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Mental Health in the workplace is top of mind, especially these days. With all that’s going on in the world, Covid continuing to upend plans, and burnout running rampant through organizations, leaders need practical, tactical solutions to helping their people (and themselves!) deal with mental health challenges. So on this final day of Mental Health Awareness month, Erica moderates a mental health roundtable discussion featuring leading experts in the diversity, inclusion, and belonging space. On this episode we have Daisy Auger-Dominguez, chief people officer at VICE media, Leonora Zilkha Williamson, human capital strategy and executive coach, and Nicholas Griggs-Drane, director of diversity and inclusion at Endeavor. In this episode, the panelists discuss how to recognize mental health matters in the workplace, how leaders and employees alike need to feel psychologically safe in order to be honest and vulnerable (and how to model that from the top), how different generations and geographical regions process mental health matters differently, why having mental health benefits are table stakes now in the recruiting process, and why it’s so important to give people time to unplug and rest in order to combat burnout.
Thanks to Terawatt for presenting this panel—“Because everyone deserves a good coach.”
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Quotes:
Leonora:
“We absolutely need to understand the state of your mental wellness in order to build what’s going to come next for you.”
“Gen Z is not going to stand for having mental health be something that’s shoved under the rug and looked down upon. For them—and I see this in my classroom at Vanderbilt—it is no different to tell a professor that you’re not coming to class because you’re having a mental health breakdown than it is to say, ‘I have Covid.’ Those are equally valid reasons to bow out for the day.”
Daisy:
“The work of diversity, equity, and inclusion is about creating a wholeness, a connectedness, a belonging in the workplace, and it’s really hard to feel connected and a sense of belonging in the workplace when you can’t share what is happening in your life.”
“Awareness is nice, but awareness without action doesn’t get you anywhere…The action comes from your managers…How do you encourage the conversations with your employees so that they feel comfortable coming to you, they feel a sense of trust coming to you, that even if you don’t have all the answers, you’re showing that evidence of care.”
Nicholas:
“The industry is moving toward a goal of diversifying our spaces, but when you have someone from an underrepresented group in a space where they may not feel welcome, there’s additional burdens they’re experiencing.”
“Mental health and mental wellness are directly attached to your experience and how you experience your day to day and how you experience yourself when you show up to work and how all those then connect.”
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
Terawatt’s website
Daisy’s book, Inclusion Revolution
Leonora’s website, Platinum Rule Advisors
Erica’s website
Order Erica’s book, Rituals Roadmap
Order Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
Text ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.
Connect with the panelists on LinkedIn:
Daisy
Leonora
Nicholas
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What does it take to scale a business from an idea to unicorn status? Suneera Madhani would say to look to family values—specifically the ones her Pakistani parents instilled in her. With her brother, Suneera co-founded Stax Payments, a fintech platform now processing $23 billion in payments, so it’s clear that these immigrant family values are working.
Suneera speaks with Erica about her three-bucket principle to prioritizing what matters most, Stax’s rituals around shared meals, why they’ve chosen a hybrid model for the office, and how onboarding should be intentionally thought through from the moment a prospective hire receives an offer letter. Suneera also runs the CEO School, a platform dedicated to educating women entrepreneurs on how to scale their businesses and go from founder to CEO.
Suneera launched this platform after learning that less than 2% of female founders ever break $1 million in revenue, so now she aims to increase that number. CEO School includes a podcast as well as a membership with monthly classes, community events, fireside chats, and a quarterly curated product box. Additionally, Suneera’s new CEO School Course—an 8-week experience, with workshops on power, pitch, process, product, people, and profit—is open for enrollment May 19th-May 25th, and you can sign up below!
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Quotes:
“Less than 2% of female founders ever break 1 million in revenue.”
“This [success] was all a compilation of saying ‘yes.’ Saying yes to opportunity, saying yes to following my heart, following my passions. But I will tell you, there was a point last year where I faced complete, utter burnout. That’s usually what happens when we say ‘yes’ to too many things. We really have to recalibrate, where can I say ‘no’? And without feeling guilty about saying no. It’s definitely a struggle.”
“You can have your plate and you can fill it sky high, but usually if you look at a healthy plate, it’s balanced in three components. That’s how I view the three-bucket principle.”
“I think onboarding begins from the offer letter; it begins even on the interview process…So we take it all the way back to say, ‘How can we drive incredible experience all the way through?’ And that’s just done with purpose and intention and showing your value system.”
“I work with my brother; this is a family business as well. Part of our DNA was always one team, one dream. And we’re always team above self. That’s how I want our people to be, and that’s truly this team that we have.”
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
The CEO School
The CEO School course
Stax Payments
Suneera’s post on immigrant family values
Suneera’s Forbes article on the Great Resignation
Erica’s website
Order Erica’s book, Rituals Roadmap
Order Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
Text ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.
Connect with Suneera:
Instagram
CEO School Instagram
Stax Payments Instagram
Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook
Connect with Erica:
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Contrary to popular belief, the highest performing teams are not necessarily conflict free. In fact, healthy disagreement—or creative friction—leads to more innovation, more trust, better ideas, and higher performance. Amy Gallo, author, podcast host, and contributing editor at Harvard Business Review, sits down with Erica on this week’s episode to discuss how to disagree in a human way. This conversation equips leaders and employees alike to build trust and psychological safety in relationships and teams (the foundation of healthy conflict), navigate difficult conversations, and establish norms around disagreement. They also touch on how and why there are gender differences in disagreement and advocacy, why a hybrid work environment makes conflict more difficult, and how to approach—top down OR bottom up—disagreement on whether employees should return to the office fully or be able to keep a flexible schedule. Anyone who’s ever struggled with conflict in the workplace will find this conversation enlightening and helpful.
Amy’s latest book, Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone, Even Difficult People, is out September 13th and available for pre-order now.
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Quotes:
“That leads to what Patrick Lencioni, the author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, calls artificial harmony. So it’s this idea that we look like we’re getting along, we’re all nodding and agreeing, but then there’s this sort of simmering tension or resentment that’s underneath the surface that never comes up. Or comes up sideways, and you have these big explosions.”
