Release Date:
May 21, 2025
Release Date: Mar 20
According to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace Report… Only 30% of employees feel truly engaged in their work, and the consequences are massive with higher turnover, lower productivity, and a workforce that feels disconnected from purpose.
The reality? Disengagement is a leadership crisis. It’s time to fix it.
Today we’re joined by Jean Accius, CEO of Creating Healthier Communities and thought leader in workplace well-being and leadership innovation.
What You’ll Learn:
In This Episode:
Resources Referenced:
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0:00
every single person should have the opportunity to livetheir healthiest life we can only get there if we're willing to get close ifwe're willing to
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suspend this narrative that for one group to succeed meansthat it has to be
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at someone else's expense is there anything else you want toleave our audience with i think true leadership is
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according to Gallup's state of the global workforce reportonly 30% of employees feel truly engaged in their
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work and the consequences are massive with high turnoverlower productivity and a workforce that really just feels
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disconnected from the purpose the reality is disengagementis a leadership crisis and it's time to fix it welcome
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to the Learn It All Podcast the show for today's leaders whowant to get ahead and stay ahead because we believe great
0:45
leaders aren't born or made they are constantly in themaking i'm your host Damon Ley two-time best-selling author
0:51
and CEO of Learn It a live learning platform that has helpedupscale over 2 million people in the past three decades
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joining me in a moment is Dr gan Axius president and CEO ofCreating Healthier
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Communities and a leading voice in workplace well-being andinclusive leadership in a moment I'm going to ask
1:10
Gene to share his thoughts on the real reason employees aredisengaged and why it's not just about pay how to create
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psychological safety so people feel seen heard and valuedand simple high impact
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strategies to boost your team's engagement which will allowthem to feel more engaged and thrive day in and day
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out what does it actually take to build a workplace wherepeople feel safe and
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they want to grow long term well you know that is anexcellent question uh we are seeing particularly now past the
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pandemic that there's this opportunity for connection thisopportunity for community so to really create an
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environment within the workplace where every single personfeels seen heard and
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valued is going to be critically important particularlygiven the fact that we're in really a hybrid environment and the need forconnection
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as human beings is so critically important so the companiesthat are thinking very intentionally about how
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they design meetings how they engage with their staff how dothey check in with staff are the ones that are going
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to see greater productivity greater engagement and franklygreater revenues
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there's a clear connection in terms of how um healthy yourworkforce is how
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engaged your workforce is directly with the bottom line infact uh Steven Covey
2:27
has a book called The Speed of Trust and in that bookthere's an amazing formula
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that looks at the relationship between productivity andtrust in organizations that have higher
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levels of trust you see a direct correlation with higherlevels of productivity in organizations that are
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dysfunctional and have lower levels of trust you see lowerlevels of productivity and think about it how are
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people spending their time i saw a meme the other day Damonthat um was
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circulating on social media and it was an individual who wasabout to get uh
3:06
say something you picked up the mic and was about to sharean idea up until he
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realized that if the idea was wellreceived he would actuallyhave to execute it so you so you saw this u
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social media meme where he picked up the microphone to saysomething he thought about it and then he put it down that is
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an example of an environment that's not psychologically safeso when we think about uh the workplace and we think
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about where we are today fostering well-being creating aculture where people feel that they are actually heard
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seen and valued is a clear opportunity for growth i'm sureyou probably saw it
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but a recent Gallup study said that we're at a 10 10 yearlow for actually employee engagement only 30% of
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employees are actually engaged in the workforce do you thinka lot of that has to do with loneliness from this the more
