The Bosshole® Chronicles
The Bosshole® Chronicles
Lisa X. Walden: The Future of Work is Human (Part 2)
Sunday shouldn’t feel like a countdown to dread. In Part 2 we dig into the real drivers of the “Sunday Scaries” with Lisa Walden, co-author of The Future of Work Is Human, and get practical about what actually changes how teams feel and perform: human-centered leadership, clear communication, and thoughtful hybrid rituals that spark connection instead of compliance.
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Welcome back to The Boss hole Chronicles, everybody out there in The Boss hole Transformation Nation. This is part two of our three-part series with Lisa Walden. She co-authored the book, The Future of Work is Human, Transforming Company Culture for a Post-Pandemic World. And in this episode, we're going to get into the book, start to talk about some specific aspects of the book having to do with how you feel on Sunday before you go into work. Are you excited? Or does it just fill you with dread? And your manager has a lot to do with that. We're also going to talk about virtual, hybrid, return-to-office policies. We're also going to talk a little bit about just burnout. What so many managers and people are experiencing these days. So let's continue this amazing interaction with Lisa Waldon. Part two of our three-part interview. Enjoy today's episode. I want to get into the book. I know we have a couple of questions about the book, and but something that you just said, you made me think about the billion-dollar market, multi-billion dollar market that is founded on leadership development, the books, the workshops, the seminars, the podcasts, and everything else like that. And we don't seem to be getting much better at it. Which tells me we need to be focusing on things like you just said, Lisa, that there this has to be a humanistic approach. This isn't a transactional approach. And it used to be years ago, but this is the difference between the command and control and a trust and autonomy mindset. And it takes a different kind of person. But um two real quick things. I have a friend of our family's he's in his early 30s, was working fully remote, and his company decided, nope, everybody's coming to Chicago. And they said, if you want to still work here, you have to move to Chicago. And they offered a just a small stipend for moving. Um no increase in pay. I mean, going from central Ohio to Chicago, there's a big difference in the cost of living. So that said to me, either we're just gonna start fresh, we're gonna discourage you from moving, but what kind of, what kind of feeling, what kind of how is that person left with an understanding of a company? Am I ever going to find a company that is not gonna treat me like that? I mean, it just has to leave a sour taste. And then I have one other thing that I wanted to point out is that another young man in his early 30s absolutely will not consider any kind of job that is not virtual. And I think that's fine. I think that's great. That's fine. But his company, and I really give them credit for this, they say, I think it's three times a year, we're gonna come together. And I think they just went to Atlanta or something like that, and it's gonna be very little work and a lot of community building.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
John Broer:And and I will tell you, he was he had some trepidation. He said, I just, you know what, I don't want to go do that. And it's, you know, you got to do all that schmoozing and stuff like that. And he came back and said, that was actually a lot of fun. I mean, it was really great. I got to meet people in person, and there is something you can't, you cannot put a price tag on that. And it's so essential to build that community. I'm gonna get off my soapbox, but when when you talk about this, the human part still requires some connection. It can't be done all via Zoom or Teams or, you know, Google Studio or whatever it is.
Lisa X. Walden:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and and this is where it gets tough because some organizations simply can't. It's too challenging to get people together. So that that's tough and uh again requires some very uh creative thinking. And that's that's you know, I said this at our at my talk, John, but this is new to us. It's working remotely, working from home, flexible work, this is new. So we have to have grace with the process itself. We are iterating right now, we are seeing what works, what doesn't. Uh it's of course we're humans and we're always going to need that human connection, but I do still think we are figuring out how to build connection remotely. So I think that there is a piece of that we're still in the experimentation phase, right? We we've been only doing this at large the way we are now for five years. If that, right? So this is new. This is brand new. There needs to be some grace too. We're still figuring it out. And yes, I believe that there is a magic in human connection that I don't really think we'll ever achieve through a computer screen.
Speaker 3:Right.