“You need trust in order to have disagreements. You need to respect the other person in order to voice your disagreement. You need to have a sense of belonging and safety. And when you don’t have those things, whether it’s in a marriage or on a team, it’s going to look like everything’s fine, because disagreements aren’t coming up, but things often are very, very wrong. And you’re not going to get all of the benefits of disagreeing, right you know, [like] innovation. What Linda Hill at Harvard Business School calls creative friction, that comes with you and I disagreeing, we’re gonna come up with a better idea if we surface our underlying assumptions, and we articulate our point of view, and we go to bat for our ideas and then collaborate and integrate each of our ideas into something better, right? We get better work outcomes. We also tend to have stronger relationships because to disagree you need to have trust, and once actually have disagreed, you do have a conflict and you’ve worked through it, you’ve set the precedent that our relationship will survive even if we disagree.”
“Having difficult conversations, having disagreements are table stakes when it comes to trying to create inclusive work environments.”
“One of the basic things is, as a leader, if you haven’t said out loud, ‘We will not always see eye to eye, and I think that is a good thing,’ say that tomorrow to your team. Because you have to lay the groundwork that disagreement is a normal, inevitable part of other human beings interacting. And it’s not going to be shut down if it comes up. We’re going to hear it, we’re going to listen to it. And setting norms around how do we do that.”
“Part of me believes we need to reclaim this language that’s always negative. To me, conflict is when our needs, wants, desires are not aligned. And we have to figure out how to align them or how to get to an answer where at least some of those desires, wants, and needs are met, but maybe not all of them.”
“You need to be crystal clear about why you actually want people back [in the office]. What purpose is it serving for the organization, for them as employees? You know, people have gotten used to being able to pick up their kids from school or at the bus stop. You’re asking them to disrupt a routine that they’ve gotten used to and, as you say, have been able to do their jobs just as well.”
“Given what the labor market looks like right now, I would be very hesitant to enforce something that’s going to make a lot of people unhappy. There are people who are willing to leave over [forced RTO], and a lot have.”
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
Amy’s website
Pre-order Amy’s book, Getting Along
Erica’s website
Order Erica’s book, Rituals Roadmap
Order Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
Text ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.
Connect with Amy:
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When Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy pitched their second book, Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay, to their publisher in January 2020, the authors were met with questions about its relevance. Fast forward six months (and three months into a new and terrifying global pandemic), and the publisher recognized this was, in fact, a very relevant book to publish. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why. In these turbulent times, with millions participating in The Great Resignation, new Covid variants emerging every few months, derailing our collective plans to move on, and many dealing with the grief they’ve experienced from the loss of loved ones to the virus, Big Feelings couldn’t have come at a better time. Liz Fosslien, the co-author and illustrator stopped by Left to Our Own Devices to dig deep into big feelings. On this episode, Liz and Erica discuss the new book, how to express selective vulnerability (aka, bringing your most appropriate self to work), the importance of being intentional and taking time to connect and check in with colleagues, and how to introduce more stability into our teams during ever-changing times. Liz also offers two salient examples from Humu and IDEO on how to onboard in ways that will give new hires a sense of psychological safety as well as permission to bring their human to work.
Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay, by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy is out today! Pick up your copy wherever books are sold.
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Quotes:
“Our work is not an invitation to be a feelings firehose. We talk about this a lot in the context of leadership. And we have a practice that we call selective vulnerability. So it’s really, how do you balance sharing, which builds trust and does bring teams together and increases performance over the short and long run, but you also can’t really over share, right? It is still a workplace context and especially if you’re leading a team, part of your role is to create stability and clarity for that team.”
“I have emotions, some of them are really, really difficult. You will have them too, that’s perfectly okay. But as your leader, I’m still thinking about how to make sure we’re all okay together in the future.”
“I will say, I am an introvert. My job involves a lot of writing and thinking, so I personally love working from home. I think back on being in an open-office floor plan, and it boggles my mind how I got anything done ever because it’s so overstimulating. So I think the keys are, when you are in person, really prioritizing relationship building and connection and seeing that as how you’re going to perform better in the long term.”
“I’ve learned to take a deep breath and say, ‘Okay, we should have that five minutes [at the beginning of a meeting] just to check in with one another. And it actually makes the call much, much nicer. So I think it just requires you to be more intentional and have the moment of, ‘What do I want out of this meeting, what is my goal in connecting with this person, and then how can I structure the next 30 minutes to make that happen.’”
“Somehow I always forget how restorative it is to just step away from my computer and walk outside. And I’m lucky enough to live in California, where that’s an option year round. It’s like, wow, being outside in the sun for five minutes has this huge impact, and I’m just always not doing it!?”
On Humu’s onboarding: “[Laszlo Bock] was like, ‘Hey, this is your first day, and I just want to reinforce that the interview—the audition is over. You’re not auditioning anymore. You’re here and we want you to grow and learn and ask a lot of questions. You’re going to make mistakes, but you don’t need to be worried about your position—that part is over.’”
“The audition is over! We’re so excited you’re here, you’re bringing all these valuable skills to the team. Please lean into your abilities—that’s why we hired you.”
“The 7 emotional states [from the book]: are uncertainty, comparison, anger, burnout, perfectionism, despair, and regret.”
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
Order Liz and Mollie’s book, Big Feelings, out now
Liz and Mollie’s website
Liz’s website
Erica’s website
Order Erica’s book, Rituals Roadmap
Order Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
Text ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.
Connect with Liz:
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Gary Ware was working as a VP at a digital ad agency when he realized that being completely depleted, feeling broken, and having no drive to do anything was perhaps *not* normal. Gary was experiencing what many of us have faced, especially during the pandemic—burnout. So Gary took an improv class and realized play is what was missing in his life. On the podcast this week, Gary chats with Erica about his journey from burnout to breakthrough by incorporating play and games into the work day. He illustrates how applied improvisation and games help teams and colleagues unlock creativity, confidence, and better communication. Gary shares the challenges of reimagining in-person games to an online environment once the pandemic hit, signs an employee may be on the verge of burnout, why playing a silly game as a team before a client call can make everything go more smoothly, and why sense of intimacy must be created if we want to form a genuine connection.
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Quotes:
On his former position: “The vibe was, ‘You sleep when you’re dead. Hey, you know what, we’re here to work, we’re here to work hard.’ It was interesting because it was, ‘work hard, play hard,’ however there was no playing at all. When you work a 12-hour day and then you go home, the last thing you want to do when you go home is do anything other than sleep.”
