Embracing Workplace Wellness as a Part of Leadership w/ Stephen Kohler
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In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with author, CEO and executive coach Stephen Kohler on embracing wellness as a part of leadership.
A few reasons why he is awesome — he is an author, certified executive coach, keynote speaker and a composer and performer (that’s music, people). He’s the founder and CEO of Audira Labs LLC, helping leaders, teams, and organizations amplify their leadership potential through transformative executive coaching and experiential team effectiveness workshops. And he’s released a book that covers his two loves – leadership and music. The book The Leadership Anthem: How Listening Like a Musician Creates Strong Performances.
Connect with Stephen and learn more about his work…
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“Our body is one of our greatest signals of how well we are… if you slow down and listen to your body, it will tell you a lot that you may not be acknowledging.:
Stephen Kohler
Russel Lolacher: And on the show today we have Stephen Kohler and here is why he is awesome. He’s an author, certified executive coach, keynote speaker and composer performer.
That’s music to those, that, those words don’t mean anything to. He’s the founder and CEO of Audira. Apparently it’s something in Latin, Audira Labs. To listen, I’ve been told. LLC. Helping leaders, teams and organizations amplified their leadership potential through transformative executive coaching and experiential team effectiveness workshops. And he’s released a book that covers his two loves of leadership and music. The book, The Leadership Anthem, How Listening Like a Musician Creates Strong Performances. And we get to chat with him. Hello Stephen.
Stephen Kohler: Hey my friend. Russel, thank you so much for having me today. I’m really grateful to be here.
Russel Lolacher: I am excited to talk about wellness today to, it’s, it’s, it’s almost a loaded topic for a lot of people of what it means, what it doesn’t mean, but we have so much to dig into. Before we get to any of that though, Stephen, I’ve gotta ask the most important question. I don’t even know if it’s the most important, but it certainly sets the, the, the mood, the tone. What’s your best or worst employee experience, sir?
Stephen Kohler: I, I love the question, and if I may, I’m gonna answer both of the, the questions. The best and worst. I’ll start with the worst.
Russel Lolacher: Yeah, absolutely. ‘
Stephen Kohler: Cause it’s very poignant. I was about halfway through my career, I had. Just gotten outta grad school and all names will remain confidential. I had found myself hired into for the, for the role that I was in.
I was in marketing in the Chicago area. One of the most prestigious organizations that one could do marketing in, or at least everybody told me. To make a long story short, the culture was toxic and the manager was just awful. And I felt very, just unsupported. And it was, I will say as painful as it was, it was also very illustrative for many of the things I think we’ll talk about today.
And it taught me a lot of lessons about what good leadership looks like, what bad leadership looks like, and frankly, a lot of lessons that I would carry with me of what not to do as a leader. The best leader, the best kind of workplace example was the complete opposite, where a couple years after that, I felt incredibly supported by my manager.
And there again, it was, it was interesting to, to be able to compare both almost, you know, back to back and then carry that forward as a leader where I started to be able to support others later in my career as a manager and a, a coach and a mentor.
Russel Lolacher: How did you approach job searching differently after both those experiences because the first outta the gate, everybody and anybody’s telling you this is, it’s prestigious. It’s got a, it’s got a serious brand to it, but then you go in and it’s a minefield and vice versa to go to a place that’s very different.
But what’s the pre-work you may be doing differently based on those experiences?
Stephen Kohler: Thank you, Russel. The biggest lesson I learned, which, which I had failed to do prior, was listen to my gut. What I learned about myself, Russel, that I think a lot of your viewers and listeners may, may know and, and I didn’t give enough credence to this, is I did not trust my gut, my intuition. In, in, in the world I’m in now in leadership, we talk about core values.
So what I did differently is I started listening to that whisper that I had about whether, for example, I felt good and in alignment with the people I was surrounded with, with the work I was doing, with the impact I was having. And ever since then, whenever I have that kind of voice in the back of my head, I listen to it in a way that I hadn’t prior.
Russel Lolacher: I think it speaks to a lot of people that do values exercises, and then just look at it like a checkbox list and go, look, I got a fancy list of words, but they don’t operationalize it. They don’t actually connect themselves to the words so that they can make more informed decisions of are they making the right decision?
Are they stepping out into this unease that they maybe shouldn’t be doing? And it means as much as it does being in an organization be how you lead, but also in the environments you wanna put yourself in.
Stephen Kohler: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And, and I love what you highlighted, which is that we all talk about values. It can be a very easy intellectual exercise, and yet a very different thing to actually put into action, particularly when we’re having to make a hard decision with some kind of uncomfortable outcome.
Like we’re disappointing somebody, we’re saying no to something that might be lucrative. That’s where values really come into play, in my opinion.
Russel Lolacher: And then we get into that compromise area where it’s like, and you feel icky out of the, out of it going, but I guess that’s what I have to do as a leader. I’m like, no, you’re not leading yourself in that situation.
Stephen Kohler: It’s so true, and it’s a perfect segue probably to what we’re gonna discuss. I mean, wellness what a, what a perfect, you know, context, right?
Russel Lolacher: Absolutely. So this is where I put you in the hot seat, right outta the gate, sir. What the hell is wellness? Like, let’s,
let’s define what it is first before we dig a little too deeper into it.
