How to Motivate Millennials and Gen Z with Psychological Safety and Gratitude

✅ Navigating Workplace Dynamics: Practical Insights with Kristen Zhivago

🙏 Enjoy the Episode & Make Sure to Like, Comment, Subscribe, & Share 🧡

Key Highlights: 📌

💼 Creating a Positive Work Environment: building a mentally safe workplace where empathy and servant leadership prevail.
🚫 A No-Jerk Policy: Discover how enforcing a simple but effective rule of not working with jerks or divas can alleviate anxiety and create a harmonious team dynamic.
📢 Open Communication: Learn how constant touchpoints through platforms like Slack and establishing clear processes can minimize workplace anxiety.
🌟 Appreciation in Action: the power of gratitude and recognizing each team member's "happy place" to boost morale and productivity.

Join hosts Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick as they welcome Kristen Zhivago, founder and president of Zhivago Partners and a renowned author. Kristen brings a wealth of experience from coaching tech CEOs in Silicon Valley and leading a digital marketing management company that prioritizes mental wellness in its culture.

Kristen discusses the importance of authentic leadership, clear communication, and why keeping jerks out of the company isn't just good for culture but essential for mental well-being. Her hands-on approach to recognizing and valuing individual strengths sets an example for fostering resilience and contentment at work.

➡️ If you've found value in Kristen's wisdom, please give us a 5-star rating 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 and share this episode with leaders looking to refine their approach to employee well-being!

#MentalWellness #Leadership #WorkplaceCulture #ZhivagoPartners #ServantLeadership #NoJerksAllowed #DigitalMarketing #AnxietyatWorkPodcast

Transcript

3
 0:00:00
 Well, welcome everybody. We're delighted to have you here for the Anxiety at Work podcast.

2
 0:00:14
 I am Chester Elton and this is my co-author and dear, dear friend, Adrian Gostin. We hope the time you spend with us today is going to help remove the stigma of anxiety, mental health in the workplace and in your personal life. And we invite some experts from around the world to give you ideas and tools to help you deal with anxiety in your world.

4
 0:00:34
 Our guest today is Kristen Zhivago, founder and president of Zhivago Partners

2
 0:00:39
 and author of Roadmap to Revenue, How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy, which was named one of Forbes top six marketing and sales books. Kristen has also spent years as a coach to Silicon Valley tech CEOs to help grow their companies. Kristen leads a team of young workers to inspire the development of their clients while encouraging mental safety in the workplace. She's our new and dear friend.

2
 0:01:08
 We're delighted to have her on the podcast. So welcome to our humble podcast, Kristen.

1
 0:01:13
 Thank you so much. It's good to be here.

2
 0:01:15
 Well, welcome, Kristen, too, from me. Mental health anxiety has become hot-button issues in the workplace. That's why we've started this podcast. When we chatted with you, we noticed you've got some younger generations working with you. We're just kind of wondering what kind of things are you doing to really get a sense for how your team is feeling and how that's affecting their work. Has the way you've led changed in the last few years because of this?

1
 0:01:46
 I don't know if it's changed. I think I get better over time, which is always a goal, of course. I try to be sensitive to issues that they might be having. You can always sense when something is a little off. I think the idea is to be empathetic, and I believe in servant leadership. My job is to make their jobs easier. We do have one big fat rule here, which is we don't work with jerks and divas. That's a new category I've added recently.

1
 0:02:18
 And my definition of a jerk is somebody who makes life harder on everybody else. So we don't have jerk clients and we don't have jerk workers. So it's really a safe place for nice people to work, no matter how old or young they are. And it's wonderful. I love it. It's the most fun I've ever had working.

5
 0:02:43
 You know, I love that.

3
 0:02:44
 You want to reduce anxiety, don't work with jerks or divas. It's really pretty simple formula, right?

1
 0:02:49
 Yeah, it's pretty simple. Yeah.

3
 0:02:52
 We've heard so much about, particularly the younger generation, that communication is such an important part of the formula. You know that they need a lot of feedback and so on. What are you doing with your team to make sure that communication is high and you're

2
 0:03:08
 communicating in ways that are effective, again, to hopefully reduce anxiety around the unknowns in the workplace.

