From Burnout To Brilliance: The CEO's Crucial Role In Workplace Evolution With Dr. Jonathan Baktari

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change-proof.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode Welcome to the Change Proof Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markel, and today we have Jonathan Bakhtari. Dr. Bakhtari is a CEO, a vaccine expert, and a physician with specialties in internal pulmonary and critical care medicine. With that background, Dr. Bakhtari has launched multiple innovative startups that leverage technology that expands and disrupts traditional markets, also focusing on growing a corporate culture that empowers leadership and staff To innovate, I know you're going to love this conversation with Dr. Bhaktari. Jonathan, he's a special guy. He's got very interesting insights on so many things. Sit back, enjoy this conversation I have with Dr. Jonathan Bhaktari. All right, Jonathan. To say that you have an impressive CV or bio is putting it mildly. You're a very accomplished person professionally, personally, and what I'm going to ask you now relates to that bio, but also is different. So what is one? thing that is not part of your standard introduction, your bio, that you would love for our audience to know about you? So one thing that's not written in that bio you would love for people to know about you.

I think in terms of profession, over the years, I've become a mentor to so many people and been lucky enough to get involved and change people's lives in terms of professionally, especially to make them grow and become leaders. And that kind of slips through the crack of this sort of professional mentor. There are people I've been mentoring for decades, and that's a real important thing for any organization. And I'm something I'm very proud of. And it's amazing to see some of the people that I've had a chance to work with blossom into just these amazing professionals. And they started off just beginning their career, not knowing, and giving them direction and giving them the skills by the mentoring process. Just having deep, long conversations about big, high view, top view kind of things that they need to understand. So that's been a joy. And I obviously, that doesn't fall into the bio anywhere, but, and it's been tremendous amount of fun.

Yeah. Immediately what's coming up for me is just in the environment of work today, we have a lot of new relationships to the way in which we work. Obviously before the pandemic, everybody was in the office. It was very rare in a traditional setting for people to work other than here and there a little bit outside of the office. We're primarily there. And now we're primarily not there, at least at the moment. There's hybrid and fully remote and very few organizations that have gotten everybody back in the office to where they were before the pandemic. So my question to you has to do with mentorship at the outset. Do you think, do you see anything that is either anecdotal evidence of it or something that's more scientific or just your thoughts on where will mentorship be, do you think, as a result of this new situation where even the newest of our employees that are coming into the workforce, the youngest of those folks, perhaps just coming out of college or grad school or something like that or wherever, but they are not spending time in a physical office with a senior-level leader that might become their mentor. What's gonna happen to mentorship, do you think?

I have a contrarian view on this whole work-from-home kind of thing because even during the pandemic, Like on my podcast when everybody was at home, get interviewed and is this the wave of the future? Office buildings are going away and home. And I really took a contrarian view on it. I said, first of all, you know, 60, 70% of people can't work from home anyway. When you look at the whole workforce, if you're a waitress or you're doing construction or whatever, you can't work from home. So practically speaking, I think the whole concept is slightly overblown because I think some people like myself or whatever, Maybe in industries where it could work, but the vast majority of industries, it doesn't work. If you are, like I said, in construction or service industry, or you work at the ballpark or whatever, you're not going to work from home. So that's number one. So if you take 60%, 70% of the workforce out of it, we're talking about a smaller group. And within that group, obviously the trend has been to bringing them back. So my personal feeling, yes. Will there be 5%, 10% of the workforce that has now moved to home? Yes. But in terms of looking at the workforce, I actually see it slowly creeping back and you see it on Twitter making announcements. Micra, you gotta— yes. Will it be tough to claw all of them back? Yes. But the way I view it, it's coming back. At the end of the day, the creativity, the culture of the things we're about to talk about, mentorship, you can't just throw that out the window. And to some level it is. And then the last thing that I think most senior-level people now understand about people who work remote. While there is a good 5%, 10%, 15% that are just kicking butt at home, let's be honest, there's another 80% that are walking the dog, getting a second job, whatever it is. I don't have this romantic vision of working at home. Yes, if you're a bookkeeper—

I'm sorry to be laughing. To me, that's hysterical. Just the idea that there's somebody who's listening to this right now and going, oh my God, is that what's really going on? My people that I'm paying money to, they're walking the dog, they're getting The second job.

Yeah. Look, no, but that's the thing. They'll take the one or two outliers that are killing it at home who are— because the freedom, their productivity has gone through the roof. Yes. But then everyone wants to point out that the outliers— you and I have had lunch with people who are working from home and come on, they tell us like, oh, it's been great spending more time with this. And I picked up this hobby and I'm doing this. I'm doing some consulting work on the side. I've had those lunches. I hear them telling Those are anecdotes, but I think my anecdotes are supported by the leadership in a lot of these organizations coming to that realization. And even if the productivity is the same, you still use the old conversations at the water cooler metaphorically. Hey, how are we going to deal with this client? I think I've dealt with them before. I think this is the way you should approach. How is that a win? I just think, I know I'm such a contrarian, but how is that a win missing out on those conversations? It can't be just by definition. So I think we're wrapped up in the romance of this new age. Why didn't we think of this earlier thing? But I think it's probably in a decade from now, it'll be a remnant of COVID And yes, there will be a handful of people, but I think it will slowly fade away.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy, Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that That will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. We're gonna have to get back together in a decade because I find where my instincts have me leaning, it's neither going to be before COVID the way it is right now. It'll be some blend of the two, not either or, but both, let's say. And for sure, I think I think the jury's still out on productivity. I'm just gonna— I haven't seen anything that's definitive either way, frankly, about the productivity piece. So let's just say we'll see. There are people who take advantage, any excuse to procrastinate or be, I don't know, suppose lazy on somebody else's dime. There will always be that small, I think, percentage of folks. But I think a lot of people have just, or are figuring out how they work best. How do they work well? Which just happens to be the name of our company. It's funny. But the other aspect, and this is the one, and I, I think you spoke to that water cooler conversation. that, how do we handle this client situation? I remember getting into my work early on, and it was an apprenticeship. They didn't call it that in the legal world, in the law. It wasn't that. You were like an intern, really. But older attorneys took me under— one particular attorney took me under his wing, and I learned so much by being in proximity to him.

