The Work IN to move out of stress, tension & anxiety

Stress and resilience in leadership and corporate culture with Jodi Woelkerling

April 04, 2022 Ericka Thomas Season 2 Episode 71
The Work IN to move out of stress, tension & anxiety
Stress and resilience in leadership and corporate culture with Jodi Woelkerling
Show Notes Transcript

Resilient culture specialist with decades of experience in the corporate world. She helps businesses successfully navigate the constant challenges and competing priorities in the modern workplace by building a corporate culture of resilience  that extends from leadership to the individual level. Jodi believes that resilience is the key to long term collaborative and productive success in every business organization.

I'm particularly interested in this topic because as many of you know I worked for 12 years in corporate fitness. As part of that contract we taught multiple classes through the lunch hours and what I noticed was that certain departments gravitate towards certain types of classes. I had a lot of IT people in yoga and HR tended to show up in the high intensity kickboxing classes.  It seemed like the more exposure they had to people the more stress. It was a fascinating phenomena in that particular corporate culture. 

As a fitness professional I and my fellow trainers were there as part of their health benefits package. Exercise as part of an overarching resilience program, I’m not sure that was even a thing. But the more we understand the nervous system and how it affects every aspect of physical and mental health the more important that becomes.

For all you fitness professionals out there who are looking for ways to scale your business and market your growing value, this will be an important discussion.

www.jodiwoelkerling.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/resilient-culture-consultant/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK33Zq1qaMAjqzVhgXiKORQ


It’s time to stop working out and start working IN. You found the Work IN podcast for fit-preneurs and their health conscious clients. This podcast is for resilient wellness professionals who want to expand their professional credibility, shake off stress and thrive in a burnout-proof career with conversations on the fitness industry, movement, nutrition, sleep, mindset, nervous system health, yoga, business and so much more.

I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.

The Work IN is brought to you by savage grace coaching, bringing resilience through movement, action and accountability. Private sessions, small groups and corporate presentations are open now. Visit savagegracecoaching.com to schedule a call and get all the details.

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Jodi Woelkerling transcript


Jodi Woelkerling  0:01  

They, as a leader, probably have more influence on that dynamic between between team members than anybody else. The phrase that I often use is leaders set the time. So that's in a couple of ways that they set an example. And they set a almost like a status quo of what's kind of the norm. So he's got a leader who is very stressed, directly or indirectly in some of the way that he's going to be affecting the rest of the team.


Ericka Thomas  0:35  

You're listening to the work in. I'm your host Ericka Thomas, a certification collector and refugee from the body brand nation sharing 25 years of experience in the fitness industry to recruit and support the next generation of fitness professionals. Coaches and wellness educators. Join me and raise the standard of professionalism in the industry by bringing trauma sensitive training to the health conscious and health curious alike. Let's get started with today's work in.


The work in is brought to you by kinetic Grace resilience. Kinetic grace is an online program designed to teach safe self regulation of the stress response through the body using trauma release exercise guided body awareness and the breath the program includes private personalized instruction, exclusive access to certified providers and a fully supported trauma release experience. Kinetic grace is available anywhere you are and is now accepting new clients visit SavageGracecoaching.com To learn more 


Welcome back to The Work IN everyone. today. My guest is Jodi Woelkerling. She's a resilient culture specialist with decades of experience in the corporate world. She helps businesses successfully navigate the constant challenges and competing priorities in the modern workplace by building a corporate culture of resilience that extends from leadership all the way to the individual level. Jodi believes that resilience is the key to long term collaborative and productive success in every business organization. And I'm particularly interested in this topic. Because as many of you know, I worked for 12 years in corporate fitness and as part of that contract, we taught multiple classes through the lunch hour. And what I noticed was that certain departments gravitated towards certain types of classes and it was just really fascinating. I had a lot of IT people that would show up in yoga, and for some reason, all of our HR or human resources folks ended up in the high intensity kickboxing class. And I'm not sure what that tells you about the HR department in that particular company, but I'm sure it says something. But it seemed to me like the more exposure that that these individuals had to people, the more stress they were experiencing personally, and it was really really fascinating and said a lot about that particular culture. Now as a fitness professional I and my fellow trainers were there as part of a health benefits package and exercise as a part of an overarching Resilience Program. I'm not sure that was even considered a thing at that time, but it was definitely important for their health, their health benefit program, just physical health. The more we understand about the nervous system and how it affects every aspect of physical and mental health, more important, that kind of thing becomes not just for individuals but for companies and businesses overall. So for all of you fitness professionals out there who are looking for ways to scale your business and market your growing value. This will be an important discussion to listen to. So let's start our work in today with Jodi Woelkerling Hi, Jodi, thanks for coming and being here with us on the work in


