85. Daily Acts that Battle Burnout + When Remote Work Isn’t an Option

Transcript – Episode 85: Daily Acts that Battle Burnout + When Remote Work Isn’t an Option

Joe:
Research suggests there’s a small simple act that done regularly can combat burnout. We’ll tell you what that is and how to get started with it. Plus, how do you handle conversations about remote work with employees who can’t remote work? We’ll tackle that now on Boss Better Now

Suzanne:
You’re listening to Boss Better Now. The show is sponsored by Joe Mull and Associates. Now here’s your host, speaker, and author, Joe Mull.

Joe:
Hello again, BossHeroes. Thank you back… for… thank you, thank you, thank you. Wow, you even did a little applause thing there at the beginning. That was fun. Well, thank you everybody for joining us this week. Whether you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Audible or Stitcher or Google Podcasts or iHeartRadio or Amazon Music, or your connected speaker thingy that sits in your kitchen, whose name, we won’t say wherever you found us, we are glad you’re here. And joining us on our mission to fill workplaces with better bosses, please welcome back to the show, my co-host, executive coach, HR advisor, and Zumba fanatic, Suzanne. Hey Suzanne.

Suzanne:
Well, hey Joe. Thanks for having me back. Hi everybody. Yeah, Zumba fanatic. That’s interesting. So that’s a truth in case we’re playing two truths and a lie.

Joe:
Right? So, we didn’t make that one up. That’s legit.

Suzanne:
No, we did not. That one is legit. And that is my… where I get my energy and my motivation, cuz I think I can dance. No one’s told me otherwise. <laugh>. Cause if you’re not familiar with Zumba, it’s Latin dancing as a workout. And unfortunately, I hit a little rough spot. My knee was really sore. I went to the ortho doctor this morning and in his infinite wisdom and based on the X-ray results; I have to pause my Zumba love for a little while. So, I have to find something else. So, if we think about how this relates to being kind to ourselves that we’re gonna talk about later on, and you mean kind to myself … and not tear up my knee, but I also need to replace it with something else that’s, that brings me joy and motivation to help.

Joe:
It sounds like… It’s like it’s only temporary though.

Suzanne:
I hope. Yes, I think, well it depends on if the shot he put into my knee this morning calms everything down and helps me in the next few weeks. So, we’ll see. Let’s hope.

Joe:
Maybe this is an opportunity, maybe you can be the founder of “Seated Zumba” <laugh>. Can that be a thing?

Suzanne:
I think chair aerobics was a big thing back in the day. So absolutely. I, I’m really close with my instructor. In fact, my Zumba structure is actually on my team here at We Inspire. Oh. So maybe I’ll talk to her and say, Okay, how can we take this and make it still work? That’s a great idea. Thank you.

Joe:
Yes, yes. You can just hop the entire workout on one foot. But I don’t think that’s gonna be good for that other knee.

Suzanne:
No, I mean I’m good at making adjustments and she calls it when you get it wrong, you don’t get anything wrong in Zumba. It’s merely an accidental solo.

Joe:
<laugh>

Suzanne:
You’re welcome. So

Joe:
That is fun. 

Suzanne:
Yes, we’ll figure it out.

Joe:
Well, it reminds me very quickly, a year or two ago, I decided – kind of on a whim – to sign up for the Pittsburgh Half Marathon. I had run some 5Ks and some 7Ks, and I thought a half marathon is just like three (3) 5Ks with some breaks in between and maybe I can make that work. And so, I signed up to do this and the next day I had an appointment at my orthopedist — cuz I have had six knee surgeries. I have some ongoing knee problems.

Suzanne:
Have you?

Joe:
And so I went into the orthopedics office, and he was checking me out and we were talking about some arthritis and things like that. And I said to him, all right, well if I don’t want this to get worse more quickly, is there anything I shouldn’t do? And the first words out of his mouth goes, “Well, I wouldn’t sign up for any marathons.” And I just busted out laughing because I had just done it the night before. And we had an interesting conversation. He told me, “Listen, if the half marathon is a bucket list thing for you and you want to do it, fine, do it. But don’t run downhill. And then don’t do any more long-distance running after that. Keep it short.” So, we’ve all gotta make adjustments.

Suzanne:
Yes. All right. And his yeah, his was… he didn’t say don’t do Zumba, but he said, you might not want to if you want this puppy to heal. I’m like, Okay.

Joe:
Yes. Right. Yes. You gotta take it easy for a little while.

