it off to my boss or my client internally. And then, you know, they go and do something with it. Now, if I’m working in the office, someone might say, Oh, hey, you know what, Liz, you know, the analysis you did, it was actually really useful. Because we were in this meeting, we had to decide if we were going to invest in A or B, and we decided to invest in B because of your analysis, like, hey, at a girl. Whereas if I send it in over email, I upload it to Box. Like, oh, yeah, it’s a black hole and managers right now, I try to plead with managers, it helps people see how their work has an impact. Yeah, it’s, we’re, we’re losing it. Really.

Sue Bethanis  27:11
I love when you said how people need to be seen, it’s like, and that, again, takes effort, it takes extra effort to get on their calendars, it takes effort to follow up on with a phone call after a group meeting it. We have clients who will get up jump on Slack, real quick after or pick up the phone and I call it lingering. Linger after or linger before, you know get on early noon. Number one, no one ever gets on Zoom really. So let’s assume they’re going to stay on for a little extra time after, stop the meeting early. So you can linger.

Liz Wiseman  27:50
And the efficiency of online meetings and connections allows us to concatenate all of these interactions and work and not have that whitespace that down space that’s lingering to kind of cleanse the palate.

Sue Bethanis  28:06
Yeah. Yeah. And then you just go on to the next one. Right? It’s just it’s really, and then exhausted. I mean, I when I’m on Zoom for 5/6/7 meetings, which I rarely do. This is what our clients are doing every day. They’re doing 7/8/9 meetings every day. And I don’t even know how that even happens. Like there’s such an exhaustion of just having to be up.

Liz Wiseman  28:27
Yeah. And it seems great. It’s like Disneyland with the Fast Pass, or the VIP pass, which I once got because I did some work for Disney. And you can hop from ride to ride riding. You’re like, this is great. This is so efficient. And then at the end of the day, which is what you know, what did you like? I’m like, I don’t know. I’m just like catatonic here. Like it was so overwhelming. And I think that’s what’s happening is we’re not getting that reflection, that lingering and connection. Yeah, because we’re so efficient.

Sue Bethanis  29:02
Okay, so this is great. Everybody, you’re welcome to jump in here and ask Liz questions or make a comment. We talked a lot about many things, messy problems, unclear roles, dealing with them, seeing obstacles, moving targets, and unrelenting demand. So those are the five practices to comment on those or you could just ask anything, Jim,  you were on first go ahead.

Jim  29:25
I think it was a great book. And I work for a company called Drift. We’re big in like books and stuff. And so we read a lot of books and I think it was it was great. It was very, like direct and really relative to a lot of what’s going on. The one thing the one comment I would also have and I liked all your comments around impact players, is I think the other thing that we have seen is the impact players then drive other impact players underneath them, other people underneath them to become impact players because, in fact, they take on these special projects, and therefore they have to push some of the stuff that’s on there, but down to other people. And I think that is another important characteristic of how to develop people in an organization.

Sue Bethanis  30:11
So, definitely assist. Go ahead.

Liz Wiseman  30:14
Yeah, that, you know, we often think, oh, development happens, and that coaching happens between the manager and the team member, but that pure based modeling, coaching, mentoring, like, Hey, let me give you some of my, what’s on my plate and help you be successful. I think it’s a much more powerful form of learning. I agree with you.

Sue Bethanis  30:37
Cool. All right, who’s next? Kari, you have a comment?

Kari  30:40
A question. Hi, Thank you, Liz, I just have your new one on order and love multipliers. I recommend that all the time. I specialize in women’s leadership. And obviously, we’ve all seen the issues that have happened with women over the pandemic. And what I’m curious about, because this, this really describes a lot of my high power eight type clients. And a lot of them are getting burnout because they take on too much. So how do you balance that? Yeah,

Liz Wiseman  31:09
Well, thank you for bringing up this topic of burnout of workload, I think there’s an important distinction between doing more work versus doing harder work. And what tends to generate burnout is when we have too much of the same type of work, and we feel like we’re turning a crank. In fact, this turning a crank was in some ways, the metaphor that I would choose for people who were stuck in this contributor mindset, which is like I’m doing my job, I’m turning the crank, you know, more work and giving someone more work and being constantly taking on more work can lead to burnout. But what actually is the antidote to burnout, in my perspective, is doing harder work, not more work, you know, work that is inherently challenging work. Like that taps into, like, oh, I don’t know how to do that. And so I think it’s easy for us to look at burnout and say burnout is a function of too much work. Let’s take our foot off the accelerator. Let’s take time off. Let’s, you know, take sabbaticals, let’s do a four-day workweek. And those are great, they provide temporary relief, but they don’t actually address burnout. And I think if we really want to address burnout, it’s helping people see the impact of their work. Now, you know, being a working woman, I think, working women and mothers are amazing, and they can do incredible things. And what we need is we need challenges that we put our energy behind rather than, like energy that just spins in the cycle. So I some of this is time-based, and we need to figure out how to let women who are now doing more roles than they then they reasonably can like, the answer isn’t just to go easy on them. Because I think what we’ll do is leave these women in a cycle of under contribution for a long period of time. So I think we have to be wise to say, actually, what we need is deeper engagement, not just a lighter workload. This is, I think, a more complicated topic than something we dress quickly, but it’s actually one that’s close to my heart. And I have a number of women on my team who during the pandemic were like, I’m out I can’t do this. I can’t homeschool three boys. And do this work. Um, so I’ve experienced this firsthand.

