Laurie Baedke (00:02.336)
Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Growth Edge Leadership Podcast. I am your host, Laurie Baedke and I am so excited to have an amazing author and thought leader, Paula Davis, join me for today's conversation. Paula is the founder and CEO of the Stress and Resilience Institute. She's an attorney by background and the author of multiple books, including Beating Burnout at Work, Why Teams Hold the Secret to Well-Being and Resilience.
I have been so impressed by her work and I'm so delighted to welcome her as a guest on today's show. Welcome Paula at fill in the blanks, offer the listener just a little bit of color commentary about you before we dig into your brilliance.
Paula (00:45.497)
Yes. thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. And I'm so excited for this conversation. Yeah. So I jokingly call myself a recovering lawyer in that I practiced for seven years and then burned out myself. So I have lived what I, what we're going to be talking about and what's in a lot of my work. And I've just, you know, kind of taken really a lot of love in this second act of my career and love writing of the books and all of that. And I have a
a beautiful, almost 10 year old daughter. She turns 10 next week actually. And so I'm hoping with the jump into double digits and tween and all of that good stuff. So that's my life.
Laurie Baedke (01:29.848)
Amazing. Well, you have worked in law the majority of your career, but as you have now branched into writing and consulting, you work with a lot of other high intensity professions, including healthcare, medicine, which is of course where the majority of my listeners reside, the military. Talk a little bit about that transition, going through burnout, but then really deciding.
aim your intentions at this important topic. What has that looked like and what have maybe one or two key observations been that have pulled that line through your experience in law and interactions and researching other high achieving professions?
Paula (02:10.586)
Yes, I love this. This has been such an evolving process for me. So I burned out and left my law practice. Gosh, it's been 16 years, 16 years already, 16 years ago. In the work that I do now and that I've done for quite some time, I feel like didn't even really exist the conversation around a lot of what we're going to talk about in these topics hadn't I don't think really taken shape.
Hugely in the world of work and all I knew is when I burned out and I decided that I was gonna leave my law practice to go get a master's degree in applied positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, which a year prior to burning out I didn't even know that existed. I just said to myself like I want to find something and have a conversation and start a conversation to help other people not end up where I ended up because the latter stages of my burnout were really not fun.
And so I just kind of went into that master's program with my eyes open thinking like, what am I going to find here that I know that I can take back that I could have used or that I can teach to other people? And so when we started to talk about resilience, I didn't even know that like some of the most the world renowned experts in the science of resilience were at the University of Pennsylvania. And so when we started to have those conversations and I started to learn about the science of it, it really, really resonated with me because I thought to myself like, wow, these are valuable
Like, I could have used this in my law practice. Would that have completely prevented my burnout? I don't know.
But it certainly would have helped me and get through, think, some of those tougher times. so once I started to learn that research, I was just, I've been like obsessed with it ever since. And what happened was, as I was finishing my master's program, so this was in 2010, the United States Army had just approached within kind of the year that I was there, had approached Marty Seligman, Martin Seligman, and some of the other leading positive psychology researchers at Penn
Paula (04:12.316)
to say, know, hey, we've been involved in Iraq and Afghanistan. We've had our troops doing multiple deployments. We're noticing significant, not just physical wear and tear, but mental wear and tear because of the high op tempo of the deployments. Can you all create a train the trainer version of your Penn Resilience program?
that we can teach to our senior non-commissioned officers and officers and DA civilians and eventually family members so that we can incorporate this training and keep it moving forward and paying it forward within our units to sort of us deal with the mental struggles as we deal with the physical struggles. And so Penn created a pilot program and launched it. And I had an opportunity to really kind of jump in
those of us who had graduated from the master's program had an opportunity to apply and become part of the training team. And so we didn't know how it was gonna be received. We didn't know how it was going to evolve. And it eventually just really took off and I spent almost four years training, being part of the training team.
for that program. So that was really my entry point into, never did I think I was gonna work with drill sergeants and very intense soldiers. And it turned out to be really just some of the most meaningful work I've ever done. And my first entry point into seeing, you know, really up close how stress impacts the intensity of, you know, what they were doing and had to consider.
