Creating a Culture of Wellbeing with Matthew Jackson

angela_r_howard (00:01.641)

All right, Matt. Hi, welcome to the podcast. How are you today?

matt_jackson (00:05.778)

I'm very well, thank you. How are you doing?

angela_r_howard (00:08.038)

I'm good, I'm good. It was lovely to catch up with you. Just now we were kind of talking about a lot of topics that I think we're gonna cover today. And we wanna learn more about you, but tell us a bit more about you, Matt.

matt_jackson (00:27.222)

Um, yes, it was lovely to catch up and I'm excited to see you next week in Chicago. It's it feels after the last three years, strange to be able to say that, but, um, I'm excited for that. Uh, so I am a Brit living in America. So I live in, um, Northern New Jersey with my wife, Alicia and my two kids, Madeline and Jamie. Um, I kind of found my way here. I did an internship in.

the financial industry in 2007, which is when I met Alicia and then traveled around the world worked in London worked in Hong Kong for a few years and then when we decided it was time to Settle down and start a family. We moved back to the area that we now live in which was actually the area that Alicia was raised in and I always love to think that we lived and worked in London in Hong Kong but my

wife was born in the same hospital that my two kids were born in. So we truly, she went full circle and this is very much home. And yeah, so it's been, it's been home since 2015 and it will be home for the foreseeable future, that's for sure.

angela_r_howard (01:26.598)

Yeah!

angela_r_howard (01:36.442)

Yes, yes, and Jamie paid us a visit this morning. The cutest. The cutest little boy, he was looking for daddy to play and was able to close the door on his own. I mean, he's just, you got it down. Yes, yes. And tell us a little bit more about, you know, what you do. So, you know, your day job, but also the impact.

matt_jackson (01:39.638)

He did. No promises he might come back again, so we'll see.

matt_jackson (01:53.679)

You will train for three-year-olds sometimes.

angela_r_howard (02:06.01)

that you personally are looking to make on the web.

matt_jackson (02:10.09)

Yeah. So, so those, those two are very closely aligned. I think I'm incredibly fortunate to, um, lead a company called Unmined in North America, and we are a company that is intent on driving cultural changes that relates to mental health in the workplace. And we ultimately have our purpose is to create a world where mental health is universally understood, nurtured and celebrated. Um,

And it's kind of the more I talk, the more obvious it becomes why somebody would want to be a part of that. And therefore what leads into their own personal mission. But my journey to one mind, I, it wasn't to get into mental health space. It wasn't something clinical or academic. It was genuinely because I worked for a company that had an incredible culture. And I worked for that company for 12 years. And I know that for folks of my generation, it's unusual to work for a company for 12 years. And there were a number of reasons.

why I did that. I had incredible growth opportunities. I worked for incredible managers. I had wonderful colleagues. And the largest part was the culture of wellbeing that created for me a level of psychological safety that I want to now pay it forward in what Unmind does. And that culture of wellbeing, it started with the physical wellbeing aspects in 2008. It was things like gym subsidies and what you should be eating and

tax-free bikes and things like that. And the wellbeing program evolved to include financial wellbeing. And then it was November of 2018 that they launched the mental wellbeing pillar. And it fundamentally impacted and changed my life in so many different ways. Um, primarily it was on a personal level that I, I grew up in a, in a blue collar area in the UK, in the Northwest, and you didn't talk about mental health. You didn't have.

You just sucked it up and you got on with it. And I was surrounded by an incredibly loving family and network. And I wanted for nothing, but in terms of understanding what mental health truly is and how you measure it and how you nurture it, we didn't get that. And I, in November of 2018 was surrounded by first world pressures. So Jamie, who we talked about before had just arrived two months early. So we're spending a bit of time in the NICU.

angela_r_howard (04:33.406)

Thank you.

matt_jackson (04:37.922)

Um, Madeline, my daughter had just turned two, so I was adjusting to becoming a parent and fatherhood. And I always joke now that whenever you ask someone, do you want kids? The answer is, you know, a majority of people, if they want kids, will very quickly say yes. But the question you should ask is, do you want your life to change forever and never go back to the way that you've been used to for the past 30 years? Because that's a life change.

angela_r_howard (05:04.374)

Mm.

matt_jackson (05:06.434)

that you need to be prepared for and that you need to continually work on afterwards. And what I realized is I'm still working on that and, and I adore my kids, but that transition to being a parent was a really, really difficult one. And, and at that point as well, the company that I worked for had been acquired by a much larger company. So there was a lot of work pressure as well. So balancing that life change of becoming a parent and worrying about Jamie and the Nick Q and then work pressures for the first time ever, which I know is ridiculous. They lucky to say.