Right.

I remember he would pop into my— I had my little office, and he'd stick his head in the door at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon and ask me a snide but funny question about what I was so busy doing? I hadn't come out of my little hovel all day long, and he wanted to know, you know, what I was so busy, what was so important that I was buried in there. So the mentorship piece, I can't imagine that the mentorship component is any easier when you're not in proximity physically.

I think you're arguing my case because, look, I am.

Yeah.

The productivity thing on the side, which I'm going to disagree with you. I think the data isn't, but no. And the problem is we all make decisions based on our own anecdotes. But I think globally speaking, the productivity is a big issue. And then Secondly, yeah, this mentorship, whether you want to call it mentorship, or I always used to say even the idle chatter of your mentors is worth hearing. Even the idle chatter, like how do they deal with an annoying situation or how do they deal with a surprise that shows up? Like I'm sure when you and I, in our younger stages of our career, something would come out of the blue and we think it was a catastrophe and then Our mentor would say, ah, don't sweat this one. Where are those conversations? When you really put it all together, I'm such a contrarian on this issue. I'm not sure the jury's out. I think if you talk to high-level HR people, especially the bigger companies, certainly where they have the data because they can measure the productivity, I'm not sure the jury's out. There's a massive impact on productivity. Again, I think you and I hang out with the outliers who are killing it at home, but the outliers don't make the data. So that's— The overall perspective.

Good. I think we'll be able to do a part 2 on this one.

Okay.

Yeah. But I love that comment or that quote right there. I'm going to repeat it for our audience, and I want to remember it too, that idle chatter of mentors is worth hearing. I think it was a study in the '70s that was called weak ties. It was the weak tie connection. It was a way in which they were measuring not productivity, but innovation. In the early '70s, I think they were using maybe 3M and some other companies that were pretty innovative at that point in time. And they said that Often some of the greatest innovations occurred when these random collisions of people occurred at the water cooler in the break room. And so when somebody from accounting ran into somebody from marketing,

right?

These folks were not in each other's silos and weren't routinely conversing about things.

Yeah.

Just had that, like you said, that idle chatter, that conversation randomly. All of a sudden, oh, like a light bulb goes off.

Yeah. So Adam, you're arguing my point. I'm gonna, I'm gonna—

oh no.

Grief. I'm gonna give you a little grief on this.

We're on the same side of things. I think that And I wanna use it for a different purpose. Our work, you and I both work in the sense of how to create greater organizational health, let's say overall health. Mm-hmm. And, and you might not use that term even though you are a, a physician and that was your area of expertise and you pivoted to that. I wanna get to that story of your own personal pivot. I pivoted out of the law. I worked in that arena for 18 years and I was not happy a lot of that time, but I was mostly just I was really burned out when I made the decision, which didn't even seem like I had a choice in it. When I actually left the practice of law, I was on a collision course with the quote, the classic midlife crisis. And instead, I had a bit of a midlife calling and reinvention. And you and I share this very much share this in common. But at the time that occurred, the reason why it was dire, and I didn't feel like I even had a choice, honestly, was because I was burnt out. And the, the level of burnout in the corporate space today has only risen, and it has risen exponentially over the last few years. And we're seeing it in a lot of different ways. And so when I'm asking you about how people work well, whether it's gonna be in the office, gonna be in some other remote or hybrid Capacity. I'm thinking in terms of sustainability. I'm thinking in terms of longevity. And if I knew then as a lawyer, because people, especially lawyers, ask me this all the time, if I knew then what I know now about how to take care of myself, how to create greater resiliency using certain rituals, I could have stayed in the law without having to have made that pivot. I'm glad I didn't, but I could have.

Like, what strategies would you have used to prolong or avoid the burnout?

This is a part of the conversation I wanna have with you today. Yeah. So first, let me get your story about your own pivot out of what was a very, I wanna say prolific medical career to what you're doing today. And then we're gonna talk about, I'd love to talk about wellness and, and resiliency in the workplace. Yep.

By the way, if I can just comment on what you said, people who get burned out professionally, I have found fall into 2 categories. One, people, there are certain people who would not get burned out if their job was only 40 hours a week. So I think like doctors and lawyers who sometimes work 80 hours a week, but the way I used to say it, I don't think I ever got to the point where I was burnt out, but I saw it in my colleagues and I, and potentially myself. But I, what I would say to people is I have the world's best job the first 40 hours of the week. The second 40 hours that a lot of people hate, and I use the word hate. So I, when I see people who are burnt out, the first question, now, if you're burnt out working 40 hours a week, Then you obviously don't like your profession or something is wrong. But I categorize people who get burnt out into people who, you know, do you love your job the first 40 hours? And if you love your job the first 40 hours, you're not burnt out because the occupation's bad. You're burnt out because you're doing it wrong. Yeah, that's a distinction for me because I see a lot of doctors who claim they hate medicine, but They only hate it the second 40 hours of the week. The nights, the weekends, the call, the rounding on patients Saturday or Sunday afternoon. That's what they hate. And what's the second? Confabulated is all. It says, I hate the profession, but go ahead.