And how to truly think about drawing in leaders into the conversation and scaling something like psychology or something psychology based into a large, you know, various, you know, strict structured type of organization. So it was that period of time was as valuable to me as the, you know, the year spent, you know, learning the science and the background and what have you.
Paula (06:16.768)
And so my intent after, you or even during those years was to, grow my business and start to explore ways that I could take these concepts and apply them to other.
other areas. so my thought was I'm going to go into the legal profession and I'm going to fix the legal profession and help lawyers in the, they just weren't ready for the conversation at that point in time. And so I did some work in healthcare and, and, and worked with physicians and nurses. And then the door to the legal profession opened in a larger way. And, you know, spent a lot of time working with lawyers, but yes, I've worked with tech executives,
startups, know, people across industry, know, a wide education and a wide variety of roles. And I'm really thankful that law really wasn't ready for the conversation when I was ready to have the conversation because it allowed me to really expand into a lot of a lot of these different areas and work with a lot of different types of professionals.
Laurie Baedke (07:22.038)
Yeah, yeah, that's really fantastic. And I do think, and you've probably experienced this time and again, as you are introduced as, you know, the founder of an organization that has stress and resilience in the topic, and you've written books on this topic, those are kind of stigmatized words and phrases, and people have an immediate reaction. And they're either green light welcoming your message, or their brain is shutting down and they are not interested. So
Paula (07:48.922)
Yeah.
Laurie Baedke (07:51.406)
How do you have that conversation or how do you introduce the work that maybe convinces the skeptic or the cynic through, you know, science and what research shows us? How do you win them in? How do you welcome them into that conversation,
Paula (08:08.024)
Yeah, I love this because, you know, it was probably some Pollyanna thinking on my part. Like, so here I was in this lovely little like educational bubble and like, positive psychology and everything's great. And, you know, resilience is all good and all of this. And the Army program turned out to be so well received, but there were misunderstandings about what we were actually teaching, you know, during the front months of the program.
you know, the soldiers would arrive not understanding like what the course was or what it was going to be about, you know, so there was a lot of things that were lost in translation there and that got fixed and got better. So I was in this lovely little bubble where everyone sort of just kind of beat all of this up and loved it and what have you. And, you know, as I started to in those earlier years, you know, especially, you know, talk in healthcare and talk to, you know, physicians and nurses and APPs and all of that.
I started to hear more pushback about...
resilience in particular. And when I was reading work of people who are working in healthcare, consultants who are working with other healthcare professionals, I noticed kind of started to put a little bit of an edge to the resilience topic and started to make it seem like kind of this bad thing and like we're forcing people to constantly persevere and push through. And I realized that there was just a lot of misunderstanding about what was actually, what these words actually meant and what the science
was actually meant to help people understand and do to build these capacities. so, oftentimes that's the first point that I rely on is just grounding people in a definition and what are we really talking about when we say these words and what is it not? What is resilience not? And I started to realize over the years too, so that basic level of information I think is really important.
Paula (09:59.387)
But what we needed to do and what we weren't kind of bringing along in the conversation and the way that I approach my work now is it very much in a systemic way, right? So we have to think about, you what are the leadership mindsets and capacities? What are the team dynamics and what is the individual stuff that we all bring to the table that interconnects to inform whether we have sustainable performance or not? And so there was so much of the early conversation focused on
individuals, which is super important, but I think the message started to become, well, you're trying to fix me, but I know I'm going to work working on a team or within a system that is overloaded, that isn't appreciative of me and what I'm doing, that's just trying to churn out work.
And we're missing that part of the conversation. And so I could understand, could empathize with people more when they started to kind of like get their hackles up about talking about resilience or talking about some of these topics, because it felt very like, don't tell me I need to do something better. I'm already trying to do what I can and I'm already at max capacity. And then, you know, just kind of adding, adding that perspective to it and saying like, yeah, I hear, I understand what you're saying. Here's the what it's not.
