guiding leaders through anxiety when employees are highly anxious, stressed-out and overwhelmed

✅ Guiding Leaders Through Anxiety: Insights from DeLise Simmons

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Key Highlights: 📌
🧭 Navigating Workplace Anxiety: DeLise Simmons delves into the intricacies of workplace anxiety, offering her vast expertise on fostering cultures that thrive even in the face of adversity.
📈 The Anxiety Index: Learn about the Culture Think Tank's innovative tool that gauges anxiety levels and provides actionable strategies for improvement.
🤝 Trust Over Fear: Discover how trust can act as the ultimate antidote to fear within an organization, allowing for a more secure, stress-reduced environment.

Dive deep into a riveting conversation on the Anxiety at Work podcast, featuring the esteemed DeLise Simmons. With her profound background in shaping the cultures of Southwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways, DeLise brings a wealth of knowledge on cultivating workplaces that not only stand strong during challenging times but also prioritize the well-being of every team member.

DeLise's insights into the new Anxiety Index shed light on how leaders can better understand their teams' mental state and take decisive action to bolster collective wellness. She emphasizes the significance of trust as a foundational element of culture, proposing that it has the power to eclipse fear, fostering a setting where creativity and productivity flourish.

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Transcript

Welcome to the Anxiety at Work podcast. I'm Chester Elton and this is my coauthor and dear friend, Adrian Gostick. We hope the time you spend with us will help remove the stigma of anxiety and mental health in the workplace and your personal life. We bring in experts from the world of work and life to give us ideas and most importantly tools to deal with anxiety. And you know as you you are on your journey of anxiety and your journey of life hey who doesn't need a guide right and we're delighted to have as our sponsor Lifeguides. It's a peer-to-peer community that helps people navigate through their day-to-day stressors by providing a place of empathy, listening, wisdom, and support with a guide who has walked in your shoes experiencing the same challenges in life that you have. Now, because you're listening to our podcast, we've got a special offer for you. All you've got to do is go to lifeguides.com forward slash schedule a demo and add the code healthy2021 to the free text box and you get two months free. Two months! It's an awesome offer. Now, in England, do they do schedule a demo? Is that different? The Queen's English would be schedule. Okay, great. And it's not a speech impediment. Thanks for pointing that out. So Lifeguides forward slash schedule a demo, free code Healthy2021. Hope you'll take advantage. We love our good friends at Lifeguides. Well, we are delighted to introduce to you our good and dear friend, Delise Simmons. You know, let me tell you a little bit about her. As a leader of training and development for Southwest Airlines, Delise developed and delivered leadership training to thousands of employees during the time they were rated that one of the top 10 companies to work for in America. And if you've ever flown Southwest Airlines, it's just more fun than you should be allowed and it's Delise's fault, basically. She helped create Southwest Airlines University for People, then assisted in the creation of JetBlue Airways. Similar great ratings and similar great experience. The largest mega startup, this is JetBlue, of an airline in commercial aviation history. DeLise is the founding partner of the Culture Think Tank. She has become a very dear friend of ours. DeLise, welcome to our Humble Podcast. Thank you, Chester and Adrienne. I am so glad to be here. Well, D'Lise, again, we're thrilled to have you. Let's start a little by talking about the new Anxiety Index that the Culture Think Tank, your organization, has been developing around our new book, Anxiety at Work. Now part of the index that we love is that it's just simple. It's easy to use and understand. And the score lets team leaders know how their team is doing, mentally, how are we doing with wellness, what anxiety levels are like, and also, most importantly, how to fix them if they are high. So tell us a little bit, if you would, about why you think this tool is necessary for teams today. Well, thanks, Adrian. We've been in the business of understanding culture and what affects and influences culture since, as Chester mentioned, since we started JetBlue Airways back in 1999. We developed a tool in 2015 that helped us understand what your culture looked like, really based on how employees were feeling. What we understand, we describe culture, we define culture as a collection of the behaviors of the people within an organization. So if the behaviors are what make the culture, the way that we can get predictive about what's going to happen with our culture is if we understand how people are going to behave. And the best predictor of how people are going to behave is how people are feeling, because their feelings are going to influence their behavior and then their behavior