Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Path Uncut is a podcast for bold leaders, forward-thinkers, and changemakers who are shaping the future of their industries. Hosted by Gregory Ng, this show takes you behind the scenes with trailblazers who are redefining leadership, innovation, and impact. Each episode dives into the experiences, methodologies, and challenges of today’s most inspiring visionaries—uncovering the strategies and mindsets that drive meaningful change.
Transcript
Path Uncut - Bob B_mixdown
00:00:04 - Bob Batchelor
The leaders that I've seen that are successful right now, they're purposely making the transition to a more culture forward perspective. And I applaud them when I see this because especially for people our age, the role models were awful.
00:00:30 - Greg Ng
Welcome to the Path Uncut. I'm Greg Ng and this is the show where we spotlight bold leaders and forward thinkers, trailblazers who are creating meaningful change in their organizations. Each episode we dive deep into the experiences, methodologies and impact of some of today's most inspiring change makers. It's a chance to explore their stories, learn from their successes and challenges, and gain valuable insights to help you drive change in your own own world. Today I'm joined by Bob Batchelor. Bob is a critically acclaimed cultural historian, biographer and the vice president of global marketing and communications at Workplace Options, a Raleigh based company that provides holistic well being services to over 115,000 clients and 83 million members worldwide. Bob has spent his career examining modern culture from comic books and music to to literary figures and history's most fascinating outlaws. But beyond his work as an author and historian, he's also deeply engaged in the corporate world, helping organizations foster environments where employees feel psychologically safe, valued and empowered to bring their full selves to work. All right, Bob Batchelor, great to have you on the show. For the listeners out there, why don't you spend, you know, a couple beats explaining your role at Workplace Options, what you do, and then I want to spend some time specifically talking about something that I care very passionately about and I know that you do too, which is the idea of psychological safety.
00:02:17 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah, Greg, I'm really looking forward to digging into that and I'm happy to be here. So I have kind of a day life by day and by night. So by day I'm the vice president of global marketing and communications at Workplace Options. Workplace Options is probably the most famous company that you've never heard of in America because in the United States we white label our services. So we are a traditional employee assistance program, eap, but really we're a well being company because we go beyond the traditional EAP services. The rest of the world, we're known as WPO or workplace options. So we have about 113,000 clients and 88 million lives under care. So it's a giant global operation. And I like to think that because we focus on mental health that I know pretty much that somewhere in the world every day somebody's really on the edge and they're getting better or getting to health faster by using WPO services.
00:03:24 - Greg Ng
Excellent.
00:03:24 - Bob Batchelor
So we are a company of do gooders by night. I am a cultural historian and biographer and I'm probably best known for the series of Stan Lee biographies I've written. I wrote a true crime book called the Bourbon King that's very popular and I've written about other characters from Bob Dylan and John Updike to a recent book on the Doors and the kind of the death of the 60s. So that's what I do in my free time. Yeah, so I have this day, night kind of thing going on.
00:03:56 - Greg Ng
All that free time.
00:03:57 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:03:59 - Greg Ng
And I imagine with anyone who has wears multiple hats. In my case, you know, I'm a CEO by day and I'm a soccer photographer at night. And shifting those gears is actually quite, not only relaxing but necessary for me to be at the sharp and at the top of my game during the day is to have this outlet at night. And I imagine that's the same for you.
00:04:26 - Bob Batchelor
It is, it is. I almost vehemently need to read before I go to bed to clear my mind. My wife Suzette and I, she's an antique and vintage dealer so we go treasure hunting a lot and I, I'm good at shutting the battery off and it recharges in that process because it's highly brain heavy work that I'm doing in these two, in these two roles. But it's a natural outcropping of my intellectual curiosity. It's what drives me. And so far so good.
00:05:03 - Greg Ng
Excellent. Well, I love that. So thank you for the, for the, the background on wpo. I'm curious as to what is so, so mental health obviously is such a very important. Well, I say obviously, but you know, based on a lot of behavior from a lot of organizations, the actions actually in some cases contradict that. But I believe that mental health is, is such an important thing that leaders need to factor in, take care of, be mindful of, and actually put structure in place to ensure that their teammates are healthy. We, I think take for granted the physical health part of, part of our compensation, if you will, or benefits package. But the mental health component is such an important thing. I'd like to start there. What are you seeing in terms of organizations and how they are prioritizing mental health? How are they, Are there differences? Are there differences country to country, region to region in the world or by category? What types of trends are you seeing?
00:06:18 - Bob Batchelor
Oh, that's a great question because it's always changing. It's very transformational, moment by moment. I should mention that I Also came to WPO by the acquisition of the diversity movement. So I've been working for the last five years in DEI and consulting and these of issues. So I'm not a clinician. I would say that I am an expert in company culture and how you create company culture. So I'm not a clinician, I'm not a psychiatrist or anything like that like some of my teammates. So what we're seeing is that a lot of organizations are trying really hard, but it's difficult to get to their employees because of all the noise in the world. So even the most good natured and do gooder companies are having a hard time cutting through the clutter and so they have to work extra hard. Not only do they need to turn to their resources like their EAPs and, and other things like that, but, but they, they're also having to cut through another layer of noise just because the world is in such chaos all over the world. We did a white paper recently, Oliver Brecht, one of our VPs who is a psychiatrist, he wrote about political transitions all over the world. You know, clearly in the United States this has been difficult for many people.
00:07:49 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:07:49 - Bob Batchelor
But it's the same way all over the world. When you start digging into the numbers, it's something maybe 30% of the world's governments changed hands just in 2024, something like that. So people are really struggling. Leaders are struggling to find answers. There is a large movement to go beyond the traditional check the box kind of HR driven training. There are so many people out there that want to do the right thing and they're still looking for guidance. And I say, still, like you just said earlier, to me it seems so obvious that it should be universal.
00:08:29 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:08:29 - Bob Batchelor
But I forget that, you know, using a baseball analogy, we're, we're not, we're in the first inning.
00:08:36 - Greg Ng
Yes.
00:08:36 - Bob Batchelor
In terms of mental health, we are, we are not in the bottom of the seventh. Like I think those of us who really care feel sometimes right. That, that there's no hope because we're so deep in it. But companies are still struggling and people are still struggling. So I think leaders are looking for answers.
00:08:54 - Greg Ng
Yeah. And I know as a leader myself, there tends to be unfortunately a huge gap between what I wish to do and what I'm able to do. And in some cases that's financially driven, some cases that's the size of the organization. In some cases there are certain things that require a fundamental culture shift for an organization to support from top down or from bottom up. And that's Hard. It's hard when it's in addition to the work that the organization is doing for their customers or their clients or their partners. So let's take a step back and actually define. I'd like to understand from your perspective or WPO's perspective, how do you define the idea of psychological safety?
00:09:51 - Bob Batchelor
I think psychological safety, when you look at it, it's essentially having the safety to express an opinion at work, an opinion that may be against the grain, without retribution. I think that's the most basic. When I look at it, I think about a culture of trust. So when you build a culture that's based on trust, psychological safety is one of the factors. But the trust is the really important factor. And so that's how I think about it. It's. There are plenty of definitions out there that, you know really long and. And deep, but I think it's essentially safety to speak up.
00:10:35 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:10:35 - Bob Batchelor
Without retribution.
00:10:36 - Greg Ng
Retribution.
00:10:37 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah.