“As a leader you can start to understand, are people showing up to meetings and *not* bringing their whole selves? And I don’t think it’s intentional. When you’re running at that [overworked] level for so long, you start to deplete yourself. Are people being a little bit more cynical than before? Those are some of the early signs that people may be starting to burn themselves out.”
“That’s the beauty of play. Play is pleasurable and when you’re in true play you want to share with other people.”
“We started creating psychological safety just by playing these silly games. We started seeing the purpose of, ‘Oh, wow, this is actually helping us listen better. This is helping us connect better with each other.’ And of course, performance increased.”
“One of the cool things about [the 5 Things game] is that it starts to prime your brain to look for connections, to look for these blind spots. And then when we would go into meetings, we would be more open to suggestions from our clients. We would actually see [more] ways that we could help our clients.”
“When the pandemic first happened and everything stopped being in person and went virtual, it was challenging. How can we create this intimacy when we are miles apart, on camera, and people are stressed out. And so I had to reimagine everything. I had to essentially dissect all my activities and say, ‘Alright, what’s the purpose here. Can it work in a virtual environment?’ But in the spirit of ‘Yes, and,’ I would go into these meetings, and I would just be quite frank with them, and I’d say, ‘Look, I get it. You’ve probably been on Zoom meeting after Zoom meeting, and the last thing that you want is to do some silly games.’ And I would just call out the current environment. And by doing that, it creates this level playing field of like, ‘Alright, cool. You’re not trying to sugar coat this situation like nothing wrong is going on in the world.’”
“When you create a sense of intimacy, that’s where the oxytocin happens. That’s where we get the dopamine and the endorphins and then we can focus.”
“With the companies I’m working with, how they’re looking at their office is almost like a clubhouse. ‘We’re all together. This is going to be the time when we’re going to connect. This is the time when we’re going to do things that are more experiential so that when we disperse, we can be more productive. We will feel like we made those connections.’”
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
Gary’s website, Breakthrough Play
Erica’s website
Order Erica’s book, Rituals Roadmap
Order Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
Text ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.
Connect with Gary:
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Few activities prepare a young person for the world of work better than participation in team sports. With skills like leadership, performance under pressure, work ethic, teamwork, problem solving, and the ability to strategize, athletes are naturally set up to be successful. And that’s just what this week’s guest, former Team USA Women’s Hockey team captain and three-time Olympic medalist, Meghan Duggan, has found. Meghan joined Erica on the podcast to discuss her transition from leading the Olympic team to gold to manager of player development for the New Jersey Devils NHL hockey team. Meghan’s main focus these days is planning and strategizing with recent draft picks and young pros at the beginning of their career life cycle so they can become full-time, multi-million dollar NHL players. Meghan talks about the moment she decided she would be an Olympian (at just 10 years old!), why family and professional rituals matter, and her work as president of the Women’s Sports Foundation, where they work to build greater equity, inclusion, and participation for girls and women in sports. Anyone going through a professional transition will find Meghan’s journey and this episode helpful.
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Quotes:
“I had to dig deep. I had to go through some hard times and look myself in the mirror and figure out, okay, hockey’s gone, but you’re a mom, you have all these qualities you’ve learned through playing, like you mentioned Erica—leadership, performance under pressure, work ethic, the ability to strategize and solve problems and work as a team—I had innately in me, and I had to find ways to bring them out and figure out how I was going to use those things and add value somewhere else.”
“I think rituals are huge, right? They get you in the right mindset, they make you feel prepared, they give you confidence. I love those things. You know if you have your own rituals, you can always fall back on them when things are hard or things go awry. They’re so important, and I love watching rituals play out in the sports world.”
on the Women’s Sports Foundation: “We do a ton of research around what sports do and how they bring different things into our lives, right? For young girls, whether it’s physical health, mastering skills, discipline, confidence, leadership, positive body image, all these things. We talk about C-suite women. When you look at that, 94% of C-suite women played sports at a young age, which is just incredible, right? But not surprising when you think about what sports bring into our lives.”
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
Meghan Duggan - Team USA
NJ Devils
Women’s Sports Foundation
Erica’s website
Order Erica’s book, Rituals Roadmap
Order Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
Text ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.
Connect with Meghan:
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From a one-man business consultant working out of a spare bedroom in 2007 to a team of 100 employees, 1 billion dollars secured in business financing, and a leading fintech marketplace for small businesses, Joe Camberato—or, Grow By Joe, as he’s known on the internet—knows a thing or two about growth. Which makes sense, because Joe’s mission is to help drive growth, both for clients and employees. So how does he do it? This week on the podcast, Joe Camberato, founder and CEO of National Business Capital, speaks with Erica about how to build a business from scratch. And the secret for Joe is to harness the power of culture. And culture doesn’t have to be overcomplicated, but it does have to be experienced. Joe discusses NBC’s team rituals, like the 9:01 AM daily stretch that gets everyone centered for the day, how they build fun into the day-to-day work, how their culture team intentionally crafts events and resources for the company, and why leaders should let people have the flexibility they need to deal with stuff going on in their lives—we’re all human after all. Listen in for a straightforward approach to bringing fun back to work.
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Quotes:
“If you’re having a tough time getting people to come back, I think it’s a really good time to relook at your business and your culture. People want more today than just a place to show up to work. They want a fun environment and companies that bring more to the table.”
“How do you explain culture? It’s not an easy thing to explain. I feel like you really have to experience it and see it and witness it. One word is fun. We talk about this all the time…there’s not a rule book that says you can’t have a fun time in the office; you can’t have fun while doing your work. And it’s not just all about having fun. We hold ourselves highly accountable…It’s about work/life integration.”
“We’re not so stiff and stuff with things. We respect and understand things happen in people’s lives. If something comes up or something happens, I’m not worried about, are they using their PTO day for that? I really don’t care. If it’s a life thing go figure it out, go handle it, go do it.”
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
Grow By Joe Youtube channel
National Business Capital website
Erica’s website
Order Erica’s book, Rituals Roadmap
Order Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
Text ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.
