Renee: Audrey, you’ve been a psychologist since 1990. You have firsthand insights into the stresses and strains of life as a senior executive, and the impact of leaders’ behaviours on teams’ wellbeing and an organization’s performance. You’ve also been an executive coach to more than 500 leaders over the past 18 years. You are the co-founder of EEK & SENSE and the co-author of the Global Leadership Wellbeing Survey, GLWS. An evidence-based tool used by leaders and their teams to enable wellbeing insights and actions. Since 2015 you have conducted research into the wellbeing profiles of more than 5,000 leaders using the GLWS tool. Welcome. There seem to be a lot of misconceptions about wellbeing and varying definitions. How do you define wellbeing?

Audrey: Thanks very much first of all Renee for inviting me along here today, it’s my very great pleasure. And I think it’s a terrific first question because it’s where we get into a lot of hot water. I mean, wellbeing is such a … Sorry, let me say at the out start, I think because wellbeing is such a common part of the everyday parlance, it’s not a word that anybody stops to really feel any element of surprise about. It’s in our everyday vernacular, but therein also lies the problem – that we don’t have a common shared understanding of what it means. And I do think that in the layperson’s mind, it probably conjures up somewhere between an emphasis on physical health (so the yoga, apples, smoking cessation, stepathons, that sort of thing) and mental ill health.

Audrey: So I think those two components, if we were to survey the average man or woman on the street, that’s probably, I think what we’d get back as the layperson’s definition. Going as far back as the 50s, the 1950s, the World Health Organization has defined wellbeing as being a complete state of physical, mental and social wellbeing. And what they were really getting at there is it’s not merely the absence of ill health, but it’s a positive thing. It’s an aspirational piece. And I think that that’s not really quite there in organizations at the moment, in workplaces. And certainly, I think there’s a way to go in running an education program around helping leaders and employees alike understand that wellbeing is a really slippery dynamic thing.

Audrey: It’s not, once you’ve got it, you can have it forever, it’s multidimensional, it shifts, ebbs and flows. And one of my sort of favourite images is to invite people to think about wellbeing as a delicate balancing act, as seesaw. And on one end of the seesaw, we’ve got all the demands and challenges that are coming at us in life, and on the other end of the seesaw, we have all the assets or resources that we have at our disposal, whether on our insights or our physical energy, our emotional energy, our mental energy, spiritual energy, all those things coming to life. And that wellbeing is that lovely sweet spot where the seesaw is in balance, but it doesn’t take much to knock it slightly out of balance.

Renee: Okay. And you spoke about the layperson’s definition or interpretation of the word wellbeing. What are you seeing in organizations in terms of the way that organizations are defining wellbeing?

Audrey: Well, sort of picking up on my earlier comments, I think one of the things that is prevalent is the sort of over-medicalized emphasis. And I have to be clear, obviously I’m not going to sit here and say physical health isn’t important, it’s an absolute bedrock. And I’m certainly not going to say that the mental health statistics that we hear so much about shouldn’t be front and centre -all those things should be foundational pieces. They seem to be very reactive and very focused on the negative. So smoking cessation, or it’s about minimizing obesity; where I’m concerned about the rise of the mental ill health epidemic that’s we’re really seeing as pandemic across the world. So, I think in short –  I’d say that wellbeing in organizations is really I think being defined more by the stats – of the focus on the one in five who are struggling.

Audrey: They’ve got diagnosed ill health, and we believe that those are the stats in Australia today; that at any one point in time, one in five employees is suffering from clinically diagnosed mental ill health, and then you put the physical ill-health on top of that. So, I think that in organizations we’re really focusing on wellbeing as being for the people who are vulnerable and at need. And whilst I think that we must do more to support and help those who are in crisis, we’ve got a long way to go there. It does also beg the question of, well, of all of the others, how many of those people are truly well in that sense of flourishing and having exactly the right level of assets to meet the challenges that are coming at them in life? And so, there’s this piece around the frozen middle.

Renee: Okay. What do you mean by the ‘frozen middle’?

