Thought Leader Publishing | Richard Safeer | 458

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

This is Peter Winick.

I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Dr. Richard Safir. He is passionate about employee health. He's got a book that just came out, which is A Cure for the Common Company: A Well-Being Prescription for a Healthier, Happier, More Resilient Workforce. He's the Chief Medical Director of Employee Health and Well-Being at Johns Hopkins. His work has been recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And he's obviously also a health enthusiast. I wouldn't expect— yes, your hobbies to be french fries and fast food.

Yeah, that's bad for PR.

That's bad for PR, right? Right. So anyway, welcome aboard. So congrats on the launch, and give us a little bit of the backstory because you're sort of this when you and I were talking a couple weeks ago, getting ready for today, sort of this interesting piece where you've created the health and wellbeing sort of culture and all that inside of Hopkins. And now you've really codified it and are bringing it to the larger universe outside of Hopkins. So give us the sort of genesis story.

Sure. Well, I, I've been fortunate to be in this space for more than two decades, and I have learned from other scientists and researchers about what it takes to set people up for success. Too often we think of health and wellbeing as an individual endeavor, but we really need supportive people around us and supportive environments, and that includes the workplace. And so about 10 years ago, I joined Hopkins and I was able to start putting the pieces together and create a wellbeing culture foundation to support our 42,000 employees. And a decade later, we're seeing a lot of movement, a lot of progress. And I was thinking, hey, you know what, I'm getting closer to retirement. And I think that it's time to share some of this with other leaders, managers, human resource professionals, and folks who do the same work that I do. Because honestly, Peter, most of the work is focused on the individual instead of— Yeah. Yeah.

What I'm fascinated about is lots of different companies. So we'll, we'll get to Hopkins in a moment. Yeah. From Zappos to Google to on and on and on. The list is almost endless. Have taken something that they built internally.

Yeah.

And then had the, the author, the thought leaders, the thought leaders codify it in some way to share it with a broader population. I'm not sure outside of obviously specific medical knowledge, I've seen a medical institution do something like that.

I'm not sure I have either. There's other health system employers who are doing great work supporting their employee health and wellbeing.

Sure.

Yet when I did some research prior to starting the writing of the book, I was looking to see if there were other books that had already— yeah. Laid out a, a framework and I, I didn't find them.

So that's really, that's really, really interesting that it's coming from a practice, right? This is not a theoretical, because a lot of the times when you get to, you know, obviously in the nonfiction space, there's this, the cribs and the sharks or whatever, right? Or the jets and the sharks between the practitioners.

Yes.

You know, and the academics, right?

Yes.

You know, everybody has a different take where, you know, the academics, everything has to be perfect to the 11th decimal, and then the practitioners, but you haven't seen a real client, patient, or whatever. But you've got the real world piece and the academic piece. And what are the things that you have done at Hopkins that maybe didn't make it into the book?

You know, Peter, I'm so glad that you talked about this idea that there's the science and academics and then there's the reality. Yeah. And, uh, I, I, in addition to my role as the chief medical director of employee health and wellbeing, I do have faculty appointments in the School of Public Health and the School of Medicine. And so I work with these faculty members to improve our, our process. And so I'll tell you that when we were working on our, let's say, our healthy food strategy, there's the science and all the different nutritional recommendations and the food labeling, and, and there's a lot there. And yet to put it into practical terms and deliver it in the workplace we really had to simplify the process because there's supply chain issues, there's marketing, there's advertisement. It's really much more complicated than one particular research paper can convey.

Now, that's fascinating. Fascinating. So what I want to understand is that to me, one of the benefits of a book like this is that because it's not a theoretical, right? So what's got— what quote made it to the book are things that, you know, work.

Because you sit with, you have a great laboratory of 42,000 real people, right? Yes.

So where I was going is anything that didn't make it in the book that, hey, we had this idea that X would be really cool and then we tried it and it was really dumb or it didn't work. Huh. Failed experiments, if you will.

Right, right. You know, thank you for asking. I don't mean to sound like we're successful all the time, but nothing super comes to mind. And I'm sure that at the beginning of our journey a decade ago, those examples were probably more top of mind, except that we've gotten into a rhythm and a pattern so that we are much more efficient and effective in the work we do now.