Connect with Joe:
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How do we shift society as a whole towards more diversity and inclusion? It starts with the people and brands defining culture itself—“the icons, visionaries, renowned experts, award-winners, champions, leading brands and institutions.” And nowhere do they influence culture more than at Endeavor, a company that represents this top tier talent in sports, entertainment, fashion, live events, and media. On this episode, Erica spoke with Alicin Williamson, Chief Inclusion Officer, and Nicholas Griggs-Drane, Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Endeavor. Alicin and Nicholas help build D&I into the fabric of Endeavor, and thus the culture at large. In this episode Alicin and Nicholas discuss how to make sure everyone can show up as their full selves, using science and stories about underrepresented groups to shift the conversation, how to onboard with D&I baked in, and why putting diversity and inclusion first is a competitive advantage. This episode is an absolute must-listen for anyone in HR and people functions.
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Resources:
Quotes:
Alicin:
“You can’t talk about growth mindset without talking about inclusion.”
“One of the ways I think about this is defragmentation of power. There is more agency that individuals have and are thinking about as they figure out how they spend their time, and what they’re willing to have happen and do. And, frankly, underrepresented people—people of color, LGBTQ+, women—have a lower tolerance for having to navigate around the delicate egos that we have had to forever.”
“The notion of diversity often ends as soon as you say yes. ‘We’re so excited to have you. You’re reflective of these voices that we’re interested in having and we don’t have.’ And then you show up, and you’re expected to assimilate. So it’s really important for the hiring managers and the onboarding team to remember—we’re not actually indoctrinating anymore. That’s not what the business is. We want them—these voices, whoever it is. They’re going to set us on this path to the future. Make sure that we give them the tools and the support to do that.”
“This is more than logistics. The world is reopening; hopefully we’ll continue in the same direction. There are a lot of people who didn’t get to bury loved ones. There are a lot of people who sat home by themselves for nearly two years. There are a lot of people who have needed to navigate things that they were already challenged with, and that they found things were exacerbated by this global pandemic and trauma. We are ready to make it so that people—however we bring them together, in whatever intention—that it is meaningful. That is mindful of what had to be navigated and overcome to get from [say] Jersey to the Flatiron.”
Nicholas:
“What does it mean to be an employee at one of our businesses, right? At a specific vertical? What does that mean when you’re in a hybrid model? How do you get that engagement so people feel seen and that we’re meeting them where they’re at in this half-virtual world still, no matter how much we want it to be fully in person. We have to adjust, and it is a competitive advantage when we do. And specifically with underrepresented people. The marketplace is hot.”
“We have this conversation all the time—you can recruit underrepresented people all you want, right? But if they’re not set up for success on day 1, 2, 3 through their 90 day entry point, they will walk out the door, and they have every right to walk out the door because they were failed.
“There’s all these pieces of making people feel a part of the organization in a way that’s authentic—we should do this for everyone—but if you as a people manager have that ability, and then you can systemically build that into your practice…I think it’s understanding that onboarding people takes work. And people notice it if you don’t. And then they will go to the next person who cares about their time and their energy and their expertise or their career that they’re putting in your hands.”
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
Endeavor’s website
Erica’s website
Order Erica’s book, Rituals Roadmap
Order Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
Text ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.
Connect with Alicin:
LinkedIn
Connect with Nicholas:
Instagram
LinkedIn
Connect with Erica:
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Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook
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Whether joining a meeting from Zoom, on a walk, or in-person, Jeannie Weaver knows that intentional connection is key to how she leads a team of 45+ in the retail marketing and special experiences space at AT&T. The pandemic disrupted so much, but it never changed—only reinforced—her approach to leadership: start with people. Her team has been able to thrive through these turbulent times by recognizing individual contribution, curating experiences together, and focusing on gratitude. In this episode, Erica and Jeannie discuss how to actually walk the walk, how daydreaming helps Jeannie feel most like herself, and why grace and vulnerability for ourselves and others is the most important takeaway from the past two years. Jeannie is a model of leadership for anyone responsible for a large team in an even larger corporation. Listen in for a human-centered approach to this type of organization.
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Resources:
Quotes:
“When you start with people as your approach, the results come.”
“We will get together because there’s just this craving of the energy, the human connectedness, right? I want to be with people, but I want to be with people with intention.”
“I need to make sure this is not a ‘do as I say,’ but truly ‘do as I do,’ and I need to tell you that I am doing those things—‘Oh, I took a walk today.’”
“Starting with gratitude in the book club and in meetings [equalizes everyone]. People you normally didn’t hear from now put forward things that are on their heart, that are important to them. And then that starts to snowball. Other people start lighting up and engaging and participating.”
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
AT&T’s Hello Lab
Erica’s website
Order Erica’s book, Rituals Roadmap
Order Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
Text ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.
Connect with Jeannie:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook
Connect with Erica:
Instagram
Twitter
LinkedIn
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Food is a vessel for connecting people. It helps build community and break down barriers. That’s the vision behind Season Four’s first guest, James-Beard-award-winning chef, TV personality, and author, Chef JJ Johnson. Chef JJ’s most recent restaurant venture, FIELDTRIP, is a made-to-order dining experience based around rice, as it’s the universal ingredient that connects us all and can be found at the center of the table in almost every community. In this episode, Erica and Chef JJ discuss the impact of the pandemic on the restaurant industry, how FIELDTRIP pivoted to donate meals to healthcare workers on the front line, how Chef JJ hopes the industry will come back more equitably for all stakeholders, and the answer to his own “Now What?”—how he plans to utilize the Series A round he raised to grow his business. On this Pi Day, Chef JJ’s experience with centering community around good-for-you food offers accessible insights to anyone seeking to bring people—in work and in life—together around a shared meal.
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Quotes:
“Food was this vessel of connecting people to then make—hopefully the food that was going to hospitals around the country—was making doctors and nurses and frontline workers and anyone that worked under those roofs perform better.”
“The great thing about the restaurant industry is we’re fighters, we figure it out. Hopefully it evolves, and when I say I don’t think it will come back the same, I hope that tipping comes back differently, I hope that minimum wage comes back differently. I hope we can really figure out for people to look at the industry as, not a luxury, but a necessity. And I think a lot of people look at restaurants as a luxury, but they employ a lot of people, and even some of our first jobs are in restaurants.”
“On the spaghetti effect, that has helped camaraderie, right? Because now when people come into FIELDTRIP, you see firefighters coming in, you see police officers, you see guys that have lived in this community for 100 years—their family—and they’re all eating next to each other and then having a conversation, ‘Oh, what’s in your bowl?’ ‘What’s that black rice taste like?’ And then that helps build community. Or break down barriers that weren’t able to be broken down before.”
