Building Resilient Teams through Holistic Health 🌱 #HumanWellbeing

Good morning, LinkedIn. Happy Thursday here with George B. Thomas. Let's build superhumans. How you doing, man?

Oh man, I'm doing great. Just got done with our other morning show, Wake up with AI. Now we get to create some content around this beautiful topic, Superhuman framework. And of course there's a topic of health. So I'm excited, brother. It's Thursday and it's gonna be a good day. I'm already putting that out into the world.

It is going to be a good day. And talking about health today, always interesting, this one in the various frameworks that you might find out there, the balance of mental, physical, spiritual, like how mind, body, spirit, however people go into it. So I'm interested to, you know, dive in with you but just to give another recap about where we've been and I'm prepared this time and I'm just going to read off the screen. Holistic happiness, helpful, humility, holiness, Hungry honesty, humor. Those are the first eight. And when I look at this list, almost all of it is pretty like mental focused, you know, some spiritual stuff in there too, but really like mindsets and like understanding what you want and like how we think about things. And now we're here at Health. What are we doing at Health here?

Yeah, well, so first of all, because I should have done this every single one because I realize this might be somebody's first time bumping into, you know, superhumans framework thing. And so we're going to talk about health and I want to get into it being kind of a cornerstone of team performance and company culture. But for you first time viewers or listeners, I want you to understand that the Superhuman framework is all about helping individual humans, about helping teams and organizations reach their fullest potential by focusing on the 10 key pillars, like Chris was mentioning, Health, happiness, humility, honesty, but also combined with the four cornerstones of this framework, which is love, purpose, passion and persistence. So there's that foundation and then it's almost like the gauges that you're watching at what it does. Even though holistic is one of the H's, it is a holistic approach that blends personal growth with team dynamics and company culture to create environments, Chris, where people can truly be their best selves. Like we're, we're setting humans up for success. So many times in the world I've watched people in organizations try to fix problems with process or fix problems with platform and the superhuman framework. What makes it a little bit different is we realize it's always been about the humans, the people. And so this Supreme. And framework is focused on the people individually, in the teams that create the culture. And so whether organizations are fostering like a dynamic, healthy team or building a culture that inspires purpose and balance, keyword there. The Superhuman framework is designed to help them unlock that next level of excellence in every part of their life, work, and organization. So that's the foundational piece that I want everybody to know when we talk about health again. It's not that we're leaving mindset, by the way. I think health is a little bit of a deeper conversation than maybe sometimes we give it. The question that I would want people to kind of think about is why is health a cornerstone for team performance and company culture? And here's the thing. Health, at first glance, what people might think it is and what it isn't. Health isn't just about whether you hit the gym or how many fricking green smoothies you drink. But by the way, I hate green smoothies. I'm. I'm more of like something with some berries in it. But it. That's not what I'm really talking about when I talk about health in the Superhuman framework. It's about creating environments where people can be the best they can be, where they can thrive, where they can live a life beyond their default. Right. Because so many times we get stuck in the default. Clock in, clock out. Well, this is just how we've always done it. By the way, I gave you human and I gave you organizational Right there. So how do you use the superhuman framework as a catalyst to get to the next place where you want to go? When we talk about health in the workplace, what we're talking about is something much bigger than just physical wellness. Physical health. Right. When we bring this up in the Superhuman framework, we're talking about the mental, emotional, and even social health of the team, right? So it's deeper and more dynamic than what one might give it. Like we give free green smoothies. Like nobody gives a crap. If you want your teams to be dynamic, innovative, and be able to tackle challenges, they need to be healthy on all fronts. I want you to think about it. When your team members are stressed, when your team members are burnt out, when your team members are feeling unsupported, how are they going to be creative? How are they going to be effective? How are they like, whatever it is that you're asking them to do, how are they going to come to the table with their best ideas and their best energy if they're living in this stressed, burnt out, unsupported mindset? Or world punchline here. They won't, they won't like, that's period, full stop. So as team leaders, as leaders of organizations, as owners, understanding that prioritizing health within a team and inside of an organization is really about protecting that energy and protecting that creative spark and protecting those great ideas that you want to get from the team in general. Because we're creating this healthy space. It's making sure that your people can bring their whole selves to work, feel good about what they're doing, and actually stay energized. Sometimes we wake up and it's like there was an energy vampire that hits us first thing and then we get to work and it's like, now there's been three energy vampires that hit us. And so how do we make it that that isn't the life that these individual humans are living? Therefore, it's not the team dynamic that we're creating. When we can make it so that people feel energized, when they feel at their best, when they're excited and they're not being attacked by these energy vampires, that's when teams move from just being good to freaking being great. Right? So that's kind of the teams, if I shift my mind to how a culture, kind of segments in here, cultures, they play a huge role because a company culture that truly values health and remember, there was multiple levels of health here that we're talking about isn't just checking the box with a gym membership or an occasional wellness challenge, which is what you see from a lot of organizations. It's about leaders walking the walk and taking time for their own well being. Like, I can't sit here as the owner of sidekick strategies or beyond your default or whatever. If I'm not like eating right, if I'm not making sure I'm blocking out time right, If I'm like, I have to walk the walk right. And you have to show that health is just as important as like hitting those performance goals. I'm saying this for a reason, because I want you to think about all of the things that you do as a leader, all of the things that you portray, and all of the conversations that you have and then diagnose it and break it down to the percentage of time that you're actually talking about health, physical health, mental health, social health, spiritual health. It is probably in the 5 to 2% range of things that you talk about or display in your day. So how is your team going to believe or embrace or go in a direction with you that you know is important? To getting the best out of them. You see, when health is part of the culture, it's no longer like a personal responsibility, like those make or break.

