The Present And Future Of Remote And Hybrid Work With Gustavo Razzetti

Absolutely. One of the things I like the most, it's cooking. And I learned to cook since I was a kid. And I'm basically— not only I enjoy cooking, but I enjoy sharing the meal with people. And for me, it's a metaphor of figuring things out. So basically, whatever I always tell my clients, whatever you throw at me, I'm going to cook something with it. So tell me what you have, what ingredients you have, and I gotta find something to hopefully delight you, but at least to have fun together.

The cooking metaphor is like a really good one. We were discussing with a client or prospect just yesterday, the idea of something that we want to do with them, something that they want to have done. And the idea of creating a recipe and the ingredients, it's very powerful. And metaphors, I don't know, because you— I know you're a speaker, as well as a facilitator and a leader of teams, etc. Metaphors to me are really, it's like a shortcut as a learning device, as an accelerated learning tool, if you will, to help people to remember things, to understand things at a deeper level. It's biblical, really. I mean, the Bible is just filled with allegory. It's symbol because those symbols teach, those allegories teach the stories. Those are the things we remember without necessarily being able to recite chapter and verse everything that's there. I would love to know, is the cooking metaphor, is that one of your favorites? If it is, or even if If it isn't, what's another metaphor that you use in your work frequently?

I don't have favorite things. I always change. Maybe it's a flavor of the month, if you may. Another metaphor that I use a lot that really works well with teams is what we call the stinky fish. And this is a metaphor to talk about the issues that teams are facing, but actually are not facing. So if you have a fish in the fridge, and you don't take care of it, it's going to start to rot. Not only are you going to have to throw it away, but everything's going to start contaminating everything around it. The issues that start small, that teams, for whatever reason, they don't address, then they start to rot and contaminate the team and become bigger issues. We always, at Nowatcha, have a tool that we work with teams to uncover what's your stinky fish? What are the things that you're not saying that if we don't tackle it, it's going to start to rot and contaminate the whole team?

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 of 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 will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. All right. I wanna dig into this a little bit more. I wanna chew on, I wanna chew on this stinky fish for a minute more, and then I wanna move on to another metaphor. But in the world that we are all in at this moment, an ever-evolving, changing world, what are some of the stinky fish issues that you are seeing in the organizations that you're working with? And of course, you don't have to name anybody.

No, of course. But we also do lots of open workshops, so where people share their stinky fish as well. So I can definitely share. I think the most common thing, it's every time there's change, the uncertainty of what's going to happen, people are really afraid. And I think that sometimes leaders fear sharing bad news with people, or news, because news are not bad, it's just information. And the lack of information actually gets people's creative juices started. So people start filling all the blanks with very dramatic scenarios, and sometimes things are not as bad. So I always say that it's better to inform teams than to let them fill the blanks, if you may. There's also a lot of tensions about people in actions that never happen. We hired the wrong person, and then no one wants to fire that person, and we kind of rotate them in multiple roles, waiting to— if the person, someone would turn into someone they were not. So basically, procrastination of issues, and that's very important. Many teams, the big issues were very small and simple at once, and because they were left unattended, then they turn into something more dramatic.

So something that maybe is not really a stinky fish, and this makes sense, right? Because we all probably have something in our refrigerator that, that's been there a little too long, maybe, right? But, but when it originally, it wasn't an issue necessarily. If we'd have handled it right away, it wouldn't have gotten to that place where it became one. But then we ignore these things. What are some of the issues that you think people are ignoring today? What are the conversations, if you will, that organizations and leaders are not having quickly enough in your view today?

One of the common themes that we see is lack of alignment between what leaders want and people. Second, the gap between what leaders declare to their teams. So they say, no, we really care about this X, Y, and Z, but then their actions prioritize something not only different, but many times the opposite. So that gap frustrates people. People say, don't tell me that your people send trickle-down center of people first, and then when margins go down, you fire people. So tell me I'm profit first, and that's okay. So people prefer to be told the truth, even if they don't like it, than to be lied to. And I think that's one of the most common tensions, the gap between what leaders declare and how they act, and then people get really frustrated. And then the remote hybrid kind of tension between people wanting flexibility, And some leaders wanting people back in the office just because they want to without a clear explanation. That's one of the most common themes that we keep seeing over and over.

