00:00:00 Paula: Welcome to Future-Focus, Well-Being and Resilience, where we focus on journeys that can keep us well and support our resilience. We figured out that no two journeys are the same, but we also recognize that there are some habits, some practices, some lessons that can nurture us and help us flourish and strive.
00:00:23 Paula: We love to capture and share these pearls of insight and wisdom. And today is special in that TesseTalks is introducing Future-Focused, Well-Being and Resilience. And we have a very special guest. Actually, he’s our first guest. So let’s get on with our first guest by introducing him to this new initiative. So our guest is David Taylor-Klaus. And our theme today will be storytelling: what leadership narratives build healthy communities. I’ll tell you a little bit about David. He’s recognized for combining candor, intelligence and humor with masterful coaching. He challenges leaders and their teams to reach the highest levels of performance in their professional and personal lives.
00:01:18 Paula: David has lived with depression and ADHD for most of his life, which has given him a deep understanding of, and compassion for, the neurodivergence that is so common among entrepreneurs and maverick leaders. When David’s life work is done, no maverick leader will need to experience what he did. That is standing on the proverbial bridge wondering how he ever got so lost. And with that, I wanna say welcome to Future-Focus, Well-Being and Resilience. David.
00:01:57 David: Thank you. Thank you. Glad to be here and help kick this off.
00:02:01 Tesse: Yeah. David, I can’t tell you how excited Paula and I get when you are coming on. It’s brilliant. And you know, you being our first guest is such a gift. Thank you for saying yes. And I’m gonna kick us off because I often hear you talking about life-rhythm. And actually how you think and feel that that’s what is needed rather than work-life balance. So for our listeners and for us, what’s the difference?
00:02:28 David: Thank you for not saying work life balance first, ’cause that makes all the hair on the back of my neck stand up. No, I think the difference is one is a life built and perpetuated by corporate America and North American grind culture. And the other one is what our real goal is. The problem with work-life balance is, uh, I don’t know whose daft idea it was to put the word work first. But it’s permeated our thinking that we are working and then jamming life into the corners around work.
00:02:59 David: And I think that set us up for failure. It’s making us over-calibrate towards work and over-prioritize work. ‘Cause the other problem with the phrase is that idea of work-life balance. Look, work is just an aspect of life. Just like family, community, travel, freedom. It doesn’t matter what your drivers are, they’re all part of your life, just like work is.
00:03:24 David: So why include it without including all the others? So at the very least it should be life-balance. But in order to balance things, you have to separate those aspects of your life. And that, that’s not realistic. You know, the idea of work doesn’t fit into a nice tidy container anymore. Unless you have the midnight, the overnight shift on a factory floor sticking widgets onto a chassis. You don’t really leave work at work. And for most people, even when they have jobs like that, they’re still perseverating over work when they’re not there. So the idea is all those different aspects of our life that are important, that drive us, that move us, that enliven us, that enrich our world, we’re trying to create a nice rhythm across those things.
00:04:12 David: So what we’re really working towards is a life rhythm. Finding that fluid, harmonic rhythm across all the beautiful components of our world, that’s the difference.
00:04:24 Tesse: I love it. Paula, what say you?
00:04:29 Tesse: Paula – I was impressed that he used the word daft because I haven’t heard it in ages, and my mom used, I used to say, that’s so British, so.
00:04:38 David: Clearly an old British man trapped in the mix.
00:04:42 Tesse: I’m sure you picked it up in England.
00:04:48 Paula: Oh, right! So because this is so new. We’ve got interesting questions like, okay, I thank you for defining the difference between life-rhythms and work-life balance. You really made it clear to me. But how can leaders authentically encourage well-being? ‘Cause this is all about well-being and resilience. How can we incorporate well-being authentically into leadership?
00:05:14 Paula: What does that look like?
00:05:16 David: First of all, model it! You know, we have so many leaders that are saying it’s important over there. It’s important for the all the employees in the company. You have to model it. The dark way of saying it is the fish rots from the head down. Right? So if the leader is not focused on their own well-being, then every push, every initiative within the organization tied to well-being is hollow, at best.
