Building Wellness into Organizational Culture

Part 4 of our 4-part conversation on embracing wellness as a part of leadership..

Wellness isn’t just an individual practice — it has to be operationalized into the culture of the workplace. Host Russel Lolacher speaks with Stephen Kohler, founder of Audira, about how organizations can prove they value wellness through their calendars, budgets, and workload trade-offs. This episode explores how embedding wellness into culture improves retention, engagement, and the overall employee experience.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: So to pull back then. So for example, we've spoken about the importance of hard trade offs. But a lot of organizations don't, aren't good about supporting boundaries like that in allowing, and they'll say we'll fail to learn. I'm like, yeah, but you punish failure. Like you, you can talk about it all you like, but you don't promote the people that fail, last time I checked, or the people that are learning. So how does a culture of no, for lack of a better word, support wellness in favor of wellness? And how do you get an organization to embrace that?

Stephen Kohler: Yep. It, I love that. I just had a conversation about this very topic and the word that I like to bring in Russel is the word evidence, and I'll explain what I mean. So, just the other day I was working with a client and they had a team. Frankly, you talk about cultures, plural. The, the team is struggling with a lot of conflict in what we'll call a toxic culture because everybody's afraid they're gonna get fired, and the senior leaders are like, I don't know why they're afraid nobody's gonna get fired.

And I said tell me this. Do they have some evidence to believe that there's reason to be afraid? And the answer was actually, yeah. We just, we just let go three of our senior leaders, I'm like, oh, okay. So they, they have real life experience and evidence to be afraid.

So, to answer your question, it's about, and, and, and so then I started to explain we need to give them some new evidence, new data points, to start to believe that what used to be true is changing and will no longer be true.

Because until that changes, until they see real evidence, they're gonna continue to be afraid. So what do you have to do as a leader? And it sounds easy, but it takes, you have to create new experiences that these people, when they take risks, you talk about, you know, celebrating failure. That when they make a mistake that bad things won't happen.

And actually when they make a mistake, they're gonna be celebrated. And so you have to give them totally different experiences, right? And then only then will they start to, I mean, fear is based on lack of trust and uncertainty. So you have to create a conditions of certainty. So that they're not afraid, right?

Russel Lolacher: You're talking about operationalizing it as well? I, I think about the, so we talk about values a lot, and I, I make jokes all the time. Values on the poster, values on the computer screen don't mean crap in the workplace,

it's how are they rewarded? How are they recognized? So with the lens of wellness, what as an organization, executive, HR, however, what leadership around... what leadership should they be recognizing? Should they be rewarding in regards to wellness? To show everybody else that this is the kind of organization that we wanna support. 

Stephen Kohler: I love it. I'm gonna answer that in two words and then I'll provide some context. The calendar and the budget. Now, what do I mean by that? I once heard a politician here in the U.S. say, it's like, don't tell me your values. Show me your calendar and show me your wallet, and then I'll tell you what you actually value because it's about how are you spending your time?

Because that shows your, your priorities and how are you spending your money or not spending your money, right? I've never forgotten that. And organizations are the same way as it relates to wellness. Don't show me the poster in the gym that says you believe in wellness, because by the way, the gym is empty. Why? Because everybody's at their desk working and they don't have time to go to the gym. Don't show me the poster. Show me the calendar. Show me the budget. So two things that can happen is that they assign budget. I mean, that's a big one. For a traditional organization, don't tell me you believe in leadership development, but the first thing that when budgets get tight, you strike that line item in the budget, right?

You reinforce that as, as, as a budget. And also you reinforce what I'll call your calendar, schedule, your time. Here's an example. A lot of organizations, at least I've been part of have the, the irony is that they have meetings that they require their employees to be in from nine to five and then the employees, after they leave all the meetings have to go get the real work done, let alone go be well.

So what do they do? They institute, and this is a tactic I've seen some organizations do really well, is they have like blackout times in the day, in the week with where there are no meetings. You cannot schedule a team meeting at like 12 to one or anytime after 4:00 PM whatever, right? It's not a silver bullet, but it starts to give some tactical reinforcement that this thing we believe about giving people time to go be well or not be in a meeting or get their work done, we mean it. Which is great.

Some managers here's a little tactic. Managers will use tools on their computers and email programs to prevent. I can send an email right after five o'clock, but it will not show up in my employee's inbox until 10:00 AM the next day. So a lot of little tactics like this that they're not silver bullets, but they can start to help us reinforce what we say we value. 

Russel Lolacher: I think it also reinforces what wellness to me is different than wellness to you, Stephen. So for instance, your perfect example of that is say there's an executive or a leader going, it's in my brain. Wellness for me is getting it out so I don't sit and stew on it, right? I need it to release into the world. However, the wellness of the person that you're trying to engage with is leave me alone for these hours of the day. I don't care when you are inspired. So for it to sort of have that moment where you get it out, but it doesn't meet the audience until they're ready for it.

I think that's key because again, wellness are being defined by two different people.

Stephen Kohler: Bingo. I even heard about a, a recent technology tool that will allow all of us basically to block all the incoming digital data. So what do I mean? I mean, texts, emails, Slack we have such, so many of these technology things, it creates this constant form of stress. You talk about fight or flight, like, oh my God, my boss just texted me.