00:10:38 - Greg Ng
Yeah. And I. I had a great example of this happen to me yesterday. One of the things that is a challenge of being a CEO is you rarely get feedback. I think that's part of one of the things that is almost the scary thing. When you see things like glass doors, something like that, you see feedback only then. Right. You see only the bad. Only the bad. Right. Because, let's face it, rarely are people motivated to go out of their way to say the good. But I was given a gift yesterday, and not only was it a gift because of the content, but it was a gift because it reinforced that hopefully we at our organization are doing the right things to create a psychologically safe environment. I had members of my team bring up deliberately with me in a private setting that there was misalignment and confusion over some of the things that I have said in terms of what expectations are or direction. And at first, always those things sting. But it was a tremendous gift for me not only to know those answers so that we could address real issues, but, wow, it sure did make me feel good that they felt comfortable actually telling me. To me, that is also a great example of an environment that at least anecdotally, it feels like maybe there is some safety. But how does one ensure that everyone within that organization feels that way? It's one thing if my direct reports, who are also VPs, have the confidence and empowerment to. To bring those up to me. How do I ensure that every person within my organization feels that, yeah, that's.
00:12:37 - Bob Batchelor
It is a gift that. That your team feels comfortable enough with you to speak, like, openly and frankly. I used to think that you could just role model behaviors and that people would pick up on it. And before I jumped back into the corporate world, I was a professor for 16 years. I taught and I used to think all the time early in my teaching career that if I just role model, the students will pick it up, particularly around critical thinking. If I just start asking critical thinking based questions, they'll start, it doesn't work that way. And what I've realized being in the corporate world, back in the corporate world, is that you have to just message and message and message. So for my team, which is a couple dozen people around the world, I tell them this is a safe space. I am an inclusive leader and I fervently believe in being an inclusive leader. And probably the number one tenet of being an inclusive leader is that you're not perfect. You have to accept and be self aware enough that you're going to make mistakes. There are certain things ingrained in people based on their generation, where they were raised, their family beliefs, their religious beliefs that are going to compete and contrast with others. So as an inclusive leader, I know that I'm going to make mistakes. But I want my team to be open and bring me, you know, what's really on their minds. And I think as you go throughout an organization, the leaders have to speak about this way more than they think they do. And it's, it's like on social media and it's, and it's like messaging. People's mental map is that if you say something that everybody's listening and everybody's paying attention and that they're seeing that message over and over and over again. But it's really like being on a road you've rarely been on and seeing a billboard.
00:14:46 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:14:47 - Bob Batchelor
Who's on that road in that moment?
00:14:49 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:14:50 - Bob Batchelor
These, you can look at somebody with 50,000 followers on LinkedIn or 100,000 followers on Instagram, they'll have posts that both 300 people see and potentially a million people will see. They're not all the same people because the algorithm sends people off on crazy directions. So it's like that with internal communications. Leaders think, well, I just talked about that last week in a town hall. It's not enough, right? It's got to, it's got to be repetitive. What I like to think as well, and I do believe this, most leaders, especially in the C suite, are successful, highly successful. They're self motivated, they're, you don't have to push them to learn new things. They're different levels of competitive. But Somewhat competitive, I would say, in general. So in that self awareness of repeating the message to your people at all levels, you're then going to be thinking about that message yourself in your quiet moments, in your self aware times, in your lifelong learning moments. And it's going to help you because there aren't classes on this.
00:16:04 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:16:05 - Bob Batchelor
And so the confluence of contextual factors is immense. And so I think one of my colleagues, week or so ago joking with me, said, you know, you're the CEO whisperer. And I laughed about that. I don't know if it's necessarily true, but I have a long history of working with like I'm their behind the scenes person.
00:16:32 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:16:32 - Bob Batchelor
And so and often their ghostwriter. When you ghostwrite for somebody, you're literally inside their head.
00:16:39 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:16:39 - Bob Batchelor
And over time you begin to, to predict and understand how they think, what they're going to say. So if I could give a blanket statement to the CEOs and the future CEOs out there listening, it's that your message is not going to land once you could give the best speech in the world. It could be shown a million times on YouTube. There are still 314 million other Americans, for example, that have not heard or seen or don't know you. So that messaging of psychological safety, it has to not only be role modeled, role modeling is still important, but it's got to be repeated.
00:17:21 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:17:21 - Bob Batchelor
It's a noisy world. I mean think about how much Coke has spent on advertising in the last hundred years and there's still some 13 year old out there who's gonna try a Coke for the first time right now.
00:17:35 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:17:35 - Bob Batchelor
You know, so that's the kind of the internal messaging hat that I put on.
00:17:41 - Greg Ng
You know, I was just a, I'm a big baseball fan. I was just having this conversation with someone that I took to a game just last summer, last season, where with that example of Coke, is that every single stadium that I've ever attended in my entire life, professional sports, has a sponsorship by Coke. And the person I was with, not in the marketing field, on completely different industry and said why is that worth money to keep on spending? I know what Coke is. Everyone knows what Coke is. And that is a great example. Yes. But a young kid maybe doesn't know that or someone who just isn't exposed to that world or maybe it's just a very great reminder that how it feels and how it tastes and things like that. Especially because I over romanticize baseball. I'm one of those dying breeds. So the question that I do have, though, is for leaders who need to. I understand the modeling the behavior and I understand proclaiming it. How does one reconcile the idea that if I speak up and give feedback or an idea to someone who is on my team, that sure may model some transparency and model some safety. But how do you then ensure, like I get feedback quite often, but rarely publicly. What are ways that I can do to then take those opportunities like the one that I had yesterday, just as recently as yesterday is, my plan is to actually tell the whole company, hey, I received this feedback and this is what, what I think we should do about it. How, how do leaders, what are other ways that leaders can, you know, actually take that? Because it's easy for me to model it. I'm the, I'm the, the boss. But, but I really want, at all levels, in all strata, I want, I, I want that to be modeled. Yeah, right.
00:20:01 - Bob Batchelor
Yep. That's a great question. And so I wrote this book. The last book I actually wrote was this book called the Authentic Leader. Because there were two reasons. One I already alluded to. I've had a long career. People watching this will see my hair is quite gray. I've had a long career standing alongside. Luckily, early in my career, I was brought into places where C suite leaders were and other kinds of leaders. So a long time beside and working with C suite. The second thing is I wrote this book because a lot of marketing leaders and communications leaders don't write leadership books. And I think that's a hole in the marketplace. So I wrote this book, how somebody becomes an authentic leader. Again, because schools aren't teaching this if you're older like me or even a millennial coming up, you haven't been taught how to be an authentic leader or what makes up an authentic leader. So I think that when you are trying to reach out, trying to reach out across divisions which are natural because of power structures within companies, there's always power. So first of all, you have to be self aware enough as a leader to understand there are always power structures, for sure, even in every relationship. So if you get deep into communications theory, you're going to run into power because power is always there. It's there with your significant other, it's there with you and your kids. Everybody, everybody, everybody you meet, there's a power structure. The other thing that I really tried to accentuate in the authentic leader is the power of storytelling. So here's what I would do if I were you. I would think a lot about how that feedback happened, why, how it made you Feel. And I would actively create a narrative around that. Because people don't remember slogans unless you hit them 50 million times over the head.
00:22:12 - Greg Ng
Yes.
00:22:12 - Bob Batchelor
But they remember stories.
00:22:14 - Greg Ng
Yes, of course.
00:22:15 - Bob Batchelor
And when they're sitting at their desk someday, when they're debating about whether to bring something to you that they see that's a challenge, they're going to remember the story far more than they're going to remember anything else. You know, you can have those successory posters up that used to be so popular.
