(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Growth Hacking Culture Podcast. I'm your host, Ivan Palomino. This podcast is about thought provoking ideas to scale up and growth hack performing and human centric work cultures. My guests are experts on mindset, skills and science behind work cultures. I hope you enjoy this episode. - I want to have a look about the role of leaders in creating a healthy work culture. Now, it's not, I think the leaders are blamed for a lot of things that happen in the workplace. But let's see if there is a reality. There is some research that shows that 88% of employees believe that senior leaders have a significant influence on company culture. But at the same time, another research shows that 60% of workers have considered living their jobs due to these same leaders who that we are expecting to drive a healthy work culture. And that makes me think, is there something that either the system is doing wrong or is there something that leaders can drastically address on themselves in order to have healthy work cultures? - My guest today is Benjamin Ritter. He's a doctor, he's the founder of Life for Yourself, Lead for Yourself Consulting. Focus on leadership development, talent management, development of careers. But what is interesting about his journey into this understanding of leadership and what makes people find their own ways to live in corporations has been kind of iterations. And I want to stay there for a little bit because I found it quite interesting that when I look at his profile, I find that it was at approximately 22 different positions that he has been running around, turning around. And it's almost like every time with the same purpose of finding what exactly is going to make him fail on his best position to find, know himself better. And Benjamin, I wanted to ask you, is that a good understanding of your journey? Or am I, I just try to understand this sequence of iterations, changing jobs, curiosity? I don't know, what was the drive for so many changes? - And thank you so much for the introduction having me here. I am very much an explorer. I think if I had to pick one trait that leads to success or even positive leadership or the growth of an organization, it would be curiosity. And it is a great summary of like how I perceive my career. I wanted to basically taste everything that the world had to offer. And also though, at the same time, explore who I was personally and to develop a sense of fearlessness and confidence in myself, outside of just the professional world. And I actually explored a lot about personal development prior to professional development. And so I did a lot of kind of try it out and see what happens without concern of what will happen in my personal life prior to my professional life. I'm happy to go through the different types of jobs I had in my professional career. But the idea of being fearless in my professional career didn't actually hit me until I realized that I was unbelievably unhappy, resentful, and very discouraged when it came to my professional life. I was like this very confident explorer in terms of my social life and different adventures that I could have outside of work. But for some reason, it didn't actually impact me that I didn't really, like a light bulb didn't go off that I could do that for my professional life until I was probably kind of like mid-career. - Is it like this curiosity is driven by you wanting to have more self-awareness about yourself? Because in reality, when we are fresh graduate from university, we don't really know what we want either. We enter into this box called corporate and we just want to fit in and do a job, take the box of say, I'm earning my money and I'm doing a job. But maybe, and I'm saying maybe because I don't know what is the right answer to that, is that people needs to go through these, the same iterations that you went in order to discover themselves. What is your take about this path to illumination or self-awareness? - You can't really get clarity on what you want to do without taking action and trying some things out. It's the number one mistake people tend to make is they sit and they reflect and they wonder and they maybe they go on a vacation because they think by doing those types of things they're gonna get an answer. You get ideas, but you never get an answer. An answer comes from actually tasting what something means to you, what you learn from it, what feelings come from that experience. The people in the industry, if you enjoy spending time with them, if you are not bored enough with the current content to explore what's next because generally what we choose to spend our time on isn't the thing we're going to spend our time on in the future. It could be in the same industry, it could have the same values, it could have the same foundation, but the thing you do is gonna change. For me personally, I dedicated my life to sports when I was younger. So I thought for some reason that being a professional athlete was my goal. I lived and breathed it. I fully encompassed this idea that soccer was my purpose. And so I only, from everything from what I ate to how I worked out, to the things I watched on TV, to the parties I said no to, to the friends that I made, and I dedicated my life to this thing, to my professional life, to the detriment of my personal health because I wasn't as successful as I wanted to be. So I had a terrible sense of self-confidence. I didn't develop and create positive friendships. I didn't create a balanced life overall. And so fast forward, 15 years of that, what might happen to someone's life and someone's mental health. And so when I lost that, I lost who I was, and I was left basically with this socially awkward, no self-confidence, no idea what he wanted to create in his life, human being. And I had the choice to either go figure out those answers, to dig myself, to climb out of the hole instead of keep digging. And that's what led me to that personal journey of, well, what does the world have to offer? And I put on this cap of curiosity, and I went and did just a variety of things. Honestly, what's so funny is that led to me choosing a variety of professional jobs, but it didn't really hit me in terms of, well, what do I want to, I didn't really have intention of what I wanted to do until later on in life where I ended up in a position that was terrible for me. 