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Jen Fisher: Bold Enough to Change- The Importance of Wellbeing · The Bold Lounge

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Leigh Burgess and I will be your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Every week, we'll hear from someone who has taken a leap or embarked on an extraordinary journey.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Whether they face challenges or doubts along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be freed.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Today I have Jen Fisher.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Jen is a trailblazer in workplace well-being and the founder and CEO of the Wellbeing Team.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Jen is a global authority on human sustainability, known for transforming how organizations think about culture, leadership and the well-being of their people.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: As Deloitte US's first ever chief well-being officer, she led the way in creating a groundbreaking holistic strategy that gained national recognition.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Officer.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: She led the way in creating a groundbreaking holistic strategy that gained national recognition.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Her personal journey through burnout and cancer fueled her passion to pioneer the well-being intelligent movement and co-found WellQ360, a revolutionary framework that helps leaders connect the dots between culture, team dynamics and individual experience.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Jen's work inspires bold change and meaningful connection, and today she's here to help us imagine what's possible when we build workplaces where people can truly thrive.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: I'm excited for this conversation today.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we were in the green room a little bit and I'm so excited to get started and jump into your definition of bold.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: What does bold look like in your world?
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: You know, I think right now, because I know we talk about how being bold changes, but I think right in this moment bold means standing in that uncomfortable space between the way things are and the way things could be, and probably most particularly when no one else is willing to join you there yet, but you know they will eventually yeah.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: It gets like kind of lonely in that bold zone.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: You know sometimes that gap between, like you said, what is and what could be.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: I love that definition.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I've never heard it said that way.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: So out of 200 plus definitions, you have an original here and so I think we're talking about that boldness gap.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: You know where people are in that zone where others may not be.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: When you think about your life and all the different places that could have shown up, what's an aligned moment with that definition that comes up for you?
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of them, because there's a lot of them for all of us, even if we don't recognize it as boldness.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: But I think a significant time or moment of boldness in my career specifically was when I proposed and created the chief well-being officer role at Deloitte, and you know why that was bold.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Well, it's an industry that's not necessarily known for well-being cultures, first of all, but I, you know, I experienced firsthand through my own burnout, but just, you know, working in, in that organization and in that culture for so long, you know, witnessing how a high performance environment can drive really incredible things, including results, but it takes a toll on people, and so I think for me it was.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: We have to do something about this and we need to understand that well-being doesn't compromise our competitive edge, and I think that was really what I was up against for so long.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: And so creating the role meant challenging deeply entrenched beliefs about what success looks like, especially in professional services.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: It required me to advocate for really a fundamental shift, like I said, in how we view this relationship between well-being and productivity, that they aren't competing but they're interdependent and they're necessary for one another.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: But then I would say, I think the boldest part of all of that wasn't just the creation of the position but actually implementing the changes, because that meant directly confronting things like an always-on culture.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: It meant having difficult conversations about boundaries, about workload, about what we truly valued as an organization beyond just billable hours and client demands, and so you know, looking back I would say it was incredibly bold, but it's also influenced workplace culture and now has inspired similar positions, I think, across industries.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: So to me, sometimes what feels scary and lonely or bold is caring enough to change a system from the inside and not necessarily always from the outside the wheel.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: You understand the, you know the bigness of it.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: So, for those that don't know what a chief wellbeing officer does, what do they do and what was your vision for that particular role?
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really great question, you know, I think at the at the creation of the role it was and it has evolved significantly in my mind over time and and still has a ways to go significantly in my mind over time and still has a ways to go.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: But, you know, at the creation of the role it was really about how do we embed well-being into the culture of an organization.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: But at the time it was really focused on what I would call elements of self-care and, looking back, a lot of the things that we potentially do, or at least believe that we should do, outside of working hours and I think so much has changed now.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: But I'm talking about things like movement and exercise, rest and recovery, including sleep, nutrition and how we eat and how that impacts the way that we show up and our levels of energy.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: All of those things, probably outside of eating at the time, were things that we did outside of the workplace.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Now so much has shifted now that hopefully there's more of that happening during the workday, regardless of whether we're working remotely or whether we're working in an office.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: They think that a lot of that has been more embedded into workplace cultures or many people's mindsets about work.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: I think that the pandemic created the first big shift in workplace well-being, where many, many, many organizations and their leaders had this moment where they were like, oh wait, this is not a nice to have.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: You know, this is not a bolt on, this is not an add on, this is not a perk, but it's something that we all need.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately, where we are today is we're seeing a shift backwards in many cases and forgetting what that was like and that, you know, well-being is truly essential and that is something that worries me and, I think, probably worries many of the people that serve or served in similar roles.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: But you know, for me, the role of the chief well-being officer was really like how do I embed this into the culture of an organization?