Stephen Kohler: I love it. And for the, for the benefit of the listeners and the viewers, you and I touched on this real briefly before we started hitting record. In my mind it’s imagine three concentric circles that are all overlapping, and this is my definition of wellness. Number one is the circle that says kind of me or I.
Am I in alignment with myself, my core values? Am I leading whether it’s at home, in work, the community, am I leading in accordance to my values? Number two, the next kind of ring is, am I leading kind of in harmony? I’m a musician, for those of you that see my camera am I leading in harmony with others?
My partner at home, my, my kids my work colleagues, right? And then the third concentric circle is I leading kind of in harmony with the community that I’m in. When those three things are all in harmony and overlapping, I’m, I am quote. And so often now you might say, what the hell does this have to do with real life?
A lot of the folks I support Russel as a coach are stressed, they’re anxious, they’re overwhelmed because one or more of those circles that I just described is out of alignment and they’re not well. They’re not taking care of their bodies or they’re not in alignment with somebody they’re working with.
There’s conflict or they’re not in alignment with their community that they’re in, right? And so all of this kind of adds up to stress and, and health issues and distraction, right? Or not being happy with the career they’re in. So, you know, that’s a long answer to your question.
Russel Lolacher: Yeah. So when you say community, just to touch on that one, are you talking the work environment? Are you talking at home or all of it?
Stephen Kohler: I to, to beg the question, I would say community can be whatever you define it, but immediately to me, I think in three forms. One is let’s say the community let’s say that I have with myself. The next would be kind of a work community, however you define that. And then the third would be kind of the, the community outside of let’s say your home.
So that could be friends, family, the, the literally town or city you’re in or the, or the people you’re connected with. For example, I’m a musician, so I would say one of my communities, the music community where I live here in Chicago. My wife is part of a, kind of our, our town council. So she’s a big part of that community.
And I, and I think part of wellness, frankly, is identifying and finding that tribe or that community. Finding your tribe, finding your community. And I know that since I’ve found that I feel much more well.
Russel Lolacher: So what are we getting wrong about this when it comes to workplaces? Because wellness has become a bit of a buzzword. It’s become something that some group in the organization, usually HR is responsible for. So what? What is failing for, for wellness in the workplace?
Stephen Kohler: I love this. You and I, I think, had a, a quick discussion about this kind of when we got to know each other. Here’s the first thing. When I was first introduced to the word wellness, it was, if I can be very candid, it was kind of a, a check the box thing. Coming out of a an HR department that was saying, we, we believe in workplace balance.
We believe in wellness, and it was this, unfortunately, it was well intended but not very pragmatic. It was this idea that frankly, because people were being overworked and not feeling very well, they had to then institute this idea, this check the box idea that we had to find balance. And it became kind of a check the box exercise.
I feel when you, when you’ve gotten to that place in a culture and organization, you kinda lost. So, I think finding wellness is very much about being a place where you’re in alignment with yourself. You’re not feeling overwhelmed, you’re, you’re frankly, you’re able to, fulfill the things that are important to you, whether it’s spending time at home with loved ones or family or hobbies and not and not work so much in these other things where you’re, you’re, you’re finding yourself drained.
Russel Lolacher: So, and, and this speaks to our, our previous conversation that we had, we got into, let’s dig into one specific problem I think when we come to wellness, which is around the idea of work-life balance.
It is something that we still, I hear quite a bit in workplaces that this is something that’s important and we need to prioritize it.
I’m like, yeah, but is it fixing a symptom or is it fixing a disease? So, so when, when we talked before, you said, this isn’t a program, so what should we be talking about when we talk about work-life balance?
Stephen Kohler: I think it’s about being, it, you’ve got, you’ve got at least two or three constituents in this conversation. One is, let’s call it the employee. We’re, let’s say we’re talking about it kind of a professional context, right? Whether it’s for-profit, non-for-profit, whatever. You have the employee. And the employee being able to have the freedom and flexibility, frankly, to be able to not only do the work that’s expected, but also be able to have the time and the balance for themselves so that they can get the sleep they need and have time with friends and family they need. And so you could say, okay, what does that mean, pragmatically? Simple things that the organization can do.
Like, institute policies, like, we’re not gonna have emails sent after 5:00 PM or we’re, we’re gonna have institute, you know, we’re not gonna have managers emailing people over the weekends. I’ll give you a great example, practical example. I was once part of a nameless organization, the CEO, very successful organization. I swear, Russel, he had this explicit policy. He said, I don’t know. I don’t care where you are, meaning the employee, or when I email you or text you, but I expect a, a response within one hour. And that was the tone that was set in the culture. So everybody, it didn’t matter if it was two, you know, 2:00 AM it didn’t matter if you were with somebody, a loved one over the weekend, you, you felt this pressure, I have to respond.
And that created a certain culture. So wellness, I think starts with a relationship between the organization, its values, what it wants to create, and then frankly, also the employees setting boundaries. One of, one of the things I do a lot as a coach is help employees set boundaries for themselves and with the organization about where to cut that line off and say, look I’ve, I’ve got a soccer team or a soccer game to take my child to at 4:30 PM and 5:00 PM and that’s important to me.
So I’m gonna, I’m gonna turn off my, my computer then, right? I will get back to you. But, but these boundaries are important.
Russel Lolacher: You reminded me of a story. I remember talking to an executive once who was bragging, literally bragging that they liked to call staff off hours and judge them based on whether they responded or not.
So they would call ’em at 11 o’clock at night and if they responded, great, if they didn’t, they were having a talking to the next day.