Audrey: So, the frozen middle is the majority of people who we would see coming through coaching rooms and onto programs who while they are not unwell in the sense of clinically meeting the criteria, but they are hanging in there by the skin of their teeth. On a good day they’re coping, but they’re probably showing preclinical symptoms that, if left unaddressed, are highly likely to morph into something more serious. And unfortunately, the data that we’ve got and the data that’s coming through from other organizations is showing that’s a growing majority. So, to put figures around that – we’ve got one in five being diagnosed as suffering from a mental ill health condition.

Audrey: There might be one in five who are flourishing and thriving and for whom we can say they have high levels of wellbeing, but there are three in five who on a good day… they’re, hmm, okay. And so, what I’d love to see is a shift in organizations from thinking about wellbeing as being the province of the vulnerable and the needy to being something that is a human issue that is relevant for the five in five employees. I want to see it plucked out of health safety and wellbeing and stitched into the very fabric of the organization and the workplace for everyone.

Renee: Fascinating. And so, as you and I both work in organizations and we see this sort of fast changing competitive business landscape that business and organizations are operating in. And I don’t know about you, but I see them asking us and looking for ways to unlock more of a sustained performance. And so, I wonder from your perspective, what is that link between a focus on wellbeing for five out of five and improve performance?

Audrey: How long have we got Renee? Look, where to start with this? I think in the olden days there was a very sort of dominant view that if you wanted to progress in your career and if you were intent on holding down a complex role, a professional role that carried with a lot of responsibility, that wellbeing was something that, not necessarily you had to give up in its entirety, but that you would make some trade-offs on in order to progress your career and to do well, to be successful. And perhaps there was a time in organizational life where that was the correct approach to take, but I think anybody who’s thinking that way today in the era of constant disruption where the only thing that’s certain is change itself, I think that, that’s a path to unsustainable performance. And I also don’t think it’s a path to success. So, I’ve been on record previously having a bit of an issue with the lovely Elon Musk.

Renee: Oh yes?

Audrey: And his declarations that we should all be working 100-hour weeks in order to achieve our mission, which of course in his case is to see society develop on Mars. There’s so many aspects of him and his approach that I love, but sadly I don’t think he’s going to get to Mars because I think the way that he’s working and the way that he’s leading his organization is really unsustainable and counterproductive. So, I’m going a bit off track here and the man does have $32 billion more than I do. Perhaps I shouldn’t be arguing with him. Well, when I look to the future and I think, how likely is it that he’s going to be successful, I don’t feel unfortunately that he is going to be successful because I see it as a fallacy.

Working harder is no longer the path to being successful. And I think that leaders who are looking after themselves and will come out and maybe talk about what that truly means. But leaders who are grounded and centred and able to deal with this constant disruption and constant change and the way that they lead organizations and create the right environment for other people to not just survive but thrive in those environments. They are the sorts of leaders and they are the sorts of organizations that are going to go the distance and be really successful. 

We have Simon Sinek talking about the difference between the Finite Game and the Infinite GameAnd that leadership is the determinant of whether we were playing an infinite game or a game that’s going to come to an end. And we know that so many organizations have much shorter lifespans these days iethey go out of business. Why do they go out business? It’s not for the lack of working hard, but are they sufficiently centred, grounded, focused, visionary? Are they sufficiently creative and agile?

And there’s a lot of research around to show that those are the predictors of the future. And in order to be able to do those things, you’ve got to be able to pause, stop, reflect, have a breath, recharge, replenish, recover, rest. Dare I say all sort of potentially quite old fashioned concepts? But they are the things that are setting the organizations who are going to have longevity and successful development over the years ahead, apart from the ones who aren’t going to be around.

Renee: Fascinating. And you mentioned a moment ago of Elon Musk and his way of working. Just got me thinking about as leaders we have our definition of flourishing, you use the word flourishing a moment ago, and whether that’s the same as somebody else’s definition of flourishing, what are your thoughts on that?

