L&D In Action: Winning Strategies from Learning Leaders - Leading Your People to Bloom: Tending to Work and Life to Develop Thriving Teams

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

Is it really best to seek "balance" between work and life? The prevailing sentiments around work-life balance seem to be two opposed ideas: Work represents so much of our lives that it only makes sense to do what we love, so it never actually feels like work, or; work and life simply must be kept separate. According to Dan Pontefract, the answer to work and life is not balance, but bloom, and it's a much more nuanced relationship of give and take, growth and renewal.

You're listening to L&D in Action, winning strategies from learning leaders. This podcast, presented by Get Abstract, brings together the brightest minds in learning and development to discuss the best strategies for fostering employee engagement, maximizing potential and building a culture of learning in your organization. This week, I'm chatting with Dan Pontefract. Dan is a global leadership strategist, keynote speaker, and award-winning five-time author. After a 20-year career in learning leadership roles at organizations including SAP and TELUS,

Dan set out independently to help companies become more productive, collaborative, and purpose-driven. His clientele includes household names like Salesforce and Dell, and his writing is frequently featured in Forbes and Harvard Business Review. Dan is an expert on topics ranging from leadership and corporate culture to organizational performance.

Today, we're focusing on the topic of wellbeing through the lens of his latest book, Work Life Bloom. Let's dive in. Hello, and welcome to L&D in Action. I'm your host, Tyler Lay, and today my guest is Dan Pontefract. Dan, thank you so much for joining me. I'm very excited to speak with you. Great to be here, Tyler.

Thanks so much. You start your latest book, Work Life Bloom, with a poem. This actually surprised me a lot. It's called In Bloom. You wrote the poem. I did not realize that you were a poet. I studied literature myself as an undergraduate, so this was very appealing to me.

I would love if you could just start off by telling me a little bit about this poem. If your poetry in some way maybe reflects the ethos of your work and principles as a whole, can we start there? Wow, you're the first of about a thousand interviews to actually probably read the poem and ask about the poem In Bloom, which is a nod to, I suppose, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana perhaps being a song of Nirvana's. Anyway, my little Easter egg, I suppose, is this is book number five and

each of the four previous books starts out with a poem. And so I wanted to continue to the tradition, but I didn't write any of those four previous poems. And I thought to myself, given I do write poetry and publish it sometimes, at least publicly, I was like, why haven't I done this yet, Tyler? And so I compelled myself to force myself to actually write a poem with the spirit of kind of what the book basically discusses.

So it's about a gardener, and this gardener is of kind of what the book basically discusses. So it's about a gardener, and this gardener is basically kind of like the road less traveled, right? It's like, hmm, which way do I go? Is it bloom? Is it renewal? Is it sort of, do I belong here? Is it light? Is it dark? And really at the end of the day,

the challenge of the gardener is to sort of remember, well, actually it dark? And really, at the end of the day, the challenge of the gardener is to remember, well, actually, it's okay. You can be in bloom, but at the same point, there's no such thing as balance. We have to understand that like gardens, like seasons, there's ups and there's downs. And it really is a metaphorical introduction in the book to what the book actually pauses, which is there's no such thing as balance or fully engaged. We go up, we go down like the season, so why don't we all be gardeners and tend to the uniqueness of each of our gardens? I have to ask, the structure of the poem is, I think it's maybe five stanzas, each one is five lines. The rhyme structure is

kind of that of a limerick, AABBA. It is. And any particular reason for that structure that you found, did it just kind of work out that way, or what were you thinking there? I had a bunch of different things going, and then at the end of the day, I've always been drawn to the aforementioned road list

traveled by Frost, and I thought, you know what, that's actually working better for me than an AABB. And so, yeah, I stuck with the 20 lines and the AABBA and it just seemed to work for me. Yeah, I liked it a lot. It was fun to read. Thank you for that. The book is very packed with actionable advice. You know, you have 12 factors here across work and life and each has its garden tools. I'm going to do my best to get through a handful of them.

We don't have to cover them all because, you know, people can speak with you, get the book, do their research. I want to start by talking about what you actually just mentioned is that balance is, you know, there really isn't balance. Maybe I think it's actually how you put it. You take a very strong stance on the relationship between work and life, which is that I'm not going to quote you here in the book, work and life are complimentary and contradictory forces, which to me, this actually feels like a contradictory or paradoxical statement in and of

itself. But ultimately you believe that these things must be understood as distinct forces. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Yeah, you're so far so good. You're two for two on digging deeper than North Might on some of the questions, Tyler. So that's my goal. You're part of the problem, right? We, society, particularly Western society, have used work as a proxy for our ills. And when we take work home and say, oh, my life sucks because of work, or we go to work and say, my life sucks because of,

or my work sucks because of life or vice versa, this is kind of where I'm getting at, is that you can both be complimentary and contradictory. So what does that mean? Well, if we're, and this is a leadership book at the end of the day, but if leaders are tending to their garden patch, which are the team members, their goals, the crops that they're trying to grow and so on, you actually have to take into consideration what the soil type is like, what the weather is like, do we have enough aridity, is there water?