So they were cultivating this fear in the culture and thinking that was the way to lead. When I’m thinking of a wellness perspective going, you’re not only disrupting their wellness in the workplace, you’re making it bleed into their home life.
And how, what are you, what are you getting from that employee when they come in the next day? Like, what is the quality of of their life and of their work experience?
Stephen Kohler: A hundred percent. One of the things, I may have touched on this earlier. I, I think. One of the biggest things that has going to the theme of today’s discussion about wellness that impacted in a positive way, the, the collective dialogue around wellness is, is the pandemic. Now, why do I say that?
Because coming out of the pandemic, as I’m sure you know, and a lot of the listeners and watchers of this podcast know we as a, we as a species, generally, many of us realize that life is too short. As we dis, you know, and we had the, the, the great resignation and people are like, life’s too short to work in jobs and, and roles that are not fulfilling.
And what that allowed us to do is start redefining the relationship that we individually had about wellness and also with our employers. And we started being as a, as a population, employees, started to be able to tell their employees, look I expect to be able to do work that’s meaningful, purposeful.
I expect to have a reasonable work-life balance. Oh, by the way if that’s not in alignment with the organization, I’m look for, I’m gonna look for an organization that will do that. There’s been obviously a big push on hybrid opportunities for employees. I know that pendulum is starting to swing, at least for the U.S., The pen pendulum is swinging back a little bit given the labor economy.
I still believe as a leadership coach, the best, most progressive organizations will say, look talent or people are our greatest asset. We’re gonna, we’re gonna do whatever it takes to get that great talent and we’re gonna create flexible work environments and work-life balance so we can attract that talent, so we can attract, develop, and retain.
If you are in East Asia, awesome. If you are in central U.S., awesome. If you’re in Canada, awesome. What’s it gonna take to bring you on board because we don’t care where you are. So I think the definition of wellness has, has, has changed dramatically in a way that was not true, say 20 or 30 years ago.
Russel Lolacher: So I’m gonna, I’m gonna get right to where I know a few people are probably thinking going, wellness. Yeah, it sounds great, but it’s this nebulous thing. I know Stephen’s kind of explaining it a bit, but, and getting to the point. What’s the ROI? ROI me, Stephen. Like what’s the ROI of wellness? How can I put that in a strategic plan?
Stephen Kohler: I love it and I am glad you asked that because I always, one of the things I like to do is speak to the skeptic, particularly the what I’ll call the left brain analytics, particularly the CEOs who look at dollar signs, right? So what’s the ROI of wellness? The first thing I’ll tell you is productivity.
You talk to any economist, you talk to any, for the organizations that have metrics around this, the first thing you’ll see around wellness is productivity for your employees. Productivity the amount of output per, per hour, depending on how you quantify, that’s a real thing. If workers are, are burned out or they’re feeling drained or they’re feeling stressed, by definition, they’re not gonna have as high of productive output.
The second thing you may care about as a skeptic or if you’re looking at quantifiable ROI is turnover. Organizations, any HR, CHRO will tell you one of the first things they’re looking at is turnover. Turnover affects the bottom line as many of your listeners and viewers will tell you there’s a powerful metric that talks about the cost of turnover.
So if you, you know, whatever your salary is for an employee. Can anybody guess what the, you know, the cost of losing that employee is? It’s at least double their salary to recruit, hire, train, and onboard the next employee, the replacement. And it’s probably, frankly, it’s probably three times now. And then there’s the qualitative aspect.
Those two are quantitative. The the third part is cultural. And you get work life satisfaction. You get job whatever metric you wanna look like. Employee satisfaction, right? You ask an employee on a, on an employee survey you know, how likely would you be to refer a friend to work at this organization?
And you get to things like Glassdoor. All of these things about wellness turn into dollars and cents very quickly. And why does that matter? Because the best organizations are available to attract, develop and retain employees, which then leads to dollars and cents and bottom line outcomes.
Russel Lolacher: So let’s get internal here, because the, the, and I talk about this a lot on the show, is that the show is called Relationships at Work, but the number one relationship we have to have is with ourselves because that’s, that fuels everything else. So as leaders ourselves, are there any warning signs that we may need be needing to pay attention to around wellness before it starts impacting everybody else?
Stephen Kohler: I love it. And, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna use for, for some of your audience members what I’m about to say will resonate. And for others, it, it may feel like crazy talk.
It’s gonna sound a little woo woo. Something that I’ve learned. For many of us, we are trained and learned as professionals to really rely on what I would say our, our mind and intellectual, right?
So we’re in our heads a lot and we’re thinking, so what I’m gonna say that’s a bit provocative is to understand wellness, we have to get into our bodies. Now that’s gonna sound crazy, but what do I mean by that? If you talk to any neuroscientist, any therapist, any psychologist, any leadership person, they’ll tell you, our body is one of our greatest signals of how well we are.
What do I mean by that? The first thing is, is to, to feel, to listen to how you’re feeling. If you’re feeling stressed, if you have this stress hormone in your brain kicking off called cortisol, it means you’re in what’s called a fight or flight response. When you’re in a fight or flight response, you, by definition, you’re not gonna lead very well at work.
And sadly, for most of us, probably 78% of our, a lot of our our lives, we’re in this fight or flight response, and we’re not gonna be able to make good decisions. We’re not gonna be able to collaborate well. We’re not gonna be able to have positive impact when we’ve got cortisol constantly going through our brains.
