Speaker 1: Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your Modern Mentor.
I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise,
where we help leaders activate performance
and engagement and dial back burnout.
Whether it's boot camps, keynotes,
or pulse checks, we help teams achieve meaningful change.
If that's what your organization needs.
Reach out today at,
before we jump into today's episode,
just a reminder to leave a review.
If you can swing it, it helps new
listeners to find the show.
Okay, so today I'm excited
to bring you this interview with Bonnie Davis.
Bonnie and I have a shared passion
around infusing more humanity into the workplace,
but she has actually built an assessment around it, one
that you can take today for free.
We'll link to that in the show notes.
In this conversation we talk about the role
that organizations have to play in driving humanity at work,
and we also talk about actions that we can take quick,
simple, and meaningful at
whatever altitude we're sitting at.
There's lots of great insight here.
I hope you enjoyed Bonnie Davis,
co-founder of Hugh Work.
What a pleasure it is to have you
on the Modern Mentor Podcast. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 2: Hi Rachel. Thanks for asking me to join you today.
Speaker 1: No, I've been really looking forward to this conversation.
You have done a lot of interesting work.
I love following you being connected with you on LinkedIn.
You have a lot of insights and a lot of wisdom,
and I know a lot of it is gonna feel really tangible
and practical for the listeners today.
And so I am excited to dive in.
Um, do you wanna start with just kind of the,
the two sentence elevator pitch around what HU Work does?
Speaker 2: Only two sentences. No, I'm just kidding. .
Yeah, I'd be happy to, well, I'll start with the name.
So Hu Work, we got that as kind of a mashup
of humans at work because we are really passionate
about being human centered.
So my business partner and I came from big careers, similar
to you, big corporate careers didn't always feel like things
were so human in terms of leadership practices and culture.
And so that was our vision mission to show up
and connect with companies to make sure that that changes.
And so even to bring those words human-centered into their
language, to give them tools to do that.
So we do consulting, facilitation,
and coaching that help make
that a reality on the organization level,
the team level and the leader level.
And change is the theme in everything that we do.
We both have a background in change management
and a lot of passion for making change.
That sticks.
Speaker 1: Beautiful. Thank you for that.
And I would love to start,
and we can go in lots of different directions,
but I would love to start with the assessment
that your organization has put out
because I think think it does a really great job.
Uh, I think a lot of people talk about this concept
of more humanity in the workplace,
and I think we mean that kind of generically,
you know it when you see it, but I can't actually define it.
And I think you've actually done some work
to really put some meat on the bones of what that means.
And so I would love if,
if you could talk a little bit about the assessment and,
and what it is grounded in.
What does it mean to be human at work? Yeah,
Speaker 2: And this was so important to us
because when we played around with, so a little bit
of just transparent histories, so my business partner
and I, we both had businesses going into joining
forces to create he work.
And so when we then thought about,
and we were partnering on projects
and we said, why not go to market together
as a we instead of a me?
For me personally, I have never in my life been athletic,
always the last kid to pick, to be picked in gym class.
But I started running in my adult life
and the fir I finally started moving from like a wa a mile
to a 5K and then half marathons by running with friends.
And it's really when I moved from New York to Denver,
I made closer friends through running
and through meeting women that we'd run together with.
So it was a lesson for me. Having buddies helped,
being in partnership with people is something
that really makes me happy.
And when we decided to do that, I said, you know,
this human-centered idea, it's getting kind of overused.
And that was pre covid, that was like 2018.
So now it's really getting overused.
So I said we really need an assessment,
as you said, to put some meat on the bones.
And so it has seven focus areas.
First of all, it's free, so if you have the ability
to share the link, I encourage anybody to,
Speaker 1: We will have that link in the
show notes. So thanks for that.
Speaker 2: Excellent. So there's seven pillars in the assessment.
I will talk, go through all of them,
but it's things like your, what are your purpose
and values, your processes
and rituals, what are the, is there a sense of community?
What happens around growth and recognition and wellbeing?
So those are some of the key areas.
So each of those areas has about five
or six questions and they're specific.
They're meant to be action oriented questions to assess
how is that going on your team or in your organization.
