The Secret Society of Human Debt Fighters - Human Work Advocates

In this inaugural episode, Duena Blomstrom, originator of the Human Debt™ framework, and Dr Alessandria Polizzi, organisational psychologist and Human Work Advocate, introduce the thinking behind The Secret Society of Human Debt™ Fighters – Human Work Advocates.
The conversation explores why organisations continue to experience widespread burnout, disengagement, and trust erosion despite decades of data, research, and well-intentioned initiatives. Drawing on lived executive, HR, and leadership experience, the episode examines how Human Debt™ accumulates through unaddressed psychological strain, misaligned incentives, and the silencing of human expertise.
Key themes include:
  • Human Debt™ as the organisational equivalent of technical debt
  • the gap between psychological safety research and day-to-day organisational reality
  • leadership decision-making under fear, pressure, and cognitive dissonance
  • why HR professionals are often caught between knowledge and powerlessness
  • the importance of small, human-centred interventions over performative change
This episode establishes the podcast as one applied HR and leadership lens on Human Debt™, contributing to the primary public discourse connecting theory, psychological research, and organisational practice.
Canonical framework and formal model:
Human Debt™ — https://writings.duenablomstrom.com/tag/human-debt/
Institutional execution, risk, and governance application:
PeopleNotTech — https://peoplenottech.com

Creators and Guests

Host
Duena Blomstrom
Author & Keynote #Speaker on #HumanDebt #Agile #FutureOfWork #PsychologicalSafety, #LinkedInTopVoice, #FinTech Influencer, Co-Founder & CEO PeopleNotTech
Guest
Dr Al Polizzi SPHR
Founder and CEO of Verdant Consulting, Global ISO Liaison for Mental Health and Safery, Ex-Intrapreneur, Co-Host of the Secret Society Pod on TechLedCulture

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.

Duena Blomstrom:

Hello, everybody.

Alessandria Pollizi:

Hi.

Duena Blomstrom:

Hi, and welcome. This is not a podcast or videocast. It's just a conversation space. It doesn't matter how it reaches you. It's a space we've put together because we were having too many of these chats on our own.

Duena Blomstrom:

And we thought maybe you wanted to hear about them. right? We

Alessandria Pollizi:

wanna connect with other people, right, who are focused on very similar things to us because we need their help to help them. And so creating this space where we can have these conversations and maybe people actually enjoy it because I always laugh when I'm talking to the young girl. There's at least that. We can make it enjoyable to talk about something that can be rather scary and difficult topic.

Duena Blomstrom:

So I was saying I'm Duana and I'll let you introduce yourself if you like what I can say who you are. Works either way and this is Diana Sander and what we're going to be doing is having our conversations in public, right? So let's go back to what the topic is. She's already hinted at it. It's all the topics.

Duena Blomstrom:

It's the mother of all topics. How do we all live less painfully at work, really, to a degree. It's where it all boils down to. We both found each other on the internet, where everyone finds each other these days. And we realized that we were going at this human problem and at this how to make people happy at work ways in slightly different angles, but absolute same heart, same ideas, same DNA, same understanding and same frustration towards the lack of transformation and change in every industry we've encountered where people are not yet happy.

Duena Blomstrom:

We've riled around the idea of human debt. We've talked about many end episodes of other colleagues of ours or other clients of others or partners of ours who are suffering from it, of which there are many, if not all. And then we decide to do some things about this. So we've we've come together oh great and we forgot to turn off all our alarms.

Alessandria Pollizi:

Hey that's our wake up call. Oh That's our wake up call to have this conversation.

Duena Blomstrom:

If ever. My my man is at me at all times that you need to stop your alarms. I disagree. If I if I just completely stop the alarm, this thing will never happen. So, sorry.

Alessandria Pollizi:

What to do next? Exactly you need those prompts

Duena Blomstrom:

but how would we tell the story so we came together and we ended up thinking look there's a lot to be done here we can't do it ourselves is what we're saying we need your help

Alessandria Pollizi:

Well, yeah. Otherwise, we're just two crazy ladies screaming into the dark. So that's not or on social media. And just to

Duena Blomstrom:

introduce myself.

Alessandria Pollizi:

Keep doing that. So of people do my name is Doctor. Alessandro Felizi, and I am a former head of HR in an organizational leadership development for twenty plus years. Been in education for thirty. And you said happiness at work, I'm solving for people doing their best work.