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hybrid virtual work i think loneliness is a factor i alsothink that there's an
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opportunity for us to really think about our our our coresense of why as
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individuals as leaders and as an organization to what extentare the
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workers the employees your associates I should say uh fullyinvested in the
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mission of the organization does it really make a meaningfuldifference in the lives of others to what extent do they actually
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see that so I share that with you Damon because of the factthat I do think that as I think it's as a combination of both
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personal and also collective responsibility meaning that atat an individual level I've had an opportunity
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to teach at American University and I've had an opportunityto teach leadership courses and one of the things I always
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ask my students is what's your why and I can't take creditfor this uh
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Franklin CVY uh talked about this in the seven habits ofhighly effective people
5:06
when you understand your personal mission it allows you totriage and
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align with organizations that are aligned to that personalmission so I see that as both an
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individual responsibility to say okay what am what fuels mysoul what gets me
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up in the morning to really go out there and conquer theworld do I know the answer to that question and if I don't
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then I need to spend some time really crystallizing thatsense of why i will
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say the other thing too Damon is that I had an opportunityto hear Seal uh speak
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uh at Lake Nona Impact Forum maybe a week ago and he talkedabout how purpose
5:49
is survival what is your purpose do you have a purpose andif you don't take the
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time to figure that out purpose is indeed survival and Ithink organizationally as employers and
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companies those employers and companies that are going tothrive in this new future of work if you will are those
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companies that are able to articulate why they exist what istheir unique value
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proposition how are they trying to change the world how doesthat show up in what ways how are you telling that
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story with your associates with your colleagues within theorganization how
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are you creating opportunities for your associates to reallyengage in manifesting and operationalizing the
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vision and the mission of the organization at CHC we havesomething called our purpose platform again
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purpose is survival it's an opportunity around volunteerismengaging your workforce in the very mission of the
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organization bring it to life and if you're able to tie thatindividual purpose into the mission or the purpose
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of the organization don't you believe that that could takethe organization much further and the individual i
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totally believe that i totally believe that 100% when I cameto CHC I spent
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some time doing a listening tour really listening to andhaving what I refer to coffees with Gan uh and it was an
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opportunity to meet staff across the organization and we didit in a virtual in a very virtual environment uh and we
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just had coffee and I had a set of questions one was what doyou hope that I do as the new CEO another question was
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what do you hope I don't do as the CEO and then the thirdquestion is what can we do together and what I learned was
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the fact that we had several staff within the organizationthat had skills
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interests passions that weren't necessarily being fullyutilized and when we married the individual purpose
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passion and skills with the organizational needs in a waythat was
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going to be strategic for the organization we've seenincrease in our growth one of our revenue verticals is
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over is 3% increase year-over-year in less than a year andthat has to do with the fact
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that you're matching people's purpose and their passionswith that of the organization when people feel as if it's
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their own they mean they will come up with better ideas thatthan you and I
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they will own it they will run with it you don't have tomonitor you don't have to do the daily check-ins the 15-minute
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check-ins because they feel ownership of it and I think thatis critical as
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leaders that how do we create an environment where peopleactually feel that they are part of the mission and