So let me ask you this then. So well-being has evolved in lots of ways, but I'm thinking specifically sort of in this— we'll call it post-COVID world, right? Where we have, although to a lesser extent in a medical facility, more and more people that will be working remotely in perpetuity, or at least for a large part of their work, whatever, where wellbeing used to equate with, we'll put healthy food in the cafeteria, we'll encourage people to do a workout on their lunch, we'll have a gym, but it's centered on the physicality of the office location. How do we have to broaden or change our thinking now realizing that, okay, I can't come to Peter's house every day to feed him lunch, or, you know?

Right, right. And certainly the pandemic has opened our minds to more possibilities. And yet at the same time, even before the pandemic, we kind of failed to recognize that we had, for every employee that we have, we have a different health and wellbeing need. And it's not possible to create a program for each person individually. So we really need to create this foundation so that everybody feels supported on their own health and wellbeing journey. Now, specifically to your point about the remote workforce, the opportunities are still kind of the same in that their wellbeing journey may not be influenced by the company cafeteria. But the social connectedness aspect of work is greatly influenced by their working at home. And we know how important being socially connected is to our own well-being. And so team leaders need to be creative and figure out how to connect with their workforce.

So Peter, that's a great point because even the, the, you know, I've talked to lots of folks and, you know, one of the benefits of us all being together in the workplace, whatever that is.

Yes.

If you're a junior person, whatever that means, right? You get to see a senior person react in real time to a situation, a crisis, a scenario, whatever. And everything has to be scheduled now, and you can't schedule, you know, Rich will have a real bad crisis at 2:32 on Thursday, right? Stick around and watch how he handles it, right? So, right, how do we deal with a world we have to create opportunities to mentor, to stay connected from a social perspective, as you mentioned. That's a different way of being, right?

Right. Well, I mean, it's— the onus is on the manager and the human resource department to be very intentional about how the employees connect. And there's a variety of strategies. So some days I'm working in our facilities, Peter. In fact, I go to multiple different facilities. And some days I am able to work from home. But on those days I work from home, I often meet someone on my team and we'll go for a walking meeting together so that we can have that connection, or we will walk and talk on the phone to have our meeting. So it's not just through a computer, we're listening to each other. We're going to meet as a team in person tomorrow. And so you have to— we have all these different ways of connecting and they bring different degrees of opportunity.

Great.

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So I want to pivot a little bit. So this is your first book, if I, if my notes are correct?

That is correct. And my wife also says it's my last book.

Good.

She's wise.

So I want to— let's talk a little bit about the experience of writing the book, what you thought it would be like versus what it was. And you are now in the midst of, quote, book launch.

Yes.

What that joyous experience is like for those—

Yeah, right.

—a year or two behind you in the process.

So I thought I had written a book before I went and looked for a book agent. And then I was fortunate enough to find the agent, and he connected me with Wiley. And then once the contract was in place, I looked at what I had written and realized, hey, you know what? This information is all true and good, but it's not entertaining. I need to rewrite the book because when I read a book like some— you had a previous guest, Daniel Pink. He's one of my favorite authors. The Heath Brothers, they write entertaining books that provide value and practical tips. And that's how I ended up writing the book over again. And I feel really good about how it came out. Right.

So, so just data on a page is not a book, right? It's the art of the storytelling and weaving it together. And the— Yes. And so, right.

So there's stories about Hopkins, there's stories about other companies. I give a little bit of my own personal well-being journey. It really comes together.

Right. So normally as a, a doc and in your position, storytelling's probably not all that important.

Well, uh, I guess that depends on that physician's style. I mean, I think it's no matter what field we work in, it's important to connect with people. And for a practicing physician, if you don't have a good rapport with your patient, the, the likelihood that they'll listen and engage in a good practical outcome is much lower. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. That's part of bedside manner. I mean, it really is. Yeah. How do you connect?

When you wrote the book, you wrote it the way you thought a writer writes, being probably more of a bent to academia scientist than how do I make this relatable to a layperson, non-MD, right? That's the— Well, right.

I wrote it. I mean, the second time I wrote it, I I wrote it as if I was going to read it. And that's what made it a good book.

That's fantastic. I think that's great advice, is every author should write it as if they would actually read it. No, absolutely. And I think that's interesting because, you know, listen, I'm surrounded by books. I love books. I'm a nerd, right?