Alessandria Pollizi:

Right? And so that means how do we navigate when and understand when we are frustrated or overwhelmed or how do we address this? And I've worked with in 15 different industries, I've worked with large, major multinational companies. And to me, not to me, the data shows that the biggest barrier to success isn't to crush people and to do more with less. It's actually to tap into the human design of who we are, how we work from a psychological health and safety perspective.

Alessandria Pollizi:

That's the answer. And so, now what? Right? This is trying to find other people who one, already kind of get it like yourself and then help people who are still in role. If I were in role, I know what I'd be looking for.

Alessandria Pollizi:

And so I've been building that because I have the luxury to do so, to help support people who understand, as you call it, a human debt. But if we don't invest in the fact that we have humans and not machines in the workplace, then we lose the value of that investment. And so, this is just about basic maintenance of human beings at work.

Duena Blomstrom:

I like it. I like it. That's really strong. And true. We'll do here is put more words to it.

Duena Blomstrom:

But what we'll also try is to always keep each other very, very honest if any of us starts to kind of really criticize for the sake of the wooden language. And you should expect some swearing. Find it impossible to speak without sweating these days. In particular if you remember it.

Alessandria Pollizi:

Have a doctorate in English so I get to use all the words and that includes the French.

Duena Blomstrom:

I don't and I'm still going to use them. If not, I will expect the language police. Although it's very very difficult to discuss the hypocrisy of sweating with the teenager these days. How come you can do it? But outside of that, I just I don't tend to just randomly swear.

Duena Blomstrom:

I swear when I get super fired up about we cannot live with this human death anymore. We cannot let people off themselves when they hate work. We cannot let people live through essentially mental health crisis and emotional engagement crisis and engagement as well crisis and you name a leadership crisis and just let them carry on with the horrendous situation we've put them in because that's not something that human beings should be doing to other human beings. And we don't even believe this, obviously, it's not intentional, it's a dickhead. We just don't know how to get out of this hole.

Duena Blomstrom:

So over the years, I've been quite vocal and quite I've made myself unpleasant to the HR community because I've been kind of very bullish about for fuck's sake, we need to do something. And I thought the good intention behind but obviously I don't expect you to be doing it yourself or obviously I don't I'm not saying you should have done it by now or obviously I'm not saying you have bad intentions and you're just carrying holding on to your to your job I'm just saying we should all do it. I don't know if that carried quite that clearly. I think just the first part of this woman is menacingly toned by death and doesn't understand our priorities. The things we get called about, the fact that the CEO asks us about policies rather than ever involves us in a serious strategy conversation.

Duena Blomstrom:

All of those things I'm not oblivious to. I'm not dumb. I know they're happening. I'm very aware of that being the reality. I just thought HR and I were in a place where we could go, come on now.

Duena Blomstrom:

Clearly we weren't. And like I say, I haven't necessarily made myself pleasant to the community. I understand why. I'm not exactly taking it with too much grace when other people think that they have the panacea of all answers. But in my defense, I have always felt like I'm not creating anything at all.

Duena Blomstrom:

I'm not coming up with new things. I'm not asking anyone to believe me. I'm simply saying this is the science. Why does it take us so long to genuinely avail ourselves of the work of Professor Doctor. Amy Edmondson, of the work of Google and the biggest essentially study in the workplace that's ever existed.

Duena Blomstrom:

And of the immense amount of GitHub studies, Microsoft studies, things that are coming out every goddamn week telling us, we're not joking. If you want productive people, if you want to be around as a company, you have to be raised everything and look at your people. But we can say this until we're put in the face. If we only talk about it and we don't find ways to immediately start driving action. We're not going to get very far.

Duena Blomstrom:

And that's why we think I'm ready to apologize to the community if they're upset with me, whatever it takes. But let's just go back to the drawing board and make it happen.

Alessandria Pollizi:

Well, I'll have to check the latest newsletter, which lists all the people that HR hates and see if you're

Duena Blomstrom:

on the Yeah. Go go go and see if I'm on the list.

Alessandria Pollizi:

Remember you being on there. But it's interesting you talk so in my mind, coming from an HR perspective, again, my last position as chief people officer for a 7,000 person organization with 250 locations. So I've I've been in the thick of it. That was during COVID, by the way. And to me, it's I just don't know what to do.

Alessandria Pollizi:

Like, I know there's a problem, but I don't know what to do. And I just having the time and space to take on something new when we've been within HR, ninety eight percent of us are burned out according to Sherm. Sherm actually had an article earlier this year that said HR is too much work. That was actually the title. This is our it's our organizational, like, industry saying, this is too much work.