'Cause like, but before that, it was all about developing who I was and experiencing the world from, you know, being a costume character, being a liquor promoter, working in the bar industry, walking around the city of Chicago with a big advertisement and sign on my back, being a production assistant for music festivals, I was actually, it was so funny, there is a museum, I think it's in Wisconsin or Michigan, I forget, it was so long ago, that has like 16 different mannequins of my face because one of the jobs I had was being a live cast model that they'd pour plaster on me. And so if it was weird, if it was fun, if it was social, if it paid well, I said yes and I did it, and I went and sought these opportunities out, but not to figure out what I wanted to do professionally, but to figure out who I was personally. - I love that Benjamin, the sad reality is that a lot of people follow the traditional path of entering into the workplace, reaching 40 without knowing, or let's say that it is the moment where you start asking yourself, what is the person that I wanted to be? So instead of using the 15 years that you had in your career to go and try, test, sometimes fail, but at least have a pattern of continuous learning to understand exactly what you had mentioned, it's not about the career itself, about your personal path to development, your personal growth is because that's what ultimately will make you happy. And 40 is also the age where you have already, if you have made a traditional career, you may be a senior position. And that senior person that you have become is the image that is transmitted to other employees. And I use the person who is disappointed about life. Is that the image that you want to give to your employees? That's a big question. So that's why I find Benjamin, that your way of looking at life, even if it is as an explorer, it is a way that many should have decided, including me back in my corporate life. I find it inspiring Benjamin. - Well, thank you. - I want to also mention though, that I'm not just still an explorer. I found the thing that I love to do, but the way that I do it could change. So in that sense, there is a little sailor cap on, a pilot uniform on, I'm still flying around the world, figuring out what gets me the most excited. But now, so I work in the field of talent development, leadership and career coaching. I split my time between talent workshop, facilitation, leadership assessments and coaching overall. So I operate in this kind of box of, how do we help people feel more empowered and accountable around their careers? Funny that we're talking about jobs and being curious and that I'm kind of in this space. But I found a way to do it from a corporate side, as well as an entrepreneurial kind of a business side. I have multiple faucets that I can turn on and off, autonomy and freedom was something I really cared about. And so I made that a part of my career. But I didn't just figure this out. This is also a journey. So once I actually realized that I knew how to be an explorer, but I wasn't doing it for my actual true profession. I was doing it just for my life and my personal health. I woke up and started doing it for my professional life. And at that point, I was actually working in healthcare for seven years. I had multiple failed careers where, and I say failed, but it's because, like for example, in undergrad, I've mentioned the soccer piece, but then I was gonna become a dietician, but I spent two years studying the degree and the school canceled my major. Then I was gonna go into public health, and I got a job in the field, but then federal funding got cut, so they cut my position. And that happened three more times after that over the span of two and a half years. And so I thought I knew what I wanted to do. It was working in health. And then I networked into a position working in healthcare. First couple of years, it felt kind of right, but then I realized, I kind of woke up and did a little bit of an audit of my life 'cause I wasn't happy, and I wanted to explore a little bit more. And I realized that the field of talent development and leadership development, and this is for a variety of reasons, and integrating with coaching was where I wanted to go. And so then I started trying to become curious in that space and see what paths would lead me forward. So initially I went to my boss and tried to get involved in projects. That worked for a little bit, but then we got acquired and then ended up not working out. And then I started looking for job opportunities in that industry to get a taste of it. And one of the things that people tend to do wrong is they figure out what they want to do, and they want to go from zero to a hundred all at once. In your career, there's