Now, I know you wrote a book called Remote, Not Distant. I actually, for those of you that may be watching this on YouTube, you can see it in Gustavo's background, beautiful yellow cover. I mean, I'm a big fan of like a striking color. This book has the buoy, you know, Change Proof has the buoy right there in yellow. So I'm a fan of that very much, that color. Let's talk about the remote world and what has changed Do you think? Obviously, we've been through quite a bit of the cycle already, meaning I think since the very start, people didn't know what was gonna happen. How could an organization work remotely? We had not done it. It wasn't the future of work at the beginning of 2020. It became the future of work quite quickly once the pandemic started. And now it is very much, it is the present of work and it is also the future of work in many respects. But we're still in a state of flux. As you said, not all the cards have been put on the table. Let's say the organizations have not disclosed their true intentions or their plans. Now, let's be clear, right? Organizations are just made up of people. Many companies don't know yet. They don't have a plan yet. And it would be great if they simply— leaders are hesitant to say, hey, we just don't know. Hey, we just don't have a plan yet. When we have one, we'll let you know. Yeah. But that kind of radical honesty, if you will, transparency, vulnerability even, to say you don't know something and that we're not ready to make a decision. That would be refreshing, I suppose. But, you know, that will also mean that maybe these folks are not competent. They're supposed to know. That's what— if they don't know and I don't know, why are they getting paid 10 times what I get paid? I don't know. You know the way people are, right? There's a reason why I think people who are in leadership roles, senior leadership roles, don't always disclose what they don't know. But so there's a chance that that's the case. But there's also a chance that they do know, that they have a sense of what they are looking to do in the future and are not yet telling everybody transparently what is to come. What are you seeing there? You're very much an expert in this arena. Tell us what the present day of future— present day of remote working and hybrid working looks like today.

Absolutely. Like every change and every trend, you don't notice it until it's too late. You're waiting for that wave to surf. You're in San Diego. And once if lose that second, the wave's gonna pass you and you miss it. And I think with this is something that was boiling, it was happening until it finally came to fruition. The pandemic accelerated something, there was a need for people to work differently, there was a need for people to find balance between personal and professional life, and so on and so forth. And the pandemic accelerated that process. The point is, some companies are seeing that as well, we gain a lot of learning. Imagine, like, go back 2, 3 years back, people didn't know how to work remotely. They didn't have the technology, they didn't have the willingness, they didn't have the process, a lot of stuff. And yet most companies not only survived but thrived financially and in many other aspects. People say, hey, when we didn't have the resources, we did it kind of okay. Now we learned after 2 years and a half or more, why do we want to go back to how things used to be rather than apply those learnings? And also the benefits, because if I can save my 40-minute, 1-hour commute and spend it doing something else, why not? Interestingly enough, people that save the commute because they're working mostly remote, they don't spend that time only on themselves. Maybe 80%, it's back to them, personal time, but they work an extra 20% for the company. So when we were commuting, we didn't work. So now companies also have that extra benefit. I think what we're seeing is there are leaders that are lost, but at least recognize, hey, I don't know how the future is going to look like, but let's figure it out one day at a time, one week at a time, and we are going to be pivoting. There are leaders that are completely clueless and decide to, you know what, we better go back to how things used to be. And the reason is there's a lack of trust, no? And people think that if their employees, their team members are visible, then it's going to be easy to manage. But actually the message that they're sending is I don't trust trust you. And when you say— when people can feel that you don't trust them, they're not going to trust you back. So that's kind of in a nutshell some of the key themes.

Yes, you brought something up that's really powerful, that as part of our history, the way we would measure productivity was basically to see, are you behind your desk or are you doing something? If you were doing something, then you were busy, or whatever you were, then you were somehow productive and earning your keep. But to not be able to look in at your cubicle or in your office or see when you came in at 7:30 in the morning, who's in the office? Or at 8:30 or at—

Yeah.

5:30 or 7, you know, who's still in the office? Who, who's here first, etcetera. You know, that was the litmus test for who's the most productive, who's the most keen and eager and all the rest of it. Yes. So now we have this unknown, so to speak. There's not a, a, I guess, a time the way you punch a time clock. I mean, there's still factory people and, and other people that are required to check in and so that, you know, when they're starting or what have you. But with remote work, it requires trust, or with hybrid situations, requires trust. So I think you put your finger on something, you know, fundamentally important. And I guess the question I wanna ask is, is that lack of trust on the part of, let's say, a manager or some other leader warranted? We're into this now long enough, couple of years in now, to be able to look at numbers to see how productive people in the remote space actually are, Gustavo. And I don't know if you have access to that. I don't— I'm making an assumption that we have enough time at this point to have reliable data about that. But I think that's a question that's still in people's minds. It hasn't been resolved. At least I haven't heard it resolved. So what's your thoughts on that?