So the first thing is to listen to your body. What are you feeling? Is your throat clenched? Are your palms sweaty? Is your stomach going in knots? What does that tell you? Maybe it tells you you are in a very inspired setting and you’re real excited ’cause you’re about to go on stage and everything’s great or, or maybe it tells you you’re in an environment that’s not in alignment with your values.
Maybe it’s telling you that the relationship you have with your boss could be improved. Maybe it means the relationships you have with your colleagues is not great. I think if, if a lot of us slow down listen to our bodies we can, it will tell us a lot that we may not be acknowledging. Yeah. Let me pause there ’cause I get very passionate on these topics.
Russel Lolacher: No, I appreciate and also understanding, I mean, I go back to my baby, which is definitions. Like, I love the idea of definitions and if you can even define by knowing yourself, self-awareness, what the difference between adrenaline to your point about going on stage or presenting versus anxiety. Because it may feel similar to someone who doesn’t know the difference between the two or themselves well enough to know what their, because you don’t wanna label things that are negative when it’s really just an uncomfortable versus… uncomfortable it should be motivating versus uncomfortable, meaning you should run.
Stephen Kohler: I love that. Yeah, and that’s a great example, Russel. It’s like, thinking about two different scenarios. I am nervous, but in a good way because I’m about to go on stage like I’m a performer, right? So I’m excited. I can’t wait to go on, but I’m a little nervous versus I’m standing outside the door of this, of the the CEO and I feel dread.
Completely different feelings, right? And getting in tune with your body, which I know sounds woo woo is a key way to understand how well am I. Right? Another, another great way is I talk a lot about as a coach, about this idea of listening in, in this case, the reason I’m bringing that up is listen to what people are saying to you around you.
You know, some of the most instructive things about when I was not well actually came from somebody else around me because I couldn’t see it. And people would come up to me and say, Stephen, are you okay? You seem a little stressed right? Or you don’t look so well? Have you been sleeping? Okay? And of course the answer was no.
But I’ve been so stuck in it in whatever situation was I, I didn’t acknowledge it.
Russel Lolacher: How do you keep accountable to yourself?
Like, I’m, I’m, I do this in a way of asking myself, I do this by, I ask myself a lot of questions when it comes to just sort of having these inner dialogues with myself. It can show up as meditation. It can just show up as a quiet moment, whatever it is. But I, I ask these questions of myself to understand where I am. How am I gonna react? What’s the best way to react in these certain circumstances? But in the, in the idea of wellness, is there conversations we could be having with ourselves? Questions we could be asking ourselves to just sort of recalibrate. I get it from listening from the body, but I also want to sort of look at it from a cerebral sense.
Stephen Kohler: Yeah. So I love it because in the lineup of work that I do, I do my best to walk the talk and I’ll explain what I mean. So when, as a coach, one of the, one of the, I will, I will tell you, no surprise to you and your listeners, one of the biggest things I hear from the leaders I support are challenges around this very topic of wellness.
Now, usually the way they articulate it are things like, Hey, Stephen, I’m feeling overwhelmed. I’m feeling stressed. I don’t know if I can keep going. And now they could be talking about a relationship. Most of the time they’re talking about a, a professional challenge. And inevitably we get into what I will call identifying for them.
So having them define in their own words what wellness would look like if, if they could get from where they were. Overwhelmed not sleeping, feeling stress to a place of wellness. And often what we talk about, and, and this is my own metric for myself to answer your question, is and again, this is gonna feel a little woo woo, mind, body, spirit criteria scorecard, if you will.
So your listeners probably know all about the KPIs or metrics, right? In my case, I have, three metrics I hold for myself, a mind wellness, a body wellness, and a spirit ness. And, and I’ll define what them am and then I hold myself accountable on a daily and weekly basis. And then I say to my clients, let’s explore what those could be for you and how you’re gonna hold yourself accountable.
So for me, mind. I know that for me to feel well, I need to be intellectually challenged. So throughout a given day, a week quarter challenge, I have metrics for myself of how much I’m doing that. What does that mean for me? Am I reading? ’cause I know that’s an intellectual challenge. Am I engaging myself with learning new things that are stimulating?
I run a business, right? So I have a bunch of metrics around the mind keeping myself challenged. I like to meet interesting people like you and have interesting challenges. What happens when I’m not doing that? I start to feel foggy. I start to feel alert. I’m not intellectually engaged, and I know that signal, which tells me I need to like re-spark my brain.
I have a body metric. What does that mean? I know that for me to feel well, I need to be doing something physical. In my case, I’ve defined that to be getting outside and running. I like to run or take the dogs on a walk. So I say, okay, Stephen, when was the last time you ran? 48 hours ago. Okay, it’s time to run.
It doesn’t have to be a marathon, but I run. Third metric is spiritual and in this case I define it as music or spending time with family. When any one of those is out of alignment, I start to not feel well. I feel dragging. I’m you know, all of those things that I think a lot of us, so I then keep myself accountable on a calendar.
I’m big about accountability, and I’m like, okay, Stephen, it’s been three days since you’ve done, you know, running music or spent time with your family. No, no, no wonder you’re feeling crappy, right? You gotta go out there, especially when you don’t wanna do it. I do the same thing with my clients. It’s not about me telling them what they should go do.