Jodi Woelkerling  4:28  

beautiful, thank you. So much for having me on as a guest, Ericka. 


Ericka Thomas  4:31  

Well I want to get started first of all, with you as a resilient culture specialist, because I'm not sure that many people have heard that term. So can you explain what that is? And what it is that you do?


Jodi Woelkerling  4:50  

Okay, so I work with organizations anywhere from an individual one on one coaching level up to helping leaders up to sort of helping this this wide culture and that is around helping people with their resilience. So helping people to to stay for an individual point of view, to really stay in a good place in terms of their stress levels in themselves. And there's various ways to do that. Leaders basically being in a good place themselves, but also setting that tone for their team and a culture wide dealing with things that that almost systematically cause stress and resulting in stress in staff. So dealing with that cultural side basically to to put in better practices so that the people within the culture know when you're stressed.


Ericka Thomas  5:51  

Alright, so let's get into the nitty gritty a little bit because resilience is a word that gets tossed around quite a bit. And I don't know if there's any one particular definition that people really, really understand. So let's talk about that. What exactly do we mean when we're talking about resilience? And then maybe we can dive into why we all need a little bit more of it.


Jodi Woelkerling  6:18  

Yep. So I look at resilience in a couple of different ways. So the first way is doing things in our life so that when stress has come up, we stay in that state of calm and that state of a non stressed state as much as possible. And there's various things that you can do in your life to help develop that ability in yourself. The second side is we're all human. Nearly all of us are going to have situations that are going to result in stress.  There's very few people are like that there's a monk who is constantly in a state of of peace and calm. So the second side is when people are triggered and they're feeling stressed. One recognizing it that in themselves because that often is one of the biggest issues is people don't it's become such a normal part of life that people don't actually recognize when they're stressed. So recognizing it and then bringing yourself back to that state of calm as quickly as possible. There's various ways that you can do that. The other kind of side is is yes there are times when we are stressed, but almost to develop that that grit and endurance in yourself that allows you to see the end of the tunnel allows you to work your way through it nearly all of us have had times where there's a lot of stress and we know we're affected, but we find that internal fortitude to kind of go through it. Now the third one, you don't want that to be the norm. But just when things happen in your life to have that almost almost taking yourself out of that victim mentality and going okay, I'm going to get my way through this and see myself out the other side.


Ericka Thomas  8:15  

Right now you Okay, so you touched a little bit on this about this normal like what is our normal level of stress? And I often say that we kind of live in a culture of stress we almost celebrate that state of, of being in a stressed out state. It's almost like a badge of honor like how busy can we be how stressed can we be? And we use that kind of language so often, that you're exactly right. It's when it gets to the point where it's going to tip you over the edge into overwhelmed. It's hard to notice that kind of thing. So you've been quoted as saying that we don't have to accept stress as a way of life that there's a better option. So what do you mean by that? And what is that better option?