The point is, there are a lot of research and facts that show that people are more productive when working in a hybrid environment if done well. Now, because there are people that do it but not necessarily the right way. Also, organizations that offer hybrid have increased diversity. to a level that no one saw before. For example, Spotify, now more than 45, 46% of the senior leadership positions are held by women. That basically in the past 2 or 3 years ago, that wasn't the case. So basically they tripled the amount of women in positions because of job flexibility, because they can balance personal stuff with professional stuff more convenient way. The same happened with Allstate, the insurance company. They really increased the amount of minority employees, Hispanic, African Americans that now like apply to a new job opening because of this. So there are dramatic changes. There are a lot of facts that shows that it works. Many companies have been operating remotely or in a hybrid since the beginning of age and they're doing great. Some companies require a mix. I mean, if you're a flight operator, you need to be there. You cannot do it from home, right?

Right.

But I think the most important thing, it comes back to trust. Leaders talk a lot about data, about being data-driven, about information. But then when they come to certain decisions, they're biased. Anyone, no, they're not perfect. They're human beings. And basically, they point back, they don't trust people. Tobias Lütke, who is the CEO from Shopify, uses a metaphor that's the trust battery, basically. And we do this activity with leaders, like, how does your trust battery work? Do you start with an empty battery, with a full battery, with a half Full battery depending on the situation when you're starting a new relationship. And also the second part, which is as important, how fast does that battery either deplete or get full? Because if you start with a full battery and you trust your team a lot, but the first mistake they make, immediately don't trust them anymore, doesn't work. So I think trust, to your point, is critical in this situation. So it's not about the facts, it's about the emotions that come to play. I don't see people working, I think they are not working. And that's something that's ingrained because leaders were created, were raised like that in the past.

Again, I'm playing the angel's advocate here because I think there's still people that go, so I get that we all want trust. We want to, we want to be trusted and we want to trust others. I don't think there's anybody would push back on that. And somebody might say, well, in order for me to trust, I need something. I have to have something. You know, it's like I don't just give my car keys to my 17-year-old kid because they've been taking driving lessons, I go out in the car and watch them drive, sit in the passenger seat, and if they're a good driver, then they can borrow the car kind of thing. I think on some level it's a bit of a show me. It feels like there's an element of show me how it is that the work is being done more productively, and then I may have more trust for this. I guess my question there is that it's that if you are seeing the company or that your group is not performing at the level that you would want or expect or that the company expects, would you not come to the assumption, let's say, or surmise that it's possible that being away from one another, not being able to collaborate, not being able to walk into one another's office or space to ask questions, to get ideas, to, you know, to be able to have innovative random conversations, unplanned conversations that happen in collision zones inside of an office building, in the hallways and in the break rooms and things Wouldn't you make the assumption that perhaps that's gonna be an issue that we have to deal with? I'm, I'm just trying to see how the other side is viewing this. Any thoughts on that?

Absolutely. And I did a lot of research for my book and also for the kind of work I do with clients. And first of all, when people didn't have a choice, when leaders didn't have a choice, they trusted people to work from wherever they could with the tools they could because they weren't ready, didn't have the right connection, the right technology, et cetera. And people rose up to the occasion and were able to keep most business up and running, right?

True.

So what people are saying now that we have a choice, why is this not working? I agree with you that not everyone is reliable, but first of all, people already went through a screening process when they were recruited. So if you recruited the right person, so you don't hire your 16, 17-year-old to drive your trucks, you say, no, I'm hiring truck drivers who have the right experience. If you hire and you did your due diligence, Then you should trust because you verify first and then you trust. There's a company that's called Atlassian, which is an Australian team software company, multibillion organization, that they have a practice that every time they hire someone new, they give them like $5,000-$7,000 check and they invite them to take vacation before they join. Basically what the company is saying is, I did my due diligence during the recruiting process. Once I hire you, I trust you and I'm actually giving you money to go and spend a vacation even before you work 1 hour and you do something for me. The message it sends, it's powerful. When you trust people, people are going to give it back, and then it's not going to be the other way around. However, there's always 35% of people that are going to screw up. Have a one-on-one, work with those people, but don't punish the majority because just a few people are basically slacking or not working or being irresponsible. And I think that leaders create rules that apply to everyone just because they're not having conversation with the people that are not really doing their job.

