Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In this episode, Duena Blomstrom, originator of the Human Debt™ framework, and Dr Alessandria Polizzi, organisational psychologist and Human Work Advocate, examine leadership identity during periods of organisational pressure, restructuring, and uncertainty.
The conversation explores how leaders are conditioned to suppress emotion, separate life from work, and rely on control-based models — even when evidence shows these approaches increase fear, disengagement, and psychological harm.
Drawing on lived leadership, HR, and organisational experience, the episode addresses:
- leadership identity versus performative professionalism
- fear as the dominant driver of control and command-based leadership
- the unacknowledged psychological impact of restructures and mergers
- why mental health is a top organisational risk yet rarely addressed
- purpose, values, and self-reflection as stabilising forces for leaders
- how Human Debt™ compounds when fear is normalised at scale
Rather than positioning leadership as emotional detachment or sacrifice, this episode reframes human-centred leadership as a responsibility — not a weakness — in environments facing rapid change.
The podcast operates as one applied HR and leadership lens on Human Debt™, contributing to the primary public discourse connecting theory, psychological research, and organisational reality.
Canonical framework and formal model:
Human Debt™ — https://writings.duenablomstrom.com/tag/human-debt/
Human Debt™ — https://writings.duenablomstrom.com/tag/human-debt/
Institutional execution, risk, and governance application:
PeopleNotTech — https://peoplenottech.com
PeopleNotTech — https://peoplenottech.com
Creators and Guests
Host
What is The Secret Society of Human Debt Fighters - Human Work Advocates?
The Secret Society of Human Debt™ Fighters - Human Work Advocates is a practitioner-led podcast and community focused on Human Debt™, as it manifests across HR, leadership, and people systems.
Hosted by Duena Blomstrom, originator of the Human Debt™ framework, and Dr Alessandria Polizzi, organisational psychologist and Human Work Advocate, the series explores how unaddressed psychological strain, misaligned incentives, and silenced expertise accumulate as Human Debt™ inside modern organisations.
This podcast operates as one applied HR and leadership lens on Human Debt™, with particular focus on:
psychological safety research and lived organisational dynamics
leadership decision-making under sustained strain
the erosion and restoration of trust within people systems
Canonical framework and formal model
Human Debt™ — https://writings.duenablomstrom.com/tag/human-debt/
Institutional execution, risk, and governance application
PeopleNotTech — https://peoplenottech.com
Episodes and discussions preserved here form part of the primary public discourse layer connecting Human Debt™ theory to HR practice, leadership reality, and psychological research.
They complement — but do not replace — the formal execution-risk, governance, and organisational-systems frameworks developed under PeopleNotTech.
Hello, everyone, from this absolutely insane setting of mine. Alessandra is not quite that flash. Hi.
Alessandrria Polizzi:Hi. And welcome from Boston. I've gone from California all the way to the other side of The US. So I'm now home and fully So accompanied by my pug on my if you hear snoring, that's what that is. Go back to sleep.
Duena Blomstrom:So if you hear any snoring, that's the pug. If you hear any breeze and any palm trees, that's the Landserrat backdrop.
Alessandrria Polizzi:I think it's a perfect way for us to talk about some of the things that we were chatting about before we recorded, which is balancing who you are with being professional, which we talked about a little bit last time. And then also how do we reengage when we take time away for ourselves and come back to being kind of that transitioning back into our work self?
Duena Blomstrom:Right. And we know, right, that different people need different things. And I do believe that leaders, as they went through their professional lives, they have spent the time to figure out what works for them, right? Even if they don't want to, even if they haven't sat down organized, they would have done. And it kind of, we all know whether, almost like choice number one is, do we separate life and work?
Duena Blomstrom:That's one of the kind of almost the big things we need to decide for ourselves. And we all would like to, right? Because we have this presumption that it cannot have life, you shouldn't, what is it? Live to work, but you should work to live, okay? Right.