1
 0:03:16
 I think it's a combination of things. So first of all, we use Slack all day long. So we're constantly in touch with each other, chatting and texting. I also, when I first started the company a few years ago, I've actually been in business for years and years, but this actual agency that we have now, we started in 2017. And the first thing I did was hire an infrastructure expert because in all my years as a revenue coach, I knew that the biggest anxiety came from lack of structure, lack of processes. And so that was the first place to start.

1
 0:03:49
 And then I built a core infrastructure team. And we're a very tight-knit group. People have been here since the beginning in many cases. And that they help me if somebody says something to them that they might not want to say to me, they might mention it to them, so I get some feedback. Not everybody says or is comfortable going directly to the person at the top to say what's on their mind or what's bothering them.

1
 0:04:17
 But I think so it's mainly staying open and giving them that good, solid environment and then staying open and also being willing to admit when I'm wrong or there might be a better way, which I'd say 90% of the anxiety from people who work for someone else comes from knowing that there's a better way to do something and thinking the boss isn't going to go for it and I try to stay so open all the time because I don't want to be that kind of boss

2
 0:04:59
 Well, you know you make a good point about Communicating is one thing, you know talking and having your slack channels listening is what I'm hearing You say it's really an important part of that too, right? That they're talking. They've got a great idea. Will someone listen to that great idea? We've also found that when people feel valued, that anxiety goes down a little bit. With the listening and the open nature that you've got, what are some of the ways that you're expressing to people that they're valued?

1
 0:05:30
 I think the first thing is to recognize their happy place. I call it their happy place. Everybody has a happy place and a sad place or a not so happy place. I used to do marketing and sales department turnarounds for companies and the first thing I would do before I even got to work was call their customers and find out what the truth was out in the marketplace. Then I'd sit down with people when I started work and one at a time ask them, what makes you the happiest doing your work,

1
 0:06:02
 what kind of work do you love to do, and what's the kind of work that you wish you didn't have to do. And then I tried to reorganize the department so that everybody was spending the majority of their day in their happiest place. And that works really well. Everybody understands it. It makes people more forgiving. You know, we know that so-and-so is really good at this, but they don't do that so well, so we try to keep that stuff away from them. And that again reduces a lot of anxiety

1
 0:06:29
 because people come to accept, that person's good at that, great, wonderful, we'll give them that. And if they're not so good at this other thing, okay, we'll just, I had one guy that was fantastic at one thing, but he just didn't invoice me. And we're a virtual company.

1
 0:06:44
 And for five months I kept saying, please send me an invoice. So I finally got Cindy, who does all of our invoices, to start invoicing for him, and he's perfectly happy now.

2
 0:06:54
 Isn't that great, yeah, that you can just sort of, and we've done that with our team too. We developed a tool called the motivator's assessment, helping people figure out what they love doing, but we also have these exercises, and we've done it with our team, where you figure out what's frustrating you, what parts of your tasks are frustrating you,

2
 0:07:11
 what could you maybe transfer? There's always times where we have to take out the garbage, right? There's stuff we don't like to do.

1
 0:07:19
 Yeah, exactly.

2
 0:07:20
 We've all got that, but if you can give people a little bit more of what they love to do, wow, the productivity that comes from that, right?

1
 0:07:27
 Yeah, because they then think about things while they're in the shower, or because it's fun. Their mind wants to be there. They want to spend that time, that thinking time on that, and I get wonderful ideas from people because they're in their happy place and they're really able to provide the best value that way and they're happy as coming to work.

2
 0:07:50
 Now you talked about one of the biggest stressors being lack of structure which couldn't agree more on that. We hear that so often from especially younger workers that I just don't know what's expected of me day to day. So no matter how much communication goes on, there's still a lot of uncertainty that deals with tasks. People lose focus when they don't have that structure. I think another thing that we hear about too is job security right now.