Right. So that's the aberration, in other words. And I would say that we're hearing more. I know we're hearing more that organizations are saying, you know, we're going to have you come back perhaps over the next few months, 2 days a week or 3 days. And I'm hearing a lot of 3-day-a-week work situations coming back into the office. Gustavo, do you think that's a good idea? I know it's Every situation's different. Every company's different. So I don't expect you to create a blanket answer for this, but just to what extent do you think if a company has been, as you said, came through the worst of the pandemic and now of course we have different kinds of headwinds economically, politically, et cetera. Is it a good idea? Even if it isn't, what's the best way to communicate with people about this coming back to the office eventuality? We'll call it.

Yeah. First of all, it's not a black and white conversation. And to your point, in my book I describe there are 5 different models of how to implement hybrid. And this one that is 3 days in the office, 2 days at home, or 4 and 1, whatever the case is, it has become the norm for many companies, but it's not the most effective because organizations are missing the opportunity that instead of designing work around the schedule, they should design the schedule Around the work. And when I say the work is what type of work—

Say more about that, please. Yeah.

Let me say that we are part of a team, you and I, Adam and Gustavo work together, and we have another, I don't know, 6 more colleagues, and we are cracking new product. And we need to do something that requires that we work together, that we spend a lot of time together, that we go to the street to test our hypothesis with users, blah, blah. So maybe we need to spend 1 or maybe 2 weeks working from the office or in the same place, whatever that is. Because the nature of the work dictates that. But then when the two of us and other people, we all split and we go on implementation, maybe we don't need to see each other for one or two weeks and we need to touch base in certain critical moments. So it's about understand what's the nature of the work that needs to be done and design your schedule around it rather than in the end. So I go two days at the office and what for? Because I have to be there. What's the purpose of bringing people together and why people should work separately? Also, one of the benefits for people, it's saving money on the commute, maybe living farther away from their jobs. So if they have more flexibility, then they have that benefit as well. The big change is we need to stop thinking about the 9 to 5 and recreate the 4 days in the office, 1 from home, or whatever model, and think, what work are my team up to and what's the best arrangement for that project In the next 2 or 3 weeks. So we need flexibility.

Yeah. It's almost like at a very granular level, we're saying you are treating each employee individually, meaning you're constructing something of a best-case, worst-case scenario for each individual employee, or at a slightly less granular level, at a team level or at a function level or in some other capacity that involves a grouping of employees. That's labor intensive. That requires a lot of thought. It requires its own planning and oversight. Yeah, I suppose people would be thinking, well, is that scalable? It's not a cookie-cutter approach by any means. And I think that's what we're saying anyway, that the future of work and where we're at is less cookie-cutter than it has ever been, certainly in terms

of

meeting people where they are. Yeah.

Definitely. And I think that individual considerations or individual expectations, sorry, need to be considered, but we need to have team conversation because this is not about what Adam or Gustavo want. If we work on the same team, to have certain arrangements the same way that we can have flexible hours. Some people like to start working early in the day. Some people like to work— they're more like night owls. Well, but we still need to agree that from, I don't know, 1 PM to 4 PM, we're all going to be available for meetings or collaboration, whatever that takes. So there need to be some ground rules that bring the team together. So it's not like everyone does whatever they want. That's the point, is freedom with accountability. But in the end, the companies have been people that stuff. There are many companies that have been operating like that for decades, not only remote-first company, but most global teams that have people in Indonesia, in France, in Canada, in San Diego, whatever. That's the way they work always.

You said earlier that part of what happened in the pandemic was went into the pandemic without the resources to work remotely. I was part of a company, was running a CEO for a company that was in 4 continents. We were using Zoom. I actually, interestingly enough, a family member of mine discovered Zoom in 2015 or 2014 or something. It was very early versions of it, but it was so effective that I could get on with my senior leadership team that was in Sydney or in Singapore or in Vancouver and have everybody participate in meetings very similar to the way you and I are, are doing this now on Zoom. There's a lot of technology and a lot of ways of doing things. that we could have been doing this 5 or 6 years sooner. And I question in my mind, even in this moment, how much technology, how many resources and tools are available that we're not focused on, not utilizing when it comes to the future, still future of where work is headed. You said something earlier about triple the number of women are in, are in leadership roles, more senior-level leadership because of the flexibility That the pandemic and remote work provided. You also mentioned other groups have been marginalized, Hispanics. And I wanted to know where it is that the flexibility— I understood when you said that flexibility would help women in the workplace because I'm making the assumption that for many women, they've had a conflict between their family and obligations and responsibilities and being mothers in particular and being in the office, the 8 to 6 Here's how I climb the ladder kind of grind. What could you say in terms of other disenfranchised groups and why remote work has helped them?