It's all a metaphor, of course, but we bring our livesidity? Is there water? It's all metaphor, of course. But we bring our lives into our work and we bring our work into our lives as human beings. You do it, I do it. Whether I'm having a tough time with one of my kids, whether I'm thinking about an elderly parent of mine, whether someone just knocked into my car at a corner last week, Thank you, crazy driver.

You bring these things into the work. But vice versa, when my boss reams me out because I missed the deadline and I come home and I've got to feed my four-year-old, my two-year-old and my newborn. Do you think that I'm gonna be all happy at that particular moment? Cause do you think I'm not thinking about

what just happened with the boss reaming me? So that's my point is that it can be complimentary when they're both going really well, they do act quite as axes of goodness. But if one or the other or both are not going so hot, they're axes of evil against one another, which can be quite contradictory. So speaking of axes, there's a quadrant system in the book where you go over kind of where you can be in terms of your wellness in these two areas.

And they intersect as you're describing. So you already spoke of a couple of them, but it's renewal, budding, stunted and blooming. Whereas the goal of course is to be at the blooming category. I wanna just have you kind of explain this a little bit deeper and then if we decide that we have some time, maybe talk about some of the actual statistics and data that you've recorded. Yeah. So I think of them as personas. And I guess first people who are listening, what you might want to do is think about the proverbial two by two matrix. So the Y axis, that's the one on the left, is work.

And the X axis, that's the one on the bottom, is life. And if you have a two by two, then you've got these four categories. I call them personas. And they're very much like, you know, what's up and down in the work and the life. So, sure, on the top right, when work is going swimmingly well, and life is going swimmingly well, so things are clicking at home, things are clicking in the office or in your job, whatever it is. Yeah, you're I call it blooming. But the fact of the matter is Tyler is we will also adopt the other

three personas, I guarantee it, because work and life don't always go swimmingly well. So let's, for example, say the top left. So work is going really well, but there's a few factors in life that are gnawing at me, maybe all of them actually. So maybe I don't feel like I belong in my life, I eat relationships.

Like I've just moved cities and I don't know anybody. Well, your life factor of relationships might take a hit. And so nonetheless, you're going to be... and maybe what works going really well, you'll be at the top left, which is what I call buddying. You're almost blooming, but it's okay. Now the reverse can be true as well. So again, the aforementioned boss, I reamed you out

or you don't understand the strategy anymore. Strategy change at the company. You're like, oh my God, what's happening? Or you don't feel that you trust, there's trust in your team, whatever. You could end up in the bottom right, which means work is sucky, life is going well, and that means you're stunted.

It's not bad. It happens to crops all the time. You should see my asparagus right now. They're stunted. But then on the bottom left, so work and life are not going so well, instead of calling it chronically disengaged, I want to set the barn on fire, I call it renewal. And renewal means that there are factors in both work and life that you and or your leader and or your spouse or your partner or your family

might have to help you with. So four personas, I've had all four, you probably have as well. You're blooming, you're budding, you're stunted, or you're in renewal. And you have percentages that reflect where people are. You actually designed a test to look at this as well. And there's a difference between what people think they are

and what they test as. And it's very telling. Thankfully, a plurality, I guess, of people are in the blooming category in both cases. So it's, I have the numbers here, about 36% believe that they're blooming and actually 41% come across as that when they take the test.

Unfortunately, every other category, where something isn't right or isn't perfect, people are overestimating where they're at, I think. It looks like almost 40% are actually in that renewal stage or in that renewal persona, more than likely means that those who think that they're budding are stunted or maybe not correct about that.

Can you talk about maybe why that is what we're looking at here? Why so many more are in renewal than maybe are willing to accept? Yeah, it's great observation of yours, Tyler. I basically did two things, right? So I worked with some math geeks basically and put together a model. Once I figured out what these work-life factors were to then test well where do people sit within those four personas but I also did a global assessment and asked people their own opinion to your point so I asked them just basically self reflect and to self

adjudicate what do you think you are based on these definitions of blooming of budding unstunted and renewal and renewal. And you're spot on, the people who said they were blooming more or less nailed it. So it's about a four or five percent difference between what the model suggests and what people self-reflected. But you've got basically fundamental attribution error playing out where people overcompensate on what they think they are versus what they actually are. So there's a big gap between people who think that their budding are stunted and the fact that they are not and or they're in renewal. And there's a lesser number of people who think they're in renewal, who in fact that they are.