And it's based on a combination of our experience working
inside big companies, working with our clients,
a whole bunch of research that we've done.
I think like you, we are big readers of, you know,
fast company, Harvard Business Review, listen to podcasts.
So somehow all of that information gets like,
like soup in your brain, , you know, a lot of ingredients.
And we spent a lot of time to put it together.
And we also, uh, we, we did it in 20, we talked about this
for a while and then in 2020 when the world shut down
and all of a sudden we had more time on our hands
we're like, we're gonna finally do this.
And so we did a lot of back and forth
and then we ran it by people in our network
who were in senior HR roles to say, what do you think?
Just to get some feedback on it.
And so when you take it, you answer the questions
and then the output is a really wonderful visual.
It's a spider diagram so you can really quickly see the
highs and the lows and the in between.
So the questions all wind up these seven areas.
You can see it visually.
Um, there's some lightweight tips in there.
It's not gonna change your life,
but there's some lightweight tips
that you get in your report.
And then we have been publishing a series
of articles on LinkedIn.
So right now we're about halfway through that series
where each of those seven areas we are going deeper
and we are providing quite a lot of actions and ideas
and tips, also collecting case studies,
some mini best practices from companies
that are doing these things well.
So it's, they really go together, the articles
with the action and then the assessment to understand.
And, and I really wanna also emphasize, we don't want you
to just look at your problem areas to fix.
We want you to get really clear on what your company
and your culture and your leadership style or doing well
because I am a strengths-based coach
and I'm all for leaning into the good stuff
and being more intentional about it and celebrating it.
So it also gives you the highlights really
Speaker 1: Nice.
Thank you. And I wanted, I wanna dig into what some
of those actions and behaviors
and some of those insights are.
But before we get there, I just wanna ask, you know,
as I look at the pillars in this assessment,
they all sound sort of delightful.
Um, but I'm curious if you ever experience any resistance
from leaders who say, sure, purpose is important
and culture is important,
but it's really about results, Bonnie.
And I'm not, I'm not looking
to make my my company feel soft.
I'm not looking to make it feel like people are on vacation.
Um, right.
I'm, I'm obviously loading this question
'cause I hear resistance like this sometimes as well,
but how do you talk to leaders who,
who feel like a workplace culture
that is too human is somehow not going to be
as highly performing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's a, it's, I totally agree.
I think people that do the work
that we do always get some form of that resistance.
And um, I think when you have assessment results,
the most successful leaders, they,
they don't, they wanna win.
They wanna score big.
And so it's interesting to actually have the results
and look and go, oh, well maybe
that is a problem if we're scoring low on purpose
and values for example, which is different than me saying,
you know what you need to do in your company CEO,
people need more empathy,
they just need more empathy and compassion.
And that's where you get kind
of sometimes the eye roll and the pushback.
But when they actually see data , they actually see a score,
a lot of them get fired up.
And I don't say, I wouldn't say you need to fix
that 'cause it's low.
Of course. As a coach,
I'm gonna ask what's important about that for you?
What are you noticing in your culture?
And I'll say something like, the companies
that you've been in that are most successful, tell me
what having a sense of purpose and values has meant there.
So it doesn't become a one size fits all solution.
It becomes a, I'm gonna meet you where you are solution.
If, if you don't want all those touchy feely soft things,
then that's not gonna work.
Because if you're not supportive of that stuff,
then it's not gonna land for your company.
So we find a version that works for them.
And usually I haven't had the full pushback to be like,
you know what we wanna do here,
we wanna just get a bunch of robots.
And I have to say, I think the buy-in for this has really
improved, I'm gonna say in the last year or two
because of ai there, even some of those leaders
who were more about results and the operations and the stuff
and not the people part are like, whoa,
people are afraid the of the robots taking over.
We're afraid of losing the human touch.
Sometimes data helps with some of these leaders.
You've seen it yourself.
Trust is very low, loneliness is very high.
So I think that people who were more like
what you're describing are getting a little bit more afraid
that they're, they need to do more to engage
and motivate and take care of their people.
Yeah. Noticing that, I'm curious, are you noticing that
to you that it's,
those conversations are easier now than maybe
they were five years ago?
