Navigating Workplace Anxiety with Expert Insights on Overload Awareness

✅ Navigating Workplace Anxiety with Expert Insights

🙏 Watch The Episode & Remember to Like, Comment, Subscribe, & Share 🧡

Key Highlights: 📌
🔄 Overload Awareness: the complexities of managing overload and stress
💡 Positive Intent Philosophy: the power of a positive mindset in reducing workplace anxiety and improving overall mental well-being.
🎯 Goal Clarity: Bob reinforces the need for clear personal and professional goals, driving home the message that understanding one's core values is essential for leadership and living up to one's potential.

In a thought-provoking episode of the Anxiety at Work podcast, hosts Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick engage in a deep dive with Bob Glazer, the inspirational figure behind Friday Forward and a prolific author on workplace culture and remote work dynamics. Bob shares his expertise on handling stress and the evolving responsibilities of leaders in today's challenging times. He also touches on the emerging trend of 'The Great Resignation,' urging caution and introspection before making drastic career moves prompted by stress.

➡️ If you're striving to balance leadership demands with personal well-being, don't miss this episode's valuable lessons. Leave a 5-star rating 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 and share these insights with others who might benefit from Bob Glazer's wisdom!

#AnxietyAtWork #BobGlazer #WorkplaceWellbeing #Leadership #PositiveIntent #VulnerabilityInLeadership #StressManagement #RemoteWork #PersonalDevelopment #CareerGrowth #PodcastHighlights

Transcript

Welcome to the Anxiety at Work Podcast. I'm Chester Elton and this is my co-author and dear friend, Adrian Gostick. We hope that the time you spend with us will help remove the stigma of anxiety and mental health in the workplace and your personal life. We invite experts from the world of work and life to give us ideas and most importantly tools to deal with anxiety in our world. And we want to give a special shout out to our sponsor Lifeguides. You know Lifeguides is 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 or life experiences that you have. Kind of cool as you navigate through an anxious life but better way to have a guide right? We have a special offer if you go to lifeguides.com forward slash schedule a demo and add the code healthy2021 into the text box you get two months of free service. So we really appreciate our sponsor Lifeguides and encourage you to go to that website. the next video. shares his ideas and insights via Friday Forward, a popular weekly inspirational newsletter that reaches more than 200,000 people across 60 countries. And I'm proud to say I am a subscriber. He is also the host of the Elevate podcast and the best-selling author of four books, Elevate, Friday Forward, Performance Partnerships, and How to Thrive in a Virtual Workplace. Welcome to the show, Bob. We're delighted to have you here. Chester, thanks for having me, and it's good to see you both again. I guess this is seeing for now. You got it. That's right. And we are big fans of your Friday Forward column, as Chester mentioned. And I've noticed lately you've been writing a lot about overload. That's why we wanted to have you on. You're a big fan of talking about people taking care of themselves, especially leaders. You talked recently about many of us like circus performers with all these plates in the air, but we don't want to say no to anything. So help us walk us through that a little bit. Yeah, look. This is an interesting time. It's like nothing that I've ever had to lead through because in the past when there was anxiety at work or stress around something, we could locate an issue in the workplace or something that we were doing, right? It was, oh, we're onboarding too many client accounts at once, so let's get a client account onboarding. Or we have too many quarterly reports due at once and that's creating a lot of stress. Let's add a resource to do the quarterly reports. There was always something we could point to where there was a cause and effect in the business that was causing it, right? And I think what changed in the last year was that the stress was being brought from outside work into work. And one of the ways I explained it, I think if people hit their stress threshold maybe at an index, I'm just making up numbers now, but an index of 75 previously, what we noticed towards the end of 2020, you know, in 21 was like, they were just hitting it at like 30 or 40, you know, and that's where their alarm was going off and entirely new set of challenges for, for a business leader, because understanding that there are real things going on in the world that are creating a lot of stress and anxiety, but at the same time, you have a business to run. And obviously we all don't have the best 95% margin where if the answer was just to cut everyone's workload in half, that we could support doing that. So it's been really tricky to figure out, again, what's the source? Is it a work problem? Is it an outside of work problem? How do we give the space? I mean, there were a lot of months in last year where there just were no good answers. I've got