Sue Bethanis  33:49
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Kari. Good to see you. Thanks. You too. Yeah. Richard, you have a question or comment?

Richard  33:57
Question. Hi, Sue. And hi, Liz. Thanks for the discussion. I’m curious about your five characteristics. And whether you have an opinion or a hypothesis, or even have done any research into whether they are more innate, or more learnable. And if the ladder, What do you have some hypotheses on how the best leaders can learn those types of impact behaviors?

Liz Wiseman  34:22
Yeah, thank you for that question. And I do and I would say I have a hypothesis, not a conclusion on this. So I come from the world of learning and development. And I am a natural-born optimist, like kind of too many a couple extra helpings of can-do attitude. And so my first reaction is I’m going through this is Oh, yeah, I’m gonna like, decompose what impact players doing what they think and then I’m going to write about it so that everyone can learn to do this. And that’s my sunny optimism at work. And you know, somewhere in that process of like, oh, yeah, some of these aren’t that easy to learn. And so there’s a little piece of extra research that my team and I did was going through once we knew here’s what this looks like is to stratify. Which of these are the least coachable, and which are the most coachable? Now, I don’t think there’s anything in there that I would say is unlearnable. But like, let’s say, you know, some of them like if you go to the root of some of these practices of mindsets, it comes down to like, internal locus of control, like how a sense of your agency and these are things that get built into us pretty early in life, like formative experiences in the workplace, in our families, and they can be altered, but that’s hard work. So there’s a little section in the book and it’s right at the end, if you wrote to info@theweizmanngroup.com, we would just send it to you. But it’s, it’s right here on page 339, it looks like this, I took all of the different mindsets and practices and put them into three buckets, least coachable relative, most coachable, that was based on serving, you know, the Marshall Goldsmith 100 coaches, so kind of a global population of coaches and said, If you have experienced coaching these, what has been your experience in like the act of coaching itself, and that’s what it’s based on. So I think it’s interesting, but I would see this as very much tentative and I hypothesis like, and one of the things that we’re doing is

Sue Bethanis  36:28
I wonder what the impact players themselves would say?

Liz Wiseman  36:31
As part of the research we went and I did a double click interview with the 25 of these impact players, and like, where did you learn how to do this? Yeah, like, and like, I’m trying to trace it back to how early did this happen? And a lot of it was kind of I learned it at my mother’s knee. Like, oh, my dad always encouraged me, he told me, you know what, I should always be my own boss. Yeah, she now works at Google and worked for, you know, Cargo, like these big companies. But she always said, like, no, no, I was taught to be my own boss.

Sue Bethanis  37:07
Which one’s the hardest?

Liz Wiseman  37:10
Now, I guess go back to that page, is it? Well, okay, so it’s on page 239, and the least coachable is our internal locus of control? I think that is very, very difficult. Like when you get a colleague, an employee, a friend who is stuck in a victim mindset, which is kind of the opposite of internal locus control is, other people are doing these things to me, right? Think about how hard it is to help that friend see a different reality.

Sue Bethanis  37:40
Yeah, it’s up in which one is internal locus control? With the practices, which one is that related to? I mean, it’s really into all of them

Liz Wiseman  37:47
It kind of sits underneath all of them. But it’s a very it drives ‘do the job that’s needed rather than do your job’. Because he’s like, oh, yeah, no, I have the power, step up and lead. You know, I don’t need to have formal authority, like, I can act for myself. Um, okay. You know, another one that shows up as really hard to coach is what I call this opportunity lens on things, which is, do I see ambiguity as a threat? Or do I see ambiguity and uncertainty as an opportunity for me to shape like, you know, someone with an opportunity lens is like, oh, yeah, like, it’s not clear what we should do. There are no rules here that are completely off the rails, this is a problem, versus someone who’s like, well, yeah, but nobody’s telling us what we can’t do either. So therefore, we have like, power to go in and do it. Like, let’s take this sort of chaotic scene as an opportunity to advance our cause. Yeah, that shows up as harder to coach, which frustrates me because I want that to be easy to learn how to do.

Sue Bethanis  38:50
Well, I think both of those have to do with this idea of, you know, how you deal with uncertainty. And I go back, keep going back to that, like, what is your, as a leader like, how do you deal with things that come up, you don’t expect? and so what I’ve, what I try to do for myself, especially raising a teenager is this expect, and you’ve been through this now, four times, and I didn’t realize your last one was already at college that’s amazing, is that you just expected stuff to happen. You expect them to be in bad moods in the end and expect things that with COVID that you don’t, that you didn’t expect? And that and that when that happens, you don’t you’re not going to freak out as much. And the question is, where do you learn that? I mean, some of it, you learn because it’s happened to you, you know, from experience. Yeah. But some of it is a very positive, like you can always get over something. I mean, that’s a that is a locus of control that locus control, you can always get over something.