Alessandria Pollizi:

So I could see, you know, people going, okay. This is all fine, but what what do I do? And and to your point, it's actually harder to not do this work than it is to actual to do it. If you can get your arms around or partner with people who already have been down the path, we can help you. But look, with the WHO printing their guidelines in September, I mean, it's just very clear.

Alessandria Pollizi:

We have the one from the the surgeon general here in The US, which and then we have the ISO 45,000. I mean, there are standards, frameworks we can use. So this doesn't have to be making it up. And I posted this on LinkedIn yesterday. I'm curious what you think.

Alessandria Pollizi:

And there was an article in Forbes about well-being whitewashing, which

Duena Blomstrom:

is Yes. I have

Alessandria Pollizi:

seen that. Absolutely. That sort of flow.

Duena Blomstrom:

Right? Lip service that's going to happen in every industry about every topic until we're going to I mean, mean, agile transformation, whitewashing, DNI, sort of whitewashing, everything that we've whitewashed, we've added to the human debt. So I'm not surprised. I've seen even funnier thing today. There are people that are from other industries are starting to arrive at these big kind of realizations of it matters to be human in technology and we have to start having I'm genuinely not even joking.

Duena Blomstrom:

There are people who are like, oh, but we are in mathematics. Why does it even matter to us? There's not going to be one industry that's going to be immune to the fact that everything has changed. We all know this, right? The way we do work has changed.

Duena Blomstrom:

The way the things we need to be successful at work have changed. We are not only unsuccessful. We are suffering right now. The models we're using in the workplace right now are unfit for purpose. All of them, obviously.

Duena Blomstrom:

We don't even need the departments we're having. We don't need. We're not asking everyone to just kind of go back to the drawing board and rediscover the organization because we know that's not going happen. What we are saying is there are quick wins in the human world. There are things you can do to move the needle today.

Duena Blomstrom:

There are things you can do to empower the team to do it themselves. And that's probably the smartest way to go about major human data. And we keep saying this is just chip at the corners. Just start doing experiments and just start doing something that moves the needle. There are ways to get out of it.

Duena Blomstrom:

You don't have to be alone. You just have to let us help you in the sense of we're hoping we can bring along to give us some data. We'll be very honest. We don't know how to these days translate the real of the human work to the corporate talk of the priorities, KPIs and whatever is on your agenda this year or next year. So what we need is for you to tell us if the KPI is retention.

Duena Blomstrom:

We don't necessarily. It's always retention, right? None of these change ever. All of the things are important. But it would be nice to hear what do you think is most important right now and how do we make a product that really is in there to help humans or a methodology or framework or a company that's going to come in, whatever it is that you're getting in, it has to come in to hold your hand and help you translate whatever it is that you think is priority into the human work.

Alessandria Pollizi:

Yeah. And the other piece that I know that I am very curious about learning, because I've been out of role for two years now, is when we have all that data. So I have been on those executive team calls where I've shared data, data, data, data. Here's the things. Here's what it proves.

Alessandria Pollizi:

Here's the KPIs. Got it. And you get the executive who goes, still don't buy it. Right? Is there an opportunity to get that person bought in and what's missing?

Alessandria Pollizi:

We have the data. Right? We have the proven case studies, the benchmarks, the world guidelines, global guidelines. And the answer is, I just don't it's just not I'm still

Duena Blomstrom:

not too sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Alessandria Pollizi:

So that's Yeah.

Duena Blomstrom:

What do we do then?

Alessandria Pollizi:

Ironically, that's a very emotional response.

Duena Blomstrom:

Yes. And And

Alessandria Pollizi:

what we're talking about is emotions. Yeah.

Duena Blomstrom:

Right? I mean, I've I've I've I I can tell you what I do. But I don't think it's a formula because and this is sometimes what I struggle with. And I'll be honest, is I've been very spoiled and I have lived a professional life that's like no other one. So I've struggled sometimes to talk about my experience and my examples because I don't want people to go, screw you.

Duena Blomstrom:

I didn't have that problem. I wasn't doing X when I was Y and so on. So it feels bad. But with that said, I will say that when we encounter execs that have that reaction. And in our case, unfortunately, it's mostly people from the other side of the human side that might have that reaction.

Duena Blomstrom:

We know what that is. We kind of work out. We know that it's a human reaction, right? So it's a human instinctive protection reaction. People are fearful in every layer of the organization.

