EP82: How a CEO's Life Prepared Him For WFH Leadership

Interview with Chris Michalak / Healthcare CEO and Lead Dad

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

In one year, Chris Michalak lost his marriage, his job and his dog. He became a single Lead Dad with custody of his sons. He kept it secret at work - it was a different time. Fifteen years later, he became CEO of VIrgin Pulse, a healthcare company, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. His personal experience years earlier informed how he led - and allowed him to lean into remote work for everyone's benefit. Listen to what he did and how it helped his company.

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Transcript

00;00;05;26 - 00;00;25;11
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the Company of Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet, silly, strange and sublime aspects of being a dad in a world where men were the go to parent, aren't always accepted at work among their friends or the community for what they're doing. I'm your host, Paul Sullivan. Our podcast is just one of the many things we produce each week at

00;00;25;11 - 00;00;48;15
Paul Sullivan
The Company of Dads. We have various features, including the lead dad of the week an ongoing series called The Lead Dad Diaries. We have our community with both online and in-person events, and we have a new resource library for all fathers. The one stop shop for all of this is our newsletter, The Dad. So sign up today at the company of dads.com, Backslash. The dad. 

00;00;48;18 - 00;01;11;23
Paul Sullivan
Today my guest is Chris Michalak, the CEO of Virgin Pulse, a health care tech company. I came across Chris's story on LinkedIn in 2005. He lost his job, got divorced, and his dog died. As a single father, he became the lead dad to his two sons. At a time when talking openly about the role while ascending the corporate ladder was just not done.

00;01;11;26 - 00;01;36;05
Paul Sullivan
He would leave for work extra early in the morning so he could make it home for dinner with his boys. He credits a boss at iron, a working mom, with understanding his situation. Fast forward to today. He's a CEO of a company that offers and encourages remote work. Employees still come together for key meetings and projects, but allowing people to work where they are has allowed him to attract top talent from around the country.

00;01;36;08 - 00;01;39;29
Paul Sullivan
Chris, welcome to the Company Dads podcast.

00;01;40;02 - 00;01;42;07
Chris Michalak
Thank you Paul. Happy to be here.

00;01;42;09 - 00;01;54;03
Paul Sullivan
Take us back to that time. In 2005, when you became the go to parent for your boys. What was it like? What do you remember most from from those those years?

00;01;54;05 - 00;02;20;20
Chris Michalak
Yeah. I mean, as you describe, that was an interesting year. I got divorced, I lost my job. I had to put my dog to sleep. I felt like it was like a country music song. A really bad country music song. And those events in and of themselves, each one of them, can be really disruptive, both, professionally and, personally, in so many ways.

00;02;20;20 - 00;02;42;24
Chris Michalak
And so when I look back at that time, you know, I reflect on, you know, just a lot of challenges and feeling really challenged about the circumstances, at the time. The funny thing is that job was the pinnacle job of my career at the time, and it was the job I always wanted. I was CEO of, 2500 person consulting firm.

00;02;42;27 - 00;03;04;20
Chris Michalak
Professional services firm. And it was what, what I hoped to accomplish in my career. And then, you know, that went away, as well as my, my ten year marriage. So suddenly I was there as a single dad, the primary caretaker of, you know, two boys who were, at the time, you know, five, six years old.

00;03;04;22 - 00;03;08;15
Chris Michalak
It was it was certainly a challenging time. Yeah.

00;03;08;17 - 00;03;25;08
Paul Sullivan
But pretty quickly, you find another job, you start doing well again. But still, you said it was tough for you to discuss being, a single dad at work or bringing that, you know, home persona to work. Why was that the case back then?

00;03;25;11 - 00;03;50;16
Chris Michalak
Yeah, I think it was, a choice that I made that I didn't want, people to perceive that I was any less connected, committed, ambitious at work than I'd ever been before. Even when I wasn't the primary caretaker for these two children. I wanted people to see me as fully engaged at work, fully contributing and, doing my best and doing my all.