Suzanne:
Okay.

Joe:
Right. Well, we’re gonna start out today, standing today. Yes. You’re standing today. I love it.

Suzanne:
I am standing, today

Joe:
We’re gonna start out with some daily acts that battle burnout. So, our intrepid producer, Jamie, for our Boss Better Now Podcast… One of her tasks is to periodically send me articles and things that I may not otherwise spot out there in the world that could serve as interesting fodder for our show here. And she sent me this article about a piece of research that came out about how being kind at work can combat burnout. So, this article was actually posted originally on lifehacker.com and we’ll link to it in the transcript of our show here on the Boss Better Now podcast website. But this research which emerged from a researcher at the University of Virginia from Yu Tse Heng was really driven around this idea that being kind to other people at work can help with burnout because it helps you feel more connected. So, the idea here is that there are three major components to burnout.

Joe:
That burnout is driven predominantly by exhaustion, inefficacy, and cynicism. So basically, when we get tired, when we feel like we can no longer be effective, or when we get cynical, when we think why bother? That’s when burnout really starts to take hold. When we overwork and when we generally feel those other aspects of inefficiency and cynicism. And what her research shows is that small acts of kindness to others in the workplace can actually help people feel less cynical. And it might help people feel more effective at their jobs. And she goes on to describe small acts of kindness as things like taking a few minutes to check in with a coworker to see how they’re doing, or when you go get a cup of coffee for yourself, getting one for somebody else at the same time. Or even something as simple as offering someone a sincere compliment.

Joe:
And that these small moments can actually combat that cynicism that piles up and that tends to help us experience burnout. And so, I thought this was interesting because we’ve been getting a lot of advice over the past two and a half years about burnout, which was obviously quite prevalent in our work lives before the pandemic but was certainly exacerbated for many of us as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak. And many folks are still battling extraordinary levels of burnout. And I think we’ve all seen a lot of bad advice about burnout. That’s something we’ve talked about here on the show before. But this piece, this idea of just sprinkling in some small acts of kindness as an evidence-based way to combat burnout, I thought this was really intriguing. What did you think when you saw all of this, Suzanne?

Suzanne:
Well, I have to say I’m a headline reader, <affirmative>, and try to get to the gist of it very quickly. And this author had me at “Hello”. Okay. Because many times when we think about burnout, we are all the way at the end of the journey or the cycle, meaning they’ve quit, they’ve had to be fired, or they’ve done some egregious act that’s put them on a pip, right? Or there’s some trouble. And I think when she talked about lack of enthusiasm, the cynicism or general fatigue, I’m like, wow, wait a minute. That’s something we can lean on to help recognize burnout in its earliest stages. So as a boss, if I’m seeing changes in those things, if I’m seeing someone less enthusiastic than they used to be, or I’m hearing cracking these little jokes that might not be so helpful or they’re just not showing up the way they used to. Recognizing that can show up in different ways for different people.

Suzanne:
And so how can you get ahead of it and be proactive is what dawned on me. And then of course the advice, most of it is free <affirmative> and it was probably Fred Rogers who told us…”Never miss an opportunity to make someone’s day a little bit better.” And you have no idea if you’re the person that then they go home and talk about in a positive way at the dinner table. Right? And I love that. I also would add a little bit about advocacy, especially as a peer or as a boss. Sometimes in meetings when people are feeling less than <affirmative>, they have trouble articulating or they don’t engage. So, either drawing them out in a safe way in a meeting or say or reinforcing what they said. So, Joe, I think that’s a great idea in allowing that idea to sit with a table and being an advocate for it. I think that’s another act of respectful kindness and it’s very constructive in a way. We need to do more of that for each other.

Joe:
And I mean, I actually know about this very interesting new book that’s coming out next year that has an entire chapter in it about advocacy and the role that advocacy plays in creating the kind of workplace that people wanna join and stay in. Maybe we’ll be hearing more about that

Suzanne:
Brilliant notion

Joe:
And here’s what I love about what you said too, Suzanne is that’s a fun little challenge that a boss can put forth to themselves is, okay, I’m going into this huddle or I’m going into this team meeting, and I am going to do this sort of stealthy, subversive little act of kindness to each to every single person at the table. I’m gonna find a way to just give them a little goose of that in a minute when we’re doing our work together over the course of that hour or two hours or whatever. And here’s the other really cool thing about this that stuck with me about this research. If you embrace this idea that small acts of kindness can help you battle your own burnout, it’s a double treatment curing, maybe not curing, but you’re addressing your own burnout. And the acts of kindness themselves are experienced by others as a way to combat their burnout. Because when people feel appreciated — when people experience belonging, it does combat some of that cynicism, some of that exhaustion. We know that to be true.