And that just sort of says to me at least that A, people are hopeful in themselves and they do believe that there's more to it than perhaps what the model suggests and that's fine like not every model is perfect but secondly what the model is suggesting and I want to follow us up with the third point the model suggesting ultimately is that people are over indexing or over guesstimating on some of the factors that actually are impacting their work and or their lives. So that's kind of key because where we built the model, just so people know, there's six work factors and six life factors. I know we won't get into them. But what it says is you can't have them, they don't all, can't be all positive all the time. And so, to be in a blooming state, you need any combination of the four, five or six to be blooming. And that's a lot. But that's actually my point as well,

meaning we can't walk around thinking we can be completely balanced or completely engaged all the time, because things happen. Things happen with the factors, whether it's my well-being, my respect, my value, my understanding of norms or strategy, whatever the case may be. So basically, my third point is this. Since the book released, we took the same model that we did with the 10,000 person kind of assessment globally in 11 countries and made it available for free. And since the book released in the fall of 2023, I've been collecting more data. And so, you know, every week there's whatever 10 to 100 people that continue to take the assessment. And the data hasn't really changed.

Okay, so there, which is my point is that there's a plus minus five percent on each of the five or four personas. And for the past almost year now, we have the same kind of cohorts of people in blooming, budding, stunted, and renewal, which says to me, A, possibly the model works, but B, people are still, when they self-reflect, they're over-indexing on things that might be going not as good as they think they are. Okay, that's really intriguing. I do wanna dive into some of the factors here,

and hopefully that can elucidate some of these things. I wanna needle a little bit, a few of them, and how you advise to go about working on them, and we'll get to that. But I actually wanna start, we're gonna start with the work factors. I want to start where you finish. So of the six norms is your last one.

Trust is first. And I'm going to come back to that. But I want to start with norms because to me, norms in the workplace are, they're almost covertly understood. In a lot of cases, You have things like best practices, you have your value systems, you have what people are advised to do in terms of how they work,

but at the end of the day, a norm by sort of definition almost is that which is normal, it becomes normative. And I think in a lot of cases, we take them for granted, we're not really sure exactly where they come from. And ultimately you describe the importance of clearly and explicitly defining and understanding norms.

And at the team level also, this can be at the, you know, the broader organizational level, at the team level to involve all members in building the norms. So I think this is, there's a rub there because in general, the nature of norms is everybody isn't really involved. You're just kind of adapting to what's going on. But I'd like if you can explain what this looks like in practice to actually involve everybody.

Good pick, by the way, to start first, because my publisher ribbed me a bit and said, you know, you could do an entire book on norms. Are you ever gonna do that? Absolutely could. To be determined for Uncle Dan here. But well, first of all, the definition, paraphrasing, it's like the operating principles and guidelines

that form a culture, basically. And so these are the expectations of what people ought to have and bring and operate in terms of their interacting or collaborating with one another. And to me, like, again, for those that don't know, I'm a recovering chief learning officer and chief envisioner in places like SAP and TELUS. And I believed that these were kind of the critical work

factors that allowed culture to actually manifest and materialize. There's three types. There's organizational norms, there's team norms, and there's personal norms. What leaders need to be thinking about, of course, are all three. But some may have jurisdiction over just their team norms, because maybe they just run the unit. But other leaders have to be thinking about the organizational norms, because they're maybe at a more senior level. And so, to your point and question, I'll answer it now. It does take a long time to discuss, to define, to almost eradicate the posture and the bad norms that were in existence before. Norms basically are sacred in the sense that if they're undefined, then people are walking around wondering,

well, how do we do this? Is this how it's done? How do we collaborate? How do we communicate? Are we allowed to send texts at 8 o'clock at night? Do emails happen on the weekend? How many people should be in a meeting? Are there meeting notes taken after these meetings? Is AI okay? Can AI summarize our notes? There are so many multitude number of different norms, but it's so important that when people don't know how to do the work, you can see right away how this is one of the work factors that can plummet quite easily. Because you've got zombie apocalypse happening inside the organization, virtually asynchronously, synchronously, face-to-face, wherever, when people don't know how to do the work. So I love that you're starting here first, because it probably arguably could be argued as that number one work factor that has to be defined. So does it take long? Sure, it does. Is it iterative? Oh, it better be, because things change.

