Latest / Real STRength with Sarah Draper / The Wellness Lie at Work | #7
Transcript
- Sarah Draper: You cannot build a healthy culture if you're not healthy yourself. When people don't trust that they'll be treated fairly, they can't show up authentically. That's what cultural contradictions do. You can only do what you can do, and you can't do everything, but you can do something. Welcome to the Future Walk Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Drapert. Each week on the podcast, I explore tools to help you lead your best now and into the future. And I talk with top leaders to see how they stay focused when life gets cluttered. It's time to stop reacting to your life and start leading it. Welcome to Future Walk. Welcome to the Future Walk Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Draper, and I'm so glad you're here. And if you're new to the podcast, an especially warm welcome. And a little bit about me before we begin. I spent more than three decades in the Army and the FBI leading national security programs and high-stakes operations. And through that work, I learned that even the best leaders struggle when they don't create the time and the space to step out of the noise and think clearly. That's why I developed the Future Walk, a practice that has changed my life and leadership, and I know will yours too. Okay. Today we're going to be talking about something that Needs to be said, it needs to be said plainly. You cannot wellness program your way out of bad leadership, toxic culture, or organizational dysfunction. Now, this is part one of a two-part series. And today I'm going to show you why leadership behavior matters more than any wellness program when it comes to team well-being and trust. Then I'm going walk you through how to identify the cultural contradictions that are undermining what you're trying to build. And in part two, I'll give you the real strength framework. This is a practical tool I put together to actually help you do something about it. So by the end of today's episode, you'll understand why your well-being as a leader isn't just personal, it's organizational. And you'll have a tool To audit your culture for contradictions. So I want to start with something that should concern every leader. It's something you probably already feel, but I think the numbers are pretty staggering. Research from Johns Hopkins analyzing over 1.3 million employees across nearly 3,000 organizations found that in 2024, US employees reported the lowest well-being scores on record. Think about that. After years of wellness programs and employee initiatives and organizational commitments to employ well-being, it's at an all-time low. Now, what I'm gonna get to, but I wanna kind of say first here is this isn't about wellness programs and their effectiveness. They absolutely matter in taking care of people and giving them the coping skills, giving helping them build resilience and De stress, those matter so, so much. But despite all that work happening, we're still seeing employee well-being declining. That's the issue, that's the gap. Because those things matter, but they're not addressing the root cause of the issue. That's what we're gonna get to as we go on. But those things matter and they are important. But we've got to get to that root cause of what's really going on in organizations that's causing the unwellness and fix that so that individuals, teams, organizations can actually thrive. And this isn't just a workplace issue. I'm gonna get into this a little too. Economist Sam Peltzman at the University of Chicago analyzed 50 years of happiness data from the General Social Survey. And found what he calls a regime change. This was an unprecedented 22-point crash in American happiness in 2020 that still hasn't recovered. So for 50 years, through wars and recessions and stagflation and 9-11, happiness stood steady at around 20 points on his measure. None of it broke the floor in any sustained way. There were little drops, but it would come back up. That was until 2020 hit. That crash was twenty-two point two percentage points, by far the largest single move in the survey's fifty year history. And as of twenty twenty-four, it's only recovered to around six. So that's a shift from twenty to single digits within just a few years with no meaningful recovery. And on the organizational side, back to that. So that's just general happiness. Now back to the organizational side. The impact, that same Johns Hopkins research that I talked about a moment ago found that poor mental and physical health in the workplace erodes profits through higher turnover, decreases engagement, reduces customer service, and increases health care costs. So there's a very big Occupational organizational costs associated with lack of well-being in the workplace. And then another thing that stood out to me was that manager well-being has actually improved just a little bit during this time frame, but frontline employee well-being continues to decline. And so that gap also says something's important. I mean, it's it's encouraging that something's improving. But it to me sends a message or indicates that. This is an organizational issue. It is not just individual resilience or individual grit or individual coping. It's an organizational issue. Now, what works? Well, research from WebMD Health Services found that in the absence of empathetic leadership, toxic workplaces, low morale, high turnover, and burnout resulted. But when leaders demonstrated organizational care, When they modeled well-being and created psychologically