00:22:32 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:22:33 - Bob Batchelor
You could have a million of those.
00:22:35 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:22:35 - Bob Batchelor
The cat dangling.
00:22:37 - Greg Ng
Hang in there.
00:22:37 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah, hang in there. A better day is around the corner. Whatever.
00:22:41 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:22:42 - Bob Batchelor
But if you tell a story. Yeah, that's gold.
00:22:45 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:22:46 - Bob Batchelor
And so not enough C suite executives actively engage with that storytelling power.
00:22:54 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:22:54 - Bob Batchelor
And, you know, earlier we mentioned things that are in your DNA. Storytelling is in our DNA. We. We are hardwired. If you go back to the beginning of humans as humans, storytelling is part of that evolution. It's the first thing that we want to know when we meet somebody new. If they don't tell us, we ask them questions designed to get that information from them, because then we want to place them in a mental box. Oh, Greg. I know somebody like Greg. Greg's like my friend from college who I really liked. Okay. So now I understand. Greg.
00:23:27 - Greg Ng
Start to sort and compartmentalize.
00:23:29 - Bob Batchelor
Right. Because we are all inundated with noise and things and social media, so we're. We have to do these kind of things to make sense. So I would rely on my storytelling skills and bring that to as many people as you can.
00:23:45 - Greg Ng
So let me take that one step further, as now I will ask you, without any context, to be my. The CEO whisperer for me is I understood the feedback, and I know that I don't know the answer yet. And I have no problem telling people that. Should I wait until I know the answer? No, I should say I don't know the answer and I will get back to you. And then that gives me another opportunity. Right.
00:24:15 - Bob Batchelor
And maybe somebody you never realized might have the answer. Right. You'll be like, somebody raises their hand or comes to see you next week or a week later. They.
00:24:27 - Greg Ng
They have.
00:24:27 - Bob Batchelor
Maybe they don't have the whole answer. Maybe they just have a nice part of the answer that you're. You can then combine with your thing and then suddenly that's good. That's good creative context and good creative thinking and innovation because people are willing to reach up as you're reaching in and you're meeting somewhere in the middle and there's more power in diversity of perspectives.
00:24:51 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:24:52 - Bob Batchelor
And it's probably the single fund, and this is off topic, but it's probably the single fundamental challenge of DEI and diversity being turned negative by political situations. Because diversity of perspective is for everybody.
00:25:13 - Greg Ng
Yes.
00:25:13 - Bob Batchelor
We all belong.
00:25:14 - Greg Ng
Yes.
00:25:15 - Bob Batchelor
And we all have a fair say.
00:25:17 - Greg Ng
Yes.
00:25:18 - Bob Batchelor
That's what's interesting about it. It's fairness. And there's nothing more American in our culture.
00:25:25 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:25:25 - Bob Batchelor
Than fair.
00:25:26 - Greg Ng
That's right.
00:25:27 - Bob Batchelor
You treat me fair, I'll treat you fair. What everybody says is, I like that person because they've got my back. And what they mean when they say that is that person's treated me fair and I treated them fair. And we will continue to do that because we understand one another.
00:25:43 - Greg Ng
Yes.
00:25:43 - Bob Batchelor
So DEI has somehow separated people, but fairness is our rallying point.
00:25:49 - Greg Ng
Yeah. So, yeah.
00:25:51 - Bob Batchelor
You know, I sound like a slogan machine here. I'm not really a slogan machine in my day to day.
00:25:56 - Greg Ng
Right. You can be.
00:25:58 - Bob Batchelor
I do think a lot about culture and power and how people hear and accept messages when they do not accept messages. Um, because, you know, power. Korn Ferry released a study a couple weeks ago and they basically said all this stuff is who, who, who. It's just really all down to pay. And that's another thing. We, we cover that up. You know, there are transparency laws that people. But if you look at job ads and you see the range for this job is 46,000 to 346,000. Come on. So it's like what people basically need, you know?
00:26:38 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:26:39 - Bob Batchelor
There are different. There are different points that you're going to plug into with people. So psychological safety is going to be a point and you're going to get them through storytelling.
00:26:51 - Greg Ng
Yeah. And I think that why I'm fascinated by. By this. Well, one is that my approach to psychological safety within our own organization is that that is not something that can just be checked off as done.
00:27:05 - Bob Batchelor
Right.
00:27:06 - Greg Ng
Who I am as, as a, as a human, how, who my team is, what the world is, what the world isn't. How we interact with the world is constantly changing. But we do build a framework of understanding. And I talked about this in an earlier episode, that for us it is about true north is transparency and empathy. Those are the two things that can get us through, in theory, everything. It can create safe places to make mistakes because there is some guiding principle for us. Right. It is hard to continue to ensure that these things happen, but it's worth it. When we work with organizations, we almost always focus primarily on how do teams interact with each other, how do they collaborate? And how does that efficiency of collaboration lead to real, true innovation? Right.
00:28:18 - Bob Batchelor
Yep.
00:28:19 - Greg Ng
That has to come from a diversity of thought.
00:28:21 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah.
00:28:22 - Greg Ng
Why do you think organizations fall into the trap or don't invest in those types of things? Because any CEO, any investor, any board member, any human will say, yeah, that sounds great. So why do you think that organizations don't. Don't do that?
00:28:42 - Bob Batchelor
I think you touched on it. It's just simply hard work.
00:28:46 - Greg Ng
Sure.
00:28:47 - Bob Batchelor
And it's hard work. In an environment in which everybody thinks they're busy 24 hours a day. The pressure is relentless. I don't think. I honestly don't think anybody does what would traditionally have been called a single person's work.
00:29:04 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:29:05 - Bob Batchelor
20 or 30 or more.
00:29:06 - Greg Ng
We've all taken on an extra 20%.
00:29:08 - Bob Batchelor
Yes.
00:29:09 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:29:10 - Bob Batchelor
And so how do you then carve out time and mind space to set a tone in a culture? Because I think it's been proven that you can't just. This isn't a challenge that you can just dump money on. You need to approach it from a variety of points. So there should be. There should be some basic training. Now, whether that's face to face or hybrid or totally online, whatever that is, there does need to be level setting at the same time. You can't have the C suite bailing out.
00:29:46 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:29:47 - Bob Batchelor
Which often happens.
00:29:48 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:29:48 - Bob Batchelor
Because their excuses, I'm way too busy for this.
00:29:51 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:29:51 - Bob Batchelor
And. But then people find out. See, that's the other thing. There are no secrets.
00:29:55 - Greg Ng
Yeah. Right.
00:29:56 - Bob Batchelor
So if you're really going to put money into the effort of creating a culture, then the people who are looking up have to see that the people above them are doing the same thing.
00:30:07 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:30:07 - Bob Batchelor
So if. And then you all have a common vernacular. So there's power in that. So I think that a good program comes at the issue with understanding and respecting that there's a power structure and understanding and respecting that. You have to. You can't just go in at one place.
00:30:27 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:30:28 - Bob Batchelor
It's got to be multiple touch points and then there has to be assessment and then you figure out the next step. There has to be a baseline, there has to be assessment. You come in, you coach, you train and you figure out. And to some people that sounds like, oh, okay, so that's a great process. I can understand that. To other people, they're like, oh my gosh, that's going to be so much money, it's going to be a headache. How am I going to schedule this? What are my people going to do?
00:30:58 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:30:59 - Bob Batchelor
Those people are not willing to accept that it's hard work, that you can't just throw money.