Liz Wiseman  39:46
Yeah. Yeah. And I think we have to look at the broad stripes on this, which is what we people of my generation have done to the youth who are now entering into the workforce because we’ve done some great things, and we’ve done some disservice, like, I think we were sort of raised a generation to say, hey, you can do anything you want. But you know, like, take charge show initiative, like, contact the CEO, make stuff happen start a company. But we’ve also created this soft messaging that says life should be easy. Because a whole generation of parents that Oh, my job is to like clear obstacles for you. And, you know, make it easy for you to get into college to get a good grade. Hey, I packed your lunch. Hey, I went ahead and took the liberty of like, we’ve created ease for our kids. Yeah, I’m sure it’s contrary to I think the reality is, oh, by the way, it’s hard. College will be hard. You will, you know, you will get grades that disappoint you; life’s supposed to be life is hard. And good point. How do we undo some of what we think we’ve done to young people who are entering the workforce?

Sue Bethanis  40:53
Yeah, it’s a great point. Richard, I just want to say thank you for your question. So any last thoughts in terms of how we can as managers and coaches, how we can teach and guide? I like the idea of giving guidance rather than feedback. I like that part of what you said in your book. This is about guidance.

Liz Wiseman  41:14
Yeah, it’s giving people information that they need. Like, I feel like we just need to demystify the whole feedback world, and maybe even accept that people aren’t going to be good at giving it and people aren’t going to be good at receiving it, like feedback, like, makes us all itchy. But like instead be dispensers of information. Like wow, here’s the information you need to know what’s important. Here’s the information you need to know to know how that session went. It’s like instead of, you know, causing people to sort of work without sight and vision, and Intel, it’s just like, open that up and give people the information they need to be successful.

Sue Bethanis  41:57
Yeah, I totally agree with you. I just simplified it down to what’s worked and what’s working and what’s not working. Yeah, you know, it’s like, it’s all practical. And let’s move on. And I agree with you demystifying de- We’ll talk about that next time.

Liz Wiseman  42:13
So we want feedback. Nobody wants advice. You know, even my mom, she turned 80 this week, and she came bursting into my house on Sunday. And she’s like, I love being 80, I feel wise do you want some life advice? And I literally just knee-jerk said “No, no, I don’t.” She was so disappointed. Terrible daughter. But I was like, no, because like who wants to unsolicited advice, not even me from my 80-year-old mom.

Sue Bethanis  42:39
Like, we’ll end on that. I love it. So, everybody, you can get ahold of Liz through LinkedIn of course. And you can go on her website, wisemangroup.com. The book is Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger and Multiply Your Impact. So again, just thank you so much for being with us. I love your stories and your metaphors. And so thanks again for starting us out this year with such an impactful, insightful set of ideas. And as always, I appreciate you very much.

Liz Wiseman  43:09
Oh, thank you. And so keep doing all that work that you do.

Sue Bethanis  43:12
Okay, thanks, Liz, everybody.

Sue hosts Bob Zukis, the CEO and Founder of Digital Directors Network the world’s only organization working to advance the practice and profession of digital and cybersecurity risk oversight in the corporate boardroom. He is an Adjunct Professor of Management and Organization at The USC Marshall School of Business where he teaches corporate governance, strategic management, and global business issues.

Bob is a Conference Board ESG Center Fellow and a retired PwC Advisory Partner where he worked and lived on four continents across twenty countries on the front lines of globalization.  He is the author of the book Social Inc. and co-author of THE GREAT REBOOT – Succeeding in a World of Catastrophic Risk and Opportunity, and several book chapters on digital and cybersecurity risk oversight and writes regularly in Forbes.

Bob and Sue discuss:

• How systemic risk is at the heart of the global failures
• Building a risk culture in your organization
• COVID’s Forces of Systemic Change
• How betters systems thinking can help us reboot the world
• How to use STEEPLED, a useful, strategic management method for analyzing external forces of change

Sue hosts Tim Spiker the founder of The Aperio and the Who* Not What Principle, a profound and research-based truth that has powered 15 years of leadership success. Tim’s book, The Only Leaders Worth Following, explores Who* Not What in depth, inviting readers into a journey that can truly change the way they lead—from the inside out.

Tim and his organization help people become, be, and stay leaders who are actually worth following. His work includes delivering keynote talks, creating unique and customized learning experiences, and guiding long-term development journeys. Tim has worked with leadership teams in North America, Australia, and Asia. He currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife and four children.

Tim and Sue discuss:

• The Who* Not What Principle
• How to determine which leaders are worth following
• What companies fail to do in growing leaders among their employees
• Establishing and maintaining an organizational culture of leadership development
• Leading effectively in the midst of significant uncertainty