Two and a half years ago, no one heard of chat GBT or AI per se. And now all of a sudden, we have to be thinking about that as a norm. How do we use it? When do we use it? Should we use it? That's a new norm, organizationally team and perhaps personally as well. So that's a really fundamental point to bring up here, Tyler. Thank you for that.

And if we don't have them, questions arise and people will be confused otherwise. Yeah. I ask a lot of folks this, but I want to ask you as well. Norms of communication are complicated because those are the kinds of things that, especially in this sort of decentralized post-pandemic world, I think we've established probably more clearly how to communicate amongst each other, especially when we have like a primarily asynchronous and decentralized workforce, that sort of thing. You know, when to use email, when to use Slack, when to message, you know, at what hours it makes sense to do those things. But at the end of the day,

there's a conflict there in how that impacts the relationships that we have. When we are so aggressively structuring how we communicate, which in some cases is the norms of how we do business, that communication, does that impact the relationships that we have? And therefore does it then go into that life factor of relationships, which we'll get to later? Does communicating differently how we are these days

impact that? Does putting structure around how we communicate that impact our relationships negatively or positively? Do you have anything how we communicate that impact our relationships negatively or positively? Do you have anything to say about that as well? Yeah, context, really. I mean, at the end of the day, when it comes to communication, it is all about context. When we've shifted from primarily an all face-to-face environment to whether it's hybrid or lots of remote virtual stuff, how I write things in a text and a Slack wherever might actually be interpreted negatively, positively or vice versa when I didn't

want it to be. And so tone, context, variability of intonation, these things actually matter in our face-to-face physical world. And so emojis don't really cut it for me, although good, they're not really doing service to context, to tone, tonality, intonation, et cetera. So I do think that in this environment that we've gotten ourselves into, which is just the evolution of business, like you can't put the genie back in the bottle,

we're done. We do have to pay more attention to communication norms. And there are folks, whether you're boomers or Zeds or soon Alphas, it doesn't matter to me by your age, there are folks that are context deaf. And when you're context deaf, whether you're a boomer with passive aggressive tone in a text or a Slack, or you're a Gen Z laughing at the wrong emoji used by an exer, we need to be very careful and cognizant of our culture through these non-communication norms if we're not educating people on what we think we need to do from a respect perspective and from an ultimately a tone and a context perspective. So again, I'm liking this interview.

You're very spot on, Tyler. I just think it's a fascinating thing how in my lifetime, I've watched the workplace. I mean, I've actually almost always been to some degree Tyler. I just think it's a fascinating thing how in my lifetime, I've watched the workplace. I mean, I've actually almost always been to some degree remote. I've used all kinds of different systems and I've seen it go from, you know, your classic sort of database oriented workplace remotely to a very social mediaified series of ways of messaging

and ways of communicating work where you can like each other's messages, you can share more emojis and that sort of thing. And I've very clearly seen the difference in how we communicate and how that impacts the relationships that we have, especially just how it's been amplified over the last few years since COVID took place.

So it's just something I like to ask folks like you about. One more little anecdote is, what I also notice is power. So from a social media or even an internal social platforming perspective, power can come through the socials or at least the online collaboration tools when people observe the number of followers or the number of likes or the number of comments. And so if people feel that an individual, whether they have a title or not that says SVP or manager, if they see that individual with more followers, more likes, more comments, and there's a gravitas that is following that individual,

all of a sudden now, tone and context take on a whole other meaning because now the individual is like, whoa, I better chime in on this thing. Otherwise I'm not being seen or I better like this particular post, whether it's LinkedIn or as I say, the internal collaboration tools like Slack or whatever, I better like it because Nahid or Jill or whoever is not, if they're looking at all the likes, I better like it because Nahid or Jill or whoever is not... If they're looking at all the likes, I better like that thing. So there's a culture war power struggle, I think, definition on the communication norm that we're talking about here, Tyler,

that also is misunderstood and underappreciated right now. Yeah, under-obs observed, I would say. I have felt that pressure and seen those things happen many times in the past several years, and I've never really zoomed out and thought like, what does this represent in terms of the evolution of work, and what does it mean in terms of relationships and hierarchy and all those things? Yeah, that's a really fascinating observation. We should dig into that offline, because I want to get into some of the other principles here,

some of the other factors. Like I said, back to the first one in the work realm, which is trust. I do want to cover trust, not because you started with a Shakespeare quote in that section. I did appreciate that as well. But because it's rocky right now,

to say the least, trust is rocky between the corporation and the individual. There's a between the corporation and the individual. There's a lot going on in the world. There's been pretty radical layoffs. A lot of major tech companies and big industry players are just constantly being scrutinized, not only by the media, but by the people within them. You tell the story of Netflix in your book when they, you know, the Dave Chappelle special. It's complex.