I started to feel these mental health pressures. And I don't know if I believe in fate, but I think things probably do happen for a reason. And at that time in November of 2018, part of the mental wellbeing pillar that was launched to us included access to Unmind. And at that point, I leveraged the platform to kind of...

Provide myself with an education into what mental health was. And I realized that we always need to measure it and nurture it. Cause we all have it all of the time. So I took practical guidance from the platform, but I ultimately fell in love with the value proposition of what Unmined does now for the sake of, of keeping this brief, that there was a 16 month period where I did absolutely everything I could to join this company. And

I was incredibly fortunate that when we started our global expansion, that the US and Australia were the first two countries. And based on the relationship that I'd built and effectively pestering, um, Dr. Nick Taylor, our CEO and co-founder. Um, I had the option or the opportunity to join on mind and start our US operations. So suffice to say, I feel.

angela_r_howard (06:40.394)

Thank you.

matt_jackson (06:51.454)

incredibly fortunate career wise that I get to live and breathe this every single day and attempt to pay it forward. And to the second part of your question in terms of what my personal mission and what I want to achieve would be, I never really thought about it until I joined Unmined. And if I'm being honest, I probably don't have an eloquent answer to that question, but in my journey to Unmined and better understanding mental health and wellbeing and

angela_r_howard (07:08.145)

Mm.

matt_jackson (07:17.662)

I call it my epiphany. I don't know if it's an epiphany or a zeitgeist moment in terms of understanding mental health and that we have it and we need it to nurture it. Sorry. I right now think that your purpose and your mission likely changes as your life evolves and with a six year old and a three year old, it's difficult for me to see my purpose or mission going beyond them and raising them and caring for them and looking after them. And.

angela_r_howard (07:32.908)

Mm-hmm.

matt_jackson (07:43.81)

helping them make the right choices or the choices that they will make to become productive and compassionate members of society. So I think that if you boil it down as my primary responsibility, I think I'm incredibly fortunate to work for a company that looks to measurably improve the mental wellbeing of people in the workplace as well. So I can map those two passions together because I feel that they're very worthy passions and purposes.

angela_r_howard (08:13.714)

Oh, I love that. And they're very much connected. And that's where I kind of want to take our conversation next, because I think a lot of the work that we're doing right now is around the correction and the nurturing of mental health today. Right. Like we're trying to create an environment within the workplace that enforces, reinforces, you know, provides the tools, but also

the system so people can be well. But there's also a conversation to be had about how we got here. So I would love to hear from you, what is the, tell us the landscape of mental health at work today? What are the highlights, what's happening? Because I think people are hearing a lot of different information. If you could just distill it down to us.

matt_jackson (08:51.818)

Mm.

angela_r_howard (09:08.63)

What's the call to action and what's happening? What's the call to action today?

matt_jackson (09:14.162)

Yeah, I mean, I'll try my best to distill it down into bite sized pieces. I think there's a few statements I'll make upfront that fundamentally as a society, culturally speaking, and as a workplace, we have so many failings in how we've talked about mental health, in terms of stigmatizing the topic and lack of education.

and understanding into what it is. And that's for decades, if not hundreds of years prior to today. What we've seen over the past three years is a level of focus on mental health that we've never seen before. And it's a shame that it was brought on by a global pandemic, but it's highlighted that there is a global epidemic when it comes to mental health. We've seen some wonderfully positive elements of that, like sports stars, athletes, corporations, brands, using their platform.

to open up and talk about mental health, to continue this destigmatization of the topic, to leverage lived experience, to talk about how they've gone through mental health challenges in life. And that's opened up the conversation and that was a really important step. And once you've opened up that conversation, we've seen that the number of workplaces that are looking to invest in mental health solutions has increased dramatically. I think there was a statistic recently I read.