safe environments, teams thrive. And all those things are very low cost or free, right? Leadership modeling, checking with your team, eliminating or identifying and minimizing toxic behavior, creating psychologically safe environments, demonstrating that organizational care. Budget can help. With a lot of these important things that are happening. But even if you don't have a huge budget, cultural change starts with leadership behavior. You just have to approach it intentionally. So it starts with intentional leadership and it starts with you. You cannot build a healthy culture if you're not healthy yourself. I know this may feel indulgence. It may feel selfish. I have heard every version of leaders eat less and I'll take care of myself after I take care of everyone and everything else possible out there. But I've learned it the hard way. And you're depleted, you are reactive, you're burned out, and you are not serving your team. You're modeling dysfunction. Your stress becomes their stress. Think about that. You're you bleed this energy. You're taking some of that stress is going on to them. While they're trying to do all the things they need to be doing, they're now carrying around some of your stress. And your reactivity becomes their anxiety. Your anxiety becomes their anxiety. Your burnout can lead to their burnout. So Well-being for leaders, leader well-being, your well-being is not a luxury. It is not indulgent. It's a leadership imperative. When you model healthy behaviors, whatever that means, taking care of yourself physically, enjoying your time outside of work, taking breaks, setting boundaries, managing your stress, your team follows. It you model that for them and it gives them permission to do that themselves. But when you model dysfunction, your team follows that too. You set the standard, you are the culture setter. So before you can fix an organization's culture, you have to start with yourself. Now, before we get into The next step in how to do that, I want to pause for just a moment. If you're finding this helpful or thought-provoking, I'd love for you to share this episode with someone else. You might have already thought of someone who could benefit from hearing this. Maybe it's a fellow leader who's struggling with burnout or someone who's trying to change the organization's culture. Whoever it is, just that person you thought of, send them a link and a short note that you thought of them. They will appreciate it. And it could change their leadership, which is all of us together to change cultures. Okay, let's get into a little bit about cultures with this idea of a cultural contradiction. This is the second part of this. Number one is you as a leader have to take care of yourself. The second part is as a leader, you have to identify these cultural contradictions. These are the gaps between what you say you value. as an organization and what you actually reward or punish. They're the disconnect between your stated values and your actual behaviors. And they create distress that no amount of wellness programming can fix. And then here's some common ones. Maybe you say you value wellness, but people who take mental health time are inadvertently punished for it. Or you reward people who work through illness. Or you kind of subtly question those who take all their vacation days. Maybe you say you value work-life balance, but you're sending emails late at night and expecting an answer, or you're scheduling meetings outside of normal hours, or creating schedules that destroy family time. Again, there are times when that stuff has to happen. Believe me, I understand that. But if those things are happening routinely, then you're sending a different message through your behaviors and what you're saying is important. That erodes trust. That's a cultural contradiction. Maybe you say you value collaboration, but only reward individual performance. Maybe you say you value innovation, but you punish people who take calculated risks and fail. So only those who play it safe actually get rewarded. Maybe you say you value transparency, but you have the meeting after the meeting where not everyone's privy to that, and that's where the real decisions get made. This matters because when employees experience cultural contradictions, they report higher stress, lower engagement, and greater burnout, even when the wellness programs are available, because that contradiction itself creates distress. And this matters more than ever. For 50 years, that general social survey just covered the reviewer who looked at that, Mr. Peltzman. Yeah, they this survey has asked Americans whether they thought other people would treat them fairly, right? Just do you think people will treat you fairly? And for 50 years, the answers were positive. 