No. So what's the second? You said the first is that—

The second one is that they actually don't like what they're doing, even if it was 40 hours. That's the second category. So whenever someone tells me they're burnt out, I always say, let me ask you a question. How many hours are you working? Because I think there's a certain amount of resentment after 40 hours because it encroaches into family time, kids' time, your wife, your spouse, you're going to the ballgame, meeting people at the bar, whatever it is, or your yoga class. Or once those things get infringed on, there's almost like a sense of, okay, now you're taking something away. How the mind plays tricks with you. You feel like there was something that you had and someone took it away.

Yes. You

know, and, and that's mindset that something that I already had has been taken away. Not, I never had it. I, I had it, but it's been taken away from me.

So those people who are working home right now feel as though they've been given something, meaning they were given the opportunity to walk their dog when, as a way to get out from behind the screen and all that good stuff. And so when an organization says to them they have to come back to the office, now granted, most Companies are smart enough today to go, let's do this 3 days a week, not 5, or whatever it might be. But at some point, like you say, clawing them back, what they're gonna experience are— is a workforce that resists because you're take— now taking something. Right.

No. That's very tough. You have me there. Never give someone— just even in, in negotiations. But you're a lawyer, right? You've done deals where You accidentally agree to something that now you realize you can't agree to, trying to claw that back. I actually call it negotiating in bad faith. If you gave me something and you want to take it back, I have a major issue with that. And I think, but that's a different psychology. We're not— so the new group that you hire, you don't give that to. But my point is, yes, it's a huge lift to claw, even give a slight benefit. Okay, vacations 4 weeks instead of 3 weeks, but then you want to claw it back. You can't call. So that's a separate problem. That's an HR issue. How do you over time claw back stuff that you've given? And yes, it can be a huge problem, but I think that's an HR issue. But I think the question really is on a high— we're going back to this, but a high level, where is your organization with people working remotely and how it's impacting culture and productivity? Once you've made the decision that's negatively impacting those 2 things, Then of course you have to come up with a strategy. You can't just send out an email and say, oh, starting tomorrow everyone's working 5 days a week.

So that's the stuff. Some folks tried that. They were the early ones that ended up dying off.

That's not— but then you have to claw back any benefit or anything. Whatever. You can eat at your desk. No, you can't eat at your desk. Wow. Okay. It's going to be huge because you're taking something back.

All right. So I want to get into your story because I think it's a will be a place that we can use as a fulcrum, a pivot, if you will, itself. So here you are, you go to medical school. Did you wanna be— and I don't wanna spend a lot of time on this, but did you wanna be a doctor when you were a kid? I just—

Oh, yeah. Very— of course. By the time I was in high school. Yeah. Very much.

Because I don't imagine you, you just decide one day you wanna be a doctor.

It's too much work if you don't really want it for, for the real reason.

Okay. So you wanted to be a doctor and then you pursued that. And where did it take you? Let's just

So I got an undergraduate degree. I got a, I was one of these crazy undergraduates. I got 2 undergraduate degrees in biology, psychology. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, you know, so obviously I was studying pretty hard. And then I got into Ohio State Medical School, which was an amazing adventure. And then after that, I went to Northwestern University in Chicago for my residency, internship and residency. And then subsequently, I was lucky enough to go to UCLA. For my fellowship in pulmonary and critical care, so really some really top-notch schools. Very fortunate, very lucky that have that kind of excellent training. And then then eventually went into private practice, joined a private high-powered pulmonary critical care group, eventually became a senior partner in that, and also then clinical faculty of a couple of med schools over or three med schools over my career. And and then slowly spent about five years transitioning away. At the top of that, transitioning away into administrative medicine and then more into sort of the private entrepreneurial kind of side of medicine.

So let's talk about that for a moment. I mentioned earlier I was on my own sort of critical path to— I could see over the edge. And in looking back at it now, yeah, I think some of it had to do with that delta between 40 hours and 80 or 90 hours. There was an element of when you're doing a 3-hour commute every day, you can hate your job or hate your life. Really? Yeah. I'm wearing a shirt that says, I love my life. I'm in a very different place than I was then. So that's got me thinking a little bit too. But what was it like for you? Why are you doing the work you're doing today versus the work you were doing 5 or more years ago?