00:31:04 - Greg Ng
And is it fair to say that it's hard work because it really needs a hundred percent for it to actually be realized.
00:31:15 - Bob Batchelor
A hundred percent. And the One thing that CEOs often believe but don't want to admit publicly is they can't control individuals and their thinking.
00:31:30 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:31:31 - Bob Batchelor
They would like to.
00:31:32 - Greg Ng
Sure.
00:31:33 - Bob Batchelor
You would love to be able to.
00:31:34 - Greg Ng
Yeah. That's what robots are for. Yeah.
00:31:37 - Bob Batchelor
Look at a person, identify their seven great traits.
00:31:40 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:31:40 - Bob Batchelor
Eliminate the two that are bad.
00:31:42 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:31:42 - Bob Batchelor
Put them into action. But people are complex animals. It's very difficult and ever evolving animals. Yeah, yeah. When I talk to. So a colleague and I, Kurt Meriwether, who's a just a brilliant guy, Stanford mba, he's a longtime executive at the diversity movement now at wpo, we both have teenage kids and we're talking about that today. Just about how different it is. We're both Gen Xers when we were their age versus what they're experiencing.
00:32:15 - Greg Ng
I'm the same, by the way. Gen Xer and teenage kids.
00:32:18 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah. So you know. You know too.
00:32:19 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:32:19 - Bob Batchelor
When you think back on your experience then and what they will experience when they enter their first job.
00:32:25 - Greg Ng
Oh yes.
00:32:26 - Bob Batchelor
100 for sure. Not even. It's not even on the same planet versus what we experienced. So it's hard work. Nobody's not. Nobody. Few people are teaching this well. It can be very expensive. It definitely takes some eye off whatever the organization exists to do.
00:32:49 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:32:49 - Bob Batchelor
Because you're trying to build up human beings so that they're better at the thing. And you don't know that it's going to work. You put a dollar into this program, you don't know that you're going to get a $50 or $3 out.
00:33:03 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:33:03 - Bob Batchelor
So it's complex. But I think in the long run it's the right thing to do. And there's enough studies to prove out that it's the right thing to do. You just can't expect it to be fast. I'll give you an example. When I first went to work at the diversity movement with Don Thompson, one of your early guests and somebody that a lot of people know around the, around the country, thought leader in diversity, ey, Entrepreneur of the Year, you know, heralded guy, he and I got along and we could do our job well, but I wasn't giving him what he needed as a counselor because I didn't trust him. And so we over time we dug into this. He Would say, bob, you can trust me. I want you to tell me the truth. Because he basically hired me for my brain.
00:34:04 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:34:05 - Bob Batchelor
I didn't trust him because I'm a Gen Xer and I got my butt handed to me the last time you told the truth through my entire early career where you sat on your hands, held your tongue and, and waited that someday maybe you'll be in a position and maybe you'll change it. So the Gen X we were, put a, put a damper on our creativity, et cetera. He and I work through it and just the other day we were talking about this, now it's four years later. And he said, you know what I learned about that as CEO? I said, no, I never thought about. He's like, I had to look at this as what. What was I doing wrong that you as one of my chief lieutenants didn't trust me?
00:34:51 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:34:52 - Bob Batchelor
And I was, that's that's some self awareness.
00:34:57 - Greg Ng
But not everyone is self aware.
00:34:58 - Bob Batchelor
Exactly.
00:34:59 - Greg Ng
Or, or even if they are willing.
00:35:02 - Bob Batchelor
Yes.
00:35:02 - Greg Ng
To do the work. Right.
00:35:05 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah.
00:35:05 - Greg Ng
Because basically what Donald had to do is overcome all of the baggage and scar tissue that you went through earlier in your career and that even that even starting in a level playing field, that's hard. But to overcome that. I guess the question that I would have is, as a Gen Xer myself, will this naturally evolve and be easier as you know, baby boomers are out of power and Gen Xers and millennials and Gen Zers and start to rise up. I mean, there is a, there is a distinct difference in terms of how my oldest is just about to join the workforce. She's a senior, she graduated in a couple months in college. And there's a distinct difference in what she does for her own mental health that I would, even if I was mindful of it, would not have ever felt I was in a safe enough environment to be able to do when I was her age.
00:36:13 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah.
00:36:14 - Greg Ng
Will this evolve and shift just naturally and we just have to kind of like fight the fight until, until it hits critical mass?
00:36:23 - Bob Batchelor
I think, I think the optimists, the optimist in us would say definitely yes.
00:36:27 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:36:28 - Bob Batchelor
And that's why I think it's important. I tell people all the time, if you want to see the sea change that's on the horizon, talk to some teenagers.
00:36:37 - Greg Ng
Yes.
00:36:38 - Bob Batchelor
I don't know what's going to happen to Gen X because we're probably going to get overlooked again. I've already seen it.
00:36:44 - Greg Ng
That's the story of our.
00:36:45 - Bob Batchelor
You. The. When I started seeing 40 year olds crying on LinkedIn about ageism. Yeah, I knew, like, this is really a problem.
00:36:52 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:36:53 - Bob Batchelor
Like, are we just going to get shunted aside again? But that's a different, that's a different.
00:36:57 - Greg Ng
Book, by the way.
00:36:57 - Bob Batchelor
That's a different episode. Another reason that I wrote the Authentic Leader is to point this out. Like being a historian, being somebody on the front line of culture at a large organization, and talking to a lot of people around the country, it does give me some insight. And what I'm trying to say is, hey, leader, the times that they are changing around you in a way that you're going to get left behind.
00:37:29 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:37:29 - Bob Batchelor
If you don't at least attempt to do it and you're not going to get it on your own, you're not going to take some class, you're not going to get a certification and all of a sudden have these traits where psychological safety is something you think of each day.
00:37:51 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:37:52 - Bob Batchelor
And. But the kids, they're coming.
00:37:56 - Greg Ng
They're coming whether you like it or not.
00:37:58 - Bob Batchelor
You can't treat them the way you were treated.
00:38:01 - Greg Ng
You know, I love that you brought that up. I have been extra mindful in the last couple years in particular. Part of that is I'm about to be an empty nester. That's, that's affecting me in a, in a big way. I've turned 50 this year. I've just, you know, it's for all those things, you know, everything that comes with midlife and things like that. But I've been very mindful about the feelings that I have around how successful of a father am I, not because I have any. I have a great relationship with my parents. I'm not trying to make up or worry about generational baggage and things like that. But I will tell you, as soon as I made that decision to be very transparent and humble and raw with my children, I feel that our relationship is even stronger because they understand that I understand I can't be perfect. I make mistakes. I'm trying the best I can. These are the things that I understand and I agree with to my core. And I don't think I will ever change. And maybe that's wrong in your eyes, but it's right in mine. All of those decisions that you do. And I try to apply that also with my team. And that's just a great example for me. It's been a great personal story for me to understand that it is okay. They don't view me as not being their, you know, the authority, their father figure, just because I say I don't know the answer to this. Right?
00:39:38 - Bob Batchelor
Yep.
00:39:39 - Greg Ng
And I think that that is a great way also to model with other leaders. But ego is always plays such a huge role. Right. I'm your boss. Maybe I need to know more. Maybe I can't make a mistake because you'll blame me. Maybe I'm stressed out about your, your job security, let alone my own. All those things. There's a lot of talking about the brain. Right. There's a lot of those emotion that will get into actual real change. Yeah, right.