helps create the culture. So our tool helps people, organizations understand how people are feeling, it helps them understand how they are going to behave. And so for teams across the world, it's important for, especially post COVID, for teams to be heard, to be listened to, to be checked in on. And this gives us an understanding of what our culture is gonna look like based on how employees are feeling. That's amazing. You know, it's so funny when you think of culture, and of course Adrian and I have been writing on culture for 20 years, as well as you've been immersed in it, and when you think about culture, it's always been kind of like, oh, it's this feeling, you know, like you feel a good culture. You've actually put hard data on it as well, which I think is really remarkable. What was it you said the other day, we measure the immeasurable? Was that the phrase. That culture has been heretofore, it's been something we talk about. At Southwest Airlines, we at first, we did a poor job. We were about culture, but we didn't identify it in terms of specific behaviors. And if you don't do that, then it can kind of feel a little bit like a witch hunt. Like you either have it or you don't. And so we've taken all that cloudiness away from it and saying we can actually identify what are the components that make your culture successful, what are the behaviors that you need to do in order to enhance it and make it better. Yeah, amazing. You know, a lot of companies have data and then they don't really know what to do with it. You know, how do you measure it? Now, you've been able to take the Culture Think Tank platform and redirect it towards mental health and wellness and anxiety. Talk to us about, not only do you measure it, but you give people the tools to identify those behaviors that need to be changed. Walk us through that whole process because it's one thing to have the numbers. It's another thing to know what to do with those numbers, right? Sure. I'm going to tell you guys about anxiety. That's nothing I can tell you all. But what we do know about anxiety is that a little bit of it is good in the workplace. You think about yourself, when you're going to go do something, we're going to have this podcast today, we all have a little anxiety beforehand. It's what gets us motivated, it gets us going, helps us to perform at our peak. Too much of it though can impede our performance. So that's what we wanted to understand with this tool is what is the concentration of anxiety in your organization? And then so we look at it from the percentage of your employees who are experiencing anxiety, and then how toxic is it? How concentrated is it? So if I'm feeling nervous, then that might help me perform okay. If I'm feeling incapacitated, if I'm feeling so anxious that I'm not able to perform the task, then it's not gonna help me or my organization. So our tool helps kind of grade that, and you can see the percentage of your organization that's experiencing anxiety and then the concentration to which they're experiencing it so you know if it's helping your culture or harming your culture. Yeah a little like you know rain some is good too much bad. Like most things in life. Yeah even money you get too much and you shoot yourself into space, apparently. Stop, stop, Adrian. That's, you can never have too much money. You know, my mother used to say, people who say money can't buy happiness have no idea where to shop. I like that. Okay, so with all this analysis, and I've seen that you've done a little of this, putting out some releases about the macro idea. So from what you're seeing right now, I mean, with COVID going on, you must be, as you start putting this tool into place, you must be seeing some big macro insights about anxiety levels today. So what are you seeing and what does it help teach us about our cultures and where we need to focus as leaders? Well, it's a good question. We've seen a 67% increase in anxiety in the workplace since 2019. So that's a huge jump. Now, it's starting to trickle down a little bit. But we can see, because we trend this over time, so we can watch the trend line and see that as COVID waxes and wanes, the anxiety levels do the same thing, partially because of COVID, but partially because organizations are responding and reacting. People have been worried about their livelihood. So anxiety is at an all-time high back in the early COVID days. But now what we're seeing too is employees are 50% and given which data you look at, but generally 50% of employees right now are saying they would be willing to leave their job if their employers don't demonstrate flexibility with respect to return to work. I've been fighting that as an HR professional the entirety of my career, that we've got to be more flexible with our employees and leadership has largely not lent an ear to that. Now those organizations that did had great cultures and they realized that equal and that treating people equally and treating people fairly are two different things. So we think we want to be treated equally but I think we really want to be treated fairly. So if we look at fairness in a return to work situation it helps us. 75% of millennials experience a high level of anxiety. They report a high level of