That's a great question. Thank you for framing it. I mean, first of all, there's a location aspect. So there are certain populations that live in smaller towns where the access to better executive jobs, it's not possible, right? Yeah, they have a job, but small. But if they want to grow, they're smart, they want to have a career, and now they can have access to larger organizations. So not only in the US, but they can work globally. for companies that operate across the world. There's also the travel thing. I mean, there's a cost associated and there's also the incidence of having kids. So minorities have a higher level of kids compared to the average American. And that means because of age stuff, you know, it's because they tend to have more kids too. And because of that reality, it's more complicated if you're a mom or a single dad or whatever to go to the office every day. So having that flexibility is better. And then there's an element of psychological safety that there are a lot of exclusive conversations or what they call microaggressions that happen in the workplace that when you're at home, they don't happen that often, or you can turn off your camera, go and grab a coffee or go for a walk. And but if you're in the office the whole day, so there's many elements, there's no one, but in the end that has helped the flexibility of schedule. It's critical.

Got it. That makes a ton of sense to me. The acronym ESG, environmental, social governance, is a very strong principle concept today. And I wanted to understand a little bit about how the remote and hybrid work relates to, if it does, in fact, if you can draw some comparisons to or really lay out a bit of the relationship as you see it between that and ESG paradigm and principles.

Yeah, there's a lot of benefits when it comes to the impact of work. So commutes, not only cost people a lot, but as a society costs a lot because we're moving people from like, you have a house that you need to keep heated, but you're not going to be there, but you're going to be working. I mean, not you in San Diego, I'm talking here in Chicago. True. That's still in the 30s, whatever. And that costs money, no? To the environment, no? It's a huge impact. Traffic, it's another traffic also. It's not only the problem of traveling from one place to another, but also the impact it has in people's mental health, Accidents, lights, et cetera.

I can relate to that. I used to be a, a 3-hour-a-day commuter, sometimes 4 hours when—

Oh my God.

I would go from my, our house in central New Jersey to my office. My, I was a lawyer back then, so my law office in Manhattan, it was on a good day, it was an hour and a half. On a bad day, it could be 2 and a half hours each way. And yeah, I was not happiest person that back then upon arrival in either location.

Yeah, I know. I lived in Connecticut and have to commute to New York City. And I know what you're talking about. The commute per se, emotionally, not only the cost for the individual, the cost for society, but also the emotions, the time that you waste. So, there are many aspects. Of course, a commute has also— everything has an upside and a downside. When you commute, you have time to relax, you have time to transition. I used to go to Chicago all the time and work there in an office. And I took the train and I wrote, I read, I did a lot of email when I was— so, it was a great focus work moment for me. But in the end, the impact, I mean, for example, in Europe, many leaders don't travel because they don't want to spend the carbon footprint in a flight to visit their teams by taking a flight, or they take a train, or they just work remotely. And I see a lot working with large global corporations, they're seeing the benefit, the impact that their company have on the planet reduced because of having people distributed and not having to work in the same place. Also, and lastly, the impact in office footprint, many leaders, especially CFOs, are saying, hey, if people are not going to be here all the time, we need less footprint. That saves the company money, but also the impact in the environment in the long run is smaller.

Yes. And you already mentioned earlier about on the social side, how it is that this has increased the opportunities for groups of people that were typically just experienced a harder time advancing pay-wise and responsibility-wise in the workplace. You've indicated that as well. So I do see strong correlation between the goals, the ESG goals, and how remote work might meet those. I wanna, in the last section here, just talk a little bit about you personally. The work that I do in the world in organizations similar to you is not about so much remote, the concept of the remote work, even though that's an element. It's about wellness. How do we create more wellbeing in the workplace? And I wrote a book earlier in the year called Change Proof to talk about this concept of how it is that we are able to embrace change. And one of those changes is that corporations have to become more empathetic. The organization is a fiction of sorts, a legal fiction, but it operates through people. And those people have to understand other people and be able to care for them better. I'm wearing a shirt today that says, got your back. And it's that concept of having each other's backs is so powerful in producing greatness and organizations that are actually able to impact in a very positive way many, many other people. So my question to you is, how have you developed resilience personally, or how is it that you've developed resilience within your own teams? What does that look like for you over the last few years?

