Mental Health in the workplace is top of mind, especially these days. With all that’s going on in the world, Covid continuing to upend plans, and burnout running rampant through organizations, leaders need practical, tactical solutions to helping their people (and themselves!) deal with mental health challenges. So on this final day of Mental Health Awareness month, Erica moderates a mental health roundtable discussion featuring leading experts in the diversity, inclusion, and belonging space. On this episode we have Daisy Auger-Dominguez, chief people officer at VICE media, Leonora Zilkha Williamson, human capital strategy and executive coach, and Nicholas Griggs-Drane, director of diversity and inclusion at Endeavor. In this episode, the panelists discuss how to recognize mental health matters in the workplace, how leaders and employees alike need to feel psychologically safe in order to be honest and vulnerable (and how to model that from the top), how different generations and geographical regions process mental health matters differently, why having mental health benefits are table stakes now in the recruiting process, and why it’s so important to give people time to unplug and rest in order to combat burnout. Thanks to Terawatt for presenting this panel—“Because everyone deserves a good coach.”

What does it take to scale a business from an idea to unicorn status? Suneera Madhani would say to look to family values—specifically the ones her Pakistani parents instilled in her. With her brother, Suneera co-founded Stax Payments, a fintech platform now processing $23 billion in payments, so it’s clear that these immigrant family values are working. Suneera speaks with Erica about her three-bucket principle to prioritizing what matters most, Stax’s rituals around shared meals, why they’ve chosen a hybrid model for the office, and how onboarding should be intentionally thought through from the moment a prospective hire receives an offer letter. Suneera also runs the CEO School, a platform dedicated to educating women entrepreneurs on how to scale their businesses and go from founder to CEO. Suneera launched this platform after learning that less than 2% of female founders ever break $1 million in revenue, so now she aims to increase that number. CEO School includes a podcast as well as a membership with monthly classes, community events, fireside chats, and a quarterly curated product box. Additionally, Suneera’s new CEO School Course—an 8-week experience, with workshops on power, pitch, process, product, people, and profit—is open for enrollment May 19th-May 25th, and you can sign up below!

Contrary to popular belief, the highest performing teams are not necessarily conflict free. In fact, healthy disagreement—or creative friction—leads to more innovation, more trust, better ideas, and higher performance. Amy Gallo, author, podcast host, and contributing editor at Harvard Business Review, sits down with Erica on this week’s episode to discuss how to disagree in a human way. This conversation equips leaders and employees alike to build trust and psychological safety in relationships and teams (the foundation of healthy conflict), navigate difficult conversations, and establish norms around disagreement. They also touch on how and why there are gender differences in disagreement and advocacy, why a hybrid work environment makes conflict more difficult, and how to approach—top down OR bottom up—disagreement on whether employees should return to the office fully or be able to keep a flexible schedule. Anyone who’s ever struggled with conflict in the workplace will find this conversation enlightening and helpful.  Amy’s latest book, Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone, Even Difficult People, is out September 13th and available for pre-order now.

When Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy pitched their second book, Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay, to their publisher in January 2020, the authors were met with questions about its relevance. Fast forward six months (and three months into a new and terrifying global pandemic), and the publisher recognized this was, in fact, a very relevant book to publish. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why. In these turbulent times, with millions participating in The Great Resignation, new Covid variants emerging every few months, derailing our collective plans to move on, and many dealing with the grief they’ve experienced from the loss of loved ones to the virus, Big Feelings couldn’t have come at a better time. Liz Fosslien, the co-author and illustrator stopped by Left to Our Own Devices to dig deep into big feelings. On this episode, Liz and Erica discuss the new book, how to express selective vulnerability (aka, bringing your most appropriate self to work), the importance of being intentional and taking time to connect and check in with colleagues, and how to introduce more stability into our teams during ever-changing times. Liz also offers two salient examples from Humu and IDEO on how to onboard in ways that will give new hires a sense of psychological safety as well as permission to bring their human to work. Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay, by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy is out today! Pick up your copy wherever books are sold.

Gary Ware was working as a VP at a digital ad agency when he realized that being completely depleted, feeling broken, and having no drive to do anything was perhaps *not* normal. Gary was experiencing what many of us have faced, especially during the pandemic—burnout. So Gary took an improv class and realized play is what was missing in his life. On the podcast this week, Gary chats with Erica about his journey from burnout to breakthrough by incorporating play and games into the work day. He illustrates how applied improvisation and games help teams and colleagues unlock creativity, confidence, and better communication. Gary shares the challenges of reimagining in-person games to an online environment once the pandemic hit, signs an employee may be on the verge of burnout, why playing a silly game as a team before a client call can make everything go more smoothly, and why sense of intimacy must be created if we want to form genuine connection.