anxieties and that's higher than any other group that we see. And then we know that top performers, 86% of top performers experience anxiety and that's a good thing. So if we understand that, if my top performers are anxious in general, I'm not going to eradicate anxiety in my organization, nor do I want to, but I want to be able to manage it well. So if we manage it well, then our wellbeing is increased. And we saw a bit of data recently too, that it's top performers who are most likely to burn out as well. A little bit counterintuitive. We think, oh, our top performers, they're just going to keep going and going, but we tend to overwhelm them, don't we? Well, the paradox with our top performers is we think they're doing well so we leave them alone. We forget to check in with them. We forget to ask them how they're doing. We forget to support them. And we figure, you know, and we overwork them. I know if I give this to Chester he's going to get it done so I continue to give it to Chester time and again. And at some point he's anxious, he's frustrated, no one's listening to him, so he walks. And then, you know what we do? We throw a party for Chester instead of figuring out a way to keep in there. I do like a good party. So you know you will throw your party but we'd like to keep your yeah it is interesting isn't it like you say we we forget about them. I think that's so insightful we forget about because they always get it done I never need to check in. They're fabulous until they're not there. Yeah I know you guys know a thing or two about gratitude and I think that if we demonstrate gratitude with our top performers, with all of our employees, but specifically our top performers, but we think they don't need it, but they do. In fact, we think they need it even more, you know, because they're tougher, they need more validation. You know, you've worked with these incredibly successful cultures, you know, Southwest Airlines is legendary, JetBlue followed along that same path and since there you've helped create these exceptional cultures for other companies with the culture think tank. So what lessons did you learn about cultures as it relates to well-being that our listeners can glean from you? Most importantly is, again, understanding that the way my employees are feeling is important. And this isn't because hug a tree, love your neighbor. is that organizations that have strong cultures outperform other organizations. So it is a performance metric. It's not just we're looking to see how you feel for any other reason other than we want you to be good, we want you to feel good, you're gonna perform better if you do. So if we understand that, then we're able to move the needle on culture. So we have a process that truly our tool works well, obviously I would believe that. But if you follow this quick rubric, it'll improve your culture. One is check in. So check in with your employees on a regular basis. We check in monthly. So we check in, then we listen, and really listen. So if we just check in and don't listen, then it can be counterproductive. Then we thank. So we check in, we listen, we thank. Thank them for their participation, thank them for their information. Then we validate, make sure that what we think we've heard is what we've actually heard. And then the most important thing, we act. Do something about it. And when we act, we tie back our action to what they told us so that they see you asked me, you thanked me, you did something about it. The next time you ask me, I'm gonna give you good information. Yeah, yeah, that something actually happened, that my opinion actually mattered because you did something about it, right? I wanted to talk to you a little bit, you mentioned about culture, you know, strong cultures can weather storms better, at least that's the way I interpret it. I had this really interesting experience in Wichita, Kansas. So Adrian and I have done a lot of work with Texas Roadhouse Restaurants. Love the brand, love the spirit. So whenever I go there, I call over the general partner and talk to him and say, hey, how's business and so on. Well, we're in Wichita, this is just last week and the place is hopping. Kansas is wide open. And I said, have you had staffing problems? Because that's what everybody's trying to find people. He said, we've done a good job on that. Because we had such a strong culture before COVID, we were better able to weather the storm. And he gave me this example that I thought was fascinating. He said, there's a steakhouse just three blocks away. Father's Day is a big day for steakhouses, right? He says, we were wire to wire, rocking it. My competitor was only open for two hours because that's all he could staff. So is that validated to you that strong cultures really do weather storms better than weak? I mean, does the crisis really tell you what kind of culture you've got? It does. Some organizations were flattened because they just couldn't bring their employees back because of the nature of the work that they did. But those organizations that could bring them back, it's that whole culture thing. It really is about establishing trust within your organization. And if you have a strong validation of trust in your organization, there's not