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The topics and opinions express in the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
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those of W FOURCY Radio.
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What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the
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answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose
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at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their
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lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization
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that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their
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highest potential. Business can be such a force for good
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in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide
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guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we
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all want working on Purpose. Now here's your host, doctor
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Elise Cortes.
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Welcome back to the Working and Purpose program, which has
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been brought to with passion and pride since February of
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twenty fifteen. Thanks for tuning in this week. Great to
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have you. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. If we
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have not met before and you don't know me, I'm
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an organizational psychologist to management consultant, local therapists, speaker and author.
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My team and I at Gusto Now help companies to
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enliven and fortify their operations by building a dynamic, high
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performance culture and inspirational leadership activated by meaning and purpose.
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And did you know that inspired employees outperform their satisfied
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peers by a factor of two point twenty five to one.
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In other words, inspiration is good for the bottom line.
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You can learn more about us on how we can
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work together at gustodashnow dot com or my personal site
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at Lascortes dot com. Before we get into today's program,
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I am thrilled to announce the registration is open for
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a fabulous new conference for women for which I'll serve
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as the MC. It's called Thrive in twenty five and
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is a jam packed few days in Chicago June twenty
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fifth through twenty eight, twenty twenty five, designed to develop
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women as whole selves from both during your mindset to
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your financial acumen, to leadership, to incorporating nature and art
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into your life to raise consciousness, and much more. Visit
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thrive in twenty five dot com for information and to register.
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Use my promo code Gusto all caps to gain access
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to the free books and programs. I'll be gifting registrants
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as well. See you there now getting in today's program
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we have with us today. Katina Sawyer a PhD and
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Associate Professor of Management and Organization in the Ellers College
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of Management at the University of Arizona. She's also co
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founder of Worker Being, co host of the Thriving at
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Work podcast, and co author of Leading for Wellness, How
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to create a team culture where everyone thrives, which will
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be diving into today. Specifically, we'll be discussing workplace wellness,
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why it's important, and what's in it for you as
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a leader to improve it, and then discuss several key
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behaviors leaders can develop to cultivate wellness in their organizations.
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She knows today from Tucson, Arizona. Doctor Sooya a hearty
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welcome to Working on Purpose.
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Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.
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Me too, and I just love celebrating, you know, really
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beautiful things that get put into the world, like this
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thing right here, right and as you know, of course
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I read it cover to cover, can quite sepers but
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you're so welcome. You're so welcome. And of course, as
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I mentioned in our correspondence, you know, there's a lot
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of things that you're up to in your business, your podcast,
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your book that aligns a lot with my world. So
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that's going to be a fun conversation. Okay, So the
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first thing I want to do is I want to
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step into just let's talk about definitions and situating what
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we're talking about here. So let's talk about what just
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wellness means first.
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Sure.
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Yeah, So actually this was something we were interested in
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when we started writing the book. While wellness has some
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academic definitions, and actually those take varied forms, so there's
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not a lot of agreement in the scientific literature of
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what wellness means either. We feel like when companies say
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wellness and when employees say wellness, they're not always speaking
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the same language. And so one of the things that
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we initially wanted to do in our research for the
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book was really tacked down what does wellness mean to
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employees when they say they want companies to support their wellness,
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And what we found is that it had four components,
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a physical component, an emotional component, a mental health component,
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and a work life balance component. And those seem to
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be the things that employees are looking for when they're
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saying they want organizations to support their wellness.
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M beautiful, so, Crisp. The other thing that was kind
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of interesting about that is when it comes to this
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idea of wellness. I mean I remember during the pandemic, Katina,
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when we started talking about well being as an important
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thing that the c suitet leaders were focused on, and
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I thought, oh, this is good. We haven't been talking
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about this for quite someever, have we. Even the Gallup
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organization went from engagement to a well being. Yeah, that
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was a really good thing. And then you know, something happened.
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I don't know.
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So I'm so happy to see that you are advancing
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this initiative and you've got resources, you're putting this out
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into the world because I think it's sorely needed and important,
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and I think it got sort of sent to the
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back seat again.
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Yeah, I think specifically, certain components of wellness got sent
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to the back seat at the time of the pandemic,
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people were emotionally suffering quite a lot and having a
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lot of authentic and vulnerable conversations.
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And then it was kind of like companies wanted to.
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Put Pandora back in the box, you know, like we're
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just going to forget that happen and move forward and
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readopt our old norms.
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And that doesn't work.
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Like, once the cats out of that bag, it's really
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hard to go backwards, right. And So while we still
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see companies spending money on workplace wellness initiatives and doing
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step challenges and things like that, which aren't bad in
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and of themselves, certain components, the tougher components, the components
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that are actually about changing the norms of our workplace
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seem to have been pushed back to the back burner,
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as you're suggesting.