00:40:05 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah. And the first step to self awareness is thinking really hard and long about how self aware you are or are not. And the leaders that I've seen that are successful right now, they're purposely making the transition to a more culture, forward perspective. And I applaud them when, when I see this because especially for people our age, the role models were awful. Like it was somewhere between Jack Welch and Gordon Gekko, you know, and.
00:40:39 - Greg Ng
Exactly.
00:40:40 - Bob Batchelor
Okay, so one guy was a real life. Jack Welch was real life and allegedly not evil, but actually very evil. And Gordon Gekko, who a whole lot of people rooted for, who was the villain movie.
00:40:53 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:40:54 - Bob Batchelor
Idolized back then, started wearing the same clothes, slicking their hair back, the whole, all the crazy, all the silly BS that goes along with that. So it takes, it takes some real work to make these changes. And at wpo, what we try to back this up with is data. And so before, before we started recording, we were, I was telling you about the WPO Psychological Safety Study.
00:41:24 - Greg Ng
Yeah, tell me what? To tell me what, what you've learned from that study. Because I think it's very interesting one that an organization will take the time and effort and investment to conduct the study. But, but I know that WPO also has all of the kind of services around how to then, you know, take that in action, Move it to action.
00:41:46 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah. Do something with it. Last year, we decided that we were going to make a real stand about helping organizations understand the barriers to psychological safety. So whereas most companies survey, which, you know, they ask a whole lot of people a whole lot of questions, a lot of it is opinion. It comes down to opinion. How do you feel in that moment? How are you feeling that day that you fill out the survey? What we benefit from is having clinicians all over the world. So we put out this thing we called the Psychological Safety Study, drawing the workplace symptoms that people called in and said, hey, I'm having this problem at work, or they're having a problem. And it turned out to be A work thing. And the clinicians are taking notes and they're, they're making checks in certain boxes and we gather all that information from all over the world and we decide we're going to release this for free. So what we looked at, I'll give you some examples. So we look at all the cases that we have in Australia and we start analyzing the data and we pull out the top three barriers. So it turns out that the top three barriers are lack of recognition, work life challenges, usually around work life balance and job performance. If you contrast that to say, somewhere like India, not that far from Australia in the broad picture, you think, okay, so maybe their symptoms are about the same. Not the same at all. Their symptoms, number one is conflict with manager in India, job performance, which is the second one, and work life balance. So their work life and job performance flip flop in second and third. But the reason that we did this is we wanted leaders to have some added insight into if you are running a company and you have people in India and you have people in Australia or you have people in, you know, multiple locations, you can't do one thing for everybody and expect it to work.
00:44:10 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:44:10 - Bob Batchelor
And yes, Workplace Options has a lot of the answers. Or we think that we have programs that will at least help you move the needle in the right direction. But as a Do Gooder organization, our CEO, Alan King, psychological safety is his number one priority. It's his number one theme. He, he talks about it all the time, does the things that, that we've outlined. And it was his initiative to release this information that a lot of companies would have kept very close to their heart.
00:44:43 - Greg Ng
Yes, absolutely.
00:44:44 - Bob Batchelor
So what we're doing this year and by the end of the month this will be out. So I'll give you the, the links that you can put in the show notes or whatever. Yeah, we've extended it to 18 countries and releasing the same type of information many more, many more countries, doubling up on the size. And what we're doing right now is analyzing the data. We've been doing this for a couple months and we're going to try to create some systems and some processes that organizations and leaders can use to break these barriers or move past them. Because if you what, what I know from looking at the data around the world is that stress and burnout are the two biggest problems in the world. Right. Number three is probably family relationships, which is not surprising, you know, as we both have kids in that age every day, family problems. And it's not just your kids, it's, it's caregiving for older, older people. It's all different types of family relationships. You can pretty much know that anywhere in the world those, those three things are going to be the top three most likely. So it tells you certain things. You should be looking out for your employees mental health so that they can get their family situation Right.
00:46:00 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:46:01 - Bob Batchelor
But it does much less to try to put a broad stroke on what's actually happening in the workplace. And so we're hoping that this information, that people actually use it because it's not based on survey. This is like the real thing. It's not, you know, our base. So it's not asking a bunch of guys who faced a pitcher, how do you feel about facing that pitcher? It's you're actually getting in the box and seeing the pitch coming at you and see what happens.
00:46:28 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:46:29 - Bob Batchelor
So we're excited about that. And I think data is probably, I'm not naturally a data person, but I know enough to be dangerous and, and so I don't naturally, I naturally gravitate towards storytelling, but I've tried over the last couple of years to talk more about the data because not only is data the love language of the C suite, but it's important to back up the story and, and add the context. So I think that's the only part that, that, that I had not brought out in this discussion that we've had today. So I'm glad that was able to talk about this a little bit.
00:47:12 - Greg Ng
Yeah, of course. Yeah. It's interesting to. Yeah. Obviously C suite needs the data, but they remember the story.
00:47:22 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah, right. Yeah.
00:47:23 - Greg Ng
But then when they're asked to justify the reason for it, they'll recite the story and then be asked for the data. Right. So like, so those obviously are intertwined. I think the thing that makes me sad, I'm not even sure if sad's the right word, but it's the first word that came to mind is that one on one, I believe that anyone in the world that you have this conversation with that you explain what you're trying to create within your work environment, I'd be hard pressed to find anyone that would say, yeah, I'm not, not interested. How does though that we, how do you bridge that gap? I know that it's hard work. I know that it, there's, there's dollars associated to, to creating that change. Who should take within an organization. I understand you will need an endorsement of the CEO to prioritize that. And maybe not every CEO even is aware. Self aware.
00:48:31 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah.
00:48:31 - Greg Ng
To know that it needs to be done or should be done. But if you ask them one on one, I bet that they would say, yeah, that sounds great.
00:48:37 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah.
00:48:38 - Greg Ng
Who though? Who within the organization is the best person, the, the one, you know, best positioned to get that ball rolling? It. Does it have to be the CEO or just endorsed by the CEO? I guess that's the point. Is it an HR function?
00:48:54 - Bob Batchelor
Is it a. I think, I think that it has to be authentically endorsed by the CEO to really move the needle. It's not like, you know, you're going to install a, you know, install a gym in your building and the CEO has got to be seen down there working out. You know, it's not like that. I don't think it's. It's that cause and effect, but I think that it. To move the needle, the CEO has to be cognizant, has to be committed to, to, to make something like that work, especially if it's something new. But I think what we see is that it's the chief, HR Chief People officer that actually gets tasked with running whatever the program is. And even then, historically, the chief people officer, chief HR officer, they're not given as much power within the C suite structure. And so there's all that kind of baggage. It's amazing when you start to think about what the challenges to progress are.
00:50:00 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:50:01 - Bob Batchelor
So much of it is things that are hap. That happened 40 years ago, 50 years ago, or just the evolution of a thing.
00:50:08 - Greg Ng
That's right.
00:50:09 - Bob Batchelor
That puts a boundary up today. And does it diminish? I don't know. I think about this a lot and I wish I had just an easy answer for you, but.
00:50:18 - Greg Ng
Oh, no. It's a complicated question.
00:50:20 - Bob Batchelor
It's a very difficult, difficult because you need champions. What I think is going to happen eventually is that companies are going to understand that the people employees trust the most is the person sitting next to them, the person they're on conference calls with. And it's almost like an ambassador program. That's. I think it's got to be word of mouth more than top down. And I think that's maybe where we're headed. Yeah, but we're not there yet.