2
 0:08:18
 Now you're a startup. You can't promise people we'll be around for decades and decades. How do you help people sort of tamp down their anxiety a little bit regarding job security, project workflow,

1
 0:08:31
 anything like that? Well, one of the things I've always said to CEOs is that when you cough, the rest of the company gets pneumonia because they're paranoid. They're worried. If the boss is confident, then they're going to be confident. They'll go home and say, you know, the company's doing well and I can buy that new car. I can take that risk. If they feel like things are always tenuous, then they just don't know what to do. It's like you were describing. So I make sure I communicate the big picture sides of things pretty often.

1
 0:09:04
 So even in my team channel in Slack, I'll bring things up if we have major initiatives or we're bringing on new clients or there's another aspect of this that I think is so important that nobody ever talks about, which is let's just deal with the truth. What is the truth of the situation? My husband has this thing recently that I love, which is find it, face it, fix it. And I have a corollary to that, which is, okay, find it, face it, fix it, fix it, fix it, fix it. And if you just can't fix it, then you F it, okay?

7
 0:09:36
 And everybody knows what I mean when I say that.

1
 0:09:39
 You have to be totally realistic about what's going on, and then you communicate that reality to your workers and your clients, and then everybody's okay. It's like there's no hidden agenda, there's no politics, there's nobody saying one thing and really the other thing is happening. It is what it is. And another rule, of course, is that you praise in public and criticize in private. So if somebody is screwing up somehow, it's my job to say, you know what, this is really good over here, but this just isn't working.

1
 0:10:18
 So, like, you're not invoicing me, we have to fix it, you know, and you just deal with the reality, and then everybody knows all the time and it helps them make decisions as they're working because sometimes I'm in a meeting and they have a decision to make they know if it's the truth and if it's real they just they deal with that and they know what they need to do next and so so much of the anxiety goes away I need to bring up one more thing which is giving instructions nobody teaches anybody how to give instructions. And yet, it's the thing, you make decisions and you give instructions all day long.

1
 0:10:56
 And managers who are bad at it are typically the ones that either say, make it so, and they don't give you any data, or they go on and on and on and on and on about stream of consciousness, he said, she said, and they don't just say, this is what we're trying to accomplish, here are the tools, here's what I expect, do you have any questions?

1
 0:11:19
 That's the way they should be doing it, every minute of every day.

2
 0:11:25
 So tell us where we can find your book and if people want more information, what website

1
 0:11:29
 should they go to? ZhivagoPartners.com and the book is in Amazon. I ended up just selling it on Amazon, but it's Kindle and hardcover and audio. It's a very straightforward advice book.

3
 0:11:46
 Excellent. You know, we found that a lot of anxiety comes into the workplace when people don't know where they're going. Opportunities for growth, that roadmap, even if it's not more money, opportunities to grow and develop.

1
 0:12:01
 How important is that, do you think, for people and how do you do it in your company? I think it's incredibly important and I typically give raises to people before they even expect it when they're doing a good job in their happy place. I try to give them as much of that work as they want. If we can bring it in and have them work on it and we try to fill them up to the point where that's all I can handle, that's fine. But I think it's just a matter, again, of going back to that understanding of what they really are good at and letting them have it.

2
 0:12:36
 One of the people we interviewed for our new book, Anxiety at Work, actually, he said his younger employees, he had this policy where it'd be about two years before you got your first promotion from analyst to senior analyst or whatever it was. And he says, he had to realize that people just weren't sticking around for that length of time. So he put in multiple steps. You started as a junior analyst. Within three and four months, you move to this step

2
 0:13:05
 and then to this step. And he says, people are much happier. He says, I'm not ending up paying them more, but they wanted that level of achievement.

1
 0:13:13
 Well, I actually pay them a little more too as I take them up. I think if somebody is doing a great job, they should be rewarded and part of that reward is financial.

4
 0:13:22
 That's awesome.

2
 0:13:23
 One of the things that we're very passionate about is helping people feel comfortable talking about their uncertainties or their anxiety. We've said that if one of your employees has the sniffles, you tell them, don't come in, don't come in. But if they have anxiety, we just don't really know how to deal with that. There's this stigma. Perhaps, especially with our older generations,

2
 0:13:48
 we're not, we were never comfortable talking about this. So how do you create in your team, maybe a place where people do feel a little bit more comfortable talking about their, maybe their mental health concerns?