And just getting clarity around that. then I think drawing in the rest of that perspective that it's really, we've got to be talking, it's a both and conversation. We really have to be talking about individual pieces and the culture system, structural pieces too, I think helps people. But I still, it's so funny that you asked this because I still hear some of that pushback. And in my second book, I actually address it a little bit more.
head on, was doing a program for chief legal officers, actually, it was a roundtable. And the topic was building resilience and engaged teams. And like one of the chief legal officers right away, she sat down in her chair and she's like, Paula, do we really need more resilience? Right? And that's how we started the entire conversation. And so I asked her, I said,
Paula (12:07.456)
If you are you, how is your team functioning? Are you all struggling with dealing with uncertainty? Do you feel like you have the capacity to handle all of the challenges that are coming your way to deal with the obstacles and the stressors and, know, figure out a way through that. And she's like, no, she's like, we're really having a hard time with that. We really need some help. I'm like, that's what resilience is. It's figuring out.
developing the skill set to build the capacity to be able to manage the stressors and the challenges and the setbacks and the obstacles and what have you. so it's sort of like she clearly had a different understanding about what resilience was. And so as soon as I kind of guided her, asked her a little bit about that, she was then a little bit more on board, but it was an interesting way to start a program.
Laurie Baedke (12:53.654)
Yeah, no doubt. Well, and I'm sure that that was not your first rodeo because you've worked in health care, you've worked in the military and there is evidence that holds up. So as you've studied in, you know, and with the Mayo Clinic or the US Army, what are they doing that really sustains performance or when you've observed some of those best practices or tactics? What do they look like?
Paula (12:56.996)
No.
Paula (13:17.454)
Yeah, I think in both instances, one of the biggest similarities was that in each instance, they drew leaders into the conversation. So my work with Mayo or studying Mayo has really been more observational and really digging into all of the work. They're really at the forefront of studying well-being in high demand, high achieving professions, certainly within healthcare, of course. Looking at burnout, looking at factors that build resilience or don't build resilience or
How do we move off of the resilience conversation? So their research is very robust and I think can really help other professions kind of move in that direction. And so one of the things that they keyed in on early that really started to inform my thinking too was this whole notion of not only...
are leaders also stressed, but they also kind of hold the key to how well the environment functions, how well their teams thrive, what are the practices that leaders need to be thinking about in order to help their teams kind of shift into a higher performance, higher capacity kind of way of being. And that was really, really informative and important for me. And similarly in the military.
you know, cause initially the program, I think the program for the most part had always been well received, but when we were piloting it in those earlier stages, you know, there, obviously folks in the military are very skeptical. They get a lot of training and they're sort of like eye rolling, like, what is this now? And why is it 10 days? And why do I have to be here for so long?
and all of that. And so several of the top generals actually in the army signed a letter that went to all of the units and army bases that said, here's why we're doing this. We're behind it. So we expect you all to be behind it. You know, and here me thinking like, if the generals say it, then they're all just going to automatically do it. And that didn't happen either. But it was the fact that you were prioritizing
Paula (15:16.866)
leadership into the conversation, but also getting them bought into what you were doing so that they could really kind of push it along and create some of the initial inertia. Several of the top generals attended portions of our training and so that they were able to say like, here's what we get, here's what this is about, here's what I learned, here's why it's so valuable. And then both organizations were really very evidence and data focused. So whether it's
you know, measuring different aspects of stress, whether it's like truly measuring and putting rates behind burnout and what that is about. But also like the science underpinning.
why this resilient stuff or why some of these other strategies can be so helpful was really, really important. And I think that's one of the reasons why certainly with the army, they sought out the University of Pennsylvania because they had created and studied for 25 years prior to, you know, the army even entering the picture, a version of what resilience skills look like, what actually helps, how do we know they help if we're going to teach these skills to other people in like a
train the trainer way, does that work and how do we have to think about how we teach these skills so that it becomes effective downstream? All of that was really...
that evidence basis had really taken hold and was formed, which is what the Army was really looking for. We want to know that there's some scientific heft. And even when we were doing the program itself, were doing different studies on, folks were doing different studies on the efficacy of the program. so in both instances, there's this very data-driven evidence basis for doing what we did or.