I believe it was, and if I'm allowed to name drop companies, but Aon, to a large global health consulting firm, found that 96% of organizations plan to maintain their level of investment into mental health resources beyond this year. Which I think is wonderful because that means they've increased them up until this point and they're going to maintain it because they recognize the importance of it. A lot of that focus in mental health resources has gone on the reactive space. So if you take the U S as an example,

there is a huge deficit of therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and those that can treat clinical mental health challenges. And what that creates is it's very difficult for individuals to find affordable therapy or treatment in a reasonable period of time. And there are wonderful companies out there in the corporate mental health care space that are using technology to solve that challenge. So to-

matt_jackson (11:31.278)

use technology to connect you to a therapist wherever they may be at a reasonable cost within a reasonable period of time. And if you look back over the past two years, there's been a phenomenal amount of investment into that. There's also been a lot of investment into point solutions to help people manage their own mental well-being. So think about all your mindfulness tools, resilience tools, and employees have been throwing them at employees and saying, help yourself, fix yourself, measure yourself, recover yourself, make yourself more resilient.

But what we've seen, all of a sudden employees have said, huh, hold on, there's a lot of yourself right here. I'm not by myself. Like, why are you saying this is all on me? I come to work for between 45, 55, 65, 75 hours a week. Like, what are you doing to create a culture or an environment in which I can flourish, in which I can truly address my mental health, like after my mental health, wherever I am on that mental health spectrum of...

angela_r_howard (12:05.982)

Mm-hmm.

angela_r_howard (12:28.122)

Mm-hmm.

matt_jackson (12:28.75)

No mental illness to mental illness to high positive mental well-being to low positive mental well-being And that's the biggest shift in terms of what the state of the landscape is now because if you go on LinkedIn or any Of the other HR press you will see continued articles about burnout You can see increased levels of stress depression anxiety and mental health challenges So the landscape right now is a call to action for organizations to not just focus on supporting the individual

but focus on driving cultural change throughout an organization that can create an environment that is psychologically safe, that is mentally healthy. And that requires all layers of an organization to step up from senior leadership to set the tone and lead by example, to the creation of compassionate empathetic managers, not managers who are therapists, it's compassionate managers. There was another study by Gallup, our name drop, that showed the biggest impact

on engagement is well-being and the single biggest impact on your well-being as an employee is your manager. And then a final point which I think is amazing, the biggest impact you can have on a manager for the well-being of your employee is to have one meaningful conversation with them a week. That's how you can move the needle on how an employee feels. It is free to have one meaningful conversation a week.

angela_r_howard (13:35.474)

Yes.

angela_r_howard (13:46.99)

Mm.

matt_jackson (13:55.11)

All you need to do is better educate managers to be compassionate, better listeners, more supportive, which are life skills, which are soft skills. And that's the call to action. There's also the mobilization of champions within the workforce. And then the final layer is that supporting the individual. So where we are right now, foundationally speaking, the tools exist, but we need to work throughout the other layers of the organization to create that cultural shift that can create environments that we can flourish, that we feel so

angela_r_howard (14:16.862)

Yeah.

angela_r_howard (14:23.61)

Yes, I love what you're saying. And there's a few points I want to reiterate and maybe add my own thoughts to, which is you bring up the point that leadership role modeling is really important. And I cannot stress that enough. Being someone who is working in the culture space, a lot of people reach out to me with symptoms, which being a consultant, typically, it's

high turnover, we need to do better with wellness, we need to do better with DE&I. And I think there's a huge gap in acknowledgement and understanding around the impact you just mentioned, which is that direct manager, that direct leader, has a responsibility. And I don't think leaders see themselves as responsible within the workplace to say, I am...

I am nurturing, nourishing, building, coaching, developing this team of human beings that actually live outside of this container, right? Like, I think sometimes we think about just work as like, work happens here and I forget, you know, I don't know if you've seen the show Severance, but it's this idea of like, I just, you know, I'm this person here and I'm that person there. But if you're a leader, you are impacting

matt_jackson (15:40.206)

Uh, yeah.

angela_r_howard (15:49.978)

individuals and human beings who are going to take that outside of the container into their family unit, their society, communities. So I think there's a there's a lack of acknowledgement of responsibility and I think we have a whole other system to fix which is around building better leaders, more compassionate leaders, and holding them accountable to that. There's too many workplaces that I think are employing leaders who are just technical experts who have made it through

and have made the company money or, you know, are maybe didn't want to be a leader, but that person only saw that as the career path to make more money and to get a bigger title. That just can't, I, that's the responsibility piece where I culturally, I think we need to change the narrative on that and have fewer leaders even. Like, let's have fewer better leaders. I mean, we want to build better, more leaders, but I think there's some people who just don't want to lead and that's okay. But let's make sure they're not.