That's a good point. I think that for me, resilience is the ability to bounce back. And I think that the best way to learn how to do that is to go through a situation in which you don't have a Escape route, and you figure it out. So in my case, a short story like I got lost. I was doing trekking in a mountain in the Andes, and I got lost, and I have to improvise shelter and spend one night there without any food, without any water, without any not even the proper clothing, and it was raining and snowing, and I have to figure out how I survive. I'm not a one of these guys that start building stuff with with their fingers, but I figure it out, and I realized that the most important thing. And for me, that's critical for resilience is like understand where you are and keep your mind calm and understand, well, I cannot control the environment, but I can control my reaction. And that was basically very important. So, I apply that same experience to new things. Every time I embark myself in uncharted waters, it's okay. Well, at some point I realize, hey, it's snowing, it's late, I need to stop, I need to read the signals and then adapt.

Yes. The adaptation is a strong piece of resilience. We are— myself and our company does a lot of research on it. I do quite a bit of keynote speaking on the topic of resilience. And today, much of it is on stress management, on mental health, on work-life balance, on things of that sort. But often people will quote Darwin, you know, in terms of this concept of sort of the survival aspects, the survival of the fittest, even.

Fittest.

Right? Everybody knows that. But they miss I think the most important aspect of what Darwin was sharing, which was that it's the most adaptable. It's the people that can adapt to changing environmental circumstances are the ones that are fittest, if you will. And the fittest is not necessarily the strongest. It's not necessarily somebody that doesn't fall down or make mistakes or find themselves in uncharted waters, as you said. It's the person that's able to be flexible, agile, alert, as you said, aware, and able to— Understand that there is, even if there's fear in the unknown, that there's also comfort. And this is where our world intersects with yours, I'd say. There's comfort in your ability to create situations that allow you to recharge. You talked about remote work as a way that people produce something in a more effective way, in a way that's effective for them, and therefore it's effective, or maybe I'll say more effective for the organization. From our standpoint, that's what resilience is all about. It's the ability to recharge your battery. You talked about the trust battery earlier. I think it's true. We wake up in the morning and we have a battery for that day. Sometimes we use a different analogy, but we talk about like a bank account, like a resilience bank account. But let's just say use it to battery today. We wake up, we have a battery, we have a charge for the day. How is it that you can maintain the full strength throughout the day? Because in all likelihood, many of the things that are going to happen will slowly or not so slowly erode the strength of that battery. You will become more and more depleted throughout the day. And if you are not aware of how it is that you can recharge the battery, then at some point the battery, you know, runs outta juice. I remember from earlier parts in my career that even when I was younger, I would run out of juice around 2 o'clock in the afternoon and didn't know, you know, it wasn't even, I was aware of it, wasn't thinking about it that way. And so I would just go get coffee. Yeah. Go eat, go get sugar, you know, like something to just keep going. And that was not a recipe or a good strategy, let's say, for productivity for myself or for being at my best. And normally what would happen is that I would just sort of grit my way through the end of the day as a lawyer. The end of the day, I sort of kid about this now, but I would say some of my angriest work I did at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I would write my love letters. I would just do this stuff. I was a litigation attorney. So in those moments when I was the most, the least patient, the most agitated, that's when I would do that work. But then I would also come home. And then I wasn't right coming in the door. I was wiped out. I was exhausted. I was depleted. And you can go on like that for lengths of time, especially when you're younger. You can play the grit card for a long time before it shows. That was the case for me. And then I ended up in the hospital and I had my scary moment, which is another story for another day. But a lot of people today, a lot of young folks, We see are showing the signs of that earlier, and they're vocal about it. When I went to the hospital, my wife calls my fart attack, my fake heart attack. It was years and years of ignoring my feelings and what was going on with me that led to that very lucky day when I didn't actually have a cardiac arrest. Today we're seeing a lot of young people talking about the anxiousness, their anxiety and feelings Much earlier, and they're also experiencing that potentially even earlier, that depletion that leads to frustration, hopelessness, sheer exhaustion, and depression. They're experiencing that earlier. Has that been your experience in your work as well with teams? Are you seeing that? And what— do you have any insights about that that you can share with us? Sure. One parenthetical question to that is, Does the remote work, and this is really, I think, the point for you in your world, does the remote work make that easier or more difficult? Like when I, person who has a 9-to-5 job, they know when they enter the workplace, they know when they leave the workplace, there are clear sort of boundaries, it seems, or it seemed today that remote work means you can work anytime and that means you work almost anytime. That's my question to you.