No. So I transitioned about 10, 15 years ago to tele— kind of, and actually really left clinical medicine about 10 years ago. But I think For me, I know a lot of people think it was like an epiphany, like you woke up one day and you're like, aha, I'm making a change. It wasn't like that at all. It was more gradual. I joined a committee and that opened up another door and then that door opened up another door. And actually I didn't know where it was going to lead, but I think there was this sense that once you get to become a senior partner and you're like sitting there, you're like, okay, you've been on this road of growth. And now, like the road is over because there's nowhere to grow. Where else are you going to go? So I think for me, I don't know if it was burnout more than wanting to see there's got to be more. And then as I did more, I think there was this sense that my feeling that, you know, being a doctor meant helping patients. You quickly realize that you could help patients in many ways, right? You could see them one-on-one, 10, 15, 20 patients a day, one-on-one and help them. And I think A lot of, I'm gonna be honest, I think a lot of doctors go into medicine cuz they feel it's a calling from God or some version of that. They feel like they're in a special group with special opportunities and privileges to help people. And if, but then if you channel that and say, okay, I can help one person at a time, then some, somewhere along the line, the light bulb goes off. I can help a lot of people. I don't have to be seeing them one-on-one to do that potentially. Initially I said I would do both. Okay, so I'll go half-time or this other half-time, I'll try to make an impact on healthcare. And then again, it was all, it was one door opening up another. And then next thing we were starting our own companies because I had this perspective. I had been a clinical doctor, I had worked for insurance companies, I had been medical directors for hospitals. So I knew how the hospitals thought. I knew how the insurance companies thought. Of course, I knew the clinical side. I was, I knew the teaching side of it. And then you're like, you know what, now I have a perspective that I don't think I would have had if I'd just done clinical medicine. Is there any way I can channel that into something different? And that's how it's evolved over many years.

Yeah, it's interesting because so many people, you know, they think that if they're unhappy in their work, whether it's again because they hate the 40 hours period after 40 hours that they're doing their work, or it's some other thing, it's just not their calling anymore. It might have been earlier, but we change. People change. It's contrary to what people think. We change, and our interests and our Our desires, these things are fluid. So regardless of what that looks like, a lot of people think the moment you realize this is what I wanna be doing 20 years from now, you gotta change something immediately. That wasn't my path any more than it was yours. Mine wasn't a jump ship scenario. It, it took, in fact, about 2 and a half years. Yours potentially was about, or a little longer perhaps, but methodical. I didn't tear down one bridge before building another one. Or create. I didn't disband my plan A before I had my plan B.

Oh, I love it.

Plan A. Right? And that's in that book Pivot I wrote. I dispel that, that jump ship mentality. I think, I think there's too much risk in that. I'm the risk averse person anyway as a lawyer. Hello. But I also think when there's that much risk, a lot of more fear comes into play.

It's funny. Actually, can I, can I share an anecdote with you? I, I remember, like, during this period where I was thinking about changing, I was having dinner with a good friend and I think it was the first time that I expressed my desire openly to go in a different direction.

Which takes some courage among your colleagues to do that.

Oh yeah. And we get a lot of funny looks. And then so he said to me, what's your plan? How are you going to do it? And I said, I had 2 ideas. I said, one, I could do something methodical. I described what you just did. Or I said, or I could sell everything I own and take my savings and go be a lifeguard at Club Med in the Caribbean. And I said, it's either plan A or plan B. So the first kind of person you were describing where you just, okay, that, that's it. I'm done. I'm liquidating everything. I'm just going to go. And then the reason I picked Club Med, because, you know, they give you food and shelter and you don't need much. You could just—

You just get to live off beads. That's it.

Yeah. Yeah. I just love the beads. I think those are the two options that I think you and I chose the— and I actually gave my thing a name. I actually gave it a name because it needed a name. So I could work on it. So like I'd come home and say like, this thing that you're describing that I'm going to build one bridge and, but what do you call that? So I actually gave it a name and I called it my ES. And I said, like, what do you do? I'm working on my ES. And that was an exit strategy. Once you give it a name, because then you can work on it. Okay. So I'm spending 10 hours a week and it wasn't exit in the sense that burnout exit, but this idea that There has to be more. You, you, if you want to impact people on a broader level, you can't do it in my case, just sitting in an office. So how do you make that bigger impact? So you have to make an exit at some point.

Yeah.

But like you, I love your phrase about building one bridge before 2. That really was the ES.

And what you just said is also the most important part of my story because when somebody says, hey, would you go back? Let's, so if you could have continued, would you in hindsight just have continued given what you know now, which we haven't talked about yet. And I go, no, because even in the work I was doing, which was meaningful, if I'm being perfectly honest, it was mostly meaningful for me and for my family. I was getting wealthy doing it, and there's nothing wrong with that. I love— that's great. I was helping people, but it was a small number as compared to what I learned that I could be doing to help a lot more people. Which, by the way, no complaints about the money on that side either, but definitely not the sort of the red carpet to wealth that the law provided and that probably the medical profession on some level provides as well, to be, again, really honest about it.

You're right.

Yeah. So let's talk about this then from the standpoint of where we meet people today because our audience, our listenership, combination of people who are working in jobs at various levels, a lot of senior-level leaders, middle managers, etcetera, people just getting started. I was assume, as well as some entrepreneurs, some folks in that space. And I think more and more we have to think in terms of the demographic as well, which has gotten on some level a little bit of play because millennials have gotten a bad rap from older parts of the workforce, whether Gen Xers or baby boomers even. But it's really just the idea that today we're seeing a shift, and we saw it during the pandemic. The Great Resignation was what it was called. It's now shifted. They're talking about things called quietly quitting. But my understanding is that about 4 million people are leaving their jobs on a monthly basis in the US, talking about North America. And at the height of the pandemic, maybe about 4.5 million, which is interesting as a number, but we gotta compare it to something. So before the pandemic, on average over 20 years, there was about 2.5 million people every month that would leave a job, voluntarily leave a job. So it's a significant change in that. And you go, okay, so inflation, we're gonna tie a few things maybe here together. Perhaps inflation is quite high. We get that there's a lot of reasons for that. But now in a rising interest rate environment where inflation should be coming down and probably is and will continue to, the biggest issue is wages. The biggest issue is we have full employment. We have 1.7 jobs for every person looking for a job. And you go, okay, so with 4 million people leaving the workforce, what are they doing to pay the bills? Are they all just living in their parents' basement? Is that what's happening? Or is it that demographically speaking, Gen Z and, and millennials, younger millennials or even older millennials have figured out that if they are unhappy at work, that they don't just grin and bear it the way our, either our generation or our parents' generation did because we were thinking about, I gotta be with this company to get my pension 25, 30 years later, or I've gotta be with this company because I don't have another option. These young people realize that they can side hustle. They can create out of the gig economy. They can create money. They could start up their own venture like they see a lot of people doing. So there's just different options for them than there were for you and I 15, 20, 30 years ago.