Jodi Woelkerling  9:13  

Basically, if you go back to the origins of the stress response, biologically, it's the getting yourself out of a life or death situation. So go back to caveman times. You walk around the corner, there's a saber toothed Tiger, your body goes into So stress is is a large part of it is physiological. There's a physiological response. That goes with it. So your body goes into fight, flight or freeze, and that is to give you the best chance of getting out of that life or threat life or death threatening situation. Now, to give you a bit of perspective of what happens physiologically, so some of the things that happen is your blood flow goes through your extremities rather than your internal organs. Some of the immediate functioning things of life either shut down or a severely impaired so things like digestion, things like your immune system. The thinking part of your brain shuts down or is greatly impaired, and you go into that survival mode. Now if you take that in perspective and go to modern day, it's very few situations where in life or death, the one that most people can relate to is a potential car accident, where it could possibly be a life or death and it's almost most people will report out of that they go into automatic mode and they go into it feels like time slows down. And that's what a lot of that stress responses. So in those situations, it makes perfect sense to go into the stress response. It's about giving your best chance of surviving. So the problem is, though, that we're not faced with life and death that much in modern society. But our body responds when we are stressed as if we are. So if you think about that, in terms of those physiological think about those physiological responses and what they're going to do to your health and your well being over the long term and your ability to function and make logical choices. So my message to get sorry, long winded way of answering your question, but my my message to get back to your question is we are living in a stress state it has health effects it has well being general mental well being affects it has effects in terms of our ability to function, intellectually. And it generally has issues in terms of relationships, and all sorts of other things. But my what part of my real mission is to let people know that actually doesn't have to be reality. There's things that you can do. Like I mentioned that the the in the moment things the lifestyle things, all that sort of stuff that you can do to make sure that you are not in that stress state and you in the end you are helping yourself health wise, mental health wise, physical health wise relationships, your ability to function, your ability to actually make the best decisions for you in the short and long term. All that sort of stuff. So yeah, I say you don't have to accept stress as a way of life because it's easy, there is way too much of it. It shouldn't be a badge of honor. And it should be something that we're looking for developing a better alternative in ourselves. And in terms of leaders and culture, definitely in terms of the way organizations are run.


Ericka Thomas  12:52  

And you know, we don't have to be some kind of expert on physiology to understand that connection. The stress response in general is the general reaction. It's a general physiological response. It's not specific to the event that is happening around you. And that's it's really important for people to understand that their body is going to react in a way that doesn't necessarily match what is happening in front of them. And this is important when we're talking about people who are working in teams in leadership positions, or if we are trying to help co regulate with other people, because that general response does exactly what you said. It cuts off that thinking part of your brain so it makes it so much harder to make rational decisions and respond in rational, calm, measured ways to all of our typical interactions with other human beings, which I can imagine, really makes it challenging. To be a good leader in the corporate world today.


Jodi Woelkerling  14:09  

Absolutely. Anybody whether their leader and everyday person, it makes it very hard to function at your best when you're in a state of stress. Absolutely.


Ericka Thomas  14:18  

And especially if you can't recognize that you're in a state of stress, right because that you know, it's one thing if you know that you are reacting in this out of this physiological response, right. If you have some awareness there, that's when you can take some action. But what about if you don't really have that awareness yet? Like how do you figure out that, hey, you know, maybe I am not being my best self right now.


Jodi Woelkerling  14:46  

Yeah, that is such a good question. Developing self awareness is is incredibly important. So there's various ways that you can do that. mindfulness practices can be very, very good. So I work with people in terms of tuning into the messages in their body. So when you are stressed, your body will give you signs. The thing is, most of us when we're in a state of stress, ignore them. So a lot of the time is is training yourself to actually tune into that. So the reason why mindfulness practices are really useful is it actually teaches you to tune into various parts of your body and really be consciously aware of things like okay, what's the rate of my breathing? Am I holding tension in my shoulders? Am I clenching my, my muscles in in other parts? Mindfulness is a really good place to start, but they can be all sorts of other things, just teaching just people alone being aware that they need to be aware actually goes a long way to making them aware. It's a long, long winded way of saying it but to know that it's important to be aware you're actually developing that awareness. So it is something you can developing yourself over time.