Audrey: Well, I think the English language is a terrible vehicle with which to express ourselves and with any label comes multiple different interpretations. But the thing I like about either definition of flourishing is it has something positive and aspirational around it. It’s something that’s got an upbeat energy, and I think one of the roles of leaders today is to create positive energy in a world that is potentially going to hell in a hand basket on some days, it’s what we feel like! So anybody that can inspire, not to some sort of diluted Pollyanna version of positive energy book, but to something that people can relate to and feel is worthy of their energy, their focus, their efforts that they can believe in. So I think that’s part of the flourishing. So I don’t know if I’ve answered your question there Renee but-

Renee: I was probably thinking a little bit more about a latest definition than being interpreted by their team or by the organization. That they sort of demonstrate a hundred hour week and that might be okay for them, but then what does their team or their organization read into that about whether that actually is the lifestyle that’s admired around here.

Audrey: I don’t want us to be a Musk beat up session.

Renee: No, but it’s-

Audrey: But I do think about what it must be like to work in the organization and have your high-profile CEO on record saying we must all be working a hundred hours a week. What does it feel like when it comes around 7:00 PM on a Friday night and you want to clock off and where does family fit in there? Where does sleep and health and fitness? So, I think you’re right. What a leader sees as being positive and flourishing, we do have to be careful about that – because it’s not necessarily what everybody wants.

Renee: Okay.

Audrey: I think the other comment I’d make before we move on from this is around how there’s this link between stress levels and performance. And low stress levels are not conducive to high levels of performance. But, gone are the days where we wander into an office and go home. I’m going to be so bored today nothing to do! For most people we’re being drinking from the fire hose. We were spoiled for choice. There’s so much that’s competing for our attention and our demands.

Understress is not really an issue for most people these days;they’re having too much stress. And the optimal level of stress is where we feel enough to kind of have a bit of adrenaline and a bit of focus and a bit of energy. But if we don’t channel that and we are constantly in a state of heightened adrenaline and so many things competing for our attention and scarce resources, then that’s the set of conditions that over time leads to us feeling exhausted and fatigued and then that leads to burnout. And after burnout – disease and ultimately death without being too melodramatic about it! So, we have to get this balance right about the amount of stress that there is in our life. Without demonizing stress. I mean stress is a good thing… to a point.

Renee: And so, in that environment that you were so well describing just then, I’m wondering why then is a focus on resilience not just and not, why is that a not enough?

Audrey: Well I think a lot of organizations and maybe even some individuals and leaders do think it’s enough. So, I don’t. I’ll come onto that in a moment. But one of the responses to the really high stress levels has been, “we just need to make our people more resilient”. So, “if we have tough minds and we have lots of grit and stamina and we’re just got to be mentally tough and hang in there, it’ll be fine”. But for me that sounds awfully aligned to the three in five frozen, middle; the people who are hanging in there. So yeah, we can of course build resilience and in part that’s a really good thing to do. But resilience isn’t … high levels of resilience aren’t the same as wellbeing, high levels of wellbeing. That’s one point I’d make.

And the other, I guess deeper issue I’ve got with putting all our eggs in the resilience basket, is that where we’re asking people to become more resilient, to compensate for bad systems and processes or bad leadership. So, I’m sure there might be some people listening in their capacity as coaches who will be able to relate to this. But when you take a brief as a coach where the brief from the organization is around, or just ‘Renee would really benefit from building up her resilience’. Oh, tell me why that is?! Oh, well there’s been some issues with her coworkers or blah blah! And over time as the coach you deduce the issues have really got very little to do with Renee’s resilience!

It’s the system or the organization or the workplace or the team or the company or the bosses that are surrounding Renee where the issue is. But that’s a much harder systemic set of things to face into. And so, Renee and her coach are briefed with the task of “just make Renee more resilient”. And so, I mean, it’s a bit simplistic and dramatized for today’s purposes, but that’s the issue that I’ve got with this sort of resilience movement. Not that resilience is a bad thing, but it’s being used in lieu of taking a more complex systemic approach to addressing other shortcomings.