holding that responsibility for other people and other humans. And the other thing is I think there's a lot of organizations right now who are trying to add things on. The wellness program, like let's have workshops. Let's create an app. Let's put it on the person to attend these workshops. When in reality, it's just about fixing your business practices for the most part or making them more compassionate and conscious.

matt_jackson (16:58.914)

Hmm.

angela_r_howard (17:18.386)

A lot of organizations that I work with are looking to me to give them recommendations on what kind of additional programs they should add, right? Like, well, what kind of workshops can we do? What kind of guest speakers can we have? And it's like, no, actually the root cause is your leadership. And your leadership is pinging people on teams at 11 o'clock at night. We have to look at our behaviors, our day-to-day behaviors, and are they matching with the values that we've proclaimed?

If wellness is a value, we need to match our behaviors. And it seems so simple, but I think organizations are reacting to the trendy stuff, the perks, which drives me a little bonkers sometimes.

matt_jackson (18:00.286)

I love, I love everything you've just said. And I was scribbling notes to try and make sure I remember to pick up on a few of them. I think I agree with you, like the trendy perks. So you'll see dog friendly offices, you'll see ping pong tables, you'll see free kombucha on tap, whatever it may be. I think, I honestly think that the progressive organizations are wising up to that's not going to cut it anymore. And just to echo the compassionate leaders point, I think

As a leader, your responsibility is the welfare of the people within your team. But that doesn't solely sit with picking them up when they've fallen over or catching them just before they fall. It's about supporting them through when they're flourishing to when they're just surviving. And one thing you said that's so true, it's about modeling the right behaviors. And I follow, so my leader is Dr. Nick and he's our CEO.

angela_r_howard (18:33.684)

Yes.

matt_jackson (18:59.414)

Dr. Nick will have times in his calendar that you know you cannot touch. And I might be calling them out here, but two of them are tennis. And the other one is kids bedtime and bath time. And we know no matter what we are, and we're a high growth technology company that's venture capital backed. You don't touch Nick at that time. And that's modeling the behavior that says, this is my, this is my, um, my boundary and we don't. And then for me, I kind of try and model that within my team that says I was off for.

angela_r_howard (19:23.355)

No, very.

matt_jackson (19:29.154)

Um, five days of the week. And I made it a point not to go on Slack and not to go on email once. Because if they don't see me nor hear from me, then they know that I take vacation seriously and therefore they can feel safe and psychologically safe to take vacation seriously. I don't, we don't want them anywhere near their laptops or their phones at that point, so it's the modeling behavior is so key and where I think it comes into is, is sustainability.

And ESG, so environmental, social, and governance is something that so many organizations are talking about right now. And the golden thread through that is the wellbeing of your people. Because if you want to create sustainability in your business, you need compassionate leaders that don't just look for growth at all costs, because growth at all costs leads to burnout. It leads to low productivity, it leads to stress, to anxiety, to depression. If you have compassionate leaders that look to sustainably grow,

You have to have a strategic wellbeing pillar throughout your organisation to understand how you support your main asset, which is your people.

angela_r_howard (20:36.358)

Yeah, and it all comes back to culture. I mean, this is, you know, I think sometimes we over engineer with different programs like wellness program, D.E. and I program. I think we have to really connect it back to culture and the strategic makeup of the organization. And so to your point. Ensure that all of your leaders are having a compassionate, conscious.

developmental conversation with their employees once a week. That's a norm, that's a behavior that we can codify into the DNA of the organization through systems, through reinforcement, through making sure that the leaders who don't wanna do that, like, well, I have a job to do, it's like, well, that's not leadership here. So I think it comes down to behaviors and I would love to talk a little bit about burnout.

to because I think that's just a term that we've, you know, we, we like our buzz, buzzwords, right? They, they start to, they, at least they tell a story, a narrative about what's happening. But I think about, for example, like the healthcare industry. And we have, you know, there's a dwindling pipeline of MAs, for example, there's a dwindling pipeline of doctors who want to step into leadership positions because they're like,