Paula (17:10.116)
for decisions certainly at Mayo being informed in that direction. So I think both of those pieces, that leadership involvement and the emphasis on the evidence piece of it and the research behind it, I think were two really big keys.
Laurie Baedke (17:27.584)
Yeah, no, I think that that's fantastic. And I've been fairly familiar with the longitudinal research that Mayo has been undertaking over these last almost two decades now and really important work. And there's one finding in their writings, I'm guessing you're familiar with because I know it intersects with the section in your book that talks about purpose and the role that purpose plays in sustainable performance and energy and excellence. So
What thoughts would you offer on that role that purpose plays in sustained performance and thwarting burn-off or succumbing to symptoms of burnout?
Paula (18:08.002)
Yeah, I think this is so important and I can certainly say from my own perspective, I think the purpose piece was something that was definitely missing in my law practice. So I never had a really strong why or.
wanting to be a lawyer or why did I decide to go into law? And I think I was just kind of swept along in my career as a lot of us are, right? We kind of start and we kind of get going and then we, you know, move to the next job or the next role. And then all of a sudden, 10 years have gone by and we're like, why are we doing this? And so, so I now look at my burnout as a blessing because one of the things that it forced me to do was to really have that conversation with myself. Like, is this what I want to do? Is this how I want to make an impact?
in my work and I had to really wrestle with that. And I can tell you that, you know, that was one of the many pieces of the puzzle for
my burnout happening is I just didn't have that strong why to kind of carry me through. There are lots of other things with it. But, you know, similarly, I mean, for the last 15 years, I've been traveling like all over the world for my work. And a lot of people are like, how do you not burn out from, you know, the pace and the level of that type of commitment? And part of it is because I feel like now I have such a clear purpose and I can see really the impact that I'm having and the impact that I'm making. And I get to have like live conversations with people.
about what they're going through and how I can help them. And that's super, super fortifying. And so I've kind of broadened that now to think about, you know, purpose. And I also include meaning. I also include, I included in my second book also a chapter on what I call sticky recognition and mattering. And it's an area that I've become like really obsessed with. not only do I like what I'm doing, but do I really see the impact? Do I feel a sense of significance in my
Paula (20:02.109)
work, do I feel like not only am I achieving and accomplishing things, but other people are noticing it and they're, you know, acknowledging or saying something to me about that significance. So that deep sense of mattering has become, I think, a really, really important piece as well. So that whole cluster of things.
Do I find my work meaningful? Is there joy in my work? Is there purpose in what I want to accomplish in my goals? And do I find that deep sense of satisfaction and recognition and mattering, I think is an extraordinarily important component of burnout prevention, building engagement, having a sense of joy at work.
which I think there's a new Harvard Business Review article out about the importance of joy at work. I think it just came out like yesterday or within the last two days and I haven't had a chance to dig into it. But I think we forget about that, right? Do we experience any positive emotions in our work at all? Is there a sense of levity or even fun, dare we say, in our sense of work and that we can architect that and things. And so I think that whole cluster of peace I think is becoming a
much more urgently needed conversation. Whether you talk about it in the burnout context or just the sustainable performance context or how do we build thriving teams context, I think it's becoming or has become a must have cluster of the piece of puzzle.
Laurie Baedke (21:37.578)
Yeah, if there is, I agree with that so wholeheartedly. And I think that it can be incredibly overwhelming for someone to really sit with or reflect on and try to discern what are the things that are meaningful to me? What about my work gives me joy? What do I think is my why? And there's so much fantastic writing and so many great books and Ted talks on this topic, but it can be overwhelming.
And for so many high achieving professionals who have by their training in law or medicine or whatever high achieving discipline have just been told lock into the rails, the process will serve you well, just put your head down and keep going. But that's not realistic. And within each of those professions, there are so many different niches and opportunities.
to plug in and the variations that one can take throughout career pivots if they are aware of kind of how they're knit and where they experience those tiny pockets of joy. And Mayo's research doesn't tell us that it has to be 100 % of our job description. In fact, I have yet to meet anyone who only has cherry picked in their world the things that they love. But Mayo's research says it's about 20%. 20 % is the thing.