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that they own it and that they're contributing to it ialways say that the best ideas never come from the top you
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joined CHC I I think in 2022 yes correct and you startedyour listening with Jean
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conversations and you talked about what are some of thegreat things you know what are things you like to see me do
8:52
what what was some of the things you would not like to seeme do do you have any specific examples of uh things that
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you've impacted from those uh that you've implemented fromthose conversations that you've seen really take off since that time ohabsolutely
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so one of the things that came out of those conversation wethere were a couple of themes uh one was the fact
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that there was a deep desire a a tremendous desire to reallyunderstand
9:16
what colleagues actually did across the organization uh andone of the things that we were able to do was that we
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created a shadow day and a shadow day was that you wouldactually shadow someone else within the organization not
9:29
on your team and not in your department with the goal of notjust understand what they do but with a key question
9:36
what can I do to help uh and what came out of that wasactually this huge
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report out where individuals said I never knew what it tookto do X i never
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knew this is what the this department was actuallyresponsible for so it drove
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tremendous clarity but equally important it actually drovetremendous collaboration in ways that we had not
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seen before within the organization just that simple act ofasking someone to
10:06
spend some time with someone that you don't typically engagewith on a day-to-day basis to really understand
10:12
what do they do and ask this one simple question what can Ido to help the second thing that it also did was that
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it actually created ideas across the organization for thingsthat we may have not thought about but could potentially
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do we created something called a million-doll idea fund uhDamon and the whole idea here was the fact no we don't
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have a million dollars uh but the whole idea was the factthat every single person in the organization potentially
10:38
had that one idea that can generate a million dollars ifgiven the tools if given the resources if they feel that
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they can actually take a risk and share what is on theirmind the third thing that we actually did was change and
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examine our language so for example when someone has an ideawe always say and so
11:00
and we could potentially do A B and C but means you shouldshut it down how do
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we nurture ideas within the organization and then finally wecreated an innovation committee bottom up comprised
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of staff to help us think about how do we generate ideaswithin the organization that we can quickly
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implement test and potentially scale and the last thing isis the fact that we
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want to celebrate failure and what I mean by celebratingfailure is the fact that not every idea we're going to
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implement is going to hit it out the park but we also wantto create an opportunity to learn from the work that
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we do how do we become a learning organization a learningorganization means that we have to be willing to take
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some risk it also means that there are going to be thingsthat we don't actually
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hit out the park and then the way that we did that Damonbecause I inherited an
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organization that is very risk adverse was that I had as theleader had to model the
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way so I asked for the team to do an initiative uh I wentthrough the process
12:05
of working with the team and it didn't have the outcomesthat we had hoped for so I use myself as a model in terms
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exactly what could we have done differently what did welearn from this what could we do differently moving
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forward and how do we document that in a way as part of theafteraction report so
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that way we can continue to learn from what's worked andwhat hasn't with that change have you been able to keep the
12:28
same let's say the same leadership ch team or did you haveto make some changes in there because people were just refuse to to to makethat shift I
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think that's an excellent question I think one of thetoughest decisions as a leader one can make and I haven't having
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haven't experienced this is deciding exactly who's in theright seat in with
12:47
the right title and moving in the right direction uh I dothink that is critically important to have the right
12:53
team around you uh which is why I took my time i thinkthere's different philosophies in terms of leaders coming
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in to an organization and deciding exactly you know howthey're going to
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help the organization meet its strategic priorities in myparticular case I spent