no rush. Go to zero to one, go to zero to point five, go to zero to point two five, which means get a taste of the field, start playing with it instead of fully committing to it. And that led me to going back to getting my doctorate in the space, doing some volunteer types of positions, eventually getting, you know, graduating, doing a bunch of research, getting published, finding my first job in the field. Didn't like that job, by the way. Wasn't a good fit, but knew that the field itself, like knew what was missing because I experienced that it wasn't a fit, moved into another role, you know, started building a team, playing, that was a head of talent development within the industry itself, kind of made it in terms of my industry. At that same time, there were things that I didn't like. So now in the next position, I made some adjustments. And our career is supposed to progressively improve over time because your jobs are the research. And we tend to miss out on that, thinking that the job is the career. No, the job is just information to help you make a better decision moving forward, just like in your relationships. Just like with the people that you date, or your friends that you end up, you know, bringing close and you have to have that level of awareness, you have to have this level of like lightness in terms of commitment and attachment to just kind of learn from your current environment while potentially improving for tomorrow. - I love that. And you know, the word that you have used being fearless is the one that describes the best. You're the potential for people to try things without being scared, scared of losing the money, the financial comfort that a job gives you, but a job doesn't give you the ultimate happiness that you may want to have in your life. It's sad when we become 40 and we realize how unsatisfied we have been. Now, I wanted to zoom out and understand your vision about work culture today. What do you see today is the biggest risk regarding work culture? What have you observed out of the different interactions that you have with organizations and with leaders? - It's not realizing that there's a culture. I think it's probably the biggest risk right now. I mean, there's a lot of different things, but generally the ultimate risk, the ultimate issue that I see at organizations is not connecting their behavior, how they show up, their perspective, the words that they use and how that creates the culture of an organization. And so a lot of times you see a company that has value statements, maybe those values are integrated into their performance management process generally. That's like if they are, but the behaviors aren't, no one has held accountable to specific values that the company holds to a high regard. And so that now there's almost like a lack of reliability or trust because the company is saying they want one thing if they have values. But then they're not enforcing or having expectations of creating accountability around the specific behaviors. So then you have value conflict and value misalignment. And then you also have leaders that aren't holding their teams accountable because maybe it's an us against them mentality or maybe they just have a different style of leadership. And so all of a sudden now you have like the broad culture of the organization, which is what they say they want it to be, but then you have the broad culture, the organization of what it is. But then you have departmental or functional kind of cultures within the organization itself too. And all of a sudden now you're just disjointed. And then we're having a pretty tough economic time in certain industries. Now when you see organizations that are just saying, well forget values for all the stuff that we're trying, we just have to be profitable. And so then all of a sudden now they're counteracting the culture that maybe they did create. And so the biggest issue in some is just a lack of consistency when it comes to the behaviors and the values that an organization promotes as or labels as their culture. I have to 100% agree with you because I also noticed from my side this connection that there is between values and behavior. Behaviors are actions. Values are just maybe intentions that may not reflect the reality, but it's like a direction that people want to go. But these values cannot be activated just by sending it into a website or having posters that speak about the values because we have a challenge, a mental challenge as human beings to understand how these values are relatable to us. And we will not do anything about it if we cannot act on it, represent it as an action, a behavior. And it's sad that very often the people who design these values or the human resources that might be empowered to influence the communication and the actions about these values do not despite the fact that they have a psychology degree may not understand that without behaviors, the values don't have any value as that. - On that note, by the way, I was working with the executive CEO of a company, like a multiple site, location, entertainment business, and he'd have problems with one of his directors. And that the person just was acting in a way that wasn't in alignment with what the values of the company are or what they think they are. But interestingly enough, that CEO was not providing direct feedback in response to that behavior. So the thing would happen. The leader would get resentful towards that individual, wouldn't give any feedback. Behavior would happen again. Someone would come to complain to him. He'd get more