For sure.

Yeah. And I think that's— so I said a few things, but I want to get your perspective because you may agree or want to press on some of that. But just any thoughts on that?

I agree and disagree. I agree on the part, look, no generation workforce is going to be like the last one. We were around 80, 100 years ago, we'd be working in a factory and making widgets and working 10-hour days, no benefits. And so obviously the whole thing evolves. I just think this, some of the stuff like you were talking about quietly quitting, I just saw an article in the Wall Street Journal about quietly firing because this whole thing comes around eventually. You know, you can only quiet quit. And then I just saw another article about the amount of money influencers are making is going way down. And what have you because of budget cuts. And I just think that when the dot-com thing, oh, it's going to go on forever. The crypto, it's going to go on for— Bitcoin's going to keep going up. Oh, we're going to keep working from home. Everyone's going to be an influencer. Everyone's going to have a YouTube channel. While you're in the thick of it, it may appear like that, but when the bubble bursts and it's not like that anymore, then it becomes obvious. So I hear that, but I'm starting to see a lot Quietly firing now instead of letting them quietly quit, we quietly fire them. And by just moving them into a different position so they will leave. And again, I think there is some good out of that. I just don't think it is the big train that people think it is. I think at the end of the day, people do need more flexibility. Whenever I hire someone for a position that I want them to be all in, like you said, be part of the organization. Yeah. Next to God and family, this better be the most important thing in your life because this position is like, there's no place to hide. Like you're going to be, we need someone that's all in. And the question I always ask them, I said, hey, let me ask you a question. This position requires you to be all in and it's not more than 40 hours a week, but it's all in. This is not the kind of thing where if you've got 3 side hustles, you can work on it simultaneously at work or whatever. And when I say that, I always say, I said, but here's what I want to know from you. Did I catch you at the right time in your life?

Great question.

You know, because there has been times in my life where you asked me to be all in. I'm like, no. You're like, I've got this personal thing going on and I'm running an Amazon business out of my garage and whatever. So it's not the perfect time. So part of it is you have to tell people, is this the right time for you to be all in?

And that's such a great question. I want folks to stop your drive. If you're driving, pull over. If you're on a treadmill, stop the treadmill for a second. Write that question down because when you're interviewing or people in your company who are doing that, this is a good question to ask people. And I don't think people see that coming either, by the way. Right? You catch them a little off guard. That's not a standard question you're asking. Is

it? Well, that, listen, I, I have a whole thing on interviewing and one of the things I talk about interviews because Interviews are like the most artificial situations you can imagine. The guy at the company is only going to say great things about his company, and the person there is trying to figure out what can I say? But, oh, I only want to say good things, but what does he want me to say? I'll say whatever he wants. No information gets really transmitted because it's like being on your first date. You're not going to tell the person you snore. Why would you? So one of the things that we talk about is asking these kind of questions that puts the person on tilt. I don't know if you've played poker, but in poker they call someone being on tilt, and that is after they lose a bad hand where they had 4 kings and they thought they were going to win and the other guy's 4 aces and you thought you had the thing wrapped up. So that then throws them off and they start betting erratically after that. So after you ask someone a question that they weren't expecting, I think some of the script that they had falls off and some of your script falls off. Now you have a genuine And I think the whole idea of how to turn an interview into a genuine conversation and not tell me what I want to hear, and I'm going to tell you how great our company is. You know, like, you're so lucky to even be at this interview. That's not good. Everyone has to be honest. So you have to be honest about the job, about your company, and they have to be. Yeah. So how you get there, that's a whole different podcast. But yeah, so asking them, is this the right time for you? And then I give them an out. I Listen, there were times in my life this wouldn't be right for me. And there were times where, you know, next to God and family, I was ready to dive right in there. And I think those kind of questions when you're interviewing helps the honesty and transparency of what you're looking for. And they can be honest and say, you know what? No, this is not the right time in my life where I'm ready to give you that.