00;03;50;16 - 00;04;17;16
Chris Michalak
So I never really had an open discussion with my boss or peers about, you know, my being a single dad. I think people knew, but it was never a topic of conversation that I pursued, strongly or felt like needed to be talked about in an open sort of fashion. I was working, I was, you know, climbing the corporate ladder, and I was continuing to do, you know, my thing at the office.

00;04;17;16 - 00;04;21;13
Chris Michalak
And so that felt most important to me. And that's what I was doing.

00;04;21;16 - 00;04;43;18
Paul Sullivan
You know, it sounds odd for me to say this in 2023, but, we know from the research that your instinct was, was correct that, you know, pre-pandemic men who raise their hand at work to be, you know, what we call leaders to be go to parent, fully present parents, they're often penalized. And their are penalized because they were seen as insufficiently committed to their jobs.

00;04;43;18 - 00;05;06;03
Paul Sullivan
Well, you know, to listen to you. Sure. You and I have talked in the past, you may have been even more committed. You may have been even more focused because you had to balance so many different things. You had to balance your kids and your work. When you look back, how did you make that work? Because you had, you know, a shorter commute in the morning and, a slightly longer commute, in the afternoon, depending on when you were able to, to get home.

00;05;06;10 - 00;05;11;18
Paul Sullivan
How did you make this? Those two worlds work during those years?

00;05;11;20 - 00;05;34;02
Chris Michalak
Yeah, I have, I've told this, this story in, some sessions when I talk with people about what should matter to them at work. I talk a lot about priorities. At that time in my life, it became super clear to me that the demands of my job and the demands at home would create a scenario where I could only afford to have two priorities.

00;05;34;05 - 00;05;57;00
Chris Michalak
And that was being fully present at work when I was working and being fully present with my kids, when I was with my kids and I specifically decided that these were the only two priorities that I would pursue. I didn't golf, I didn't date, I didn't go out a lot. I made the priority being these two children.

00;05;57;01 - 00;06;27;10
Chris Michalak
Now, the good news is I had a group of friends who I was very close with, who had kids of the same age, and that created a great little, a great little community for myself and my two boys. And but prioritizing was the key to success. Being able to say what matters and what doesn't matter in this particular season of my life and for about a ten year period, a pretty good ten year run, though, those were the two things that I made my highest priority.

00;06;27;15 - 00;06;35;02
Chris Michalak
And I really kind of pushed out everything else that could potentially consume my time, my energy, or my past.

00;06;35;04 - 00;06;54;20
Paul Sullivan
Were, you know, looking back, you know, the old, you know, hindsight's 2020, you made it work. You made it work for, for for ten years. But what were the moments when it was, you know, difficult to sustain in that, that almost binary life? And when you had those moments that were difficult, who did you turn to? Somebody. How did you get through it?

00;06;54;20 - 00;07;05;04
Paul Sullivan
How did you keep pressing on? Because, you know, you look back, you know, okay, I, I did it for ten years. You could do it, but you didn't know it was going to end at ten years. You know, this is only when we look back. We have that frame.

00;07;05;06 - 00;07;26;09
Chris Michalak
Yeah. I had a very small group, men in my life at that point. So we met, on a fairly regular basis, sort of a, you know, a good discussion group, men's group, all fathers, all, you know, doing their very best to be great dads, in their own right. And being in that circle of people really helped in a lot of ways.

00;07;26;11 - 00;07;49;01
Chris Michalak
It was a, a good foundation for and a good community to be a part of with my two boys. And so I didn't feel alone in it. I was also very connected to my church at the time, and, and got a lot of encouragement from the relationships that I had there as well. And so the combination of those things made me feel not alone in it, if you will.

00;07;49;04 - 00;08;14;20
Chris Michalak
And so, and by the way, work was a great community as well. I enjoyed my relationships with the people that, I was working with at that, that decade in my life, I had a great and understanding set of, series of bosses at the time. And, you know, so, like, when you have people around you, that makes that kind of single mindedness about priority really work.