resentful. Wouldn't provide direct feedback to the individual. So when you look at it, like Zoom out, you go, "Oh, it makes sense." By not responding, by not giving feedback, he's reinforcing the behavior, reinforcing a different set of values, and also reinforcing the expectation, or the lack of accountability within an organization overall, that we don't provide direct feedback, that we instead may be promoting gossip or speaking behind someone's back, or not supporting each other, or not being transparent. And all of a sudden now, the things that you think are important to you, you have to take your actions and say, "Oh, are they?" And it's not that there's one right way to do things or not, but there's a way to do things that will lead to more improved outcomes. So something happens that you don't appreciate as a leader. You immediately have to go provide feedback on that situation if you want to reinforce certain values. And values are really just the behaviors that you expect to see in your organization, and that you hold people accountable to. But if you don't hold people accountable to a behavior, then you're not reinforcing it. - Exactly. Now, it seems to me that the catalyst of in order to develop a healthy world culture would be the leader. The person who is accountable for the well-being, happiness, and productivity of a group of people. What are the key characteristics according to you of leaders who foster these healthy work cultures? What do they do usually? What have you observed or heard that they do? - So, Jagan, generally, when it comes to working with a leader, there's a couple of different areas that we tend to work with. So an executive coaching program, leaders tend to say, "Oh, I need to improve my communication. "I need to improve the altitude, "so I need to improve how I speak to certain audiences. "I need to improve my confidence." So generally, those are the things that people think they need. But underneath that, generally, what you find is they're terrible at giving feedback. They're terrible at delegating, and they're terrible at coaching. And so you kind of have these three specific pillars, a feedback coaching and delegation that tend to be the most important when it comes to a leader. I'll even broaden that out, though, and say those are just aspects of executive presence. And to be fair, what your organization expects from a leader is unique. So if you're trying to figure out how to grow in a company and how to be a leader at a certain company and to align with the culture, more importantly, you sit in meetings and watch the executive leaders and take notes on how they act, how they act, what questions they ask, or how they're paying attention and engaging in meetings, how they write emails. That can be really important for you just to fit in. But from an effectiveness standpoint, generally, leaders have to have a certain level of presence. So that means they engage, they show up, they just have a different way of interacting. And now we can break that down and say that they're curious, they call on people, they listen more than they speak, they communicate based on the audience that's in front of them, to all that's important in regards to presence, how they show up and how they engage. But they also need to communicate, and when they are communicating a vision. So generally, leaders have a broader view on what's happening in an organization. They have a leadership brand that they're communicating as well. So a certain way that they show up as a leader that people can expect and understand, because that also builds trust. They also understand the vision of their team. So they ask questions to learn, what do people care about, what are they working towards, because if you have that information, you can then align your approach to those individuals. So presence and vision, incredibly important when it comes to a leader. And then the final piece is credibility. Incredibility is not just what you say and what you know, but it's can people trust and rely on you to do what you say, to show up and to follow up and to follow through as a leader overall. And I know I started with a couple different pillars, but all those pillars fit into kind of this definition of executive presence, which is you're present, you're credible, and you have a vision. - So when you are talking about executive presence, is it the same as, because I heard that word, right? And I didn't know it, it's an English word of gravitas. Is that the same? - Say that one more time? - Gravitas, I remember that. - Gravitas. - Some people say that gravitas is a component of executive presence. You'll see charisma as a component of executive presence. And everyone has their own definitions. I just put these, I built my own definition off of what I've seen to be the most important for building trust, for empowering leaders. And when I say empowering leaders and building trust, it's curating an environment around the employee that actually helps them succeed. So zooming out leadership is not about, is not about leading others, demanding and directing others. It's about understanding the people in front of you so much, that you're able to create an environment around them that makes them more motivated and engaged and productive at their work. So that requires you to have their trust, but also to know who they are as individuals, and to know what the organization is trying to achieve, and align those to the people in front of you. That's how you create followers as a leader. So if I understand correctly, so because you know them well, you can