Ericka Thomas  16:07  

I think that's one of the benefits to physical exercise as a way to help build resilience, because that's a conduit for people to to become more aware of what's happening in their body. Even in exercise, modalities that not like yoga now yoga is built into that like that mindfulness is built into that, but other types of movement, not not just you know what we think of as like exercising in the gym, but just any movement. If you are going for a walk and paying attention to how your feet hit the ground or how your shoulders move when your arms swing, those kinds of things. It's not that you're noticing your arms swinging, it's practicing staying right there present in the moment in your body. That is the important piece. So what do we do with that kind of self awareness? Where do people take that the next step for building resilience?


Jodi Woelkerling  17:12  

So basically, if somebody is is developing that awareness in themselves, and then they become aware that they are stressed. The next step after that is there's a whole series of sort of techniques that you can go to, to trick that physiological response that we were talking about before, to bring yourself back to calm so once you're aware, there are physiological things you can do. That's that overturn that. So one of the most common ones that people are aware of and keep in mind with each of these, none of these work for everybody. So there's a series of them so that you kind of try a couple and see what works for you. The one that works for most people, when is the most well known is the deep belly breathing, where you sit, you sit upright, calm, normally closed eyes, and you breathe very, very slowly from the bottom of your lungs, and it's called belly breathing, because if you do it right, your belly goes in and out. When you're doing it and your shoulders stay down. So you're breathing from the bottom of your lungs. My preference is different patterns. My preference is very slowly and for for very slowly out for six. And what that does is go straight to that physiological response because if you think stressed, it means that you're going to probably breathe shallower, quicker. So it's doing the opposite to tell your body that it's you're not in life threatening. It's okay to come down and this is one that I use myself and as I said, it works for doesn't make for everybody, but it works for more people than anything else. And there's a series of other ones as well.


Ericka Thomas  19:00  

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The the breath is the quickest way for people to communicate with their nervous system, a very, very primitive primitive communication to that nervous system. So I'm so glad that you brought that up. So let's move some of this into the corporate world, the working space, right. So there are very few businesses where you can get away with working and not having any interaction with other human beings. Even if it's just on Zoom, like the world is a little different now, but we still have to interact with other people. And whenever we are working with other people we are going to be affecting their energy, their energy affects us. And we kind of call it we call that in the resilience space in the stress world co regulation and how we behave affects other people. Whether we are consciously trying to affect their mood or their sense of well being or not, you know, we might just be trying to do our job or meet a deadline or whatever it is, right. And so,let's talk a little bit about the role of maybe empathy or co-regulation and leadership and how important it is for an individual to have some sort of ability to self regulate their stress response when we're talking about a team dynamic like in a corporate setting. Being able to work with other people and be productive and not kind of spin out of control in that like toxic work environment.


Jodi Woelkerling  20:54  

I'm so glad you brought this up as a point because you're absolutely spot on that it sounds a bit woowoo but we are energetic creatures, we pick up on the energy of others. And different people are aware of that to different degrees and pick it up or don't pick it up to different degrees. So I'm really glad you brought it up as a point. So if you talk about leaders, one of the reasons why leadership is so important for them to develop their own resilience is exactly what you're talking about. They, they as a leader probably have more influence on that dynamic between between team members. than anybody else. The phrase that I often use is leaders set the tone. So that's in a couple of ways that they set an example. And they set a almost like a status quo of what's kind of the norm. So if you've got a leader who is very stressed, direct directly or indirectly in some of the way that he's going to be affecting the rest of the team. And different people will be affected in in different ways. But yeah, so leaders set the tone and and of course leaders are people with themselves. So they want to be able to function their best. So they have to be in that that resilient on top of their stress state in order to be able to function the best which was all the stuff we've talked about before. Then if you talk about your everyday team member you're absolutely right with that as well. Even down to say you're in a customer facing role, say something like a retail store. If you create almost like an order around you and I'm talking a little whoo hoo hoo but if almost to order around you have tension and the customers disturbing you by by asking for help and that sort of stuff that's going to affect how your customers react to you. So if anybody can relate to this in terms of like a retail stores, so if you think of it in terms of something like a retail setting as a customer, you pick up the the vibes of whether the person who is serving you wants to actually serve you in as it has that welcoming, calm kind of aura about them as opposed to somebody who is is tense and it's almost you're being an inconvenience by asking for help. So that this applies to, as you said, in a team environment with colleagues working together leaders, customers, suppliers, pretty much as you said, anybody who you interact with in your day has a huge effect.