I have so many patients to see, I can't even think about being in a leadership role. So, and then I think about their journey to healthcare like a doctor, an MD, and the system of education to get there. I mean, you just watch like, you know, Grey's Anatomy and you just see them like sleeping on cots and not getting sleep and they're stressed out all the time. So how do we bring it back to the full,

what's the word I'm looking for, kind of the where it starts. Because I think we're not really role modeling these behaviors within workplaces, even in healthcare, you know, even in healthcare where it's everyone's burnt out. So what's the root cause? Where does it start? And how do we, from a systems perspective outside of the workplace, make sure that we prevent it once it gets to the workplace?

matt_jackson (22:57.598)

I mean, if we had the answer to that, we'd be in different roles and we'd be highly successful. I think healthcare is a vertical that we focus greatly on. I think for many reasons that we should care for our carers and we have and we are in such debt to folks in healthcare, particularly over the last three years. My sister is a frontline nurse in the NHS in the UK and my sister-in-law over here is a physician's assistant in a large...

angela_r_howard (22:59.57)

I'm sorry.

matt_jackson (23:26.938)

care system and I see first hand the pressures that they're under. I think in that specific example there are deep-seated cultural structural and systemic changes or inadequacies that need to change and I think that in the healthcare organizations that we talk to they're going through that transition that I mentioned before about looking at how to support the individual, how to create cultures where people feel they can care for their own mental health because

There's an irony in healthcare that if you raise concern about your mental health, that depending on the roles that you currently have, it might be that you're deemed unfit to continue on with that particular role. And that shouldn't be the case, because you could be a highly, there's a big difference between a mental illness and low positive mental wellbeing. There are people that...

angela_r_howard (24:07.935)

Hmm.

angela_r_howard (24:18.94)

Mm-hmm.

matt_jackson (24:21.038)

manage mental illness day in day out, but have a very high positive mental well-being if you think of it as a dual continuum And they are incredibly productive people within the workforce and wins within society but what they are Happens to them is they are in that stigmatized group that are frowned upon because it's a misunderstood and it's that lack of Education I think healthcare is a is a is one example of that. There are many different industries that present different stresses

angela_r_howard (24:28.035)

Mm-hmm.

matt_jackson (24:50.326)

But to your point about how do we fix it, I think the structural and systemic changes that need to happen to ensure the right foundations are in place for people to thrive. And that's a whole collection of things that would take another 45 hours for us to discuss. But one thing that I am incredibly passionate about is I mentioned before that all layers of the organization are responsible for creating the right culture.

But I think that I also mentioned that a societal and cultural failing and how we approach mental health before we even get to the workforce. And we should be inputting into curriculums from the ages of three, four, five up mental health and wellbeing curriculum. And I've seen them in here, there, and everywhere. I know it's difficult to amend the curriculum in public schooling systems, but this, this isn't a workplace benefit mental health. It's a human right. And, and

angela_r_howard (25:42.844)

Yes.

matt_jackson (25:43.95)

Kids have human rights when it comes to mental health. And if we can better prepare kids to have a greater understanding of mental health and wellbeing, and how to measure it, how to spot it, how to support others, then I think we're setting people up to come into the workplace to have an unwavering expectation that you're gonna support my mental health. Because if you think about the analogy we always use is that you don't go to bed on a Monday, feeling absolutely fine, and wake up on a Tuesday with a clinical depression.

angela_r_howard (26:14.526)

Hmm.

matt_jackson (26:14.786)

you collect symptoms over a period of time. Imagine if we were educating our children to understand what those symptoms were so that they could track them and they could speak up. Or their best friend who's nine years old says, I've noticed this and this about so-and-so, and therefore that person gets the help they need at the right point in time. It's about prevention, it's about proactive, it's destigmatizing, it's education. I think that's where we can create real change that will then filter in through the generations that then enter the workforce,

continuing to focus on the workplace.

angela_r_howard (26:48.282)

Yeah, you bring up a great point. It does start at the very beginning. And, you know, if I just think about when mental health became like a reality in my orbits, probably wasn't until I was in my 20s and getting my graduate degree in org psych and studying psychology. So I had to literally get a graduate degree to start to realize that I, you know, like mental health was a thing, and it's actually something we have to focus on.

matt_jackson (26:58.967)

Mm-hmm.

angela_r_howard (27:17.47)

And we go to the doctor when something hurts, or we have preventative things that we check on, but I wasn't checking in on my mental health. And I still struggle with it, to be honest. I go to therapy, I do all the things that I need to do, but it's a learned muscle that's taken me well into my 30s to now start to flex. So it sounds like we're talking about the educational system.