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a little bit over a year doing a lot of listening observingwe created a five-year strategic plan and then the
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question became based off the strategic direction that wewanted to go what skill sets would we need in order to get
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there uh we also experienced some uh financial challengesearly on uh as many
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nonprofits actually do uh so I was forced with having tolook at a reduction in force uh coupled with
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trying to meet our strategic priorities and those decisionsweren't easy uh but
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those are decisions were necessary for the evolution of theorganization uh so
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in my particular case I do think it's extremely important touh have those
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courageous conversations with the leadership team to fullyunderstand who's on board with the direction that
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we're going as an organization and realize that it's okay ifyou're not uh
14:05
on board it just means that we're going to have to part waysand I think those
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are the conversations that are necessary uh it's neverbeneficial for someone to be in a leadership position undermining
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the agenda of the organization you need to all be on thesame page as leadership team each other up that's ex that is
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exactly exactly uh correct uh in fact when you knowoftentimes uh when we talk
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about diversity I people think about it just from the uhdemographics and things of that nature one of the things I love
14:38
is diversity of thought i don't want a lot of yes i don'tneed any yes people around me i don't think it benefits the
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leadership i don't think it benefits the team and I surelydon't think it benefits the organization group think
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can be very dangerous many organizations have um closed downbecause they created
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a culture of group think not realizing that the world aroundthem was drastically changing i want to kind of
15:06
switch gears and talk about total well-being we talked wehit on it a little bit but you know sometimes people
15:12
look at work as you know it's because of income but there'sso much more than than just that how do we make it so that
15:19
employment is more of a social driver when it comes tohealth and total well-being work where you work the
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workplace the workforce is a social driver of health itimpacts your
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well-being it impacts your mental health it impacts in manycases your longevity
15:38
if you think about it Damon uh when you engage with othersin the
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workplace it is part of that social fabric you're learningyou're engaging
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it helps with your health overall it reduces socialisolation it fosters
15:55
greater connectivity and community you actually feel as ifyou have a sense of identity in some cases purpose uh so the
16:02
ability to really focus on total well-being in the workplaceis critically important in this environment
16:07
of turbulence of uncertainty how are leaders helping theirassociates their
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colleagues navigate what is frankly a very uncertain time inour environment
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and I think that the ability to come together as a communityto be able to see that person talk to that person hey
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what did you do this weekend that socialization is extremelyhelpful in terms of reducing social isolation the
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US Surgeon General indicated that social isolation isequivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day
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it is extremely negative to your health uh and we know thatbeing able to foster
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community in the workplace across all generations isactually beneficial many companies are managing
16:53
four to five generations in the workforce and in theworkplace and if you think about it these different
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generations have different attitudes perspectives insightsskills experiences
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and when you have that richness of age diversity in the
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workplace and if your company is leveraging that agediversity in a very
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intentional and meaningful way you're going to get new ideasyou're going to get new products you're going to see
17:22
greater creativity innovation lower turnover in part becauseof the fact
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that often times these generations are mentoring each otherthey're learning from each other i always say uh when
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people I when I have conversations with folks that I lovetalking to older
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adults full of wisdom part of it is because I was raised bymy grandmother the other part too is the fact that I
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know that that you have gone before me so what mistakes andregrets you have that I can help prevent me from having
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those same mistakes so I always say that I'm a benefactor ofthe wisdom and experience of older people uh and that's