00:51:00 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:51:01 - Bob Batchelor
I think actually I shouldn't give this away because I've been thinking about this. I think this. I think the entire. Our entire ecosystem is moving this way. So if you look at, uh. So probably I'll. I'll just guess I'll tell you a scenario. You tell me if you agree. Four or five years ago you were watching cable Channels, different shows, movies, things like that. Your, your kids were, they didn't ever watch that kind of TV. They're only watching YouTube.
00:51:35 - Greg Ng
That's right.
00:51:35 - Bob Batchelor
And you were wondering what the hell are they doing?
00:51:38 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:51:38 - Bob Batchelor
Why aren't you watching tv? You know, it's all we did when we were growing up.
00:51:41 - Greg Ng
That's right.
00:51:42 - Bob Batchelor
Well, now most people our age are now watching YouTube and doing the same thing. Cutting the cable, all that. What everybody wants is a highly personalized experience. Everything has to be about my experience. So for programming, I think that's gonna, I think it's gonna be the wave that takes. That's the next wave to me.
00:52:05 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:52:05 - Bob Batchelor
It's gonna be personalized advertising down to the person. It's going to be video that is personalized to me that the company sends out and says, hey, Bob, you know you're supposed to sign up for your benefits next Thursday. Did you realize that we have this new training that's going to make you, blah, blah, happier and smarter and faster, whatever, that kind of thing. So I think ultimately we're moving to a place where intense personalization and people who, who become champions, ambassadors who are then pulling their, you know, now how's that going to work remotely? I'm not sure. But we, I think we're advanced enough that we can reward or incentivize people we don't see often either. Hybrid remote to do the same kind of things and get involved and who knows where the technology is taking us. So it might be like my AI agent is going to go out and recruit everybody else's AI agent to do. Yeah. And they're going to set up a little play date for us.
00:53:14 - Greg Ng
Right.
00:53:15 - Bob Batchelor
Without us having to know it. And we're just going to show up and it's going to be great. And, and we're going to have great conversations about psychological safety. I don't know.
00:53:23 - Greg Ng
Right. And our grandkids won't. Won't think twice about it.
00:53:25 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah.
00:53:26 - Greg Ng
Yeah. I mean, I think that a lot of executive leaders, we grew up in the, in this environment where you specialize, you're compartmentalized and that's your single track. Right. Let's say you're marketing. Right. Okay. I'm going to start as a marketing coordinator and then I'll be a manager and then a director and then eventually cmo. Right, Eventually. And yet there is this hierarchy within the C suite of chief people, officer, chief, HR or whatever that is not at the same level as CTO or CMO or chief digital officer. And I actually consider myself A chief people officer, that's the most important role that I have is to not only identify the right people, but inspire those people to do the things that affect our collective good. And in some cases that's real money metrics like revenue. In other cases it's harmony and fulfillment and being valued as humans and do all those things. And I constantly feel like when I talk about those things and I feel, honestly I feel like why not? That's exactly what I should be doing. I still feel like there's a percentage out there that is like, what are you doing?
00:54:51 - Bob Batchelor
Yep.
00:54:52 - Greg Ng
What do you mean? Or, or if you weren't doing that, would you be 10x in profit?
00:55:01 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah.
00:55:02 - Greg Ng
And so it does sometimes feel like swimming upstream. And I see that we are retaining great talent that are at younger generations because they're actually understanding that other organizations aren't operating in those ways. I think we're in the middle of that change.
00:55:22 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah, yeah.
00:55:23 - Greg Ng
And I think again, Gen Xers, we always get, you know, we always get overlooked. But I think we're the ones doing the hard work.
00:55:30 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah, we are.
00:55:31 - Greg Ng
Right, of course. But we have to do the hard work so that it continues that progress because we see and you know, in the world right now a lot of what I call old school thinking and old school decisioning and old school tactics that are running this country. And I think that there's some risk there. Right. So if someone is listening to this and they are a manager of people or a leader of an organization, doesn't even have to be a for profit company, any type of organization. How would you recommend they frame their, their brain around how, how do we give them the confidence to either change or, or be more mindful of, of a different way of thinking or how would you get them started? What is, what are those like first steps to kind of towards the path? We know it's not a flip the switch. We know it's hard work. We know you're going to make mistakes. But what would you recommend to them?
00:56:30 - Bob Batchelor
Wow, that's a, it's a tall order.
00:56:32 - Greg Ng
Yeah. I just think like three minutes.
00:56:34 - Bob Batchelor
No, no, no. It's, it's just, it's just so difficult. Like where to start the journey.
00:56:38 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:56:39 - Bob Batchelor
It would have to be in your own backyard.
00:56:44 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:56:44 - Bob Batchelor
You know, assess your own organization and try to understand what messages are being delivered in what way. There are the, the actual messages that are being sloganized and out there sloganeered and then there are always behind the scene messages and you have to be aware that these, both, these kind of messages exist. And I would look for ways to improve incrementally first in your own organization and then I think the other part of it is diving in deep reading, you know, from Harvard Business Review, through websites, blogs, books, listening to podcasts. I mean, it's amazing, you know, you and I can attest to how much you can learn listening to podcasts. I mean, I listen, so I, I, I learned so much by listening to podcasts on AI and then going out and fiddling with AI. And I've been doing it from the very start. So I think that the, the ability to, to, to find good sources, to, to learn from them and then use your own organization as not necessarily a playground, but a place where you can maybe test some ideas.
00:58:00 - Greg Ng
Sure, sure.
00:58:00 - Bob Batchelor
Maybe you have a little bit of time with your manager, your manager's manager, maybe you even get some time with the C suite. Use that to pick brains. Ask people who are wise out for a cup of coffee. I mean, in this world, the one thing that hasn't changed in all the social media, people love to talk about themselves. So if you invite somebody for a cup of coffee or even, hey, you have 10 minutes of virtual chat.
00:58:25 - Greg Ng
Yes.
00:58:26 - Bob Batchelor
Nobody's going to say no.
00:58:27 - Greg Ng
Right. I mean, especially if there's coffee involved too.
00:58:29 - Bob Batchelor
There is no way anybody's gonna down. It's just not gonna happen. Especially if you're a student, young people. I mean, you say, hey, college student. When I was a professor, I used to say it's like an imaginary get out of jail free card. I could get access to any CEO in any company.
00:58:46 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
00:58:47 - Bob Batchelor
I just say, hello from Bob, bachelor professor at blah blah, blah.
00:58:52 - Greg Ng
That's right.
00:58:52 - Bob Batchelor
And they're going to return that. Of course, because people our age even, you know, they want to give back. They want to feel like they're doing something absolutely better for the next generation.
00:59:03 - Greg Ng
Yeah. You want to cut through the clutter. Yeah, I answer and respond 100% of the time. And I, and almost 100% of the time, I actually then show up right for that. You know, speaking of that, I know this is maybe a little off topic, but generationally, I do see that as well. I do have had the fortune of speaking at a number of colleges, universities, to explain what I do and where I see the market moving. And one of the biggest gaps that I see in college and recent grads these days is the willingness to follow up.
00:59:46 - Bob Batchelor
Yep.
00:59:47 - Greg Ng
Especially when looking for jobs. I even specifically say, follow up with me in one month. And almost 99% do not.
01:00:00 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah.
01:00:00 - Greg Ng
And I'll tell you that the couple that have, over the years, 100% of them I have hired.
01:00:06 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah. People are afraid for some reason, all this digital communication and people are afraid to reach out. I'm an overreacher. I. If I read a book and I like the. I like the author and I don't, you know, it's a new book or something.