1
 0:14:00
 It hasn't been that much of a problem with most of the folks that work here because, again, they're in their happy place. Now, some people who have come and who are no longer here have kind of come in and they've had bigger problems than relating to work. And I've tried to help them off to the side, so to speak, in the evening or something, and just talking it through separately from work. I do that anyway for friends and loved ones, and it's just something I enjoy doing. My whole goal in life is helping people realize their dreams.

1
 0:14:40
 And if they're happy doing what they're doing and it's working at home, that's fine. If they have to leave because it's not working for some reason, that's fine too. And I've stayed friends with people over time that you know don't work here anymore, but they still want that that connection. I think it really you can't fake caring. You can try to fake it. And a lot of people do try to fake it. But the truth is you either carry you don't. And so I really do care. I want them to be happy and they know it. So it minimizes the reluctance to talk about those things. I love that you can't fake caring.

3
 0:15:15
 It's really true, you know, and we know when people aren't being sincere, right? You can smell it on them, right? Yeah. So, you know, this concept of resilience, that's another word that's particularly with the pandemic, you know, resilience, the ability to bounce back, you know, not all the hardships in 2020 are hardships, you know,

3
 0:15:35
 we've learned a lot of things and yet it'll still affect our performance at work and even in our home life. So what's one thing that you tell managers to start helping their people bounce back from the 2020, you know, from the pandemic to help them build resilience?

1
 0:15:53
 I love that word resilience. The find it, face it, fix it thing is actually a way to keep stress completely out of your life because stress is self-produced. It's something where you decide that you're going to freak out and you give yourself time to do that and you spend time doing it, you get all wrapped up in it. Meanwhile, the problem gets bigger because problems never get smaller over time and you're even less able to deal with it because you're so worried about and you're so stressed out about what could be happy what the ramifications are and how could this

1
 0:16:31
 happen and all this emotional self-talk. I write a blog for fun called Kristin's Wisdom where I talk about a lot of this stuff and just how to be happy in your life and one of the things is okay just as my husband also says do the next Here you are, that's the situation. Okay, what do we do next? And that's actually how you eliminate stress from your life. You just stay calm, no matter what, and it's a decision, and you do it. And life gets a lot happier when you do that.

2
 0:17:05
 I love that idea, and it's almost like control what you can control, and realizing that. You know, one of our passions is gratitude. You know, we always tell people, look, to build resilience, you express gratitude regularly. And as leaders, we should be expressing gratitude to help people feel valued. So maybe give us a couple of ideas of how you show your team members that you're grateful for their efforts, anything we can learn from you.

1
 0:17:35
 I never turn down the opportunity to thank somebody for something. I probably thank people, I don't know, 25 times a day on an individual basis because I do so appreciate everything they're doing and then they know it and I tell them and it's not flattery. It's really honest to goodness. I really appreciate what you just did. And even just the little things where they notice something or they correct me and say, no, no, that's not what we were going to do.

1
 0:18:06
 We're going to do this other thing. I'm like, oh, you're so right. Thank you so much. And I thank them in public. I recognize them in public. I've sent a few trophies to people over the years, too, because I think that's important to have something on your mantle that says you're special. So I really do think it's part of that whole caring thing where you really do value that

1
 0:18:29
 person and their contribution and what they're trying to accomplish. And then everybody tries harder. We all just work as hard as we can. It's a lot of fun.

3
 0:18:40
 What do you say to leaders or people that are listening to the podcast right now, say 25 times a day, that's way too much. That's way too much.

1
 0:18:50
 What do you do? I don't mean each person. I mean in total amongst my team, I probably think, and individual. It's just a natural knee-jerk reaction for me. Every day they're doing something right, and it could be the tiniest little thing, but they did it right, and they should be recognized for that and thanked for that, because that's priceless. I can rely on them for that and that's amazing.

