What if the reason work feels broken isn’t you—but the system you’re working in?

Employee engagement is declining, burnout is rising, and AI is reshaping the workplace faster than most leaders can process. In this powerful conversation with industrial-organizational psychologist Jennifer Posa, you’ll explore what’s really missing at work—and why culture matters more than perks when it comes to wellbeing.

1. Discover why wellbeing must be personal and organizational to truly work
2. Learn how leaders can build trust, improve engagement, and create high-performing teams
3. Understand why culture—not apps, perks, or policies—is the real driver of sustainable performance

Press play to learn how redefining wellbeing at work can help you—and your team—thrive from the inside out.

Connect with Jennifer: https://www.drjenniferposa.com

You can also find her on LinkedIn and Substack.

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Join me on Substack https://substack.com/@milkshakeswithmichael for more ways to stay resilient and navigate today’s uncertainty with more grace.

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With Whole Again: A Fresh Approach to Mindfulness and Resilience through Kintsugi Wisdom, listeners explore mindfulness and resilience through personal stories of trauma, scars, and injury while learning to overcome PTSD, imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and perfectionism with self-compassion, self-love, and self-worth. Through insightful discussions on building resilience, fitness, and stress management, as well as mindfulness practices and digital wellness, the show offers practical tools such as breathwork, micro-dose meditation, grounding techniques, visualization, and daily affirmations for anxiety relief and stress reduction. Inspired by the art of kintsugi, the podcast embodies healing as a transformative process, encouraging a shift in perspective from worry and overwhelm to gratitude and personal growth. By exploring the mind-body connection, micro-dosing strategies for emotional well-being, and

 Hey there, it's Michael. Welcome to Whole again, the show that can help you navigate today's uncertainty with more mindfulness, resilience, and grace. And today I'd like to share a conversation with you to help you feel whole again at work, which is essential considering how much time we spend at work.

And if you've been paying attention, work isn't really working well enough for everyone. And Gallup's recent survey definitely paints that picture. So many of us are not engaged in our work. Our managers don't seem to get the stress that we're under. We have AI coming, we're uncertain about its impact, although everybody and their brother is trying to predict what will happen.

But the reality folks is that no one really knows. Is something that we have to navigate through. A couple weeks ago I sat down with another exceptional human in Jersey. We like to say I know a guy for that, but in this case I know a gal and she's fantastic. Her name is Jennifer Za, and she really knows how to help people thrive from the inside out.

She knows how to help people feel whole again and have greater wellbeing at work. Like all of us, we have many factors that build or create our identity and she'll share many of them during our conversation. Professionally, she's an industrial organizational psychologist, which is a mouthful. She's a global leader in mental health and wellbeing, and she's led strategy for top companies that you are familiar with all around how to have better workplace wellbeing.

She's worked at the Mayo Clinic, Johnson and Johnson, and the CIA. No, not that CIA, not the Culinary Institute of America, the actual CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency. She was their first Chief wellbeing officer. Very cool. In our conversation, we don't just talk about work, we talk about most importantly, wellbeing, what it means to be human.

Jennifer brings both science and data and soul to the conversation, and we define what wellbeing looks like. On our own terms, which is key. You'll pick up on that during our conversation. And we also talk about why high performing cultures, and I will add high performing leaders must prioritize the inner lives of their people in order to be more productive or at least tap into the company or the team's full potential.

And those leaders I talked about, we need to prioritize our own wellbeing as well. As they say, every time you get on an airplane, put your own oxygen mask on first before assisting others. We also talk about bagels. Did I mention she's from Jersey? Hitting the slopes and why wellbeing requires you to come up with your own recipe.

So if you're ready, take a deep breath in. Nice. Slow releasing breath out and get to know Jennifer Pza.

Jennifer, so good to see you. Welcome to whole again.

Thank you so much, Michael. Great to be here.

I can't wait. It's always good to talk to another person from Jersey, you know, because the state gets a bad rap. It's actually a really well kept secret. Mm-hmm. It's pretty cool to live here, don't you think?

Yeah. I'm actually gonna continue to say that it's not a great place to be so that we can just enjoy it ourselves.

It totally sucks. Yeah. Yeah. Do not come here.

Mm-hmm.

Move.

No.

Everyone listening. Move to North Dakota. It's better there. Leave us. Leave us be There's

more space.

There's more space. Although we do have better bagels.

So one of the things I wanna start off asking you, because here on whole, again, we believe nature is medicine.

Nature helps us feel grounded and safe and whole again. And I know we're gonna get into a nice conversation about wellbeing. So when you think of being in nature, a place that helps you feel grounded where would that be for you?

Uh, two places for me, Michael. One is in the mountains and one is at the beach. Oh, wow. Alright. So I'm a, I'm a big skier. Uh, I grew up skiing, but and, uh, I really enjoy it. I think the best thing about snow and cold weather is that you can ski. So being in the mountains and being on a, flying down a ski mountain and having no cell phones, and quite frankly it being you're with yourself, you're with nature, you're with the snow, and you are challenged usually.