Moments of something went wrong, we gotta fix it. There is a healthy energy that those people, like, thrive on in that moment. But then there's other people that are like, just get out of my way. Let me just talk to customers. Let me take care of the customers. Tell me what I got to do to be able to do that right. Don't put a bunch of problems on my desk, because then I'm going to lose my mind.

It's interesting when I hear you say that, I go to this thing of if you have a health and wellness program in your organization and it's something that your HR department just put out with actually not having conversations with the humans who actually work at the organization, it may not be any type of program that anybody cares about, or it might be, but it's something to definitely diagnose. I'm a big fan of, by the way, having conversations with humans inside of your organization. But Chris, I want to go into this, like this conversation around teams staying healthy, individuals staying healthy, but also being able to achieve high performance. And by the way, when I say high performance and you say high performance, it's very much tied to this word you used, value. I'm high performing, meaning I'm giving the maximum amount of value I can to the world, value to my family, value to the people I work with, value to myself. And the thing here for me is it all comes down to balance. And sometimes I find it's easy to stay in balance. Sometimes I have been off kilter. But we've all been in those teams where we're facing high pressure projects. There's tight deadlines, and it can be real easy to push health to the back burner. But the funny thing about that, when it becomes easy to do that, that's when it matters most. Like if your team is running on empty, burning the candle at both ends, they might hit a deadline, but at what cost? Like, they might hit the project deadline, but are they also hitting their deadline when we get in that space? What we want is we want humans to be productive, we want teams to be productive, we want our culture to productive. But productivity plummets when people are exhausted, it plummets when they're stressed, it plummets when they're burnt out. I know I'm not blowing anybody's mind here, but why don't we pay attention to it in the moment? If I'm not blowing your mind in this video or audio that you're watching or listening to. Like, because we haven't set it as a pattern, we haven't set it as a default, we haven't set it as a value. Right? Healthy rhythm, healthy balance. Those are the things that I want you to think of. One of the things that I try to do, and again, I'm preaching to my own aspirational place when I talk about some of these things, is like a rhythm of rest. All right, I'm going to work for two hours. I'm going to take a five or ten minute break. I'm going to have this many hours a day and I'm going to then take this time in the evening for rest. And I don't mean sleep. I'm going to work so many weeks and then I'm going to take a week of rest. I'm going to take work so many years and then I'm going to have a month of rest. Like, you see how you can extrapolate this out to that? You have predefined rhythms in your life where, you know, you can mentally rest, physically rest, socially rest. By the way, I love getting on stage, but there are also times I love to just be a hermit because I socially need to just shut down and rest again. This could be something as simple as simple breaks. It could be vacation schedules. It could be where you take a month and you just rest based on what you want to do. I love organizations like HubSpot that after five years they give their workers, you know, this month to go and just do something outside of. Of. But here's the thing. I want to see where these organizational leaders went and, and did their sabbatical. I, I want to see where the organizational leaders didn't work all weekend. I, I want to see where the leaders actually take 10 minutes to walk away and go outside and look at the sun instead of going from meeting to meeting to meeting. Because ladies and gentlemen, I've been there. But we as leaders, we have to model this behavior. We have to show these rhythms. We have to lead by example, right? So if your team sees that you're prioritizing health, whether that's taking a break or logging off at a reasonable time from your work. Logging off because I work from home, clocking out, whatever, however you want to put it, I think that's important. I also think that this idea of communication, open communication. Let me get more specific. Open communication about well being. Do you run or own an organization where people feel safe to Come and tell you they are not doing okay and not get judged and there be actually something that can come positive out of it. I mean, imagine kicking off a team meeting by asking, how's everybody really doing? Not just like, hey, how are you doing? Fine. Good. Fine, fine, fine, fine, good. No, how's everybody really doing? And not just in terms of like, work. Right. We all have these like 15 minute standups that we do in the morning with our teams. Well, I'm working on this, this, and this. Boss, thanks. Let me go hide, go back to my desk. But, like, what if it was a how's everyone really doing? And it was about physical, mental, emotional work, like, all the things like, and we had that freedom. I think you'd be amazed at what comes up when you create the space for open communication about humans. Well, beings. You see, we're not too much different than consumers. When you think about creating a customer experience and creating an internal experience. If you pay attention to what we're talking about here with the superhuman framework in today's health conversation, focusing on these things builds trust. It creates empathy. Oh, well, okay. And it allows teams to support each other. If you reverse that the other way, you'd be like, hey, that's a pretty dope way to create a great customer experience. But this is creating a great internal experience. And here's the thing, the importance of movement externally. We always talk about the buyer's journey, the customer's journey. There's movement. How do we get them from point A to point B? What point A to point B are you trying to get your employees through your teams, through your culture, through what's. What's the cultural journey? What's the team's journey? What's the growth path like? And how do you do that without paying attention to the health. You have to build this culture that prioritizes health. Chris, where's your brain at? I know you started to say something.