Starting from the last question, I think that I wouldn't say that remote is better or worse. It's how you do it. Because in the end, there are some people that are working remotely, either fully or in a hybrid arrangement, and they're working endless hours. And there are people that are able to control their time much better. I think that remote or working partially remote at least gives you the flexibility to, hey, to your point, if it's 2 PM and I'm depleted, I can take a nap, I can go for a walk. Now you feel that you have that space to take care of yourself and then recharge. Because when your battery gets depleted, you cannot move on. You can— grit can take you so far away. So, you need at some point to recharge. And the best way to recharge is to switch activities. It gives you the ability. Some people leverage it, many people don't. It's not like an easy recipe, easy fix. It's more how you do it. But I think in the end, what happens, it's what's the purpose? Sometimes when we lose the focus on why are we doing the work that we're doing, then our level of resilience, our bank account, It gets kind of a— we withdraw everything we had there and there's no money left. Overdraft. More than— yeah, we start paying interest because we're running overdraft. Exactly. So we're in the negative side. I think that it's important to connect. Now, if you're basically working and working again and you forget why you're doing, and if your work doesn't mean anything, is there no impact to what you're doing, then of course you're gonna get tired, you're gonna get stressed out and that stuff. So I think it's important to To always— are you doing what you want to do? How the job that you do brings you a passion, connects you to what challenges you, learns you, and also gets you out of the comfort zone. Sometimes we get stressed out not because we're being pushed to our limits, it's because we're not being pushed at all. And we're being in our comfort zone can be as bad as trying to take our behaviors to the extreme all the time.

Gustavo, I so have enjoyed this conversation. My last question for you is just, is there one thing that you do on a routine basis? Again, our definition of resilience is how it is that we recover. So it's the recovery that is an important item that helps us to bounce forward, if you will, to go bounce back, but bounce back stronger. To bounce forward requires that we ritualize our practices for recovery. So My question is, is there one thing that you do on a ritual basis to recover and recharge your battery?

Absolutely. I think the 2 things. First, I anticipate the need to recharge. So, when I need to, for example, I work with global clients. So, let's say tomorrow I have to start at 5:00 AM. I need to— I'm not an early riser. So, I know that that's going to take a toll on me because I'm not going to go to it until whatever. So, we're going to have to work longer hours. I really anticipate that. Tomorrow I'm going to give that extra effort, but then the next day I design it for, hey, I'm going to start a little bit later. I'm going to have a cushion for taking care of myself. So I design the chaos and the recovery at hand. I don't say, well, now that I'm depleted, what I'm going to do. So because you don't even have the time to think or the energy to plan for that. But for me, the most important thing, I like what I call the getting lost. It's kind of a ritual that I use when I feel that I'm getting depleted. I need to get lost. That could be grabbing my road bike and starting riding 30, 40 miles in any direction without a clear plan. That could be going for a walk, that could be writing something, doing some research for an article or whatever it is, but kind of a change. I think that sometimes the brain has much more energy than we think. We need to put the energy into something that becomes rewarding at that time. And no, so we feel the weight when we're always doing the same. So like, if you're doing a very deep work activity, you need to do something that's more superficial. And there we are. And I think that helps me a lot.

Yes. I'm just writing, writing down a couple of notes on what you said, but I love the getting lost. And it's funny, or maybe it's not funny, right? You found yourself lost that one night. You had to survive a night in the mountains, in the Andes, right? And so getting lost, is that a bit tongue-in-cheek? Do you say that as a bit of a—

No, no, no. I turn it into, and turn it into, I learned from that. I think about resilience, talking about your topic it's not fighting back reality, you know. When you realize, hey, I'm lost, instead of saying, oh, I'm gonna find my way home because I'm so smart, I say, hey, I need to stay put. I learned also that getting lost helped me reframe a lot of things about my life, about myself. So now sometimes I get lost on purpose. It has become a practice.