Like, it, it creates a shock and we feel impulse to immediately react. There are tools now that are start, ironically technology tools to help blunt some of those things. So the easy idea is that you put on do not disturb on your phone. There are similar things that you can do to email programs, IMs, tweets and texts so we can, we can have a bit of that wellness. I'll give you a great example. One of the things I used to do is I I would turn all that stuff off, go hide in a conference room where nobody knew so I could get work done for two hours. That these were some tactics I had in my control to, to create focus.

Russel Lolacher: Right.

Stephen Kohler: And I think these are things that we as leaders in organizations can support and enable from a, from a wellness perspective.

Russel Lolacher: And I think at hammer's home, we're kind of dancing around a bit here, but I think it really reinforces the fact that wellness being different to different people, if we understand that better, like some people, wellness for them is working in a very busy environment.

It invigorates them. It makes them very, like, they feel the energy, they feed off that energy. Extroverts. To be able to channel it back into their work.

Others want to be in a silo in the middle of nowhere and just leave me alone. I'll interact with people virtually. So it brings that diversity, equity, inclusivity element to it is that if we have different definitions, we can be more inclusive if we have an understanding of what each person's wellness level is, and that's what that's on leadership to sort of figure out.

Stephen Kohler: And I love that. And I wish more organizations, and I hope more organizations are listening to this podcast for that very thing. So you get into something like whatever you call the, the, the how many days of work we're coming to the, the organization. Frankly, I think, I think we miss the point when we start coming up with kind of arbitrary, everybody's gonna come in for three days and everybody's gonna have two days off.

I think if it's more flexible, where the manager of the team, the employees have the very conversation You're talking about saying What's wellness to you? Maybe the extrovert's like, man, I wanna be in, or yeah, I wanna be in the office five days a week. 'cause I can't, I, I can't have enough stimulation with humans.

And the introvert says, you're gonna get the most out of me if I come in maybe once a day, once a week but I have that quiet time, that recharge time at home, right? And having that conversation on a one-to-one basis rather than an arbitrary basis.

Russel Lolacher: So what's a hard truth here that you think organizations really need to accept if they're gonna get serious about promoting, fostering, supporting wellness in the workplace? 

Stephen Kohler: Wellness matters. Wellness is not just a fluffy term. Wellness is also not having a gym in your office and saying, we've done our job. 'Cause, 'cause employees will naturally just make time to do it. Wellness is not about, with all due respect to my friends in HR, having a court work-life balance program, whatever that might mean, that's not wellness.

Wellness is also about having hard trade-offs about workload with employees and, and, and saying, no, we're not. You're not. Nobody could get everything that's on your work on your to-do list done. And so I as your manager gonna sit down with you and say, here are the two things we're gonna prioritize, and here are the eight things we're gonna say no to right now.

In favor of your wellness. And, and we know in the long term, if we invest in you, you're gonna be more productive, more engaged, and help the organization. And it's that intellectual rigor of trade offs, but also values that I think the best organizations understand.

Russel Lolacher: So I love wrapping it up with the idea of, okay, what's one thing we can do? People are listening. They're like, okay, I don't know what my wellness gauge is. I dunno what my teams are and they wanna start down this path, their wellness journey, what's the first baby step they start tomorrow or right now?

Stephen Kohler: Yep. I like to ask one question, and you can ask this to your I would say ask this of yourself and of your team members. What's one thing that fuels you that if, if you had permission to, you would go do? When I have people reflect on that, almost always, almost always, when I give them that permission, they're like, oh, I know what fuels me.

It's reading a book. It's spending time with a loved one. It's running, it's music, it's fishing, right? It's, it's watching a movie. If I only could do that, right? If, you know, I'm like, okay, we're gonna do that. It sounds easier than it, and it is, but what it takes is commitment to yourself and a willingness to to say no to everything else.

And so I would ask everybody in this who's listening to this session identify what's one thing that fuels you and commit to yourself that you're gonna do it within the next 24 hours. And then make a commitment to yourself of how you're gonna sustain that over time.

And lastly, indentify it... It's a little, it's a little cheesy. Find an accountability partner or buddy that will hold you to that. I know that's been really helpful for me. Russel, thank you so much. It's been an honor to be here with you.

Russel Lolacher: It has been great. Sam, thank you so much. I feel a bit more wellness involved. Like for me, I'm an extrovert, so I love a good conversation. That's sort of a thing that fuels my bucket as well and helps me start my day is just sort of getting below this of surface conversations.

So, I appreciate you filling my bucket today. So thank you very much for your time.

Stephen Kohler: And, and likewise, I, I feel rejuvenated, amplified.

Russel Lolacher: Amplified. There's Stephen Kohler. He is an author, certified executive coach, keynote speaker, composer, performer, and founder and CEO of Adira Labs. He's also the author of a book you should definitely pick up, which is called The Leadership Anthem, How Listening Like a Musician Creates Strong Performances.

Thanks so much, Stephen.

Stephen Kohler: Thank you, Russel. Really appreciate it.