Few activities prepare a young person for the world of work better than participation in team sports. With skills like leadership, performance under pressure, work ethic, teamwork, problem solving, and the ability to strategize, athletes are naturally set up to be successful. And that’s just what this week’s guest, former Team USA Women’s Hockey team captain and three-time Olympic medalist, Meghan Duggan, has found. Meghan joined Erica on the podcast to discuss her transition from leading the Olympic team to gold to manager of player development for the New Jersey Devils NHL hockey team. Meghan’s main focus these days is planning and strategizing with recent draft picks and young pros at the beginning of their career life cycle so they can become full-time, multi-million dollar NHL players. Meghan talks about the moment she decided she would be an Olympian (at just 10 years old!), why family and professional rituals matter, and her work as president of the Women’s Sports Foundation, where they work to build greater equity, inclusion, and participation for girls and women in sports. Anyone going through a professional transition will find Meghan’s journey and this episode helpful.

From a one-man business consultant working out of a spare bedroom in 2007 to a team of 100 employees, 1 billion dollars secured in business financing, and a leading fintech marketplace for small businesses, Joe Camberato—or, Grow By Joe, as he’s known on the internet—knows a thing or two about growth. Which makes sense, because Joe’s mission is to help drive growth, both for clients and employees. So how does he do it? This week on the podcast, Joe Camberato, founder and CEO of National Business Capital, speaks with Erica about how to build a business from scratch. And the secret for Joe is to harness the power of culture. And culture doesn’t have to be overcomplicated, but it does have to be experienced. Joe discusses NBC’s team rituals, like the 9:01 AM daily stretch that gets everyone centered for the day, how they build fun into the day-to-day work, how their culture team intentionally crafts events and resources for the company, and why leaders should let people have the flexibility they need to deal with stuff going on in their lives—we’re all human after all. Listen in for a straightforward approach to bringing fun back to work.

How do we shift society as a whole towards more diversity and inclusion? It starts with the people and brands defining culture itself—“the icons, visionaries, renowned experts, award-winners, champions, leading brands and institutions.” And nowhere do they influence culture more than at Endeavor, a company that represents this top tier talent in sports, entertainment, fashion, live events, and media. On this episode, Erica spoke with Alicin Williamson, Chief Inclusion Officer, and Nicholas Griggs-Drane, Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Endeavor. Alicin and Nicholas help build D&I into the fabric of Endeavor, and thus the culture at large. In this episode Alicin and Nicholas discuss how to make sure everyone can show up as their full selves, using science and stories about underrepresented groups to shift the conversation, how to onboard with D&I baked in, and why putting diversity and inclusion first is a competitive advantage. This episode is an absolute must-listen for anyone in HR and people functions.

What’s a human leader to do as we all try to figure out how to navigate the future of work? There are so many variables right now around the return to the office, working from home, hybrid models, and everything in between, that it can be tough to make the smartest and safest decisions. And we can’t do this difficult work alone. That’s why for the finale of the Hybrid season of Left to Our Own Devices, we’re running a special episode: a live webinar (previously recorded) from keynote speaker, bestselling author, and founder of Happier, Nataly Kogan, called the Awesome Human Hour. Nataly invited Erica on the weekly webinar, and they discussed why in this transition period, honoring relationships, focusing on well-being, and shifting to outcomes instead of hours is a great start. They also talked about why leading with vulnerability, transparency, clear communication, and gratitude are powerful ways to ensure engagement from employees and leaders alike. And as always, Erica reminded us that rituals are a sure-fire tool for offering the people in our organizations psychological safety, a greater sense of purpose, and a boost in performance, especially in uncertain times. Listen in for two expert takes on how to be an awesome human leader during this transition.

We’re half way through summer, which means the official “return to office” date, the day after Labor Day, is fast approaching. Many companies expect that their employees will be back in the office in some capacity. Which means NOW is the time to be thinking about how to navigate that transition. Enter executive start up coach Alisa Cohn and her client, co-founder and CEO of startup Common Paper, Jake Stein, to chat with Erica about how they’re both figuring out this transition time. In the episode you’ll hear Alisa reflect on her first offsite since the pandemic and the feeling of magic that face-to-face connection created, how Jake is thinking about building rapport, trust, and understanding with new hires in a future of work that isn’t necessarily geolocated, how matching the message to the medium is more important than ever, why old rituals may or may not translate as well in a different context (office setting versus WFH-during-a-pandemic setting), and why reopening may be tougher on us all psychologically than the initial lockdown.

For the July 4th holiday week, we’re replaying the Season Two finale, featuring Eve Rodsky. As the discussion around Hybrid work and equity around the Return (or not) to the Office continues to heat up, Eve’s perspective on how women are impacted is ever important. As one woman noted to me recently, “I want to take advantage of my company’s offer to work from home on Thursday, but the two men on my team aren’t going to do it.” Women especially want flex, but don’t want to be left behind if they’re “out of sight; out of mind” when it comes to career advancement. Companies navigating a return to the office without intention and a plan for inclusion could result in leaving people in need of more flex (i.e.: mostly women, people of color, differently-abled people, and caretakers) behind.