Lisa X. Walden:I mean, my my sister, not to sorry, Karen, if you're listening to this, but my sister, there's a story around this. So she she works uh in a very virtual uh workplace. I think there, I think she's hybrid now, but uh for a while there it was fully virtual. Now, now it's hybrid, but they have uh people all over the world. I'm talking France, Germany, um, the US. It's all over the place. She's located in um in London. And she was having this tension, this really, you know, extreme tension with one of the people that she worked with, a colleague. And she said, you know, on paper we should get along, but there's such tenseness in all of our meetings, and I feel like we're clipping each other and you know, throwing out passive aggressive things. And sometimes I don't even mean to, but I get caught in up in the moment and I dread having meetings with this person, and it's just so frustrating. And it's, you know, the kind of workplace tension, you never, you know, full-on call each other, you know, every bad name in the book, but you you, it's the um, what is it? What is it that we uh write as as I as I mentioned, what is it that we write in our emails when we're like um trying to be passive aggressive? Um, as previously stated or whatever, you know, those those workplace things that are.
John Broer:Per my previous email. Yes, yeah.
Lisa X. Walden:Per per my last email. Yeah, these, these, these passive aggressive workplace things. So it's not fun, it's not a good feeling. So anyway, she had this this tense dynamic with this friend. Right. And they had a yearly meeting where they all went together. I think they actually went to to New York. Um, and this was the first time that she met this person in in person that she'd seen her face to face.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Lisa X. Walden:And she said, from the first night, the tension melted immediately. She said, I just didn't get her. Like I didn't understand her humor, I didn't understand her way of communicating. And after that first dinner, we were like, we got on like a house on fire. We were besties for the rest of the trip. Oh, that's nice. Come home, that tension, that you know, frustration, of course, we still butt heads now and again, but it's different. There's a different dynamic there because I met her, I saw her, I understood her, we spent time together. And that probably wouldn't have happened if they hadn't had that moment for in-person meetups. So I am a huge proponent of that. I also think, you know, sometimes employees will grumble and say, well, why do I have to go do this? And we're not even doing real work. And I don't want to have fun with my colleagues. I want to have fun with my family and friends. Why am I doing this? But the value in those experiences cannot be understated. Like it's not just fun for fun's sake. Um, again, I don't really love transactional anything, but this is more than transactional. This is something that makes work better. It makes the work better and it makes the experience of work better. So I always try to say it's okay to be a little frustrated, push through that, get to that place with an open mind and an open heart because it will make your life better and everyone else's as well. So absolutely such a proponent of those in-person gatherings.
John Broer:That is awesome. Just as a side note, you you know, the passive aggressive stuff that people can put in emails. Uh, I just want you to know, Lisa, that my use of the ellipse has gone down dramatically since you're a you know, the little dot, dot, dot. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, are they going to misinterpret this? So I just want to point out that you've it's had a lasting effect on me.
Lisa X. Walden:That is amazing. I love that.
John Broer:So let's let's talk about the book a little bit. And by the way, to all of our listeners, go into the show notes. We always include links to our wonderful guests and of course the link to Lisa's book, Hannah and Lisa's book, The Future of Work is Human: Transforming Company Culture for a Post-Pandemic World. If I could just call out a couple of things. First of all, I forgot about this. You mentioned it about Sunday Scary. Tell every tell our listeners what Sunday Scary is.
Lisa X. Walden:Yeah, I will. And um I'll actually tell the story with uh the person who has influenced my work, influenced everything I've done, and is uh responsible for good company consulting in a in a major way, in that she inspired me. So I started my, you know, work career doing some very strange, odd jobs. I actually worked for a Halloween costume company at one point. That was wild. We all have our stories of the weird jobs that we have before we um, you know, find our lanes. And anyway, I started finding my lane with this one uh workplace that I joined. And my leader, it was a very small organization. At that point, there was only, I think I was like the fifth person to join. Uh and my my boss, my leader, Deborah, she was the one who did, you know, my um my onboarding and walked me through that day. And at the end of the day, she said to me, Lisa, I need to ask you something. If at the end, if at the end of the weekend on a Sunday night, you feel that sick pit in your stomach, like that icky feeling of, oh, I do not want to wake up tomorrow to go to work. Like, oh, I'm dreading it. This day is going by so quickly because I have so much dread. She was like, if you ever feel that, I need you to let me know because that means that I'm doing something wrong. And I was like, whoa, I have never experienced any leader say that to me or care about that. Like it's been, you know, how can I help you be more productive? How can I help you do your job well? But not again, back to that experience of work. Not how can I help you have the best experience here?