Either with moguls or steep terrain or something like that. That's me and my best in terms of nature. And then the other is a little bit more soothing, which is at the beach. The ocean is, you know, water is therapy for me. And so, you know, during summer months and warm weather, it's, you know, sitting and closing my eyes and listening to the ripples of the waves.

Mostly on the Jersey shore.

Yes. I love that. The Jersey shore, which everyone listening is really a bad place to be. Yeah. So do not come.

It's a terrible place to be. Don't go,

go to the beaches in California. Better go there. So in terms of skiing, yeah. Do you have a favorite mountain to ski on?

I do. Uh, all right.

Where's that love? Yeah. Um, Mount Rose. It's 808,000 feet and it's the highest elevation of all of the mountains in the Tahoe region. So when there is snow, that's only reaching a certain elevation. Rose is the place that has the snow, but we're not gonna tell anybody that, Michael, because then people will go there and they'll go there

and it'll ruin your skiing vibe.

It won't ruin it. So, you know, my goal in life is to find all of the great places in nature that we can go and then make sure no one knows about them.

Don't tell anyone about it. Just go, go to the cities people. So,

yeah,

I know we're gonna talk about what we'll dive deep in your work and how you help people with wellbeing.

So we're gonna put your work and those titles off to the side. How would you describe who you are through that lens of not work and not your titles?

No work, no title. I'm a mom, I'm a daughter, I'm a sister, I'm an aunt. I'm a friend. And I am a person who cares deeply around uh, for the people around me and is very passionate and committed to health and wellbeing and helping people thrive, including the people close to me, and then anybody who I have the ability to, you know, engage with in my life.

So

it's great. It's, it's a great gift that you are providing to others by showing, showing up in that way. I love your answer. Now we'll switch to work. You've had the privilege of being the chief wellbeing officer at a company that most people have heard of, J&J as well as the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, not the Culinary Institute of America, if I have that right.

So can you fill us in a bit on, I guess we should ground ourselves, because you mentioned wellbeing. What is it? It's a word that gets thrown out there a lot in the self-help and self-care. It's one of those buzz words and it probably can have, many definitions. But how would you define wellbeing?

Sure. And I think I'll clarify too. My most recent role was with the CIA chief as the Chief Wellbeing Officer at Johnson and Johnson. I was the global head for mental health and wellbeing. So didn't hold that C-suite position, but was defining and executing that strategy for 140,000 employees in 77 countries, which was a huge honor.

Um, the job was just as big.

Yes, it just as big

it and just as complex. They're two big jobs. They just have different titles. Well, we'll get

to like, like maybe a little similarity and comparison, a little Venn diagram action there, but thanks for that clarification.

Right. I just don't want anybody reaching out and saying, oh yeah, hey, where's the CWJJ now?

Yes, absolutely.

Good clarification. Thanks for that.

I think from the wellbeing perspective, this is probably the, the biggest question I get oftentimes, well, what's the difference between wellness and wellbeing? Wellbeing is holistic in nature, and you may have seen, uh, you know, news reports on this from Gallup or other organizations that talk about it, wellbeing, but really the beauty of wellbeing is its holistic nature and having many different dimensions.

And for an individual, for example, for myself, I take a look and think about my own wellbeing in many of those dimensions. If you were to Google wellbeing and ask for what are the dimensions of wellbeing, you'll actually get a lot of different answers. Some people say there's four, some people say there's eight.

Some people say there's 12 dimensions. So it's not that there's, uh, um, a definition that is prescriptive, and that's actually very important for me because you, Michael, have. Likely different dimensions for your wellbeing than I might for my own. But the work that I've done for 30 years has been helping organizations identify which dimensions are important to them so that they can actually support their employees in those dimensions.

So I'll explain that a little bit further. So for me, I am constantly looking at my own internal wellbeing and where I sit, and I do that because I know it impacts how fulfilled I am in my life every day. For example, if my physical wellbeing is really strong and I'm doing a lot of great things, like I'm riding bikes and skiing down mountains and you know, walking, three miles a day or getting my 10,000 steps in, but I'm not speaking and socializing with people that I care for.

My family and my close friends, my physical wellbeing will be really high for that day. Or weak, but my social wellbeing and my emotional wellbeing will likely be quite low. So when we talk about wellbeing, think about it as a wheel. And the dimensions of the wheel are the elements of wellbeing that you personally get to define yourself.

And what I think has been fascinating for me is over the years as I talk to individuals and organizations around wellbeing, they each want to define what that is, not only for the organization in terms of the responsibility that they might have to their employees, but more importantly, employees don't wanna be told what their wellbeing definition should be.