Duena Blomstrom:

But kind of in those layers where your courage and you're standing up for what's right is required all the time, you are a lot more likely to have these moments when you just come pick it up. You're going to leave that one on the floor. Right? This is maybe where we should get this is why I would like a human editor because someone needs to insert here the that lady about picking up all the facts. The older you get, the more we let them drop and we your back is broken.

Duena Blomstrom:

So you're gonna go down for why does everyone wear Birkin stocks well whatever I can't be bothered it's over I'm 50 I don't get anymore so it's like that right so all of the f's that we have oh wait I said Very close, right? Well, I don't give a Let me tell you.

Alessandria Pollizi:

I don't give a Aware. I've I've walked the streets of folks done with you, my friend. I've seen, I've seen your outfits.

Duena Blomstrom:

Yeah I'm not in a time where I care about what we wear at all. But so my point is if we impression manage both of as those that have asked for the courage action. So say you're in this room and you are the HR that has tried to reason with people, has tried to say, but we need the human word. We need go back to the drawing board. None of this jokey, how do we do remote work?

Duena Blomstrom:

We need people to work from anywhere, anytime as long as they're happy and their outcomes are being tracked. We need a data culture. We need all of these things. We need people to be happier. Are you serious?

Duena Blomstrom:

And they go like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what you're saying is the need, but I don't quite see it. And we have other things we need to be doing this year. If you're in that room, chances are you're going to do one of two things or several. Either in your head, you're going to go, I've given up on these people or in your head, you're going to go, I've given up on my mission.

Duena Blomstrom:

And I wish you gave up on the people because if you stay and you've given up on, I want to make this happen, you're probably not ever going to be able to really walk away from it. Let's face it. My fear is that we're talking to professionals that are suffering themselves even more than others because cognitive dissonance in HR, knowing these are not the right things to do, knowing that people are offing themselves on the way to work, but we now have prettier pants that they can take home for their kids is immense. The only people that don't feel that competent distance are people that have managed to train themselves to be completely immune. They are kind of like a nine eleven operator.

Duena Blomstrom:

They don't care if you die, but they don't care if you survive well in the enterprise either. We cannot push HR into a place where they don't care anymore. Have to keep them where they keep fighting. They keep being courageous. We have to have those execs that are smart enough to never whack their HR or to whack it all together.

Duena Blomstrom:

Look, if you're not going to trust this person enough to tell you how to run an organization that's continuously improving, that has people that are happy or these people, not this person, this department, this function. You don't have to have it at all. Take that function and give it to your tech people or give it to your HR people, give it to your change people. I don't care. Just put it to witsome humans that are going to be the human work advocate.

Duena Blomstrom:

And as an HR professional, like I say, I know that there's fear, there's years of trying, there's disillusion. There's the same type of feelings you have when you're an innovation manager or you're in someone who has long tried to move the needle. This is who we are. We're pioneers, we're evangelists, we're advocates. It's hard.

Duena Blomstrom:

We can't keep complaining. We still have to move the needle for these people just because, you know.

Alessandria Pollizi:

That's right. And I think you talked about nibbling on the edges or I say, what does it take to get one or 10% better? Like, we just need small moves. Those are more sustainable anyway. But what I'm really curious about is, I love how you said the decision between, do I decide to give up my mission or give up on these people?

Alessandria Pollizi:

And maybe there's a way that's kind of, or do I walk hand in hand with them as I move forward? Because the thing is, is that for a lot of HR professionals, and this is quite frankly one of the big hazards, psychosocial hazards at work for HR is if you're not aligned with the strategy, if you're not aligned or don't feel valued, if you don't feel like you can make an impact when it comes to human performance and tapping into the human side of work, then that's where the burnout really accelerates, right? Because you have that, as you said, cognitive dissonance. So, it's that moment though, that pivotal moment where we've had the conversation, I've got this, I need to understand, I need help understand what's in the way, what's behind those comments, what's the fear, what can we put in that HR leader's toolkit to be able to move that forward and not have to decide which to abandon, right? How do we keep them whole and help them be able to do the good work, do the work that they know, we know makes a difference.

Duena Blomstrom:

Right.

Alessandria Pollizi:

Yeah. Think it's worth mentioning why do we call this a secret society? Because not all of the folks in the world, let's just talk about within HR specifically, are on board with this. Right? I've personally encountered HR professionals who are like, that's a bunch of hooey.

Alessandria Pollizi:

We don't need any of that. That's all touchy feely, you know, whatever, flavor of the moment. So why did we call it the secret society, Dwana?