01:00:22 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
01:00:23 - Bob Batchelor
75% of the time I'll email that person. I'll track them down one way or another, say, hey, hello. From a fan and fellow author who's not going to respond to that email.
01:00:32 - Greg Ng
And you probably get a lot of responses.
01:00:34 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah, tons of responses. And some, and some of those people have become friends and allies and confidants and, you know, why not?
01:00:43 - Greg Ng
Right.
01:00:44 - Bob Batchelor
The world's your oyster, you know, you got to go out. It's. It's all the, it's all the stuff.
01:00:51 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
01:00:51 - Bob Batchelor
You know, it's, you know, if you want a little interesting sociological test, ask somebody, you know, how you doing? And people just immediately hair on fire answer, you know, how busy are you?
01:01:06 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
01:01:07 - Bob Batchelor
Oh, my God, everyone's busy. So busy. But if you, if you track their time. I think it would be cool, though, going back to, you know, the percentages of being a CEO. If I were back in academe and I could convince somebody to fund it, and I think I could. I would start something like CEO Institute. And what I would do is get CEOs to come in and talk about what they do, but then commit to keeping, say for a week. Just kind of keep a diary of your time. I would really love to dig into that because so much is, Is gained from that process.
01:01:45 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
01:01:46 - Bob Batchelor
I think, like, McKinsey puts out these books, and a lot of them are really good, and they have all their CEO institutes, kind of, you know, think tanks, but they don't. They go. They stop one level too soon, you know, into. If you knew that CEOs at X, you know, same about revenue stream, same about number of employees, same industry, even they were spending X amount of time on these different things.
01:02:16 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
01:02:17 - Bob Batchelor
It might not help you that much, but it could help you. It could help you. And you'd probably be happy for that. With that information.
01:02:22 - Greg Ng
Good motivation to motivation.
01:02:24 - Bob Batchelor
Could, could, could see that maybe you're not paying enough attention to your own health versus your colleagues. Otherwise, I've had dozens of CEOs say to me, it's a lonely job. Nobody wants to tell you anything. I see that in my. I'll give example. I'm so worried about my team and they're all over the world and I worry about them almost like their family. I want them to succeed. I can't always give them what they want. Sure, there are limitations. We live in a capitalist world. There are limitations. What I wish they would do at times is to just tell me, red, green, yellow, like on my time, my mental effort. I'm so maxed out right now, I can't think about anything else because I'm paid to context switch and I context switch dozens of times a day. And that thankfully for me, that's something that's. I don't like it, but it's not out of my ability. I know that if I asked my team, how many hours did you work last week? They would, they couldn't answer. They would have no understanding. And I am, I think, a very inclusive boss with a high level of psychological safety. But that's one I know. That's the third rail question.
01:03:56 - Greg Ng
Yes.
01:03:56 - Bob Batchelor
I'm never going to ask that because I know they'll freak out.
01:03:59 - Greg Ng
Right.
01:03:59 - Bob Batchelor
But I don't. I've got to devise a way to get at their workloads. Not because they think I'm going to judge them, because that's historically the power dynamic that they had in their past operations, past jobs. I'm trying to protect them.
01:04:18 - Greg Ng
Right.
01:04:18 - Bob Batchelor
And they don't even realize there's that trust thing. And I tell them I. And I. So I've been telling them for a number of months and I'm going to keep telling them and eventually we'll come up with something and maybe I'll just. Maybe it'll just be, hey, we'll come up with three emojis. When you're in crisis situation, you just.
01:04:41 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
01:04:42 - Bob Batchelor
You know, teams message me that, you know, for this week, I'm in the. I'm in the fire emoji. I don't have any more time. I'm maxed. It doesn't have to be a group. You know, I try to get their safety in numbers. So my leadership team, I try to get them to do things together. And even so. So even somebody like me who's trying to work on psychological safety and having a honest, open, trusting culture every single day, I'm working at this.
01:05:10 - Greg Ng
Yeah. And even when if you devise a system and someone is your team is willing to participate, even that only tells just scratches the surface. You still need to understand. Is that because of the workload? Is it because of the way in which that particular person handles certain types of stresses? Is it something not Even work related, that's creeping in, but at least it flashes up the bat signal.
01:05:45 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah.
01:05:45 - Greg Ng
For you to say, hey, there's a change here, let me dig a little, a little deeper. Those are the dangerous things, I must admit. When I was a junior art director at a big ad agency and I, I felt like I was underpaid and I was getting actively recruited in different places, I raised my hand and I said, look, I think I'm doing a great job, I'm getting other offers, but they just would not, you know, give, you know, do, do anything for me. I knew that they looked at timesheets. So what would any junior person who feels like they're not being valued and didn't feel like they were being listened to do? I patted my timesheet.
01:06:29 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah.
01:06:30 - Greg Ng
And sure enough, you're working a ton of hours. It was the only way to interpret in their brain that I was being overworked. Not my mental state, not the context shifting trauma that happens working multiple accounts, not any of the other things going on because I had a newborn at home. And all those other things that play into how someone is approaching how they're showing up every day, it went back to the how are they managing? How culturally does the organization value overwork versus normal work? And I wonder, I'm thinking out loud or brainstorming out loud. Are there ways to then apply that, what you were just saying this example to start to not game the system, but at least create a more approachable, data driven structure for an organization to march towards a more psychologically safe environment. Environment?
01:07:36 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah. I mean, yeah. In the, in terms of like brainstorming, we use culture amp at workplace options and it gives you a lot of great information, but it's also a pain in the neck to people that they have to fill out their culture amp stuff and it's like on what cadence? And look, it's, it's better than not having something that's, that's institutionalized that, that you can, you know, look at year over year, quarter over quarter, however you look at it. But I think if we go back to the idea of like, everybody's got to have their own experience, right? Maybe it's going to be eventually through gamification or something. Maybe the questions that you and I are asking people will be like, so each day you'll go in, in the morning you'll, you'll do five questions or something and, and that will calculate and over time it'll give you the data, give you, because I don't know otherwise how to Overcome. Sometimes I know that my team is trying to prove their loyalty, and so they're working more than they should.
01:08:38 - Greg Ng
Right.
01:08:38 - Bob Batchelor
Other times I was. I was happy at the. At the process. A couple weeks ago, one of my top performers said to me, hey, you know, I'm a little off my game. Something really bad happened to one of her friends. She got mugged or. Or something along those lines. And I was really happy. She. She told me, but I felt really guilty because I was loading her up with work and because she's. She's a machine and she's great at her job. And so, you know, it had. I quickly changed the tenor of the conversation. I'm like, look, I'm so sorry is your friend. And then we had a different type of conversation in which hopefully I was mentoring her in the way that. So when this happens again in her career.
01:09:32 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
01:09:32 - Bob Batchelor
That she will internalize taking better care of herself.
01:09:38 - Greg Ng
Right.
01:09:39 - Bob Batchelor
And someday, which is not going to be long, that she's leading people that she will teach that lesson again to.
01:09:47 - Greg Ng
To learn behavior that needs to actually be passed along.
01:09:50 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah.
01:09:50 - Greg Ng
Right. Right.
01:09:51 - Bob Batchelor
She just wants to do a great job.
01:09:52 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
01:09:53 - Bob Batchelor
Like, she just wants to be a superstar.
01:09:54 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
01:09:55 - Bob Batchelor
And that's also a thing like.
