Jennifer Wallace: Resilience and the Importance of Mattering at Work

This podcast is brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.

Welcome to Barron's The Way Forward. I'm Greg Bartalus, and my special guest is Jennifer Wallace, a journalist and the author of the book Never Enough: How Toxic Achievement Culture Hurts Kids and What We Can Do About It, and the upcoming book Mattering in the Modern World. Welcome to the podcast.

Oh, thanks for having me.

My pleasure. Tell me about your books and what prompted you to write the first one and then the second, and then let's talk about how that applies to wealth management and advisors. Great.

So the first book was really personal. It was— researchers like to call it me-search. And so I was noticing how different my children's childhood— I have 3 teenagers— how different their lives were from my own growing up. And I was trying to figure out why. Why had childhood become so competitive? And then the book sort of stemmed out of an article I wrote for The Washington Post in 2019, where I was covering 2 national policy reports. One was the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the other the National Academies of Sciences. These are two reports written by the country's leading developmental researchers, and they were looking at who are the kids who are most at risk for negative health outcomes today, and they were naming children living in poverty, children with incarcerated parents, children of recent immigrants with few resources, children living in foster care, and then they named a new at-risk group, children attending what the researchers were calling high-achieving schools. Those are public and private schools all around the country where the kids go off to competitive 4-year colleges. These students were now 2 to 6 times more likely to suffer from clinical levels of anxiety and depression, and 2 to 3 times more likely to suffer from substance abuse disorder than the average American teen. So these were my kids that I was writing about, and I wanted to know what could I do in my home to buffer against that pressure.

And tell me a little bit about what, what has been driving that phenomenon.

So when I was growing up in the '70s and early '80s, life was generally more affordable. Housing was more affordable, healthcare, higher education was more affordable. There was slack in the system. So parents like mine could be relatively assured that even with some setbacks, even with a B- in AP Calculus like I got my senior year, that most likely I'd be able to replicate my own my childhood as an adult, if not do even better than my own parents did. That's always been the American dream, to not only do as well as your parents, but to do better. But modern parents are facing a different economic reality. We are seeing the first generation, the millennials, who on average are not doing as well as their parents. We have seen the crush of the middle class. We have absorbed the hyper-competition that comes with globalization. And it's always been the job of a parent to prepare a child to thrive when we're no longer around, but never has that future felt so uncertain. You know, AI is now on the scene disrupting everything. And so what I was hearing over and over again in my interviews, and parents weren't saying this explicitly, but that they were hoping that early child— they were betting, really, that early childhood success, getting their kids into a quote-unquote "good college," they hoped would act as a kind of life vest in a sea of economic uncertainty. They couldn't control for all the other macroeconomic forces out there, but if they could just get that that safety vest of a, of a college brand on their kids. They were hoping it would keep them afloat no matter what came their way. But what I found in my reporting and what those two national policy reports showed was that that life vest was acting too much like a leaded vest and drowning too many of the kids that they were trying to protect.

Right. I mean, in many ways, I think on the surface, the kids are represent proxies of sorts for the parents' ambitions. So, and that's the more negative take, like, but there's a reason for that to your point that things are so expensive, tuition, the level of competitiveness. So if you're gonna do all this, you, you know, they feel they want to get it right. There's all this uncertainty. There's AI. Again, I grew up in the '70s and '80s too. Yeah, it was a simpler time. We're now in more of a winner-takes-all society. It's very understandable why some of these trends are happening too. It's easy to be judgmental, but if you unpack it, there's good That's a good reason too for why we're seeing many of these things, I think.

Well, it's also that parents today are sensing fewer and fewer guarantees for their kids, fewer and fewer social safety nets. And so what I have found, what sociologists look at when they look at intensive parenting, it's not a decision that parents are making alone in their living rooms. They are responding to these macro forces, and what intensive parenting really is, is a parent trying to weave individualized safety nets for each one of their kids. They are trying to, in the words of one sociologist, Melissa Milkie, they are status safeguarding. They are doing their best to help keep their kids afloat no matter what comes their way.

But there's a point of diminishing returns, right? So you can— I don't want to use the word coddle, but give as many advantages as you can, but there's a point where it can become counterproductive.