You know, if I told you, Michael, this is what wellbeing looks like for you, Michael. You'd probably say, how the heck do you know that? Like, you don't know who I am. You don't know. I grew up in this place. You don't know that this is what you know is important to me. For me, family is very important.

My career is very important from that intellectual side of things and professional occupational dimension. But this emotional and mental wellbeing component as I've gotten older, has become even more important. In fact, I realize that, hey, if I don't make sure I'm focusing on that area than the other areas really start to start showing some signs of risk and how I'm ignoring it.

So back to your whole question, wellbeing is multifaceted. It's individual. And it's incredibly important 'cause it impacts how fulfilled, productive and empowered we really feel in our lives each and every day.

I so appreciate your response really around the individualistic approach to wellbeing.

'cause we don't really hear that enough, I would say on the internet through the social channels. You can take a guru, you can take an expert or an influencer, and it seems very prescriptive. This is what you need to do to have wellness or wellbeing or good mental health. You name it, fill in the blank.

Basically do it the way I did it. And I, I think we can, I think we can honestly say that we've had now years of promoting self-care. Wellness and wellbeing in that fashion of do it the way I do it. Don't do that, do this. Trust me, I have the answers. And I don't know how well it's actually gaining traction because I think we still struggle with this, but I, I love your take because I think it has the potential of breaking through all the noise and the clutter to say wellbeing.

You, you can define it, and we're gonna meet you where you're, and we're gonna help you define what your recipe is for wellbeing. And it's sort of like a, a good, uh, tollhouse, chocolate chip cookie. You know, there's the recipe on the back of the bag that we all know, but, our cookies are a little bit different.

We, we might play with a recipe a little bit and we make the cookie, the tollhouse cookie, or we make wellness our own recipe. And when we do that. I think we have a greater likelihood of it gaining traction.

I agree. I think it's really important though that some of the experts are providing very good advice.

Sure. And guidance, but choice is really important. And I think that is speaks to human beings wanting to have autonomy and decision making and control. So you're absolutely correct that when you give evidence-based choices, again, I put my, practitioner hat on to say, I don't want Michael to take the ingredients that he thinks are healthy in the cookie because he wasn't educated enough to know that the other ingredients might, that substitute might be better.

So I guess it's don't throw the baby out with the bath water, but we should really be acknowledging. Individuals need to have that choice and need to identify what works for them. And I'll tell you, and I think you probably could relate to this, based on both of us not being in our teens anymore, in our early twenties, maybe even our thirties, if I can absolutely, you

can peg me like around 28, 29.

Same for you. Okay. Yes.

With that, think about what you needed, wanted or were open to when you were in your early twenties verse when you were in your early thirties, maybe raising kids verse in your late thirties verse. In your fifties. I mean, I can tell you right now that my priorities have dramatically changed.

My interest in receptivity for certain things has also changed. I've gotten hopefully older and wiser. But I think my needs have changed. I focus so much of my exercise routine now on functionality and not getting injured because if I trained the same way I did when I was 22, I would be injured right now.

And then from a mental capacity perspective and emotional capacities perspective, when I was 22, I had no children. I had, I didn't have a partner, I didn't have these people in my life that I was, if you will, a hundred percent responsible for taking care of. Then I always use the example with organizations that if you share with an employee when they come and they onboard with your company about elder care resources, most 23 year olds don't have elder care needs.

So by the time they do have elder care needs, they're like completely forgot what their company offered and they might even be less prepared. So, looking at life stages can also be really helpful for the experts who and organizations who are trying to equip. So why don't, I'm gonna go back to your cookie, um, analogy, which is an excellent one.

Don't have the pantry only having two or three items for ingredients. Make sure that it's for different taste buds and for different, areas of interest or maybe somebody's. Wants to manage their weight. So they're gonna look for something that's lower calorie as an ingredient. Maybe somebody wants to up their protein level, so they're gonna look for something in the cabinet that has a more grams of protein.

So it's a great analogy when you think about wellbeing and you think about it as an individual, but you also think about it from the organizational perspective.

Also a divide between. How managers or leaders saw their team members and what team members were actually experiencing as far as their overall level of engagement, their overall health, if you will, wellbeing. You have been able to lead at a very high level again at j and j and then subsequently at the CIA two high performing organizations that I think a lot of people from the outside would see them as go, go, go, let's make things happen.

And I would love for you to share what you can in terms of what you learned about wellbeing as it relates to high performance cultures and , high performance people.

Yeah, i, it was interesting. If you don't mind, I'll share a little bit about my career and my experience.

Yeah, please do. Experience. So, started out of school, actually not in this field at all and really wanted to explore the area. My first, major organization that I had really worked within was Mayo Clinic. I was there for 17 years, and then, like you said, j and j and then the agency throughout that 30 years, I will tell you, Michael, that there's not a person that doesn't want to be more productive and perform at higher levels because at their job that, that's why we work.