Speaker 3:Right.
Lisa X. Walden:And the fact that she cared about that, it truly, like I like the mind-blown emoji, I think that's what it looked like in that moment. I was like, what are you, what? So you care? I want to know about this. And it changed the way I thought about work and it changed the way I thought about leadership. So that is what the Sunday scaries is that that dread, that deep, like almost despair that you know you need to go to work in the morning. Um, and it's horrible. It's a horrible feeling.
John Broer:It is. And as we say at Real Good Ventures, we want to help people find meaning and fulfillment in their work. And if you're feeling the Sunday scaries, there's something better for you out there. Hopefully. Hopefully. So if I may, I've had some recent conversations with clients right now about burnout anxiety. And one of your chapters, you talk about our burnout emergency. And before we hit record, you were also talking about some manager overwhelm. And I don't know if this relates to what some of our millennial managers are experiencing, because believe it or not, our, you know, we have a lot of millennials that are in leadership and management roles. Tell us a little bit more about that burnout.
Lisa X. Walden:Oh, gosh, what a topic. That, John, that's like a whole uh whole other hour of conversation. But let me let me dilute it here. So even from the point that we wrote that book, so much has changed uh in terms of that, this burnout. A lot of what is in there uh holds steady today, but just the context of where we're at right now has obviously changed quite a bit. It's all important to consider. Uh, I would say that the nature of the American workplace is one that breeds burnout. The way that we think about work, the think, the way that we uh, you know, internalize work as our identity for or have been doing for a long time. Uh, our work ethic is our self-value. You know, if you have a strong work ethic, you are a good person. If you don't have a strong work ethic, you are a bad person. That is the uh common, you know, wisdom that or your or or assumption that we've had for a very long time. So this is not, this does not lead to a place of balance. Uh, I often talk about uh the badges that we wear as badges of honor. Um, I'm not sure if I showed these badges in our uh in my session with you all, but um, you know, we use busy as a badge of honor. We use instant responder as a badge of honor, always available, these things that are not badges of honor. My favorite one is the chief vacationer, where you know, a boss will go on vacation and be like, you know, I'm on vacation, but my resort has amazing Wi-Fi, so I can just pop, you know, an AirPod in one of my ears and listen into the meeting, and you'll you'll never, you know, like it's I'll just be in the background. So all of these things are generating this environment where we feel like more is the answer, more time, more effort, more energy. And this is one of the drawbacks of work from home and virtual work is when you you're working from home, home is work. It becomes an environment where you're used to working and our environment uh and what we do in that environment, we're influenced to repeat, right? So if we're working in the morning and we sit and we're working on the couch, and then you know it's seven o'clock and we have an email to respond to, we respond to one email that turns into five that turns into we're working until 10 o'clock. So the mindset around, you know, work and worth ethic and work culture, the circumstances currently. And then specifically looking at millennial managers, there's a really interesting shift that we are seeing there where a lot of millennial managers have taken on kind of this mindset of I don't want my employees to experience the burnout that I felt when I was in their seat. So I want to protect them and I want to make sure they're okay. So frequent check-ins, um, you know, what can I do? What can I take off your plate? Uh, what can we move around to make it, you know, easier for you? I want, I want you to to live your life and not just devote yourself to work. I want to make sure that you're okay. And in doing so, they're taking on a lot themselves. So I we are seeing this uh this the levels of burnout with millennials are, you know, skyrocketing, especially managers because they're taking on this such of a protective role. I one uh term that's been used that I don't like, apparently I don't like a lot of these rules. Well, a lot of these naming comment things uh that are thrown about, but um they're calling them mummagers. So, like moms, you know, like manager instead of manager, it's a mummager because they're so protective of the people that they are leading. Again, I don't like it, it's not my preference, and I don't ever like referring to people in the workplace as kids. That's a huge pet peeve of mine. No kidding. It's a dynamic of protecting their people. And it's exhausting. It's exhausting because they still have their own work to do, and at the same time, they're spending so much energy trying to prevent their staff from feeling burnt out, but then they get totally burned out. And I always say people are not doing as leaders what you're telling them to do. They are trying to model what you are doing because they know that in order to get to your seat, they need to behave like you. So by nature of not taking care of yourself, you are not taking care of your staff.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Hannah Best:I'm curious, Lisa, what is the response from the other side from those that are being managed? Are you seeing a trend with is that preferred, or is it almost reinforcing an idea of being perfect, or is there a want that they want to grow and do more and there's not that opportunity? Are you noticing anything from those managed maybe by a mummager?