Beautiful. I love it. What a wonderful way to close the loop right there, Gustavo. You're awesome, and I so appreciated our conversation today. I know our folks have as well. To the audience, a couple of calls to action here. First of all, if this is a conversation you would love to share with some other folks, please do that. It's always so wonderful when we hear that you're sharing these episodes with friends, family, colleagues, et cetera. There'll be full show notes. So in the show notes, you can find out much more about Gustavo's work. You can find out about his brand new book, wonderful book, as well as he's a keynote speaker. So he's somebody that you could also, I'm sure, reach out to, to have come and speak at your event. We'd love to hear from you as well to know how this episode landed for you. Was there things that you wanted to hear more of, things that were impactful insights, etc.? You go to adamarkel.com/podcast and leave your comment, and it will be me, yours truly, that will respond to those. And lastly, a request, a favor, if you will. I say it's a favor because, of course, it's self-serving to make this request, but— Yeah. It would be wonderful if you would rate the podcast. You know, they give you that opportunity on the platform that you are listening to it to rate it 5 stars. 5 stars, a great rating, or less if that's what you feel is true for you. But when you rate the podcast, it assists the algorithm to put this podcast in front of more people that might enjoy it and it might be a benefit to. You're helping us, but you're also helping others. It's a ripple effect. It's community. I learned long ago that struggle is optional. And by that, I mean, often it is in our lives, we struggle because we don't ask other people for help. So that's it. I would appreciate it. We appreciate it. And thank you for listening today. Again, we love the fact you're part of this community, and we look forward to connecting with you again very, very soon. Well, I thoroughly enjoyed speaking to Gustavo. I'm sure you did as well. I got so much out of that conversation, so many insights and so many Notes a little bit. We started talking about the stinky fish. I mean, what a great metaphor. And Gustavo really, I think he hit on it that so often it is the case in our personal lives and, but specifically with our teams and our businesses that we ignore issues and we ignore them the way we ignore that fish that's getting stinky inside of the refrigerator that, that needs to be dealt with. And what we realize is that if we just deal with it sooner, It doesn't get to that place. It's not a stinky fish at the beginning, even though you might think so. It gets stinkier. Let's put it that way. It gets worse with time, not better with age. It's not a good wine. So we've gotta deal with those issues upfront. Today we talked about the benefits of the remote and hybrid work situation in a way that I've not talked to any other researcher, author, speaker about it before, and the impact that remote work has had, the positive impact that it is having to this day for organizations, for ESG, for environmental, social governance principles. How it is that in this world of remote and hybrid work, many of the marginalized and disenfranchised groups of folks have been able to advance because there's just so much more flexibility in order to do that, whether it's been women. In fact, 3 times as many women are in leadership roles since the pandemic than before. that was the case, and in part because women can work in a more flexible way, care for their families, for their children, and still care for their careers, which is absolutely remarkable. We also talked about the fact that with other groups of folks that are— have been also not able to advance as quickly as others, the hybrid and remote situations allowed flexibility in terms of where you work, geographically speaking. You don't have to live in a— or within commuting distance to a major city, for example, to get paid top dollar to work in large organizations and have more responsible jobs, etc. There's less of an incidence in those remote situations or hybrid situations of the kind of microaggressions that occur when people are not being treated fairly, when others are biased, or where there's a certain element of just lack of understanding, lack of inclusion and understanding, and a lack of psychological safety for people to really lean into their jobs more fully because they feel like they don't necessarily have a fair shot. And this has leveled the playing field in a lot of ways for those people as well. We talked about trust and how really at the heart of the whole back to work and getting people back in the office drive has a lot to do with how managers and other senior-level leaders think about their workers and whether they have an element of trust or feel trust. That they're able to get the work done. And without that trust, of course, there's the desire to sort of micromanage people, look after them. We talked today as well about how remote and other more flexible work situations might be contributing, to what extent it's contributing to a lack of recovery, to people feeling more exhausted or more depleted or more anxious than they may have ever been feeling before and, and what we do about it. We talked about the trust battery, and I thought that conversation and that distinction was really quite a great one, one that I'm gonna think about as well. And lastly, when I was speaking to Gustavo, he shared some of his own principles for recovery and how he practices getting lost on a regular basis. Getting lost. You know, you tell somebody, get lost, right? Well, Gustavo tells himself to get lost. For a particular purpose and a purpose that is really beneficial to him and his resiliency. Again, love the conversation. Hope you did as well. Hope you share it with other folks. And again, you know, our request is always the same. If you love this episode, share it with a friend or a family member or a colleague and give us a rating if you could and leave a comment. You know, you can do that as well. And lastly, I'll say this. If you are curious how resilient you or somebody on your team is right now, you can simply go resiliencerank.com, resiliencerank.com. And in 3 minutes, and I kid you not, less than 3 minutes, you'll get a snapshot in time of your mental, emotional, physical, and yes, even your spiritual resilience. So take advantage of that. It's entirely free. It's our gift to you. And I'll just wish you a wonderful rest of your day and say ciao for now.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build Build resilience and become change-proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcast. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com/becomechangeproof.