also anticipate and help on the conversion of these cultural values into relatable, personalized behaviors. You can help people to represent these maybe concepts that we call values into actual behaviors, because we have these values. This is how you could as an employee or as my direct report, act in a day-to-day basis. Is that correct? That they can do this connection and coach someone to in order to develop this consistency of behaviors so that the culture is shaped? - Yeah, and not to discount the fact that an organization, like they were just baseline expectations show up to work, some that work on time, respect others. So there are certain things that are just required from a work environment that a leader has to enforce. And one of the biggest mistakes that I see is that a leader is so concerned about having that gravitas or being that very well-respected leader that they stop holding people accountable. That's not what leadership is. Knowing someone doesn't mean that you don't hold them to certain expectations. Knowing someone means that you adjust your approach to them so that they're more effective and engaged. Like for example, working with a leader the other day, they have one employee that is a little bit more sensitive to how people approach and how they communicate. And had some experiences in the past that have caused some kind of some skepticism around people around them. Plus that individual really loves engaging and interacting with others to complete work. And like certain type of work. There's another employee though, very reserved, much more of an introvert. Has a positive view on work really results driven, but much more along with the kind of like intellectual and technical aspects of the job. So when you're leading those people, you're going to approach them very differently. You're gonna assign different work to them. You're going to potentially check in on them differently. You're gonna create different resources for them. And so when you're a leader, knowing who the people are in front of you, and actually spending time to create profiles of who they are and what they need and what projects they're working on and their career goals, can help you adjust to how you get the most from them. Again, doesn't mean that you don't hold them both accountable. So coaching that leader, the individual holds the person that is a little bit more skeptical and sensitive, just accountable to the same work deadlines. And in workload is the person that is more intellectual, but they assign different work. And they potentially speak to them a little bit differently. - You have used several times the word accountable, which happens to be one of the challenges of leaders. But if we look at accountability in a broader sense, not only that I'm accountable about my job, but I'm also accountable. I feel like it's mine, also my culture. Is there a way that leaders can empower employees to develop this sense of accountability for this is mine, this is my home, this is my family, this is my house, so that people can be motivated also to spread a healthy work culture and even voiceover when something doesn't go, is not going to the right direction and is destroying or providing toxicity at work. - You can help someone feel more accountable by helping them feel more ownership over the work overall. You also can help someone feel more accountable by holding them accountable. I know that's silly, but if someone is consistently not getting away with the work that doesn't meet standards, it's consistently getting away with disrespectful behavior. Then not only will that person not feel accountable, but the people that that person engages with will not feel accountable as well because they'll be frustrated about the individual that's not being held accountable. It's funny how that works. So you can create a culture, you can actually dismantle a culture of accountability by not holding just one person accountable to the expectations and values of a company. Now let's say you actually want to create ownership around a project, oftentimes a leader, especially when giving feedback or assigning goals or work to tell people what to do. Telling people what to do is a great way to maybe create action and results, but not to actually increase engagement or increase productivity or to increase long-term motivation. If you instead ask somebody, what do you think we can do about this? Or we need to achieve this, how might we get there? And you give someone the autonomy when it comes to process. Not outcome all the time, but process. Then that person is going to feel more accountable and more ownership over the thing that is decided. And so oftentimes leaders, when they have trouble delegating or coaching, it's because they're telling, they're basically directing the process. When the process doesn't matter if the outcome is the same. And everyone has a different type of process that is more encouraging to them, that more aligns to who they are. - Did I understand correctly? So in what you have described, accountability is a chain reaction. So if someone is not doing the right thing, then this chain reaction is broken and there is no accountability. But this chain reaction starts from the leader itself, or you mean that anyone in the chain, like any employee, if suddenly not accountable, then it puts everything to help. - Well, in a perfect world, peers would hold each other accountable to work. And there isn't generally that level of safety in an organization or a level of responsibility when it comes to an individual. If you want to be a