a lot of room for fear when trust is abundant. There is a lot of room for fear if trust is not there. So if I have an organization where we have a strong culture, by nature we have strong trust with one another, that chokes fear out. So when we get into a situation that's anxiety-producing, that's fear-causing, we can lean on that experiential trust that we've created with one another and it helps to choke out some of the fear and anxiety keeps your culture strong. Yeah, love that idea. Yeah, fear. Or sorry, trust. Choking out fear. By the way, how can people get a hold of you, Delisa, or learn more about your organization? Where would you send them? We are at theculturethinktank.com. Kind of like the Ohio State University. The University of Ohio. Yeah, the university. So yeah, theculturethinktank.com. And it gives you an opportunity to hop on and kind of see what we do. You can request a demo. Our solution is easy, it's very intuitive, it's nimble, and it's not expensive. So it's kind of the trifecta of everything you want in a tool that helps you. You can easy in, easy to understand, and easy to pay for. Right. As we've seen with your tool, it's great even for small companies because it's very affordable. One thing we always like to ask is, okay, some actionable advice for managers with your background, you've worked with thousands of managers in your career and helping them become more effective. For example, around transparency and openness, something that you really stress in the cultures that you help build at JetBlue and Southwest. What's something leaders coming to a team maybe can do to develop more transparency, get honest feedback from their people to build a strong culture because we know that when people are starting to talk and share their feelings anxiety levels come down. Well I think I agree and I think that the problem with anxiety is it's not something that employees feel comfortable generally walking into their supervisor manager and saying hey I I'm suffering from anxiety or I'm too anxious to get my work done. It just isn't a norm that we've really accepted. Even our whole mental health system I sent my kids to a therapist just to check in not that long ago and I asked the therapist should I run this through my insurance and he was like I wouldn't because you just don't want to stigmatize them with having a check-in. I'm like this is like a regular is everything okay we're in a weird situation but we've stigmatized mental health in such a way that people don't even want to go talk to a therapist. I mean if my heart was not working I'd go see a cardiologist, right? So I think what managers can do is open up that dialogue to understand are you, you know, how are you feeling? And that basic question, people aren't used to it, but once you start making that a normal part of your conversation, how are you feeling, if you believe and understand that the way I feel does largely influence the way I behave, and at the end of the day, what we're managing as managers is behaviors. So if I understand how you're feeling, I can get way out in front of how you're going to behave. Try to bring mental health into the conversation in a in an easy way and then Continue to check in and ask and act Very cool. You know, it's interesting Get a lot of veteran managers and leaders that that tune into the podcast and we always talk about how important it is to have That that vision what we call the burning platform, you know the mission the vision. What advice do you have for managers to help them create that strong purpose in the culture? I think that regardless of where you are in an organization, you can be in an organization that has a great culture or you can be in an organization that has an ailing culture, but you as a leader can create an oasis in your organization. You have your group of people. I think that the vision for who we're going to be, who we want to be, is not an individual exercise. It's a team exercise. So we identify who are we, who do we want to become. So there's usually a little bit of a delta between who we currently are and who we want to be. I think it should be reflective of who we are, but a little aspirational as well. And then what are the behaviors that we need to do on a regular basis to get us there. And then we check in with those behaviors. It's my behavior as a leader and it's our behavior as team members and those behaviors, if we codify them and we reward and recognize to them and it does help if we have an organization that's built on some sort of values but even if the organization doesn't espouse that, my team can. So I have, you know, I believe that culture is a very egalitarian issue. It's everyone's piece. It's not leadership's responsibility. But as a leader, I'm going to have a better, I'm going to have better luck with my culture if I take the lead. But I want to take the lead arm in arm with my people. That's great. I love that idea, too. We've often said that, you know, we find these little oases, to really create a more emotionally safe space for their people, maybe to mitigate some stress, and also maybe how does the index, the Anxiety Index, help managers be the best leader for their team? What are you seeing with that idea of emotional safety