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a good thing i've learned from them and they've also learnedfrom me and Damon I
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don't know if you have any children or not i do i have a sonthat's 14 and my daughter is 11 and I tell you I learn
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something new every single day i mean the language that theyuse I'm like I don't even know what you're talking
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about oh I know i got a seven-year-old and a three-year-old
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like what are you talking about you know I'm learning newterminologies that I didn't even know existed you know but it
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keeps me it keeps you going so how do we shift the thethinking from that that is
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so challenging to turn it into an asset so we could all workbetter together like what's one thing leaders can do
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better or differently i think one of the things that leaderscan do differently and it it doesn't cost anything uh but
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it's something tangible and that is to get close and what Imean by that one of my favorite quotes is by Brian Stevenson
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he is the executive director at uh the Equal JusticeInitiative author of the book Just Mercy and he says that you
19:00
cannot be an effective problem solver from a distance thereare nuances and details you will miss unless you
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actually get close and what I mean by that is the fact thatparticularly in the workforce in the workplace leaders
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have an opportunity to think about ways to create communitywith individuals from different backgrounds different
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perspectives different ideologies with the hopes of reallylearning
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if we truly say that we value the to the total well-being ofour workforce then
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we have to be very intentional about creating communitywhere all of those individuals can bring their full selves
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into the workplace and that means that there areopportunities again as I mentioned
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before even within CHC I intentionally with my executiveteam identified up and
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cominging leaders within the organization for them to mentorit was in their individual performance
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evaluation that you had to mentor and support and coachsomeone who doesn't
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look like you who's not in your department and the uhmentoring was both
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mentoring down and mentoring up and that is part of theirindividual
20:15
performance objectives so we have to institutionalize thisin terms exactly how are we creating community within the
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workforce what are the lessons that we're learning and howdo we bring that back so I think that's the first thing is to really createthose opportunities
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some companies Damon have um different uh uh employeeresource groups hartford
20:34
has Yorro which is like their young professionals and MattPro which is
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their more mature professionals and what they do is fromtime to time throughout the year they actually bring these two
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groups together intentionally for mentoring for conversationfor networking for relationship building if
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you think about the number of um young workers who are goinginto the
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workplace today they may not necessarily have some of theskills in terms of that
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interpersonal skills because they came through the pandemicand then attend a
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virtual environment to really understand how to navigate theworkplace might be a little bit more challenging i'm not you
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know I don't want to overgeneralize in some cases that mightbe the case but an older adult who've been there done that
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can kind of help them navigate some of these challenges andthen vice versa right so I do think that there's some
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opportunities to think about how are we within thisenvironment using the assets
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that we actually have within the workplace in a way thatreally harmonizes this opportunity of shared
21:39
learning and shared opportunity because I think if we can dothat then we can get at the root cause of agism uh and
21:47
the World Health Organization uh had a report that said thatyou know over half of the world's population has agist
21:55
beliefs meaning that they see an older person and theyautomatically have some negative assumptions about what that
22:01
person can and can't necessarily do and I think one of theopportunities we have is to challenge that and the only way we
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can actually challenge that belief is not just throughpolicy it's not just through advocacy but it's also through
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just sitting down and talking to someone and realizing that
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hey I've learned something about you that I didn't knowbefore and that
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totally changed my perspective of you and that changed myperspective of you gentleman I mentor in his 30s uh sales