leader, then you're not holding your peers accountable. You're missing out on a huge opportunity to prove to your leader that you can grow in the organization. So in general though, a leader is the one that's responsible for holding people accountable. If a leader lets one person get away with something, I promise you, the other people on your team, know that, know that happened. And if you also are ignorant to the fact that someone's not doing their work or not pulling their weight and you let that go, you have now just destroyed trust, credibility and accountability on your team. Is there anything specifically that can be learned from a leader, but not, I mean, something that you can learn from the leader, but you cannot learn in a training setup, in a traditional training, going for one or two days into a room to learn. What can we specifically and only learn from a leader and not from the training? - I'm not sure I fully understand the question. I think overall experience is the best teacher, 100%. Training is a wonderful, but training is effective if it mimics real life learning. So if training does not have you doing the stuff or have you imagining the stuff and how it relates to your job, your day to day, you're just overall in terms of examples, you're not learning. Just if you're listening to something, you're even, sorry, even this podcast, you're gonna probably take away, I think statistics were like 20% or something like that. And if as time goes by you learn, you retain even less. So, I mean, I think the answer to the question is learning training should be as close as possible to real life for any learning to take place in that real learning comes from practical application of anything that you actually are trying to learn. So as a leader, this is actually one of the things that holds the leader's back the most is they're afraid to try certain things, afraid to try maybe a framework of feedback. And so they never practice it. And then what happens? Well, someone does something wrong and you have to hold them accountable and give feedback and you haven't practiced it. So I'm not sure if I answered your question, but at least I talked about it for a little bit. (laughs) - I think you did. Very often the leaders don't demonstrate certain behaviors because of the lack of mental bandwidth. And let me explain you because maybe it's a word that I'm using. I'm not a psychologist, mental bandwidth, that means that because my priorities is performance, results, I'm stressed. And even though I'm a very empathetic person, I don't demonstrate it. Lack of mental bandwidth because I'm overloaded. Too much information and too much stress. What are some practical steps so that leaders can really increase the mental bandwidth and is start improving their world culture? - Well, sadly, our mental bandwidth is limited and we can't increase it. We just have to work with what we got. So because of that, what we need to do is we need to get rid of the stuff that's draining it. So you wake up in the morning, you have a certain amount of energy, mental bandwidth that you have available to you. When you choose to what you're gonna wear that day, you use a little bit of it. When you choose what you're gonna eat, you use a little bit of it. If the first thing in the morning that you do is something incredibly stressful or incredibly complicated, you use a lot of it. And so for leaders that want to increase their mental bandwidth, I'd say, well, really what you're doing is using it more effectively and efficiently. So looking at your calendar and saying, what's the most important thing I need to do today? I'm doing it in the beginning. What's the most creative and innovative thing that I need to do? Okay, making sure you also have time around that thing that isn't very stressful 'cause you wanna go into it with your bandwidth prepared and not drained. Where are the most draining meanings in my week? How do I adjust those? Maybe so you don't have to do them, but adjust them to be less draining. So for example, if you know that there's certain people in the meeting that cause you a lot of stress, maybe you take the meeting walking or maybe you fix the relationship outside of the meeting or maybe you eat your favoriteness as kind of silly, your favorite cookie during the meeting itself. You have to basically take pay attention to your, like mental bandwidth is like your battery, your energy battery, and try to proactively adjust your calendar and the people you engage with and the work that you do based on how much energy you have throughout the day. If you try to do something complicated at night, you're in trouble. So if any sort of innovative or like any sort of strategic thinking time, you wanna try doing that generally in the mornings so that when you do have a little bit more of that mental capacity, and all this is really just saying though, take control of your time, be more aware of it. Maybe even block out some time. I had a client the other day. This is tough and we started working together, had a very, very skewed perception of work. They were so afraid of setting boundaries and saying no to their coworkers, to their boss, that they were basically destroying their mental bandwidth or capacity. They were working too late, they were working weekends. They were reactive. They saw everything as a fire. There's a lot of stress and anxiety related to work. And we had to spend a lot of time deconstructing that belief. You can't just go to someone. I don't know if you've ever done this and someone who over works and she'd just, just put a