So let's keep it light and tell about trust through the story of Emperor Penguins. Then maybe we can get, you know, back around to the strong stuff. But would you mind starting off with the Penguin story that you tell in the book? Oh, sure. Because all's well that ends well with Emperor Penguins, I suppose, there, Tyler. Precisely. Which is the Shakespeare nod and bird drum in the countess for people wondering. OK, so if you're if you're not, I guess, an ornithologist, because I assume that penguins are birds, but if you're not an ornithologist, emperor penguins

found down there in the in the Antarctica, they have this kind of really neat bond between mom and dad, and they work together somewhat obviously to copulate and produce an egg, but what they decide to do, and who knows why, the ornithologist will call this out on me, the mom takes off first to go and find food because the mom needs to sort of bulk up a bit, ultimately to feed the young hatch, chickenling, hatchling, maybe, don't know. But the dads all hang out in, you know, sub a thousand degrees centigrade temperatures

for months at a time, holding on to their little nest egg, literally nest egg. But the egg is sort of held in between their feet and they shimmy around to make sure that the egg is protected. But what then they do is there's two levels of trust. There's trust between all the dads because it's so frigging cold down there.

The dads actually get together into these massive happy circles, happy feet circles maybe, homage to Robin Williams. And they hang out together and wait for moms to come back fully fed. But they're rotating in and out of the circle of trust, perhaps, to make sure that no one else is stepping on the eggs, but that they all take turns in the middle, which is much warmer than it is on the outside, etc. So all of a sudden you've got a bunch of men whom are looking after their soon-to-be son or daughter, and no one is fighting, and no one is trying to kill each other's eggs. They're just working together.

There's like an absolute infinite level of trust there. But the trust is also then demonstrated between mom and dad, because mom takes off, dad's like an absolute infinite level of trust there. But the trust is also then demonstrated between mom and dad because mom takes off, dad's like, yeah, I trust you'll come back. I mean, I'm not wearing a watch, but I'm pretty sure you're gonna come back in a couple of weeks or months. So we'll see you, you come back.

They take their passport, they go, and they eventually do all come back. And dads are starving. They're like, oh, well, we knew you'd come back, but you mind if we go now? And so dads take off and they go hunting and fishing and they come back when they're plump and ready to and somehow magically this hatch egg thing is born and mom and dad are hanging out and now it's summer again. So metaphorically, when you think about leader to leader or leader to team member or just a team member to the organizational culture,

you know, I just kind of wish Tyler, which weird not being an ornithologist, that we were a little bit more emperor penguin-esque in the way in which that we thought about each other in this thing we call work. I fully agree. To me, this most closely reflects the principle of consistency that you describe in the trust category there. So there's three of them, authenticity, consistency, and advocacy are the three principles to follow under trust as the gardening tools, I guess. And I just, I want to follow up on this because I think it's, again, it's a tumultuous time and I think it's the hardest time of all, I mean, not in history, but in recent history,

to be consistent, to be authentic, and to advocate for people. Because especially as a leader, when markets are struggling and business is down and it's just hard to stay on top of things when you have AI changing so much about what we do and maybe changing more in the near future. Authenticity, how do you be authentic

about a future that you're unsure about? How do you be authentic about a company strategy that is increasingly hard to feel confidence in? How do you have consistency when you might literally be changing business plans and strategies and all of that so rapidly that everybody is impacted by it and exhausted by it?

How do you advocate for people when you're also enduring all of this and you need somebody to advocate for yourself? So when it comes to these gardening tools, how do we do it right now in this time when business is so difficult and these relationships are just doubly hard to develop because of how tumultuous everything is. Tyler, I think one of the things leaders need to come to grips with, right, is their own humanity. I mean, when we think about what work is, is it the conquest? Is it growth is good?

Like growth at all costs? Or is it like we're here to serve. And that means I go to work because I've got three kids and a wife and a house and I like going on holiday every now and then. Well, what about other leaders? Like whether or not you have kids or a house or not, what are you serving? I serve my community. I serve my friends, I serve my family, I serve the people that I work with too.

And so I think integrity is an oft-used term, but completely denied action. And when you're integral to your humanity, you're demonstrating integrity to the team so that you can just basically say authentically, look, I know we got a bunch of things here. I know there's things going awry. I know there's things that we've got to do. I know we've got to grow.