00:05:39 David: And so that’s completely inauthentic. So one of the things we work with leaders on is a holistic view of their own self-care. Right? How are they balancing the aspects of their life? Are they the workaholic? Like Elon Musk was sleeping on the floor at Tesla for years trying to get when the model three came out, trying to turn it around.
00:06:02 David: I do not want to use him as a model of positive leadership. That was modeling imbalance. So there is no such thing as well-being in an organization where the leader is modeling imbalance. And if they’re living in balance and telling the rest of the org that they need to be more balanced. No! So the first step is actually leaning into it, living it, and thereby modeling it.
00:06:24 David: Then you have something to share and broadly through the organization. And you know, Google’s offices in Ireland just before the pandemic. They had a rule you didn’t work when you weren’t in the office. You left your laptops in the office. And that’s a beautifully extreme version of it. But there is work and there is not work.
00:06:46 David: There are many more initiatives now that employees are no longer required to answer emails that are sent after hours, for many organizations. Because you’re teaching them that, yeah we can send stuff after hours if we are choosing to work at that time. But your work time is your work time. You make your own decisions.
00:07:05 David: So if you’re deciding that once the kids are in bed, I’m gonna put in a couple hours so that I can finish what I need to get done. That’s a call, you’re call. That’s not a requirement. When we deal with paid time off, a lot of times we’re seeing organizations lean into the legal structure that if you are answering email and texts and work issues while you are on vacation. Then that doesn’t qualify as paid time off, right? That is you are not taking paid time off, you’re actually working remotely. So organizations are saying no, if you’re on vacation, you’re on vacation. So I think it’s important that the organizations from a structural perspective, are practicing what they preach.
00:07:45 David: If you’re calling somebody while they’re away on their honeymoon, you are not practicing any sense of balance or rhythm. You’re practicing we own you! And that’s not gonna teach them well-being, and it’s certainly not gonna provide any airtime for resilience.
00:08:01 Tesse: This is, I’m getting too excited for my own good.
00:08:04 Tesse: Paula, that’s such a great question. Yeah, yeah. I’m kind of leaning into some. Yeah, some kind of curiosity here. Because, uh, David, I don’t know if you, remember that I am a Lawyer. And I’m a non-practicing Solicitor in, in England and Wales. And really what I can see are all those virtual clocks that go on, once somebody says to a Lawyer, hello! And the curiosity here is how competence and capability and wellness, well-being, relaxation. How they can sit together in the kind of environment like an accountancy firm or a legal firm where it’s ruled by the clock, and at the end of it by bonuses, and other goody goodies.
00:08:45 David: You know what you compensate, expands. Right? And if you’re telling people that if you can put in more hours than anybody else, you’ll make more than anybody else. You are paying them to grind them. And that’s old thinking. And clock-driven accountancies and solicitors and attorneys. That is, look, our middle child is in med school right now and I remember. You know, my dad, who was a physician, learned how to sleep, standing up, leaning against a wall.
00:09:14 David: Because they would have 48-hour shifts. And doctors were taught to and expected to just grind through it. And not only grind through it, but you have to be focused and on because any mistake or any delay is literally a life and death matter. They no longer do that. In most hospitals and in med schools, they’re teaching them the new protocols of this.
00:09:35 David: You can’t work more than X number of hours. If you work more than X number of hours, there’s a fudge factor. ‘Cause if you’re in the middle of a case, or a patient, or an operating theater, you can’t walk. But the idea is, you work more than X hours, you need Y hours before you can be back on the floor in the hospital.
00:09:50 David: ‘Cause we now understand what’s required to be at the top of your game. And bludgeoning through is not what works to be at the top of your game. Same in leadership. Same in same for any level of work in any organization. They’ve changed it with firefighters; they’ve changed it with EMTs. They’re changing it on the life-and-death side. And it’s trickling into the rest, of corporate-think.
00:10:14 David: And if we want the best out of our people, we have to treat our people well. You can’t rely on them being resilient if you’re trying your best to kill them with structure. There’s a friend of mine who was working for one of the large, international consulting firms and was, thankfully at the time, headquartered in Europe. And he completely burned out. When you burn out here in the US. Most organizations have a, ‘you can go on disability’. You have X number of months, then you’re back. And if you’re back at anything less than full-time, you’re then 50% time you’re not back and you only get a portion of your salary at best, et cetera, et cetera. Organizations have different rules. You burnout in Europe. It was, you’re out for 18 months. You’re gonna work with doctors and therapists along the way to help you recover. We’re gonna pay for that. You get 75% of your salary. This firm paid him 100% of his salary. And when he came back, he came back an hour a week and worked his way back up. And they made sure that they brought back a whole human. Because they serve the people.