block on your calendar. It makes sense, but there are so many fears that we have in relationship to work and maybe losing our job of the security that we feel towards our work or hurting someone or what people might think of us that prevents us from doing the simple things. So if you find that you are not able to do the simple things, then there is a belief issue that you're having, some sort of limiting belief and fear that is holding you back that you need to tackle or else you're going to consistently be exhausted. - I think that the problem is that a lot of leaders have been formatted with the same type of schools. I don't know if you are familiar with the fact that as of the 90s, there was this time management school that promoted by the Stephen Covey saying things are only important urgent and that's how you treat life. But in reality, because our own biology, human biology and because of the fact that we have our mental well-being to put, to create a space for this mental well-being, things are not as easy as putting, using the metrics of Stephen Covey and being satisfied is because otherwise everything has been decided in the external way. The importance in the emergency depends on external factors. So I didn't have any power of decision or control in my life. So I'm going to feel shit all the way along and I'm not going to have any capacity to interact and improve any work culture. If I don't have the right habits of that are related to how I control my, I have the feeling of controlling my life. And as we are talking a little bit more about the importance of growing importance of well-being, the sad news is that yes, there has been a lot of companies investing because of COVID millions of dollars in order to try to improve. Sometimes improve the well-being of the employee. Sometimes it was like painkillers, but not something that was related to the root causes of why are we stressed, why are we unsatisfied in the workplace? But they were investing, let's say there was, from yoga mats to awareness talks in the workplace. What would you say is the role of leaders? Today, in order to promote work-life balance and preventing burnout because the levels of burnout, despite all of this investment, remain the same as the first year of COVID. And we are in 2020 for Benjamin. What do you think about that? - Well, burnout isn't about ping-pong tables and yoga and meditation, maybe meditation actually, that could probably help. But burnout is just, I don't know, the actual definition last time I checked was a prolonged exposure to stress without any reprieve. So basically, or consistently under stress. I know people that have worked in the same organization. One person was burnt out and one person wasn't. So there is something to be said about, leaders being aware of workload and expectations and the pressure that maybe they're creating for their team. 100%, totally understand, that's important. But I talk a lot about self-leadership. I talk a lot about how we need to take accountability, there's that word again, for our own job satisfaction and our own health. So leaders are important to watch for workload, but I actually see that leaders tend to, leaders that really care, tend to underutilize their team more than overutilized them. They tend to try to protect them by assigning less work and don't push them and don't challenge them. So generally, if our leader is concerned about burnout, they tend to actually not to do enough, not assign enough for their team. And so I like to actually say that a leader, your job is not to watch for workload and such. But more so, look at the personal side of things. Talk to your employees. Your job is to have a conversation with your employees, to promote the fact that they can take time off, that they shouldn't be working at seven o'clock, eight o'clock, nine o'clock at night. It's nice to see some of these laws get passed that an organization can't legally email somebody after the end of the work day. It's not a thing over here in the United States where people feel like they need to work to keep their job. So a leader is not responsible for creating a workload that someone to try to protect them. They are responsible though for bringing a role model of how they should work in a healthy manner and having conversations with their team around these topics. And so if they're able to promote this balance, basically it's saying everything's okay, you're not gonna be fired if you make a mistake, you don't have to work late, we are here to support you. Those are the types of ideas and concepts and role modeling behavior balance that can prevent burnout 'cause burnout is just prolonged stress and that's a mental thing, more than it is a workload thing. - I want to play a little bit that was advocate Benjamin because you and me, we are entrepreneurs and we know that the story about stress is not about amount of work or time spent in the work because doing 14 hours of whatever you do, Benjamin, is not the same as doing 14 hours of something that you hate because you hate the culture because I don't know, you hate the people around you 'cause you don't feel part of the team, you don't feel belonging or whatsoever. So let's just put a tick to this story. Stress is not equal the time and effort that I put at work. Stress can be because I don't feel this connection with my work environment, is that right too? - 100% back to the first thing that I mentioned, two people in the same work environment, two very different ideas of what's happening in that work environment. - Yes. - And to what you shared, it's