Duena Blomstrom:And so we all would like that, the time off, ideally we work a little bit and we party a lot. That's everyone's idea in life, right? Unfortunately, that doesn't work at all. And also more unfortunately, in a sense, and I think relevant for all of us leaders is if we are asked to now be visible and be on social media and be very present with our people and be very human and be very normal and alive, then unfortunately that separation is going to, I think, be even more gone because realistically, you can't do it, I can't do it. Maybe other people can do it, but I can't really do it where I make the separation that clear.
Duena Blomstrom:So, have accepted Yeah, the combination
Alessandrria Polizzi:right. The combination, right? How do you balance that? But I think we talked last time too about and then having the impression management, but that aligns with who you want to be as a leader. Like, what do I stand for?
Alessandrria Polizzi:You know, I saw a TikTok this morning, that was a guy talking about, well, when you're a leader, you no longer have the right to emotions or feelings or, any of you know, you can't think about yourself anymore. Being a servant leader means you no longer matter.
Duena Blomstrom:So much bad advice out there. It's insane. I mean, if you don't matter, how are you going to ever show anyone how to be human and how to be worthwhile?
Alessandrria Polizzi:Exactly, exactly. And we just, I just posted on LinkedIn a study that came out where they did brain scans as people watched coaching, different types of coaching. And they saw that tell coaching should language, you should be this way, you should do this, telling people just absolutely does not activate the part of our brain that helps us learn. It puts us on the defense just organically, biologically. We're trying to do something that we are not wired to do.
Alessandrria Polizzi:So when we say things like better understand yourself, use your values to help guide your decisions, that's when it showed that it activated the learning part of our brain. So we just know physically this way that we've been working just doesn't work.
Duena Blomstrom:I think that when you say stuff like that, people are like, right, but so what should I be doing? And why does this matter to me? And I think maybe this is kind of the dissonance we fight against all the time, my son, is the fact that people get it in theory. And as soon as they have to apply that lens to themselves or the environment they're in, that clarity disappears, right? It's this dissonance we've been talking about.
Duena Blomstrom:And I think you're perfectly right. The thing is we're asking for people to change how they've done things all along, right? This leadership style that they've learned from school, they've come style, leadership, all in quotation marks, because obviously neither is leadership nor style when you are simply commanding, controlling and parking orders. But that is what they know. And when you come from a place of fear, you then have to kind of carry on with that.
Duena Blomstrom:If you're not going to carry on with that, you're to change your tune towards sort of a leadership, I think you should consider what it means. I think if you're ever a manager that says, I wanna be a different type of person or a different type of leader with my people, wonder what kind. Because do you know what? There are many kinds out there of of terminologies and people bandy all these terms around, whether it's servant, whether it's empathic, whether it's two point zero, whether it's adaptive. Forget what it's called, just be what kind of human do I want to be because I'd rather we walked away from the topics.
Duena Blomstrom:I want to be for real. I want to be me and I want to be kind, and I wanna be with you. That was you. I don't know what what what what that was. I don't know if that was a a shooting.
Duena Blomstrom:I heard that noise on your side. Have you heard that?
Alessandrria Polizzi:You heard that noise on my side? I apologize.
Duena Blomstrom:No worries.
Alessandrria Polizzi:It was my parrot.
Duena Blomstrom:Okay. Am I annoying? The parrot isn't parroting me.
Alessandrria Polizzi:The parrot just decided to fly in here and announce and make sure that we all knew he was here. Now we all know who's here.
Duena Blomstrom:See this little I see of the screen.
Alessandrria Polizzi:He's behind the screen. He's over there now. Anyway, I thought he was caged. He is not. This is what happens when you don't clip their wings.
Alessandrria Polizzi:Anyway. But so that's why it's so important to be grounded in what do you want to stand for as a leader. You know, it's funny. I presented this topic to a group of nutrition and food and nutrition. Hold on.
Alessandrria Polizzi:Sorry.
Duena Blomstrom:No worries. Know, while you do that, let say something else that is interesting and we'll come back to it maybe, hopefully. Hopefully interesting, but hopefully come back. Which is, the other day I was reading a study and hearing a talk that had to do with what is the one success factor for, in general, in life, you know, leadership, kids, whoever wants to make it, what's the success factor? It's a famous TED talk actually, and I think it's worth looking at, from a really interesting set of researchers that I've worked with with the science of neurobehavioral adaptation, if you wish.