We work so that we can support our living, right? That's usually how it goes. And there's this reciprocity principle, but what I think is really important, and what I think you're hitting on is as we've continued to. Speed up our work and increase workloads and increase, and the demand has increased and our capacity and drive to have a competitive advantage has increased at an organizational level and an individual level.

We've found that, you know, the demand can exceed the capacity. It's why we hear a lot about burnout and we hear a lot about the engagement rates from organizations like Gallup. I think we're at a really great inflection point right now. And again, this is my perspective from 30 years in the field, that we've got a bit of a perfect storm happening right now where we've got new generations of.

Workers coming in. I have a 23-year-old that is a year into her, corporate job that she's really enjoying, but feeling that tempo, feeling, that pace the conversations she's having with me sound very different than the conversations I had with my parents. The conversations I had with my parents were, what's the path I should go down to make sure I'm successful?

Get this job, do this management training program, you know, then you're gonna do this. And this is an expectation. The conversation I have with my daughters are, well, mom, I don't know if I wanna really be burned out my entire career. I don't know if I wanna work 14 hour days and have a three hour commute.

I'm not sure if I wanna work for a leader that doesn't support my wellbeing. I really like therapy, and therapy to me is like having a coach in my pocket. By the way, my daughter said that you know, she said, I don't know why, and everybody doesn't have a therapist because it's like having a life coach in your pocket.

Like, why would you wanna make these decisions all by yourself? And I chuckled because there is a cost to therapy. You know, if you have great benefits, a lot of those sessions are covered. But if you don't have those benefits, they're not. But that's, again, that was a 17-year-old chatting with me about what I thought was super powerful, which is this generation doesn't mind talking about their mental health.

In fact, it's an expectation. So the expectations are changing of the new workforce and the generations. I think if you ask leaders, they'll say. Huh? These folks are a little different than I was. So we're feeling that shift, and that's because I do believe individuals are focusing more on their wellbeing because they've been educated on why that's important.

So when you become educated, you start to challenge the status quo. And the status quo for decades has not been looking at wellbeing data for employees. There are leading companies that have been doing this for decades, like Johnson and Johnson, but it's not the standard. When you ask a leader what's on their performance scorecard.

It's rare that I find one, unless they're talking to me and asking me, or one of my, again, esteemed colleagues that I've worked with throughout my career about what should be on our performance scorecard. It's very rare that a leader or a C-Suite is talking about this unless they've stopped, paused and said, let me look at that Gallup data.

So I will say the Gallup data is fantastic because it's raising awareness and it's raising the importance of this conversation. And without that type of data, even though you and I might say, darn it, why are these numbers so disturbing? You need sometimes that catalyst to actually ignite the conversation.

So I would say that the Gallup data is something that many people are aware of. I think it's an important index for us to continue to be looking at. But I do think the hard work is still yet to come. But there's an inflection point that's happening in from my perspective right now, and what that is, is we've got AI coming in to our worlds every day, whether you're an individual contributor or you're in the organization and AI is the new technology.

Do you remember when the internet came out and we were all like, what's that? I was in grad school and I remember learning, and I was like, what is the internet? I mean, I remember asking the question. So ai, I mean, there's a lot of people still saying, what is ai? And then more importantly, how is it gonna impact me?

And that conversation is just starting and that is disrupting what we know is going to happen in the future because there is going to be change to work design and what people do. That level of change is very disruptive and it's going to be transformational. We all know that. But you know as well as I do, Michael, especially with your background, it's the how we manage that transformational change that impacts the lives of the individuals.

And I think that's the conversation that's having, that's going on right now in C-suites. So the factor of AI disruption, the second factor that comes along with that is human resources disruption, which is because a lot of our human resources function is transactional, AI is directly impacting those conversations in many ways as it should.

There's also that component of human person management, human person relationship, and what I call strategic relationship management. And that brings me to my next point, which is there's something in the world of psychology, I'm an industrial organizational psychologist, and there's something called a psychological contract.

And that psychological contract begins when an employee joins an organization from the minute they talk to the first recruiter or they learn about the company. We're starting already mentally to build what our expectations is all are for that company to give to us as an employee. And that could be a paycheck, it could be benefits, it could be leadership, support and training.

But it also is the reverse, which is the company's saying, Michael, I wanna hire you and I'm gonna give you these things. So it's this psychological contract. That goes on top of all of those kind of hard, materialistic things that we get, which then makes me say, oh, this is the relationship I'm gonna have with Michael, my employer.

Now when you go and step foot into that job, that re that contract can change over time. And the disruption we're seeing from AI is actually directly changing that contract because trust is involved, communication and transparency is involved. And my immediate understanding of what my employer's gonna do for me versus what I'm gonna do for them is kind of being in question, right?