I know there's EBIT.targets. I know that we've got customer sad issues. But when we deny that there are issues, when we're inauthentic, when we lift the rug up and shove some things under it and hope that no one else asks questions about it, when we're not open, ultimately, Tyler, as a leader, how do you develop that trust?

How do you even sustain trust? Does trust even come up? As I say, just like remove the first T of the word trust, and you've got rust. And that's so critical to me. Meaning, if you're not basically walking the talk of your own humanity, that I'm a human being that like, you know, Bleep is going to hit the fan from time to time and being open and honest about that. and being open and honest about that,

but being open and honest about what the organization wants and how we get there, being open and honest to be not an Aatna, which I call the all talk, no action. It's like, yada, yada, yada, yada, but nothing follows up. Like, there's no follow up. I don't understand. Like, I get a little bit frustrated not by your question, but by why leaders think that they have to talk this game and be inauthentic and not followed up with the fact that they think that they're not human either, that they don't have things going on in their lives. It's just, it's bonkers. totally balderdash. I see it a lot. And unfortunately, I've had the grand privilege of in a prior life, working with a lot of folks who felt a lot like that, who were similar to you

in the way that they were, you know, they went from management to consulting and they were strategists and they advocated for the sort of like anti-humanity perspective of work, you on the conquest and the growth and those things. That was the goal, the sole and primary goal. And unfortunately, I mean, this was also pre-pandemic when I was engaging with these people most. I do think that at the end of the day, we've probably made inroads after seeing how work

affected us when we were dealing with the pandemic, I think there's been some changes made there, but I have unfortunately seen that too, and it frustrates me just like it frustrates you. I want to pivot to life factors. We still got some time here. Relationships, let's jump into the number one there. I'm glad that you had it first. I am a big advocate for organizations helping their people build community.

You give sort of three realms of relationships, inside, outside, and online. That's how you demarcate them. You did actually at the start of that chapter, or sorry, at the start of the book, you cite, I think it's Maya Korica. Yeah. She says that workplaces should embrace

the whole spectrum of human experience, but ultimately without everybody feeling obligated to sort of bring them their whole selves into the workplace. But at the end of the day, it's the workplace's obligation to be welcoming in that sense. So I'd like to, if you could go over some of the relationship garden tools. This was one of the most robust gardening tool sections in the book, probably the longest, I think, actually. And I'd love if you could go into what some of those are since we're really at the end of

the day talking about interpersonal interactions here. The point you bring up about Dr. Kurika, you're again spot on. And this is sort of subliminal, I suppose, in the book, meaning we have arguably as leaders a fiduciary responsibility to the humanity of the individual. And that may mean as well, of course, right, allowing that individual to put up their own guardrails to how much they want to divulge. And that's completely fine. But if we're not asking the question, where are you at? How much more can I support you with sort of both work and life? Then if we don't have that open-ended question and conversation, then I do take umbrage

with that on the leader. So if we get to relationships then, which is a life factor because I believe we build up relationship skills and bring those into the workplace, that's why it's there. As you mentioned, I have this sort of notion of the inside, outside and online.

And so if really at the end of the day, they are skills that we're talking about, if a leader wants to be a good leader for that individual from a life skill perspective, because these skills are brought obviously as well into our lives, on the inside side, like it's just kind of things like, well, are you able to both introduce them and teach them how to reach out? Meaning, not everyone is skilled on the art of the cold email, the cold LinkedIn reach out, the cold kind of social networking,

the cold physical networking, the how do you say hi to people, the do you as a leader know inside an organization who people are? Who's who in the zoo? I mentioned things like skip level meetings. Are leaders having those so that they themselves are both introduced to someone that might be two or three levels below,

but creating bonds with them and saying, hey, I know Tyler over at Get Abstract. Let me introduce Tyler. at Get Abstract. Let me introduce a Tyler. What an amazing dude. Here's what you can learn from Tyler. Like these types of initiatives, kind of introducing people or even for your organization

setting up, you know, TMRGs or ERGs, sometimes they're called. So team member resource groups or employee resource groups. I know they're getting bashed around by a few organizations these days. Yeah, I've talked about that in a recent episode actually. Yeah, but these are communities and communities are relationships

and relationships help fuel the soul of whether I feel worth or not. And so there's a bunch of things you can do inside the org. There's a bunch of things you can do outside if you're kind of thinking about outside. Are there ways in which for you to, again, say we're not at Get Abstract, say we're at whatever, Dow Chemical, or we're at NBC or whatever. Are there ways in which you as a leader, you have an individual on your team say, Hey, can I introduce you to Harry over at Comcast or some other network altogether or media company? And on the online stuff,