22:33
leader and we were he's on they're hiring and we weretalking about a couple of the candidates and one of the
22:40
candidates happened to be graduate from college in the early90s and he almost
22:45
threw that resume aside because he said well this this thisperson's you know pretty old you know and for and I'm
22:52
somebody who graduated in the 90s right and uh and I justkind of went through
22:57
exactly what you brought up I said think about theexperience that they can bring to the table the way they do things
23:03
differently and other people can learn from includingyourself and so I think what you brought up there right right
23:08
there Gene was a very good point you know people we need tolook at things differently and and think about the
23:14
values and benefits that people can bring into anorganization so what what
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do you think it uh an organization to can do to retain andattract um older
23:25
workers you know are there specific policy or culturechanges that you think need to happen within an organization i
23:31
I do think there there are a couple of things I would justkind of bring to this conversation i think one is really
23:37
examining um all of your job descriptions uh uh positions toensure
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that the language is inclusive of all ages you know you knowthere are certain
23:49
buzzwords when I see I I kind of uh question uh good fitwhat does that
23:57
mean um full of energy right uh full of
24:03
enthusiasm yeah so really kind of going through the processof looking at your job descriptions for any position to
24:09
ensure that it's inclusive of all ages I think is going tobe critically important the other thing that I would
24:14
uh encourage is that there are opportunities to reallyhighlight uh and think through how do you create benefits
24:21
that are ageless and what I mean by that Damon is the factthat if you think about caregiving for example we have
24:27
over 53 million caregivers in this country uh and if you getwhile the
24:33
average caregiver is around 54 years old roughly speakingyou do have a lot of
24:39
caregivers who are millennials who are much younger so ifyou're an employer thinking about how do
24:46
you address the needs of caregivers who are older you mightmiss on the fact that
24:52
you also have some caregivers who are extremely young soreally thinking about your policies another example would be
24:59
for example student loan debt and student loan repayment youhave some companies that actually reimburse
25:06
um for student loan payments as a benefit and oftent timesthey have tied
25:12
that reim student loan reimbursement to frankly uh newemployees right so uh new
25:20
employees come into the organization and they may actuallyhave a benefit or there's some policy within it that says
25:26
you know this benefit is for a certain category whatever thecase may be the the challenge with that is the fact that
25:32
if you are only focused on age and experience less than fiveyears of
25:38
experience whatever the case may be you might miss the factthat you have a significant uh percentage of older
25:45
adults that carry student loan debt because they either tookit out for themselves they took it out for their uh
25:50
child that they're still paying or they took it out fortheir grandchild right right so really thinking about the opportunities to lookat your benefits
25:57
and say okay do these benefits really benefit people of allages in life
26:02
stages and if not how can we reimagine that i think theother piece is to
26:08
ensure that you're creating opportunities within theorganization to have courageous conversations about
26:13
topics that may be comfortable in some cases not comfortableto give people the space in the vehicle and the platform to
26:20
convey uh their thoughts and their feelings and not shy awayfrom it uh remember that your workers your
26:28
employees eventually have to leave the physical or thevirtual platform and go home
26:34
uh and uh they have to go into their own communities uh soyou can't compartmentalize your worker you have to
26:41
really fully embrace what they're dealing with and whattheir challenges are so how do you create that opportunity to um do that at CACthere's
26:50
a couple of things that we've done one is that we believe inthis time of turbulence that it's important to equip
26:57
our workers our workforce with tools to be resilient how doyou be resilient in
27:02
this environment uh so we've had everything David fromactually having a
27:07
facilitator walk us through meditation and mindfulnesspractices deep breaths
27:12
so literally uh during one of our staff we had someone for20 minutes or so give
27:18
us different tactics and strategies that we could use toaddress the nervous system to ensure that you know we are
27:25
managing our mental and well-being through deep breathexercises the entire executive team participated along with
27:32
staff so that's just one example other examples are havinguh volunteerism
27:38
opportunities uh we believe very strongly that when youvolunteer uh it improves your health it connects
27:45
you much closer to the mission and the purpose and itthere's so many great
27:50
social values of doing so so what are the opportunities torally your team around a volunteerism project again
27:58
thinking about different ways to create community and if I'ma leader sitting here which I am and uh and I'm thinking
28:04
about how can I get my team more involved in volunteerismwhere is where is one place uh they should go to start
28:11
to look for that is an excellent question so we have apurpose platform and it's literally based off the
28:17
opportunity to look at a volunteerism in your localcommunity it can look at uh different issue areas so depending on
28:23
the focus of the organization you can filter to see exactlywhat those opport opportunities are uh but I would start
28:29
there uh really think about ways to engage we have somethingcalled break with a purpose and that is an
28:35
opportunity where we actually bring in experts into theworkplace and to provide and engage with staff on a range