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Chef JJ’s website
FIELDTRIP’s website
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Order Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
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Here we are, two years after March 2020, when everything changed. Things are FAR from back to normal. People are quitting their jobs in record numbers. Mental health challenges remain at an all-time high. And flexibility isn’t going anywhere. So how do leaders retain top talent and run their businesses during all this uncertainty?
On Season 4 of Left to Our Own Devices, Erica is asking, “Now What?” And leaders from all walks of life will help her find the answer. -
What’s a human leader to do as we all try to figure out how to navigate the future of work? There are so many variables right now around the return to the office, working from home, hybrid models, and everything in between, that it can be tough to make the smartest and safest decisions. And we can’t do this difficult work alone.
That’s why for the finale of the Hybrid season of Left to Our Own Devices, we’re running a special episode: a live webinar (previously recorded) from keynote speaker, bestselling author, and founder of Happier, Nataly Kogan, called the Awesome Human Hour. Nataly invited Erica on the weekly webinar, and they discussed why in this transition period, honoring relationships, focusing on well-being, and shifting to outcomes instead of hours is a great start. They also talked about why leading with vulnerability, transparency, clear communication, and gratitude are powerful ways to ensure engagement from employees and leaders alike. And as always, Erica reminded us that rituals are a sure-fire tool for offering the people in our organizations psychological safety, a greater sense of purpose, and a boost in performance, especially in uncertain times. Listen in for two expert takes on how to be an awesome human leader during this transition.
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Quotes:
– “We have just gone through something incredibly stressful...Acknowledge for yourself and for others—your team, your organization—everyone is coming into this depleted. We are not at our best in terms of our energy and our focus because we’ve just gone through something really exhausting, and it’s not over. It still has ramifications.”
– “Why are change and transition so hard? Your brain only has one job: keep you safe from danger. Any uncertainty signals possible danger to your brain. What does the brain do when it senses danger? It starts to look for everything that could go wrong. It’s so important for you individually and for you as a leader of a team to recognize that, as we’re going through this transition, everyone’s brain is looking for, ‘What about this change am I not going to like? What is going to be annoying? What is going to be frustrating?’ Not because they’re negative people—there’s no such thing. It’s just that’s how our brain deals with change. It starts to focus on what could go wrong because it thinks that it can protect us.”
– “When you share what you’re worried about, you give everyone else permission to acknowledge what they’re stressed about. And that creates a sense of connection, common experience, and psychological safety, that actually helps to reduce that stress. I’ve been looking at some research about leaders who handle crises the best, and the most effective leaders during crises (which is what we’re going through right now) are those who openly acknowledge their challenges and create a space for people on their team to do the same.”
– “We all want to connect, and it is important, but when we get busy and stressed, it goes to the bottom of our list. Not because we’re bad people, but just because our brain is going, ‘What do I need to do?’ Just putting on your to do list: check in, is transformative. Be intentional but also be making these concrete to-do’s part of your schedule, part of your day. Don’t feel weird about scheduling kind things.”
– “The pandemic was a wake up call. When people are under extreme stress, we can’t talk about performance.”
– “Leaders ask me this a lot: ‘How do I encourage well-being and self care for my team?’ You cannot teach what you don’t practice….Before I burnt out, I was the leader who told my team to take the weekend off, and make sure you’re taking time for you. And you know what I did on the weekends? I sent them emails, I worked on public documents that they can see, so I just created an atmosphere of a lack of trust because I wasn’t practicing. So the number one thing you can do as a leader is, you have to make your own emotional fitness your number one priority. What do I mean by emotional fitness? Emotional fitness is a skill of cultivating a more supportive relationship with yourself, your emotions, your thoughts, and other people.”
– “Creating a ritual, creating something that is meaningful to you, that is a positive experience, that makes you feel comfortable, actually signals safety to your brain.”
– Tip for practicing Emotional Fitness: “Make a quick list: what are some things that fuel you? Maybe your list includes a creative hobby that you used to do. Learning something new is really fueling. Our brain loves to learn something new...Make it intentional for yourself to practice a few of those things. Make them part of your daily fuel up.”
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
Nataly’s website
Nataly’s book, Happier Now
Join a future Awesome Human Hour
Erica’s website
Erica’s course How to Bring Your Human to Work for Leaders starting Sept. 2021
Order Erica’s book, Rituals Roadmap
Order Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
Text ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.
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We’re half way through summer, which means the official “return to office” date, the day after Labor Day, is fast approaching. Many companies expect that their employees will be back in the office in some capacity. Which means NOW is the time to be thinking about how to navigate that transition.
Enter executive start up coach Alisa Cohn and her client, co-founder and CEO of startup Common Paper, Jake Stein, to chat with Erica about how they’re both figuring out this transition time. In the episode you’ll hear Alisa reflect on her first offsite since the pandemic and the feeling of magic that face-to-face connection created, how Jake is thinking about building rapport, trust, and understanding with new hires in a future of work that isn’t necessarily geolocated, how matching the message to the medium is more important than ever, why old rituals may or may not translate as well in a different context (office setting versus WFH-during-a-pandemic setting), and why reopening may be tougher on us all psychologically than the initial lockdown.
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Quotes:
Alisa 3:22 – “Being in the same room, being able to have that human connection, that human contact was priceless, and I would say we really savored it because I think that we know that that could be taken away from us.”
Alisa 7:13 – “What have we experienced and enjoyed actually, about remote work, and then what do we need to fine-tune as we figure out what our version of back-to-office looks like.”
Jake 8:44 – “We’re four people who’ve all worked together before. And so we have a base level of trust and rapport and understanding, and we’re trying to recruit more people and one of the things that’s most important to me, is how do we develop that rapport and trust and understanding in a context where there’s not a kitchen to go talk at the water cooler or a Friday lunch for us to cater. And so I think we’ll have to do different things, and it’s something that we’ll need to be really intentional about, and I don’t, candidly, have all the answers.”
Jake 18:12 – “You really need to start from first principles, thinking, what am I trying to accomplish? And then also, what are the pros and the cons of the mediums that are available?”
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
Alisa’s website
Common Paper website
Erica’s website
Order Erica’s book, Rituals Roadmap
Order Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
Text ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.