Suzanne:
We do. And I wanna go back to that self-help like that. If I tell you I appreciate your contribution or your idea was fantastic, or Joe, I just want you to know your energy is something we rely on positively. <affirmative>, it brings a lot to the team. Thank you. I feel better walking away. My endorphins fill up all the happy feels are kind of sparked for me. So even it, it’s the gift that gives back. It will.

Joe:
And the act of kindness doesn’t always have to be words. I love the example in the article about just offering to grab somebody a cup of coffee when you’re going to get one or bringing some new treats into the office. Or my … Jamie here a couple weeks ago saw this really neat little coffee sign that she thought would be neat to hang above the coffee maker here in our office, hang it above our curate. And she just brought it in, hung it. And that was just a really nice little gesture. Stuff like that matters.

Suzanne:
It does. And speaking of copiers is even grabbing their work off the copier and delivering it to them to say, hey, saw this had your name on it, here you go. Those little pay-it-forward moments or just being aware, picking something off the floor that they dropped, anything like that.

Joe:
And I think if there’s a takeaway from this <affirmative> as a leader, maybe I embrace trying to do this with more frequency, knowing that it’s something that works both for myself and for my team. I think that the headline takeaway though here is that it benefits myself to do it. If I’m looking for a way to be at my best for my team, then I, I’m gonna have to be aware of any burnout that I’m experiencing. If I’m experiencing that cynicism, if I’m experiencing exhaustion, but I need to keep showing up for my team in a way that is worthy of them, then I do need to think about a treatment plan for my own burnout. And this is one potential kind of intervention. And I think that’s the other piece of this that I would caution leaders to keep in mind. I think it could be really tempting to maybe share this article or this podcast with your team and say, Okay, we’re gonna create a program where we all do acts of kindness for each other.

Joe:
Or you pull your huddle together and you give people the advice that, hey, if you’re feeling burned out, I want you to go out and do this for other people. I don’t actually think that’s a good idea. I think if you want to encourage other people to embrace this strategy, the simplest way to do it is to talk about what you’re doing. Maybe you just say, I read this article a while ago about how random acts of kindness combat burnout. So, I started doing it, and man, I feel better. It does help a little bit. And by role modeling it or embracing it for yourself, it’s a much less direct way of encouraging other people to do it.

Suzanne:
And it’s more likely to be sincere instead of a task or something that’s expected to do

Joe:
Our new program,

Suzanne:
Everybody, you better get five and we’re gonna track it <affirmative>.

Joe:
And if you get 10, you get a set of steak knives. Yeah, <laugh>.

Suzanne:
Yes. Yeah, there’s an incentive for it. I think it falls in line with one of those behaviors that you need to model it <affirmative>. So good leaders model the behavior they expect to see in others not to do, As I say, not as I do. This is a do-as-I-do moment and your culture will grow and it will be seen as something that’s okay cuz there may be somebody else in your team who needed that permission or they love to see that it was the gate open to have those types of conversations. Yeah.

Joe:
Well, folks, we would love to hear what you think. Have you noticed a difference in your own feelings of exhaustion or cynicism or effectiveness that have changed as a result of trying to do more acts of kindness? Have you noticed differences on teams? Is this something that you are going to try and act on in the weeks and months ahead? And any of those tends to be true? We would love to hear about your experiences. You can email the show at bossbetternow@gmail.com and tell us about it and we might circle back and shout you out here on the show.

Joe:
All right, folks, that brings us to the Camaraderie Question of the Week. Bosses build camaraderie on teams by making it easier for people to find things in common with each other. That’s why every week we give you a question you can use at meetings to facilitate connection and build camaraderie. And you don’t just have to use them in meetings, you can use them in huddles, you can use them one on one. Maybe you even throw them on your Slack channel and see how people answer this week’s question. Suzanne, tell us about a time when you experienced a good surprise. I love that qualifier in there. Good surprise cuz not everybody likes surprises and so we can all define that a little differently. So, tell us about a time when you experienced a good surprise.

Suzanne:
So, words matter here. So, a good surprise. And when you propose these questions or pose these questions, I try to be like someone in the huddle or someone in the audience think, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? And then 10 other things come to mind. But the very first thing that came to mind was from a parent perspective. And that is a good surprise when your neighbors give you positive feedback on your children.