Duena Blomstrom:

Well, because many of us need protection. We need to be, or some of us, the people that we want to hear from might very well need protection. And it's a serious issue. They might feel like they need to be stealth for many reasons. Most HR professionals I talk to very rarely ever want to be in public or talking about the enterprise or taking a stance on whether or not they have human debt.

Duena Blomstrom:

It's almost like they're taking it personally or they see it as a personal failure if the organization shows there's anything wrong with it. But we're not asking for that. What we're asking for is essentially anyone who fears that, yes, the human work needs to start happening at an individual level, at the group level, at the team level and at an organizational level. That's who we're after. People who have been trying to move this border, people who have been trying to be the Sisyphus for long enough.

Duena Blomstrom:

We want you guys to all come into a forum. We haven't yet built it. We have built a Trello board we'll give you access to so that you please go in and give us your ideas of how to build this the fastest. We're trying to team with you. We're trying to make it live and we all get somewhere.

Duena Blomstrom:

But the vision we have is a place that's protected by anonymity and we can ask questions about what generally will move the needle within HR. So for you to be able to really tell us in a benchmarking sort of way, they can turn to you with valid results. What are other people's priorities? What are other people's agendas? What are their pockets like?

Duena Blomstrom:

What are their primary KPIs? What's the OKR of the company tied into HR like? So once we figure those things out, we'll share them with everyone. And so that we make this easy as we were thinking, if you're an HR professional, please get the burner address. You don't need to tell us who you are.

Duena Blomstrom:

But what we do need is to find out that everyone who's an HR professional actually is in work and knows this data. So one type of verification of sorts, we don't know what that would mean. And then you can be anonymous all you like. This is not only for them. We should say that.

Duena Blomstrom:

Was saying this is not you can probably walk people through now. Sounds very scary like with HR professionals only. Not at all. We're open to having everyone from every bit really.

Alessandria Pollizi:

Yeah. What we're looking for is how do we help you, right? So, if you are like, what we're doing isn't working, we are burning people out, all the data I read is real, I've actually been paying attention, but now what? We wanna give you anything and everything that can help you continue to make that better. And that will be about making workplaces better for those that you work with, but also for yourself.

Alessandria Pollizi:

Right? So understanding, what you need in order to drive this work, I think is a critical part of it. And one of the things for HR in particular is for us to understand some of those headwinds and specific hazards to our mental health we face every day, which we don't often talk about. I talk about a lot, but we don't often talk about. I think it might also be worthwhile, we've been talking about human debt.

Alessandria Pollizi:

We go ahead and define what does that mean from your perspective?

Duena Blomstrom:

Good question. I never remember to tell people definitions. So when I first thought of human debt, to me, it was like a light bulb moment because I had heard about tech debt for many, many years. And I didn't know exactly what it is. I never wrote a line of code.

Duena Blomstrom:

But I do know that if you have it, you're effed. So it's a really bad thing that will at some point stop you if you completely ignore it. And essentially for those of you that are not in technology but listening to this, it just means that you write code that you know is not of great quality or you cut some corners, you don't quite test or you don't quite ask anybody else's opinion or you don't quite bring something up for debate. And what happens is that you make things that are not of great value and that code remains there. It becomes old, becomes embedded into the system.

Duena Blomstrom:

And by the time you realize it's there, it can really trip you altogether as a company. So many companies end up in these big exercises where they have to actually get rid of tech debt and institute better cleaner code. And so I had known about many of these transformations. I had seen them. I knew how painful they were, but it didn't occur to me that it's practically the equivalent of that until much later when I was writing the books.

Duena Blomstrom:

And then one moment, it just came to me and I was like, this is the exact same thing we're doing with people that we are doing with technology, which is we left things, cut corners, we were afraid to say, we kind of dropped the program, we kind of forgot that we didn't do anything on a Friday, we sort of changed and didn't really explain what we were doing, no sexuality, whatever. No psychological safety. Everyone's afraid of everyone else. But that's where we are. Kind of we're all aware that that's where we are, but we feel this human debt.

Duena Blomstrom:

I think anybody in an organization where there is human debt, and by the way, everyone has it. You can start getting it as a startup if you're not careful. You will definitely get it as a scale up if you're not very careful. And you will then live in a toxic soup of untouched status quo human that nightmare in the company unless you start chipping at it. So yeah, that's what it is.

Duena Blomstrom:

It's like thick that but for humans.

Alessandria Pollizi:

I love that. Well, here's the thing, you will get it. Like if you think you can do everything perfectly and set everything up and it's gonna go flawlessly, that's you're setting yourself up for disappointment, failure, frustration. But if you say, okay, we know that we will it's like accruing these these these things that kind of just come up as as just normal work. So then what is the process for identifying that?