Speaker 1: I am starting to notice a little bit of a shift.
I am feeling like the whole talent
landscape has changed, right?
And I think especially top talent these days has largely
come to the conclusion that they can be more demanding
of the experience they get at work.
And people aren't generally as accepting of,
well you get a paycheck, so deal with it and move on.
And so I do think that more
and more companies are recognizing that, you know,
when you create a sense of belonging, when people feel part
of a community that is your workplace,
when they have connection, when they feel trust
and safety so that they can speak their ideas, you know,
not only does it make people loyal,
but I also feel like leaders are
recognizing we get better results.
Like when our employees feel empowered to speak up,
they're the ones on the front lines.
They are often the ones who see the fractures in our system.
They're the ones interfacing with our customers.
They are the ones engaging with our technology.
If I'm a leader sitting in the ivory tower,
I don't know when something's broken.
I don't know what's angering or frustrating our customers,
but my employees on the front lines do.
And so when they feel trust
and safety enough to speak up,
to raise a flag and say, you know what?
I've noticed that this glitch has caused
three customer complaints this week.
Can we look into that?
Creating a culture where people feel safe to speak,
that it enhances results, right?
It hits bottom and top line.
And so I think the more that people like you
and me can highlight those areas
where it's not just about the human feeling in the human
experience, but the human experience in service
of better results, customer loyalty, more profit, I think
that's where I think that's where we start to win.
Speaker 2: I agree. I think another pain point is return to office
and a lot of leaders just feeling like
just one exhausted from that topic,
but two, like if there as a lot
of cultures have become fully remote
or hybrid, they are looking for new and different ways.
And so having an assessment to understand where we at
to fill those gaps that we feel like we suddenly have
'cause we don't see each other all the time,
that's been another driver to get people
to pay more attention to the people side of their business.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. So you were
very clear in that it's not a one size fits all sort
of approach, right?
And it is gonna be a very custom experience.
That said, I assume there have to be some practices
that you generally see be more commonly appreciated,
maybe more successful than others.
Specifically in this realm of kind of trust and connection
and belonging and community.
Are there any particular practices
that have become favorites of yours
that you have seen clients implement
or that you've, um,
just seen be successful in your corporate travels?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm sure we could compare notes on our favorites,
but, um, the first thing that comes to mind
for me is companies that have rituals in place.
And because people get a little bit overwhelmed
of we don't have time and money for offsites
and big training programs.
And you know what, those are nice, but you
and I have both seen those where they're one and done
and they're not sustainable.
And so this idea of having rituals, I mean as simple
as team meetings and one-on-ones
and if you are in person lunches at whatever intervals,
but also just the way you can communicate.
So in your team meetings, are you just going
through the laundry list of the agenda items
or are you creating white space for people
to openly share when you've just come off of holidays,
are you asking people about their traditions
and giving them that ch chance for their voices to be heard
and their unique parts of their lives to come through?
Or are you just skating through and doing business as usual?
So thinking about what are those rituals?
And we, we have an article on rituals
and processes that we have on LinkedIn.
I think that's the, the foundational part.
Do you do something for people's birthdays?
Do, how do you celebrate success?
You've just gotten a win and, and a customer win internal
or external, what do you do?
Do you, do you keep going or do you have ways
to celebrate success?
So collectively, you know, these might sound like really
tactical, lightweight things one off,
but collectively, when I think about the best teams I've
been part of, they had these rituals where just this,
the humanity came out.
And the flip side is we see a lot of companies now
where it's this like time scarcity to busy always on mindset
and they're not slowing down for those things
or even companies that are in the office.
You see, you, this has become, believe it
or not, a ritual of sorts
of everyone you walk into an office, I had this last week,
I was on flight with a client
and everyone has headphones in.
So they're not even like checking in to go,
Hey, I have a quick question.
What do you think of this? Or even, do you wanna grab lunch
or, or chitchat on a Monday morning, you know, .
So, so looking around and understanding both in person
and virtual, what are the, the connection points that exist
or are missing just for people to have And,
and these, these ways of connecting.
And it all comes down to relationships.
And relationships mean better collaboration
and all of that mean all
of those business results that you talked about.