You gave me a great way to dovetail into this last section of our, of the conversation today anyway, by focusing on the quality of the And obviously, for the purpose in that context of connection, of how we connect at a real level. So the way I want to do this is to say that in our work, we work with organizations to create workplaces and work cultures of well-being. And one of the ways that we talk about that is through this sort of lens of, do people think that and feel that you have their back? Does somebody who's working in an organization feel as though that organization and its leadership actually has their back? Sometimes I wear a shirt that says, got your back. And part of that is about really checking in so that you're not just superficially asking, how you doing? Like that joke, how you doing? That, like, nobody answers the question, at least not where I grew up in New York. You'd ask, how you doing? Somebody say, hey, how you doing? That's the way it went. Nobody answered. And today when you ask somebody that, they go, fine, good, hanging in there, whatever. There's not a real conversation like what you were just saying. What we have to do is ask deeper, more incisive, curious questions about not just how people are doing, but what are they doing? What are you doing? So I wanna ask you about that now in terms of, look, we know that, again, statistically speaking, we have people leaving their jobs. That's a fact. We know that burnout, at least from what we're reading about it, that burnout is on the rise. Depression is at levels we haven't seen in Ever, probably. Anxiety, tremendous issues there, mental health issues that people are facing. That's not BS. That's not— that's the reality of the world we're living in. And it's not just in North America. It's globally. We feel like, how do we meet people where they really are? Where they really are as being that sort of various points of time has to do with the responsibility of that company. Now, if you really wanna care for people, Yeah. You gotta really care for people. So I just wanna get your perspective on it because I know you work in, in, in developing, helping companies create better cultures that, that are more well. I, I'd love to get your thoughts on how we do that today. Is there something you're focused on in your work when you're advising organizations about how to uplift that culture, make that culture stronger? What are you telling folks?

Yeah. That really, it's, it's amazing topic. Thank you for bringing it up. That's, that's That strikes a lot of chords with me. That's really so important. I think that actually goes to mentoring leadership and going to CEOs. I'm about to launch my second season podcast. It's called Crash Course for CEOs, which focuses on exactly some of the skills that you're talking about. But one of the things I talk about, if you're gonna be the CEO, and of course you'd be leading that culture, is that what is your real job as a CEO? I think a lot of people think my job is to grow the company. My job is to improve our profit and loss. But that's not really their job. And this is what I try to tell CEOs. Your job is to improve the lives of everyone in your organization professionally and personally. And if you wake up every morning saying, that is my job now, and then the argument, I can say, look, if the company makes more money and you give everyone raises and everyone has more benefits and less work, and if you invest in technology that takes work away from your staff and and simultaneously your company makes more money. So I think this, what I call alignment, is the CEO and the leadership aligned with the rest of the organization. If you're only aligned in the sense that you want to suck as much money out of the universe and put it into your company, that's not alignment. But once everyone feels, hey, the leadership's job is trying to improve my life professionally, personally. They're trying to get me an assistant. They're trying to get me a better office. They're trying to— now simultaneously, those things might make more money for the company, which again, I'll make the argument that will improve everyone's lives financially. So once there's a connection between our company grows, you grow, which by the way, I'm sure there's some companies that are guilty of not doing that. In other words, their company grows and nobody else grows. Everyone gets their 3% raise. And, but one of the things I tell people is if you are running a company and someone's been with you for 3, 4, 5, certainly 10 years, they better say, oh my gosh, I'd have to take a pay cut to go anywhere else. If your senior people are not saying that, either your company sucks and you're not making a lot of money, which case that's a whole different conversation, or you're not handling it right. That's all your senior people better be saying. And not only money, benefits and what have you. I'd have to, the whole idea of retaining people and keeping them happy is rewarding them for what they've done for the company. That's really the name of the game. If someone's, you know, single-handedly responsible, the other, I tell other CEOs, look at someone and say, okay, I lose Susie, how many people would I need to hire to replace her. And people in their organization will say this, oh, I lose Bill, I lose Susie, we're dead. We're, you know, that whole department's blown up. Then you better take care of that person. You can't say I need 3 people to replace Adam if he left the law firm and then not take care of Adam. It's just common sense. But this is how you have to take care of people. So you wake up in the morning and say, my job is to improve the lives of everyone in my organization. That's really my job. Now you do that and it will synchronize with the other things that CEOs like.

Exactly. And you said, use the word common sense. And we know maybe it was Nietzsche that was supposedly the one that said this, that common sense isn't common. But whoever said it, I think it's true. And my question to you is, how many CEOs do you find buy into this before you bring it, bring the topic up? Because I think in many corporate situations. It's an extraction model, and that's why people are not only more hip to it today, like our kids, we have 4 kids and everything from 22 to 30 years old. I think not to do with anything that my wife and I did. We, I think we did a decent job or whatever, but they're just like a higher, like whatever your latest iPhone is or your latest, whatever your device is, that's the most current software. And these kids that are in the workforce, coming into the workforce, the ones that'll come in the workforce 10 years from now, will have better software than you and I had. And they are more hip to a lot of things that you and I weren't hip to, including the fact that it's an extraction model in a lot of organizations, meaning how can I extract the most from a person for the amount that we, for what we invest in them, cost, their benefits, their salary, all of it. And we will not get to the next level of productivity or Teamwork or anything that— No,

I'm going to give you one additional thing. I'll just give you many, just one example. I remember 10 years ago, this administrative assistant knocked on my door and said, oh, hey, Dr. Bakhtari, can I have a couple of minutes of your time? And he goes, I hope you don't mind, but I was reviewing our website over the weekend and I came up with like 100 grammatical errors and stuff like that. And I'm like, that's not even her job. What's she doing on our website? And I'm using that as an analogy. This is not extra. You couldn't extract that if you wanted to. How do you extract that level of ownership? So it— You absolutely cannot. Exactly.

You cannot extract that level of ownership.

You cannot. So the people who are trying to extract the max are not getting the— there's a level beyond that they're not addressing.

Exactly. So my question to you is, in your work, How often do you see CEOs that have the, quote, common sense to, to understand what we've been talking about?