It’s about how do you define wellness? And they might say something like, oh man, I love fishing. Like, okay, what are you gonna commit to? And they’re like. I’d like to maybe go fishing over the weekend. I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. You’re gonna commit to yourself and me right now that you’re gonna go fishing over this weekend, and you’re gonna text me that you went fishing at three o’clock on Saturday.
I’m like, okay, Stephen, I’ll text you. It’s things like that that ultimately define wellness.
Russel Lolacher: But there’s a lot you can’t control. So we’re talking a lot about what we can control and that’s absolutely where any leader should start. Your yourself, your relationships, your reactions to things, but going into that community piece. There are a lot of people around you, a lot of people you interact with every day.
Your bosses, I use the term boss, not leader for a particular reason. And in that there are things you can’t control and impact that wellness regardless of what boundaries you’ve set up. How do you handle that? Or is there like a, is it fight or flight in that sorry, you’ve tipped over a boundary.
I have to quit now, or is it sort of a spectrum?
Stephen Kohler: I love it. And that’s a great point. ’cause a lot of people that that’s real, right? You say, okay, I’m gonna go for a, a run during lunch, and then your boss says, no, you’re not. You’re gonna come with me in a last minute meeting. What do you do? So what I, so the answer to your question in my mind is it, it goes back philosophically to what can you control?
Then the answer is agility. That’s part one of the answer. And then part two of the answer is what I’ll call making it up to yourself. So let’s walk through this scenario. So you’ve committed to yourself, you’re gonna go on a run at lunch, but your boss calls you at 11:45 and says, no, I need you in this meeting.
And you’re not gonna, he doesn’t know, but you’re not gonna go for that run. So you’ll say, okay, what? What can I control? I can’t control, my boss just blew up my lunch plans. So what am I gonna do? I’m gonna be agile. I’m gonna say yes to my boss, of course, and then I’m gonna make it up to myself. I was gonna go grocery shopping at 6:00 PM but you know what, I’m gonna throw that out the window because I made a promise to myself that wellness, physical wellness is important.
So I’m gonna go for a run at six o’clock and I’m, I’m, I’m gonna be agile, but I’m not gonna kick the can down the road. And I’m not gonna say, oh, well I guess, I guess I’m just not gonna get to this. That’s the key. It will require some hard trade-offs.
So it will say, I was gonna do X, but because this commitment I made for myself is so important, I’m gonna have to say no to something else. That’s the key. That’s the key. The, the big part of strategy, by the way, and, and wellness in my mind is about trade-offs, right? So I, instead of doing X I’m gonna do Y instead.
Russel Lolacher: I think that sounds great. And the reason I’m gonna kick the, kick the tires of that one a little bit too is then, but where’s the line in that? Because in my brain I’m thinking of things like the, the term technical debt when you get into agile work and so forth, the project management. But I love the idea of it getting into cultural debt and basically what we’re talking about wellness debt.
So we keep going. We’ll do it later, we’ll do it later, we’ll do it later. But then that starts building up and that commitment of that, that habit we wanted to build of meditation or running every day goes from five to four, to three to two is becoming less and less because we keep saying yes or keep allowing these things we can’t control to keep pushing these. You say, don’t go grocery shopping, you’re gonna have to run. No, you do need food. Your kids need food. So eventually you are gonna have to go grocery shopping and that might need to be prioritized. So how do you handle wellness debt? Because it’s not it can become a problem.
Stephen Kohler: it’s the answer is a choice.
Ultimately, it’s about a choice and, and look again and with some agility. So you, you can say, look, and I, and I, I say this a lot to my clients. You have to, you have to be agile with what shows up, right? So the boss blows up your lunch plans. Great. Then you say, okay, I’m gonna run at six, but then you’re, you’ve gotta, you know, take care of a child or go grocery shopping. Understood. So you’re agile. In, in in the broader scheme though, after two, three days, maybe a couple weeks, couple months, couple years, you start to have to listen to yourself and say, but what am I giving up? Or what am I trading off? You know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve, again, I support a lot of leaders that are in jobs that are no longer fulfilling.
And I say, what, what has this cost you? So to put it in terms of this, this podcast, it’s, you’re in a wellness debt. What, you know, what is this costing you? It’s costing me my health. It’s costing me my relationships at home. You know, I had a coaching call with a client last week and he says, I haven’t seen my son in, you know, it feels like I haven’t seen my son in three months.
And I’m like and how do you feel about that? So then you say it comes back to a choice. And then we have a hard conversation about continuing to look for opportunities to set boundaries at work. And if those are not, if that’s not possible, then we say, what is in your control? One of the things that’s in your control is making a different choice about a role, a position, a job.
That’s within your control. Now, a lot of people say not really. And I, and I challenge them, I say, yes, it is. And I talk about, ’cause a lot of people say I could never get a job. I couldn’t leave this industry, blah, blah, blah. And then I review with them. I, because I’m not, I, I can be objective. Like, let’s look at your experience.
You have amazing experience. Let’s look at your connections in the industry. You have amazing connections, right? And, and they’re like, yeah, actually, you’re right. Maybe I can find another job. May, maybe it’s possible to work in an organization that’s not toxic, right? It is, right?
Russel Lolacher: It, it’s harder to see through it when you’re in it.
And it’s, that just speaks to the importance of a network coaching, people… people that have a different perspective than you do because you are, you’re in it, you’re feeling it, as we’ve sort of talked about whatever that those feelings are defined.