28:42
of topics uh it could be around mental health it could bearound caregiving uh so those are some of the opportunities
28:48
particular on the CAC website so your uh leaders can go tocac.org or and type in
28:54
purpose platform and that will actually come up but I dothink that there are some things they what I tried to do in
28:59
our conversation is that really provide some tips and somestrategies that are frankly low cost but high impact and
29:07
what do you say to leaders who are like when it comes tomeditation and all that kind of stuff they're like "Hey that's
29:13
not our responsibility that's an individual'sresponsibility." Well you know what I would say is the fact that
29:19
um that it shows up in your in your bottom line it shows upin terms of
29:25
productivity it shows up in terms of absetismium it shows upin terms of uh
29:31
uh sick leave it it it actually shows up uh so I think it'sa shared responsibility clearly we're not mental
29:38
health uh counselors we're not licensed to do that but we dohave the opportunity to bring in resources into
29:45
the organization to help individuals navigate their thechallenges personally
29:50
or professionally uh and I also believe that as leaders wehave an opportunity to model the way uh meaning the fact
29:57
that when I get on a call with someone I don't justautomatically jump into the agenda item now there are days I am
30:04
guilty of doing that but for the for but for the most part Ireally try to spend a few minutes just saying hey I want to
30:10
check in with you how are things going you know how's thefamily doing i know during our last oneonone you mentioned
30:15
that your brother was ill is he feeling a little bit betterin other words as a leader I
30:21
think it's important to convey to those in which you leadthat you see them
30:27
beyond the fact that they're just an employee and when youdo Jean they feel like they belong that's exactly right
30:34
and that makes such a big difference um to how peopleapproach coming to work
30:39
you know they're not just coming for a paycheck anymore kindof like we talked about they they're coming to a place where they belong a lotof times they
30:44
believe more on the purpose and what you just did rightthere doesn't cost anything to ask a couple questions and
30:51
there are inexpensive ways to provide services likemeditation i think at Learn It I think we spend like $7 a
30:58
month per employee to give them different apps that theycould use and have access to to to help exactly
31:05
exactly i mean it is a tremendous it is a tremendous valueuh and I did talk to
31:11
a leader who had a similar uh remark said well you know youknow we're not responsible for their mental health was
31:17
the feedback that I got and I said and I said well that'sthat's that's not what I'm referring to here i'm referring
31:24
to creating a culture where someone can actually feel safeseen and valued and in order to ensure that individuals feel
31:31
safe valued seen and heard you have to address thepsychological safety within the environment in which they operate i
31:37
want to switch gears a little bit and go back to somethingwe kind of touched on but I know it's a lot of work you do at
31:43
CHC CHC and that's um life expectancy by zip codes can wetalk a little bit about
31:50
that we sure can we sure can how much time do we have
31:56
David not enough no so so you know so this is an
32:04
area of of work that is a deep passion of mine and when wetalk about life
32:11
expectancy what we're really talking about here is time timeto engage with your family
32:19
time to contribute back to society time to do the thingsthat bring you joy and
32:24
satisfaction that's what we're talking about here and what Imean by this is
32:30
the fact that in the US there's a huge difference in termsof the life expectancy gap how long you will live on
32:38
average of about 20 years and what this means Damon that it
32:44
would be one thing if it was an average of 20 years from onestate to another right or from the east coast to the west
32:50
coast or the west coast to the east coast or the the centralyou know it would be different if that's what we were referring to
32:55
but this 20-year difference in life expectancy actuallyboils down to two neighborhoods less than 5 miles apart
33:02
from each other now that is crazy right two neighborhoodsless than 5
33:08
miles from each other have a difference of about 20 yearlife experience you got
33:14
and we see this all over the country in the in the DC areaif you're a resident of
33:19
Georgetown your life expectancy is about 96 if you're aresident in Anacostia
33:25
again less than 5 miles your life expectancy is 67 nearly 30year nearly
33:31
30-year difference right and what that represents isbasically that if you're a
33:36
resident in Anacostia you have 30 year less 30 years
33:43
less of time to do the things that matter most to you to seeyour
33:49
grandchildren to be able to walk your daughter or son downthe aisle to create
33:56
memories to contribute back in meaningful ways whereas aresident in Georgetown would have those
34:03
experiences it's the same case in Baltimore Chicago New York
34:08
Pennsylvania California i mean you we can go literally cityby city and you
34:14
can actually see these huge differences so the questionbecomes how can we actually close those gaps because every
34:20
single person in every single neighborhood deserve the sameamount of time to do the things that bring them joy and to live out their fulluh
34:28
destiny their full potential this is a nonpartisan issue itdoesn't matter if
34:33
you live in a red state or a blue state or a purple state oranything in between it surely doesn't matter if you live in
34:38
a rural area or an urban area every single person shouldhave the opportunity to live their healthiest life period and we know that inthe
34:46
United States for a country as rich as ours with tremendousresources we spend
34:51
more on health care but actually have some of the worsthealth
34:57
outcomes so we really need to start to think differentlyabout how we address these gaps and it really comes down to
35:03