01:09:57 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
01:09:57 - Bob Batchelor
You're. Again, we're not inside people's heads. It's sometimes that's like a great case, but it can. It's still around the edges, can be difficult.
01:10:08 - Greg Ng
Right.
01:10:09 - Bob Batchelor
So do we have psychological safety? I guess we have psychological safety in some areas.
01:10:14 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
01:10:15 - Bob Batchelor
It depends how close to the heart something's cutting. Maybe. Right. And that's back to the complexity of. Of people and. And how we deal with it. But it's. It's fascinating. It's.
01:10:28 - Greg Ng
It is fascinating.
01:10:29 - Bob Batchelor
This is the. The most extended conversation I've had about culture and, and building culture in a. In a while. And. And I've really enjoyed it because it fundamental. And as you said, nobody would say now, I don't care about that.
01:10:43 - Greg Ng
Right.
01:10:44 - Bob Batchelor
But depending on the pressures.
01:10:48 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
01:10:48 - Bob Batchelor
You know, you read about the tech companies where the. The boards are pressuring the heck out of the C suite and they're acting in ways that turn out to be abominable. And what do you do?
01:11:00 - Greg Ng
Right.
01:11:00 - Bob Batchelor
If you met those people in the street, you'd probably. This is the nicest person I've ever met. But they walk into work and. And it's a different person because the pressures and, and all the things that cascade from that.
01:11:12 - Greg Ng
So what they're being judged on.
01:11:14 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah.
01:11:15 - Greg Ng
Motivated by factors in. Even to the purest intent of who they are at their core.
01:11:23 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah.
01:11:23 - Greg Ng
Right. I always view it as. Culture is. Is. Can be a maddening thing, and it can be a fulfilling thing. And when it's maddening, in my mind is like trying to reach infinity. You know, you'll never achieve it, but you have to constantly work towards it, whether you like it or not. Time is progressing whether you like it or not. And you're marching towards this idea of forever. And how do you actually realize it? Well, you have to, one, enjoy the journey. But two, you have to, based on the type of person you are, set some kind of realistic goals and benchmarks, you know, six months, a year down the line. And unfortunately, I think in a lot of cases, that comes down to participation or filling out a survey or things like that. And it's, as, you know, just way more complicated than that.
01:12:15 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah. I think going back to, you know, what would I tell that person, beginning out or wanting to start this journey? I mean, it's self awareness, it's reading, it's practicing, it's understanding where data is taking us, where AI is taking us. It's maintaining your humility and your humanity as you go through this process. Because people get corrupted by the system and by the goals they set. And sometimes they don't see it that well. So.
01:12:45 - Greg Ng
Right.
01:12:45 - Bob Batchelor
It is very fundamental. And, you know, it's. But. But it's got to start, like so many things with lifelong learning, intellectual curiosity, self awareness.
01:12:57 - Greg Ng
Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Well, Bob, before I let you go, I wanna ask you a question that's totally off topic.
01:13:04 - Bob Batchelor
That's fine.
01:13:04 - Greg Ng
I know you wrote a book that featured the Doors. One of my best friends, Mike, shout out to Mike, who's a great photographer and also a rock drummer. And I had this debate about who was the greatest American rock band. And he says, the Doors. The question I have for you is, do you agree?
01:13:29 - Bob Batchelor
I do agree. I do agree. And I've thought a lot about this.
01:13:33 - Greg Ng
Okay.
01:13:34 - Bob Batchelor
They were, for a time, bigger than the Beatles, bigger than the Stones, in an era in which the Beatles and Stones were making phenomenal music. And still to this day, when you listen to the Doors, there's no other band that's like the Doors.
01:13:52 - Greg Ng
Absolutely no other band that sounds like the Doors. Yeah.
01:13:56 - Bob Batchelor
There are bands that you can tell that they are the Descendants of the Beatles, the Stone Zeppelin. They're. They're a certain kind of pop singer, and they're derivative of this singer and that singer. The Doors are wholly unique and were wholly successful, but it was a short and shiny Flame that then went out.
01:14:20 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
01:14:20 - Bob Batchelor
And that might be part of it. Why they're so good is they didn't have to. They didn't have to keep going.
01:14:29 - Greg Ng
Right.
01:14:30 - Bob Batchelor
You know, Morrison's vocal cords might have burst two more years of the way that he sang.
01:14:37 - Greg Ng
They might have broken up. They might have.
01:14:39 - Bob Batchelor
If you, if you listen to some sources, they did break up and, and they kind of covered it up. So there was dissension. Also, the point of the book that I wrote, Roadhouse Blues, is to use the Doors as a lens in this little sliver of time in American history where we went from the Summer of love to the murders at Kent State.
01:15:00 - Greg Ng
Right.
01:15:00 - Bob Batchelor
So you have all the hope in the world to all the disparity in the world in a five year period. And the Doors are a great lens to examine that they may have imploded in the 70s.
01:15:13 - Greg Ng
Sure. Yeah.
01:15:14 - Bob Batchelor
Who knows?
01:15:15 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
01:15:16 - Bob Batchelor
But it's a great question.
01:15:17 - Greg Ng
And it's a great question for us, number two and number three, just to throw it out there, that we've debated for, on, off and on for many years. And I agree, I tend to agree with my friend Mike and you that it's the Doors. But a close number two and three for us has always been the Beach Boys as well as Nirvana.
01:15:35 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah.
01:15:35 - Greg Ng
And then Aerosmith sneaks in there every once in a while. But it's a. It's a harder question to debate than you would. Than one would think.
01:15:42 - Bob Batchelor
In my high school, some, for some reason you had to choose sides. You either liked the Beatles or the Stones and Zeppelin or the Doors.
01:15:54 - Greg Ng
Okay.
01:15:55 - Bob Batchelor
You didn't have a choice. You couldn't go across. And there were fist fights right. When you, when you tried. So I was a Stones and Doors person.
01:16:03 - Greg Ng
Nice.
01:16:04 - Bob Batchelor
And to this day I love the Beatles. I recognize them for everything they did.
01:16:09 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
01:16:09 - Bob Batchelor
But I still like the Rolling Stones better.
01:16:11 - Greg Ng
Yeah. Great.
01:16:12 - Bob Batchelor
And I. I dig Zeppelin, but I love the Doors.
01:16:15 - Greg Ng
Yeah.
01:16:15 - Bob Batchelor
And so, you know, it's those. What were you doing at 12, 13, 14, 15.
01:16:21 - Greg Ng
That's right.
01:16:22 - Bob Batchelor
And that's probably pretty much.
01:16:23 - Greg Ng
That imprints in you forever.
01:16:24 - Bob Batchelor
Yeah.
01:16:25 - Greg Ng
Awesome.
01:16:26 - Bob Batchelor
So I'm. I'm a Door fan all the way.
01:16:28 - Greg Ng
Excellent. Well, on that note, we'll. We'll. This is the end. But Bob, thank you so much for.
01:16:36 - Bob Batchelor
Thanks, Greg. I appreciate it. This is. This was a lot of fun.
01:16:44 - Greg Ng
And that's a wrap for today's episode of the Path Uncut. A huge thank you to Bob Bachelor for sharing his insights on psychological safety, leadership and building trust in the workplace. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe rate and leave a review. It helps other change makers find the show. And if there's someone you'd love to hear from or a topic you'd like us to explore, let us know. I'm Greg Ng. Thanks for tuning in. And remember, the path to meaningful change starts with bold ideas and courageous leadership. See you next time on the Path Uncut.