00:11:20 David: That’s actually when Human Resources is actually taking care of the human as the greatest resource of the organization. We give it lip service here in most cases. And that may have been an extreme example, but it’s a structural approach to keeping humans healthy. And when they fail at that, it’s then helping them be resilient and come back. So!
00:11:42 Tesse: This story you’ve told. I mean my heart is warming to that because, you know, it was a win-win for everyone in the long run. You know, to get the whole human being back it. It says what HR should really be doing about taking care of the humans. Really be doing! So, you know, my curiosity is leaning further in ’cause there’s some content I’m hearing.
00:12:03 Tesse: You know people talk about, a lot about resiliency and resilience. And then there’s another thing which is about hardiness and then fragility. These are all sorts of concepts I’m hearing in the resiliency field and in the kind of like the wellness and well-being field. Can you shine any light on these different things? How there’s similar or different?
00:12:24 David: Oh, I worry about the idea of hardiness. Because it really is saying, how much can you endure? There is a chest thumping. You know, I can work 20 hours straight. Okay, great! What’s home life like? Oh, no, no, no I’m avoiding that! Right? So, I don’t know, I think I go back to the idea of Kintsugi.
00:12:47 David: It’s a Japanese art of taking a broken piece and using gold embedded, gold, to fuse it back together. Where the repaired piece has a beauty that’s different in some ways, even more than the original piece. And when we look at healing by improving and expanding. That’s amazing! We’re looking at the inherent value of something and whether it’s a piece of pottery. Or a human, why should it be any different? It’s instead of discarding something that’s broken. There’s so much more that we can do. Yes, we should organize our structures so we’re not breaking humans. That’s where I hope we’re moving. You know, it’s the Star Trek future we’re all talking about. But that idea of healing the human to bring them back better than ever, for their sake. Not for the sake of the organization. Or not just for the organization.
00:13:44 Tesse: Yeah, you’ve really got me because that, method. The broken piece analogy into the Japanese thing was what really has helped me in the last few years. To see brokenness as a gift at times in relation to how you come back and can be better. You know, how the golden thing is, is bonded together. And I simply love it. And that journey was something that you kicked off for me David. You don’t this but you did. Because you started off, to me, when we first connected, and I was exchanging emails with you by saying, that each episode of loss, grief, whatever is a single episode. It’s not layered. It’s not layered! And while they, you empathize and have compassion for the composite impact of those, seeing them as single helps to actually do more single events, which just happen sadly to coincide. And you said, that. I’m not sure if you remember. I still kept the email by the way. And when I met another coach and she was talking about the Kintsugi element of gold and sun. It meant something. And my mindset started being in this level of, what’s the gold?
00:15:01 Tesse: How’s it come together? What’s the pottery looking like, et cetera. It was such a healing mindset. Thank you, David. Thank you!
00:15:10 Paula: Yes. It reminds me of the conversation we are having yesterday with the post that you sent to me about, you know, in order to have forgiveness, you’ve gotta open up that space. And then I saw something early this morning. And sent to you, which, you know, as we spoke more about this.
00:15:26 Paula: Talking about every relationship having a spiritual; I’m reading it by the way! Every relationship has a spiritual purpose that helps us to grow and become stronger. And sometimes, our most challenging relationships bring out the greatest personal blessings because from that, we learn forgiveness. We remain patient, and we learn of the virtues.
00:15:47 Paula: And you know, it all ties up with what we’re saying. You know, sometimes our most challenging times bring out the best in us, but we’ve gotta be nurtured through it, you know? And David, you did make a very valid point about, with that example, of the person you talked about, who HR in the European company help that person come back.
00:16:09 Paula: So they could be a whole person again. Not for the organization, for themselves. Which we don’t have the luxury of enjoying in the United States!
00:16:19 David: Not yet! Not yet!
00:16:22 Paula: I like that. Not yet. Because that that means you’re indicating that there’s hope.
00:16:28 David: Well!