2020, that belief collapsed and it hasn't come back. Peltzman's analysis showed that trust and fair treatment. As he put it, fell off the end of the table in 2020. And it's behaved exactly like that happiness question. It hasn't recovered. So happiness has eroded and trust has eroded. When people don't trust that they'll be treated fairly, they can't show up authentically. They can't bring their big ideas. They can't fully engage. They can't take the good creative risks you need. They might hesitate to collaborate. That's what cultural contradictions do. They destroy the belief that fairness is possible in an organization. When what you say doesn't match what you do, people lose trust. They become cynical, maybe they disengage or they actually undermine your efforts. And no amount of programming, wellness programming is going to fix that when wellness programs are only trying. To build individual resilience instead of address organizational dysfunction. You've got to address organizational issues so you have a foundation upon which the individuals can thrive and do all the things you've brought them in your organization to do. So before you add another wellness initiative, you need to ask yourself: number one, what does my organization say it values? Number two, what do our policies and our leadership actually reward and punish? And number three, what's a contradiction? That contradiction is going to be where you start with eliminating those contradictions that are breaking your culture one at a time. So I want to give you a practical tool you can use this week to begin to do this. And this is called a cultural contradiction audit. Is first you ask yourself these three questions. Number one, what does my organization say we value? Think about your mission statement, your stated values, what you tell new hires, what you tell your family members when you're bragging about your organization. What do you say in all hands meetings? What's on your website? Write down three to five stated values. And then Question two, what do our policies and leadership behaviors actually actually reward or punish? Think about for this one who gets promoted and why. What behaviors get praised, which ones get criticized, what gets celebrated in meetings? Well who gets or what gets punished formally or informally? Then write down three to five actual behaviors that get rewarded or punished. Now compare your two lists. Where do your stated values and your actual behaviors contradict each other? So be honest. Be honest with yourself. Write down those contradictions. You might say something's important in a mission or value statement, but find that you're actually doing something that you reward the opposite behavior. Or you might believe something is really, really important, but you've realized there's this old policy that makes doing that thing against policy. These are the type of contradictions you're looking for. Identifying these contradictions is key. And then you have to figure out what you're going to do about it. Now you cannot do everything, right? And you can only do what you can do, and you can't do everything, but you can do something. So, how you figure out what that something is that you're gonna do is go this week, after you figured out what those lists have, those that you've got your two lists, and you've figured out what what's like those contradictions on your list this week. Leave your phone behind, go outside, take 20 to 30 minutes, take a strategic future walk and ask yourself this question: What is one thing, one thing I can do? as a leader to close this gap. Just one. Maybe it's actually changing a policy, right? Maybe it's like you you have that ability and authority and influence. Maybe it's modeling a different behavior through your own actions. Maybe it's just having a conversation with your team members about what you're seeing or what you've identified and getting their input. I mean maybe it's changing a policy. Maybe you have that authority and ability within your organization. Maybe it's personally modeling different behavior yourself. Maybe it's having a conversation with your team members about what you've identified and get their input on it. Or maybe you lead a team of other leaders and you ask them to go out and talk with their team members and you bring all that information together. You don't have to fix everything at once. You likely can't fix everything at once. You likely can't fix everything, but you can identify One thing, one thing that maybe moves the needle a little bit, one thing that helps your employees know you've got their best interests in mind, one thing that invites them into the conversation when it's appropriate, one thing that you can identify to start addressing the gaps. Okay, today we talked about employee well-being at being at an all-time low. And why leadership behavior is what makes the difference and how you have to start with yourself before you can change the culture. You deserve it, and the people you lead, the people you serve, and the people you love need you at your best. We also talked about what cultural contradictions are and why they create distress. And then the cultural contradiction audit, this tool to identify. where there's a gap between what you say and what you do. Now in part two of this, I'm going to give you the real strength framework. And this is a three-dimensional approach to build the strength you need to close these gaps and lead well. So it's going to be practical tools for yourself to do this work. This part is identifying the work that you can do. All right, so this week, do that cultural contradiction audit. What do we say we value? What do we actually reward or punish? And what's a contradiction? Right? Find that cont find those contradictions. Go out on a future walk with the question of what is one thing I can do to begin to close that gap. If you're finding value in this podcast, please follow us so you don't miss part two. And I'd love to hear from you. Please leave a comment about the cultural contradiction you identified or what surprised you or anything at all. And I appreciate you joining me today. So thank you for being here on the Future Walk Podcast this week. Step outside, leave your phone behind, take 20 to 30 minutes, see what becomes clear. And I'll see you soon. Until then, enjoy your walk.