Paula (22:58.742)
26th? Yeah. Yes.
Laurie Baedke (23:01.858)
to the tipping point. And so that's encouraging and attainable, but it's not going to fall in our lap either.
Paula (23:08.312)
No, and I think, so this has been, I think, one of the biggest lessons that I certainly learned in terms of my own burnout recovery. And one of the things that I like to talk about with folks is I think we sometimes paint this idea of sustainable performance or managing stress or whatever as like, you you just go meditate for a little bit and do some exercise, eat well, sleep well, all really, really important things. But there is a very deep reflective aspect to figuring this stuff out for ourselves. And that's, I didn't do any of it.
until my burnout happened. And one of the things that I did, if you're somebody who's listening and you're like, how do I start figuring out what my purpose is? Because it seems like this big, huge lofty thing that's way aspirational and we're lucky if we find it. But I actually just did an exercise that I've come to call the list.
and it was like a Sunday afternoon and I poured myself a glass of wine and I just sat with a pen and paper and I thought about like what have I always loved to do and I don't know that I had ever asked myself that question before right so at this point I'm you know like well into my 30s and I'm like what have I always loved to do like what have people consistently told me I was good at I went all the way back like to grade school
and just thought to myself, like, what do I want to have? what did my parents own the business for 15 years? And I remember.
how much I love that entrepreneurial world. And I loved going on sales calls with my dad and meeting all of these people at different organizations and how stifled I felt being in an office for 12 or 14 hours a day watching the sunset from my office. And so I started to think about like, do, if I'm gonna create this new thing, and I didn't call it purpose, but if I'm gonna create this new thing or go in this new direction, what do I have to have as pieces? So I think that can be a fruitful start for people.
Paula (24:59.452)
I like if you had asked me back when I was in like fifth grade or sixth grade or whatever it was, what do you want to be when you grow up? The answer for me was always teacher. Like I always loved teaching. And so that thread is now so, so much a part of what I do. And we just call it different words, but I think of myself, you know, really as a teacher at heart. And so I knew I wanted to travel. I knew I needed to be out in the world, kind of, you know, out with people and doing things. And so, so it's just a matter of
of putting those ideas in place and then you can go out and say like what is a job that may have these features or maybe it is most of what I want is actually what I'm doing you know but I'm missing this component and maybe I can start a side hustle or maybe I can you know ask to take on work in another department to kind of fill that void but it's that clarity piece and that reflection piece
that I think we don't even think about, we breeze right by, and it wasn't until I burned out that it really forced me to actually do that. So however you want to do it, I think creating your own little version of the list is a great place to start. If you're sitting here wondering, like, where do I even, how do even get that?
Laurie Baedke (26:11.478)
Yeah, no, I think that's so important. And if there is someone, mean, who's not thinking I'm going to architect an entire substantial career pivot, but maybe what is what is an example of something that you've seen someone do in their day job without changing roles or anything else about their job, but that allows them to better understand and better manage their own energy in the course of their existing day to day work? Is there a sequencing tactic? What could you suggest to someone?
who's not in a position that anything is going to change substantially, but that might allow them to increase their adjacency just a little bit to work that's more meaningful or energy that's more sustainable.
Paula (26:51.876)
So there's a great area of research called job crafting. And so there's a lot to say about, you know, because I think I am definitely in the minority. Most of the people who I've worked with or interviewed or coached or talked to don't usually just.
significantly change and go do something completely different. And so most of us are in the position of, okay, I have to kind of figure this out within the four corners of my job role. especially these days, we can't always just up and leave our work because we have bills to pay and mortgages and all of those good things. But we can always think about how we think about our work. And there's a story that I remember about a janitor who actually worked in a hospital and he certainly was in the healthcare.