So we figured it out, Stephen. We’ve got wellness figured out for us. We know what it is. We we’re, we’re, we’re doing the work. We’re committed to the work. And then we show up into the workplace and we’re responsible for other human beings and their wellness to some degree. Even though I know we are responsible for our own wellness as leaders, that is the human component, that is the human centricity in the workplace.
So as a leader coming into the workplace, looking at these individuals that are the team, how do we introduce wellness into that environment?
Stephen Kohler: I love it. And this is again, kind of where we as leaders have to walk the talk. So what it looks like as cliche as the sound is role modeling and being a role model. So I’ve seen a lot of examples, both good and bad, where a leader will say, I believe in work life balance and I believe you should take care of yourself and go exercise and be at home with the children and things like that.
And of course they never do it, so the silence or they’ll say something. Yes, we, we shouldn’t be emailing each other the weekends, but of course, they are the ones that then do that very thing, which create this whole culture and the signal. So we have to walk the talk. You know, one of the things I’ll give you simple examples that I, in my team, I will say something like somebody will say something to me like, I’d like I, I’d love to go do X, but I have this, this meeting or something. You know, I’d like, I’d like to be able to, to go exercise, but I’ve got this client meeting and I say, go exercise. Go do it. And, and I’m the, the boss, so to speak. And, and so it’s about reinforcing and role modeling the very values that we established and then reinforcing. And here’s the trick, saying no to something, you know, wellness, ultimately for the sake of this podcast is about trade-offs.
And so if I’m in a work setting and I’m a leader and I’m managing somebody else, rather than just giving lip service to wellness. I am willing to support you, let’s say my direct report by making a trade off. I’m saying I’m, I want you to go do the thing that you will make you well in favor of, quote the work thing.
I’m endorsing you, I’m sponsoring you thing, and I know that’s gonna have an impact, but I know in the end, it’s gonna make you be more productive and more engaged, which will make you ultimately be able to, you know, show up best as a leader at work.
Russel Lolacher: I know there’s some teams though that will still be operating at a high level because they’re throwing themselves into the work. Their productivity’s fine, but their wellness is still not great because maybe something’s horrible at home, but if they focus on work, it’s okay because they can put that outta mind, but they are not in a good place.
Is there any, and I use that as an example, but is there anything a leader should be looking for, for a team to show, you know, these are some signs that we might, regardless of productivity being as great as it is, that we may need to dig a little deeper?
Stephen Kohler: Absolutely. The first thing, again, one of, one of the, the areas I talk a lot about is this idea of listening with a capital L. And as leaders, one of the things we have to listen is with our eyes. We listen with our ears, but our eyes and our heart. So what does that mean? In this case, let’s say I’m leading a team or I’m a colleague to a team member.
I hear when I’m working with somebody, stress in their voice, maybe, maybe they snap back at me over something trivial. And I get curious and I’m like, that’s interesting. I haven’t heard John kind of snap at me like that. I wonder what’s going on. I see their body language and I can see after weekend, you know, maybe they didn’t get enough sleep ’cause they see bags under their eyes.
I feel the tension, right? So all of these are signals that I can then use to say, Hey John, you okay man? I want to let me take you off for beer, man. Let me take some coffee. I’m ’cause, ’cause I care about you. How are things at home man? And they’re like, oh yeah man, things are not good. Things are rough.
I’m like, talk to me. And so we can use all of these kind of listening senses to be there with others and then support them, whatever a relationship with them is to get to a better place. So we might say, Hey man, I know you’re overwhelmed. Why don’t I take something off your plate? You’ve got way too much on your plate.
What can I take off your plate, man? So you can get outta here at two o’clock, whatever. Yeah
Russel Lolacher: It feels like empathy is such a key part of this.
And compassion even more so. I think, ’cause I mean, empathy is feeling other people’s feeling compassion is actually doing something with those feelings.
So I know you’ve written about pragmatic empathy and i’m kind of curious as a leader trying to work with their relationship with their team that’s maybe struggling in this wellness, how does that play a part?
Stephen Kohler: Yeah, I love it. And thanks for mentioning the pragmatic empathy. Again, I think prior to COVID, my experience was empathy was kind of a four letter word, in particularly corporate America. It’s like we’re here to drive results. None of this soft, fluffy feeling like if you don’t like something or you’re hurt, you know, too bad.
But coming outta COVID, I think we realized well until the computers take over, which they will likely with AI, organizations are largely run by human beings. And human beings are social emotional creatures. Most of the time, most organizations are social in nature in terms of how we get things done. We have to work with one another.
And so this thing about caring about how others are feeling actually matters ’cause it affects our actual behavior and our output. So we have to balance caring for the, what we call the whole person, not just the person that shows up to work from nine to five, but what happens is their, their personal lives, right?
We have to balance that with actual work outcomes. So a very pointed example was, at least during COVID and now many organizations is hybrid work schedules, right? Whatever you call it. So, how to balance the very real thing that while at home an employee may be juggling lots of things. And getting work things done.
So we have to establish a relationship with our, our teams about trust and accountability. So, for example, we may have a policy where we’re working five days a week at home or three days a week, and we’re gonna trust, we’re gonna trust that you’re gonna get the work done and we’re not gonna micromanage you.
And, and so we’re gonna measure on outcomes, not you know, did you clock in at nine o’clock? So I think the best organizations are doing this by looking at outcomes like, we don’t care if you log in at 2:00 PM but you’re up until 2:00 AM. Like, get, get the work done, and most importantly, take care of yourself.