That's exactly right. So, so what I did for this book was I went in search of the kids who were doing well despite the pressure. I wanted to know what, if anything, they had in common. What did their parents focus on at home? What was school like? What were their relationships like with their peers, with their teachers? How did they see their role in the larger world? And I found about a dozen or so common threads that these healthy strivers, as I call them in the book, had in common. But it boiled down to this: The kids who were doing well despite the pressure felt like they mattered for who they were deep at their core, away from their achievements and successes. The kids I met who really seemed to be struggling the most were kids who felt like their mattering was contingent on their performance. They were only worthy, they were only valuable when they got the A, when they got into the good college, when they made the A-team. The other group of kids who were also struggling, and this surprised me, but it makes sense, were kids who felt like they mattered to their parents, but they were never relied on or depended on to add meaningful value back to anyone other than themselves and their own resumes. And so what these kids lacked is what I call in the book social proof that they mattered. They heard it in words, but they didn't see how their little lives could impact anyone other than themselves. And so they had this really self-focused lens that really could set them up for, for mental health struggles.

Interesting. So they acknowledged the message, they heard it, but it wasn't felt on a visceral level, if you will.

Exactly. And it was not seen. They didn't see the proof of that.

Right. That's interesting. Any other findings from that when you looked at the kids who landed in a good place?

Yeah, the big finding, which is what led to my second book, is— this is true, this is according to decades' worth of resilience research. That the most important thing we can do for a child, especially a child in distress, is to make sure the primary caregivers in that child's life, most often the mother and father, to make sure their resilience, their mental health, their support system is intact, because a child's resilience rests fundamentally on the resilience of the adults in their lives, and adult resilience rests fundamentally on the depth and support of their relationships. So we are often sold a bill of goods by the multibillion-dollar wellness industry. Oh, you know, take this bubble bath, light this candle, download this app, and you'll be resilient. Those are great stress reducers, but they do not give us the resilience that we need to show up day after day as the first responders to our kids' struggles. The only thing that does that are deep, nourishing relationships. And it's, it's not that these parents that I met in high-achieving communities didn't have friends. It's that so often they didn't have the time or bandwidth to invest in those friendships so that they could really be sources of support when they needed them. We are often told as caregivers to put on our oxygen mask on first, but actually what I'm saying goes deeper than that. I'm saying find 1 or 2 or 3 people in your life who you can open up with, who you can be vulnerable with, who can see when you are struggling and gasping for air, and who will reach over and put the oxygen mask on for you. That is a very different level of support than we normalize in our culture today.

And doing so will obviously help you, make you more resilient, and if I'm hearing you correctly, in a way trickle down to your kids, because you're saying they, they need to see that from their parents.

So both Both, they need to see the modeling of resilience, but just as importantly, we parents have to have our resilience. We all know that a child needs a sturdy adult to thrive. Well, guess what? Sturdy adults need sturdy adults too. We need somebody to support us so that we could act as those first responders to our kids.

What are some telltale signs of a profile, if you will? Like, what would that look like? Just to be clear, I mean, I get it directionally, but if you could paint the contours. Resilient. Yeah.

Resilient.

Yeah.

What's the North Star role model? Like, what would be the ideal?

So, actually, there was a study done by the Mayo Clinic of busy physician mothers who were also caregivers, and researchers wanted to know what kind of relationships actually provide this kind of resilience. Could you do it with a once-a-week getting-together meeting over the course of 3 months? So they studied these mothers. They put them in groups of 5 or 6,, and once a week, carved in their calendar, was time where they would talk about the stresses in their life, where it wasn't therapy, it was simply feeling validated, feeling heard and seen, just like we do for— try to do for our own kids. And what the researchers found was that after 3 months, not one of these busy physician mothers dropped out of the study. Number 2, they measured their cortisol levels,, and found that they had decreased. And actually, these women went on to continue to meet after the 3-month study. And this research has been since replicated in men, in heads of school, on Zoom, so it also works virtually. And really, what the finding is, is that it doesn't take a ton of together time. What it takes is intentional time, being intentional, being willing to open up, being willing to be vulnerable, allowing somebody to validate us, to hear us. And importantly, it needs to be someone outside of the home. So it cannot be your spouse or your partner. Those relationships are already overtaxed as we try to be these one-family villages. So really, it needs to be 1 or 2 or 3 people outside of the home. And if you won't do it for yourself, do it for your kids.

In terms of the importance of mattering, you know, you mentioned that there's so many technological forces, so many things that people perceive are beyond their control. A lot of it is, some of it's just optics perception, but they feel a lack of autonomy, that they don't matter. Some people are just disengaged, or cynicism may have taken hold to an extreme regard where they're just like, boom, just removing themselves. Tell me about how that may have changed over the years and/or like where we are today, to the extent you can quantify this, because it's admittedly tricky, very hard to quantify?