00:16:29 Paula: There’s work to be done. There’s work in progress.
00:16:32 David: Well, I hope it’s more in progress than I think it is. But we are beginning to value the human and not the role.
00:16:39 Paula: Yes.
00:16:40 David: And that’s a big shift from, you know, the industrial era and the eighties, excess greed is good era. We are maturing to be more focused on the contributor, not the contribution.
00:16:56 Paula: Right! So, right! Yeah! Yep! Yeah, I mean, having a conversation with a friend of mine who spent, a few more months here in the States living with her daughter; her children who are here. And she’s like, wow! The American psyche and the American work ethics. It’s so different from what it is in Nigeria. She is like, in this country, you pray not to be sick! Because I mean, she said, I’ve seen so many instances of people’s possessions being thrown out of apartments because they just couldn’t make the rent. Back where we come from, somebody will bring it. You know, people you can go and ask people. People will help you, people. So you know, she said, I’ve had to adjust my mindset to think work is the king!
00:17:48 David: An unhealthy approach.
00:17:50 Paula: Yeah, we do have to have a new approach.
00:17:53 David: Yeah.
00:17:53 Paula: Oh boy!
00:17:55 David: Celebrating the fact that you’re working well in a system that’s sick is not; I think that pushes us towards insanity. Great. I’m well-adjusted to a sick system.
00:18:07 David: It’s not something to celebrate.
00:18:09 Paula: It isn’t!
00:18:10 Tesse: Not at all. Not at all.
00:18:12 Paula: Well yeah,
00:18:13 Tesse: I can’t stop laughing because it’s not something to celebrate at all.
00:18:18 David: It’s not, I know I’m paraphrasing a famous quote, but it’s, we do that. Oh, look. Look how well I’m doing in this system, but this system is sick. There’s a logical way that it’s come to this point that doesn’t excuse it.
00:18:31 David: But it’s understandable and as our approach to humans changes, we’ll see the systems change around it. We will! But we, we’ve gotta believe that we can change it. And I think the biggest piece to, you know, speaking to resilience. The biggest piece of resilience is believing that you can rebound, you can overcome, you can come back, you can heal.
00:18:56 David: And whether it’s multiple events happening at one time or something that feels dire. To believe that you can’t, proves you can’t, and makes it so you won’t. You’ve got to believe that you can overcome. And I think the most important piece is there’s nothing. I mean, I get that death is final, so maybe other than death, there’s nothing that you can’t overcome.
00:19:18 David: There are countless examples of people who get beyond what seems to be insurmountable and unbeatable,
00:19:26 Paula: Tell me about that!
00:19:28 Paula: Ooh. I’m still mulling over that phrase you said. We celebrate, what’s it? How well we…
00:19:35 David: Not the contributor. Yeah, and it’s, it’s, the shift is to celebrate the contributor more than the contribution.
00:19:42 David: The, valuation problem is huge. Because when we value people for what they do, who they be, that’s why I have a job. Right? So the folks I work with are the ones who have gotten to that point where, in order to get better at doing any of the things they want to be doing better, it’s time to get better at being who they be; who they are at their core.
00:20:02 David: So they’re shifting that focus to doing the internal work that we haven’t been socialized to do along the way. So in our forties or fifties or some lucky ones thirties, decide, oh yeah, the work starts here. That’s how I’ll get better at doing all the things I wanna do. But that’s by getting better at being me.
00:20:21 David: Right? So when that’s valued, first and foremost. These questions about well-being and resilience they will be inevitable and logical outcomes rather than something we strive for and have to recover to, or have to stretch for. Right? Being broken will be the anomaly rather than the norm.
00:20:48 Tesse: I’m loving this. I’m loving this.
00:20:50 David: So you got me on a rant because I realized so, much of our medical system here in particular, and medicine in general, is based on a break-fix model. It’s broken. Let’s fix it! It’s not based on a wellness as a priority. You know, I’d like to take it all the way back to Freud, who I think screwed up Psychology for everyone. Because he had this in to totally simplify it. He had this inherent belief that we are all broken, we have glimpses of wholeness, and then we revert to our natural broken state. Several of his disciples or students rejected him wholesale. Adler is one, and so much of coaching is based on Adler.
00:21:27 Tesse: I love Adler!