So making sure that there's natural ways
that people are building those relationships, communicating,
collaborating, if you're doing those alone ,
you're gonna be in much better shape
than a lot of other companies. That's
Speaker 1: Great.
I think those are all really powerful.
I know I'm just gonna build on a couple of your ideas.
You talked about the power of celebrating the big wins.
If there's a customer win, do you pause?
And I think that's super important.
Um, I also really encourage my clients to
not only focus on the big shiny wins,
but also celebrating just the small acts of bravery,
of courage, of sharing a new idea,
asking a quote unquote dumb question that unlocks things.
Right. I think a lot
of companies have gotten reasonably good,
I think at celebrating the big wins and the big milestones,
but the more we can celebrate the behaviors
that we wanna see repeated, um, seeing more of those types
of celebrations to be really successful.
I also really, like, I've had a couple
of clients set up these kind of internal
who's in today dashboards, you know,
whether it lives on slack
or some sort of shared drive so
that if you're going into the office on a day,
you know who's there and who's available for lunch.
And maybe you even have a couple of your interests, um,
you know, in a profile so that people can set up a lunch
with you because they wanna talk about their favorite book
or, you know, it doesn't
necessarily have to be work related.
So those are a couple of kind
of connective rituals I've seen.
To your point about, what did you call it? Time scarcity.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm . That's a big problem. Never enough.
Never enough, never enough. There's
Speaker 1: Never enough time.
And yet what I'm also finding is
when we say we don't have time, what we mean is
that we can't fit the stuff we wanna do on top
of the stuff that's already scheduled.
What we're not as good about is really questioning
what's already scheduled.
Because I'm finding that there are so many just meetings
that have been standing for, for years and years and years,
and we're not questioning the value of those meetings.
And so I love to tell my clients
to take a a Marie Kondo approach, right?
When you clean out your closet, you have to first empty it.
You have to take everything off the calendar
and then justify what goes back.
Because I, I think you're right.
It's, it's, we are so busy doing the things
that it's hard to create the time.
And yet if we wanna have this human workplace, we have
to be disciplined in, in creating that time. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I'll, that doesn't have to take a lot of time.
You know, I will tell people Monday morning,
whether you're at the water cooler or on or on Zoom
or on WebEx, first meeting of the day, what do you say?
Hey Rachel, how was your weekend? And what do you say?
Speaker 1: Good. Yeah, Speaker 2: It was good. How was yours?
What if instead I asked, Hey Rachel,
what was one fun thing you did this weekend?
Speaker 1: I love that. Like a more specific, more specific question
that demands an answer.
Speaker 2: Basically it's one word thinking, it requires you to think
and you're like, what did I do this weekend
anyway, it was just yesterday.
I don't know. But it's not an automated robotic answer.
It, it, it, it becomes thoughtful.
And so it means that now we're having a real dialogue.
Oh, I was at my kid's soccer game.
Hey, my kid plays soccer and we're finding commonalities
and this can take like three minutes instead of 20 seconds .
So right. And, and it's,
and we're, we're building connection
and we're building shared experiences
and we're building our relationships.
So it doesn't even have to be like a time, a time thing.
Sometimes it's a little bit of light skills
and just, you know, people say to me, I can do that.
I'm like, great. Then can go for it.
Take that question on a Monday morning, that's yours.
So awesome. Um, it, it could be little things.
Um, and the other piece is I agree with what I love
that Maria Kondo Marie Kondo approach, I I'm always with,
with dealing with time management
and the client's saying, um, three Ds,
dump it, delegate it, do it differently.
Hmm. And often I can't dump anything. Delegation.
Well my team is so overloaded.
Well then let's talk about doing it differently.
And you know, that's like,
we're not gonna do 60 meeting minute meetings anymore.
We're only gonna do 50 minute meetings.
And that gives you 10 minutes to chit chat with people
between meetings or 10 minutes to go for a walk
or 10 minutes to get that email done or whatever.
I mean, there's so many ways to do it differently.
Met a client that realized recently
is like 10 page report can really be boiled down
to an email without all the formatting and all the time
and went to the senior leader
and said, Hey, I'm trying
to find better ways of using my time.