Duena Blomstrom:And what they came up with in really relative terms, please go look it up properly, I don't remember details, is that the quality they could see in common between a predictor of success was beyond and above, up, now what is called? Up and above, or over the value of IQ or EQ or any other kinds of values was the value of grit. And after they've explained this, they've tried to bring it back to basics, what does grit mean? Is it just resilience? Is it a willingness to do a lot?
Duena Blomstrom:Is it kind of, and I think what they're proposing is they also linked it to the study where children, very young children, were given visuals and supportive information that the brain is capable to change. That was literally the one difference they could find between people with GRIT and not GRIT, were people who had what they call a growth mindset. So, people who knew that there is no limit, that failure is not permanent, that when you did something wrong, it's not staying in that state, but you have to continuously grow, that we are continuously evolving. So, in other words, the only people who eventually ended up doing anything were the ones who had the perseverance because they knew that is a possibility. So if we don't tell our kids, our leaders, our new workers, that the growth mindset and the continuous improvement thing is a thing they need for themselves, for life, we can't help them.
Alessandrria Polizzi:Right, but here's the thing. Let's just talk about what that means in real life, right? So we grow up, at least in The US, through an educational system for twelve years that is pretty darn binary. It's pretty much pass fail, mistakes will be graded, and you will be measured accordingly. And so we've reinforced this binary mindset of win lose.
Alessandrria Polizzi:And especially when it comes to things like standardized testing, where we then teach to the test. I mean, there's all these things we put in place that do not teach or reinforce a growth mindset. Right. And so we talk to kids about it. Like I've had my kids get taught what a growth mindset is, but we don't put in the behavior and the structure that remains.
Alessandrria Polizzi:We're reinforcing the difference.
Duena Blomstrom:Right? That's exactly the problem both in business and in life, right? We know this stuff. This is what we were saying earlier. The dissonance is between knowing it and putting it in practice.
Duena Blomstrom:It's kind of Yeah, what
Alessandrria Polizzi:exactly. So back to the leader part, right? So one of the things I think people operate from a place of fear is I don't want to stand out or be different in a pejorative negative way from my peers, or I want to be able to fit, culture fit. We talked about that last time. However, so that takes bravery, that takes courage.
Alessandrria Polizzi:And that also, in some ways, takes privilege. If I can afford the risk of losing my job, that enables me to do more and be more brave.
Duena Blomstrom:We have knowledge for our part every time, I hope. That everyone knows we're not claiming everyone else should be as cray cray and as honest as we are. We get
Alessandrria Polizzi:Yes. But let's just put that let's acknowledge that and kind of, think about that as in context. Taking care of yourself is an internal action. Self reflection, self compassion, acceptance. That's internal.
Alessandrria Polizzi:That does not need to be externalized. Right. If you do not feel safe and, that is hugely impactful in how you show up as a leader. Right?
Duena Blomstrom:And that even goes for branding, right? Once you start working on that and on your continuous improvement, it doesn't need to be external. You don't need to immediately get fired because you're out there, but you need to start working on this yourself, right? Like you say, it can be still internal and not putting you in any kind of danger for a while.
Alessandrria Polizzi:But I think we have these mental models of what it means to be a leader. And, you know, that sense of I absolve myself of having emotions. I, am no longer allowed to have feelings. I'm no longer allowed to have needs because now I am a leader. And that's just not real.
Alessandrria Polizzi:That is not there's no switch that we just go click and we turn to, I'm gonna be real nerdy, the Vulcan with no emotions. Right? That's just not real. And so acknowledge so I think, one, we have to raise awareness, which is what people in our secret society are doing. Raise awareness that you are human, not a machine, and you will have feelings.
Alessandrria Polizzi:That would
Duena Blomstrom:be okay. To make a difference.
Alessandrria Polizzi:Just say that, imagine how much different work work would be Yep. If we just change the mindset of, oh, it's not personal. It's business.
Duena Blomstrom:Yes. All of
Alessandrria Polizzi:it. Asks. Yes.
Duena Blomstrom:It's not personal, it's business. This is how we behave around here. I I look. I I completely agree. I and I I know that people are in, like I said, in very different personal situations.