Joe:
Oh Yeah.

Suzanne:
This isn’t that. What we want, we want them to know. And when they go into someone’s house that they’re respectful, that they say, please and thank you that they’re polite. And we get that feedback even though we may not be experiencing at home <affirmative>. So that, that’s good surprise. And on the work setting, oh my gosh, Joe, this went clear back to 25 years ago, my first real corporate job that I was nervous to apply for. This is when I started my 13-year long, 55-mile commute to Pittsburgh. If I haven’t told you that already, I keep bringing that up and I was nervous about it. Am I the right fit? Blah, blah, blah, blah. So, I hadn’t started the job yet, but I get my mail, enter my home, and there’s a big box waiting for me. And inside the box chocolate chip cookies.

Joe:
Oh.

Suzanne:
That said, welcome to the team. We’re so excited to have you. So, it was an opportunity between that space of accepting the job and making that decision and where you actually start, and studies show that we need to keep that connection. It’s a great time to build relationships. And I’m here to tell you that cookies matter.

Joe:
Well, first of all, look at you dropping some boss advice in the camaraderie question of the week, connecting it to engagement, and giving that suggestion to our listeners. You can stay my friend.

Suzanne:
Oh thanks, Joe.

Joe:
And you’re right, Cookies do matter. And I love that <laugh> at the earliest stage of your career when you were experiencing all of those emotions that somebody was thoughtful enough to do that for you. It just goes to show when we think that those things don’t matter, that they actually really can.

Suzanne:
I know, I couldn’t believe, I still remember that honestly popped straight into my head was this metal tin of cookies and I’m not sure I shared them with anybody cuz they wanted ’em for me <laugh> to help me prepare for my journey. So, it was great.

Joe:
If that was me and I was nervous at work and I got a box of chocolate chip cookies, I was absolutely eating my feelings at that point.

Suzanne:
Yeah, that may have me maybe.

Joe:
Gotcha. Cool. Good answer. All right. Hey, when I tend to try to go with my first blush reaction when I see these questions and I think I’m very hard to surprise. My wife will tell you that I’m very hard to surprise just even without trying. My brain just works things out sometimes. And so, I think I like to be surprised, but I also tend to know everything ahead of time. I don’t know. So, I think I’m hard to surprise and I don’t know always.

Suzanne:
I bet you are. You’re very anticipatory generally.

Joe:
A little bit. But my wife pulled out an amazing surprise for pulled off, an amazing surprise for us. A couple of years ago, I was turning 40, so I’m about to turn 46. So, this was six years ago. And this was right about the time that the musical Hamilton was exploding. And we had fallen in love with it. And we’d been listening to nothing but Hamilton for a while. The show had been out in the world for maybe two years at that point. And my wife planned a surprise birthday party for me that was Hamilton themed. And she went all out. She invited a lot of friends we hadn’t seen for a while, and the cake was Hamilton, and the decorations were Hamilton and there were the revolutionary war hats. And she stood up at the party and gave a little Hamilton themed speech that had all sorts of callbacks to the show and said lovely things about me. And then at the end of the party, everybody gave me a gift and it was an envelope and everybody, she had gotten like 25 people to pitch in to buy a pair of tickets to see Hamilton in Chicago shortly after it had set up residency there. So, we got a weekend in Chicago a couple of months later to see Hamilton after my Hamilton themed surprise party. That’s probably my favorite surprise that I’ve experienced.

Suzanne:
That is awesome. And now I first I’ll say I feel bad because my daughter did throw a 50th surprise party for me. And so, what I can relate to, I kind of saw it coming, but what I can relate to is the heartfelt… I mean the tears, the emotion that it brought out of everyone would take their time to drive here. And then my daughter opened her home, which is a new home for her. And the eclectic bunch of characters that she found, right, that showed up was huge. So, there’s the big and the small in our examples, but it’s the sentiment that really hits right.

Joe:
And I think that’s the thing about a surprise is sometimes if we’re caught off guard by something, just taking that moment to think what was the intent here? And most of the time if it was good, I think we can quickly get to what you just described, which is, wow, somebody went to the trouble to try to do something special for me. And even if it didn’t land the way that maybe I would’ve wanted, it’s that intent that we should focus on effort. Absolutely.

Suzanne:
Well, think about our love languages. So, I can say too that I’ve been surprised by acts of service when someone takes the time to just do something kind or that I know they were, I was on their mind, and they took action toward it. Yeah, that’s huge. I feel loved when that happens. Is my husband listening?