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: And if I was still doing that role today or when I left Deloitte, it was really about how do we begin to elevate well-being beyond programs, tools and resources, because those are kind of foundational, fundamental, baseline things that any organization needs to have.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: But how do we make well-being a teachable skill set, a capability of every person, of every leader within an organization?
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Because I truly believe that until we do that, you know, we think of operations as a skill set.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: We think of finance as a skill set, we think of technology as a skill set, and until we think of well-being as a leadership skill set, it's always going to be something that is stuck in HR as a program or an initiative, and this is not a knock on HR, it's not a knock on any of the programs, but it's an and right.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: I think, why so many people think workplace well-being isn't working or it isn't working because that's true is because we haven't started to address these leadership skill sets, these leadership behaviors, the ways of working, the design of work, the things that you see in every news cycle about why people are frustrated with work is what we need to start addressing, because we now know and we can't turn our heads away from the understanding that work itself actually impacts people's well-being.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: And I think when I started in the role, we didn't think of work as one of the pillars of well-being.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: It was physical health, emotional health, mental health.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Those types of things were the things that we were thinking of.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: We didn't actually stop to say, oh wait, you mean work actually affects people's wellbeing.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: We were just giving people these tools and resources to take care of themselves, which is important.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: But you know we've all heard this phrase.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: You know you can't outrun a bad diet.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: You know you can't self-care your way out of a toxic workplace culture.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for me, as I hear you talk about it like you totally get it, you totally get the layers to it.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: You've lived it, you've led it right and within an organization and now, through your work and speaking and your upcoming book and the things that you've created around well-being intelligence, we have the opportunity to learn even more.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: I think one of the things you thought of immediately when you weren't well was that you needed to quit, and so when you were diagnosed with cancer, you actually said I'm, you know, I'll resign.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about the mind shift for you in that moment when you're leading such an incredible organization, and also their well-being efforts to really see someone, what I think as a whole person and, like you said, helping them get the tools or learn the tools so that it's part of our fiber, versus an add-on or a bolt-on or something that's just a nice to have.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for asking that question, because I think it's a really important nuance, or maybe not even a nuance, it's something that's incredibly important.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: So, just to kind of set the timeline, I had experienced significant burnout about 10 years ago.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: What came out of that burnout, from a career perspective, was the creation of the chief well-being officer at Deloitte.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: I was in that role for less than a year probably nine or 10 months when I was diagnosed with cancer, and so my immediate reaction in response to that like probably every single person that gets diagnosed with cancer is, you know, I mean, your whole world just feels like it's, you know, crumbling down upon you.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: But you know, from a workplace perspective, I think I had this fear of like, wow, I just came into this role leading well-being.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: My job is to help others be healthy and take care of themselves.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: So they can you know, they can show up and be their best in both life and work.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: And here I am diagnosed with cancer and I process that as not necessarily failure, but like a weakness.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: How is anybody going to listen to me if I stand on stage or if I sit in a room with them and tell them like, oh, you've got to take care of yourself.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: And here I am, you know, the girl with cancer.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: And so that was the completely wrong and irrational thought process, right, but when you're diagnosed with cancer, like you look, I cannot be held accountable for many of the thoughts that I had, but it was a conversation with my boss at the time when I worked up the courage to tell him that I had been diagnosed with cancer and that was my choice.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: I want to be clear that you don't, in an organization or anywhere, you know you don't actually have to disclose that to anyone, and so I chose to do that with him.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: I said, you know, I understand if you don't want me to be the chief well-being officer anymore, because you know how can I lead this effort to tell people to be healthy and well if I have cancer?