I don't know if you realize this, but this takes me about
six to eight hours to, to do,
would it be okay if I gave you the email summary
and the leader was like, that takes you six to eight hours.
I had no idea. No, I don't want you spending that.
I don't need all of that.
But how often do we just check in with stakeholders
and say, could I do it differently?
So there are lots of ways to just pause,
stop making assumptions, break the status quo.
You're right. Clean house.
Um, and then of course there's all the meetings that,
you know, you don't need 10 people.
That could be six people and we could have a whole show
of course, on, on these strategies.
'cause I get a little bit, uh, geek,
I geek out on the life hacks.
'cause it really can make a difference. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But what I love about that example that you just shared is
that not only did it increase humanity,
but it also increased efficiency.
Right? A lot of times when we increase efficiency, not
through kind of robotic cuts,
but through really giving people permission to raise flags
and say, there are pieces of my work that are really painful
and inefficient, which kind of reads inhumane.
And if I were empowered to, to streamline it, to,
to speed it up.
I'm having a more human experience
and I'm saving the organization time that I could,
I could be doing something more strategic with.
So yeah, there's a real win-win for people
and organizations I think when we,
when we frame it correctly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I love that word empowered
because I think a lot of people are just,
you just go, go, go.
'cause you've been told to go and you don't feel empowered
to stop and question.
And yet most bosses would prefer
that their team question the inefficiencies,
but for some reason we just feel like we
don't have that permission.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a bummer.
So speaking of empowered, I know one
of the pillars in your survey is all employee behaviors.
Um, I imagine the water cooler chatter example
that you gave is probably one of them.
But I would love to talk about, you know, for people
who feel like I, I'm, I'm a frontline contributor.
I'm not in a leadership role, but I wanna do my part.
I wanna, you know, start from the ground up and,
and just bring a little bit more humanity into my workplace.
Uh, where, where can people start? What do you recommend?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well the first is, I know a topic
that's also near dear to your heart, which is listening.
Let's just, just truly listening with heart
and just taking those moments to deeply listen to
what is going on with people.
It is taking the extra beat to care
and whether it's what's going on with your family
and how is your weekend or just that problem you're trying
to solve and, um, going deeper and supporting
and having more of that.
I have your back attitude of like, well,
maybe we can figure that out together.
Tell me more about that. And so, um, I, with listening
that goes hand in hand with curiosity is just
to better understand what people are working on,
what their strengths are, what gets them excited,
and really like, how can we better partner together?
How can we collaborate more? How can we partner more?
How can we communicate better?
So just having that continuous improvement mindset
about your relationships at work
is a really great way to start.
And then just transparency goes along with all of that.
I saying, I I I'm not gonna make that deadline
and here's what you can expect instead.
Or saying, you know, in that meeting when you said
that thing, I just wanna let you know
that this is how it went over.
Or saying, it feels like in this situation we're
not communicating the way we should.
How can we improve things?
So we just tolerate
and ignore a lot of bad behaviors at work.
for many reasons. Personally,
I'm guilty, I am conflict averse.
So I get it. Some, some of this can
feel like we're engaging in conflict,
but I I just try to flip the framing on that
and say, as long as you're coming, the intention is
improve relationships
and the intention behind that is more productivity,
then it's all good. Bring it on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with what you're saying and I,
and I think it really has been exacerbated since the
pandemic and since we started working in these hybrid ways.
I can't tell you how many in-person offsites I've run
for clients where employees,
colleagues who've been working together for a year,
two years have never met each other in person.
They only know each other from these boxes on screens.
Mm-hmm . And it's,
and I'm, I'm a big believer in hybrid
work, don't get me wrong.
And I think,
and I think there is a place
for in-person experiences if the budget is there.
And also I think it's important to acknowledge
that building relationships is a different animal on screen.
I think your point about curiosity is really well taken.
I think being curious about somebody,
but also being curious about
what somebody may have meant.
I noticed that people more
and more are quick to make assumptions about,
well he said this, so he thinks that about me.
And so he hates me and I hate him too.
And, and I'm obviously being a little bit dramatic,
but there's a lot of very quick assumptions being made
rather than, Hey Bonnie, when you said that,
can you just clarify what you meant?