clients asking me for X, Y, and Z. I've got preschool going on right behind me with my three kids, my husband lost his job. Like, there's no timeout button that was just gonna work for everyone. So I think that's been a really interesting challenge. I think that the mental health is certainly on every leader or CEO's top five list now, and it's a new responsibility with, yeah, and we're playing it forward that doesn't take any other responsibilities off of their plate. I like what you said, there are no good answers because there are so many stressors. There are so many things that are contributing. It's not like, like you said, you've got this patent one answer fits all. You've also written a lot about remote work. So what have you learned about those of us that are managing remote workers or working remotely ourselves to help us really thrive and your favorite word to elevate the work we're doing? Yeah, well, I'll go back. So one of my closest mentors, he's interesting. He's antagonistic about this. He doesn't believe in stress. He says, and he says, any conference he says to someone, I'll give you $10,000 if you can go out of this room and come back in an hour with a can of stress, a bottle of stress, find me stress somewhere. And his point is that, and it is, it is an actual internal reaction that our body creates and it is triggered for a whole bunch of things, right? Someone might be stressed that they can't find food that day and someone might be stressed because they're juggling their three multimillion dollar mansions and it's overwhelming, right? They actually might be having the same physiological reaction, which is an old school fight or flight mechanism, but they're just using it in different ways. So I do think that is important because it ties into the remote work and understanding that we are ultimately what determines whether our fight or flight mechanism, it's not the objective severity of the situation. I've talked to experts on stress and stuff and they say, look, you could trigger the same fight or flight because you're really in danger, or you just can't let something go or focusing on it. So, one thing I noticed during the pandemic that was interesting was that, you had some people that were really in trouble, right? They had lost their job, they had lost their home, the virus was threatening them. And then you had some other people for whom that wasn't the case, but they were watching these stories on the news five hours a day, and it was producing the same response. And I think they had a hard time delineating between the fact that, oh, I have a job, I have food over my head, I am safe, I am not, and I am not sick, but it was producing maybe even a worse response than the person, the person who actually had to deal with these issues might have actually been using their flight or flight, you know, in a different way. So how this replies to long winded answer, but how I think replies to remote work is, I mean, what's been very clear is the need for boundaries. And what creates stress in remote work situations is not having those boundaries, not be able to create clear separation, that if you're if you're working from your home, then how do you separate your sort of Clark Kent and Superman personalities and have your work time and have your personal time. You've talked about before those boundaries, creating rituals. Do you want to expand on that a little bit? You said that separation, so how do you create those rituals where you have separation? Some leaders have said, you never have a 60 minute meeting, you have a 50 minute meeting. You never have a 30 minute meeting, you have a 25 minute meeting. Give yourself that. What are some of the tactics and strategies you've used to create those boundaries? So first we encourage people to get up with a dedicated, kind of quiet space. This is a best practice in general, but at night your phone should be out of your bedroom, it should be downstairs, it should be away from you, you know, an hour before you go to bed, an hour before you get up. I mean, there's a lot of data on that, it causes anxiety even if it's in the room, and you don't hear it and it's on vibrate. The need that, oh, there could be something there that I need to answer. So you remove that. We're not commuting anymore, and while I think a lot of us don't miss the traffic and the congestion, there was something ritualistic to the commute. I think people need, you need to not jump out of bed and turn on your computer and be, it's like being sucked into the office in your pajamas, right? So you need that morning routine. You need that sort of wind up before you walk into the office. And then you need that kind of virtual commute at the end of the day do and not schedule yourself to six o'clock. So if your dinner is at six o'clock, schedule yourself to 530 and then take a walk or exercise or do yoga or listen to a podcast or something that creates that that separation. So I think getting these social cues of this is my time and this is work time and these are transition times I think are important in that. I did a session a week ago or so with some leaders and one thing I talked about was quit sending these weekend emails because you think, well