Latest / Humanity Working / Is Wellbeing For Wimps?

Transcript

Is Wellbeing For Wimps? · Humanity Working

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so we've talked about well-being a lot on this show, but lately it feels like the topic's kind of gone quiet.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think's going on?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Matt.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if I had a if I had a scent for every time the presence of this or the lack of this has come up over the course of the last few months, I'd be a I'd be a wealthy man.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think I actually believe there's a there's a lot going on.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um part of it is something we we spoke about, I don't know, three, four weeks ago, something like that.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um the white the white collar recession, it's what we referred to it as.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I mean it's all it's it's been this way for as long as as you know traditional or work environments have have as long as there have been employers and employees, I would say this this has been the case.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly as long as there's been something akin to unemployment, um in situations where people are finding it difficult to get jobs or difficult to change jobs um at any level of the economy, then things like um do you feel healthy in the workplace?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel uh engaged in the workplace?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um do you enjoy your work?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, things of that nature um are things that you stop talking about because you are worried that if you that if you do talk about them, you'll be considered difficult and they'll replace you with somebody who is not complaining about those things.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess the net new thing is that you don't hear AI complaining about this stuff.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that's I I I think that is is uh one aspect of this.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: There are more, but I think there's one there's one aspect of this.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Taking the human out of the loop certainly eliminates a lot of that worry, right?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: So uh Yeah, I will tell you that, you know, like the fear, uncertainty, and doubt associated with with AI is something that is difficult to get your head around.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: But some of the more um in-depth interviews that we've done and private conversations that we've done, it's rare to find a human that isn't in some way slightly worried about AI coming and taking their job.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a uh means different things to different people, and they can simultaneously be afraid of AI taking their job and really excited to use it.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's there in the background in a way that it was not there a few years ago.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're combining that with news of large amounts of layoffs from big tech companies and wondering if you know that's gonna filter through the rest of the economy.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: You combine it with um with, as I say, you know, problems with people uh getting even the people that are employed, right?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: If they're looking for another job, finding it very difficult to find one.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can you you combine that with the experience that we now have of AI, which is not just what it was, but you know, what it is compared to what it was, and people put two and two together and get scared.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, do you think there's uh you know a masculinity element here?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like are men tuning out more?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh is there is there any gender relationship uh in your in your research?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: We have seen that, yes.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's and it's this is a difficult one to to to discuss.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'll I want to be quite you know kind of precise here.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because what I'm what we're definitively not saying here is that men have less of a problem here than uh than women do, or that women are complaining about this or or wanting to focus on this more than men because they need it more in some way, or something like that.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's definitively not that.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um but what we what does seem to be happening is that the that the almost like the men are kind of retreating into gender stereotypes a little a little bit, uh as in appearing to you know to be the oh yeah, I don't I don't need any of this stuff, um suck it up buttercup, you know.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a tough world out there, you know.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: That all that all that kind of sort of like lying to themselves more, yes, and sort of stereo stereotypical, I'm stronger than this, it's all a bit foofy, you know, all of all of that kind of stuff.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now what's interesting is that when you start to kind of reframe the conversation a bit, you get almost exactly the same themes, but um but done, explained in a different way and thought of in a different way.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Say more about that.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you mean reframe it?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the language, we live in a world where the idea of like uh of how you use language is itself becoming a becoming a hot political topic, but the language here does um does make a difference.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: So if if for example you speak to certain communities of people about well-being, mental health, um, wellness at work, then for certain groups of people that feels like something that real people don't do, right?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And is and is for and is for weaklings, right?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: But if you take exactly the same concepts and you refer to that uh to the same concept using, for example, terms like readiness, like being ready to do great work, then all of a sudden the exactly the same stuff becomes completely different, right?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because, for example, if you were an elite athlete, and you had a the let's say you were a tennis player, right, and you were preparing for a Wimbledon final, would you be ready?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: You probably would.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And what would readiness mean?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be rested, right?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be well trained, right?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be eating right, I'd be doing these things.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: So readiness is sort of like almost associated with like elite performance, and that feels very masculine, right?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but well-being and wellness seems foofy and for wimps.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: So same stuff, talked about different ways.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, helps people uh sort of like engage with these topics or not engage with these topics.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's really interesting.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, so if you if you then spin it to like leaders that uh glorify 80, 90 hour work weeks and talk about grit and uh all this, is there any evidence or or lack thereof to support that in terms of performance science in saying that yeah, you know, those those grinding that's the key, that's the success factor that made a difference, right?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, there's a couple of things you sort of alluded to there that are connected to each other.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the first thing is that those like like there's the concept of of grit that you know many of us have read have read the book at this point, and then there's the concept of like grinding yourself into the ground.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then for certain people, groups of people, those two things have been completely conflated with each other, right?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: An example of grit is the person who uh who works the 60-hour week or the 80-hour week and is able to do it again and again and again, right?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're demonstrating stamina and strength and you know, and all that kind of stuff, right?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: But no attention paid to what does that actually mean in terms of quality of work?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: What does that actually mean in terms of being sustainable uh sustainably effective over time?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, the other thing that we do that we've done forever is that um we tend to take people that have had success in their lives, senior leaders of organizations, and uh and then we look to them for guidance.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: The theory being obviously is that well, why don't you pattern your life off to mine?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do, you'll uh you'll have success.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the reality, of course, is different for a whole but for a whole bunch of reasons.