right now? A couple of things. I'm reminded of a story, I put something out on LinkedIn this past week and somebody responded that I worked with at Southwest. Herb Kelleher would send a letter, a customer response letter, if someone wrote Southwest Airlines and complained about the basic operation of the organization, I don't like the way you board, I don't like Boeing 737s, I don't like the way your flight attendants dress, things were not going to change. He had a letter, a form letter that he sent out. I was responsible for culling through the letters to identify which one went in this stack. And the letter reads, Dear Mr. Gostick, we will miss you. Love, Herb. So we sent that out a lot. But I was reminded by this employee that he received a complaint from a customer. He didn't do anything that he wasn't supposed to do. He was doing what he was supposed to do, but the customer complained, wrote him out by name, and Herb Kelleher wrote a letter to a customer because the customer complained about the employee. So if you have your employees back like that, if you will support your employees, we say the customer is always right. That's just not, that's foundationally untrue. And to suppose that, supposes that the employee isn't right. So I think we create emotional safety by supporting each other. By letting each other know, I've got your back. If you behave in alignment with the values that we espouse, and this vision and these behaviors that we've talked about, I've got you. I'm not going to let you fall. I'm not going to bring the supervisor in and cut your knees out from underneath you. I'm going to support you. Then that creates trust. It chokes out fear. Then it gives me the ability to be, I can be a little creative with my customer service because I know my supervisor is going to have my back. Dear Mr. Gostin, we will miss you. That's an important message to an employee to hear from leadership, especially from a CEO. It's just awesome. I can't tell you how much I like that. That is just so great because I grew up in an era where they said the customer is always right. Well, you know what? That's just not true. The customer isn't always right. And we spend all this time trying to placate 2% of our customer base when it would be a lot more efficient if we just said, miss you. We'll miss you. Absolutely. Yeah, Herb's famous for a quote that he gave and his response was, and he's in commercial aviation, so hopefully not everyone can say this about their customers, but he could say, sometimes a customer is drunk, sometimes a customer is misinformed, sometimes a customer just doesn't understand the process, and we're going to support our employees in that. We love our customers, but we're not going to love them to the detriment of our employees. Brilliant. Hey, great discussion. Knew it would be. Love spending time with you as always. If there were two things you wanted people to take away from our conversation, what might they be? They would be that culture is everyone's to access. It is not, it's about behaviors. So if you behave within an organization, you have a responsibility for the culture. So it's everyone's responsibility and then check in and listen and act. If you're gonna check in and not do anything about it, it's actually more detrimental than not checking in at all. So if I'm, we talk about pull fatigue, I don't agree with pull fatigue. I think what people get fatigued by is being asked and then nothing's done about it. That's fatiguing. But if you ask me and then you do something about it, that's energizing, that's not fatiguing. So if I'm going to move the needle on culture, especially in these trying times, I gotta know how you're feeling. That's terrific. Well, D'Lisa, this has been just a delight. We knew you'd be a great guest, but this has just been amazing. Lots of amazing takeaways for leaders listening, anybody who's trying to build a culture, which is, as you say, everybody. So thank you again for joining us today. It's been a real delight. Always a pleasure. I will join you guys anytime. Thank you for the great work you're doing in anxiety. It's helping us a lot and we appreciate it. Well, Jess, another great guest, lots of learning there. Boy, I was really impressed by the idea that culture, it's about focusing on specific behaviors. It's odd, you know, since we work in culture, now and then I'll meet a leader who says, you know, you really can't define culture. It's like, of course you can. You know, there's a difference between going into say, an Apple store and a Best Buy store, not nothing's right or wrong, they're just different places, right? You absolutely can define culture if you focus in on the behaviors you're trying to accomplish Yes, and I love to she said how do you people feel you got to know how they feel? Do they feel great about coming to work? Do they feel like their voices are heard? You know right at the end there when she said, you know pole fatigue There's nothing wrong with doing lots of polls with what's wrong with is if you don't do anything with the data You know, they've got a I love your formula check in, listen, thank, validate, and then act. And she was very specific about, and the last thing is by far the most important, because