So there's a huge opportunity from an HR perspective to seize the moment of AI coming in and redefine and actually enhance that psychological contract. But if we're not thinking about that, we could potentially lose our shirts. We could really be going in the wrong direction. And even adding to those numbers that we don't like in Gallup, let's flip it and take it as an opportunity.

And so that's where I feel that there's a tremendous opportunity for organizations. And really where that is where the rubber meets the road on that is at the C-suite and at the leadership level, because leaders make decisions every day and every decision impacts the wellbeing of the workforce.

That's it. Everyone, which might put a lot of weight on leader's shoulders. But what it's meant to do is to say, don't dismiss how that decision could impact the people doing the work to achieve your mission. And when you think about it holistically. It really is an incredible time for all of us to be talking about the new performance scorecard that really we should be putting in place with ai.

Let AI drive that. And that's where I get excited because I actually think it's very exciting time.

There's so much to unpack in your response, so thank you for that. And the first thing I, I'm actually amazed we can both have children in our twenties and 30 years of work experience.

And yet we're, again, as we mentioned earlier, just 28 and 29. I don't know how that happened, how we happen to be the youngest Gen Xers out there, but I'd say Jen, good on you for doing all that you've done. I too, I have , a 25. Daughter and a a 28-year-old daughter. And one of the things my youngest daughter will say to me is she gets a little bent outta shape when folks who are a bit older, say, I, we can't wait for the younger generation, like younger gener.

There's so much hope in the younger generation. It's the, graduation speech at every college.

Yeah,

we believe and we're hopeful and optimistic. And she said, yeah, I, she goes, I, I get that. But in some ways, when you old folks say that in takes you off the hook for solving the issues of today, you put it all on us and you're still doing the work.

When we think about who basically sits in the C-suite, , generationally. They might be some younger boomers. They are Gen Xers, they might be some older millennials. You know, certainly the whole onboarding and that psychological relationship. We struggled, I think in some circles through the pandemic of making that connection because a lot of people had to onboard virtually and mm-hmm.

You know, not in person. So when you think about the data is clear, from Gallup, but as far as the gap that we have, so we have that awareness. If you are going to speak, , directly as you do to leaders, maybe in the middle, maybe the C-suite on a couple different things that they can do, like right now.

Progress in this area. What would you reckon men to them to do? Because certainly there's still the pressure of like, we got so much stuff to do, like we gotta get stuff done. And I don't necessarily see a lot of companies making space for wellbeing. They're like, yeah, that's a nice thing. We give them an app.

We have this beautiful slide that we present to our executives on all the different employee resources that we offer. Mm-hmm. But we don't necessarily make it a day in and day out intention setting type of action. So I would just be curious if you were speaking to leaders as you do, what are a couple of different things that they can do right away to help?

Yeah, so it's an excellent question and I would tell you first that you, the way you asked the question was actually part of the answer. So oftentimes people think a wellbeing program is offering an app or offering these services, et cetera, like a collection of services, resources, and benefits.

And that's actually not. Where I focus my energy. It's very important because you need resources and services in order to get someone the help and support that they need. So that's, if you will, foundational to making sure, for example, if somebody needs mental healthcare, you need to make sure that you have a network in place, easy way for them to resource and find the support that they need.

So it's access, quality, and then that are gonna drive the outcomes that you need. But if we push that aside and say, that's a transactional, let me purchase that entity, right? I will tell you there's, in that space, there are folks doing incredible work that we didn't have being done 10 years ago, five years ago even.

So with, we can go there later, but if we think about this in addition to a service benefit and resource, and we think about it culturally. You asked the question, what can leaders do? Leaders need to be educated on the importance of strategically prioritizing wellbeing just like they do other facets of their business.

So if you're creating a product and you want the product to be first to market and the market leader, how do you build a strategy? In order to make that happen? You need to actually be prioritizing wellbeing in the same way to actually expect it to have the same results. It's not a check the box, it's a strategic intention that weaves throughout all of your business strategies.

I learned this very early in my career when I would sit at the table at Mayo Clinic with my leaders and we would talk about an innovation that we might wanna bring out, um, to the market and. The standalone question that was asked at the end of those conversations. Every conversation by the way, was how would this innovation impact patients?

And if the answer, if there was any harm done to the patient, we weren't gonna do it. It didn't matter how much money it would make us to bring back into education research, that was the line, right? That was absolutely a requirement. In many ways, I see wellbeing strategy for leaders and organizations in the same way.

We shouldn't be making decisions that are gonna compromise the wellbeing of the employees that do the work for the organization. And if leaders have that front and center with every decision that they're making and they consider it, there's oftentimes a way to tweak the decision so that the decision is coupled with something else.

I'll give you a great example. When an organization is going through a transformational change where they might be. Bringing on a new company or maybe they're separating the company, there's a massive amount of effort that goes into that process. But if you are preparing someone and groups of employees in a way that enables them to say, here's what you can expect.