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: The one simple thing to think about here is that um there is no evidence whatsoever that um leaders, in fact, there's a lot of evidence in the country, that leaders of Fortune 500 companies are experts on how to get the best out of all of the individual employees that work for them.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um now they may be experts on how may, may not be experts on how to get the best out of themselves, right?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but they're not experts on how to get the bet the best out of other people.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, if we look back to that idea of of sports science, for example, um a great coach isn't saying you need to you need to do exactly what this other party did.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: They're figuring out how to get the best out of you, right?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: You as the individual.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And for the vast majority of people, working, probably everybody to be honest, but for the vast majority of people, consistently working 80, 90 hours a week is not conflated with better results.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: We know this is not theory, we know this.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Studies that are done on, for example, professions where this is this was embedded into the profession.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, junior doctors, for example, in the United Kingdom were often required to work 80, 90, 100-hour weeks.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: The number of mistakes went up, yeah.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the number of um of minor and major incidents that affected uh patient health outcomes dramatically increased, right?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: This was this is not a way to get the best out of your uh of your of your junior doctors.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Pilots, right?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's a reason we put time limits on the number of hours that pilots work, because if they work too many hours, planes crash, right?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we know, we know that this is not associated with best results, but we listen to the leaders of these organizations because they have their version of I didn't get where I am today by checking out after 45 hours.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we got to make this shift.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna make this shift to say, okay, if as humans, right, we're gonna be remain relevant, we've got to be the best humans we can be.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the best humans don't regularly work 90 hours a week.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: We need the really lazy folks to write better stories, is what we need to do.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what that's exactly what glorify.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, hey, I got 10 hours of sleep every night this week.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like that that that should be celebrated, right?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the point is we can do it, right?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: We absolutely can do it, right?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm not saying Tim Ferris is you know, four-hour week, but we can but we can get uh we can get to a point where we're working smarter versus working harder, and we should be um we should be celebrating the idea of working smarter versus working harder.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: I often ask with you know, with threat reports I've had, I'm like, what did you do to what did you do this week to work less hard?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great question to ask an employee.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And um and then and help them understand why you're asking that question.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because the why you're asking that question is actually relatively simple, which is that if if your employee is working less hard, they are more well-rested, but critically they're able to take on something new.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: If all of your employees are working 90 hours a week and now you've got a new pr new challenge, who's doing it?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's I I ask people, um, what are you working, what are you doing that you absolutely hate and wish you didn't have to do?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's gotta be stuff or stuff that you think is stupid.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: What are you doing that you think is gotta be stupid?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's gotta be a better way.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: And when you start to really pull those out, sometimes people don't even realize it.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like they're doing stuff and they're just like, yeah, it only takes me a minute.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, how many times does it take you just a minute?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and is it like add that all up and you got a couple hours, right?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: So um yeah.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um so a lot of people don't want to obsess over all this stuff and and measure it all, but is there something really simple people can do to move the needle?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think um, you know, if you're into the health stuff and you're into well-being and you're into well-being as a concept, you know, uh go for it, right?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that's wonderful.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: But even if you're not, right?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about this idea of thinking about it as peak as peak performance and readiness and all that kind of stuff, right?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: You underneath that, that is about being well-wrested and and and devoting your attention to work.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: We use a very, very simple model.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: We've been using it now for a few years, and it resonates with a lot of people.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the idea of it is just to try to focus on three things that are easily um controllable, that are relatively measurable, um, and that are are associated with being ready to do great work.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we call it RMS.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and the R stands for rest, the M stands for movement, and the S stands for socialization.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll briefly, very briefly, because I think we're over time already, but I'll but I'll briefly discuss why why those three.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: So rest is we're we're in a crisis of people generally not getting uh not getting enough rest, not getting enough sleep, and all that kind of stuff.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: But rested people, uh rested people do better work and rested people enjoy their work more.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Movement because we're sedentary, right?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: The work uh that many of us do when we're sitting at a desk is literally just sitting at a desk, right?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so we're moving a lot less than we should.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: We're moving a lot less than we than than we have as a species.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, as been said multiple times, right?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Sitting is the new smoking.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um and with a few simple changes, you can uh you can add a lot of additional movement associated um with it.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then socialization is really centered around because as workers become more distributed, we're not getting for free the kind of socialization that we used to get into work.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we really need to focus on uh on those three things.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Everything else, um almost everything else, can kind of like sit underneath that.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, if you think about nutrition, right, very, very important.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if I have good nutrition, then I'm often going to have better rest associated with it, right?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're getting poor sleep if you're not eating well, for example.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: So some of those other things can kind of come underneath it.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: But we found a lot of success um in helping individuals and teams focus just on those on those specific three things.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's easy to remember and it's easy for something to uh to focus on, and it's something you can track.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: All right, very good.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: Humanity Working is produced and edited for Billion Minds by Matt Neal.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: If you like this podcast, please subscribe, like, and recommend us to others.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: It helps us reach more people.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to learn more about how Billion Minds gets companies ready for the future of work by building adaptable, resilient employees, look for them on LinkedIn or visit their website at billionminds.com.