Well, I would say mattering has eroded over the last few decades. I would say mattering has eroded in places like we used to gather. I'm not saying religious— religion was a perfect situation, but religion afforded time every week to come together. The idea that you mattered no matter what to whatever god you were praying to provided a sense of unconditional mattering that is now gone. We no longer invest in our neighbors. We don't have— we bowl alone, like Robert Putnam. And so all of these sort of protective factors that used to be in our environment— religion, community, organizational, being a part of organizations— these protective factors have been taken away for adults. And what, honestly, what the reason that I'm writing the second book is, if we want to really make a dent in the youth mental health crisis, we need to go upstream and look at the adults in their lives. They are suffering, according to new research, at the same rates as young people. The adults in their lives are suffering from anxiety, from depression, substance abuse disorder is on the rise. There is so much we can do to help adults, and I was thinking, where, where are adults 8, 10, 12 hours a day? They are at work. That's where we— if we could create mattering in the workplace, if we could have people believe that what they do, that who they are, how they show up to work, that they are seen, that they are valued, that they are depended on, they can then go back home after 10, 12 hours and be those sturdy sources of support for their kids. If you go into an office where you feel like you don't matter, whether you're a physician working in a major hospital, feeling crushed by the insurance insurance companies, or an accountant, or a wealth advisor, feeling replaceable at any moment, how can you really show up for your kids if you are made to feel replaceable day after day?

I'll add that it's all the more important that you at least get a semblance of that at work because people spend less time with their friends physically. They might be texting, hey, shooting notes here and there, a couple of emails, but they're not hanging out as much as they used to. So that is increasingly not happening. So to the extent that you can achieve this at work, it's all the better. And you mentioned the church, but more broadly, there's the whole death of the third space, which is just that common destination. And I think that what we increasingly are seeing in our society is a stratification by wealth whereby there are fewer and fewer events where people regardless of means are rubbing shoulders together. So, you know, one example is you can go to a sports game, and in the old days, you know, okay, there were the bleachers, there were the cheap seats, you had the box seats, but you were all out watching the game outside, and the difference in ticket prices was quite minimal. However, today you still have the crappy seats, and then you have these, like, all these deluxe You're not even— you got glass partitions, air-conditioned, you're almost in another galaxy. And you're— so there are fewer and fewer— or you travel and you get— so you just see it over and over and over in our society. If you have money, there's a way to get preferential, better treatment. And there's less and less that really keeps us together. And this is in the overlay of a highly partisan society where already we have a lot of discord and whatnot. So I think You're tapping into, like, a big issue, and there's so many moving parts, but—

It's true. I mean, just to play off what you just said, so researchers who study mattering say that after the drive for food and shelter, it is the instinct to matter that drives human behavior for better or for worse. And so mattering really is what researchers call an umbrella term. We talk a lot in the workplace about belonging and connection. Mattering goes deeper. So you can belong to a group and not know how much you really matter to that group. You know, it's interesting because when you, when you look at mattering, when you, when you feel like you matter, you want to show up to the world in positive ways. You want to give back. You want to be a good colleague. You want to be good to the environment. You want to grow as a human. But when you are chronically made to feel like you don't matter, You can either turn against yourself, become anxious and depressed, turn to substances to try to alleviate the pain of not mattering, or you can lash out in anger. School shooters, mass shootings among the most tragic examples. But there are other ways that this feeling that you don't matter shows up in the workplace: incivility, hyper-competition, rudeness. Mattering affects our psychological health, but it also affects our physical health. And there is a business case to be made for mattering. Yes, we should, we should make people feel like they matter because it's the right thing to do. But there's also a business case to be made. If you don't feel like you matter at the office, you are more likely to go and look for a new job. Yes.

Now let me ask you this. Let's say I'm listening, I'm an advisor, I have a team, and of course I want all my employees to be punctual and productive and courteous and kind, et cetera. And let's also assume that I'm totally on board with this message. So then from a practical point of view, are there any recommendations you have on how to maybe go about implementing some of these ideas? And I recognize that depending on the size of your organization, there are variables, but just high level, any actionable advice, if you will.