Renee: What I’m hearing in what you’re describing there is almost like an approach to the individual being responsible, solely responsible, and for by building up their resilience now that will cure all of those issues for what you’re describing there of course is as you said, what coaches here every day in their engagements is that of course it’s more complex and needs to be addressed systematically.

Audrey: I came across a lovely analogy the other day about likening wellbeing to a barrel full of apples where the individuals in the barrel… sorry the apples in the barrel were equivalent to individual employees. And of course what we want are shiny, crisp apples that are being and have been well looked after, and are all lovely and fresh. But, you have to consider the barrel that they’re in. So the workplace, the organization, the culture. But also, the fact of apples on one another. And then we had a bit of fun with this analogy saying, well, it gets even more gross when you think about a punnet of strawberries. ‘Cause you know, what happens if there’s a mouldy strawberry in there? And particularly big mouldy strawberries spread very quickly. And so, everything in the barrel is affected, well, if the leader is the big mouldy strawberry, that’s not much fun, is it?!

So fruit is an analogy, but wellbeing is contagious, and the wellbeing of one individual – you may well have experienced this yourself, working in a team where how one individual shows up –has an impact on everybody else’s emotions, on everybody else’s enjoyment or satisfaction, on everybody else’s energy levels.

Renee: Yes.

Renee: Like a contagion.

Audrey: like a contagion, that’s exactly right, the wellbeing effect, the contagion effect.

Renee: So when you’re working with leaders and they don’t know themselves very well, and they’re also not aware of those multiple dimensions of wellbeing, well beyond resilience we’ve just spoken about, in your experience what is the consequence? And I know you’ve alluded to a few of them already, but could you expand on what you see as the consequences for either the individual or those around them when they don’t have that level of awareness?

Audrey: So one of the common things that we would see is an executive saying, yeah, no, I’m fine, I’m okay, and they may genuinely believe that, and to some extent then who are we to argue? Wellbeing is a very subjective thing. But as a coach you’ve got to learn to kind of dig under the surface if somebody says fine, what does that really mean? But what I’m getting at here is that leaders can just develop entrenched habits so they can be accustomed to getting less than five hours sleep. They can be accustomed to getting up into the office at 6:00 AM to get a head start on the day and they get their work done before the team comes in at 8:30 and then they do this, and then they do that. And all of a sudden that becomes their norm or over time actually becomes their norm, and it becomes so normalized for them, it doesn’t occur to them that it might be suboptimal or doing them harm or not sustainable.

And so, I think that leaders can be a little bit fearful to look at the habits and patterns that in many ways have contributed to them becoming successful. Their work ethic is one of the most common ones that people will say, ‘I have worked really hard to get here’. And yet in this era that we live in now where there don’t seem to be very many boundaries, where you could work 24/7, the work ethic becomes a potential downside or a risk that, if they don’t manage, can be their undoing. So, I think one thing that we could do as coaches is to help leaders confront what they might be fearful of in changing some habits.

And then the other thing I think, is that leaders can have some blind spots. Well, we can all have blind spots, but blind spots around our own wellbeing. And we find that when we get to do some work with them and really focus on their wellbeing and kind of bring that into focus a lot more sharply, one of the things that then happens is they go, ‘Oh my God, that was amazing, this is so important, I’ve developed all these new habits’. Then one of the other things that they can do is then insist that their team run with exactly the same habits. 

So I had a leader contact me the other day saying how that was fantastic stuff that we did and I had such a breakthrough. It was amazing for me So now I’ve insisted my whole team come to the gym with me at lunch time, 12 o’clock on the dot every day.

And I just put my head in my hands going, no, no, no, no, that’s not the point! wellbeing is so subjective, that worked for you, but it might not work for the team. And that’s one of the other kind of pitfalls I see leaders fall into – that they become so passionate about their own wellbeing. They well -intentionally but erroneously prescribe their wellbeing recipe to other people. So they miss the point!