2
 0:19:22
 You know what I love about your advice, Kristin? We've had psychiatrists and doctors and so on and it's great and their advice is wonderful. What I love is that you're running a business. This is really practical. This is the advice that a lot of people listening are going to need and boy do we love our community that gives up time to listen to wonderful people like you and to find more about your blog and your books and where to find information. Give us your website and all that good stuff one more time.

1
 0:19:49
 Okay, it's Chivago Partners. You can also just type Kristen Chivago into Google and you'll find me on page one all the way through. But it's www.chivagopartners.com and the book is on Amazon. It's Roadmap to Revenue, How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy.

2
 0:20:07
 What about the blog?

3
 0:20:08
 Where do we find that?

1
 0:20:10
 There are two blogs that I do. One is on the Chivago Partners site. You just click on blog and you'll go there. That's aimed mostly at business managers. christenswisdom.com is again just a labor of love where I'm hoping to give this kind of common sense advice to people who are coming up who haven't actually heard anybody say some of this stuff. So I do feel sorry for the younger generation that comes out of school and they've really not nobody's had a business class in high school or something.

1
 0:20:43
 It's kind of sad they're going to spend the rest of 40 years of their life after that working and nobody said well here's what politics are about and here's how to be more effective and here's how to find a job and It's pretty sad if I had another lifetime I'd open up a school or something But instead I'm writing Kristen's wisdom as often as I can

2
 0:21:07
 well, it's so great because your your wisdom is so practical. And it's funny because as we go out and we work with leaders, we meet about maybe 10% of leaders that are like you, that just don't need our help at all. They sit in our audiences. They just nod their heads. They go, yeah, yeah, keep talking. Because they really don't need us.

2
 0:21:32
 And that's great. Unfortunately, as you say, we've got a lot of leaders who may not quite get it yet. Maybe they've come up, they've gone to business school, but nobody ever taught them this practical stuff about leading people. So maybe in summary, okay, so you've just promoted one of your, or you've hired somebody new into your company

2
 0:21:51
 and they're gonna lead others. Kind of what sort of summary takeaways from our conversation today? Well, you know, what were the two or three rules

1
 0:21:59
 of the road would you give them to help them lead people? Well, first of all, they know from their interview That we don't work with jerks. I always tell people that And their reaction tells me if they're a jerk or not, believe it or not and The nice people always laugh The jerks get offended because they know they're jerks. So I've just given away the little test. But they know that all I care about is the truth and getting things done and that's going to be reinforced by everybody else in the organization. The most important thing I think is in every situation, what's the right decision? And

1
 0:22:41
 again, if you have these basic principles where we deal in the truth, we deal in reality, We just do the most loving thing. We always, I mean, honestly, business is about love. I don't care what people say about money and greed and all that stuff you see in the movies where they're all terrible and big fat guys smoking cigars. That's not what business is about. Every single entrepreneur I've worked with, except for the jerks, have a dream. They want to help people.

1
 0:23:11
 They're trying to be good leaders. They're working really hard to take care of their people, might be hard for them if they're not totally empathetic and stuff, but they're good people trying to solve a problem. That's what I find and I have worked with hundreds and hundreds of CEOs and that's who they are. So I think it's just, you know, you really have to focus on the people side because the people are the ones working. And you set a good example by your daily gratitude-filled,

1
 0:23:44
 caring actions. And when it's time to be tough, you're tough, okay, but you're never mean, ever.

4
 0:23:51
 I love that, tough but never mean.

3
 0:23:53
 I'm gonna write that down. Hey listen, Kristen, this has been a delight to have you with us. Your practical advice is wonderful. Your experience is, well, you know, who's got more experience than you? My brother would say, nobody. I don't know about that. We didn't even get to your personal story and what a great sailor you are and the lessons you learned sailing the seas.

3
 0:24:15
 That's a conversation for another time. We really want to thank you for your advice. Our goal is to take this stigma away from being able to talk about anxiety and mental health and create those great workplaces. Like you say, they are filled with gratitude and not filled with jerks and divas. So we really want to thank you for your time. Any parting thoughts as we close up? My parting thought would be just relax.

3
 0:24:41
 Everything is going to work out.