you know, I mean, it kind of goes without saying, but there are channels in which to stack on top of people goodness. So, you know, whether that's threads and you're sort of tagging someone say, hey, you should go introduce yourself to her or on LinkedIn and say, you know, every now and then, for example, for me, I will just randomly do a LinkedIn post about somebody and say, here's what I think they're awesome. Like that's a way in which for my network to learn about someone online that they might not know about. maybe they get followed maybe they go read their bits or whatever the case may be there's ways in which for us to do that online as well. Much of the principles of Worklife Bloom revolve around better

communicating as a leader with one's people. The first question for adapting your soil test concept, which I'm talking about the soil test now, which is kind of one of the key action items at the end of the book. The first question under the trust category is, do you feel safe to speak your mind at work? And to me, this is another thing. It's a bit paradoxical. I've asked a handful of guests about how to elicit genuine feedback and responses when you are working toward these goals of improving relationships, improving well-being, etc. Because at the end of the day, a lack of trust means a lack of, you know, maybe transparent feedback. And if somebody doesn't feel safe speaking their mind at work, they might say yes, and it could be a lie,

because that's kind of the point there. So I want to hear from you, how do we establish trust if the goal is to establish trust? If that's the thing that we need to change, where do we start? How do we develop that enough that we can actually get reliable data to then improve from there on?

Well, the old adage, right Tyler, like trust is earned, it's not bought. And so trust is one of those things where you have to demonstrate, you've brought this up already, you're the one with the PhD in work life bloom, to be honest, that consistency of the habits that are leadership habits. So whether that's recognition, whether that's not reaming people out, whether that's being proactive, whether that's following through and following up,

whether that's developing people. Like there's just a cadre, there's a corneucopia, a full-on encyclopedia of habits that leaders need to demonstrate with consistency that then gets that trust to be earned. And so I get the point of the question, by the way, in the soil test where there's perhaps irony, where if trust and the question that a leader

must ask its individual team member, do you feel safe to speak your mind here at work? And the answer is no. Staring into their eyes. Right. But what we're trying to get at here is not just the leader subordinate or leader team member relationship, right? It's about the overarching culture of either the team and or the organization writ large. And I think that's more what I'm getting at. It's that if people feel unsafe in the corporate culture climate,

whereby when they say something, maybe they'll get nuked, which is a metaphor obviously for being terminated, whether they're calling themselves out in a way that's gonna ultimately prevent them from promotion or big assignments, whatever. I get it. But that's kind of the point, is that it's the leader's responsibility to get to a position whereby their trust has been earned by the team member that they feel

the reciprocal trust in order to provide an answer of authenticity like that. After the soil test is the water test. And to me, this, even though it's the last thing in the book before the COTA might actually be the place to start. Um, it's about self-reflection. It's about taking stock of your team as a leader of the organization, of your own feelings with a water test, with reflecting on your team, can you do that successfully without, you know, digging in and asking those questions? How do you actually take stock in a way that, again, you feel like you're getting reliable data

that you can then act on to take care of these 12 factors? The fact that you're asking questions about both the soil and the water test means you actually went through the entire book, and that makes me very happy, Tyler. When we are talking about the water test though, which is kind of the last test, as you say, before the quota, where I'm getting at with that is, if a leader has read the book and then analyzed, assessed, self-adjudicate themselves and wonder, holy be Jesus, I am not having conversations with my team members. I am not even anywhere close to knowing if they're blooming, budding, stunted,

or renewed. I don't even know what they think about with relationships or trust or the norms around here. That means that that leader is not leading because leading is not just about strategy and execution of vision. Leading arguably in this day and age actually should have more time percentage-wise spent with those conversations with the team members so that they do know. If a team member, sorry, if a team is comprised

of say 10 people and there's one leader, those are 10 conversations that have to happen, have to happen, sorry, with regularity to then be getting into situations like a water test, to know why someone might be blooming now or not. What's going on in work and life? If you're only having really a once a year conversation with someone and you relate that back to performance review, when you actually are asking questions about the full gamut of work and life, shame on you as a leader. The conversations and communications that are both formal, informal and social. So

there's formal times of chat meetings, whatever there's informal times water cooler, checking in little text like kind of saying, Hey, whatever. There's informal times, water cooler, checking in, little texts, like kind of saying, hey, I heard you, Sally, had a big soccer game this weekend. How did it go? If you didn't know Sally was having a soccer game, how can you ask that question? And social the same, whether it's text or online community forums, LinkedIn or wherever. If we're not asking ourselves as leaders,