00:21:28 David: That yet we are creative, resourceful, and whole, right? That’s our core state. Now, yes, we may have broken behaviors and broken times and broken experiences. But we are able to revert to our natural state of creative, resourceful, and whole.
00:21:43 David: And that Adlerian approach is a lot of where coaching comes from. It’s born out of that. And they are other things like positive Psychology, also born from that. But that idea that humans are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. Hell yeah! I vote for that. Right? And learning to hold ourselves this whole. Yes! There are literally broken bits that we can have.
00:22:06 David: This doesn’t work for therapeutic things. Living with depression is one thing. Depression is another. That is a, I have a broken chemistry. But I can learn to live with that and adapt to it. I am naturally creative resource and whole. So when I hold myself as whole, my recovery point, what I am resilient towards is my wholeness, not a broken state. But when we hold other people as inherently broken, or we hold ourselves as inherently broken. Then our relationships are inherently broken. And our belief that the future is coming at us and we just have to endure it. Is the default state rather than we get to create our future because we have agency. ‘Cause damnit, we’re whole! We’re not a broken thing. So, this is a mindset that’s woven into the fabric of, of our world, that has to be dismantled for resilience to be the order of the day.
00:23:04 Tesse: I love that. I totally, totally love that.
00:23:07 Tesse: You know, taking ourselves as whole. It’s a beautiful, beautiful way of thinking about this. It’s a beautiful way of feeling. You know, what life and living can be, what becomes possible with that image in mind. Paula, the quiet one…
00:23:23 Paula: Yeah. I mean, David has had me thinking so deeply. But, you know, and I’m looking at the time too. But you’re so good with words, and I know you’re excellent with metaphors.
00:23:34 Paula: Now, if you had to come up with a metaphor that we can share about well-being and resilience as a pillar for leadership and leading. What can you create? What metaphor can you come up with for us?
00:23:48 David: You know, it’s, what’s funny is the vision that came up to me immediately was the Zoom screen. And you know, we joke about the Zoom mullet, right? Where it’s business above the waist and it’s pajamas below the waist. And I think, that’s, that’s the challenge. We don’t have holistic thinking about it. As long as I look good, I am good. And, but that doesn’t work. That’s not well-being. That’s well-looking.
00:24:15 David: You, you can’t lead like that. Right? And okay, so I don’t have shoes on, but I don’t like to wear shoes! I would do that in the office. But that idea of as long as I look good, I am good is, I think the challenge in leadership when it comes to well-being. You have to be well to help others be well. It’s the mask in the airplane.
00:24:37 David: You put the mask on you first before you help somebody else. And that has to be the way we approach well-being. And I feel like I’m about to get up on the soapbox and rant.
00:24:47 David: Help yourself first so that you can help and model for others. And that’s the core of well-being. It is a holistic whole-body, whole-brain, whole-heart, whole-spirit. It has to be whole. It can’t be the mullet.
00:25:01 Tesse: I love it. The Zoom line! I love that above and below what go on?
00:25:10 Paula: You’ve got to be well before you can help others be well. And we’ll close out on that because that summarizes it all. We hear it on the airplane. We hear it around us, you know about, you know, take care, self-care, take care of yourself. But as you’ve said, you’ve got to be well before you can help others be well.
Outro:
00:25:33 Paula: And that’s what we will use in concluding this very first episode of Future-Focus, Well-Being and Resilience. Which was hosted by TesseTalks. And so we say to all our amazing audience members that join and tune in. Thank you so much. We also ask that you head over to Apple Podcast, YouTube Podcast, to YouTube itself. Spotify or anywhere where you get your podcast. And we ask that you subscribe. And if you love what you just heard. Please write us a Raving review. And if you’ve got any questions or topics you’d like us to cover related to leadership or governance. We ask that you send us a note. Remember, this note can be personal, as well as professional.
00:26:20 Paula: And if you’d like to be the second guest on Future-Focus, Well-Being, and Resilience, reach out to us on tesseakpeki.com/tessetalks/ to apply. Thank you, David.
00:26:35 David: Pleasure.
00:26:36 Tesse: Yeah, David it’s always a joy. Always! Never disappoints! DTK always delivers like the post-person.
00:26:46 Paula: Thank you!