145: How Great Leaders Make People Feel Valued | Jean Accius

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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

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leaders aren't born or made they are constantly in themaking i'm your host Damon Ley two-time best-selling author

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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on your team and not in your department with the goal of notjust understand what they do but with a key question

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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

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spend some time with someone that you don't typically engagewith on a day-to-day basis to really understand

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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the right title and moving in the right direction uh I dothink that is critically important to have the right

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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

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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

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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

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switch gears and talk about total well-being we talked wehit on it a little bit but you know sometimes people

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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

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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

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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

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greater connectivity and community you actually feel as ifyou have a sense of identity in some cases purpose uh so the

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ability to really focus on total well-being in the workplaceis critically important in this environment

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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learning and shared opportunity because I think if we can dothat then we can get at the root cause of agism uh and

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the World Health Organization uh had a report that said thatyou know over half of the world's population has agist

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beliefs meaning that they see an older person and theyautomatically have some negative assumptions about what that

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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

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leader and we were he's on they're hiring and we weretalking about a couple of the candidates and one of the

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candidates happened to be graduate from college in the early90s and he almost

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threw that resume aside because he said well this this thisperson's you know pretty old you know and for and I'm

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somebody who graduated in the 90s right and uh and I justkind of went through

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exactly what you brought up I said think about theexperience that they can bring to the table the way they do things

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differently and other people can learn from includingyourself and so I think what you brought up there right right

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there Gene was a very good point you know people we need tolook at things differently and and think about the

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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

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workers you know are there specific policy or culturechanges that you think need to happen within an organization i

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I do think there there are a couple of things I would justkind of bring to this conversation i think one is really

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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

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buzzwords when I see I I kind of uh question uh good fitwhat does that

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mean um full of energy right uh full of

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enthusiasm yeah so really kind of going through the processof looking at your job descriptions for any position to

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ensure that it's inclusive of all ages I think is going tobe critically important the other thing that I would

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uh encourage is that there are opportunities to reallyhighlight uh and think through how do you create benefits

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that are ageless and what I mean by that Damon is the factthat if you think about caregiving for example we have

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over 53 million caregivers in this country uh and if you getwhile the

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average caregiver is around 54 years old roughly speakingyou do have a lot of

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caregivers who are millennials who are much younger so ifyou're an employer thinking about how do

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you address the needs of caregivers who are older you mightmiss on the fact that

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you also have some caregivers who are extremely young soreally thinking about your policies another example would be

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for example student loan debt and student loan repayment youhave some companies that actually reimburse

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um for student loan payments as a benefit and oftent timesthey have tied

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that reim student loan reimbursement to frankly uh newemployees right so uh new

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employees come into the organization and they may actuallyhave a benefit or there's some policy within it that says

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you know this benefit is for a certain category whatever thecase may be the the challenge with that is the fact that

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if you are only focused on age and experience less than fiveyears of

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experience whatever the case may be you might miss the factthat you have a significant uh percentage of older

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adults that carry student loan debt because they either tookit out for themselves they took it out for their uh

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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

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and say okay do these benefits really benefit people of allages in life

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stages and if not how can we reimagine that i think theother piece is to

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ensure that you're creating opportunities within theorganization to have courageous conversations about

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topics that may be comfortable in some cases not comfortableto give people the space in the vehicle and the platform to

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convey uh their thoughts and their feelings and not shy awayfrom it uh remember that your workers your

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employees eventually have to leave the physical or thevirtual platform and go home

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uh and uh they have to go into their own communities uh soyou can't compartmentalize your worker you have to

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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

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a couple of things that we've done one is that we believe inthis time of turbulence that it's important to equip

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our workers our workforce with tools to be resilient how doyou be resilient in

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this environment uh so we've had everything David fromactually having a

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facilitator walk us through meditation and mindfulnesspractices deep breaths

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so literally uh during one of our staff we had someone for20 minutes or so give

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us different tactics and strategies that we could use toaddress the nervous system to ensure that you know we are

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managing our mental and well-being through deep breathexercises the entire executive team participated along with

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staff so that's just one example other examples are havinguh volunteerism

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opportunities uh we believe very strongly that when youvolunteer uh it improves your health it connects

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you much closer to the mission and the purpose and itthere's so many great

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social values of doing so so what are the opportunities torally your team around a volunteerism project again

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thinking about different ways to create community and if I'ma leader sitting here which I am and uh and I'm thinking

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about how can I get my team more involved in volunteerismwhere is where is one place uh they should go to start

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to look for that is an excellent question so we have apurpose platform and it's literally based off the

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opportunity to look at a volunteerism in your localcommunity it can look at uh different issue areas so depending on

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the focus of the organization you can filter to see exactlywhat those opport opportunities are uh but I would start

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there uh really think about ways to engage we have somethingcalled break with a purpose and that is an

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opportunity where we actually bring in experts into theworkplace and to provide and engage with staff on a range

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of topics uh it could be around mental health it could bearound caregiving uh so those are some of the opportunities

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particular on the CAC website so your uh leaders can go tocac.org or and type in

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purpose platform and that will actually come up but I dothink that there are some things they what I tried to do in

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our conversation is that really provide some tips and somestrategies that are frankly low cost but high impact and

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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

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not our responsibility that's an individual'sresponsibility." Well you know what I would say is the fact that

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um that it shows up in your in your bottom line it shows upin terms of

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productivity it shows up in terms of absetismium it shows upin terms of uh

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uh sick leave it it it actually shows up uh so I think it'sa shared responsibility clearly we're not mental

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health uh counselors we're not licensed to do that but we dohave the opportunity to bring in resources into

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the organization to help individuals navigate their thechallenges personally

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or professionally uh and I also believe that as leaders wehave an opportunity to model the way uh meaning the fact

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that when I get on a call with someone I don't justautomatically jump into the agenda item now there are days I am

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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

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check in with you how are things going you know how's thefamily doing i know during our last oneonone you mentioned

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that your brother was ill is he feeling a little bit betterin other words as a leader I

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think it's important to convey to those in which you leadthat you see them

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beyond the fact that they're just an employee and when youdo Jean they feel like they belong that's exactly right

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and that makes such a big difference um to how peopleapproach coming to work

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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

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believe more on the purpose and what you just did rightthere doesn't cost anything to ask a couple questions and

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there are inexpensive ways to provide services likemeditation i think at Learn It I think we spend like $7 a

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month per employee to give them different apps that theycould use and have access to to to help exactly

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exactly i mean it is a tremendous it is a tremendous valueuh and I did talk to

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a leader who had a similar uh remark said well you know youknow we're not responsible for their mental health was

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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

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to creating a culture where someone can actually feel safeseen and valued and in order to ensure that individuals feel

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safe valued seen and heard you have to address thepsychological safety within the environment in which they operate i

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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

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