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: And you know, after what felt like you know four year pause, which was probably only about three seconds, he said to me Jen, you're a really smart person, but that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard you say.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: And I was kind of like, wait what?
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: And he went on to say like, first of all, you're going to get through this.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: And thankfully I did, because I know too many people that did not.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: But you know his perspective was if you've never struggled, if you've never gone through something, then that actually gives you less credibility, like it's easy to stand on a stage and say, hey, be healthy, get healthy, do this, do that.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: This is what I do and have never experienced any troubles in your life or any challenges in your life versus.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: You know, we're all going to have challenges, whether they're at a young age or older, but we're all going to have.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: We're all going to face challenges, whether they're at a young age or older, but we're all going to have.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: We're all going to face challenges, whether they're with our physical health or with our mental health.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: And so you know that conversation with him was, I mean, that was a game changer for me.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: It changed my complete mindset and I've been very fortunate to have a handful of leaders, because I had another leader who saw me when I was going through burnout and created that space for me and you know, and basically said it's time to focus on you and time to take care of yourself.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: But I think that that's what leadership.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: And when I say leadership, you know I'm using air quotes, even though you can't see me a leadership is all of us.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm not necessarily talking about somebody that holds a leadership yeah, a title in an organization, although that is very important, and they have a lot of impact and a lot of influence and power over how other people feel in their organization.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: But all of us are leaders of some sort, right?
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: You know, whether it's just kind of that, that role of influence that we play or that impact that we have on other people, and I think all of us have a responsibility to show up and see the humanity in each other and help people understand that struggling of any kind, whether it's your physical health or your mental health, is is is not a weakness, that it's, that it's human and in some ways, it makes you stronger and bolder.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: Quite frankly, if that's what you choose, if that's how you orient your mindset, so when I think about the organizations I worked in so I shared that with you earlier so, like Duke and Dartmouth two huge academics, incredible research, incredible things that they do every day but when I think about well-being, at least as it was when I was in that setting and maybe it's changed over the last five years, but it wasn't a lot that I could like point to.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: You know, you had your ad, what I would call the add-ons, or you said your bolt-ons things that seem to be optional here.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: You know, get, get a patch If you walk 5,000 steps and you get a free pedometer.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: You're that kind of stuff like which people really got excited about, but for me it wasn't something that would stick.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Right, and that's what the research says now is that things don't stick.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't change, yeah.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: And then being a data driven person, like what are the data?
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: You know that we can understand better about ourselves and those that we lead support in community, or however we're doing that, how do we better understand that?
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: So tell me a little bit more about wellbeing intelligence and walk me into WellQ360, what that is and how it educates us really, I think, on some of those key things that would help us know when we're burnt out or help us know when we're not well, because for me, I didn't even think I was burnt out.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: I was working 17 hour days, every level of my health was shot, but I was just like trying to do what I always did, which was work harder, take on more responsibility.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: It fixed it before.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: It wasn't fixing it this time.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: So for me, a pretty smart person, I think I didn't see it but, like everybody else, did Right.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: So so tell me what wellbeing intelligence is and then tell me what you created so that we can understand it better.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: So wellbeing intelligence and I touched on it a little bit before is really this ability to, and this skillset to, recognize how our behaviors as individuals and leaders impact our own health and well-being, how our behaviors impact others, how the systems, if you will, that we are working in are creating either positive or negative well-being outcomes.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: And when I talk about systems, I'm really talking about the design of work and the ways of working, and so a good example for ways of working is the constant and ongoing debate right now about does everybody go to the office?
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Does nobody go to the office?
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: Do we go three days a week?
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Do we go two days a week?