00;08;14;23 - 00;08;15;19
Chris Michalak
What what was.

00;08;15;19 - 00;08;45;07
Paul Sullivan
Happening in the moment you meet your your second wife, she has three kids. Your boys are older. At that point, it seems like, you know, just a totally different phase in your life. But what what do you think made it possible? Either, you know, work wise or family wise for you to sort of, you know, make that transition from, from single, you know, the dad to, you know, dad and step father and husband again.

00;08;45;10 - 00;09;07;12
Chris Michalak
Yeah. It was, again, timing is, timing the gift. Kids were getting older. I often joke that, every year, my kids life from the time they were two years old to the time they were 16 years old, got better every year was just like, I enjoyed that era even more. And then when they get their driver's license, something happens relationally.

00;09;07;12 - 00;09;30;27
Chris Michalak
From my perspective. I don't know, maybe it's just a boy thing. I raised two boys. I came from a family with three, three sons. So I don't really. I didn't know girls very well, and I didn't know daughters at all. But, like, so the boys turned 16. I think that opens up, you know, time for me and it opens up opportunity for me to do, and think about other things.

00;09;30;29 - 00;09;51;13
Chris Michalak
And, I have a great relationship, with my now wife. And, it opened up the opportunity for us to spend more time together. And so that turned into, you know, a marriage, and it turned into my picking up three bonus kids and included in that two daughters who taught me a lot about being a dad from a different perspective.

00;09;51;15 - 00;09;54;12
Paul Sullivan
And a dog. Chris, you forgot that you got a dog back, right?

00;09;54;16 - 00;10;17;22
Chris Michalak
And I got the dog. Yeah. So, I got I got a new job. I got a new CEO job, about the same time, same year that I got married. 2017. So 2017, I get remarried, I get a new CEO gig. Better than the gig I had, you know, a decade earlier. And my wife brings a dog with her, which was, absolutely a bonus as well.

00;10;17;24 - 00;10;36;01
Paul Sullivan
And you said that you've used that experience, which I find so inspiring to talk to people that, you know, life is not a straight line up or down, that there's, you know, variability to it. And we're going to all have have struggles in our life. And if we have support that, that will hopefully help us get through those struggles.

00;10;36;04 - 00;10;46;22
Paul Sullivan
You know, talk about how you often, you know, use that with, with some of your employees to discuss, you know, your personal experience and how it's informed. You know, your your professional work.

00;10;46;25 - 00;11;11;15
Chris Michalak
Yeah. You know, I've come to really love a redemption story, story where something that was a challenge or, a really difficult time and, in life becomes a real story about, overcoming a real story about success. And I've seen that in my own personal life, and I've seen that in the lives of others. And I love that kind of storyline.

00;11;11;18 - 00;11;34;19
Chris Michalak
Something that was hard become something that was that that was awesome. Sometimes being at the bottom, rising to the top feels even better when you've risen out of the bottom. And so I've seen a little bit of that in my life. My career trajectory has by no means been up into the right storyline. I've had difficulties at multiple times in my career.

00;11;34;22 - 00;11;59;12
Chris Michalak
And you know, what I have found is, you know, staying true to yourself, staying true to the way that you lead leadership is a really important, characteristic and value for me. And what I have found is if I stay true to my beliefs about leadership, in the way I show up at work, my career tends to follow one up into the right sort of path.

00;11;59;12 - 00;12;07;23
Chris Michalak
Now, it's not always going in that direction, but, overall, on a macro level, it seems to be always going in that direction.

00;12;07;25 - 00;12;29;28
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. You know, a year into the pandemic, you get your current job, which is the CEO of Virgin Paul's health care company in the tech tech space. And, you know, it's we don't really know what's have we gone through the first wave of the pandemic? You know, nobody's quite sure where things are going. But you do what any CEO would would do pre-pandemic.

00;12;29;28 - 00;12;51;12
Paul Sullivan
You move from Chicago. The British cargo area where you live, to Providence, Rhode Island, where the company is based. It's fully expecting people to return to work, and that doesn't quite happen. So pick up the story from there. What do you do? You've moved to Providence. You know, pizza's not as good as it is in Chicago, but the lobster rolls are a lot better.