Ericka Thomas  23:38  

Yeah, I think most of us have had some sort of experience like that at some point where we've had to either on the customer side or on the opposite side deal with someone who was obviously having a bad day, right. And so it's it's very difficult if you yourself, are not, if you have if you don't have enough self awareness of your own, to be able to come away from a situation like that and not take it personally. Like like they are against you. It can really put you kind of on the defensive and that is exactly that physiological stress response, right? You're feeling attacked. So in a corporate setting, if as an employee you are feeling attacked on a regular basis, because there are dysregulated people on your team or your leadership maybe is operating at this highly activated, stressed out state that can really create a toxic work environment that's, you know, the language that I am, I've heard before, but it can also kind of affect what what you call like psychological safety in that space. Can we talk a little bit about that?


Jodi Woelkerling  24:39 

Absolutely. So psychological safety is one of those buzzwords that you hear a lot these days, but it is such an important concept. So psychological safety is where your staff feel safe to express their opinions possibly say things that are going to be different to people in the leadership structure. They feel safe to try new things. They feel safe to try new things and possibly fail or not do it that well. They feel safe to innovate. They feel safe to collaborate with others rather than going into the protective kind of insular mode. If you think about all of those things, they're all things that lead to innovation, productivity, staff being happy to be there, feeling heard and valued. All that sort of stuff. So psychological safety is it's a it's kind of a buzzword at the moment but my gosh, it's it is absolutely essential to that culture that is good for both the business but also for the individuals within the business because because my my rationale always is that if your employees feeling safe value, well, of course that's good for the business. But it sounds so obvious, but it just so commonly gets missed


Well and not just that, but if if you feeling safe and valued in your work, then you're going to be less likely to go somewhere else. I mean, turnover has is huge now I mean, I don't know about Australia, but in the United States we have are having a difficult time getting people to come to work to stay at work to we want to create the best environment and this is a really simple thing to do. As far as you know, creating a good work environment. So what are some actions that businesses, leaders and businesses, even employees can take to support that kind of culture that kind of environment in their work? What specific things do we have to start doing there? .


Jodi Woelkerling  27:39  

It is very business culture specific. So the first step is actually really to get a comprehensive view of what those issues are, and then address them but some of the common concepts are things like building up those trusting relationships, where the leaders are showing that care concern, active listening and developing that. As I said, trusting relationship with with staff now that that sounds very difficult to do in a large corporate. But this is why leadership development is so important because in a large corporate, there's various levels of leadership. So a leader at any level can develop that skills. So one of the areas I focus on is is developing leadership because in a lot of in a lot of cases, leaders are thrown into the role because they can do the people who answer to them the role that they're doing. The leader can do well so they go are you are you're a good XYZ as a person at doing that put you in a leadership role. And they it's almost like an if you guys use the term sink or swim. Like a sink or swim and there may be a little bit of a leadership development and leadership help. But my gosh, for the vast majority, it's nowhere near enough. To me leadership is not an innate skill that needs to be developed and it's something that can't be developed in a couple of day course. It has to be nurtured and developed. Over time. So yeah, really developing human centered leadership is one of the absolute keys.


Ericka Thomas  29:31  

Yeah, and, and I'm glad you said that because even if you do have innate leadership skills, that doesn't mean you shouldn't continue to develop those I mean, because people change over time. And the people that you're working with, that you come into contact are with are changing all of the time. And so that is, it's like an infinite number of possible interactions. And so that's not something that is a finite skill, for sure. So, when you're working with companies, what are some of the major behaviors or the workplace norms that you can see that are problematic? t What should people be looking for? 