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Like this constant swing between you know where, when and how we work.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: And then design of work is really, I mean, look, I mean talking about data, you know.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you look at some of the data around, you know the amount of task switching that people do in a day, because you know, even though every single one of us, including myself, used to put on our resumes that we were incredible multitaskers, all we're really doing is task switching because your brain can't actually do two things at once, but the amount of task switching that happens during a work day or us getting our work done, and so the number of pings and dings, the number of emails, the number of systems, the number of programs that we're going back and forth between just to get one project or one task done, is astronomical, and the mental load, the cognitive load that that creates on people, is actually creating exhaustion and burnout.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: And so we need to start addressing those types of things because, to your point, especially for high performers or high performing organizations of which I think most organizations would say they're high performing people don't know that they're burning out.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Or if they do know that they're burning out, like in my case, similar to you, you know, I had this mentality of like I'm just going to keep pushing through and eventually something will give.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Well, eventually something did give.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: It was me.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: But that's not what I thought was going to give right, you know, but because I just kind of said, let me just power through, and I didn't have any examples either of anybody that I believed was doing it differently, it appeared to me, at least perception wise, that that's how everybody was doing it and that everybody was fine.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: And so, since I wasn't fine, there was something wrong with me right, right.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: I feel like we didn't even really talk about it until 2020, 2021.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know I had not heard the words burnout before then and I had already burnt out.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: Right, right, me too.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: Right and I think that was part of the story is that I didn't know what I was going through.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: So, for better or for worse, we're talking about it a lot more now.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think burnout too.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: I think what I've learned about it after experiencing it, probably at a pretty high, I would say, toxic level is that it follows you because it's your habits, it's your discipline, it's what you do.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Maybe the workplace can exacerbate some of it, like with their culture or how they operate or what they reward, right, yeah, true, you know, I think about lots of things that I think it can come into play into that equation, but I think ultimately, what I realized is that I own the master key to whether it happens again or not.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: And knowing.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: The signs and symptoms are huge, and I've certainly had my moments over the last five years of being an entrepreneur where I'm like whoa, like when I asked, do I need to put my out of office on for Saturday and Sunday?
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: That's probably an indicator of like I'm not thinking, like I should be thinking right.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: You know I'm taking the weekend off.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: I feel guilty.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Right and those feel like you know, almost kind of like you know, you and I can sit here and talk about them and actually like laugh or giggle about it because they feel silly and frivolous, but they're not, because that's what the workforce is experiencing and that's the questions that they have.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: Impact of those behaviors and, in particular, as a leader, you know understanding the impact of your own behaviors when you are working every weekend.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: Or you know something when I was at Deloitte, actually, another leader said to me I cannot stand the fact that people put an out of office message on when they leave for the afternoon to go to a doctor's appointment.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Like you should be able to get up and leave your laptop or your phone or your email for two hours to go to the doctor.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: Like you don't need to.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Like yeah, I used to apologize.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: I get back to my office.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: I was in mean sorry for my delay and it had been 75 minutes, Right, Exactly, you know and like saying you know like, stop saying sorry for my delay.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: delay, if you took 24 hours, I mean not even 75 minutes 24 hours right, the role that work like work has consumed our lives and we have, we have normalized these behaviors, so no wonder so many people are feeling burnt out and so no wonder people don't say something when they're feeling overburdened or overstretched or overwhelmed.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: We're starting to see it right.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: We are starting to see the younger generation push back and you know God, love them for it, because they're not wrong.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: I feel like they're motivated by different things as well.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: You know, what I keep telling like senior leaders is no, I'm not throwing shade on parents or adults, but a lot of them also grew up with parents who were overwhelmed, overworked and would say to them hold on a second, I have to respond to this email, I can't pay attention to you right now.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: And so they're like no, we're going to find a different way.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I don't want to be that.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: I don't want to be that.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like I don't want to be that.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: I don't want to be that, yeah, I don't want to experience that yeah.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Good for them?
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, good for them, right, like we need that.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: I think the big question is and this is where wellbeing intelligence comes in, and this idea of we have the opportunity to change the system of work and the ways of working and the expectations around work.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: This doesn't mean that we are, you know, lazy or less aspirational or want to do less.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: It means we just want to do it differently, and we know that it can be done differently, because we know also that, you know, you and I embraced the system and the system burned us out right, like the system didn't treat us well.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: And so we're still to your point about burnout.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, a lot of it is about our own behaviors and what we choose, but also, as people that care deeply about our work and being passionate about what we do, it's really hard to be like well, it's my own fault that I burnt out, because the system, the system, benefits from you, like, not from you burning out, but from all the things up until the point of you burning out.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: Right, you're working extra hours, you taking on extra projects, you like organizations benefit from that, but ultimately they don't.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: And so well-being intelligence, you know, is a bit of a hill to climb because it's a longer term play.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: It's the desire to want to change things now because we know it's going to make it better.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: It's going to make it better now, but it's also going to make it better in the future.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: And we have to look at things like how are our behaviors perceived or real impacting ourselves and others?