Um, I, I wanna, I wanna start with an assumption
of positive intent.
And if you meant to offend me, let's, let's hash it out.
But nine 10, I I don't think that that's what you meant.
And so showing up, like you said with that blend
of transparency, I want you to know how that came across,
but also curiosity.
Can you tell me more about what you meant, um, when you made
that comment about how I speak or how I engage with clients?
Tell me more about that. Um, I think there's a lot of room
for that in the workplace because I think you're right,
we're absorbing a lot of negativity,
but a lot of it is just based on assumptions
that may not even be accurate.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it,
these are all cognitive shortcuts back to being busy.
We just, we fill in the blanks because it's fast
and we are like, I know this personality type, I've seen it
before and we just take the shortcuts.
So I totally agree.
I actually did a team workshop with a team a few months ago
and they, I do a workshop where you,
we organically create team agreements.
So what are the things that being on this team mean to us
that, that are really important?
And one of them, and I had never seen a team do this before.
Usually they're pretty standard trust,
communication roles and responsibilities.
But this one team, they called out positive intent
as something that they wanted to have as one
of their team agreements because they felt like continuously
that was the rub, that was the tension of like,
they were not giving each other the benefit of the doubt.
And then when I checked in with them three months later,
they had all these powerful examples of where
that was coming through and, and they realized,
and then some of them were like,
and I realize I'm doing this in my personal life,
that I'm not giving people the benefit of the doubt.
And so we talk about humanity, you know, that
Speaker 1: No, Speaker 2: That was really cool that they had that aha
and that they were going with it.
Speaker 1: That's a real win. So I wanna ask you
selfishly, you alluded earlier, no, you stated earlier
that you are a strengths-based coach.
Um, you know, a lot of what I hear around me,
and sometimes it's in my own head, , we can tend to be,
we're talking about kind of assumptions of, of negativity,
but sometimes we are the worst with ourselves when it comes
to some of these things.
And I would love it for somebody
who maybe does not have the good fortune of the budget
to work with you one-on-one, any tips that you can offer
around how we can take a strengths-based coaching approach
with ourselves or, or with a colleague?
What does that look like? What does that sound like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that question. Um, so many things.
'cause I do a lot of work in this space.
So for starters, I'll give another plug
for another free assessment, which is called Standout .
And so standout will give you your top two strengths roles,
and this is how we tend to show up in any situation.
And so you can use that strengths lens.
So my top two roles are connector provider.
And so sometimes when I am stuck, I will just ask myself,
how would a connector provider solve this problem
to get myself unstuck?
And, um, so, so that is one way.
The other thing is thinking about connecting, engaging
with people in strengths-based ways.
So again, I'll get back to simple chitchat example.
We get to a cocktail party or we get to the soccer field
or whatever social situation, personal or professional.
And we ask, Hey Rachel, what do you do for a living?
What do you do for work?
And somebody like you, you're gonna light up
and tell me what you do and it's going,
you're gonna probably start an engaging conversation.
Many people, I'm a financial analyst, I'm a lawyer, I, okay,
so a strengths-based question would be, Hey Rachel,
what do you love about your work?
Speaker 1: That is really interesting.
Yeah, that's really interesting
because it puts me as the answer in a, in a mindset
of hunting for something that I enjoy about it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Exactly.
It literally forces you to think about the positive
before you're just going right to the negative.
And now you also, I have now sparked an emotional,
and I don't mean an emotional like I'm bringing you
to tears, , I mean in a positive emotion.
I've now engaged with you in an emotional way so that
the base of our relationship,
we're now talking about something meaningful and warm
and joyful instead of like complaining about, you know, the,
the long lines of Costco, which, you know, , I'm, I,
so often I'm in my social life, I'm like,
why am I talking about this?
Like complaining and negativity.
So there are ways
to engage each other in these strengths-based kind
of conversations, but it takes work.
Uh, you're right, the negativity is there.
You probably know this. We are wired for negativity.
Our brains naturally go there.
Um, I think like you, I do a lot of 360 degree assessments.
People consistently score themselves lower.
You know, I work with Apple and some really high performing
companies and people very ly score themselves lower.