Yeah. Not that often. But the ones that I have the opportunity to coach or influence, and usually they're younger. I think my peers, I, I don't know. It's awkward for me to be coaching them, but certainly, I have a lot of people in their 30s and 40s that are starting their own gig. And I, they call me. I meet with them, have coffee,

and talk about By the way, don't you just love the fact that, that again, like somebody in their 30s or, and it's, this is a random thing, 20s, 30s, 50s, whatever. It's somebody with an open mind, right? An open mindset. You could be 80 years old. Martha Stewart is 83. Okay?

Right.

It's crazy. She, and she's like on the COVID of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, like magazine or whatever, this next month or something. And she said that when you're through changing, You're through. And I thought, man, that's at 83. That's an open— that's a person with an open mind. She would love what you're saying. She would lean into it, I believe, because that's an open— a person with an open mind. But you're right. Like, sometimes you find people that have a fixed mindset and this is—

Yeah. But maybe you and I learned that when we were pivoting because the only way we could have pivoted it, because look, you may be the smartest bankruptcy attorney in in whatever, New York or whatever. But if you're trying to pivot to become an author and you have to shut up and listen to other people. And I think that's probably what I learned and what you learned is you cannot be the smartest guy in the room all the time. Now, maybe in court or maybe in that law firm, yes, because you were the senior guy, you knew the most. But as soon as you move out of that arena, what I learned is as I was transitioning to the kind of is shut up and listen. Not to everybody, but if you run into a Michael Jordan or LeBron James of something, I give this example. I'm like, let's say LeBron James comes up to you and says, hey, this is how you shoot a basketball. Is there any comeback to that? Is there like, oh, that's all good and fine, but have you ever thought about this, LeBron? No, shut up. You're talking to LeBron James.

Unless he's talking to Michael Jordan. Unless his conversation is with Michael Jordan.

Oh, I, yeah, yeah. I'm trying to stay current for the— I was going to say Michael Jordan, but okay. So Michael, if Michael Jordan says, this is how you dribble the ball, there's no comeback.

No. If those, if those 2 guys are talking to each other.

Oh, they're talking. Yeah. If they're talking together. Yeah. That would be, I'd love to be in that conversation.

Me too.

But for you and I, not everyone we meet is going to be a Michael Jordan, but understand, yes, there are people that are going to know more than you. And instead of challenging them, which I see a lot of young people, oh, I don't know. Have you thought, that sounds good, but what? Shut up because you're talking to someone who's been living and breathing it for 20 years. And it doesn't— now, there are people who are older than you that don't know what they're— I'm not saying listen to everybody, but once you identify someone who clearly is a leader or has a lot of insight, and of course you got to be smart about that. You can't just listen to everything.

I think Bob Iger, I don't know if you heard this, but like a couple of years ago when he resigned, from being the— was the CEO of Disney. It— part of the reason that he gave for resigning that position, I think he stayed on the board, might even stayed on the chairmanship, I don't know. But I just remember this one aspect. They interviewed him. He said, I stopped listening to the people around me. There's a lot of smart people you would imagine around that guy in that organization. He stopped listening. And when he said, the moment I could sense that I always thought I knew more than these folks around me, I knew I had to go. And I thought that was pretty— wow. Talk about some great self-awareness. Right?

Yeah. And maybe that's one of the intangibles that allows someone to grow. Because if you always know more than everybody in the room, how do you grow?

Great question. I think we're gonna end it in just a second here, but I wanna come back to something that we didn't fully touch on. I wanna ask you a question about it. So for me, I wasn't, I wasn't able I didn't know enough how to take care of myself when I was a lawyer. I was just a workaholic, and I was surrounded by a lot of other workaholics. I know a lot of doctors. I lived in a neighborhood with doctors who, while committed to other people's health and wellness, were living very unhealthy lives themselves. So not only high incidence of substance abuse in that profession as well as in the legal profession, high incidence of thoughts about suicide attempts, et cetera. Really rough stuff. People don't, I don't think, fully recognize it being a sort of a disconnect, like a shoemaker whose kids walking around with holes in their shoes kind of thing. So what I know now is that if I could have focused then on taking the kind of breaks, micro breaks and other breaks throughout the day, if I was creating greater harmony between my work life and my non-work life, I wasn't doing those 90-hour weeks consistently. There were just some pretty serious changes that I could have made. Then that would've helped my practice. I would've been healthier in the practice of law. I imagine a lot of doctors who also live what might be called unbalanced lives, they're too heavy, they're pre-diabetic or worse, or, and yet they're dispensing advice on, on for people to be well. I guess my question to you, is there something today that you do on a ritual basis, meaning consistently, habitually, To just make sure that you don't end up on that burnout track, that you're not ending up hating, to use your words, hating the hours after between 40 and some other number. Because I work more than 40 hours this in a week typically. I'm sure you do too. But I love what I do. And in part, it's not it's what I do, but in part, it's also that I've learned how to take better care of myself in the process of getting things accomplished. Any what are your thoughts for you?

I'm pretty much a straight area. I do all. the things that you would imagine. I have a trainer I go see 3 times a week to make sure we go through the motions of that. And that's really amazing and a nice outlet for me. I pray every day. That's really—

So do I, by the way. And I don't get to often say that in a conversation like this. I thank you for saying that. I do too.