Joe:
<laugh> <laugh>, you are gonna be sharing this episode specifically with him. Good idea. And that’s the Camaraderie Question of the Week.

Joe:
All right, friends, as we announced on the show last week, our next boss Better Virtual Summit is taking place on Tuesday, December 6th. It features five captivating mini-sessions with a rockstar lineup of guest speakers, all designed to fill up your cup, rejuvenate your leadership, and help your boss better. We’ve got a session about going from stress to resilient. We’ve got a session packed with scripts and tips to help you get better at coaching employees who are burned out or overwhelmed. And I’m closing the event with a virtual keynote on rehumanizing the workplace to find and keep devoted employees. Now, we do this event twice a year and it’s one of our most popular things that we do. And here’s the really cool news. We just opened up the VIP subscriber pre-sale for a few days. You can get tickets for half price. That’s right, 50% off for a short time. Just go to bossbettervirtualsummit.com and use the code PODCAST at checkout. That’s gonna grab you a seat for half price. That’s gonna give you a seat for $199 for this full-day engaging virtual conference designed and delivered just for you, the BossHeroes of the world. So, one more time, that’s bossbettervirtualsummit.com, and use the code PODCAST at checkout. It’s gonna be so good.

Joe:
All right, we are closing today, Suzanne, with one of my favorite segments. It’s Mail Time.

Joe:
Technically, this wasn’t mail, it wasn’t email, it wasn’t snail mail, it wasn’t a piece of paper strapped to the leg of a carrier pigeon. No. This question…

Suzanne:
How’d it get in here?

Joe:
It got in here from a listener on YouTube. So, our episodes all stream on our BossBetter YouTube channel. And Tosca asked this question in the comment section of one of our videos. So, see, we’re watching. We are listening. We are seeing what you post there. Tosca’s question: “When offering life/work/balance options like working remote, how do you handle the conversation with employees that you can’t offer remote to? I’m talking about the employees that are customer-facing, the employees that you need there in person Monday through Friday all the time.” Tosca, thank you for the question. It’s an important one and I have a few ideas for you. Suzanne, where do you wanna start?

Suzanne:
I bet you have a few ideas. Yeah, I do too. I think many times we’re feeling the limitations of policy. We are here to be stewards of the business needs <affirmative> as bosses, but also trying to be advocates or supporters of the burnout, per se, of our employees or the experience they’re having when they come, or they contribute to work. So, one of the first things that came to mind is be careful that you don’t carry around a false or an ill-informed assumption that no one wants to come back to work.

Suzanne:
I have worked with many people, and I think of a woman who worked in an insurance agency in the city, and she loved to come to work because she loved but to buy the clothes in the shoes <affirmative>. And she was playing this role, right? So be careful that you haven’t over assumed that this group of people are miserable about it. Now again, this is one of those things, we don’t have all the context. Maybe Tosca can say, nope. Yeah, I’m pretty sure by and large they’re not thrilled about it. But make sure you’re taking that into consideration too. There’s some people that love to come to work or they’ve been working at home and now are like, Yeah, okay, that was nice, but my kids are tired of me shushing them or I can’t, I can’t seem to get away. I can’t seem to turn off. So, they might be finding a benefit, or they miss people, they miss that connection. They’re just not feeling it over Zoom and teams anymore. So be careful. There might be some or be thoughtful I should say, and intentional about it. And then I think about the guidelines for which you have to work in. So, the conversations you might have would be about exploring the flexibility or the creativity that you might be able to bring into play. I am thinking about an IT group that worked at a plant level. So, these were the guys and the gals that helped to fix the computer on the machine, or they were there when you’re jiggling the cable and your laptop didn’t work, they were your first line.

Suzanne:
And we all love calling and trying to get help with that. That’s fun, <laugh>. And we didn’t wanna that hands-off. Their support role is to keep the business running. But they took a look at their numbers from transactions, when are they most likely helping people? What time of the day? They looked at what goals they still needed to reach from a satisfaction level, and they build a plan <affirmative>. So, they did overlapping schedules or they did it. So, we had two people at home this part of the week. So, they added that flexibility in without damaging the service quality. So that might be an opportunity, but your numbers start to get complaints. We’re coming back to you, right <affirmative>, because we can’t let that slide. And that may be the case with some of your customer-facing roles as well, but I totally get it. If it’s retail, they’re coming to the counter. <laugh>, You gotta have some like restaurants. Oh my gosh, look how many have had to close because they couldn’t get staff. So, the next conversation would really be around the business need and how important they are and those types of conversations, which I’m sure you can speak to as well, Joe.