Lisa X. Walden:Actually, Hannah and I look to some very interesting sources for some of our uh quote unquote research because we kind of like to know what is going on. We like to we call it tap into the collective consciousness. What are people saying out there? You know, what are the conversations on social media? Uh, and this is also where Gen Z spends a lot of their time. This is the public forum for theirs for them in a lot of ways. So we spend a lot of time pouring through, you know, Reddit threads, uh, TikTok, Instagram, places that may be more typical traditional researchers don't. We look at the traditional sources as well. Wrong, we're not just looking at this, but this is some supplementary information. And we have uh looked at uh TikTok specifically, talking about these mummagers and these millennial managers. And these comments are fascinating because almost, you know, the vast majority of comments are in support. They will say things like, My millennial manager healed my workplace trauma. Like, I love my millennial manager. I wouldn't trade her or him for the world. Like they are incredible. They are so protective of me, they look out for me, they are so human, they're so approachable. And it's funny because I think Gen Z has kind of a tenuous relationship with millennials, like they like to mock millennials quite a bit, the world at large, but at work, it's like millennials are the desired leaders because they have this kind of Mummajer style to them. They really are um, they they want to have that close connection with the people that they lead and they want to protect them and help them. And they that's palpable.
John Broer:There there's a humane element to it. I mean, they uh they understand that.
Hannah Best:Yeah.
John Broer:Interesting. Oh my gosh. Great question, Hannah.
Hannah Best:I think one of the the big pieces that um has also stood out is we talked about a little bit already, but the idea of policy and how I think companies throw money at let's change the policy or let's implement this, um, let's mandate someone back into office. And maybe that might be easier um at times to get a policy approved, but where the real difficult piece comes into play is working on the mindset, shifting mindsets. So is there anything, you know, if you had to give our leaders or aspiring managers kind of tips of our advice about what are little things? There's so many of these little actionable items, by the way, in the book that I love for managers. But are there any key pieces of advice where you can give to a manager, these are the things you can focus on to help, number one, maybe shift your own mindset, but also bring your people along with you. Uh, maybe if we use as an example, uh mindset, we've been talking a lot about the the work from home or the work in office. Uh, maybe the mindset um shift there, okay. Maybe the hybrid style, not having one or the other be right, but being open to the idea that one might work better for someone else. Yes. Okay, interesting.