The pandemic accelerated several workplace trends, but none more rapidly than the conversation around holistic well-being. How do we think about wellness at work? How do we integrate work and life instead of trying to force an impossible balance? How has the pandemic changed our view of well-being in a way that’s holistic and gives mental health equal weight? At the end of the day, “We bring work to life by bringing life to work.” This week on the podcast, Erica chats with two women leading the transformation of workplace well-being: Jen Fisher, author, podcast host, Thrive Global Editor-at-Large, and Chief Well-being Officer at Deloitte, and Keren Ehrenfeld, Managing Director in Global Capital Markets at Morgan Stanley and Head of Healthcare and Transportation Debt Capital Markets practice. Jen, Keren, and Erica discuss how to recognize burnout, how each individual’s view of wellness is different, how managers are one of the biggest impacts on wellness at work, and how wellness can be achieved from organizational, team, and individual levels. This is an absolute must-listen for leaders looking to move into the future of work with well-being as a top priority.

What’s important to you? What are your non-negotiables? What are your goals? When it comes to negotiating what’s best for each person in the hybrid workplace, answering those questions is a great place to start, says Mori Taheripour, this week’s guest on Left to Our Own Devices. Mori is a globally recognized negotiation and DEI expert, executive, Wharton professor, and author of Bring Yourself: How to Harness the Power of Connections to Negotiate Fearlessly. Erica and Mori discuss why it’s important to be straight forward about our needs at work, how companies will have to look at the future of work on a more individual, holistic level, and why it’s key to set boundaries with our values in mind and learn to communicate effectively and with curiosity. Listen in for a thoughtful conversation around bringing our best selves to work and life in an authentic way, and stick around to the end for some sage advice Mori gives to Erica as the parent of two college-bound kids.

How do the leaders of one of the biggest and most successful tech companies in the world lead in the Hybrid Revolution? With a figure-it-out mindset. Today on the podcast, Erica chats with Colette Stallbaumer, General Manager of Microsoft 365 and Future of Work at Microsoft. Colette explains Microsoft's approach to Hybrid work—it’s centered around a three-part framework: people, places, and processes. They’re using technology and research to implement best practices around empowering managers, hiring diverse talent, embracing flexibility, creating connection and culture in new ways, and staying agile with touch points. Because at the end of the day, as Colette asserts, leading IN a crisis is far different than leading OUT of a crisis. Instead of taking our bad pandemic habits (like working into the evenings and weekends and taking endless back-to-back Zoom calls) with us into the Hybrid Revolution, Microsoft is shifting away from reactive and into proactive processes. Colette also shares some professional and personal rituals from that past year that made quarantine a bit brighter. Listen in to hear insights from one of the leading vanguards in the future of work.

How do you develop great talent in turbulent times? What about for a future of work which has never yet existed? By being a people-first leader. This week on Left to Our Own Devices, Erica sits down with Susan Justus, VP of Talent Development at Betterment, a digital automated investment platform. Susan has spent many years in the talent development space and understands that building relationships with people “beyond the task” (part of The Betterment Way) is key. To develop employees with clarity, confidence, and purpose, leaders must be able to connect on a deeper level and reinforce psychological safety, EQ, transparency, and values. The work itself must also be meaningful for people to truly connect to an organization and thrive. And at Betterment, they really listen to their people. Which is why this summer, they’re running testing grounds on their hybrid model to work out any kinks, find balance, and help everyone prepare for the full hybrid model which will kick off in the fall. Listen in for more on this Hybrid model that every leader should be paying attention to.

As we start thinking about the epic “Return to the Office,” many are thinking about space and how it can be used more intentionally for collaboration, creativity, and productivity. Peter Knutson, chief strategy officer at architecture firm A+I and Bastien Baumann, chief design officer at Publicis Groupe join Erica on the podcast this week to discuss this very topic. A+I and Publicis Groupe partnered together to form Le Truc, “a New York City-based center of creative excellence for clients, converging 600+ creatives, producers, and creative strategists from Publicis Groupe New York agencies into one dynamic, collaborative space.” So for these two creatives, space and how to use it to maximize creative flow is top of mind. As we’ve seen in the last year, employees have proven they can be just as productive at home as they were at the office, which leads to the question, why come back at all? Bastien asserts leaders must give their people a real tangible reason to come back. Peter maintains that people are why we will want to return to the office—people are the pull. Listen in for a thoughtful conversation around people and space and why we gather.

When Covid hit, several industries were hit hard, but some thrived immensely. One such industry that’s seen a huge uptick in business this past year has been the pet industry, as 11 million households got a new pet in 2020. Wow! That’s a lot of new family members. But Banfield Pet Hospital is here to help new pet owners manage all that animal energy. On this week’s episode, Erica sits down with Banfield Pet Hospital president, Brian Garish, to talk all things cats, dogs, and leadership in the (hopefully pet-friendly) Hybrid Revolution. With over 1000 hospitals and over 19,000 associates servicing all these new furry friends, how does Brian lead through it all? By talking to his people. Brian leads with empathy and knows that the key to an empowered, passionate workforce is one that feels heard and sees vulnerability modeled at the top. This conversation imagines an optimistic future of work, where we can continue giving our pets the “best year of their lives” indefinitely, through flexible work options.