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Like are those behaviors actually aligned with our values as an organization?
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: And it's more the outcomes of those behaviors than the behaviors themselves?
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: Right, and actually looking at things as a set of outcome, because I believe that well-being isn't an input.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: Well-being is actually an outcome of the things that you do the things that you do as an individual and the things that you do as a leader and the things that you do on a team and the things that you do as an organization either create good well-being or create bad well-being.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: It's an outcome, yeah.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: It's not outcome of action.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: You know your actions, organization, act.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: It's a combination, right?
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely wasn't saying like it's all my fault, from the sense of being burnt out, and I think it's a really good point that you made.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: But I think for me, what I had to realize is I had the tendency to drop back into some of those habits.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Of course, because you're in a system that celebrates those habits, so of course you're going to right yeah, and that's how you get ahead and that's how you get the promotion and that's and for me it was, I think, at 53.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: What I'm realizing is like literally what I'm doing right now this journey, this messy middle they call it, or whatever.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: For me we gotta come up with a more positive than messy middle, but I think it is this becoming right.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: It's about right now, like the things you things don't work, the things you figure out when it gets really tough, how you celebrate yourself.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: You know, I think that's one of the reasons when I created the bold framework which is believe, own learn.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Design is understanding our own beliefs are totally the pivot, the jump, the springboard out of everything that we do.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: And the ownership piece was really about taking agency in our life, which I really felt like.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: I didn't have that for some reason, even though I'm a really confident, bold woman, very experienced, very intelligent, doing all the things.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: But I didn't make smart moves when it came towards my work, when it came to me burning myself out.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: But most people don't right.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, and I think that's, I think that's why we are where we are is because most people don't.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: It's not, you know, I, when I talk to leaders, I tell them, like, if 30% of your organization, if 30% of your people are saying that they are burnt out or don't feel like that, that yourbeing is supported and keep in mind, some of these numbers are a lot higher then that's not an individual problem, that's an organization Like, that's a systems right.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: When your numbers are that high, you know, if you have 10 people that are feeling burnt out out of 10,000, okay, you know, maybe there's something about those people or the way they're working, or something that's going on with their work or how they are.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: You know the choices that they're making.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Or, quite frankly, I know we define burnout as something that is a workplace phenomenon.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: I tend to disagree with that.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: I think that burnout, at least today, is coming from many different factors.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Why couldn't you burn out at home, like I'm just thinking here of all the things you do as a mom Right, taking care of parents?
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of things that we do that aren't at work Exactly, and so I mean, I think it's more of a life phenomenon and I think that the way that the and this is what wellbeing, intelligence and WellQ360 tries to get at, it's like work is a part of our whole life, you know, and it shouldn't consume or, you know, impact in such a negative way the rest of our life.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: And so if we're having to choose between wow, do I, do I get this work done tonight, or do I spend time with my children, or do I need to put an office on for two hours while I'm away at the doctor, that's how we're spending our brain power.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: What are we actually doing?
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: And how do we create workplaces that don't force people to have to even think about those things or make those decisions, where they're having to choose either life or work?
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: Because, like I mean, work should be a part of your life, a meaningful part of your life, for sure, and it's going to ebb and flow depending on where you are in your career.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: Sometimes you're going to give more to work and sometimes you're going to give more to life, and I think that that's perfectly normal.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: But I think where we are for a lot of people is that it feels constantly like this choice I either have to choose work, and that's how I get ahead, or I choose my life or my family or whatever it is that I like doing outside of work, and I won't get ahead at work if I do that, and that's not.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's not sustainable.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: And why do we want that Like?
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: Why wouldn't we change that?