I see your bookshelf. Yeah.

But I never care about the $20, $25 or whatever it is you spend on a book. What I care about is is this worth the investment of 5 to 8 hours of my life? Because that I can never get back, right? That's true. And it's rare that I won't complete a book that I start, and I'm doing that more often lately. That might be stubbornness, but, you know, what are you getting for this investment of time? What am I— you know, 5 to 8 hours of my time, that's a lot of time. That's— I want to get something in exchange for that. I want to have a different way of seeing the world or thinking, or at least challenge my pre-existing thinking or add something new to it. Let's go to the launch piece because most authors think the hard part about being an author is the authorship, is the writing of the book. And that is hard. I'm not saying that. But then there's this whole other thing that the publisher and the PR people say, "Oh yeah, we're gonna go into book launch mode, Richard." And you go, "Yeah, okay, sounds interesting. Is that north of Switzerland?" Right?

And now here you are in the midst of it.

What has that been like? Yeah, you are right.

I thought the writing of the book was gonna be the hard part, but the The challenge and the growth continued into the marketing phase. I don't think of myself as a self-promoter, and so getting into this comfort level of promoting the book has been a growth opportunity for me as an individual. It has pushed my comfort zone, but I think that my high school theater experiences have come back to me. Those times in high school where I was part of musicals have actually served me well lately. Got it.

So, but I think it's, you said you're not a self-promoter. I would argue that there's a point, a moment in time, you know, during book launch where your job is to be the evangelist for the ideas, whether you benefit from it or not. I mean, you're advocating ideas, right? And you believe in what you wrote and you want to get it out there to more people. Right. So it's the tax you have to pay to unleash the power of the ideas. Now, I like how you put it. You didn't say uncomfortable. You said growth, which I love. Yeah. It's different. It's not in your lane, in your zone. It's not what you're used to. Yes. What are some of the hacks or the tricks? I like the musical theater piece. I'll sing some Hamlet maybe. If we have some time left. But what are some of the other sort of things that you've learned? And then let me sort of frame this in what I hear from lots of my author friends are, oh my God, it's so monotonous, right? Like, I feel like if I'm doing 10 interviews like this other than mine today, obviously, yeah, I gotta get the same, I gotta get my talking points out, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. And how do you approach each one realizing that whoever the listener or the viewer or the whatever is, it's their first time being—

Sure. Well, Becky Robinson, the founder and president of Weaving Influence, who is also going to be— Yes. Yes. Who's been helping me with the book launch, told me early, she said, listen, you're not promoting yourself, you're promoting the book. And if people don't read the book, that means that there are millions of employees who are not being helped. And that mindset has really helped me because that is That's what I maybe shared with you 10, 15 minutes ago, Peter Winick, the goal of the book is to help more people. And so that alone has really gotten me over a hurdle. So every time I have a conversation, I just know that it's possible that I'm going to connect with one or more people in that audience, and that can make a difference to the people they touch.

Yeah, really, really well said. And then, you know, the reality is there's a disconnect between the cadence of the publishing world, like, oh, we got 90 days to do book launch, and the reality. The reality is your book is an evergreen book. Whether I read it today or in 6 months from now or 18 months from now or whatever, I could still have that same aha and internalize it and do something with it. But the reality is we can't stay in launch mode for 3 days. Right? Like, that's like, we have things to do other than—

Right, right. I think this book is going to be a resource for most leaders and human resource and folks who are in the health and employee health and well-being space because there are practical tips about how to go about creating this well-being culture. And there, I turn it around on the reader. Yeah. How is this helping you? And your workday. I also reference, you know, we talked about science versus entertainment, and there's a balance here. So there are dozens of references in each chapter so that the readers know what they're reading has merit, and that they can come back to the book and count on it to be a good source. Well, that's great insight.

And thank you for sharing that. Any final thoughts or anything you want to share before we go back to a healthy day?

I would just ask folks to look at the book on Amazon.com. The look inside feature is available, so you can get a taste of it. You could also go to richardsafir.com if you want to learn about well-being culture in the workplace more. Open your mind to the possibilities that well-being is not about just about the individual. It's about the organization as well. Thank you.

Great stuff. Thanks for spending some time with us today.

I appreciate it. Thank you, Peter.

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