Here are the changes that are likely to come. This is who you're gonna hear it from. This is how much time you're going to have to prepare for that. Here are the resources and experts that are gonna be there prepared, and then this is how we're gonna set you up for success. That's a human-centered approach verse somebody saying, Hey Michael, guess what?

You're in this company today and you're gonna be in this company that we just decided to spin off tomorrow. So good companies prepare for the transition. A lot of this is change management 1 0 1, but oftentimes change management 1 0 1 is the same as thinking about wellbeing of employees. So it's a frame of how we think about it.

So back to your question, what can leaders do? The first thing leaders can do is think about the decision and think about the people. It's gonna impact, not just the immediate person, but the domino. And even if they only, if they don't give it any time of day right now to think about it that way, and they only think about it operationally for efficiencies or productivity.

If they did that for five minutes with the decision making team around the table and said, hold on a second. Jennifer gave me a fun assignment this month. Every decision I make, I'm gonna have to think five minutes about this. I guarantee that many of those decisions would be supplemented with additional communications or additional resources, or maybe even a different decision or the timing of the decision might change.

So that's, it's the how. It's in the how that you do it. That's the first thing. The second thing is I think leaders need to be supported. It's really hard to be a leader right now, and your daughter's response to that question of, oh my gosh, it feels like you're expecting me to solve the world's questions.

I'm not ready. Like, why? Why do you wanna just throw me your problem? That's sometimes what leaders are feeling right now. I had tremendous leaders that I've worked with throughout my career, and every time I sat down and asked them, how can I help you be a better leader? They oftentimes said, please give me the guidance on how I can get this employee more support quicker.

So it, it's not that leaders don't want to be a good leader. Nobody wants to be a bad leader. They just aren't necessarily set up for success if they don't have the space and the support to know how to have the difficult conversation, how to know how to most quickly get to the resources. Think about in an organization, when you change your technology platform, guess what happens?

You have to learn it. You gotta figure out where everything is. You've gotta make sure, and what we find in a lot of organizations is that the navigation support for the leader and the employee is actually where the, where it breaks down. So I examined, at one point in my career, I actually examined how long or how many decisions it took for an employee to get mental healthcare if they had a problem.

Based on the systems in place, how many decisions did they have to make before they got to a therapist? Guess how many that was in one system? I looked at

13,

14. You're really good. 14. Imagine if you're having a mental health issue and you have to make 14 decisions.

There's so many things that we can help leaders with by enabling them to a, put it on their performance scorecard. So being successful doesn't mean just achieving mission or getting that product out the door or hitting that sales number. It actually means doing those things and not, and having high wellbeing on your team at the end.

And the team all wants to work with you on the next project. So that's what we should be looking at. Then if the numbers are low. Ask those employees on the team, what would you have needed more so that you did feel like you wanted to get back on Michael's team again? And that's where your answers are.

So that leads me to my third answer to your question. What can leaders do right now if they don't have a CWO? Who's in charge of figuring all this out, by the way, a chief wellbeing officer, they can listen. They can start asking questions. And the easiest question to ask is, how can I support you more to do your job better?

And if you get answers from your direct report and you take action, or you let them know that you heard what they said and you're going to do X, Y, and Z to look into it, you are building trust. And then the fifth conversation that you say, how can I support you more? They're actually gonna tell you what they really need, but it takes time.

You have to build trust and you have to ensure that you're listening and then reaching into all of those solutions that your organization has for you. And if it they don't have the solution, raise it to the C-suite to say, this is preventing me from having the highest performing team I can have. So they're real conversations that happen.

And I've done this as a CWO, I've done this as, you know, the leader at j and j where we pull back that onion and we understand what are the real, real barriers to peak performance. And what we find is they're not only in the area of health and wellbeing, they're oftentimes in structural process. And the ways of working that we've created that maybe worked five, 10 years ago and they're no longer keeping pace with.

Where we are today so that we need to change them. And that's where transformational change happens. But gosh, when it happens and you do have the right performance scorecard, it's amazing how the culture changes. And all of a sudden it's not only the CWO doing the work or the leader doing the work who's asking these questions, it's actually the entire workforce.

Because people jump in and they're like, I know how to do this. I've wanted to do this for years because it's gonna help me be more successful. Can I help you with that? If you go and ask my old j and j colleagues, they all joke 'cause they're like, I was kind of on, you know, the Gen Posa team even though I wasn't the direct report on the Gen Posa team.

Right. So it, it is really such a. Energizing realistic approach. And it doesn't have to be big. You don't need a CWO, you just need to start the conversation.

There's such great power in being curious and being a good listener. , You'll learn so much from your team about what's working and what could be working better.

So I have a couple more questions for you as we round out our conversation. What we just talked about was really the leader and her orientation out to her team, but in your experience, how have you gotten leaders to pay attention to their own wellbeing? One only has to walk the hallways of corporations across America and see.