Oh yeah, no, it's a big part of my family's life and my life. We take time out and we pray every day. And that's that in itself. I remember being a psychology major and they were like talking about things that put you in an alpha state like meditation. And but people don't realize that prayer can actually do the same thing as yoga and meditation, the same alpha waves that are— if you put an EEG on someone and when they're praying, if you can actually achieve similar status as As though you were meditating or what have you. So anyway, so there's value in that. And the last thing is just to have a lot of balance. We have some hobbies that I share with my kids and my wife, and we travel and we try to get away in the summer, and travel is a big part of what we do. And then just, we have season tickets for all the sporting events with the kids. And it's so, it's not just work. And still, obviously we work long hours, but if you balance your life with whether it's season tickets or something that gives you an outlet and you go to the gym, you work out, you have a trainer, or you just run or what have you, it's not complicated for me. I just do like the ABCs of trying to have a balanced life and, you know, little hobbies here and there. I'm a watch enthusiast, go figure. I love Seiko watches and I love Anything watches. And so just different things that me and some friends have in common and fun stuff that we do.

Exactly. It's an alternation. We talk about it in our work as a toggle between a light switch, on, off, on, off. You toggle between your focus energy and your recovery energy. And there's ways to do that in a very intentional way. So we schedule it. My week is mapped out in a lot of ways. And I map out the time to think. I don't put prayer time on. I just have a set time every morning when that's what I do. But I have time when I'll, by design, in the ordinary course, I'm going to walk. I'm going to do my legs up the wall. I'm going to drink water. We become more intentional about how we recover. I think that's when we elevate our resilience to almost anything, including the normal stress that we got to expect out of business, out of life, out of being in a family, out of being a member of this society, any society, like all of it. So first of all, Jonathan, Dr. Bakari, I just want to say thank you for your time today. This was a great conversation. And I'm sure people would love for you to come back and visit us again, do a part 2. We'll dive into something else. So I love it.

Thanks for having me. It was a bit, a lot of fun and a big honor.

Likewise. Okay, everybody, we thank you so much again, as always, your commitment to the show. And we'd love to know if you've got a question or a comment for myself or Dr. Bakari, you can leave a message for us. Go to adamarkel.com/comment and leave anything there for us to answer. We'd love to do that. And of course, this is an episode that resonated with you. Some bells rang. Share it with a friend, a colleague, a family member, somebody else that might benefit from it, hear it. That's helping us in ways that, of course, widen our audience, but also with the algorithm, help it to be seen and shared with more people. So we thank you for that support. And for now, I'll just say, be resilient. Have a great rest of your day, and thank you so much again. No doubt that conversation was enjoyable. It certainly was for me. I absolutely venture to say that some of the insights that Dr. Paktari is sharing, not about medicine, but about business, covers everything, covers health industry and many other industries as well. He talks today with me about mentorship and the value of mentorship and where that sits and fits in this evolving landscape of the workplace, the flexible workplace, the the workplace that has changed so much over the last few years and what the future looks like when that workplace may well be more virtual in many ways. That concept of a flexible hybrid work environment is changing that dynamic greatly. We talk about that. We talk about how we mentor young leaders in that landscape. We also got to talk about burnout. We talked about how it is that we've, each of us in our own ways, experienced A tremendous change in our careers and where those pivots have occurred and how we've taken care of ourselves. He and I have very similar and also very different rituals for self-care, for developing greater levels of resilience. We talked about the role of the leader, the role of the highest leadership in an organization, which is that person who's making those day-to-day decisions, whether that's the president, the CEO, etcetera, chief operations officer, CHRO. What does that look like? What is the main focus? What is the main job of that person? And I love Dr. Bhaktari's take on this. He said that role, the most important aspect of that role is to take care of your employees, to grow everyone, to improve the lives of everyone in the organization. That is the overriding and underpinning responsibility of somebody that is making those important decisions. We really talked about how it is that we, in fact, create greater opportunities for leadership success, for better outcomes? How do we ourselves pivot along the way, along the path to continue to make better decisions, decisions, if you will, that affect as many people as we're capable of affecting in a positive way? Of course, that our ripple effect is broader and deeper as well. So much that I think is valuable in hearing Jonathan's insights gained from years in a space of innovation as a founder, As a leader, and as a doctor as well. So I love this conversation. I know it's gonna be one that will be paying dividends and providing value to people for a very long time. If you know somebody that would benefit from hearing some of these insights, please feel free to share this episode with a friend, family member, colleague. If it also meant something to you, meaning that, that you thought it was valuable, that there are takeaways that you're gonna continue to potentially be coming back to or sharing with others, We would appreciate if you rate the podcast a 5 out of 5 stars on whatever platform you consume it. That helps the algorithm to help to put this show and shows like it in front of the people that would most benefit. Algorithm is something I don't quite fully understand from a technical standpoint, but I understand that we have to contribute in some way. You're helping us to do that when you rate this episode a 5 or whatever stars you think warrants, and we appreciate that. We greatly Appreciate your taking the moment to do that. Also, if we can answer a question, feel free to put that question to us, myself or Dr. Bakhtari, by going to adamarkel.com/podcast and leave your comment there. As always, if you've not already determined how depleted or how in surplus you feel mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, your energy level, and you'd like to figure that part out, you can simply go to resiliencerank.com, resiliencerank.com. And in 3 minutes or less, you can get the results, snapshot in time of how resilient you are in those 4 specific zones of resilience. Go to resiliencerank.com, 3 minutes or less, and you'll get those results for yourself. You can also share that, that link and even the resources with team members, family, friends, etcetera. So again, thank you so much for being a part of this community. Thank you for supporting the podcast. And I can't wait Thanks

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