the local level how do ensure that we are bridging betweennonprofits and
35:09
companies and government in a way that centers the communitylived experience at the center because they are the true
35:17
experts you know I joke all the time that when I was growingup in South Florida in Pmpa Beach Yeah you know uh
35:25
we weren't um we had limited resources uh and my aunt wasspiritually rich uh
35:31
rich but uh but financially you know when you look at thepoverty line and
35:37
things of that nature we were potentially qualified as beingpoor i say that to say that as we think about
35:43
ways to address these issues we got to figure out what those
35:51
individuals at the community level want and need and it maynot be what we think they want and need
35:58
i call it Damon that I said I knew how to I saw my aunt whoworked for a family
36:03
for 30 years getting a paycheck of nearly about $200 a weekworking 40
36:08
hours a week master the sum of over $100,000 in herretirement so I say that not to brag
36:16
i say that to say that that I saw firsthand what it meant tobe a hard
36:23
worker to be someone that had grit to see someone who hadpassion you know who
36:30
knew how to work it we call that now today
36:36
innovation all right broadly defined everyone loves the terminnovation i saw
36:42
folks innovating with very limited resources in a way thathonored their
36:48
dignity honored their agency and that's what we have anopportunity to
36:54
do that is the opportunity for us is to ensure that everysingle person has the resources the tools uh and the wealth
37:02
the tools frankly to navigate and be in the driver's seat oftheir own destiny are you cautiously optimistic that we
37:09
could get there that's an excellent question i think that wecan only get
37:14
there if we're willing to get close if we're willing tosuspend this narrative that for one
37:23
group to succeed means that it has to be at someone else'sexpense we can only get there Damon if
37:31
we truly understand what CO was designed to teach us andthat is what you do in
37:36
California impacts me here in Maryland what I do here inMaryland impacts here in California that we're actually more
37:43
interdependent than independent and I think it's a falsenarrative to believe that we are independent people we're
37:50
interdependent people and I think that's the biggestchallenge that we actually face so am I
37:56
hopeful i am hopeful that as we continue to navigate theturbulence that we're in
38:02
I'm hopeful that as we continue to navigate the uncertaintythat we're in that we will finally start to see our
38:07
interdependency in a way that we have not seen before i'mhopeful that we will
38:13
start to um get to a place like the movie uh Crash if you'venever seen the movie
38:19
Crash I highly recommend it uh that the confluence of issuesfacing our country
38:25
is going to force us to crash and then we'll have to be ableto confront each other and see each other in different
38:31
ways that we hadn't seen before well hopefully it doesn'ttake us to hit rock bottom to get there to be able to see those things that'swhat that that's my
38:38
hope yeah so Jean you know I could sit here talk to you forhours there's so
38:43
much more um but I want to be respectful of your time isthere anything else you want to leave our audience with before
38:49
we wrap up i I think Damon is conversations like this andthe opportunity for us to learn from each other i think true leadership is
38:56
realizing that you don't know all the answers uh trueleadership is being open to having conversations to learn about
39:04
what other people are doing what other practices arehappening how are other leaders navigating challenges and then
39:10
implementing some of those solutions in your ownorganization to scale for impact so what I would love to leave
39:16
your organ uh your lead your listeners with is the umability at the individual
39:22
level to challenge your assumptions to be willing to fostera diversity of
39:29
thought to be open to engaging with individuals
39:34
and people who may not be from your background walk of lifeor your department all in the spirit of becoming
39:41
a learning organization all in the spirit of being acoaching leader
39:46
um if we're not willing to continue to learn then we've doneourselves a
39:52
disservice our team a disservice and also the organizationthat we're leading just kind of recap some of the things we
39:57
talked about the importance of total well-being uh learningorganization
40:03
which of course we're all about here diversity of thoughtand also Gan I really like how you walked us through
40:09
when you first came on board at CHC and you did your listenwith Gan conversations I think that is such an
40:15
important thing because so many times new leaders or CEOscome in and they just disrupt and you and I were talking
40:23
offline and you said it's one thing to do something but it'show you go about it so I think that that is so important
40:30
this has been a wonderful conversation i don't want to leavewithout uh giving a shout out to uh my good friend Meredith
40:36
Bell from Grow Strong Leaders who introduced us meredithyou're awesome so thank you thank you and what I'd like to
40:42
say to our audience is think about somebody who could valuethis conversation i mean everybody can of course right somebody maybe who needsto
40:49
who's in a leadership position and maybe they don't believethat uh taking care of somebody's mental well-being is
40:55
important on their team uh or lacks diversity of thoughtmaybe that somebody who's too much into yes uh runs an
41:01
organization or a team where it's you know they want yes menyes women coming to them and send this episode to them uh
41:09
or if you're a small business owner like me and you want tofind out how to better uh maybe set up some volunteerism
41:16
I think that's awesome that's one thing I'm going to do uhwe used to do this a lot at Jean in the back in the and and at Learn it sowe're going to do that
41:22
again but until next time everybody I want to say staycurious keep learning
41:28
and have a great day thank you the scariest thing that anyleader will do
41:34
is disrupt a relationship which could complicate theworkflow the results