00;12;51;12 - 00;12;58;00
Paul Sullivan
But here you are expecting to lead in person, and that doesn't happen. So how do you adapt to what was going on?

00;12;58;02 - 00;13;28;25
Chris Michalak
Yeah, I'm a I'm a showing up guy. In general, that's kind of my style. I'm a show up early and generally stay late kind of person. And so in April of 2021, I think I'm going to start showing up and people are also going to start showing up and then wave two of, the Covid situation comes and it starts to become clear that people are going to be more reticent to come back to the office after wave two.

00;13;28;28 - 00;13;51;09
Chris Michalak
The other thing that happened during that time frame is I replaced a lot of my leadership team. And in order to get the best talent, the best possible talent, I didn't, you know, just focus on the northeast. I didn't just focus on, New England. I focused on where can I get the very best talent. And we did an acquisition and we picked up some talent from that.

00;13;51;09 - 00;14;19;18
Chris Michalak
So now my leadership team is actually spread out around the country. And three people who happen to live on the West Coast, I have one in Denver, a person in Atlanta. I think there are three in the New England area. So now my leadership team becomes this much more geographically diverse leadership team. And so now I've got people who are reticent to come back to the office were predominantly a tech company that is, you know, really capable of delivering productivity from anywhere.

00;14;19;18 - 00;14;45;21
Chris Michalak
And I've got a leadership team that doesn't sit in a single hallway in Providence. And so what becomes clear is there's a need to lead differently. There's a need to show up in different sorts of ways. And so, you know, I started writing a blog. We are doing regular town hall. We're finding, other ways to communicate with people and continue to establish a culture that we're really proud of, that we think really makes a difference.

00;14;45;23 - 00;15;06;29
Chris Michalak
Despite the fact that there's not a huge core of people gathered in a single office on a daily basis, but people are coming back here and there for team meetings were for, for teams that happened to be in the Providence marketplace. They're coming into the office and we're using that headquarters location really well to unite people.

00;15;07;01 - 00;15;23;00
Chris Michalak
But fundamentally, we really shifted our orientation with the expectation of our employee base to make sure that we're delivering the very best employee experience to them. And all the other dynamics that come with, with being an organization post-Covid.

00;15;23;02 - 00;15;42;23
Paul Sullivan
You know, looking back, it all makes complete sense. But you're really a forward thinking CEO to have been able to to do this. I mean, adapting under pressure is what any great CEO needs to do, but you're adapting into a world that we'd never seen before. This wasn't something that we, you know, could have imagined doing before Covid.

00;15;42;23 - 00;16;00;20
Paul Sullivan
Certainly not anything you did in your career to that date. You know, being in Chicago, what allowed you to think differently? What allowed you to sort of see the future of work before, you know, it was really fully formed before other CEOs were we're seeing this, this crucial need to adapt.

00;16;00;22 - 00;16;25;11
Chris Michalak
Yeah. I don't know if I beat any other CEOs to the punch, but we early on formed a team of people to talk about the future of work. Being a human capital company, we care about human capital issues, pretty, pretty greatly. And so we formed this team and they helped kind of take the temperature of the organization and understand sort of what people thinking was at that time.

00;16;25;17 - 00;16;50;09
Chris Michalak
There were also a number of surveys going on in the broader environment in 21 about what the future of work look like. And so we were all students of what was going on in the broader, you know, the broader professional community. And from those things, we sort of started to adopt and adapt, adopt new things and adapt our, our previous thinking about where we were taking the company.

00;16;50;09 - 00;17;21;00
Chris Michalak
And so it was really listening more than anything else that enabled us to figure out how do we go thread that needle. And then it's also a matter of trust in a lot of ways, Paul. It's trusting your leaders to lead well. It's trusting your people to do the right thing. And so I had a little moment at that at one point when, when a lot of articles were being written, written about quiet quitting, I had these moments of doubt like, hey, am I doing the right thing?