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For the July 4th holiday week, we’re replaying the Season Two finale, featuring Eve Rodsky. As the discussion around Hybrid work and equity around the Return (or not) to the Office continues to heat up, Eve’s perspective on how women are impacted is ever important. As one woman noted to me recently, “I want to take advantage of my company’s offer to work from home on Thursday, but the two men on my team aren’t going to do it.” Women especially want flex, but don’t want to be left behind if they’re “out of sight; out of mind” when it comes to career advancement. Companies navigating a return to the office without intention and a plan for inclusion could result in leaving people in need of more flex (i.e.: mostly women, people of color, differently-abled people, and caretakers) behind.
Original air date: 2/2/21
Original show notes: In the season finale of Season Two: The Rituals Edition, Erica has an incredible guest—keynote speaker, New York Times bestselling author, and equality evangelist, Eve Rodsky. Shaped by a difficult upbringing with a single mother in New York City, Eve learned important lessons early on around resilience, responsibility, and care. In this episode, you’ll hear about her first ritual—going to a march related to social justice every year on her birthday with her mother, as well as her current ritual—a nightly communication check-in with her husband. Eve has dedicated her life to equality, including by helping partners divide domestic responsibilities more equitably and by helping organizations get to a place of equality and psychological safety. Eve and Erica also discuss this inflection point in history: where either Covid will push mothers out of the workforce, or as a society we’ll rise up to make a new, more equitable future of work where women aren’t penalized for having dependents. Don’t miss this important conversation.
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Quotes:
13:30 – “What [the research] shows is that, when you communicate more consistently, there is psychological safety and connection there. It is a ritual. And rituals allow you to do things that maybe if it’s a one-off wouldn’t. It allows you to bring up hard conversations and to say, ‘You know what this isn’t working, but I know I can come back to this tomorrow night.’ And that’s what that communication ritual does for Seth and me. We say, ‘You know what, we’re going to table this. Let’s come back when emotion is low and cognition is high.’”
21:11 – on this covid inflection moment to build something better for working mothers: “To really build a new society after this horrific reckoning…To me the silver lining is, an hour holding our child’s hand at the pediatrician’s office is just as valuable as an hour in the boardroom. I think we can build that through ritual. I think we can build that through communication. I think we can build that through psychological safety and empathy. But it’s going to take not just women doing it. It’s going to take men. It’s going to take our workplaces.”
22:20 – “The leaders we talk to and how much they recognize that being a whole human being is actually better for their company and better for society.”
28:38 – “Nothing is going to replace [our previous rituals]. And I think we should grieve for the lost rituals. we should grieve for the fact that we are right now losing those connection times with friends. Or we’re losing the ritual of that daily walk with your grandma, or whatever it was, that we can’t do now.”
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
Eve’s website
Eve’s book, Fair Play
The Fair Play Deck
Erica’s website
Erica’s book, Rituals Roadmap
Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
Text ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.
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The pandemic accelerated several workplace trends, but none more rapidly than the conversation around holistic well-being. How do we think about wellness at work? How do we integrate work and life instead of trying to force an impossible balance? How has the pandemic changed our view of well-being in a way that’s holistic and gives mental health equal weight? At the end of the day, “We bring work to life by bringing life to work.”
This week on the podcast, Erica chats with two women leading the transformation of workplace well-being: Jen Fisher, author, podcast host, Thrive Global Editor-at-Large, and Chief Well-being Officer at Deloitte, and Keren Ehrenfeld, Managing Director in Global Capital Markets at Morgan Stanley and Head of Healthcare and Transportation Debt Capital Markets practice. Jen, Keren, and Erica discuss how to recognize burnout, how each individual’s view of wellness is different, how managers are one of the biggest impacts on wellness at work, and how wellness can be achieved from organizational, team, and individual levels. This is an absolute must-listen for leaders looking to move into the future of work with well-being as a top priority.
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Quotes:
Keren 10:02 – “When your demands exceed your capacity is when you hit the burnout level. And that’s the thing we’re trying to avoid, and that looks different for everyone.”
Keren 10:56 – “We all know at the end of the day, the best relationships and employee happiness really depends on who your manager is.”
Keren 11:23 – “Number one is to understand what burnout looks like is really, really important. Being able to look at someone or your people or even have a conversation and notice when they’re exhausted or losing steam or a little bit irritable or sometimes we start hearing people be a little bit cynical about their job, right? Or people who are superstars start to lose their mojo a little bit and their work product is not as good as it was. Noticing those things and instead of getting annoyed or angry at it, it’s then understanding how to have the conversation and building in some strategies that can help the employee or help your friend or whoever the person might be.
Keren 12:07 – “So once you spot [burnout], how do you source it? How do you source the burnout? What is the real problem here?…Of course unsustainable workload is one of them…but there’s also lack of control about how and when you work your best…just having that conversation around having more control can alleviate a lot of the burn out.”
Jen 26:27 – “How do you continue to maintain the authenticity and vulnerability? I don’t think our workforce is going to let us go back, right? So much has changed and there’s such a demand societally for people to be able to show up and be who they are.”
Jen 27:54 – “At the team level it’s really about behaviors and norms. How do we get together as a team? Because we know all the research shows that the people who have the biggest impact on your day-to-day wellbeing are the people that you spend most of your time with. And for those of us that work, the majority of our waking hours during the week are spent at work, right? So those people that we’re engaging with on a regular basis are the people that have the biggest impact on our wellbeing, so for most of us, that’s our team. So how do we as teams get together and talk about what do we want our wellbeing behaviors and norms to be? What do we want standard working hours to look like? How do we get in touch with each other outside the standard working hours? What does common or accepted response time to emails look like? What are the expectations around learning and development? Do we all want to step away from our laptops for lunch everyday? Just having those conversations and creating norms on a team so that everybody understands what’s expected of them and when it’s expected. It also creates a platform and an environment where I can speak up.”
Jen 29:29 – “Every individual must have agency and feel empowered to take care of their own wellbeing. We can do as much as we can possibly do at an organizational and team level; I cannot force you to take care of yourself.”
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
Jen’s book, Work Better Together
Erica’s website
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What’s important to you? What are your non-negotiables? What are your goals? When it comes to negotiating what’s best for each person in the hybrid workplace, answering those questions is a great place to start, says Mori Taheripour, this week’s guest on Left to Our Own Devices.