no that's how I work, my people know that. You send it out on Saturday and what's everybody thinking about from Saturday through Monday is that email that the boss sent. Yeah, so you should not start emails after hours, but I have the world's best solution to this, which is also in the book. So as a CEO, right, my email gets crowded towards Friday. I actually like my quiet cup of coffee on a Saturday morning before anyone's up, and I go clean out my inbox and delete stuff, and I respond to some things. Now I understand that as a CEO, when people get those emails, then they're inclined to respond to me. So I got a tip years ago, and this is what I do. I do delayed delivery until seven or eight Monday morning. So any email that I send way out of hours that's not urgent, or particularly to someone who is not on my management team or levels down, who would feel anxiety from a response from the CEO, I delay delivery until regular work hours. That's great. And lots of good tips in your books, by the way, everybody should pick up. Another thing you talked about. I'll throw in one tip for the worker in that. So if you tend to respond to things at hours, first of all, now you're training people that you're available, but the best thing you could do is stack those up for six o'clock, 6.05, 6.20, 6.30 the next morning, and then you just look like a workhorse the next morning. I love that. I love that. Well, you know, and speaking of your books, in one of your books, you talk about, you know, hey, if somebody can do it 85% as well as you, I think you said, you know, let them do it. I'd always heard 70%. I like your specificity there. So tell us about delegating because this is something, when we do executive coaching, Chester and I, you know, especially new leaders, they want to take everything on, or entrepreneurs. How do you teach your leaders of people to do this effectively? Yeah, so new leaders go through this like, just this complete cycle every time. So it's, I'm overwhelmed, I get all of these people, I give them all the stuff to do, I'm so happy to have their help, I give them all the stuff to do, they screw it up, don't do it how I like it, this is why I can't trust anyone, I have to do it by myself. Like this is like the playbook that goes on with every new leader. And what they missed was two things. One, hey, it's gonna take actually a little more time up front. The troops are here, but the troops need to be trained, and you need to be clear about your expectations of what you want. It's actually gonna take you a little more work up front to be clear. And then again, on the back end, 85% how you want it without doing it as a win. If your standard is 100, you're just always gonna be disappointed. So yeah, I call that the 85% rule because I think that, I think if you're thinking, nothing is done how I want it, but if you could start to get satisfaction and be like, wow, that was pretty close and I didn't have to do it and maybe when we debrief, I'll coach for next time and we'll get to 87%. So I think there is, but that is the cycle of every new manager from doing it themselves to like, yeah, I'm so overwhelmed, I got to delegate. And then just here, here, here, and then everyone screws everything up, I need to do it again. And then they tend to pull everything back from them and it doesn't work. You know, that's so funny, Adrian, we talk about how perfectionism, you know, drives a lot of stress. And if your managers are perfectionist, if 85% isn't good enough, that's a big anxiety inducer, a big stressor, isn't it? You can't be a manager, right? Look, you can be a real producer if you want to, but you can't be a manager if you can't get comfortable with other people nodding 100% to your standard. Yeah, sometimes just good is good enough, right? And like you said, that communication up front is so important. You know, I love that you talk so much about positive intent in your work. Talk about how that attitude and that culture of positive intent helps you with mental health and building that culture where people feel more at ease and less stressed. Yeah, look, if you look for a rabbit all day, you'll see rabbits, right? So I think that, let me be clear, positive intent does not mean unbridled optimism, right, around everything. It just means that, you know, bad things are going to happen to me. You know, I know some people won't name their names, maybe some family members, you know, or who are vicarious hypochondriacs. And we joke as a kid, like, you know, the broken clock is right twice a day, like, eventually, someone's going to have this thing that people are worried about them having all the time, right? It's just, there's just no way, there's just no way to live. Someone recently explained to me, if you're always living in fear, you basically go through the trauma twice of expecting the bad thing to happen all the time, and then it happening. So positive 10 is like, look, even if it doesn't seem, I'm not gonna walk around and be an idiot and be naive around things, but I'm gonna carry positive 10 in, I'm gonna assume positive 10. I will find out that there wasn't some in comes case or someone did something wrong, but then I'll sort of deal with it and move on. But