We're talking about the workplace as a system. We're talking about healthcare as a system. I mean, I think we've just solved the world's problems in this podcast. I think we're ready. Let's call the president and make some things happen. So, yeah, I think this is, you know, this gets back to, I just wanna reiterate the fact that this is multi-generational. It's compounded, it's systemic, it's systematic. It's not about the perks.

matt_jackson (27:59.108)

Hehehe

angela_r_howard (28:16.262)

It's not about the reactionary programs or initiatives that you launch a campaign via email in an organization. And it's definitely not the yoga classes. And all those things are nice, right? I think that's the other thing, which is I was recently asked to comment on the idea of like perks in the workplace.

it's kind of threw me off, but one of the, there was a survey that came out that asked, would you take advantage of hangover leave as a perk? And it was just like, okay, so we're talking about wellness at work, and we're, but we're reinforcing alcohol, and then we're not even getting to the root cause of the problem, which is why we would be, it's, we really have to do some internal.

matt_jackson (28:52.363)

Mm.

angela_r_howard (29:12.166)

reflection, I think, because I think companies are throwing things at the wall and be like, let's see what sticks. Let's see what makes the people happy. Here's the thing, like, just talk to your people. Listen to your people. I think health equity starts with understanding what people need and all the differences in what they need and then providing some systematic changes and maybe perks, maybe perks. But it has to start with that.

matt_jackson (29:39.298)

Yeah.

angela_r_howard (29:41.886)

that conversation that leader is having.

matt_jackson (29:45.442)

I couldn't agree more. I think, and hangover leave, that's wild, by the way. There is a place for perks for sure, but perks on top of a toxic culture are just putting band-aids over something that's gonna fail anyway. And I think it was Desmond Tutu that said, at some point you need to stop pulling people out the water. And well.

As well as pulling people out of the water and saving them, you need to go further upstream and understand why they're jumping in, in the first place. And that is to your point. Let's have a conversation with people about what they really want and what they understand. And I think another big trend that we've seen in the state of mental health in the workplace is that closing that loop on actually understanding what people want. And, you know, for so long companies have done engagement surveys with hundreds of questions and one of them has been about wellbeing. My company cares about my wellbeing. Agree.

Right, and there's like oh we got like neutral cool. Let's move on no That one

angela_r_howard (30:45.334)

It's like we have, right. And it's like, okay, we have a wellbeing problem. Okay, now what? Like there's, you know, little emoji person like this. I'm doing the little emoji hands up shrug. It is wild. And I do think employee engagement is part of the problem. Like that whole movement around employee engagement. I mean, I, you know, I worked in corporate for a long time. I...

matt_jackson (30:50.507)

Yeah, exactly.

angela_r_howard (31:10.702)

I've run many an engagement survey and analyze them and, you know, done analysis on them and all of that. But at the end of the day, I think I think it's I don't think it's measuring the right things. I think we should really be focused on employee and human experience versus how like loyal and how much you're going to go one hundred and fifty percent for the company, which I think is a problematic behavior in and of itself.

matt_jackson (31:36.734)

Oh, so you've hit on one of my, my biggest realizations and we worked with a number of professional services companies and they said, Matt, one of the biggest challenges is we reward people for burnout. If you hit 110% of your billable hours, you get a bonus. 110% shouldn't exist. That's, that's rewarding going above and beyond burnout. It's, and this, this firm recognized that and like, that's not good. We need to move away from that, which is wonderful. But.

Just to pick up on another really important point, measurement. Measurement is so key. And we shouldn't just be measuring on a scale of one to 10, my company cares about my wellbeing. We should be measuring the workplace contributors to what impacts my wellbeing at work. So this is everything from trust and leadership, psychological safety, flexibility and autonomy, supportiveness, workload. These are the questions we should be asking and measuring for. And then from that, we understand the levers that we can...

as a workplace to improve those metrics because if you improve them you will improve the overall culture and well-being of that organisation.

angela_r_howard (32:44.166)