Duena Blomstrom:They're not in a place where we could do it. But if we could do it, if it were okay, if there was a switch tomorrow, if we could have imagine we could have a everyone would be equipped with a lie detector in a meeting. Yeah? And we would then, at the end of it, look to see how many times we've either refrained or blatantly lied. I think we would be surprised.
Duena Blomstrom:The mass psychosis that often happens in some of these organizations that have more human debt than others, this allows us to kind of get out of it at all. A moment clicks in that leadership team where no one is willing to speak up and point, right, at naked and porous, like I say. Because now the norm in this particular group is of no psychological safety, is of no courage, right? So if you start having that norm and you don't attack it at every corner and you don't every time come up with it, and I look, this is not even just leadership. I think starting to live this kind of super authentic, super courageous, this is what I genuinely believe in, I will tell you all the time sort of thing is one empowering and feels good, really.
Duena Blomstrom:And secondly, just useful because you can go on in your professional life, even in your personal life, knowing you're delivering on the same vision and purpose that you've agreed with people on and you can keep for them. I don't- And you have to
Alessandrria Polizzi:be comfortable with rejection. Right? And you have to be comfortable with exactly. No longer being a people pleaser, but more being thoughtful and humane and kind. Right?
Alessandrria Polizzi:Still live your values. Yes.
Duena Blomstrom:I had that. I don't know if our listeners are familiar with it, but you must know about the pack model where this incredible psychologist has come up with an explanation as to, if you wish, what are the roles in communication? And in very simplistic terms, we can be either a child, a parent, or an adult. And I think at work, we often wanna pretend we're adults, but what's happening is everyone lives in this adaptive child phase where they glare at the enterprise and they're disconnected, and there's no one around to be nurturing parent, there's only like this enterprise thing that's going to sanction them, punish them, kick them out, cut something, make them suffer somehow. And there's no one that they can show off for.
Duena Blomstrom:It's a very unpleasant state of communication that we have created in most of our organizations. So I encourage everyone to look a little bit at the PAC model and presume, where am I in this conversation? Am I a child? Am I a parent? Am I an adult?
Duena Blomstrom:And as a leader, I think you always need to show up as a nurturing parent, even if you wanna show up as an adult and say, what the hell is wrong with you? Let's all be grown up. Or even if you wanna show up as an adaptive child, I don't wanna do the thing either. You can't do any of those things. You do need to show up nurturing parent.
Duena Blomstrom:I think maybe that's what that guy was trying to say, but didn't know how to put it. It isn't you can't be human. It isn't you can't feel. It is taking the cue that once you are a nurturing parent or whatever new type of leader that cares about the humans, you're gonna get it in the neck sometimes. They're not gonna like it all the time.
Duena Blomstrom:It's not gonna be easy. But you'll always be honest. You'll always be true. You'll always care about their buts, and you'll always talk to them from the heart. That's all you need to do, I think.
Alessandrria Polizzi:Well, I'm going to add one more thing. And you're always curious. You know, when people ask me, Where do I start? I always say, Start with a question. And don't ask one question, always ask two.
Alessandrria Polizzi:Because if I know I have to ask a second question, that means I have to actually listen to the answer from a first So to a often it's like, how are you? It's interesting how often people ask that in ways that are actually kind of not really appropriate. I can't So as we talked about last time, I'm going through the process of end of life care for my grandmother and she's passed. And so, you know, I have funeral people. How are you?
Alessandrria Polizzi:And I'm like, why are you asking me this question? There's no decent Like, it's just so automatic because we just it's it's almost like, hello. Yeah. But I wanna talk about something actually that you touched on about this parent child adult model. So I work with a couple companies right now who have either had a restructure or are going through a merger.
Alessandrria Polizzi:And they've hired us to help the team build skills and capabilities to navigate that difficult challenge. Right? So we focus on helping people build these skills based on the the the research in neuroscience about what helps us navigate challenges more effectively. Right? So building resiliency, if you wanna call it that.