Mori is a globally recognized negotiation and DEI expert, executive, Wharton professor, and author of Bring Yourself: How to Harness the Power of Connections to Negotiate Fearlessly. Erica and Mori discuss why it’s important to be straight forward about our needs at work, how companies will have to look at the future of work on a more individual, holistic level, and why it’s key to set boundaries with our values in mind and learn to communicate effectively and with curiosity. Listen in for a thoughtful conversation around bringing our best selves to work and life in an authentic way, and stick around to the end for some sage advice Mori gives to Erica as the parent of two college-bound kids.
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Quotes:
6:46 – “Companies are going to have to look at this very differently as well. and you can’t just force feed people into what this used to be. A lot has changed, and so I think they’ll have to have individual conversations, because one size does not fit all. And I think that part of those conversations, obviously there has to be some amount of compromise, because it could be that they want a lot of people back just to create that sense of camaraderie and connection, even a greater sense of maybe innovation and bringing people together—that energy that is hard to replace even at your finest moments virtually, right? So I think those conversations have to be tailored to people.”
8:44 – on being straightforward about your needs: “I’m hoping that the HR folks, your boss, your manager, or whatever it is, will be able to have those conversations so it’s more like collaborative problem solving as opposed to ‘this is the way it’s going to be, and this is what you have to do,’ because I don’t think workforces will fare that well if that’s how they approach it.”
11:33 – “Everybody doesn’t deserve every part of you and all the information you have at the beginning. You give a little, you take a little, you give a little. And then, as you become more comfortable, even in that first negotiation, that first conversation, you can see that natural progression, because the connection is made, the empathy is created, the rapport is built.”
12:28 – “It’s also the values piece of it, right? Being very true to who you are from a values perspective. So that’s less about, not necessarily behavior, so much as it is knowing your boundaries and the things that are important to you.”
17:25 – on the conversations around the future of work: “Too much has changed to unsee what has happened. And so I think a lot of those conversations are going to change, pick up, be a little more malleable, pliable, and really individualized.”
23:42 – “When I first started teaching negotiations, it took me a little while, but the essence of it is communicating effectively and being heard, and being curious and going into conversations not with your mind made up but being open to ideas and somebody else’s ways of communicating with you and perspective—hearing things from a different perspectives before you actually draw your own, and maybe what you end up with is far better than you ever thought was possible because it was innovative and you were open and curious.”
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
Mori’s website
Erica’s website
Order Erica’s book, Rituals Roadmap
Order Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
Text ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.
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How do the leaders of one of the biggest and most successful tech companies in the world lead in the Hybrid Revolution? With a figure-it-out mindset. Today on the podcast, Erica chats with Colette Stallbaumer, General Manager of Microsoft 365 and Future of Work at Microsoft. Colette explains Microsoft's approach to Hybrid work—it’s centered around a three-part framework: people, places, and processes. They’re using technology and research to implement best practices around empowering managers, hiring diverse talent, embracing flexibility, creating connection and culture in new ways, and staying agile with touch points. Because at the end of the day, as Colette asserts, leading IN a crisis is far different than leading OUT of a crisis.
Instead of taking our bad pandemic habits (like working into the evenings and weekends and taking endless back-to-back Zoom calls) with us into the Hybrid Revolution, Microsoft is shifting away from reactive and into proactive processes. Colette also shares some professional and personal rituals from that past year that made quarantine a bit brighter. Listen in to hear insights from one of the leading vanguards in the future of work.
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Quotes:
1:48 – "We no longer believe that work is a place, right? It’s more of a state of mind and that we want to help be successful in this new normal from anywhere.”
3:05 – "In Hybrid, which we’re moving into now, there isn’t a standard. Everything becomes more complex in flexible work. And that’s really the new leadership challenge for every leader and every organization. It’s going to be figuring that out and figuring out how to empower people in this new, new normal.”
12:43 – "We have a three-part framework around people, places, and processes...And it obviously starts with people. Getting that people piece right is critical."
23:38 – "The key to flexibility is lots of little things that can have a big impact.”
24:21 – “Taking just a small break—even 5 to 10 minutes between meetings—has a dramatic impact. It resets your brain, it lowers your stress levels, and it increases your cognitive function. And so we just last month came out with a new default setting in Outlook, so people could set that automatically in their organization."
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
WorkLab: Vital facts about the future of work. (microsoft.com)
Erica’s website
Order Erica’s book, Rituals Roadmap
Order Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
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How do you develop great talent in turbulent times? What about for a future of work which has never yet existed? By being a people-first leader. This week on Left to Our Own Devices, Erica sits down with Susan Justus, VP of Talent Development at Betterment, a digital automated investment platform. Susan has spent many years in the talent development space and understands that building relationships with people “beyond the task” (part of The Betterment Way) is key. To develop employees with clarity, confidence, and purpose, leaders must be able to connect on a deeper level and reinforce psychological safety, EQ, transparency, and values. The work itself must also be meaningful for people to truly connect to an organization and thrive. And at Betterment, they really listen to their people. Which is why this summer, they’re running testing grounds on their hybrid model to work out any kinks, find balance, and help everyone prepare for the full hybrid model which will kick off in the fall. Listen in for more on this Hybrid model that every leader should be paying attention to.
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Quotes:
3:30 – “I’ve really tried to deepened the connection that I have by getting to the core of who they are as individuals, not just about the work…we’re moving so quickly in regards to our priorities, our OKRs, and the things we’re focused on for the year and for the quarter, etc. that sometimes we forget who our people are. So this past year, one of the ways I’ve shifted is really getting to know my team first in terms of, what’s important to them at this moment? How can I support them? Because the better they are, in terms of how they’re doing, the best work they can bring into the organization and what they bring to the team.”
10:53 – “We do have folks internal within the people team that are going to start these hybrid team sessions in the summer just to get people comfortable with what it looks like to be in the office and those who may be virtual or not based in New York. Just to get them comfortable with the idea of, what does it look like to have a hybrid team in place? What best practices do we need to put in place because obviously we have to start all over again in really figuring out, how do we find the balance and make our team most effective in this new way of working? So there will be a bunch of testing grounds around this summer just to get people to a good place by the fall when we fully reopen.”
12:15 – “How can you lead your team in the most inclusive manner? How can you make them feel safe? Because at the end of the day, that builds trust. Trust is a really important behavior to demonstrate for your teams so they feel like they belong within your team, within the organization.”