00;17;21;02 - 00;17;45;09
Chris Michalak
Am I, am I accepting the possibility of quiet quitting in mediocrity when, if that's really going on, should I be really concerned? And I spent a lot of time, personal time, just sort of thinking about that topic and the conclusion I came to, it made this a little bit of a full circle moment. People generally want to do the right thing.

00;17;45;16 - 00;18;14;06
Chris Michalak
It's my core belief that people in organizations generally want to do the right thing, and people need to balance work and life, and they've always need to balance, always needed to do that. That's not a new phenomenon, the need to balance work and life. And there were times in my life, you know, I'll go back to 2006, 2007, when my balance of working life might have been a little bit different than it looked like in 2010, 1112, and I was making tradeoffs.

00;18;14;11 - 00;18;35;26
Chris Michalak
And I came to the conclusion that Quiet Within was just work life balance, which was just people who want to do the right thing, who are adults making good decisions, making some tradeoffs in their life, in the seasons that they need to make. And so I got comfortable. Despite the concept of quiet quitting. And now, look, the pendulum has swung back.

00;18;35;26 - 00;18;57;15
Chris Michalak
People are leaving their jobs less. They're doubling down in their commitment. And I think that's, again, little adjustments in work life balance type types of scenarios. And so it's made me feel great about the culture that we're creating at Virgin Pulse. And about what we're trying to do with respect to, you know, working remotely and in our environment.

00;18;57;17 - 00;19;22;20
Paul Sullivan
And, you know, obviously the people are saying, you made this work, but was there a moment when you knew that you'd hit a tipping point when the feedback and the productivity research that you said, okay, this was worth the risk? It doesn't look like a risk in retrospect because, you know, the companies are getting beaten up now, are the ones who are requiring everybody to go back into the office a certain number of days a week, and that just get people to sort of, you know, we're both dog people.

00;19;22;20 - 00;19;38;12
Paul Sullivan
You know, we talk about I sometimes talk about donkey dog where they put their paws down and there's no way you're going to pull them forward. You, you avoided that. People. You know, you were a leader and and people bought into your leadership style. But was there a tipping point where you said, you know what, Chris? You made the right decision.

00;19;38;12 - 00;19;44;11
Paul Sullivan
This is this is going to work. And, hey, I get to move back to Chicago and get to have a better pizza.

00;19;44;13 - 00;20;12;16
Chris Michalak
I by the way, I really love a good lobster roll, just to be super clear. But, you know, we did an employee engagement survey, and, I'd set a goal that, you know, we would top a particular percentage of engagement for, for the year 2022. And we did top that number. And almost a little to my surprise, I'm, one of those leaders who's always setting sort of stretch goals.

00;20;12;16 - 00;20;44;00
Chris Michalak
And you, you know, you go, hey, I'm going to put it out there and let's see what happens. And we overachieved that. Now, I'm not saying we have the most engaged culture in the world, but I think the progress we made in a year where we came through Covid, in a year where we changed that, most of the senior leaders in the organization creating, a lot of change in a year where I launched a fairly ambitious set of strategic and corporate initiatives and objectives.

00;20;44;02 - 00;21;12;18
Chris Michalak
It was it was a year of massive change and effort and, and demand from the employee base. And in that year, we topped the engagement score that I set for our goal. And it made me convinced that the work we were doing predominantly around bringing talent in, around our culture and around specific human capital initiatives, were making a difference in shaping the type of company we wanted to be.

00;21;12;20 - 00;21;35;07
Chris Michalak
And so, I felt great about it. I know my head of HR felt great about it. She's doing an absolutely fantastic job in that regard. And we're shaping the kind of company we want to be. Every town hall, for example, we have three principles that we cover in every town hall. We talk about our purpose changing lives for good, and we tell stories about how we're actually doing that as a company.