What America looks like, you know, in terms of our overall wellbeing, you mentioned it, leaders are stressed. There's uncertainty that they have to navigate, so that definitely taxes them from an emotional and mental health perspective. When you think of male leaders, generally speaking, we're not good at having social connection.

Because we usually have a lot of our social connection at work.

Mm-hmm.

Women in my experience tend to be a bit better at that physically. We do suffer from many ailments that come from, from a life in America, whether it's diets or how, how much or how little we move. So there's the orientation of how she can show up for her team.

But in your experience, how do we get leaders to say, I need to do this also? For myself, myself, you've flown a bunch in your career. Mm-hmm. I can imagine probably blowing out a Newark or whatever, and we hear the same statement over and over again. Uh, in case of an emergency, put your own oxygen mask on first.

Yeah.

How do we get people to care enough to put their own oxygen mask on first? First?

So from a leadership perspective I oftentimes share quite a bit of data. But I also, there's usually one or two leaders that are doing this well and they're performing at high levels because they are. So what I usually do is I usually try to identify who those individuals are and then start to learn, because again, every organization is different.

Michael, the culture is different, and you know how things get done is different, and how you succeed is different. Observation, in addition to listening, is very important. So I've oftentimes observed who are the most successful leaders, and then how are they successfully integrating and using them as role models because leaders follow leaders and leaders want to be successful and the most successful.

So the other thing is there's a vulnerability aspect of this. I was fortunate enough to work with a leader at one point that openly shared that he had made mistakes earlier in his career, and now that he knows more and knows better, knowing that taking care of himself is really what enables him to perform and sustain at such a high level.

So it's those real stories. When I was at j and j. And we were going through the pandemic. This was actually the, one of the most powerful things we did and my team did, is we held leadership conversations and we actually asked leaders to share examples of what helps them to support their own performance levels in the areas of, and many different dimensions of wellbeing.

And what you learn when you have these conversations is for some leaders, it's actually being able to spend more time with their family because they are on the road and they are working so many hours. But what we know is quality exceeds quantity. And when I had a leader talk a little bit about that and say, you know, and it doesn't, it doesn't dismiss the fact that it would be better if it was a 40 hour work week for this leader, but this leader said, honestly, I'm so committed to my work that I love my job.

I love it a lot more because now I make sure I get the quality time with my kids and with my spouse and you know, with the other people that I wanna be with. So it's successful careers are about trade-offs and also about expectations, and then making sure that you can prioritize yourself. So sometimes this is a bit of introspection for the leader to say what matters most.

And it's a question I ask a lot. What matters most to you, Michael? And if you come back to me and say, you know, what matters most to me? It's my two daughters and my wife. What if you come back to me and say. It's, you know, making sure that I can participate in this triathlon this year because it's something that I've been training for and wanting to do my whole life.

It's a bucket list item. Whatever you tell me, I'm gonna say, okay, how can we get there and prioritize that with your work responsibilities that you have? But where people think, they think that if time was a pie, like a, a pie that you bake in the oven and there was no piece left. People are trying to create space or a piece of the pie out of no space.

But it's sometimes the mindset of looking at the requirements for performance differently. I can tell you that when I prioritize my physical and mental wellbeing, in some weeks I'm graded it. Another weeks I'm. I not great at it, even though I've been doing this for 30 years. My difference in performance is significant.

So I oftentimes, A, give them a role model with another leader. B, I ask them to do a little self-reflection and figure out what is most important if they were truly being honest with me. And a lot of times they're saying, work's really important, but I've got this other thing in my life that is even more important right now and I need to find the space for it.

And then the third thing we do together is say, okay, let's reevaluate where you're placing your time and your energy. Because usually that's the conversation that ends up spurring. How can we maybe use that space a little bit differently? Leaders tend to, especially high performers, think that they have to be everywhere.

And delegation is a really important skill. I've learned it myself. And that delegation is critically important because what it does is empower the people under you to do great work, but it also enables them to see that you trust them as well. So there's practices that can be incorporated depending on how much space that person needs to start integrating wellbeing into their life.

And then when the magic happens is when the leader starts to do that they start to sh leave the office at six during football season because their teammate or their team members know that they have a senior in high school that plays football, that the leader doesn't wanna miss the game. That's a real story.

And that leader blocked out her calendar and said, by the way. I'm gonna be gone on these days because I don't wanna miss my son playing the football game. It's his senior year and it's the last year I had another leader that said, every day at 12 o'clock, you're gonna see me walking down the hallway in my suit, in my gym bag because I wanna show everybody that I incorporate this in my day.

Why did those two leaders do it? They did it because they knew that when they put it into their schedules, their performance level improved. Their sustainability improved, and everything improves. So it's finding the, the leaders who are doing it, showing them as the example, not me, because I might not be the leader that's been in that organization for the last 20 years, and then proving the results through their people 'cause their team can feel it, and then the team has the permission to go do the same thing and work together to do that.