organization and he was being interviewed and he had such a joy about the work that he did and so for a lot of people it's like we're janitor like like there's not a sexy job like what what is what why are you so filled with joy essentially about the work that you do and he said
The work that I do is about making, I'm as key to making sure that people are healthy here as all of the people who are prescribing the medications and, know, kind of wearing the doctor coats and the nurses and all of that. And he really saw that his purpose was, you know, I'm cleaning, yes, I'm cleaning things, but it's making sure that people, if I don't, people could potentially get sick as well. And so the way that he had just framed
the importance of his job, gave him lot of joy and purpose and energy and kind of carried him through a lot of, you know, those drudgery moments. And so, so we can sit and think about like, you know, why am, why is my work needed in this organization? I can do that for myself and kind of reframe how I see
Paula (28:45.018)
what's needed and important about my work. I also have the ability to form connections in different ways. And so that's another type of job crafting is through relationships, right? I can decide, you know, I want to meet this particular person or, you know, here's somebody who I think I might want to have a lunch with or a conversation with and start to build some of those network capabilities. And those connections can introduce me to other potential, you know, options or roles or, you know, ways of thinking that I have.
haven't really thought about. And kind of back to that 20 % rule, we don't have to wildly shift our jobs. It's like once we kind of think about, you what are the aspects or the pieces that I love to do, how can I do that like for an additional hour this week or next week? Or how can I, you know, over the course of the next couple of weeks, you know, build in a few hours of whatever it is that I find, you know, really joyful or beneficial.
you know, for some physicians it might be, like doing the research side of things. Okay, how can I carve out a little bit more time, you know, to read a few studies and then start potentially my own research paper? And so it's like when we start to think about it in those small little reframe ways, then I think it starts, we can start to build some inertia around it. Because if we think about it as like, well, I just have to completely change my job in order to find my purpose, it stops us before we start. And then it's hard to even take a step beyond that. And we don't. So kind of building those
Laurie Baedke (29:53.762)
Yes.
Laurie Baedke (30:09.196)
Yes.
Paula (30:09.308)
small little reframes.
Laurie Baedke (30:12.354)
Yes. And if any of us, unless we are in the very final tail end chapter of our career, any of us zoom out and start to think in the long game, you know, what might be different a year from now or three or five years from now in the next role, people are always coming and going from departments. The world is very dynamic. And if we think about what
Paula (30:17.327)
Yeah.
Laurie Baedke (30:35.086)
compound interest could come from our investing a bit of time into clarity building and reflecting around what it is that we love the most now. And then how can we incrementally increase our adjacency to it year over year? And with every new promotion or making key decisions about ways that we might want to advocate for ourselves for opportunities or next steps in our career, we can really significantly change that over time.
even with those small incremental shifts that don't feel very powerful in the short run, but then pay dividends in the long run because of our choosing. And I mean, I'll raise my hand as a strong type A driven person. It never feels productive enough to reflect, right? To sit down and list make. But on the other hand, you're denying your future self the dividends on that investment, right? If we don't.
Paula (31:22.564)
No!
Paula (31:32.548)
Well, so a couple of things. mean, this is why like in, in Beating Burnout at Work and in my second book, I talk in the phrase I use as TNTs or tiny noticeable things. So I think so much of the conversation around sustainable performance and capacity, especially now with all of the uncertainty in healthcare and in our world of work and the AI conversation and what is that going to do to change how we do things that we're already stressed out about. It's, I think it can feel daunting.
for leaders and for anybody to think like, where do I even start with this? Like, even if we're just narrowing it down to the conversation about burnout, it's so complex. Like, how do I even, like, where do I even start? And so it's understanding that whether you're looking at it through the lens of stress management or burnout prevention or team building or decision making or whatever it is, to think in that tiny, noticeable thing perspective, right? We're really talking about very small incremental things that once you realize the impact
they can have you just do them a little bit more consistently. Whether it's for yourself, whether it's you as a your role as a leader, whether it's for your team generally. So really thinking about it from that tiny noticeable things perspective I think can really really help us start to even think that we can do something about what feels like just a huge overwhelming issue or problem. So that tiny noticeable things is something that I like to teach.