I won't then go walk around with being like, again, fight or flight, you're using your on guard mechanism all day long. It's, it's exhausting. It's exhausting to you rather than assuming that people are not out to get you. How did you teach yourself that? I think it's, I don't know, it's elements of stoicism and just repetition. And maybe just realizing it just doesn't work. Like, it just, to be on, like, I am a cautiously optimistic person, I am not an unbridled optimist, but generally, like, when something bad happens to a situation, I'm like, all right, we'll figure it out. Like, I have to figure it out anyway, having gotten angry about it, you know, before it happening, just seems like a waste of energy. Doesn't help, it doesn't help. So tell us, Bob, how people can learn a little bit more about your work. Where would you point them? Yeah, I have, everything's kind of integrated now at robertglazer.com, G-L-A-Z-E-R.com. They can get the books, podcasts, Friday Forward, everything is all on that site. Yeah, and you guys call him Robert, we call him Bob, because we're close. Yeah, you can do that. I've got a quick question for you though, and I love asking authors. You've written several books now. Which one's your favorite? You know, Elevate was the most struggle. So I think for me it's probably the, I mean writing the first book, this is like your kids, this is hard. They each have a different, but I think Elevate really was a kind of three year struggle. It was actually, I started writing it as the book that came Friday forward. I rewrote it, and I think it was a sort of personal and professional breakthrough. So I'd have to go with that one. Well, it's mine too, just so you know. Thank you. I picked the right one. Well, you picked the one that I like the best. Yeah, great. Go ahead. Let me ask you one. One of the things you wrote about is ditching the armor. I just love that analogy because we talk about leaders becoming a little bit more vulnerable, that this myth of the flawless leader has to go away and that carrying around this body armor you say creates this unnecessary psychological fatigue. So walk us through that concept and how we can maybe change. Yeah, so that for Andy Ford came out of a conversation I listened to between Tim Ferris and Brene Brown. It was really interesting. She was talking about, and I think we can all see this in our lives, a lot of us have early experiences, either life or work or traumatic or experiences where we build up a defense mechanism. That defense mechanism serves us really well for a long point of time, and that's our armor. But then at some point, it just doesn't, but we don't know how to get rid of it or take it off. And it goes from protection to being really heavy. And look, I think this is having people in your life that challenge you on that. So six months ago, I had just gone through sort of an event and with my business, and I was on with a coach that I've worked with who's one of the, I've had him on the podcast, Phillip McKernan. He's this guy, he's on clarity, and he's kind of like a clairvoyant. And he said, so what's going on? I told him where my head was at, and what was going on, and what I was thinking about, and he's like, you know, seems like a great story you've been telling yourself, but I just don't think it's true. And if you know Philip, this is just what he does. And I thought about that for about the next 10 hours and I was like he's totally right. Like I've made up this narrative and it works but it's not true. It is it was kind of one of this case of this body armor that it actually served me really well and I just didn't want to take it off and I had come up with all kinds of reasons outside of it. So I actually called him back and we had a discussion I was like thank you thank you for saying that. But it is if you don't have those people in your life, yes there's being vulnerable but you also need those people in your life that will ask you those tough questions or will challenge you on that. Because a lot of times, I always say, I'm good at being that person for other people. They know they don't come to me, my kids don't come to me for what they want to hear. They know I'm gonna tell them the truth. That's why there's five people, in my life sometimes, if you want people to just give you the answer you know you want to hear, I can give you the five people that would be happy to do that. But this notion of, I think Adam Grant talked about it when a challenge network. Who are people that really challenge you and push you? I remember him saying that and he's like, I heard you and I just don't think a piece of that is true. It's pretty funny. You say often, and you write about it a lot, that most of us are living below our potential. So how do we get up to that potential? What are some of the things you counsel people so that we can live to our potential, or even over our potential? Yeah, I think some of the root cause of that, Chester, is that we're not clear on what we want, right? And we're focused on other people's definition of success, and it's not really what we want. So we're not kind of working towards it. And the most fundamental thing, I talked about this in Elevate about finding