Not everybody's gonna be out from whatever, whatever time that football, game was on, but somebody else might wanna take their child to daycare in the morning and all of a sudden you start saying, you know what, Michael, you're gonna take the late shift. I'm gonna take the early shift. So there's all sorts of way that we can rearrange our work so that we're more flexible, so that everybody can take that pie and find that piece that we can start feeding wellbeing into our daily habits and activities.

Thanks for that, Jen. I could talk to you all day long. . Thank you so much for coming on. Is there anything I should have asked you but didn't ask you?

I think the only thing I would add to our conversation that we didn't get a chance to talk about is the difference between individual and organizational.

Well. So we've talked a lot about individual and how we either as leaders or individuals approach our wellbeing and integrate it into our lives and our work so that we can perform at higher levels. But I do think organizational wellbeing is something that's very important to understand and that's how does the organization make decisions for the structure, the policies, the resources, the benefits, so that when an employee comes in, they, it's an easy choice to integrate wellbeing.

It's the norm and it's, it's what we do here and that's the culture we want to create so that it's not a question of whether or not it works. The, the research is there to support it. It's, we're setting up the infrastructure, if you will, of the organization. So that we can give your daughters and my daughters the future workers, the ability to thrive in work and in life.

And that's really what we need to be setting up because why would we set up a system or leave a system that is not sustainable, that only takes away from individuals ability to perform at work and in life? Doesn't make any sense.

Yeah. A pin in it and, uh, wrap up our conversation. For those listening, I'm gonna include all the different ways you can connect with Jennifer on all the different platforms out there.

So if you wanna discover more about her work and just how to bring greater wellbeing, your own personal lives, but also your organization, I would definitely recommend connecting with Jennifer. So Jennifer, thanks for coming on hold again. It's always good. Again, as I mentioned up front to speak with someone from Jersey who happens to be like me, the youngest Gen Xer out there.

,

That's right.

Thanks for coming on.

So nice to chat.

That was awesome. Sauce. Definitely let me know what came up for you, what you wish to incorporate into your life to help you enhance your wellbeing at work. For me, I took away from our conversation that wellbeing should be holistic and personal. Going back to those cookies, we all have our own recipe and we gotta figure that out for ourselves.

Yes, experts and gurus and leaders will tell us, you should do this or you should do that, but we really do need to be curious and figure out what our own recipe for wellbeing looks like. The second thing that came up for me was that culture matters more than perks. I actually live this through my pause, breathe, reflect app.

So many big companies said, I love your app, Michael, but we already have an app. But the thing is they weren't really teaching people how to use the app. It might look good on a PowerPoint in front of the executives, but if people don't find a way to incorporate all the different perks into a way of living, then change doesn't happen.

So culture, making culture so important, that matters much more than any perk, any flashy app or program you put on a PowerPoint. This topic of culture is why I came out with our new book that I co-authored with Dr. Sean Andrews. The five levels of male allyship 'cause allyship, we all need allies, allyship matters to culture, and we need everyone involved in making the culture work better for all of us.

And the third thing that came up as I was talking to Jennifer is that leaders need care too. We always seem to put ourselves on the back burner. That is, if we make it to the stove top at all, we often say, well, all that stuff that's for everyone else. I'm fine. I'm just gonna grind my way through it. I got this.

But truth be told, we're just pouring the stress inside of us, as I like to say, we're putting more rocks in our backpack, and eventually that backpack gets pretty heavy. So as leaders, we also need care. And when we invest in our own care and we make it overt that we're doing, so that is called role modeling.

And so now you give space to all your team members to do the same so everyone can have better wellbeing at work. And when we have better wellbeing at work, then work works better. Just ask. Any athlete out there. And in some ways we're all corporate athletes. I hope you enjoyed what Jennifer shared with you.

And in the show notes, I'll put all the different ways you can connect with Jennifer and make her part of your Peloton, as I like to say. And I wanna thank you for being part of my Peloton, being part of our community here. Thank you for showing up. If you haven't yet joined me over on Substack over there, I share more of my writing.

I do a teaching each week on how to weave our practice into your daily life, so it really becomes a way of living for you. And I also host a few live meditations each week, all in an effort to help enhance your wellbeing. So I hope you'll join us over there. And again, thank you for being here. I appreciate you

and if you wish to learn more about creating beautiful ripples and how to prevent a bad moment from turning into a bad day, please visit my website, Michael O'Brien schiff.com and sign up for my newsletter called The Ripple Effect, and join us each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday here at Whole Again, and discover how you can heal, grow, and become more resilient and celebrate our scars as golden symbols of strength and resilience.

Until then, remember, you can always come back to your breath. You've got this, and we've got you.