Renee: Yeah. Can I ask, there’s a lot of people, thousands of leaders as I said in the introduction, thousands of leaders who’ve been through your wellbeing survey. Can you share with us some of the things that you’re finding of late, what the data is telling you?

Audrey: Yeah. Well, a big picture of the data would just be really confirming the one in five, three in five and the one in five trends. So, if we think about wellbeing as being sort of on a continuum, the data would show really a reinforcement of my earlier comments.

Renee: You’ve got that breakdown in the data?

Audrey: I’ve got the breakdown on the data, and that middle or frozen majority (however is we want to refer to them) but there are significant number of people who are calling out preclinical signs of low wellbeing, but they are being offset to a degree by some things that are really positive in their life. And that’s kind of how it works. 

So a typical profile Renee might be a senior leader who says, ‘I love what I’m doing, I’m really engaged in my job, I find it really interesting and I’m really committed and I like the organization that I’m working with’. So there’s a lot going well and that really is very supportive. That’s the idea of a wellbeing assets, something that’s enhancing their level of wellbeing.

And yet when, if you pursue that conversation with individual then and maybe ask a question about, what will happen if you change nothing about your wellbeing habits at all? You love this job and it’s really interesting and engaging and stimulating, how will life be for you two, three, five years from now? 

And often that then makes them pause and think, five years from now my kids are going to be this age, I’m probably another five to 10 kilos heavier, that probably puts me at risk of some diabetes or heart health issues. God, maybe I’ll be divorced because I haven’t been paying attention to my loving partner sufficiently. 

So, there can be lots of things that are going well that if we focus on them to the exclusion of the habits and patterns that are potentially detractors, that’s what we’re seeing coming through in our data as being of concern.

It’s like a short term versus long term. We quite often talk about wellbeing as being a bit like an insurance policy, that you’ve got to pay into knowing that you’re doing something good for the future. Some of the stats that we’ve got around the ways in which people are … Sorry, I’m losing my voice here talking about wellbeing! 

Some of the stats are around 80% of senior professionals feeling that their concentration is compromised by competing demands for their attention. 75% of them feel that they’re pulled in too many different directions in their roles and drowning in red tape, high levels of self-doubt. Now, these individuals aren’t saying that they have low wellbeing, they’re saying that there’s many things going well, but when that level of self-doubt and being distracted and overwhelmed are occurring at the level that we’re seeing them occur, then I worry about what that looks like over the longer term.

Renee: You’ve mentioned a few times in our discussion, you’ve worked with thousands of leaders who’ve been through your wellbeing tool. What is the data showing?

Audrey: I love a bit of data. Yes, we’ve got a few. So I have analyzed 330,000 items which have come from several thousand leaders mostly in Australia, but across the globe, and they’re in professional or senior leadership roles. And what that data tells us is that much like I was saying earlier, the start of our conversation Renee, most people are not unwell. We don’t have huge high levels of anxiety and depression being reported, but most people are not flourishing and thriving and firing on all cylinders. What we see is the majority of people reporting quite concerning experiences and behaviours, which if they play out without change over the long term, I worry for their wellbeing over the long term.

So, for example out of our population, 80% of leaders say that their ability to concentrate is compromised by competing demands for their attention, 75% feel pulled in too many different directions in their roles, 63% feel that they’re at risk of developing burnout. And just as a quick aside on that, in the era of increased governance and risk management we should be really, really worried about burnout because when people are burned out, the incidents of bad behaviour or poor behaviour skyrockets. It’s where we see poor judgment, people stop caring about the decisions they’re making, they start behaving in very uncivil, rude, aggressive ways with one another.

Those are some of the sort of behavioural signs. So, 63% of senior leaders and professionals say that they sometimes usually or always feel at risk of burnout. I think we have to take that very seriously. They’re not saying they are burnt out, but that there is a risk of it. We’ve got 60% of people saying that they feel stressed and anxious whilst at work and the same numbers feeling prone to very high levels of self-doubt. And I could go on, there’s more around sleep and toxicity of relationships, politics in the workplace on and so forth. But it’s makes me feel that we’ve got human beings who are experiencing work in life somewhat as a bit of a pressure cooker and it’s questioned about when’s it going to blow.