Alessandria Pollizi:

One, knowing where those hazards are so we can try to mitigate as many as possible, evaluating what your big ones are that you've picked up, the debt you've picked up, and then building a plan on that. And you don't have to make that up though. That's the beauty of it is that there are global guidelines that are based on a hundred years of research about workplace psychology and workplace mental health. So you can just use that, right? But I love that way of thinking about this is just the clutter that happens in everyday work.

Alessandria Pollizi:

If we continue to ignore it, it's not gonna go away. Right. It's very, very true. More risky.

Duena Blomstrom:

Very, very true. And where do you start? I don't even really think it matters. I keep saying this. Do pen and paper what we would be doing with smart technology.

Duena Blomstrom:

Check how your people are feeling at all times. Get them involved in changing their behaviors and their mode of interaction. Get them involved in understanding that knowing how they feel themselves and knowing how their colleagues feel themselves and knowing basic things. I keep saying this, how do people pair program when they don't know if the other one has any children? How is this even possible?

Duena Blomstrom:

How do we believe people collaborate when they're not doing any people and any humaning at work? So I think start there. Start by normalizing the human work everyone else. Just start by letting them encourage people saying silly stuff, encourage people swearing. Let them be humans.

Duena Blomstrom:

Let them be people. Let them ask each other about their lives that matter because your enterprise doesn't. And then just kind of take it from there. I think this is a good in because it forces your execs to come on the same journey. And eventually that data that you have to keep plummeting every time you see a new study from GitHub and Microsoft, send it to them.

Duena Blomstrom:

Even if they go, whatever, Some of them say mumbo jumbo. You can only hope that one day they'll get there. And meanwhile, if you use teams and humans to chip at the debt themselves, we will have made the kind of experiments that will show these execs that the needle can be moved and it's worth investing in.

Alessandria Pollizi:

Yeah. There's tons of research on doing it this way, right? So there's one study I like to quote a lot at the Tabassock Institute, which is they looked at what drives And courageous behavior are things like asking questions, taking risks, learning from mistakes, all the things we want in a highly engaged workplace. Those four things. The highest one was collaborating, just working together, just building a shared history.

Alessandria Pollizi:

But then another one right on the heels of it was getting to know the human, getting to know and building relationships. And what I say on that is always ask two questions, not just one. It should never be, How are you doing? I get the answer and we're done. You should always be followed by a follow-up.

Alessandria Pollizi:

And so I think there are specific things that we can do that can help that. The other thing is, and this is important to me, is that it's not just about what we do, but it's also how do we get the skills to be able to handle our own biases, experiences, history, trauma, whatever is showing up at work so that we're not letting that get in the way. Right? Self awareness, the self compassion, the acceptance, those are the skills that we need to build within ourselves. And where do we learn those?

Alessandria Pollizi:

There's no, you don't learn those in school. Very rarely would you learn that from parents. That's a competency. That's a leader. These are leadership competencies for how do I navigate stressful situations, not about other people, but about me.

Alessandria Pollizi:

Right?

Duena Blomstrom:

And on that, how do we get to know each other and how do we get to know our teams better? We're gonna leave you and try and keep this as short and sweet as possible. We will probably get raunchier than this with a lot more examples like that. I'm not raunchy in that way. I'm not an English speaker.

Duena Blomstrom:

More fired up. But it's been lovely just kind of us having this space to have this conversation. You don't need to listen to us. If you want to, we're never going to keep it anything else but real. We have a lot to both complain and talk about and ideally build together.

Duena Blomstrom:

And meanwhile, reach out to us. There's going to be a link with this podcast to let you into the Secret Society for Human Work. The link to the trailer will also be posted with this. So you can come in and tell us what you'd like to see on the show, what ideas you have. We have a couple of ideas for segments that we'd like to run past you as well.

Duena Blomstrom:

They'll be in the trailer. But meanwhile, you can find both of us on LinkedIn in both our newsletters and you know, kind of just get in touch, just get in touch like you always do, most likely in a private message like it always happens. But just tell us the real, will this be useful if we get you the data that says this is what execs care about and this is how to translate what they care about into how we make human work? Can we start moving the needle on this human work and get to where we're all trying to get to. Absolutely.

Duena Blomstrom:

Thank you for listening to us and we will see you next week.

Alessandria Pollizi:

Bye.

Duena Blomstrom:

Bye.