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Which is really this conversation is really exciting for me, Katina,
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because I really am I'm a future of work sort
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of researcher. I'm a social scientist here about work being
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a place where people can see it as a experience,
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as a playground and not a solow crushing place that
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they have to go to with their paycheck. So and
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I do I have seen that gap between how the
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workforce has evolved, think in part in part because of
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what's been catalyzed in the pandemic. But yet, you know,
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unfortunately our companies and much of our leadership is still
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you know, there's a gap between those two domains.
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One hundred percent.
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Yeah, I think we are really held onto these sticky
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norms that we talk about in the book called ideal
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worker norms, and those norms were actually derived back in
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time when employees had more focused spheres between work and
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life that they were dedicated towards. And of course we've
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made great progress in having more flexibility and letting people
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choose which spheres they're more attracted to. Do they want
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to be more focused on life or work or work
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or life, right, But at the time that these ideal
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worker norms came about, it was more traditional, you know,
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a normative couple split, where a husband would go into
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the workforce and a wife would stay home. And the
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assumption with sort of that work can be number one
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at all times and other things aren't interrupting. And while
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we've evolved somewhat on that front, the world has changed
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much faster than our norms have, and so we're trying
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to cling on to this old norm of what it
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means to be a leader and what it means to
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be a good employee that just doesn't match the realities
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of the lives that employees live.
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Completely agree, one hundred percent. So you know, there is
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a lot of research out there. Your research is gold,
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and there's just so much out there that speaks, you know,
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to what needs to happen. So why aren't leaders focusing
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on wellness? And if they do, how are they, as
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you like to say, treating it.
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Yeah, so I think that leaders are sort of taking
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cues from what their organizations ask them to prioritize. And
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while workplaces have been investing more time and energy and
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attention into employee health and wellbeing, it's not what they
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ask their leaders to focus on. They ask their leaders
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to focus on results and the bottom line and making
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sure that you know, they're delivering on expectations. And because
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they're not asking leaders to see and framing these wellness
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initiatives or wellness focuses in as part of what does
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help drive those results, leaders view them as being at
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odds and so they think, well, either I can make
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people happy and healthy, or I can drive results.
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But when push comes to shove.
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I'm going to just try to be results focused, which
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often means, you know, overwork making people put the pedals
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to the medal, deprioritizing their lives, which we all know
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as a recipe for burnout and a lower level of
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productivity in the long term. But what they're trying to
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do is prioritize what they hear their workplace is saying.
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And workplaces are not often putting these two things in
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conversation with one another.
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That's very chris So that brings us to then what
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can we actually do as leaders just start to change
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the tide of the ship. And I love that in
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all the search that you do, and I love research too.
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This is great. You found at least two kinds of leaders,
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and I don't know if they were more in your research,
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but I'm interested certainly what you talk about in the book,
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the generators and the extinguishers. So let's let our listeners
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and viewers understand what are those two leaders like?
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Sure?
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Yeah, So in the research we did for the book,
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we asked people to nominate and discuss with us leaders
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they had who they felt were exemplary at supporting their wellness,
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and we did dozens of in depth interviews and then
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hundreds of people filled out surveys afterwards to sort of
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verify our findings to try to understand who those people
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were and what they were doing, and we came up
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with the term generator because the leaders who we heard
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about who were exemplary at doing this tended to be
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leaders who really amplified the energy on their team, made
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people feel extra engaged at work, made people feel like
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their health was better than ever physical health, mental health.
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So not only were they thriving in their workplaces, they
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were also feeling like their lives were improving and that
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they were having a great level of work life balance
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that they act actually we're reaching a balance that was
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appropriate for them, that they felt in balance, and so
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all of those things led us to name these leaders
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who we are providing a roadmap in our book for
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how to become more like generators.
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The interesting thing.
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About the process of doing the interviews and surveys for
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this book was that while we were asking people to
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really focus on we don't want to know what not
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to do, because the presence of good leadership isn't just
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the absence of bad leadership.
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So we don't want this book to be a bunch
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of like don't, don't, don't, don't, don't do this right.
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We want it to be what can you do to
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get yourself proactively great at this? And what we found
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in the interviews was that it was often challenging to
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keep people on track from talking about foils to this. So,
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you know, we'd hear a lot of let me tell
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you about this great leader that I had, this is
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what this person did in comparison to this horrible person
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that I had, And then they would go on and
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talk about and tell stories about.
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These other folks.
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And what we started to realize was that the natural
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emergence of these stories about extinguishers, which we ended up
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calling them in the book, the extinguishers are really people
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who suck energy and life out of a team and
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out of their employees. And we realized that one of
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the reasons these were organically occurring stories about these folks
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were organically occurring was because people really view the generators
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in opposition to or they were highlighting a useful distinction
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for us that we actually found helpful in conveying these
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concepts in our book, which is it's not just about
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avoiding being an extinguisher, which you also need to learn.
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It's about getting to being a generator, but you kind
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of need to understand the behaviors of both to get
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yourself to that place.
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Gorgeous, so well said. You know, when I was doing