Laurie Baedke (33:02.022)
that's awesome. Okay, so in our limited amount of time left, how can we kind of take this from talking about it individually? You've alluded to teams and we've talked about teams, but when we think about kind of that team multiplier of impact, what's one shift that a leader might make in their team or the way that they engage with individuals around them, peers or direct reports that might improve collective capacity?
Paula (33:28.632)
Yes. So one of the things that I talk about, and I've mentioned it already, but kind of going into a little bit more detail, and I always encourage leaders to start here in the context of this conversation, and that is to amplify what I call sticky recognition and mattering. So the sticky recognition is my own phrase, and it's basically just meant to be a way to show other people or your team the evidence of their impact, right? So having a very specific
conscious efforts to really trace back and tell people the impact that they're having in their work because that activates that deeper level of mattering, right? That sense that I'm achieving and that other people are acknowledging it. And so there's actually quite a number of different ways that you can build this pretty easily. So one way that I talk about is by saying a thank you plus. So oftentimes because we have so much work on our plates and you know we're
There's the uncertainty and the stress and all of that. We miss moments of that acknowledgement and being able to share with people what we've seen and the good things that they are doing. So it's when you have those moments of saying thank you, the plus piece is adding one or two additional sentences. So it's the why behind for the strength that you noticed or what did you see that led to the good outcome and that you're actually sharing it back to somebody. And so it can be very, very simple. can be, you know, gosh, the way that you organize the reports
really helped me see the takeaways very clearly. I just wanted to say thanks. It's literally it. It's like 45 seconds. It's a minute to write or to share something like that. But that little extra plus piece is a huge indicator to somebody that, wow, you actually noticed what I did. And it lands in a different way. Right. So thank you plus is important. Tell people how you rely on them. Right. The little sentence starter is if it wasn't for you, it wasn't for you. There's no way.
Laurie Baedke (35:17.25)
Yes.
Paula (35:26.972)
this medical conference would have gone off as well as it did because you were so organized. Just letting people know that you rely on them becomes a really important component of mattering.
And then this one last question that I came across, a lot of this is research by Dr. Zach Mercurio, who does a lot of work. He has a phenomenal new book out about mattering. And I'm very obsessed with this body of science right now. But he just basically, the question that he talks about is, you know, asking someone, when I feel like I matter to you, what am I doing? When you feel like you matter to me, what am I doing?
Which is a great question. I asked that of my 10 year old daughter, Lucy, and I loved what she said because it was very actionable, right? I love it when you say I love you to me. I love it when you pull me aside when we're in a big group of people and you whisper in my ear that you're proud of me or that I'm doing a good job at something. And I was like, wow, she really like, very concretely told me exactly what I can be doing to make her feel this way going forward very consistently, you know? And so if that feels
little too squishy to ask in a workplace context. You can ask somebody, hey, when you feel like you're a valued part of this team, what am I doing? Or what are we doing collectively? And that's like an on the spot engagement survey. People will tell you, or if they hesitate to tell you or can't tell you anything, that's an answer as well. And so, so the research coming out of this, these simple practices is like higher organizational commitment, less burnout, less anxiety, less depression.
all things that folks in healthcare struggle with at higher levels than the general population. Higher levels of resilience, higher levels of self-efficacy. So when I experience challenges, my going in position is, think I can do this. And so you deal with struggle and challenge in a better, in a healthier, in a different way. And so, I mean, we're just loads of positive things, newer research about achievement culture. When I feel like I matter, that sting of perfectionism
Paula (37:33.052)
that I might feel starts to lessen a little bit because I know I'm valued, I'm a valued member of this work community. So lots of really great things coming from that. So that's always where I tell leaders to start.
Laurie Baedke (37:48.182)
I love that. I couldn't have landed it any better. And I just don't think that there's any more complete way that we can just tie this conversation into a bow. so Paula, I just thank you so much for your generosity and sharing of your time today. I'm going to encourage individuals to follow your work. I'll link them to your website and your LinkedIn and offer links to both of your books as well. But thank you for your important leadership and brilliance.
Paula (38:13.774)
Thank you so much, Laurie. I really, really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much.