13:08 – “How can you give your team members the work that really makes them thrive and they’re excited about. That they feel like they’re connected to the organization—even if they’re virtual. Being really transparent about, ‘You’re doing this project because this is the ultimate goal that we’re looking to solve for, and this is the part you play in that ultimate goal.”
15:29 – “We’ve found that defining the behavior and what it looks like in action is so critical to anything we do around development at Betterment. Because if people don’t understand what does that behavior even look like in action, why would they be interested in participating in the training, if the expectation isn’t aligned to the actual training and purpose of their role? So we’re trying to be more and more intentional about communicating that across the board with everything that we offer around education.”
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
Betterment website
Erica’s website
Order Erica’s book, Rituals Roadmap
Order Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
Text ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.
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As we start thinking about the epic “Return to the Office,” many are thinking about space and how it can be used more intentionally for collaboration, creativity, and productivity. Peter Knutson, chief strategy officer at architecture firm A+I and Bastien Baumann, chief design officer at Publicis Groupe join Erica on the podcast this week to discuss this very topic.
A+I and Publicis Groupe partnered together to form Le Truc, “a New York City-based center of creative excellence for clients, converging 600+ creatives, producers, and creative strategists from Publicis Groupe New York agencies into one dynamic, collaborative space.” So for these two creatives, space and how to use it to maximize creative flow is top of mind. As we’ve seen in the last year, employees have proven they can be just as productive at home as they were at the office, which leads to the question, why come back at all?
Bastien asserts leaders must give their people a real tangible reason to come back. Peter maintains that people are why we will want to return to the office—people are the pull. Listen in for a thoughtful conversation around people and space and why we gather.
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Quotes:
Peter 9:58 – “The idea that comes to you in the shower happens because creativity is hard and amorphous, right? It’s not something you can grab and force. It’s something that you have to sort of coax and cajole a little bit. You have to fight with it sometimes. You have to prepare and just wait sometimes. I think that for us, it was really meaningful to think about Le Truc as the challenge to be creative, especially to be creative on the timeline for others is a huge pressure. And this idea of, what is the space that allows you to wrestle with the uncertainty of the creative impulse? What is the version of the idea in the shower in the office? Is it more than a conference room and a desk? Is it something other? And I think that’s where we’re really pushing this is, what is the variety of physical environments that can change the way you’re experiencing the world in a way that gives you that moment or that inspiration that’s going to let the idea come out, let the idea become formed? And then how do you form it afterwards? Because nobody has the right idea; nobody imagines the perfect thing the first time it enters their brain. And that challenge is fun to tackle as a spatial one.”
Bastien 12:56 – “Thinking about creativity and how it works—it’s two basic steps: diverging steps and converging steps. So you need two steps. You need one where you’re going to be by yourself, feeding yourself about the problem, what’s the problem? And then you’re going to have to exchange that problem with others. So it’s really collaboration. And open space is amazing for that because you’re with everybody. But you need that time where you’re by yourself—you need to do the things, you need to craft the thing, you need to find the solution. This time you don’t need anybody, so that’s why you go to a library or you try to hide everywhere you can, in a coffee space or whatever. I think the spaces of today for creatives are good for collaboration but very bad for crafting by yourself.”
Peter 20:04 – “Even in just the beginning instances of this, Hybrid is a completely different thing than working all in person or working all remotely. And there’s an imbalance between the people who are on a call and the people who are physically in the room that is impossible to overcome. There is language that your body says that is impossible to replicate on a Zoom call.”
Bastien 23:25 – “I think you need to give people a reason, a very tangible reason of why should I go back to work? Because I’ve proven to you that I’m as productive as I used to be when I stay at home.”
Peter 25:35 – “I think there’s so much to be said for, ‘We are the reason to go back to the office’ right? We are the pull. People are the pull. And the relationships you form and nurture and exhaust and trust and depend on.”
Peter 26:16 – “I’ve yet to feel, at the end of the day, exhilarated by eight solid hours of Zoom meetings. And I think it’s because the joy of being social doesn’t quite transcend to this environment.”
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
A+I website
Publicis Groupe website
Publicis Groupe launches Le Truc
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Order Erica’s book, Rituals Roadmap
Order Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
Text ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.
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When Covid hit, several industries were hit hard, but some thrived immensely. One such industry that’s seen a huge uptick in business this past year has been the pet industry, as 11 million households got a new pet in 2020. Wow! That’s a lot of new family members. But Banfield Pet Hospital is here to help new pet owners manage all that animal energy.
On this week’s episode, Erica sits down with Banfield Pet Hospital president, Brian Garish, to talk all things cats, dogs, and leadership in the (hopefully pet-friendly) Hybrid Revolution. With over 1000 hospitals and over 19,000 associates servicing all these new furry friends, how does Brian lead through it all? By talking to his people. Brian leads with empathy and knows that the key to an empowered, passionate workforce is one that feels heard and sees vulnerability modeled at the top. This conversation imagines an optimistic future of work, where we can continue giving our pets the “best year of their lives” indefinitely, through flexible work options.
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Quotes:
4:23 – “When you think about being a leader in a company, and being part of the conversation of, ‘what’s the hybrid work force going to look like? what are the hybrid working conditions going to look like?’ It can’t be made with just an executive team, it has got to have your people’s voice involved in the conversation.”
10:16 – “Culture is my top priority and has been my top priority. The strategic direction of the company is a second priority because strategy without empathy is a wasted idea.”
10:41 – “More so now than ever, people want to be seen, they want to be heard, and they want to be understood. And we have that opportunity to do that even better.”
12:30 – “The theme of our session for the year for 2020 was ‘b empowered, b passionate, and b here.’ We wanted our associates to be empowered to truly own the hospital experience and own what they needed to do to take care of each other and take care of pets and clients. The passion is about really connecting to our purpose, which is making a better world for pets. And being here is out Banfield shows up for society. Well we were thankful that that was the theme because that really anchored us in 2020 once the pandemic really started to come in.”
17:35 – “We can’t be our best selves if we don’t take care of ourselves. Our hospitals and all of our associates need our leaders to be present and to be fully available. And you’re not going to be if you’re burned out.”
Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signups
Banfield website
Erica’s website
Order Erica’s book, Rituals Roadmap
Order Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work
Text ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.
Connect with Brian:LinkedIn
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Connect with Banfield:LinkedIn
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Connect with Erica:Instagram
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