your core values. It actually wasn't until two years later where I released the course on discovering your personal core values where I really took a methodology that I had developed and that we worked with all of our leaders that I thought was transferable. But I think when you understand your core values, you understand what you want, you pick your goals. That is the key to then start saying, okay, I know what I want, so now I want to make sure that I get it. And it almost makes you much more likely to start, you know, if you think about the elements of capacity and elevate, like once I have the goals, then I'm much more disciplined about going for them. I know why I want them. My health is more relevant to me. And I start thinking about the people that are going to like get me there and the people that aren't going to get me there and I make those difficult decisions. Very cool. You know, just really quick, because I know we're up to time here, but we've been talking a lot with Curtis Martin, you know, in these Monday morning calls we have with Marshall Goldsmith and he talks about that ripple effect. It seemed to me that right what you were saying there was once you know what you want, you know, when that stone hits the pond, the ripple effect is more positive, you're more engaged about that. Does that metaphor resonate with you as well, the ripple effect? Yeah, because I think for a lot of people, I always say, like, there might be someone who's really great at intellectual, physical, and emotional capacity, who's achieving, who's a world-renowned surgeon, who's only real want in the world is to be writing books in a log cabin in Montana, right? So you know, that's actually Adrian. So you know, that might be extreme paradox, but again, I think there are a lot of people who like, I just don't want to push to get better at this because it's not my dream. It's not my life. I got pulled into it. It's not what I wanted. Once you really have that clarity, yes, I think that that becomes the sort of ripple or the multiplier effect to say, like, if I'm clear of who I am and what I want, then anything below me getting that feels suddenly unsatisfactory. And how can people help you if you don't know what you want yourself? I love that question. As a leader, if you're not clear on your personal core values, then I think it's very hard for you to lead authentically. It's been such a great discussion, Bob. And we again, encourage everybody to check out Friday Forward, check out one of your books. So as we close, one or two things would you like listeners, leaders who are listening to take away from our discussion today, Bob? What would you say, you know, these are the things that if I was training somebody new as a leader, I would want them to know these couple of things. Yeah, I think for where we are today in the workplace, I think everyone needs to take a big step back. And there's this great resignation going on right now where everyone's changing jobs or thinking that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, which I think we're gonna see in three to six months if that's probably not the case. I saw one study that came out, I believe the 90% of people were looking for new jobs. Almost by itself that indicates that like, that's ridiculous because that believes that everyone believes that what everyone else is doing is easier and less stressful and otherwise. So. Yeah, I just want to say that sounds like a great story. I just don't think it's true. Yes. So again, I think that we need to take a step back, you know, figure out what it is that we need, not rush into a new job or just thinking that change is going to provide less stress and less anxiety. And if we need some time off, let's take some time off. Let's communicate that, both as leaders, as employees, and try to understand where we've been and where we need to go, because this has been an extraordinary time. But again, I think just changing everything, I think that feels like a band-aid. I just I just see I mean you guys are on LinkedIn Like my entire LinkedIn feed is I'm so excited to be starting this job and leaving this job And I it just it feels like we're trying to solve one problem by assuming that This last year happened right work might have been stressful because we were working in the middle of a global pandemic Switching jobs is not going to eliminate that memory, and it's not going to make things easier right away. I think we need to address some of the root causes of it. Very good. Hey, as always, great to spend time with you. We sure appreciate you coming on the show and the work that you do to really create great workplaces and reduce people's anxiety and stress and build those great cultures of trust. Thanks so much. Thank you both in congrats on uh... continues excessive well as we expected a great session with uh... with pop glasier what what were some of your key takeaways i started was really interesting what he's talking about overload is that we can't think of overload in the same ways we always have the bobbins a very successful business leader he leads his own big business. He consults other businesses, writes on this. What he's saying is, look, you can't just assume, oh, it's the