It's paramount. And I'm always wondering, thinking about the why, like, when it relates to these challenges that everybody knows about and just have not been solved for or have been, have been solved for by the best organizations. You can go find a book that has some case study in them and. But somehow that's not trickling down. And I keep coming back to risk in terms of just creating this litigious culture.

That's a good Scrabble word right there, bro.

Allows or disallows me from asking you, like, how are you actually feeling, George? Like, because when I ask that question and you give me Responses that relate to, you know, personal mental health or personal physical health challenges. There is a lot of perceived risk. Perceived and real, I'm sure in. In a lot of cases for how I respond to that as the person asking you that question, whether I'm making suggestions or like the other managerial habits. Right. Maybe not so good in this specific conversation because it needs to be more about just sharing experiences and creating the space to share so that you can understand. All right. At this season. Right. Because you mentioned rhythms. I think the challenge here is that everybody, no matter what, has their own rhythm of some sort. And if you do not talk to them and learn what that is, it's very difficult to know that you're putting them in a situation or that you're creating the space for them to be healthy.

Yeah, I don't disagree with you. Like, and by the way, I know this gets difficult at some level. I know there's organizations like, well, it's impossible for me to know everybody. No, but you know the people that you know. And if you're leading the way for the people that you know, then they know the people they know, and they're leading the way that you're leading because they know those people. So it can be like this trickle down effect, if you will. And this is why I say it all starts with leadership. It starts at the top. But also you could be the top of your food chain and you're then the leader for what trickles down from you. And here's the thing, you use the word no, and when I hear the word no, not as in no, but like, known stuff. I think of, like, things like documentation inside of organizations. Healthy culture starts at the top. And we should, you know, walk the walk, talk the talk, be leaders that actually, like, care about the humans, that. Not that you don't. Don't send me hate mail at a deeper level, care about these humans, but here's the thing, it should permeate everywhere. Right? So it's one thing, Chris, to say that you care about employee wellness, and it's another to entirely bake it into the DNA of the organization or the company that you work at or own. When health becomes part of the culture, it's visible in the policies, it's visible in the way that people interact. It's visible in the overall vibe of the workplace. Like, you can just tell it's not something we're doing, it's something that just is. Like, it permeates through the entire place. Again. Yes. Do we as leaders need to be the torchbearers do we have to show like through our own actions? Yes. But again, it becomes something bigger than ourselves. I think health is one of the things that when it's done right, it almost runs on itself. Like, it's the gauge that if it's working right, you can just kind of glance at it and be like, yep, we've got a healthy culture. People are focused on physical, mental, social, spiritual, like health. And it's, it's in our documentation, it's in our daily meetings. It's leadership is leading the way. Like, yep, okay. Now I think a big part of this though, because you even mentioned like individual humans are humans. Humans are going to human, they're going to human in different ways. I think a big part of this conversation has to come down to flexibility. And a lot of companies have realized, especially over the last few years, that giving the humans flexibility, whether that's remote work, flexible hours, or even like these wellness days, is like key to creating a healthier culture. When you enable flexibility in your organization, it shows that you trust your people to get their work done. You trust them to get the work done, while also trusting that they're going to take care of themselves. This builds loyalty. Wait, an organization that focuses on trust and loyalty? Wow, that sounds like it might be a great place to work. It shows that the company genuinely cares about its employees, not just as workers, but or employees, but as human beings. You've got to figure out how we can move into this. Like another piece of this is. And again, this is more for people who still maybe go into offices or if you have a lot of remote people, how do you enable this? But creating like physical spaces that support health? By the way, I'm not talking about, yep, we put a gym in, maybe that'd be great. But like, is there a quiet room? Are we focused on ergonomics, natural light? Can people step away and meditate and decompress? Like, is there a space for that? Again, think about the emotional, physical, social, spiritual health and do we have spaces or times or tactics or strategies if they don't work in there to make sure that we're giving the space, digital or physical, for those things? It, it sounds like those would be nice to have, but honestly, they're essential in creating this culture or this environment that promotes well being, AKA health.