They are, we're really hard on ourselves.
So we need to overcome that.
And then the last thing I would say is just for people
to do their own little light research on negativity bias
and imposter syndrome.
Because literally our brains are hardwired
to always find the negative
because that's what survival means.
So just study up a little bit
and learn more about what that means so that we can overcome
that tendency and be kinder to ourselves.
Um, self-compassion is really important.
Um, Kristen Neff, who may have read her work,
she's an expert on self-compassion.
She talks about talking to yourself the way you would talk
to your best friend or your sister.
Like we, we are, we're so mean to ourselves.
We wouldn't talk to our best friend that way.
So being kinder and,
and our self-compassion is also important.
Speaker 1: Really nice. Thank you.
Bonnie, is there anything that I haven't asked you about
building a more human workplace that feels important today?
Speaker 2: I would say for people to be honest about
where do I have some control over helping to influence
a more human-centered workplace.
So even if you're not in a leadership role, that's okay.
You can still take the assessment
and pick like one or two things on there.
Even if it's your own action to go, you know what,
I'm committed to more active listening with my,
I'm committed to more curiosity.
So, uh,
but there also could be things that,
that be bold, be courageous.
Because if you are feeling the rub of things
that can be more human centered in your organization,
you're probably not alone.
So I would just encourage people to take some action,
feel like they can be an advocate.
And of course if you are in an HR
or leadership role, then prioritize.
It could be just a few things can really make a difference
for your organization to feel more human centered.
We're not talking about a major overhaul.
And sometimes the difference is,
is actually being strengths based
and going, wow, you know, we're good at that already.
Let's be even more intentional about the things
that we're already good at.
It's not even always big change.
So take some ownership
because it can really make a big difference.
'cause in my opinion, this is people's health.
This is, I mean, this can avoid burnout.
It can mean that you, you literally are healthy
or it means that you're, you come home
and you're not as grumpy with your, your children
or not as grumpy with the person
who rings up your groceries.
So I also believe that the domino effect
of more human-centered workplaces is bigger than
just our work.
And that is one of the things that gets me
so excited about doing this.
Speaker 1: Beautiful. One of the phrases I love to use
with my clients is this idea
that I call focus on your locus.
Mm-hmm . So there are always gonna be a million things
that are totally out of our control,
and there's always gonna be at least one thing
that's within our control.
So let's focus there. So I love that, that take action.
Yeah. And I really love that idea about start with
where you're already doing well
and just turn the dial up on that.
I think that's a really, really powerful space
to play if you're in like 40 meetings a week
and you're losing your mind,
but one of those meetings is like really great, think about
what makes that meeting great
and what can you take from that
and infuse into just one other meeting
and just start there. I think that's, yeah,
Speaker 2: This is actually .
I know you mentioned, I'll go full circle to LinkedIn.
This is my next LinkedIn post, which was, um,
I just finished the book Reset by Dan Heath
and, um, and Bright Spots.
He talks about bright spots. He talks about when we,
when we fix things, we look for the problems to fix,
but first look for what's working and do more of it.
And I have a, my LinkedIn post is all
about bright spots, so there you go. . Spoiler alert.
Speaker 1: I cannot wait to read it. Um, it's very weird.
I also just finished that book
and my team is in the process of reaching out to him.
Um, Dan Heath, if you're listening
and I'm sure you are, please come on the show. Um,
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be great.
I will listen. Uh, he's, he's awesome.
I really, uh, like his work a lot.
Speaker 1: Well, Bonnie, this has been such a pleasure.
Thank you so much again.
We will have links in the show notes for
where people can find more about you, your organization,
and your amazing assessment.
But thank you so much for being here today. Thank
Speaker 2: You, Rachel.
This was a fun conversation. I
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoyed my conversation with Bonnie Davis.
You can learn more about her
and the work that she does@hughworkteam.com.
That's HU work team.com.
Join me next week for another great
episode of Modern Mentor.
Until then, visit my website@leadabovenoise.com.
If your organization could use a talk, a bootcamp,
or a workshop, follow Modern Mentor on Apple Podcasts,
Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Thanks so much for listening and have a successful week.
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