So balancing the empathy with the pragmatic, and also I would say the best organizations. The leaders are always saying, always saying, and what can we do to help support you?
Russel Lolacher: Yeah, and I see that from a, so those are two different things though.
So there is the leader having control of their direct team going, how can I support you? But then there’s the larger organization allowing that and permitting it and modeling that to happen.
That is two very different things. ’cause I often talk, when people say culture, I’m like, what do you mean? There’s 17,000 cultures within an organization. We can’t just talk about one. There’s no such thing as one.
Stephen Kohler: So true.
Russel Lolacher: So to pull back then. So for example, we’ve spoken about the importance of hard trade offs. But a lot of organizations don’t, aren’t good about supporting boundaries like that in allowing, and they’ll say we’ll fail to learn. I’m like, yeah, but you punish failure. Like you, you can talk about it all you like, but you don’t promote the people that fail, last time I checked, or the people that are learning. So how does a culture of no, for lack of a better word, support wellness in favor of wellness? And how do you get an organization to embrace that?
Stephen Kohler: Yep. It, I love that. I just had a conversation about this very topic and the word that I like to bring in Russel is the word evidence, and I’ll explain what I mean. So, just the other day I was working with a client and they had a team. Frankly, you talk about cultures, plural. The, the team is struggling with a lot of conflict in what we’ll call a toxic culture because everybody’s afraid they’re gonna get fired, and the senior leaders are like, I don’t know why they’re afraid nobody’s gonna get fired.
And I said tell me this. Do they have some evidence to believe that there’s reason to be afraid? And the answer was actually, yeah. We just, we just let go three of our senior leaders, I’m like, oh, okay. So they, they have real life experience and evidence to be afraid.
So, to answer your question, it’s about, and, and, and so then I started to explain we need to give them some new evidence, new data points, to start to believe that what used to be true is changing and will no longer be true.
Because until that changes, until they see real evidence, they’re gonna continue to be afraid. So what do you have to do as a leader? And it sounds easy, but it takes, you have to create new experiences that these people, when they take risks, you talk about, you know, celebrating failure. That when they make a mistake that bad things won’t happen.
And actually when they make a mistake, they’re gonna be celebrated. And so you have to give them totally different experiences, right? And then only then will they start to, I mean, fear is based on lack of trust and uncertainty. So you have to create a conditions of certainty. So that they’re not afraid, right?
Russel Lolacher: You’re talking about operationalizing it as well? I, I think about the, so we talk about values a lot, and I, I make jokes all the time. Values on the poster, values on the computer screen don’t mean crap in the workplace,
it’s how are they rewarded? How are they recognized? So with the lens of wellness, what as an organization, executive, HR, however, what leadership around… what leadership should they be recognizing? Should they be rewarding in regards to wellness? To show everybody else that this is the kind of organization that we wanna support.
Stephen Kohler: I love it. I’m gonna answer that in two words and then I’ll provide some context. The calendar and the budget. Now, what do I mean by that? I once heard a politician here in the U.S. say, it’s like, don’t tell me your values. Show me your calendar and show me your wallet, and then I’ll tell you what you actually value because it’s about how are you spending your time?
Because that shows your, your priorities and how are you spending your money or not spending your money, right? I’ve never forgotten that. And organizations are the same way as it relates to wellness. Don’t show me the poster in the gym that says you believe in wellness, because by the way, the gym is empty. Why? Because everybody’s at their desk working and they don’t have time to go to the gym. Don’t show me the poster. Show me the calendar. Show me the budget. So two things that can happen is that they assign budget. I mean, that’s a big one. For a traditional organization, don’t tell me you believe in leadership development, but the first thing that when budgets get tight, you strike that line item in the budget, right?
You reinforce that as, as, as a budget. And also you reinforce what I’ll call your calendar, schedule, your time. Here’s an example. A lot of organizations, at least I’ve been part of have the, the irony is that they have meetings that they require their employees to be in from nine to five and then the employees, after they leave all the meetings have to go get the real work done, let alone go be well.
So what do they do? They institute, and this is a tactic I’ve seen some organizations do really well, is they have like blackout times in the day, in the week with where there are no meetings. You cannot schedule a team meeting at like 12 to one or anytime after 4:00 PM whatever, right? It’s not a silver bullet, but it starts to give some tactical reinforcement that this thing we believe about giving people time to go be well or not be in a meeting or get their work done, we mean it. Which is great.
Some managers here’s a little tactic. Managers will use tools on their computers and email programs to prevent. I can send an email right after five o’clock, but it will not show up in my employee’s inbox until 10:00 AM the next day. So a lot of little tactics like this that they’re not silver bullets, but they can start to help us reinforce what we say we value.
Russel Lolacher: I think it also reinforces what wellness to me is different than wellness to you, Stephen. So for instance, your perfect example of that is say there’s an executive or a leader going, it’s in my brain. Wellness for me is getting it out so I don’t sit and stew on it, right? I need it to release into the world. However, the wellness of the person that you’re trying to engage with is leave me alone for these hours of the day. I don’t care when you are inspired. So for it to sort of have that moment where you get it out, but it doesn’t meet the audience until they’re ready for it.
I think that’s key because again, wellness are being defined by two different people.