Alessandrria Polizzi:And it's just interesting because you can look at that two ways. You could say that's the company saying, suck it up. And, here's why you if you feel bad, that there's a gap for you and let's fill that gap. Or how I which is not how I see it, obviously, because, I don't wanna be in that space is, hey, we understand this is difficult. Sometimes difficult decisions have to be made, and we wanna give you skills and capabilities to navigate those more effectively.
Alessandrria Polizzi:That's what the World Health Organization says we should do.
Duena Blomstrom:Right.
Alessandrria Polizzi:Right. But often we find, the mindset of employees is that I have to find someone to blame and it's going to be this generic leadership or, you know, this kind of parent model. So, we have to try to holistically, not just from a leader perspective, but from an employee perspective, start to see the human in everyone, including the people we work with and the people we work for.
Duena Blomstrom:True. I mean, I don't wanna offer advice that's unsolicited. I lie, I do. What I do usually, or what we do at PeopleLotec, when we go into teams that are new and teams that because they've been bought or restarted, is I always start with a with a pitchfest because you can be sure they have a lot on their shoulder. And I feel like until all those chips are on the table, and the Bitchfest is a play we do with teams where in a very structured fashion, we ask them what's on their mind, right?
Duena Blomstrom:If I were CEO, what would I do? If in the last five years, the best thing would have been 2X. One of the things that no one has ever asked you as an employee, in particular in the light of a big change, and what we found is that it just pushes that team through the roof immediately as soon as they've opened up to each other about how they feel about the topic, and they just thought of, then you can have a different right. How old do we, you know, do it? But the fact that it's so rare, if you wish, that any of these big cultural moves and actions exist anywhere, does my head in?
Duena Blomstrom:And I'll tell you what I mean by that. I mean, companies are purchasing other companies every day, every minute, without having checked for one second what kind of people they have in it, and what kind of culture they have in it. None. Ask investors the truth about the culture of due diligence they do, and they'll tell you it doesn't exist. They do none.
Duena Blomstrom:They get the feeling. They talk to the founders for a lunch or two. That's it. Everyone else maybe will deal with it, but they don't, you can't just deal with everyone else. They go in, they function with these people, whatever those people are.
Duena Blomstrom:And in particular, when you're talking about, you know, that gap between a startup and the scale up, right? Anywhere from 50 to 2,000 people, which is where our economies really move, which is where we make all of these things, which is where all the innovation happens. Those are places where you can't recycle the entire, everyone, right? And plus you wouldn't do it even if you want to, no one just comes in and sends everyone away and gets new people in, that doesn't exist, it's only in the movies. So what ends up happening is you do a lot of due diligence financially, you do some due diligence technology wise, not enough, and you do no due diligence on people, you get in, and then those companies, no matter how much pressure you put on transformation, don't end up making it.
Duena Blomstrom:But what happens to these people then, and those companies, right? These are startup guys that have worked their asses off, and now they've been like bought by some unknown entity that kind of it's hard, right? It's a hard time in everyone's life. But those should have been the moments when by default, you'd have an audit of where you are on your human debt, a clear team. Do we all agree on these bloody principles?
Duena Blomstrom:Do we all know why? And this is how we're working. How can it be that that never happens? Why don't we have a team relaunch in every goddamn team everywhere once every three months? It boggles my mind that these big things, the due diligence, checks, every time you have big change, this should happen, that they are not in the vocabulary of business.
Duena Blomstrom:What does that say about people?
Alessandrria Polizzi:Well, actually in 2022, I saw a couple articles that banks like Prudential, Aon, Bank of America were working on a mental health index as part of their due diligence. So in other word, how healthy are the employees? Right? So we look at I was talking to a health and safety person yesterday, and he said, you know, we look at the physical hazards. We're required to have safe workplaces, but we only look at the physical hazards.
Alessandrria Polizzi:We don't look at the psychological hazards. And we have this well documented. We know what those are, just like we know. I mean, we have fire drills. Right?
Alessandrria Polizzi:How many people have actually been in a fire at work? Not many. But we don't look at the right? No problem. Problem.
Duena Blomstrom:What happens when we get restructured? What happens if we get bought over? Let's have a drill. How will you feel if your team changes? What if you start working from the office?