Jodi Woelkerling  30:25  

So you've already mentioned psychological safety. A lack of psychological safety is definitely one of them. There's a whole heap of others, but just sort of to give you a couple of examples of when people feel that the needs of the work that they're doing the demands of those work are not matched with their ability to be able to do the job. So that could be ability in terms of their knowledge or skills, it could be ability in terms of things like tools or resources to be able to do it. It could be ability in terms of if they have a problem, have somebody who is trusted and knowledgeable who they can turn to so when people want most people want to do a good job. So when people feel that they're not empowered to do a good job, however, that looks in that particular circumstance causes major issues because it's a good way to to formula for getting people disenchanted and and especially if they didn't raise just maybe they say, are this this tools not working properly? Can we order a new one? And that gets that's just an example but that gets brushed aside or not dressed? So So


Ericka Thomas  31:44  

What you're saying is like when someone is given a task to complete, but not the support to complete it, like an impossible task or make this happen, but we're not going to help you do it and it's impossible anyway, so


Jodi Woelkerling  32:02  

And nobody, no leader sets out to do that consciously. But it almost happens by default, whereas the city can be things like resources, tools, digital electronics sort of help, your knowledge, it can be all sorts of ways that people want to feel empowered to be able to do a good job. And if part of that is missing, to be able to raise their hand and go, this is an issue, can you help me and it actually gets addressed and fixed and all this stuff sounds so obvious, but it gets missed. So regularly. To give you a sort of another one, as I said, there's a whole range of them that I've mentioned, obviously two now with psychological safety and the ability to do a good job. Things like It is human nature, whether we're conscious of it or not. And quite often we're not conscious of it. We want to see a greater purpose and vision in what we do. So if we go to work every day and don't see a greater vision, either for the business as a whole or for us personally. It is very, very difficult to perform your best when you don't see a great vision for you too. So I would strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, any business leader, they want to develop and create that higher purpose of the business and that vision of what we're doing, why we're doing it and where we're going and also tap into with your people, what's their purpose and their vision. So it could be something as simple as well, I want to basically do a good job, get a nice day's work and be a home to to be able to bath and feed my kids because it's because my role as a parent is extremely important. So you take that sort of purpose and and lead in knowing that purpose for that individual staff member and then they start regularly asking me to stop another half an hour at night. You've got a real issue there because it's not in alignment with the purpose of vision of that stuff. So again, it goes back to that personal trustee communicative relationship.


Ericka Thomas 34:20  

Right and people always want to be heard. They want to feel like they've been heard. No matter who you are, what you're doing. Whether your own work or without outside of work, right. We want to know that. That people see us and that they hear us.


Jodi Woelkerling  34:38  

Absolutely, absolutely. They want to be heard, valued, respected, feel cared for. Yeah, so So when someone's got the back,


Ericka Thomas  34:48  

Absolutely, absolutely. All right. So let's talk a little bit more about the business. side, the struggle to kind of help support employees mental well being mental health is huge. Now, all over the world. Everybody is in this heightened state and have been for two years, right? Like everything is a little bit on edge. And we know that stress, the sources of stress can come in many, many layers and not just in work, your workplace. Right. We've got layers of things coming at us all the time. So what can businesses do to kind of help support the overall mental well being of their employees?


Jodi Woelkerling  35:43  

So there needs to be a couple of different layers of support. So the first side is what I call reactive support. And a lot of businesses do do this. So that seems like I'm not sure if your listeners would be aware of EAP programs, so employee assistance programs. So that's where the organization pays for. It's generally an outside organization, too. If employees are feeling stressed under pressure means talk to somebody, they can pick up the phone they don't pay for business pays for any it's like it's almost like an on phone, psychological counseling sessions. So that's really important. Unfortunately, the uptake of EAP employees actually using EAP is not great. Three, three, to 5% per year uptake is considered quite high.


Ericka Thomas  36:38  

So that's just that's mental health support, basically on call. And in the United States, I would say that would be dependent on an individual companies insurance program and I think it was from what I my experience with things like that. Some, it just varies from company to company, right? And so there is always something in the back of your mind. I think some people are nervous about that kind of thing, because it can sometimes you think that it will get back to your employer, right, like nobody wants anyone to know about that.  