Lisa X. Walden:Whenever we're talking about policies and shifts like that, I know it's not always possible, but buy-in from employees is such a huge piece to making those policies successful, to have them at least have the opportunity to share their opinions and better have shaped in some kind of way what the outcome looks like. So some organizations that I've worked with, you know, they have they've literally done a survey to be like, what is the sweet spot for you in terms of how many times we're in the office versus, you know, what we're at home, um, how many times we're at home, uh, what can be our collective day. They might choose a Thursday or a Friday. Uh so I think the buy and piece is really important, but that's more for like broad organizationally and and policy. To answer your question, I I think it's really it's, you know, it's such simple, it's just such a simple bit of advice, but I I maybe it's not acted on as much as possible. It's so many times I find myself saying to people, have you had the conversation? Have you asked the words? Have you sat down and had time to just talk about this openly? You know, um, with with an open kind of vulnerable space where people can, you know, safely share their opinions and their thoughts. Sometimes people just need to talk it out. In fact, most of the time people just need to talk it out. Um, this is bear with me for this analogy, but I used to sit next to um, I worked at an architecture firm in HR and I sat next to IT. And people would come by that by their department, by their little, you know, area all the time. My computer's not working, this isn't working, the software isn't working. They would ask them every single time, have you tried rebooting your computer? Nine times out of 10, those people would not come back. It was as simple as a reboot and everything was fine. And I was honestly like, you guys need a sign that says, Have you tried rebooting your computer? But my point is when it comes to things like this, it's kind of similar. Have you have you tried having the conversations? Have you tried creating space for people to air their frustrations, you know, tell you what they feel, um, share what they're thinking about this shift, right? And and you're not always going to be able to say, okay, you know, you want to work five days from home, that's what we're gonna do. No, but you can say, hey, I understand what you're saying, I empathize with what you're saying. Here is why the organization is choosing to do this. Here's what I think we can, you know, adjust in small ways to make it work better for you. And just know that like I'm here to support you and I understand where you're coming from. And however, you know, I can support you to make this easier for you, I want to do that. And I want you to help me do that. So we need to have an open, open communication loop here. I need you to tell me, you know, how you're feeling, where you're at, and we'll get through this together. I think that's the key piece, too, is feeling like your leader is an ally, is on your team and you're working through it together versus this is what's happening and this is what we're gonna do. And it's like, you know, sorry, like hard cheese. That's what my dad always used to say when something was unfair, hard cheese. And I was like, what do you mean hard cheese? That's unjust. We have to change it. He was like, you can't change everything, but that that that will be the case. But and how you talk to your people about it is is the difference between um, you know, like shoving something, you know, shoving a process through and guiding them through it.
John Broer:It reminds me of how Patrick Lancioni talks so much about, you know, you cannot overcommunicate. I mean, you know, getting that feedback, having that dialogue, being transparent, these are words that, you know, I would say command and control managers don't quite understand. Compassion, kindness, understanding, and something else that I I think, okay, we we we before we hit record, and to your credit, Lisa, I would agree that this is too big a topic to bring in, or maybe too sensitive a topic, but this the state of the world and what's happening and how people are treating one another. But I think it is a reflection of the lack of civility. And I think that comes into the workplace. And we got to regain that, uh, just the basic respect for for other people, whether they're a peer or whether they're a direct report or they're your manager. Not in all cases, but in many cases, we are just losing that civility, and somehow we need to regain it. We really do. And I think a good way to do that is to go buy Lisa's book, Hannah and Lisa's book, The Future of Work is Human. This whole thing, really, when we met you and you were going through the different generations that are in the workforce, and you asked us, are there any Gen Z folks in the audience? And Hannah, our Hannah, raised her hand. She was the only one there. I it feels like Gen Z is really getting a bad rap, or there's some stories that we talked a little bit about that stories. Uh, give our listeners some encouragement or perhaps guidance about how to really experience and understand what Gen Z brings to the workforce. Is that okay? Is that okay, Hannah? I know what you bring, but I just want a word of encouragement because there's there's just really there's just weird things going around. Like we've never had so many people come into interviews with their parents. It's like, oh, okay, well, let's just not make that all inclusive of you know, Gen Z. So back to you, Lisa. Sorry.
Lisa X. Walden:Yeah, and you know, people, the media, we just love buzzy headlines too. So, you know, it's like one person will bring their parent and it's like, Gen Z is now bringing their parent. You know, I sometimes the media just runs away with things. Um not not to put you on the spot, Hannah, but I'm actually curious before I answer that, to hear from you if you as a Gen Zer have felt or seen this kind of prejudice towards your generation in the workplace and how it how you have perceived it as a Gen Zer.
John Broer:So make sure you tune in next week to hear Hannah's answer to Lisa's question. Such a great discussion. So excited that we had Lisa on the program. And we're gonna round it out next week with part three of our discussion with Lisa Walton.