how often to what depth am I having communication and conversations with my team member? You know, you're not a leader to me Tyler. So it's really about addressing that arena of ignorance, you know, trying to figure out what we don't know we don't know about our people and figuring out what questions we've just never asked about somebody to just kind of open up ourselves to who somebody really is. and figuring out what questions we've just never asked about somebody to just kind of open up ourselves to who somebody really is. Eliminating that degree of ignorance by effectively using the principles and the questions that you have in the book. Is that right? That's exactly right. My frustration, Tyler, and this feels a little bit more like we're in a

psychiatry counseling session right now, but that's fine. I'll take my medication after the chat. My frustration lies with the fact that the leadership checkmark or checkbox these days is about how to draw more blood from the stone to grow. Yeah. And the outcome, if the outcome is growth, fine. We have to ask what the inputs are. And the inputs aren't do more with less, be less humane in the objectives then of actually achieving said goal,

which is the output, which is growth. Maybe we need to ask ourselves, what are those inputs? And the inputs to me start with what we've been talking about for the better part of the last 45 minutes or so. Yeah. Speaking of which, I know you have another one of these to record at the top of the hour. I got one more question that I have to ask.

You, like I, are a shoe human. We have different approaches to the footwear game, I believe. I'm a sneaker guy, although I do collect other categories as well. I'm a pretty big collector. It sounds like you do as well, based on the book. And also, I've seen you twice in person now, and in both cases, I think I've commented on your shoes, which is very rare, because I'm looking at everybody's feet and always deciding whether it's worth a comment.

So props to you for having having strong shoe game. You like FluVog. This is a brand that I hadn't heard of until I read the book. I immediately went to their website with the first thought being, I'd be surprised if they had my size because I'm a size 14 and that's very rare for me, but they do actually have size 14 US in some categories

and I'm looking at a few pairs right now. So thank you for bringing this to my attention. Ultimately, this was a good story at the start of the book. I'd like if you could just kind of tell what you know about Fluvog and them as a business and how their commitment to kindness and respect is how you put it, I believe, how their commitment to kindness and respect matches your own values and why that's a good story to tell in the frame of the book. John Kluvog started the company about 52, 53 years ago. Vancouver centralized, but not from Vancouver originally in British Columbia. And it was just sort of like, we need to put the art of shoes back in shoes, you know, kind of that Italian Dutch thinking back in the day.

And a little mom-and-pa shop, handmade stuff, homemade stuff. But what they, what Fluvog, the company, which is now global, it's New Orleans, New York, St. Fran, across Canada, Europe, right, what it is that they've continued to do is to, and it's a family still owned business, is to ensure that that familial love, authenticity, trust that went into every shoe that John Fuvog designed back in the day continues throughout the organization, systemically and globally. continues throughout the organization, systemically and globally. And so they treat their customers like you are family,

which sounds really weird. And their shoe lines, like they get the entire organization thinking about design and how their shoe shop should be marketed, how they were called fluv voggers. I mean, I might have 18 pairs there to be honest, Tyler, but there were flu voggers. And the employees are called flu vogologists. And they have these two annual community flu moonities, they're called. It's just, they've figured out a way to translate how to be happy, authentic human beings in their products, in their online, in their company headquarters, in where they make the shoes, and in the retail stores

throughout the world. I guarantee you, if you go to fluvog.com, F-L-U-E-V-O-G.com, I have no stake in this game whatsoever. I make no money from them. But I do believe that you'll go there and maybe go to one of the shops and say, oh wow, well this is different. And it's how they treat their people. And they're not a huge company,

but what you feel there is that work life bloom time and time again. I love that story, especially because it's about shoes. Well, thank you, Dan. Before we sign off here, can you just let my listeners know how they can learn more about you and your work and contact you if they wish? Oh, that's really kind. Probably two ways. DanPontefract.com is pretty easy or WorklifeBloom.com is another way to get to the same spot. And then, yeah, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, other socials now and then, but mostly LinkedIn. You can find me there. Happy to connect with you there. Wonderful. Well, thanks again for joining me, Dan. This was a great conversation.

Hope to have you back on when you inevitably write the sixth book, I think, is where we're at now. So I'll look forward to that. For everybody listening at home, Thanks for joining us. We will catch you on the next episode. Cheers You've been listening to L&D in action a show from get abstract Subscribe to the show and your favorite podcast player to make sure you never miss an episode And don't forget to give us a rating leave a comment and share the episodes you love Help us keep delivering the conversations that turn learning into action. Until next time.