00;21;35;10 - 00;22;01;28
Chris Michalak
We talk about people, and how people matter to us, in particular, three people, our clients, our members that are on our platform and our employees. And we we specifically talk about what we're doing for those three important stakeholder groups. And then we talk about performance, because I wanted to bring a more performance orientation into the organization and talk about specific results and metrics that are important to the company.

00;22;02;00 - 00;22;18;10
Chris Michalak
I think we've created a company that is uniting around our purpose, that is committed to our performance and recognizes that we value people. And to me, that has made an enormous difference. Average impulse over the course of the last two years.

00;22;18;12 - 00;22;34;02
Paul Sullivan
Chris, this has been a wonderful conversation, and I'm grateful for your time. One one last question. You know, when you there are a lot of CEOs out there who publicly have said that they're hesitant. You know, to go to this, the model that that that you have that they really want people to go back in the office three or 4 or 5 days a week.

00;22;34;08 - 00;22;50;20
Paul Sullivan
What can you share with them? What can you share with them about how you were able to make this work? For the good of everyone and and how they perhaps could just make a few small changes in the way they think in the that they could make it work for their companies as well.

00;22;50;22 - 00;23;22;17
Chris Michalak
I don't know that I have a particular, you know, unique perspective on that particular topic. I think every company is different and every company has different expectations and orientation. I happen to run a SaaS based technology company, lots of engineers, lots of product people. When they need to be together. It's when they want to do creative work. But otherwise a lot of times you're head down doing the work that you need to contribute to the organization.

00;23;22;20 - 00;23;45;29
Chris Michalak
And we've been able to make, you know, for the most part, make that work for most of our employees. By the way, not every employee is remote. And by the way, I should say we have a massive offshore capability, in Europe where everybody in that office is in the office. We have 550 people in that office who are plugging away every day in the office, and that is working for them.

00;23;46;01 - 00;24;10;05
Chris Michalak
They feel great about what they're doing in that regard. But in our, you know, very graphically dispersed US population, you know, my view is we've got an amazing talent. And I feel that from the top all the way to the bottom, I feel like, you know, the top of the, of our organization. I've been able to, you know, build in a tremendous team by being flexible about where people work.

00;24;10;08 - 00;24;37;08
Chris Michalak
And I'm applying that principle to every level, the organization, let's go get the very best talent who contribute at the highest possible level, and let's bring them into this company to make the company really great. And that is really working. Now. I'm also at the same time really encouraging be in the office for things that really matter. Last week we had 250 of our commercial leaders in the office collaborating around how do we, you know, best sell our solutions?

00;24;37;08 - 00;24;56;28
Chris Michalak
How do we build customer centricity, in the way that we serve customers that that have to happen face to face. And so we spent three days together face to face. Now people going back out in into their, their home environments. I think we're getting the best of both worlds, opportunities to be together, to unite as teams, to do work.

00;24;56;28 - 00;25;12;09
Chris Michalak
That has to happen face to face while we're getting the very best talent by letting people work from home. And and it's working. And so, yeah, it's been a good story for us. And I'm happy about the culture that we're creating.

00;25;12;11 - 00;25;18;29
Paul Sullivan
Chris Michalek, CEO of Virgin Pulse. Thank you again for being my guest on the Company of Dads podcast.

00;25;19;01 - 00;25;21;25
Chris Michalak
Thank you Paul. It was great being here.

00;25;21;28 - 00;25;50;19
Paul Sullivan
Thank you for listening to the company of that podcast. I also want to thank the people who make this podcast and everything else that we do with the company of dads. Possible. Helder, Mira, who is our audio producer Lindsay Decker, handles all of our social media. Terry Brennan, who's helping us with the newsletter and audience acquisition, Emily Servin, who is our web maestro, and of course, Evan Roosevelt, who is working side by side with me on many of the things that we do here at The Company of Dads.

00;25;50;19 - 00;26;04;29
Paul Sullivan
It's a great team. And we're we're just trying to bring you the best in fatherhood. Remember, the one stop shop for everything is our newsletter, the dad. Sign up at the Company of dads.com backslash. The dad. Thank you again for listening.