same things that it's always been. We're giving people too much. He says, first, you've got to get to the source and realize that the people's stress index where they may have been able to get to a 70 before, maybe they can only get to a 30 now. We have to be understanding of that. Yeah, I love his story of the new manager, how it's always been, right? Yeah, great, I can now delegate and then they give it back. Then it's crap and I've got to redo it. You know, if you can get to 85% and you didn't have to do anything, that's a win. You know, give yourself the win and don't be afraid to delegate. Let your team, you know, do what they want to do and do what they can do, right? Because we know that as we do executive coaching a lot of the folks that we work with Especially when they get promoted into the big job They think I've got to be as productive as I as I was and many times we're working with them They are now leaders of leaders. No your job is to teach These other leaders how to do what you've always done. So I mean, I love that. Yeah, I give you stuff all the time I never expected to come back. You know, really, very good. As 100%? Yeah. I love what he said, too, because positive intent. I know you were paying attention there. He said, you look for rabbits? What do you see? I know. You know what is so funny, too, because they're talking about the rituals, you know, getting up in the morning and doing whatever. For whatever reason, there are a ton of rabbits in my neighborhood. So as soon as he said that, I thought, I do look for rabbits, and you know what, I do find them. So it was really good. I loved what he talked about going through the trauma twice. I thought that was really insightful. He says, you're worried about it and then it happens and then you worry. You've put yourself through the trauma twice. So don't let that worry cloud what's gonna happen. Let it happen, deal with the problem when it occurs. And to the same point too, he says, look, you gotta ditch your armor though. You can't be this invulnerable, perfect leader. That's a myth. And not only that, too, is that we put this armor around us to protect us. I love the friend telling him, hey, that's a great story you've been telling yourself. Shame it's not true. I just don't think it's true. How often does that happen to us? And we build stories to justify our actions or justify who we are, and we do it all the time. I did like too when he said, surround yourself with a challenge network. Get people that will challenge you, that'll push you, that'll, you know, they're not the yes men. If you want yes men, you can find them, right? Like rabbits. And I thought that was great. The last thing on my list before, you know, his big takeaways was this idea of make sure you pick your goals, that you have your definition of your success, not someone else's definition. Yeah, because when we come in and we start working with somebody as a coach, sometimes they'll say, okay, what do you want me to work on? That's not how it works. Because if it's, I want you to work on it, but you don't, you're not going to do it. It has to be something you want. So and it's amazing how few people are clear on that. And what do I want? Then other people can help you. And yeah, so my last takeaway was, probably what you had too, is his last big aha was, look, take a step back and realize the grass is not always greener. Sometimes it's less anxiety inducing and producing to make things work where you are, no matter what. If it's a relationship, it's a job, et cetera, change doesn't always create less anxiety. If you need a little time off, figure that out too. Well, again, just a shout out to our sponsor, Lifeguides. We love these guys. They're trying to impact the lives of a billion people around the planet by providing a guide through your stressors, people that have gone through things that you're going through right now. Maybe it's financial, maybe it's your work development, and maybe it's dealing with anxiety. And we love the offer that they've given our listeners. If you go to lifeguides.com forward slash, schedule a demo and add the code healthy2021 to the free text box, you get two months of this guide work for free. And that's just a fabulous offer. Yeah, it absolutely is. We also want to give a special thanks to our producer Brent Klein, to Christy Lawrence who helps us find amazing guests like Bob Glazer and to all of those of you who listen in we especially appreciate when you download the podcast so we can keep building this networking and getting just some great amazing guests on. Yeah we'd encourage you also to follow our podcast obviously Anxiety at Work based on the book we also have a wonderful online community we thrive together dot global why dot global because dot com just cost too much didn't it Avery? We're creating a place where it's safe to talk about mental health. It's safe to talk about anxiety at work. We bring in guests, great help. Please join us. We'd love to see you there. Don't forget our great new book, HarperCollins. We want to thank HarperCollins for putting out what we think is probably our most important work. So thanks everybody for joining us today. Take care and be well. We'll see you again.