Jodi Woelkerling  37:20  

Such an important point. So a lot of the time people won't pick it, pick up the phone and use it because exactly that they're worried about an annuity. They're worried about it coming back home in some ways. So any organization that offers this has to make sure that that this is why it's often an outside organization. Make sure that it's not reported back most of the time, different EAP programs will work a little bit differently, but most of the time the reporting back is either things like number of calls, length of calls, that sort of stuff, they they very rarely will actually go and say person X y&z rang. Yeah. So that needs to get promoted to stuff. So that's reactive stuff. And when people are feeling stress, the reactive stuff around providing that support with that tip, whether that's an external psychologist, whether that's giving them some time off, to be able to reset themselves. Yeah, so that's reactive. So So So organizations have to do that and a lot of organizations do.Not all that long to come to the other sides the proactive. So these are the things that are put in place to help people who aren't obviously really struggling, or seeing that they're struggling to be able to help well being and what's happened traditionally, you mentioned in your introduction about we have been being involved in corporate fitness. This fits into into that the proactive stuff. So things like a lot of organizations or do things like offer, exercise or yoga or meditation, or what I saw a lot in the pandemic was they'll send out care packages to their staff. So for people who are working from home, they'll get a little package in the mail that might have some food in there and some maybe something that will appeal to most people. Now, all those things are absolutely fantastic. And they really do have a a positive place. But do any of those things like the fitness, the care packages, that sort of stuff really get to the heart of what is actually causing the issue? Very rarely yes. And so things like the things like meditation can be absolutely fantastic. And so one of the things I'm actually really strong in terms of getting over getting in control of your own stress, it's one of the things that I really do promote to people, but there's a lot of people it doesn't work for. So those care things are really important, but what they really need to do more of which I see as the absolute biggest gap is get to what is actually causing the issue in the first place and addressing it and creating programs that more in depth and getting to the heart of the issue rather than that kind of surface benefit stuff. And that surface is not the right term things like exercise and meditation. I'm not surface for the people who works for it can be life changing, and it's fantastic. But it doesn't get doesn't help everybody and it doesn't get to the cause.


Ericka Thomas  40:42  

Right? Right. So what would you say? Is the cause for people?


Jodi Woelkerling  40:48  

 That's the $20,000 question. Well, they says probably $2 million question because he's very business specific. So with businesses they need to actually find out what's going on and what are the issues within their business. So what I say to businesses, the same nature really spend the time getting that accurate picture to start with. And some businesses do this to some extent through things like employee engagement, employee engagement surveys, that sort of stuff, which are part of that there no where near the full picture. So they need to find out what's going on through quantitative quantitative stuff like what is staff turnover rates, what are what are productivity rates? What are people may meeting their KPIs? What are the engagement surveys actually showing us so that quantitative stuff, but they also need to do qualitative so again, that goes back to the relationships and maybe getting outside consultants to actually talk to people at various levels of the organization? Actually really getting a picture of what's going on. So there's no one size fits all in terms of that, unfortunately. Businesses need to find out what's going on first, and then address them as much as they possibly can. Any larger the organization the trickier this is putting measures to address it, and then reassess probably three months down the road and it's like an ongoing process. The larger the organization, the trickier is to fix and normally the longer term it is to fix but it is a process that can be done over time.


Ericka Thomas  42:37  

Yeah, I have a couple questions that came out of that. So what would be a clue for business that would tell them that maybe they had a problem? Is there something that stands out or often stands out that would that would maybe tip off leadership in in a business setting that hey, we better bring a consultant in here. We have a problem.


Jodi Woelkerling  43:04  

Absolutely. So most business leaders are numbers. People that look at the numbers. The most obvious number is staff turnover what percent of your staff actually leave every year. Yeah, that's that's the most obvious there's a lot of others but yeah,


Ericka Thomas  43:18  

yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. So what is one essential characteristic for a leader who wants to create a more resilient culture, for their team for their business? For them personally? Yeah, well, in general, you could say in general, what's the characteristic for leaders in general who want that for their company? what's what? What is it about them?