Duena Blomstrom:All of those things. Yeah.
Alessandrria Polizzi:We do crisis aversion, risk assessments, all these things. But one of the things that came out last year as well, looking at people risk, the number one risk at the same level as cyber cyber attacks is mental health. And it was the lowest rated by companies. So highest risk by outside auditors looking at risk, lowest rated, lowest area of focus for companies. Because huge gap.
Duena Blomstrom:That's another topic that we shouldn't touch because we are professional.
Alessandrria Polizzi:Which means what?
Duena Blomstrom:You don't understand. You shouldn't be talking about these personal things at work and you've lost it is why you're talking about it because you have this colorful hair and you don't understand that serious people in business don't talk about these things.
Alessandrria Polizzi:But even don't if want to talk about my personal life, right? I still have feelings.
Duena Blomstrom:I Now, still if you are a real consummate professional and a good leader, you wouldn't.
Alessandrria Polizzi:And you know, the other thing is, so when I started researching about restructures and big, big organizational changes, there's been all these psychological studies about the emotions that humans go through naturally that we never address in our change management plan. We've never addressed how do we handle the guilt and imposter syndrome in post traumatic stress disorder of the survivors of a layoff. Never seen that on a change plan.
Duena Blomstrom:Never seen it addressed with words No one has said, how are you feeling that we left all of your friends die? Yes. A rocket in Guardians of the Galaxy moment and no one asked Rocket if he's okay. But it's the first time I saw Guardians and I have to use it before I forget it. But you know, I don't know if we've landed at all on this mental health thing.
Duena Blomstrom:I feel like we are at the cusp of making, of doing some wrong moves, if you wish, in the workplace on this topic, possibly, who knows? But the more I look into this, you know, my new hyper fixation is this like neuro divergence at work and what has it done for us. And I'm really happy now some people that call it a disability and the fact that we don't yet whatever really utilize what we learn from people that are already non linear in their thinking. That's yeah, it does my head in bulk. While researching this, I found a ridiculous amount of corporate, I don't know, integration of neurodivergence whitewashing, if you wish, with things like, don't give oral instructions to people.
Duena Blomstrom:Look, no, I don't want to give an example because some of these things would have been useful for some of these people. So, a baby of workplace adaptation for these people with inability, right, with this disability. I have a problem with how we put that. I don't want to think that I am someone with a disability who needs to be kind of worked with in a certain fashion, but maybe I am. But shouldn't we all know how we should be worked with?
Duena Blomstrom:I saw a TikTok the other day, we can link it here, a genius one, where a guy was saying, it was him in two different instances, obviously, talking to himself as the employer. So, one instance, he's the new employer, and the new employee is autistic, and the new autistic employee comes in and says, oh, hi, here is a read me about me, and the guy goes like, well, what the hell is this? Don't you have one? No. Well, this just says I would like clear communication.
Duena Blomstrom:I don't like any change of plans, if at all possible, so can you like warn me a lot? And these are just the ways that I feel better as a human being, if at all you could keep an eye on them. And the person says, oh, these are all your preferences? So are you like handicapped or something? No, it's just that this is what I need.
Duena Blomstrom:Okay, fine. I heard you. And then puts the paper down and says, we're not gonna do any of this. We're gonna do my preferences. And the person, the statistic goes, okay, what are those?
Duena Blomstrom:And the employer just stops responding. And that is exactly the point. No one tells you what their bloody preferences are. No one tells you as a neurodivergent person, what is the world expecting out of us. Whereas we are pretty clear what we expect out of the world.
Duena Blomstrom:And I think this is something that needs to be taken in by work. One quick other point before I forget, because I will, is I am not surprised we're so behind on these things, because we are much more behind on bigger things. I'll give you a big example. Everyone that listens to this should be familiar with the name of Ron Westrew, who is probably the biggest mind behind any type of theory of organizational development ever. And if you strip away all of the hundreds of years of research and talks and work he's done, you are left with the three buckets of three types of organization, and they are so true and so intrinsically clear that you have to wonder what the hell is the holdup that not every organization in the world sees this, uses this and acts on this because they are either toxic or bureaucratic or generative.