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, what's your advice for someone who's starting to feel that like something's like I call it, the something's got to give, like I, one more thing and you know I just can't cope.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: And the world keeps spinning.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: You're like, okay, what do I do?
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: And what would your guidance be for someone who's feeling they think they're burnout or they're getting to that place?
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: What would you say?
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: So, first of all, I think it depends on the capacity that you feel that you have.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: But you know, even today, even even with everything that I know and everything that I help others with and share with others, you know you and I were talking before.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: You know in the green room that sometimes it's easy to fall back into those behaviors that that you know lead you right back down that path, and so for me, I've become really aware of what that looks like.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Even my own behaviors, you know I'm very reactive, I'm very, you know like.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: You know, emotion regulation is hard.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: I'm, you know I'm.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: I snap at my husband.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: You know, like things where I'm like, oh wait, something is up here, you know, and those are the signals to say, okay, like I need to sit down and do like a life audit, right, then there's many great books on this type of thing of like, okay, what am I doing?
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Like, what's everything on my plate, what's out of my control?
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: That I need to just be like, all right, I'm not spending time and energy on this because I can't control it.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: I call that my out of my control list, but just writing that down is helpful.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: And then the other things are okay what are my?
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: non-negotiables, like what are the things that Jen needs to do to make Jen?
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Jen like to make me show up and feel good and be engaged and you know, generally feel content and happiness and joy and all of those things, and that you know that looks like getting good sleep and you know making sure that I'm getting movement or exercise and you know, and looking at how I'm feeling my body and my diet, it's looking at my social connections and am I spending time with friends.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Because what happens when you feel overwhelmed is those are the things that you compromise on.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: First.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: You compromise on yourself.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: First you start canceling lunch dates with friends.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: You stop going to the gym or doing going for a walk, whatever your preferred choice of movement is, doing yoga.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: You start compromising your sleep because you're just going to get a little bit of extra work in before you go to bed.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: Like you start compromise.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: You start eating at your desk right and kind of just shoveling food into your mouth just to get it in.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: So I look at those and I rate like how am I doing?
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Have I canceled workouts?
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: Have I, you know, am I going to bed later than I?
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: Would write and rate those and then I also make a list of like, what are all the things that I'm working on?
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: And start prioritizing those.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Like, are there things that I'm working on that don't need to be done right now or don't need to be done at all?
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Right, and you know if you're working for someone or with a team, having that discussion of like look, I got all these things on my plate.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: Can you help me prioritize, because I'm feeling overwhelmed and I don't know.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: You know, I don't know which one is most important, but I can't do all of them effectively in a way that I would be proud of if I have to do all of them at the same time.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: And that's a very fair conversation to have with a leader as a leader.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: If somebody came to me and said that I would be like oh my, thank you for telling me this, because I think the other thing is is that we need to be careful and this is where I kind of see a problem in the workplace around well-being, intelligence and in making the changes that need to be changed is.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: We talked a little bit about the younger generation wanting to work a different way and them not being wrong, and then you have the people that are in these more senior leadership roles that came up through the system of work in a very different way and don't necessarily either completely understand or it's change right.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Like change is hard.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: I didn't do it that way, so like doing it some other way means that I have to change, and that's just generally hard for people.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: But I think what we have right now is a lot of people are pointing fingers at each other, like we're saying, oh, the younger people are lazy or they don't want to work hard or they and that's not it.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: And then the younger people are saying, oh, you know, the older generation, the leaders, they just don't get it.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: But what we're not doing is having these real conversations about like, ok, what can we actually start to change, recognizing that this is going to be, it's not going to happen overnight.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: But but can we have these very real conversations about what is not working, about work and what are the realities of work Right?
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: Because I think also we tend to kind of say they don't understand or they don't get it.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: And I tell people a lot of times, until you communicate this to your leaders, like until you, I mean, talk about being bold and courageous.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: These are hard conversations to have, but you can't expect that they themselves even know what the problem is.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: Or maybe they're experiencing the same problem and they don't know how to fix it, or they don't have the time or the capacity to fix it.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: Because chances are, if you're overwhelmed, your leader is probably overwhelmed too.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really possible.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Out of the things that you said, I think what is coming up that I think people should hear is that have the conversation first with yourself.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Like, is this truly me when you look at yourself in the mirror?