1
 0:24:43
 One thing you learn is you get older. One of the benefits of getting older is that you do start to realize that you really did work through a lot of stuff. And so when it comes again, because there's always going to be something, there's always something, you just start to say to yourself, you know what, I can deal with this. I've been through this before. I've been through worse things. We're going to handle this and we're going to figure it out. Find it, face it, fix it.

1
 0:25:09
 this and we're going to figure it out. Find it, face it, fix it.

5
 0:25:16
 Adrian, every guest we get gets better and better.

3
 0:25:20
 It's amazing. I mean, just the great wisdom. Kristen was great. What were some of your key takeaways? I'm curious.

2
 0:25:27
 Again, you're right, very practical. I love what she said. You know, one of the, again, from a practical manager's perspective, who realizes after leading people for many years, that one of the biggest anxiety drivers is a lack of structure. And boy, did we hear that when we were writing Anxiety at Work. It's, you know, can my managers just tell me what exactly they need and then give me a little guidance? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2
 0:25:56
 Lay it out. Ask the right questions. You know, a roadmap. The other thing, you know, right off the bat, I love the, we don't hire jerks and divas. We talked about the bad boss, post-traumatic syndrome. And if you're working with jerks, it does. Your anxiety just amps up. We knew that from previous companies. We'd have that one jerk in the company, and man, it just wreaked havoc with the rest of the team. And I loved her tell.

2
 0:26:26
 She said, when you tell people that during an interview, and if they laugh, they're the right person. If they get offended, that's not the person for you. I just love that.

3
 0:26:38
 If they get offended, they know that they're jerks.

2
 0:26:41
 Exactly. That tell. Another one, very practical, was, look, a lot of anxiety, she says, comes from employees knowing that they have a better way, but thinking their boss will not go for them. Boy, did we hear that again! And she said, as a leader, I have to be open every day.

3
 0:27:00
 That listening, you know, it's safe. I love that you can't fake caring. You know, people need to know that you care. You know, she said, look, 25 times a day I'll point out something. They did something great and I don't hesitate to point it out. I praise in public and I criticize in private.

2
 0:27:16
 I know that's an old idiom and yet ever more it's important and it's true. Probably the last one for me, and again very practical, was I give instructions all day long. It's not stream of conscious, but I'm very deliberate. Here is exactly what I'm looking for. We had a boss once, didn't we, Jess, who said you'd give him, turn something in, and he'd go, yeah, that's not exactly it. I'll know it when I see it. Go try again.

2
 0:27:43
 Yeah. Which was so incredibly anxiety inducing versus a manager who's giving instruction. Not extremely conscious, but this is what I'm looking for.

3
 0:27:51
 Right. And my last one was find it, face it, fix it. Fix it, fix it, fix it. If you can't fix it, F it. It's just delightful. Well listen, thank you so much for spending some time with us. We hope you had two or three great takeaways. We love spending time with you.

3
 0:28:12
 We love this mission of taking the stigma away from anxiety and wellness in the workplace. We've got a wonderful community. We thrive together. Tell them all about it, Adrian.

2
 0:28:21
 Yeah, we'd love you to join. It's a safe place to talk about anxiety at work. If you're interested, check out our books. Anxiety at Work is coming out in May from HarperCollins. We're really excited about that. Our book Leading with Gratitude was just named one of the 15 top books of 2020 by the Outstanding Works of Literature Committee. We were happy to be on there with Jay Shetty's book Think Like a Monk and some other amazing books. So yeah, check out our work and if you need somebody to come into your organization

2
 0:28:53
 to talk about whether virtually or in person, talk about resilience, culture, engagement, we'd love to hear from you. And if you've loved this podcast, share it with your friends and family. It can be found where all great podcasts are found. We're hoping to build a movement that really does make it safe

2
 0:29:10
 and make it healthy to talk about anxiety, get great advice and talk about wellness in the workplace. Well, that's our show and we're sticking to it,

3
 0:29:18
 right, Adrian?

2
 0:29:20
 Exactly.

6
 0:29:20
 Take care, everyone.

5
 0:29:21
 All right.

4
 0:29:22
 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.