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We need a new definition of success—one that harmonizes meaning and money.
Imagine diving into your workday with renewed energy, leaving behind the exhaustion or dread of a monotonous grind.
Traditional beliefs about success and the root cause of burnout are the same:
Prove yourself.
Work harder.
Take care of the business, and it will take care of you.
We’re recycling the mindset and practices that keep us stuck. Our souls need a jumpstart into The Age of Humanity.
Tune in for a new way of working that honors our nervous system and the bottom line, using knowledge of the brain, the Bible, and business. We’ll discuss timeless truths that amplify growth, ignite change, and reshape the world of work. No corporate speak or business BS. Let’s get to the heart of a rewarding career and profitable growth.
We speak human about business.
What’s in it for You?
Value, Relevance, and Impact (VRI): No, it's not a new tech gadget—it's your ticket to making your work genuinely matter to you and your company.
Human-Centric Insights: We prioritize people over profits without sacrificing the bottom line. Think less "cog in the machine" and more "humans helping humans."
I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hesson, your thrive guide leading you into the new Age of Humanity. I’ve navigated the highs and lows of business and life, from achieving over $40 million in sales, teaching thousands of people around the world about leadership, trust, execution, and productivity to facing burnout, divorce, raising a couple of great humans (one with ADHD), and navigating the uncertainty of starting a business.
I’m committed to igniting change in the world by jumpstarting business into profitable growth with the timeless truths of our humanity.
Sound crazy? It’s only crazy until it works.
Hit subscribe to never miss an episode, and leave a review to help other listeners discover our show.
Want insight and advice on your real career and business challenges? Connect with me on social media or email me at rebecca@wethrive.live. Your story could spark our next conversation.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:00:00]:
I'm not coming down I never knocked it on the ground I'm not coming down I wanna go higher, higher, higher than that welcome back to the Business Is Human podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hession, and we're here to bring you episodes that blend meaningful work with profitable success. Here to steward what I call the Age of Humanity. I believe if we transform the way we work, we can transform the way that we live. As always, my friendly request. If you like what you hear, hit subscribe so you don't miss any episode and leave a review to tell the other humans that they might like it too. Always looking to help you and connect with others. All right, let's get into it, shall we? So picture this.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:00:44]:
You're a manager. You get another urgent email from somebody in leadership that says something to the degree of hit the numbers. Get your team in line. It's probably laced with some I appreciate you language. And you're reading this and you're thinking, yeah, no, but your team's drowning. Your inbox is ridiculous. And the only real support you're getting is an invite to a mandatory webinar about resilience. I wish this was a Dilbert cartoon, but it's reality for too many teams and people that I know that are trying to navigate this.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:01:31]:
This is all coming up for me because of a Forbes article about we have a manager crisis. Now, there's always a crisis somewhere. So the manager crisis is abasically that nobody wants to be a manager because of this, 75% of Millennial managers are burned out. I'm going to say the article says Millennial managers. I don't buy into that. Like, let's label people based on their age and stuff. So I'm just going to say 75% or more of managers are burned out. Half of them have already quit.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:02:05]:
And so the newer workforce, people call it Gen Z. I guess I say that because I just have a really hard time with labeling people. But anyway, they're looking at all this and going, yeah, no thanks. Like, why would I want to aspire to be burned out and miserable? They've been watching their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors for years, looking around, going, yeah, that doesn't look like it's worth it. P S. They're right. So the hard truth is that work isn't broken because people don't care or aren't trying. It's broken because this entire system is built around this outdated model of control, power and hierarchy.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:02:56]:
And we dust it up with a lot of pretty language, but it fundamentally hasn't changed ever. And so there has to be a shift. Like it just keeps breaking. It just keeps breaking in more fundamental ways and now in much more human ways. Now people are literally going, no, I'm out. I'm out. I have several clients that I'm helping them build off ramps, exit plans so that they can take some time off and regroup. Like this.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:03:26]:
This is real. These are great people, high achievers. And I am applauding that they're taking a break because their nervous systems need it in order for them to even know what they want to do. So this, this isn't a trite little problem. Oh, we have a manager problem. Let's develop a training program for the love of everything holy. You all know that I worked for decades in the training industry. A training program is not going to fix this.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:03:50]:
It's going to make it worse. So there has to be a shift. This industrial age model of top down, fear driven, productivity obsessed. It ain't working y'all. And it's 2025. The world has changed. We are in a post quarantine COVID environment where everybody shifted their expectations about life and work and for some reason we aren't paying enough attention to that and realizing that something's gotta give. Because our leadership models haven't changed at all since then.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:04:28]:
It's the conversation just is about stupid things like should we work from home or order everybody back to the office. And all of that is because we are still managing through control, not connection. So we're going to keep burning people out, we're going to keep losing talent, we're going to. It's just we're circling the drain. So the solution isn't another leadership training. It's how we define leadership itself. When I talk about control versus connection, it may sound like a trite little subtitle, but it's so much deeper than that. So the way that it's been thus far is that control equals success.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:05:17]:
The more I can control the narrative, the more that I can control expenses, the more that I can control everything. That's the method to success. Org chart is the visual description of that. This top down power at the top model because employees need to be managed. None of that works. And honestly it never really did. It's just working less and less and people have had it more and more. And so it's this rapid decline.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:05:54]:
What's really happening is that managers are just this invisible middle of the organization of this org chart. They're squeezed by leadership's demands, which are endless While they're trying to keep their employees engaged. Employee engagement is just a term that drives me crazy. It's a fancy way of saying control. We use the word engagement because it sounds prettier and it sounds like we're nicer, but it's really about control. And employees don't feel valued at all because they're measured by output versus impact. And it's hard to measure impact. And so that's why most people don't pay the price to figure it out.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:06:41]:
And people entering the workforce, we call them Gen Z's, see through all of this bs and they don't want to be it. They just want to paycheck. They don't want to deal with all this, y'all. Nobody does. It's just some of us have been in the system longer, so our patterns are just saying, well, that's just the way it is. And people entering the workforce saying, no, I don't have to do this. There are other ways that I can make money. And so here's one of the things that I'm writing about in this book I'm writing right now.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:07:13]:
The old system, this org chart, designed like a pyramid, has leaders at the top, power flowing down. So my. My belief is, my premise is that if we want to build a workplace that actually works, we have to pay attention not to how we work, but to how we as humans work. And so the first recommendation that I have, among many others, is we have to lay the pyramid down so it's no longer pointing up and lay it down. So it's pointing like an arrow, moving forward. Because leadership isn't about being above anyone. That immediately creates competition and power struggles. It's about moving people forward.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:08:06]:
So your job as a leader is not better than. It's different than. It's inspiring people. It's understanding humans and creating the right systems, processes, communication, motivation to move people forward. So the best leaders aren't really at the top. They know what's happening in the trenches. Leadership's not about power. It's about taking this responsibility to say, let's all win.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:08:38]:
Let's all go do impactful, meaningful work that is profitable, and let's do it together. So the future of leadership isn't about commanding. It's about nurturing and coaching. And a lot of leaders don't know how to do this well. And so what I talk about and write about is what's called the Age of Humanity. So we're shifting from the industrial age model of work into the Age of Humanity, which requires leaders to show up differently instead of the control version, which is just do what I say because I said so. How many people's parents said that? Connection says, let's dig in and figure this out. Together with realistic expectations and timelines, I might add.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:09:29]:
Control says, prove your worth. Yes. Root cause of burnout. Proving yourself. Connection says, know your worth. And this is another fundamental shift that I'm writing about in this book that's going to take a few more episodes to unpack. But it's that everybody in the organization needs to know their worth, needs to know their value, needs to know who they are. We'll get into that in a bit.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:09:58]:
So that way we're not waiting for somebody else to tell us who we are again, we're going to unpack that in another episode. Control says, keep your head down and just get it done. And Connection says, know your strengths and make an impact. Here's an example of that. This week, I was working with one of my clients, and the goals that they were given for 2025 are no longer realistic. Not because her team doesn't have the power and the capabilities, because of so many shifts in their industry, shifts with tariffs, shifts with lots of external circumstances have changed so rapidly and fundamentally that when we looked at her list of goals for the year, those aren't applicable so much anymore. And so she was originally going to be just like, I'm going to put my head down and figure it out. And she probably would have figured it out to some degree, but her team and she and her team both would have suffered dramatically for it.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:11:00]:
And that's kind of where she was starting to go, because, you know, it's February. Well, it'll be March when this comes out. I guess it's March today. I don't know what day it is. But instead we looked at it and I said, well, what if you went back to your leadership team and talked about, based on current conditions, here's what I think we need to shift to. Here's our strengths as a team, here's how I think it makes a difference, and just go in and have the conversation. And she said, I think I can do that. And she did.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:11:25]:
And guess what? They listened. And they made adaptations, they made changes. And she went back to her team and said, good news. We're moving this to third quarter. We're moving this out until next year. And here's where we're going to focus. And here's why. Do you know how her team felt knowing that they were now going to be playing a winnable game versus just try harder not to lose huge.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:11:50]:
And what that said about her as a leader, that she was willing to go against the system a bit to have a logical conversation in the best interest of not only the company, but her team. That's connection. Oh, I get super fired up about this. So for the last, I don't know, 50 years more, we've run businesses with this money first, put your head down. Mindset, profits over people. Just get it done no matter what. Which is control versus connection. And it's control over creativity.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:12:26]:
And we as humans, we are designed to create fundamentally in our DNA. And so when you exert control constantly, you starve out our humanity. That's based on creativity and connection. It's always been metrics versus meaning. It's just the way it's been. And it was always broken. But it wasn't broken so bad that people had to pay attention to it. Well, now it's broken so bad people have to pay attention to it because now we're burnout, turnover, disengagement.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:13:04]:
If we want to fix this, we have to stop treating people like machines and start understanding our human cellular system the way God knit us together in our mother's womb. Cellular nervous system, decision making, body, mind, heart, spirit. It's time to stop faking that with fancy words and really understanding the science of it. So again, we're talking about this article I read about a manager crisis, which is way more. It's bigger than that, but it's. The manager crisis is now how we're raising the flag on business is broken. It's just another title for oh wait, business is still broken. Oh wait, business is still broken.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:13:52]:
So, okay, what do we need to do? Leaders have to lead with humility. I'm just. Pause there. Leaders need to lead with humility. Ditching the ego, listen more, guide instead of control and dictate. And I know leaders are also fed up, exhausted, burned out. And so the response a lot of times in that place of feeling that way, it's like that wild animal that gets like put into the corner and they're just like trying to call their way out because they're feeling threatened. That's the way a lot of leaders feel.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:14:31]:
And I'm saying there's a different way. But it's going to require you to make a significant shift in the way that you see success for yourself and others. Because humility aligns to all of our humanity and cellular structure and spiritual basis. To be able to truly connect, we have to lead with humility. It's the only way to have trusting conversations and connections. And so as a leader, with humility, your responsibility first, before you can even really look at the details of the goals and the metrics, is to understand that if we're going to make this shift to the Age of Humanity, that organizations, your business has to facilitate the healing and the shift from people feeling like machines here to produce to being treated like humans. Because we've now, we now expect to be treated like machines. So some people just show up like, no sense in having any creative thoughts or inspiration or ideas that'll just be shut down by managers and leaders.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:15:50]:
So I'm gonna just show up, I'm gonna wait for somebody to tell me what to do, then I'm gonna go do it. I'm gonna about it to all my colleagues, and then I'm gonna go home and be miserable at home because this sucks. That's the system we're in. I mean, there are varying degrees of it, but that exists in every organization that I've worked with for a long time. And so there needs to be a healing period in order for people to trust that they can show up as a human and be valued for it. People are exhausted and they don't need more pressure, they don't need more tighter deadlines. They don't need more control. They need clarity.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:16:39]:
They need meaning, and they need autonomy. Let's go back to Daniel Pink's book Drive. Pick that one up and revisit it. The key aspects of human motivation from a cellular and spiritual perspective are autonomy. I need to have creative freedom over my life. Mastery. Once I know who I am and I show up knowing that I'm valued for being a human, I want to get better and master some things. But my role has to be based on those strengths that I have inherently as my unique gifts and talents.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:17:19]:
I have to know those because then I want to get better using those and purpose. I want to use those to make a difference, to make an impact for other humans. So me showing up saying I want to get better so you can have a certain percentage of increase in shareholder value is not going to hit anybody's soul. But if we have conversations about how your work impacts other humans, which it always does, then we start to heal from this. I'm a machine here. To produce it is a significant difference. So that requires. This is a big one.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:18:02]:
This is going to take a few episodes for us to unpack. Employees, everybody that is inside the organization, no matter what their role, need to know their value, their unique gifts. Talents and abilities not wait for somebody else to tell what they are. Because we are worthy, because we are here, alive. God allowed us to wake up for another day. Our worth isn't based on our productivity and our achievement. Our worth is because God gave us another day to serve other humans in a way that makes us feel alive. When people know their worth, they don't burn out.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:18:47]:
They step up. They want to give more. But the more we try to bring control in, the less people will step up. Because it's not tapping into any of our cellular or spiritual hardwiring. It's dual. It's a leadership problem, and it's a human employee problem. And managers are just stuck in the middle saying, screw this, I'm out. And I don't blame them one little bit.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:19:20]:
But I do have some recommendations. The way we move forward is simple in understanding it, but it's going to take some healing time to shift it, because we're all just products of the patterns of our past. And so if we're going to change the way that we work, work, it's going to take some time to truly understand it and to trust it and to learn how to do it differently. So here's my recommendation to move forward. And again, we're going to have to unpack a bunch of stuff. I call it VRI. And we've talked about it here before, but I just keep digging into it deeper and bringing it into different topics so that we can truly understand it at a deeper level. Value, relevance, and impact.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:20:08]:
Value. Again, I just said this, but I'm gonna say it again. I'm gonna say it again. I'm gonna say it again. I'm gonna say it again until you start to believe me. You are worthy because you woke up this morning. You are valuable because you woke up this morning, which means that God needs you here for some purpose that was knit together in you in your mother's womb. It's always been in there.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:20:30]:
It has nothing to do with your boss or your title or your paycheck or your degree. It's because you have a heartbeat and because you are here. And so it's up to us to know what makes us uniquely valuable. What makes us us. And so when organizations create the space for these conversations, then employees can say, here's who I am. Here's what I would love to do that I'm really good at. Someone really listens to that conversation and starts to match unique gifts and talents with relevance and impact. We'll talk about that in a minute.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:21:14]:
Then you Start to put this puzzle together, that every piece is unique. You've heard me say this before. Like a jigsaw puzzle, everybody is unique down to their fingerprints. But when we put those uniquenesses together, like a jigsaw puzzle, it's far more beautiful, it's far stronger, and every piece matters, no matter what's your title or role in the organization. So this is beyond your job description. This is about how are you showing up each day with your unique gifts and talents. So managers then can shift from evaluating external validation, which doesn't do anything to inspire us or motivate us. It's not autonomy, it's not creative.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:22:02]:
It's not aligned to ourselves and our spirit. When we go from evaluating to really elevating, it's what I do as a coach. I hold up the mirror and help you see you. If we can give employees more experiences to help them see who they really are by elevating and affirming that in them, they'll get motivated to do more, to step up. But at the same time, employees have to own their own strengths and advocate for the work that energizes them. So it's a. It's not a top down or a bottom up. It's both.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:22:42]:
Both have to happen. And in the middle is this connection point of amazing conversations and connections and inspiration and motivation and elevation and all the stuff we want. But it's a different role. It's a coaching and nurturing role to do that, not a command and control. And not all managers are great coaches and nurturers. And a lot of times coaches and nurturers don't want to be managers because managers are expecting to command and control, expected to command and control. So we have a misalignment of what's needed in the organization and who's trying to play that role in the middle. That's value, relevance.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:23:27]:
Once you know your value, it's like you're armed with all these gifts. You're like, okay, these are my gifts and talents. I want a place to give them, to use them. Relevance says, where does my work actually make an impact? So that employees aren't just showing up for the paycheck. They're staying for the meaning and the way it feels to do work that matters to another human, not to a metric. The metric is just the scoreboard to say, are we winning? We gotta know how it matters to another human. To really tap in to cells and spirit. Leaders need to stop managing the tasks and start connecting people to the purpose.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:24:13]:
Why? Who is this for? These are the questions. These are the simple ones. Who is this work for? And why does it matter to them if employees know that for every job that they do, you're already making a difference? The best teams don't just know what they do. They know who it's for and why it matters. Impact. How do I shape my future here? That's a employee is looking to say, okay, now I'm awake. Now I know who I am. I'm ready to make a difference.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:24:44]:
So then the work is about growth and cultivating connections and cultivating impact, not control. So it's more like the garden than the factory and the machine. How do I create the conditions where I can thrive? Employees need the autonomy to shape their roles and evolve them, which is why it requires a leader to have the humility to say, let's figure it out together, and listen to that feedback and conversation and connecting points from the employees so that together you can create things that are far better. Because we're having this conversation together, not command and control. So leaders have to measure success not on how much is produced, but on how many people are stepping up to thrive in this organization because they know who they are and they want their work to matter. And they're bringing you suggestions and they're bringing you ideas that can have a greater impact for your customer or whoever it is that you serve that pays you. So we're not measuring output. We're measuring impact.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:26:03]:
I'm so passionate about this. When I talk about it, I just get excited, exhausted, because I'm like, oh, I can see it. And I just want it so much for our society. If every single person in an organization deeply knew their value, worked in a place where their strengths were relevant, and felt like they were making an impact, that business would be unstoppable. And I know it to be true because I'm helping enough people do this that the impact that it's having for them and their teams is tangible, not only to the business results, but to their cells and their spirit. So we could change work forever with this. We could change the world. We could change society with this.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:26:58]:
So, leaders, if you're listening, if you're still leading with control, I say this with love. You're already losing. So I'm inviting you again, with love, to step into leading with humility and to give your team the space, the conversations, and the nurturing and the coaching to truly thrive. Your job isn't to be the smartest person in the room. It's to help others know who they are. So they can step into their own greatness and then together everybody can make a difference with your customers. And then your customers are going to want to pay you more and you're going to have more customers. And then your bottom line grows and then people are happy.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:27:48]:
And managers. Your burnout isn't personal failure. You didn't do it wrong. It's system failure. You have power, you have value. You have worth. And I want you just to take this invitation from me today that you can stop bleeding with fear about what the leader is going to say or what's going to happen and you can decide to lead with connection. Yeah, you're going to be swimming upstream a little bit, but life kind of sucks right now anyway.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:28:19]:
You might as well just give it a go, right? The future of work could be different. Hold up the mirror and help your people know who they are and invite them to bring those strengths in more creative ways. Go against the grain a bit. Prove it out. If you can't get your leader to listen, that's all right. If you're getting results, eventually they're going to leave you alone. Doesn't matter matter how you get them. Be a little rogue.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:28:48]:
Go against the grain. Don't just succumb to a bad system and to employees. You are not a cog in a machine. You are not a productivity report. You are a beautiful human. You are valuable, you are worthy. Your work is relevant and you deserve to make an impact. You deserve more than a paycheck.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:29:16]:
So start to do some your own personal reflection. Don't wait on your manager or your leader. Create your own life. Decide what are your unique gifts and talents, what do you love to do that you're good at? And then go to work looking for ways to use that in ways that are relevant and feel good and you know you're making an impact to other humans. If your job won't let you do that, find one that will. It's worth it. It's totally worth it. This isn't just about fixing work.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:29:46]:
It's about fixing how we see each other as human beings. We've spent decades treating people like machines and it's over. It's over. Welcome to the Age of Humanity. Whether anybody else is on board yet or not around you, join me. I can promise you that there is hope and something different on the other side. Let's build this together. If I can help you in any way, as a coach, as a speaker, I will bring the passion and the tactics of how tos.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:30:24]:
And nothing would make me happier than for you to message me and say, hey, will you come talk to my leader or will you help us? Because this is the hill I'm going to die on is to change the way that we work so that we can change the way that we live. Because for the love of everything holy, making money just ought to feel better. Okay, so next episode, I'm going to break down a little more of this each week as I'm writing this book and doing work with clients and just building movement and momentum with more people willing to jump in and give some of this a go. Okay, Love you, Mean it. Bye. Thanks for being here. You can follow us on Instagram at Business Is Human or TikTok Rebecca Fleetwood Hession. It's a great way to share some of the clips with your colleagues and friends.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:31:22]:
All right. Make it a great day. Love you mean it.