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: Is that have the conversation first with yourself?
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: Like, is this truly me when you look at yourself in the mirror?
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Is that you and go through their profile of how you take care of yourself, what you do, what your habits normally are, and are you aligned right?
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: I think the other thing for me was just being misaligned with my value.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: So I value relationships, I value my family, I value time outside.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Literally none of those were happening and I was sleeping maybe two hours a night and working 17.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: So there wasn't a lot of time to do much.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: So I think some of them become very, very obvious that something's misaligned or out of balance, if you use that word.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: So I think that's the first person you talk with you and you know are you reactive?
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: Are you feeling negative?
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Are you know?
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Are you feeling depressed?
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Are you feeling depressed?
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Are you feeling sad?
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: These are things that you need to check in and not ignore.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: I ignored the majority of those.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: I did too, yeah, and then your body says sorry, you can't ignore me anymore.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Exactly so, I think.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: And then, ultimately, the next bold move is having the conversation with whoever you work with, whether it's your supervisor, the leader or someone at your work that can help you maybe prioritize.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: That's kind of an awkward conversation, it might feel like, but it is you advocating for yourself as well as being able to prioritize the work.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: So, you know, having the conversation with yourself and with others is one of those first things that you can do, but recognizing that some of the symptoms are happening.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, with that.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: I always you know.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: I say that you know, and this is something that Brené Brown always says in a different context, but I think it applies to so many contexts in our life.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: That clear is kind.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: If I know, you know, I tell leaders this all the time make sure your people know exactly what the priorities are, right, and that way they can align their work with what's prioritized, as opposed to, you know, just having this giant to do list of things that paralyze most of us, right, because we don't know where to start.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: I think, oftentimes in health care or any industry.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: But you know, obviously my lived experience is there.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: There were so many things.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: Everything was a number one, right and so being able to to see it and be able to deal with you know we need to.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: We can't do 10 number ones like we have a number one right and so being able to see it and be able to deal with you know we need to.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: We can't do 10 number ones Like we have one number one, yeah.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Greg McCann always says there's one priority.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: That's why it's called a priority you can't have seven of them.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: Otherwise, that's not the definition of a priority.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: Well, as we close out, what's coming up for you, where can we find you and what are you most excited about of the work you're working on?
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely Well, we've.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: Obviously we talked about WellQ360.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: And so, working with my collaborators and my co-creators on that, we're going to be launching more around that soon.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: You can follow us on LinkedIn.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: You can follow me on LinkedIn.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: I also am the creator and the host of the Work Well podcast, so you can find that on any of your podcatchers.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: And then also I'm writing a second book called Hope is the Strategy.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: It won't come out for a little while.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: It doesn't come out until February of 2026, but I still hope you'll put it on your to buy and to read book.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: But much of what we talked about today, that hope is this underrated skill set that really does transform leadership, organizations and work and wellbeing and demystifying hope away from this idea.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: That hope is, you know, softer or wishful thinking, but that, as Gallup recently said in one of their reports, you know, hope is the number one thing that followers are looking for from their leaders, and that's worldwide, and I love the way that Gallup talked about it.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: They talked about it.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: Trust was the second, but by a big margin.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: They said that trust maintains the status quo, whereas hope actually gives people the path forward, like gives them the ability to believe in a better way and in a better path forward, and I just think that that is really powerful and really needed, because we're in the middle of a mass transformation of all kinds, and I, too, roll my eyes when people talk about transformation.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: But the thing is, is without hope, transformation and strategy actually falls flat, because if you can't get people to believe in your vision, then you're going nowhere or you're going alone, and that's not very helpful.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: So that's what my book is about.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so another powerful, big reminder of belief right, and it's, it's ability to really help us move forward, overcome, figure out.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: Be bold Without, without hope, we we would struggle with being bold, right yeah for sure for sure.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on the bold lounge.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: All the information about jen is down in the episode notes, thank you.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the bold lounge podcast.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: Through the continuum of bold stories vulnerability to to taking a leap you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with a bold mindset.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey with you.