Absolutely. An easy way that I think about mattering is with the acronym S.E.D. So each of us needs to feel significant and important. That means, you know, knowing what's going on in our lives outside of the workplace. Do we have a mother who's battling cancer and we are a caregiver for them? Do we have a child who's going off to college and now we're an empty nester? So knowing what's going on in that person's life asking about it, making them feel important and significant. A, appreciate them. So, you know, we all know how to express thanks, but really the appreciation that counts, that makes someone feel like they matter, is not the, "Hey, thanks for doing that." It's not about the deed, it's about the doer. "Hey, thanks for being the kind of person that I know I can always rely on. You are so reliable. Thank you for being," not, "Thank you for getting us all connected for happy hour." "Thank you for being the kind of coworker who cares about community. Thank you for putting your talents and your energy into that for us. We all benefit from that. So really appreciating the doer, not just the deed. I invested in— I mean, what the researchers call it is ego extension, which is really just another way of saying, I am invested in your well-being. I am invested in your growth. I believe in you. I want to hear what your dreams are. I want to hear how you want to go, and I want to help you make that happen. So really feeling like people are invested in your well-being and your success. And the last one is "Depended on," is knowing that you are depended on. You matter here. And how can we show that dependence? We can— we need to, as managers, really draw a line. We really need to show people their impact, really show it to them. And researchers have come up with something they call a mattering map, so I'll just quickly I'll quickly lay it out for you. In the middle, think of 3 circles that fit one inside the other. In the middle, think of the person that you have in mind that you work with. What are some of the attributes? Maybe they have high integrity, maybe they are a hard worker and empathic. Then go to the next ring and say, who are these people that they interact with and they make a positive impact? Is it a client? Is it other people in your department? Is it, you know, the next department that they work over with? And then the final circle is your organization's goals and values, and how does this person impact positively those goals and values. So helping somebody really draw out the line between what they do and the impact they make, show it to them, let them see their impact.

Excellent, excellent. And how about things maybe not to do? That companies might often actually do thinking that they're giving constructive appreciation, but maybe it's just perfunctory or people feel it's disingenuous? Are there any things that you might say, "Eh, this is not even worth doing," or is in fact that better than nothing?

So my take is that what you do to make someone feel like they matter should be individualized to the person. So there are some people who would love appreciation in a big meeting and being called out, and there are other people who would absolutely not like that. And they would say, how do you not know after working with me this long that this is not the way to make me feel appreciated?

Right, I feel horrified that you did this to me.

I feel horrified. Here's another thing. I mean, just as important as fostering cultures of mattering is scanning the environment for messages of anti-mattering. Things, you know, this is a wildly big example, but when Elon Musk took over Twitter, he locked people out of their accounts. That's how they found out that they lost their jobs. Compare that to NASA, who a few decades ago, there was a study done on NASA by mattering researchers, and they were, they had to lay off a group because they ran out of funding. Instead of just saying goodbye, what they did was they matched each of those employees with somebody in HR, and they checked in on them every week to see how they were doing. That person knew that NASA still cared about them. We can't, we have to let you go, we don't have the funding, but we still care about you. Boy, did that message resonate not only with the people who were laid off, but also with the people in NASA. NASA cares about us as people. That is— yes, it is inevitable that we have to have layoffs. How you do them, how you support people, that is how you know they matter. And boy, does that have a ripple effect in the office as well.

I think I've read somewhere that it was a company, I forget which it is, in which anytime anyone left the company, they'd like gave them a big round of applause as they left. And it was not a cynical thing, but it was just like genuinely wishing the person well. So it can manifest itself, I guess, in different ways, as long as it's genuine and coming from a good place. We're nearing the end. Are there any other key points that you might want to bring up that we haven't talked about?

I would say just the big headline is, you know, we talk so much about the youth mental health crisis, but there is a crisis among adults too. And people are not willing to necessarily be open about it. If you're struggling, if you have colleagues who are struggling, I think the best thing we can do for each other and for this next generation is to create this safety net of mattering. And it does— it is not huge sweeping gestures. You know, mattering occurs in small moments. It's feeling seen. It's feeling validated. It's knowing that your work matters, that it's appreciated, And if we can build up each other's mattering, we could go home and we could solve for the youth mental health crisis that we're seeing today.

Well, thank you so much for sharing. This is very valuable information, and I appreciate you taking the time. Thanks so much. You're welcome. My guest has been Jennifer Wallace. For more podcasts and the latest wealth management news, visit barons.com/advisor. For The Way Forward, I'm Greg Bartolis.

This podcast was brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.