Stephen Kohler: Bingo. I even heard about a, a recent technology tool that will allow all of us basically to block all the incoming digital data. So what do I mean? I mean, texts, emails, Slack we have such, so many of these technology things, it creates this constant form of stress. You talk about fight or flight, like, oh my God, my boss just texted me.
Like, it, it creates a shock and we feel impulse to immediately react. There are tools now that are start, ironically technology tools to help blunt some of those things. So the easy idea is that you put on do not disturb on your phone. There are similar things that you can do to email programs, IMs, tweets and texts so we can, we can have a bit of that wellness. I’ll give you a great example. One of the things I used to do is I I would turn all that stuff off, go hide in a conference room where nobody knew so I could get work done for two hours. That these were some tactics I had in my control to, to create focus.
Russel Lolacher: Right.
Stephen Kohler: And I think these are things that we as leaders in organizations can support and enable from a, from a wellness perspective.
Russel Lolacher: And I think at hammer’s home, we’re kind of dancing around a bit here, but I think it really reinforces the fact that wellness being different to different people, if we understand that better, like some people, wellness for them is working in a very busy environment.
It invigorates them. It makes them very, like, they feel the energy, they feed off that energy. Extroverts. To be able to channel it back into their work.
Others want to be in a silo in the middle of nowhere and just leave me alone. I’ll interact with people virtually. So it brings that diversity, equity, inclusivity element to it is that if we have different definitions, we can be more inclusive if we have an understanding of what each person’s wellness level is, and that’s what that’s on leadership to sort of figure out.
Stephen Kohler: And I love that. And I wish more organizations, and I hope more organizations are listening to this podcast for that very thing. So you get into something like whatever you call the, the, the how many days of work we’re coming to the, the organization. Frankly, I think, I think we miss the point when we start coming up with kind of arbitrary, everybody’s gonna come in for three days and everybody’s gonna have two days off.
I think if it’s more flexible, where the manager of the team, the employees have the very conversation You’re talking about saying What’s wellness to you? Maybe the extrovert’s like, man, I wanna be in, or yeah, I wanna be in the office five days a week. ’cause I can’t, I, I can’t have enough stimulation with humans.
And the introvert says, you’re gonna get the most out of me if I come in maybe once a day, once a week but I have that quiet time, that recharge time at home, right? And having that conversation on a one-to-one basis rather than an arbitrary basis.
Russel Lolacher: So what’s a hard truth here that you think organizations really need to accept if they’re gonna get serious about promoting, fostering, supporting wellness in the workplace?
Stephen Kohler: Wellness matters. Wellness is not just a fluffy term. Wellness is also not having a gym in your office and saying, we’ve done our job. ‘Cause, ’cause employees will naturally just make time to do it. Wellness is not about, with all due respect to my friends in HR, having a court work-life balance program, whatever that might mean, that’s not wellness.
Wellness is also about having hard trade-offs about workload with employees and, and, and saying, no, we’re not. You’re not. Nobody could get everything that’s on your work on your to-do list done. And so I as your manager gonna sit down with you and say, here are the two things we’re gonna prioritize, and here are the eight things we’re gonna say no to right now.
In favor of your wellness. And, and we know in the long term, if we invest in you, you’re gonna be more productive, more engaged, and help the organization. And it’s that intellectual rigor of trade offs, but also values that I think the best organizations understand.
Russel Lolacher: So I love wrapping it up with the idea of, okay, what’s one thing we can do? People are listening. They’re like, okay, I don’t know what my wellness gauge is. I dunno what my teams are and they wanna start down this path, their wellness journey, what’s the first baby step they start tomorrow or right now?
Stephen Kohler: Yep. I like to ask one question, and you can ask this to your I would say ask this of yourself and of your team members. What’s one thing that fuels you that if, if you had permission to, you would go do? When I have people reflect on that, almost always, almost always, when I give them that permission, they’re like, oh, I know what fuels me.
It’s reading a book. It’s spending time with a loved one. It’s running, it’s music, it’s fishing, right? It’s, it’s watching a movie. If I only could do that, right? If, you know, I’m like, okay, we’re gonna do that. It sounds easier than it, and it is, but what it takes is commitment to yourself and a willingness to to say no to everything else.
And so I would ask everybody in this who’s listening to this session identify what’s one thing that fuels you and commit to yourself that you’re gonna do it within the next 24 hours. And then make a commitment to yourself of how you’re gonna sustain that over time.
And lastly, indentify it… It’s a little, it’s a little cheesy. Find an accountability partner or buddy that will hold you to that. I know that’s been really helpful for me. Russel, thank you so much. It’s been an honor to be here with you.
Russel Lolacher: It has been great. Sam, thank you so much. I feel a bit more wellness involved. Like for me, I’m an extrovert, so I love a good conversation. That’s sort of a thing that fuels my bucket as well and helps me start my day is just sort of getting below this of surface conversations.
So, I appreciate you filling my bucket today. So thank you very much for your time.
Stephen Kohler: And, and likewise, I, I feel rejuvenated, amplified.
Russel Lolacher: Amplified. There’s Stephen Kohler. He is an author, certified executive coach, keynote speaker, composer, performer, and founder and CEO of Adira Labs. He’s also the author of a book you should definitely pick up, which is called The Leadership Anthem, How Listening Like a Musician Creates Strong Performances.
Thanks so much, Stephen.
Stephen Kohler: Thank you, Russel. Really appreciate it.