meaning is a big part of job satisfaction. So if someone feels their work is meaningful going back to values 'cause values are at the core of meaning, then they're less likely to feel burnt out but that's not always the case. - No. - 'Cause you can feel something is meaningful but also not be confident in yourself and that can lead to burnout. You could feel something is meaningful but not feel that you're making progress or growing or see a future that can lead to burnout. You could feel that something is meaningful and think that everything has to get done today because of the fact that you don't feel confident and you don't feel like you're making progress and that can lead to burnout. So there's all these different components of job satisfaction that can lead to burnout but they're all mental and they're a perception. So yes, if you don't feel connected to the work, if you don't feel that you're making progress, if you don't feel confident in yourself, if you're not filling up all the areas of your cup, then you're going to potentially give burnout 'cause you're under stress. But it doesn't have a direct correlation to the hours that you work, 100% then, or we're on the same page. - Benjamin, I want to use a brain. I mean, you have been doing some work. I mean, you have a doctorate which means that you have been doing some research on different topics on leadership and maybe also on work culture. And I wanted to, if you had to advise today a leader about a book that is science based, psychology based, that they must read in order to empower people to or empower organizations to be more healthier, to be healthier in the culture, what would it be these books that you say, if leaders read that, it would be amazing. It would already be a progress. - I have so many books. You just opened up like a floodgate of recommendations. I'm going to give like only a couple. So first off, read the book. Everyone deserves a great manager. It has a lot of really great pieces to it. Yeah, the next one is, there's this book called Employality by Joe Mull. Actually, the next two books I'm going to recommend that are actually on my podcast, The Executive. So Employality, which is about basically being like a better boss in building trust. And then the other one is, and he has a variety of books. I recommend them all, but the most recent one is how to get along with almost anyone by Michael Bongay Stanier. I think that's the name of the book. Yeah, how to get along with almost anyone. Hold on. - I'm taking notes because there are two books that you didn't know about. - How to work with almost anyone by Michael Bongay Stanier. He has a variety of books, The Coaching Habit, The Advice Trap. He's an incredible author as well. - Thank you, Benjamin. Benjamin, this discussion is interesting, not only because of your experience, kind of, I mean, these iterations that we were talking at the beginning has increased your level of wisdom. So your wisdom points are super, super up to me. I like the fact that the way you explain things about the impact of leaderships are accessible, despite the fact that you have some research background, I also find it quite practical to implement. Benjamin, if people want to reach you out to ask you questions regarding leadership development, regarding their own careers, their own way of finding their goals in life, how can they reach you out, Benjamin? - Yes, and we were talking about books, and so at the end of 2024, so a couple more months, maybe I'm gonna be releasing a book called, "Actually Becoming Fearless." It's on the way, I'm doing some final edits and talking to some agents and such, but it's kind of a no fluff direct strategies and actions to becoming fearless in your personal life and your professional life. As we've talked about my journey, even though I focused in leadership development, it's more about self-leadership, so that encompasses who you are personally, too. And if you want to find out more information about that, you can go to liveforyourselfconsulting.com. And on that site, you can also sign up for our email list, so you'll find out a lot about the book, our podcast, and such, but also be able to download a free guide to creating a career that you can love. And then I'm super active on LinkedIn, too, so make sure you're connected through there. - I will put the links that you have mentioned, your LinkedIn profile, liveforyourselfconsulting.com. I think that it would be good that I put directly also your guide, because I was paying attention that that guide could be quite interesting for a lot of leaders. Benjamin, it was really nice and lovely to spend time with you today. Really, it has been a quite nice learning experience for me. - It's been a ton of fun, and I love that we can be on opposite sides of the world almost, and still be able to have this incredible discussion. And I mean, where you're at seems really incredible. I think, by the way, leaders, if you have the opportunity, go travel, go explore, because you will grow in terms of how you show up in your presence as a leader in your day-to-day, the more that you kind of show up in your personal life. So hopefully I can do some travels, maybe we'll say hi in the future, too. That would be nice. And by the way, I think that this becoming fearless is book, from Benjamin is going to be awesome. So end of 2024, you say it, right? - Yeah, I'm gonna make sure that I release it near my birthday so I can tell all my friends and family to buy me a gift. (laughs) - That's great, Benjamin. Thank you very much. It was lovely talking to you.