acting builds trust. And she had some great ideas around trust, didn't she? She did. Now these are folks who are surveying, you know, tens of thousands of employees, and they're seeing a 67% uptick in anxiety levels since 2019. And we think, oh yeah, but that's starting to wane now that, you know, we're coming through the pandemic. Well, as she says, it wanes and waxes because the pandemic's here, then it's not, then it's here again. But what not only are people feeling anxious, not only about the pandemic, but they're anxious about coming back to work, they're anxious about, will I have the flexibility, which we're hearing is the number one concern. People are coming back, they found out, boy, I like this flexibility stuff. Yeah, yeah. Well, and I love what she said, we treat them equally versus fairly. She says, look, treating people equally, that's a good goal, I guess. What I really think is people want to be treated fairly. And that does mean you'll treat people differently depending on their situation. You've got a long commute, you're a single mom, English is your second language, you're going to be treating people differently. We want to know that we're being treated fairly. I want to come back to trust for just a second. I love she said there's no room for fear when you trust your people and she said trust chokes out fear. I love that. I think it's... I circled that myself. Yeah, World Wrestling Federation, choke them out. Different kind of choke. Yes, I really appreciated when she said that because so often we say, well, there's gonna be fear built in. You're not gonna be able to get rid of that. Yeah, you can. And it all has to do with trust. I thought it was brilliant. And where does it begin? She said, add this simple phrase to your lexicon as a leader, how are you feeling? Because we'll say, how are you doing? Fine, you know? No, no, no, how are you feeling? That's deeper. That requires some thought. You can't just get by with a fine. And if you say, you know, and especially if you're pushing a little bit to say, you know, I'm good. Really? Because I'm struggling. It's amazing how the conversations can open up. Yeah, two last things that really left an impression on me, which she said, look, even if you're in an ailing culture, you as a team leader can create this oasis of a good culture. And the last one, which I just found shocking, was, you know, she said, well, I sent my kids to a therapist just as a check-in, you know, we're going through this pandemic, and should I claim it on my insurance? I wouldn't. It'll add to the stigma around you I thought oh my and this is a therapist saying that so there is there's terrible We don't even talk about this, but say say somebody's taking Prozac. There's a very good chance. They don't get life insurance There's a very good chance that they don't get insured so so there's a lot of work That's being done behind the scenes on issues like this with mental health that nobody talks about. There's incredible stigmas, yeah, that she's exactly right. That we is, you know, that's why we're doing what we do here on this podcast is to try to remove some of these stigma around this. So, you know, my last thought too was this idea of emotional safety. You gotta have your employees backs. I mean, she talks about the airline industry where, you know, every week we're seeing some poor gate agent or flight attendant being berated about the mask mandate. Well, it's not their choice. They're not making people do this. But it's the 2%, unfortunately, that are getting angry with these poor folks. It's not their decision to do this. Yeah, yeah, it's a federal mandate. We're up to me. We do it differently. Well, we talk about removing the stigma. We talk about never being alone, having somebody to talk to. And I think that's where, you know, our sponsor Lifeguides is just so important. You know, this peer-to-peer community that helps people navigate through those stressors and all the things we've been going through, that you've got somebody that's had the same experience, that's walked in your shoes. And the special offer, of course, for our listeners is, if you go to lifeguides.com forward slash schedule or schedule a demo and add the code healthy2021 in the free text box, you get two months free. So lifeguides.com forward slash schedule a demo, healthy21 two months free. We love that you are not alone. We'd love that you've got a guide. You've got a life guide. Check him out, lifeguides.com. Special thanks to our producer Brent Klein, to Christy Lawrence who helps us find such amazing guests, and to all of you who listen in. We're especially thankful if you download the podcast, it helps kind of build up our reputation. But recently, Chester, we were just named as one of the top three mental health podcasts for working adults in the world. So that was really exciting, wasn't it? Yeah, it's always great to be validated and recognized. So thank you to all of you that give us your time. Hopefully you had some great takeaways. I know I had a couple of pages and I at least gave some really actionable items and I hope you'll use them to create your oasis of a great culture that is anxiety free where you live and work. Well until next time take care and be well.