Renee: And when we consider all that data and knowing that our listeners today will often be those who are passionate about coaching often coaching themselves and working with leaders every day. What do you see is the coach’s responsibility in all of this?

Audrey: I guess it’s similar to what we would say the coach’s responsibility is in a lot of areas. So, it’s to play that dual role of being supportive and simultaneously challenging. So, with respect to wellbeing, if I get a little bit more specific, I think there are questions around what is the individual that you’re working with in the coaching engagement, what are they doing to support or detract from their own wellbeing? So, your job as a coach is impart, uphold or hold them to account for taking responsibility for their own wellbeing. Now they may be working in a bad system, in a bad workplace with a bad boss and a bad team, but there are still some things and some choices that they have open to them. And so, the coach could really be focusing on those.

So you get the coaches to help the individual put their wellbeing front and centre of their choices and explore the link between their wellbeing and their performance. And then I think over above holding the individual to account and gently encouraging them to examine the way that they’re leading their life in the context of their wellbeing. Once they’ve done that, I think it’s also about encouraging the leader to think about how they show up having an impact on other people’s wellbeing. So that contagion effect that we mentioned earlier.

And when they’re doing that, the stage after that, because hopefully they are really converted to the idea that wellbeing is not a trade-off for successful performance, but it’s an enabler of sustainable high performance. And when they’ve got that message, then they’re in a position of really being able to sort of act as an influencer at the systemic level. In the work that we do, we talk about helping leaders develop wellbeing and a culture of workplace wellbeing.

So, developing a capability around enabling wellbeing. And we have four things that are our catch cry. We talk about them being able to learn it, and so educating them just in the way that we’ve been talking today about what wellbeing is and it’s multidimensional and subjective and ebbs and flows and it’s more than the absence of ill health. All of those things really sort of pulling your leaders together and having that conversation with them. So, once they’ve learnt it? Live it! Which is where we really sit down and that’s where we would use our global leadership wellbeing survey, the GLWS, and we’d sit down and we’d take them through 121 questions. They would really scrutinize the factors that are enhancing and detracting from their own wellbeing and they get a really sort of forensic level understanding of what it is.

It’s an audit for themselves. And once they’ve lived that and they’ve really developed their own sort of self-awareness around the factors enhancing and detracting from their own wellbeing, then they’re in a position to Lead It for other people. But if you go too soon to trying to get people to lead it before they’ve learned it and lived it, then I think that’s part of the reason why we see comparatively low levels of uptake on things like wellbeing programs. And it’s why they’re staying in this sort of OH&S and medical space as opposed to moving into or being integral to leadership.

So –  learn it, live it, lead it, and the stage after leading it with their teams is to then embed it  within organizations and really be that sort of power horse for systemic change. So, going back to the apples in the barrel, they’re really in a position having looked at their own apple, polished it up, helps other people polish up their apples that embedded places is working at the systemic level.

Renee: So Audrey we’ve come to a close, there’s been some great insights and tips, peppered throughout what you’ve shared today. I just wanted, if there’s any final advice you’d give to coaches.

Audrey: Thanks Renee I’ve enjoyed this immensely. Final advice. There’s two things I think I would suggest. One is –  don’t leave a discussion about wellbeing until the person that you’re coaching is heading on their way to being the one in five. Remember, wellbeing is for five and five. And so wellbeing should be a feature of every single coaching relationship. Not just the coaching briefs that around, I’ve got somebody who needs to build a resilience or who’s stressed or who isn’t very well to make it front and centre. So that’s point one. And the second sort of tip I’d give is don’t be a mouldy strawberry or an unpolished apple. Look after yourself. It’s sounds obvious, but it’s hard to do.

Renee Holder: Great. Thank you so much.

Audrey: You’re very welcome.

Renee Holder: Great. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time today and for being a fabulous guest.

Audrey: Thank you, Renee. I don’t know about that, but thank you.