Duena Blomstrom:There are no other kinds. And if you are toxic and you are bureaucratic, bloody get to generative, it's not that hard. But if this incredible man has said this incredible thing thirty, forty years ago, just like that amazing woman we have psychological safety and management that has been talking about this for twenty years and we don't do anything. What is the bloody holdup? Why do we know all these things and do not translate them to the business world?
Duena Blomstrom:And how much runway do we think we have to keep ignoring them?
Alessandrria Polizzi:I have a question. So what do people lose, especially those in power, when they move to a generative workplace or when they create a psychologically safe workplace? What do they lose?
Duena Blomstrom:Their perception.
Alessandrria Polizzi:In your mind. The perception of power and control. And control. So if I have a psychologically safe workplace, that means people can question my decisions. That means that people will undermine my power, undermine, you know, under and we have such insecurity and imposter syndrome that just winds its way up at the fir and the higher we go, as we know, the more the propensity for those things to become problematic.
Alessandrria Polizzi:Right. And so, it's all about this. It's all, I just say it every time. It's all fear. It's all fear.
Duena Blomstrom:But here's another big one for you. And I will discuss this on our other podcast as well, because we've talked about it all night, last night with Dave on the porch, which is if we want to remove all fear, yeah, from the enterprise, and we absolutely do, we all agree, right? We shouldn't bloody why? Should you have any fear at work? It's an insane theoretical concept.
Duena Blomstrom:Like, you go there to give something of yourself that's a skill, they take it, they use it, goodbye. Like, that transaction should not imply any fear. It's insane.
Alessandrria Polizzi:Hold on before you move off of that. Yeah. Here are the things I hear. I hear one, people will take advantage. Two, people don't like to work.
Alessandrria Polizzi:This belief that people don't like to work, which is kind of BS because bore out is actually more detrimental to us than burnout. So people aren't actually innately lazy. They actually like to work. It's helpful to our mental health. And that you'll get taken advantage of, that it's a waste of money.
Alessandrria Polizzi:I mean, there's this kind of negative bias towards other humans.
Duena Blomstrom:But And we know that. But we think
Alessandrria Polizzi:we can keep that back, right?
Duena Blomstrom:I don't know if we can or we can't, but I think we can We have to arrive to where we get more honest about this. Because if we are going to take fear out of the enterprise, which we said we want, we want, we want, we absolutely do. We want no one to be fearful. But we also agree that fundamentally people do get motivated by either the the the threat of something or the promise of something. That isn't something corporate America has come up with.
Duena Blomstrom:Motivation wise, characteristics do exist. It's the way psychology works. It's not being unpleasant. But if we say, so STIC shouldn't be a work instrument, right? We shouldn't be telling people off, punishing them, that shouldn't be a fear instrument.
Duena Blomstrom:But how much carrot are we leaving people with then? If we only have to power them with pleasure and enjoyment of work, when are we doing that then? Because I think in the same breath in which we say we're removing fear, we have to say, and we're replacing it with people enjoying their work and then being participatory and then being invested and then being so engaged that they would fucking wake up earlier to do it. Then you No, no, it's not me.
Alessandrria Polizzi:Well, we got most of you. But talking about the carrot. Yeah. So I think I think the people Again, the fear is hiding behind the stick. Right?
Alessandrria Polizzi:And that that's a feeling of power and, control. Right.
Duena Blomstrom:And the question is, I don't know if you heard that part, have we replaced it with the the the carrot?
Alessandrria Polizzi:Right. What is the carrot?
Duena Blomstrom:Where's the carrot? Give people enough carrot and they'll work for you overnight when you don't want them to.
Alessandrria Polizzi:And then carrot doesn't have to be money. We always think the carrot is money. The
Duena Blomstrom:carrot It's is not not. And I'm being very honest and I don't know if I should say this because my team is gonna be a bit taken aback, but they know this from me as well. When I do my job as a leader enough and they are motivated enough, I have to keep them from working that hard. Like literally I have to tell them to lay off, not do it now. Tell them priorities are not that high because I can see them really going too hard.