Joe:
Yeah, you used the word that I think is maybe the most important takeaway word for Tosca here in this conversation, which is flexibility. And one of the things that’s happening right now in this conversation about remote work is people are conflating what people are asking for when they ask for remote work. <affirmative> flexibility is now the number one most requested workplace benefit in the world according to Sherm, according to the Society for Human Resources Management. This is what people want more of. And what’s happening is people immediately go, Okay, well people wanna work remote and we can’t do that. Well, remote is one kind of flexibility when we have to have a conversation with folks who have to be on site. I think that conversation really becomes about two things. The first is flexibility. We can’t necessarily give you remote work, but <affirmative>, maybe we can give you some more autonomy or influence over your schedule.

Joe:
When you start end, how many hours, how long the shift is, where you work, who you work with, what kind of work you do on certain days of the week. What people really want, even more than remote work is some choice, some control, some ability to flex and adapt their schedule or their work circumstances to better fit their life. That’s a huge part of what’s happening in the job market right now is people are reaching for more of that flexibility, more of that influence. And so, I think that’s a big piece here. My advice to U Tosca is for these folks who have to be on-site, if you hear them saying they wish they could work remote or expressing resentment that some people do, but they don’t, my question to them would be, So what appeals to you about that? And I would really listen, I would really dial in to what their answers are.

Joe:
You may have somebody who says, oh, well my commute is just brutal. I spend so much time in traffic, just it changes my mood for the whole day. I end up getting home crabby. And then maybe you can offer, well, if we tweaked your start times to help you avoid some of that traffic, would that alleviate that for you a little bit? Maybe that person says, well, you talked about clothes. I hate having to get all dressed up. It’d be nice to work in jeans or sweats every once in a while. Maybe you can accommodate an adaptation to your dress code. Maybe that person says, honestly, gas prices are killing me, and I’d love to work from home to save on some of the expense. Or I spend a lot on meals, it’s cheaper for me to eat from home. And at that point, maybe the company can gift some gas cards or create a meal allowance or bring food into the office.

Joe:
For some folks like this, this is where innovation really matters. And that’s the other side of this, Suzanne, is when I see this email that says What about employees that we can’t offer remote work to? One of my first questions is always, Are you sure? Maybe just like you said, those two IT folks who were overlapping, some people were in the office some days and others weren’t. We have entire industries that have created customer-facing positions to now be able to work from home because they’re doing call center work or they’re doing video kind of telecommunications interaction. And so, you know, could do a little thought experiment here. I think if you looked at certain positions and said, if we had to allow these people to work from home one day a week, how could we make that possible? What innovations would we create? What changes to job duties or descriptions would we have to engineer? Because that’s what people are looking for. And so those are my two big takeaways, which is don’t stop innovating but also don’t conflate remote with flexibility. Flexibility is really what people want.

Suzanne:
I love it. That’s spot on. And this isn’t the time I wanna say the time to strike is now, but really if you think about, there’s so many paradigm shifts coming out of Covid and the pandemic. Everyone’s had to be creative from supply chain issues to customer demands changing to remote work. So, it is really time to keep having that conversation and check your paradigm. If you’re holding a belief that that could be argued <laugh> differently, then be willing to open that up, and then you’re prepared to influence others and really come to different solutions for people.

Joe:
Absolutely. And I feel like that if we were gonna record an album, the title would be, Check Your Paradigm. I like it if we’re gonna go out, if we’re taking this show on the road and get, check your paradigm at your local record store, which don’t exist anymore. <laugh>. Well Tosca, we thank you so much for the question. I hope that’s helpful advice. If nothing else, hopefully, it sparks a couple different kinds of conversations that you can have with the folks in your charge. That was Mail Time.

Joe:
All right, friends, that’s our show this week. Thank you BossHeroes for joining us. If you liked what you heard, please take a moment to leave a review. Tell others here on the Apple Podcast site or wherever you’re listening that our show doesn’t suck, that it’s maybe worth a few minutes of time by leaving us a review. That is always appreciated. In the meantime, thanks for everything that you do, and thanks for taking care of so many others out there in the workplace.

Suzanne:
The show is sponsored by Joe Mull and Associates. Remember, commitment comes from better bosses. Visit joemull.com today.