This is the part where micromanagement shows itself big time. Because usually if you see a problem and you try to micromanage this specific one the way that you do it and if you do solve it and I'm thinking like I'm having some neck issues. So can I get a stand up desk? Right. Or can I get a reworking of my space? Can I get a different monitor? And then you give it to me and then there's 10 other people that don't have that thing or have never asked for it. You just start to create this space. So I think what I'm getting to is like, it's very difficult, it's probably impossible in most organizations to know everybody well enough on every level at every moment of the day. Right. Which is where culture and really transparency comes into play. In that if it's a transparent culture that is trusting and there's psychological safety, there is no problem me asking you how you're doing because you know, I don't have any agenda. You don't have to protect yourself from, oh, am I going to be risking, you know, employment if I answer this question honestly? Instead, if I answer honestly, I'm going to be supported no matter how I answer. So I'm going to be honest. And now I don't have to hold it inside, which just kills health. Like when we are feeling things that we cannot share and we have to show up in front of customers and in front of our teammates and we know something's not right. Just all these aspects, just the transparency, the values, the cornerstones, all these things, like you just have to create the space for it. And then like you said, health is just one of those things that's going to happen without any micromanagement.

Yeah. As we kind of land the plane here, I spent a lot of time talking about teams and culture and I want to just kind of dip into the individual human piece for a second. The truth is for you employees, normal humans, whatever you want to call yourself, the truth is it all starts with the individual. One person's health, whether they're an employee, a manager, a leader, one person's health or lack of it can have a ripple effect on the whole team and the entire company culture. So you have to have a little bit of the ownership mindset or mentality around this from an individual sake because you know that it'll impact the team or the culture. And when, when we have that in individuals and when we then come in as teams and team members can say, hey, I need to step away for a bit to recharge. And that's respected. The ability to say that is respected. It strengthens the entire team dynamic. So again, the individuals listening, your health is not just about you. Yes, you have to have ownership of it. But your ownership of your own health ripples into the health of your team and your team's health ripples into the culture. It's about how you show up for your team, how you contribute to the culture and how you inspire others to do the same. Because you can lead from the back row like and for leaders, it's about recognizing that when you invest in the health of each individual, you're investing in the long term success of the whole team. We're all in this together is what I'm kind of trying to say. We so many times we feel like we're way different, but we're not. We're in this together. Your health, my health, our collective well being is what fuels everything else inside of our days. And if you pay attention to health and you're leveraging the superhuman framework, that's truly what makes a superhuman team and a roi. Thriving, growing, revenue generating, whatever you want to put in there for your brain, company culture.

It's that simple.

It's that easy.

And well, I'd say it's simple, not so easy for most. And I think this is just one of those hard things. The hard thing about hard things.

Yeah.

And the way that people try to band aid this stuff and kind of cherry pick the easy stuff from organizations that have very clearly done all of the things we've been talking about. And it's easy to go cherry pick one because somebody has created a product around that and I can just bring them in and they're just going to install it into the business. Right. And all of a sudden we're going to have anything from a smoothie machine to a, you know, a nap area to this new online space for all of our, you know, remote teams to get together. And if it's just when it's handled that way, but then we're not investing in the other things that these successful companies have done like training and onboarding of the teams to talk to everybody about what that means and why we're doing it as a business and how it relates to the compensation that a lot of people, you know, are focused on. And just all the thing like that's why this stuff, you know, doesn't hit. Because you're not talking about the why. You're not talking about we did the.

What, but we didn't do the why. Dang on it. That's why. Yeah, exactly.

And if you don't talk about it, I create my own why. Oh, like, right. And we're all great.

We're great at making up our own narratives. We're, we're pros, humans are pros at making up our own narrative if we're not given one. And Chris, I'll say one last piece before you close us out because I'm, I'm sitting here and I'm kind of reminded of this saying in life and I believe it's Les Brown said when you focus on what is hard, life will be easy. And when you focus on what is easy, life will be hard. If you take that and you think about the triangle that I painted at the beginning of this of platform and process and people, you put those three together, you quickly realize that platform and process are easy. It's the people that are hard. And so, ladies and gentlemen, if you take something and implement it in your organization that focuses on the people, it's going to be hard, but it's going to make your life easy.

So find those opportunities and let's grow.