Yes, oh my gosh, this is gonna be a whole other podcast episode because I have so many thoughts, especially because we're hearing about quiet quitting and all of these buzzwords that I think just get back to the issue in the first place, which is there is this traditional expectation and norm within organizations that people need to do 110% of their job. And we have to connect that back to

mental health and wellness of people. And this idea that we have to get the most, we gotta squeeze the most out of people, that is problematic. And it's a contributor to your point, it's impacting people's mental health. So that could be a whole nother podcast episode. But I will close the loop, I will tie the bow with one more question, which is, and I really want us to get to things we can do, like if someone's listening to this podcast,

and they're inspired and they're loving everything we're saying, like your average leader, your middle manager who is perhaps really passionate about this topic. They wanna make sure the responsibility they have on their team, their stewardship of that team and the humans on their team is compassionate and makes them well. What are some things other than the one meeting a week? What are some other things that I could do as a leader today?

to create more psychological safety and wellbeing in my team.

matt_jackson (34:19.342)

So I think if somebody is passionate about this and they want to make real change, I think a rising tide lifts all boats, so we should all get up on our soapbox and bang the drum about the importance of well-being. I think if this leader example in question, number one, to what your point before, is speak to your people and understand what it is that they need, what it is that they want and how they feel.

And if your organization doesn't do that more broadly, you should feel empowered to do it within your team because their welfare is your primary responsibility. And if their welfare is good, their wellbeing is good, they're gonna be happier, more energetic, and more productive. So it's within the best interests from a human nature perspective, but also from a business perspective. And I think as well, reflect on what you want from your leader and what you like about them, what you don't like about, sorry.

what you like about the way that they treat you or how they behave and, and what you do like and don't like, because there's going to be a lot of clues in there in terms of how they make you feel and therefore what roles into your layer and how you make your people feel. And if you reflect upon that and ask yourself really truly what it is that you want from your manager, then you can become that manager yourself. So I think it's, it's about listening, it's about understanding, but there are so many simple things, you know,

There are so many wonderful books about there about how to be a better listener, how to communicate better, radical candor, a wonderful book by Kim Scott. There's, I just think there's so many resources out there. Just make sure you care enough to go out and find them to, to encourage yourself to be more compassionate, more empathetic and put pressure on your organization to provide the support tools and education to do that.

angela_r_howard (36:12.282)

Yeah, and I would just add, I think I worry about that middle layer of management because they are oftentimes, um, the ones who are, you know, they're, to your point, they're role modeling from the top down. Um, and they're also having to build a team that's healthy and positive and productive, um, but if their leader is not demonstrating those behaviors.

it makes it really, really hard because now they're struggling with their mental health, their feelings of psychological safety, and then they have to preach something down to their team, which they are personally really passionate and want to make happen, but the layers above them are not supporting it. So I, I mean, I've heard a lot of, so every year towards the end of the year, I work with, um, I work with a team of IO psychologists to

come on the podcast and tell us like the trends and employee experience and what's happening. And last year, the thought was that middle layer of leaders are gonna be burnt out. And all women leaders are going to start exiting the organizations because they're over it. They're done, they're wanting more.

So I really worry, I think that's, we're gonna see more people in that layer of leadership leaving organizations because they feel completely and utterly powerless to make the change. So I think, you know, this is the work that needs to happen. I think we need to be working at that executive level. If you are working at an organization where you've delegated wellness to like a committee or one person to just do it,

make it happen, I think you're making a mistake because it really needs to be that executive team that is the stewards of that type of culture change or really matching our behaviors to those values.

matt_jackson (38:20.246)

Perfectly said. I think it happens at all layers, right? As well as the executive support, you need that, the army of champions that go out and advocate for wellbeing. You need to actually back your head of wellbeing. It's not just a tick box exercise window dressing, you know, there's. Yeah. It's a whole organization approach. It's not just an individual.

angela_r_howard (38:35.276)

Mm-hmm.

angela_r_howard (38:41.394)

Well, Matt, I could talk to you all day. Like, we could, like, I have so many other topics that we could talk about. So I'm just going to end it there, but we'd love to have you back on the podcast at some point to delve deeper into some of these other topics around leadership, around, you know, this idea of burnout and healthcare. I mean, there's so many different topics, but I just want to thank you. I appreciate you.

I appreciate your time and your insights today and just spending time with us. So thanks a lot.

matt_jackson (39:14.306)

Thank you so much, Angela. It was a pleasure and I appreciate you too. And I would love to come back.

angela_r_howard (39:19.823)

Yay, awesome, I will see you next week.

matt_jackson (39:21.87)

See you next week.