Jodi Woelkerling  43:46  

Most of the good leaders out there have a high level of emotional intelligence because the theme that I see probably more than anything else, so emotional intelligence has two sides of it. Most people only kind of a really conscious of one side of it. So the side of it that people are conscious of is emotionally intelligent leaders have that real way of connecting with the people around them. So the stuff that we've talked about in terms of empathy and active listening and really developing those connections and seeing what's going on as much as possible for the other person's point of view. That's one side of that the other side of emotional intelligence that most people aren't aware of, is emotional intelligence is about the person really knowing themselves and being in control of themselves. So knowing the triggers knowing what may cause them to be stressed or not perform at their best knowing one of the things in the opposite side to actually what are the conditions so that they can perform at their best and they can kind of react so it's about really developing that self knowledge and developing that self patterning, that self control and that self self monitoring and and you're really developing that skill in yourself so they can stay in that state of calm as much as possible. So emotional intelligence is definitely both sides.


Ericka Thomas  45:22  

So do you think that that is something that can really be developed in someone who doesn't naturally have emotional a lot of emotional intelligence?


Jodi Woelkerling  45:32  

Absolutely, absolutely. It some people have it naturally more than others? Definitely. But it is something that can be can be developed. Absolutely.


Ericka Thomas  45:42  

Yeah, that is, that is really, really interesting.Jody, this has been a fantastic conversation. I think this is such an important conversation because we all have to live with each other. Right? I mean, it's just it's not just about how you behave in business. Although this is a big part of our life, right? We spend a lot of time at work we should be able to feel safe there. We should be able to feel calm there. We should be able to be successful there. And all of the things that we've talked about today, and I just want to thank you for coming on The Work IN it's really been wonderful meeting you and going deep into this topic.


Jodi Woelkerling  45:51  

Thank you so much for having me on. Ericka. It's always great to be able to spread awareness around resilience because it's such a powerful concept. So thank you very much.


Ericka Thomas  46:40  

It is it is Thank you. So if people wanted to get in touch with you, Jodi, where can they find you? And if they wanted to work with you, where can they find you?


Jodi Woelkerling  46:50  

Yeah, so my website’s kind of the answer to both of those questions. So if they go to Jodiwoelkerling.com and the spelling of my name in the show notes.It’s just Jodiwoelkerling.com. There's links there to different services that I do. There's ways that there's forms there so that people can actually register that they want to actually have a chat to me. I always, as an introduction, chat with people as a complimentary if they want to get a complimentary consultation to start with and then we decide from there. There's also links there to read my book. I've got it here. World Class Leadership.


Ericka Thomas  47:31  

yes. World Class Leadership. Excellent. Yes. 


Jodi Woelkerling  47:36  

So there's links there in terms of the things they're interested in to get hold of that. It’s mainly directed towards your higher level executives. And it's around the larger scale cultural issues that I see very commonly. Yes. So the best way is on my website. I'm also very active on LinkedIn if they want to see sort of some information that I posted on there as well.


Ericka Thomas  47:59  

That's awesome. So I'm going to include all those links in our show notes. But before we sign off, I asked all my guests, what is it? What is something that you are doing for your own work in these days something that brings you balance or joy? Or just makes you smile?


Jodi Woelkerling  48:18  

Love it! I would actually probably mention two if that's all right, yeah. In terms of creating that, that, that calming myself, there's two things that I do, and one of those meditation so to me meditation is a fabulous way to to keep myself centered. And the other thing is walking. On the exercise side I'm not I'm not big on the the really strenuous exercise, but I'm an avid walker into me in terms of my mental health and my state, it is an absolute. To me, it's a key.


Ericka Thomas  48:57  

Beautiful. Thank you for sharing that Jodi. Thank you. Take care. All the links to get in touch with our guests will be in the show notes and you can find them at savage Grace coaching.com along with other free resources to support a growing movement of fit pros on the path back from stress, tension and burnout to radical resilience and results. Thanks, everybody. See you next time.


Transcribed by https://otter.ai