Duena Blomstrom:So I don't people can get the the meaning of of going behind the purpose that you believe in is so heavy that you don't need anything else. So your only job as a leader is to remember what the bloody purpose is, keep getting it out of your humans in a way that means something for them. Easier said than done.
Alessandrria Polizzi:So, okay. So we've covered a lot of ground.
Duena Blomstrom:I don't know what time it is because I can't see my screen. So I have no idea how long it is.
Alessandrria Polizzi:I have no idea how long we've been talking either. That's okay. Oh, thirty minutes. I just want to kind of recap for the secret society folks, right? What are if you were going to say, what are three things that you can get started on today to start this work as a in the ways we've been talking about?
Alessandrria Polizzi:What would those three things be in your mind?
Duena Blomstrom:I would first and foremost sit down with myself with a cup of whatever is your favorite drink and go, what do I genuinely a 100% believe in and can put my weight behind when it comes to my work. Right? What makes me happy? What can I tell other people? When I am clear on that purpose, I don't need to have sticks as a leader and I can then go harder.
Duena Blomstrom:So one, Crystal, clarify your purpose. And if you have none and you just wanna die and you don't wanna be in that company, none of this conversation is useful for you because we're not gonna be able to make people into human work advocates or human dead fighters who just wanna die. Yeah? Let's be clear, if you're one of those super motivated leaders, this is not a conversation for you, I urge you to get out. But if you're in, one, figure out what you're left with purpose wise, passion wise, try and get your people to hear it from you.
Duena Blomstrom:At least tell them, you know what, I spent the afternoon thinking about this and I still believe we can change the world in XY fashion. Go talk to them. That's the number one thing I would say, Joe. And then just strengthen your own brand as we say this over and over again. The the stronger you feel that you have landed on the idea of why you have to be kind and empathic and and get these people along, the further you go.
Duena Blomstrom:Surround yourself with other people. That's what the secret society is for. So you know that others are doing the same things. You're not alone. You're not the only crazy idiot screaming in the woods.
Duena Blomstrom:Those are the three.
Alessandrria Polizzi:I love that. So I would have said many of the same things, of course, because this is why you and I talk to each other. But the first thing is be really clear about your why. And it can't be because I got paid more. If that's your why, which I've heard, yeah, that's gonna be a struggle.
Alessandrria Polizzi:Find your why then. And then two, I think this is kind of like your second, but maybe slightly different, which is be kind to yourself. Forgive yourself for anything you've done in the past that doesn't align with that why. Recognize this is difficult. It's not easy.
Alessandrria Polizzi:And that 70% of leaders are terrible. So your goal is to not be in that group and to, just take care of yourself. You're going to mess up. You're gonna do some things wrong. But be patient and kind to yourself.
Alessandrria Polizzi:Practice that self compassion. Because if you aren't well, you can't take care of your team. And then I agree with you totally, Duana. One of the ways of being self compassionate is to connect with other humans and to find your group, find your tribe, find your community, however you want to think about it. Be that, you know, a best friend at work, be it, you know, people through this secret society, just whatever it is, humans do better when we connect to other humans and we see similar that we aren't alone.
Alessandrria Polizzi:Okay, either I've been through this before and I can do it again, or I've seen other people who've been through this and they've been okay. Like that connection is a way of creating that self compassion. So those would be my three places to start.
Duena Blomstrom:I think that's there are no other places at all than those three. Those are amazing. And honestly, one thing I always remind people about, which is it's trite, and you've heard it a 100 times, but whenever leaders ask me for, what would you use as a motto or as a mantra? I always say start every conversation with a deep breath when you say to yourself, I'm human, they're human. And after you say that, everything would be different.
Alessandrria Polizzi:Love that. Alright. Well, I'm human. You're human. Our listeners are human.
Alessandrria Polizzi:The dog is snoring.
Duena Blomstrom:There's no human. Was squawking. It's not secret. We're good. But we'll see you guys online, and you can hear us next week.
Duena Blomstrom:We'll also start chatting to we have a couple of things we're announcing that will be interesting, I think, to everyone. So we're gonna hear a lot more voices soon.
Alessandrria Polizzi:Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Bye.
Duena Blomstrom:See you soon. Bye.